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Free trial weekend, Aug 23rd - 25th
Volkon
Member UncommonPosts: 3,748
in Guild Wars 2
ArenaNet is offering a free trial weekend next weekend for, well, everyone. Link provided if you're interested, you can register now.
Oderint, dum metuant.
Comments
http://medias.luna-atra.fr/gw2/char_tool/CT_imageGenerator.php?pseudo=Centurion Mikal&lang=EN&code=&code=TSwtLDUsLSw2LC0sMjksOSwyMiwyMywyNCwtLDEwMiwzNiw4MSw4NCw4OQ==
This promo strikes me as strange considering it's B2P. Free weekends were a tool used to bring players back. But in that regard, GW2 is always a free weekend. Why not just offer a set trial period for the game so that potential new players won't have to wait to try the game?
In before the usual suspects come around claiming this is further proof the game is dying. (Although post #2 could have beet me to it seeing as how I can't tell if that was sarcasm)
I know a couple of my relatives aren't that into MMORPG's and maybe this will be a good time to introduce them.
RIP Jimmy "The Rev" Sullivan and Paul Gray.
Perhaps they want to do a big promotional push a week before FFXIV:ARR launches ?
In case they might catch a few people that were intending to play FFXIV but hadn't pre-ordered yet ?
Just because you're making tons of money does not mean you should stop trying to make more. That's not the way business works, ask Blizzard...
Commonly you don't add a free trial until game sales drop below a certain point.
There are 2 reasons for this:
1. It is a sign of weakness, unsuccessful games start offering free trials when they are desperate to get players playing, and you don't want that action to make it look like you are in a similar state.
2. There is literally no reason to offer a free trial of lots of people are still buying your game anyway.
I think GW2 isn't doing as well as people would like to believe, I don't think it is a complete ghost town either.
If the game had been working well they wouldn't have drastically changed their direction and they wouldn't be blitzing so hard with all the PR lately.
If I had to guess i'd say they aren't retaining enough players in the west, and they are really hoping that the chinese release takes the game to the next level for revenue.
The chinese release will at least temporarily increase the health of the game, maybe they will be able to snowball that momentum...
I predict the game to be very small like GW1 became, within a year or two once the game is released everywhere and the novelty of the game has worn off.
GW2 already offered a free trial, back in November.
This isn't a permanent free trial, just a limited trial that give people enough time to try the game.
They even increased server capacity not long ago because they had a GW2 sale.
I even posted the forum quote again in case you missed it from the other thread.
Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
They've been offering free trials every 4 months...
Game is fine.
"As you read these words, a release is seven days or less away or has just happened within the last seven days those are now the only two states youll find the world of Tyria."...Guild Wars 2
Oderint, dum metuant.
Lol wow, right on cue.
1.) Proof? Every MMO offers free trails eventually, this is not the first time GW2 has done so.
2.) Even if you have 1 million players, the goal is to get 2 million. It makes tons of sense because there is no other way to demo the game without buying it.
Man I remember all those celebrity WoW commercials years ago. Was the game dying then?
I'm sure your prediction is more like a hope. "I hope the game will fade away." for some strange reason you're hoping for the game to fail.
Yes... they offer free trials, when the game isn't growing rapidly anymore... Commercials are not free trials. Commercials are advertisements..
My prediction is my prediction... I wanted gw2 to be a great game... in the end it is taking the same progression as most big named MMO releases in the last few years... and it is doing it at a much more rapid pace... (People were quitting the game faster, faster free trials, quicker "course corrections", quicker rate of sales dropoffs, etc etc.
Wat? You're prediction is a blind hope and you want to know why? You just proved it with your lastest response which is some made up stuff. It is taking the same progression as most big named MMO releases in the last few years? Are you sure about that?
Lets just look at SWTOR who had lost subs around 4-5 months after release, before GW2 released SWTOR was going F2P...this was within a year.
So people are quitting the game faster? How many people quit the game since launch. Give me numbers or don't respond.
Game is offering free trials only months after release. FACT
Every quarter the game has dropped significantly in sales. FACT
Course corrections. FACT
Twitch tv viewership down 95% since launch. FACT
2.5m logins a week. FACT
Based on common MMO gaming habits for nonsubscription mmos you are looking at 4-20 logins per week. That puts the game at anywhere from a tad over 600k to a little over 100k active players.
Give me numbers of how many active players there are if the game is doing so well, give me other logical and official reasons for course corrections, free trials, no interest from viewers on twitch, and why sales dropped 20% from q1 to q2.
The onus is on you because the evidence and facts aren't looking positive.
So by your logic, blizzard was doing awful when they gave people free trials at the peak of their sub numbers?
Don't be silly... You can't know why exactly are they offering trial weekends (this isn't the 1st one) unless you're an employee there and are involved in such decision making.
