Did ESO kill GW2?

bcbully

I think it did. A huge portion of GW2 was based off WvWvW. There was a time when the WvWvW player base was massive. Since ESO, WvWvW is all but dead. Be honest, how many of you know people (many people) who left GW2 for ESO? Now, how many of you know people who left ESO for GW2, nobody I bet. 

When it became obvious to people that ESO had a better 3 way, large scale war product, people left GW2 by the guild. I believe this is around the time ArenaNet and NCsoft changed direction and pulled support from WvWvW. They also knew they could not compete on that front. They moved resources to Spvp, Raids, and Grind. They attempted to go where ESO wasn't. All that did was alienate the rest of their player base and leave them with major articles being written like "GW2 Apathy sets in". 

At this point I believe the ship has sailed on GW2 due to the mark being missed so badly with the expansion. I don't think there is any coming back.

What do you think?

BeansnBread

I think GW2 is still doing well.

reeereee

Luckily for us gw2 is an NCsoft game so they release color coded charts every quarter about how their game is doing.  As I recall they got a nice bounce with their new expansion and the quarter after only saw a minor dip.  There is really nothing in the reports to indicate ESO is putting any kind of dent in gw2's population. 

ESO on the other hand releases absolutely nothing other than extremely vague statements by Zenimax employees claiming ESO is amazing.

I only have ESO on PC and last time I checked on the campaigns they weren't exactly filled to the brim.  I don't think this reflects on the overall ESO population more so that PvP doesn't seem to be a huge draw for most ESO players.

Thupli

Naw, GW2 is the only game that is really stunting and hurting itself.

ESO IS in many respects closer to the spiritual successor of gw1 with regards to Builds, which IS truly embarrassing, but I wouldnt say ESO killed GW2.

GW2 really hurt itself, and more importantly TRUST from their players.  They have literally not been able to produce a full raid (9-12 bosses) yet, have added no dungeons, and been super stagnant on LW (12 months?), effectively throwing out the pve crowd.  They also failed to bring WVW to what was needed.  Instead they are working on a new xpac with a huge chunk of their resources.  

They lost their window of trust from players with this expansion; players arent going to believe them about the next expansion.  I expect decline from here.

MikePaladin

No . No. no no !

Gw2 Killed it self   WvWvW used to be lots of fun and many thing over time changed dramatically and they lost people because of it

gervaise1

ESO impact on GW2? Doubtful. 

I think if that was going to happen it would have manifest itself after ESO went b2p last year. No reason why it would happen now.

And based on NCSoft's reported earnings for GW2 that hasn't happened - despite ESO 7M+ sales (presumably most in the last year.) 

I think any change you are seeing is more likely to be caused by The Division or Overwatch. Recent big releases basically.

GW2's Q2 results may shed some light. 

BeansnBread

I think this describes the situation well. I think fairly soon there will be Q2 results so you can try and trash the game then if you want:

http://www.mmobomb.com/file/2016/05/NCSoft-Q1-2016-Financials.jpg



Also, we'll never know how well ESO is doing since they don't release financials. And I've heard AvA is dying and that might be indicative of it having far fewer players than you think it does.

Baitness

I didn't notice any real drop in WvW activity when ESO came out.  I heard about a few commanders and guilds that were moving to ESO, but they came back.  Like the others said, I think the only thing that hurts GW2 is itself.  It obviously has a large number of interested players, it is up to ANet to turn those into recurring customers.

I think Thupli made some great points about trust in their expansions.  I don't think anybody realized how little content we would be getting with the expansion pack.  It is a real shame, because the content in HoT is damn good, there is just far too little of it.

observer

No.  If i had to make a guess, i'd say that people started leaving GW2 between the end of season 2 and Heart of Thorns.  That was a seriously long wait with no content at all.  Megaservers was also another factor that hurt GW2 tremendously, since it killed server communities.

Mikeha

ESO? lmao

Want to know how GW2 is doing, check the numbers released every quarter.

Celcius

ESO is a popular game, but so is GW2. GW2 is doing quite well financially, so I don't see how it was killed by ESO. WvW is not as popular as PvE in GW2. It never has been. 

ESO's WvW style combat has received a ton of negative perception lately as well. The main reason for ESO's success is console. Not that it matters, but I doubt the PC player base touches GW2. 

Incomparable

Gw2 reminded me too much of gw, but in a bad way. I just didnt care for the world to begin with that much, and the game did not hook me in with the art style, small sanctioned areas, story, and even combat.

I think those things were too much of a negative for me to even enjoy the other aspects of the game to even mention those since I gave up on the game too early.

With ESO, I cared enough for the story, and crafting, that I made it to end game, and then realized I was not enjoying the combat enough due to bugs, and expliots, and the last quest being bugged to not even get VR rank. It was bugged for a few weeks, and by the time I quit, still bugged. At least, ESO drew me into their game, and got a lot of my time invested into their world, and I think when someone is invested into a story and world, it makes them more likely to continue that journey. So if I were to say which is better, then ESO from my point of view.

But may be the GW2 would have been more fun?

observer

Recore said:

ESO? lmao

Want to know how GW2 is doing, check the numbers released every quarter.

Here's the latest report:  Q1, 2016.



It's still doing okay, but it got bumped up due to HoT.  30,557 = korean won, so when converted to USD = $26 million.

I wouldn't be surprised if it drops back down to 20k korean won, or below, or if converted, $17 million.

B&S obviously did good but that was for their western launch.  I wonder how it's doing since Black Desert came out.

This doesn't reflect population numbers, just money.

Rusque

It seems plausible, but I think most MMO's kill themselves.

Mardukk

ESO is quest based and GW2 isn't.  You may be talking about PvP only...both suck.  Although GW2 doesn't pretend to be free aim and it has combos.  And oh yeah GW2 is years older than ESO.

To the chart above.  Tough to believe B&S ever had that many players...even at launch.

Mikeha

observer said:

Recore said:

ESO? lmao

Want to know how GW2 is doing, check the numbers released every quarter.

Here's the latest report:  Q1, 2016.



It's still doing okay, but it