You assumptions are just that. Your effort to interpret them as facts is in vain
"Happiness is not a destination. It is a method of life."
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I don't see anything bad with offering free trials.
It gives those players who are on the edge to try the game and maybe play it. Even those players who didn't think about the game might play it for free. If they won't play it maybe they'll talk about it with friends and maybe some of those friends will try and like the game. The possibilities are infinite. The reason for free trials are always the same, you're trying to make more money and attract more players. It doesn't mean the game is in such a bad shape that it's dieing of and needs fresh meat, at this point it would already be too late for a free trial. Just look at WOW and when they introduced free trials or "guest pass". It was their prime time with huge numbers of subers and it was still growing. So what do you think would be the reason they introduced free trial? It's not all black and white.
Considering sale drops, it's a B2P game. Did you ever see a quarterly sale report for Crysis, Tomb Raider, COD, BF, HALO.... the list goes on... Every B2P game is expected to drop sale numbers after time. ANet is making money trough cash shop from existing players and it looks like it's more than enough to keep constant updates going. Sounds also like a fact, doesn't it? :P
The number ANet gave was about log ins and they didn't present any numbers considering "how many players there is" because it's hard to tell. There's no subscribtion so they can't just list all those accounts which have sub active and tell - oh we have XXXX active accounts. They can only go by player activity in a week or month by logins. So you have the number and I think it's doing quite well.
"Happiness is not a destination. It is a method of life."
-------------------------------
No, GW2 increase from 3Q12 (around $50M) to 4Q12 (around $140M).
There was no announcement of 2.5M loggins a week.
Course correction - more permanent content from the living story left behind.
Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
Financials from NCSOFT showed that GW2's sales slowed down which is expected since the game has been out for almost a year now.
Haters citing the 'drop in sales' is hilarious for an almost a year old game. /Facepalm
What I don't get is why ANet isn't doing a proper demo. Sales are down so why not do a proper demo to get more people playing?
Release demo + drop price by X amount ($10-$20) = BAM! more players / more sales.
I like their course correction as more permanant content is better than temp stuff so while ANet moved away from their original vision, I didn't like their original vision anyway.
Gdemami -
Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
Yep that's a fact. It doesn't imply anything except that Anet wants to get more people playing the game.
Box sales dropping is a normal occurrence.
I don't ever watch Twitch TV. Whenever someone brings up a number so perfectly rounded I doubt it anyways...
Oh? Where did you get that from, 2.5m logins huh?
No sir the onus isn't on me, I'm not the one running around in every GW2 thread screaming "DOOOOM!". The truth is you have no proof to claim what you are saying, you're guessing and making bad guesses at that. Course corrections...you mean how WoW went from Vanilla WoW to what it is now? Free trials IS NOT a indication of failure, no matter how many times you tell yourself it is. Yet it is still one of the most games on xfire etc? Who cares? Maybe most of the GW2 players are playing the game? Also until you provide a link as to this twitch thing I won't care or consider it at all. Also sales dropped because people don't buy games twice usually...so yeah sales tend to drop. People have told you this day after day yet the common sense just doesn't get to someone that has a agenda.
So yeah, where is the hard proof that people were quitting GW2 faster? You know what I won't wait, because you can't prove something like that because you can't even 'quit' gw2...you can stop playing for a few weeks and return...
Actually, the huuuge dropoff in revenue is from box sales & cash shop COMBINED.
As for your other point - that's just stupid. Anet knows exactly how many players they have, regardless of it being B2P.
They could've easily said how many UNIQUE logins there are in a week, instead of what they did - which is barfing out numbers that don't mean anything (or can be interpreted to mean 2.5 mil players or 1 player and everything inbetween).
http://lyrics.iztok.org/verse/Lynyrd_Skynyrd/Simple_Man/80615
Yep yep... when people are intentionally vague with their numbers it is because they are hoping you interpret it the best way possible even if that may not be the reality of the situation.
As I said before confident companies give you real numbers that aren't open to interpretation, because they are doing well, they have no reason to be vague, because the real numbers are good marketing for them.
GW1 waited a few years before it offered a permanent 14 day/10 hr trial
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/219275/Look-here-for-GW-free-trial-link-Sticky-Please.html
EQ2 fan sites
Twitch TV really doesn't tell you much about the population. It is more of an indication that its attempt to become an esport has failed..... then again everybody who actually follows esports already knows that.
James T. Kirk: All she's got isn't good enough! What else ya got?
It's a bit sad isn't it? Not sure what anyone gets out of a game failing any ways and I never understood the whole rooting for a game to fail thing.
So many people want to pretend this game is something that it isn't.... it's a bit 2.5million.
I would give it another shot but I'll be too busy playing FFXIV. Guess I was never their intended demographic heh
If they were smart, theyd offer it a couple weeks after FFXIV launches. That way they have a chance to grab some rebounders who didnt end up liking the game.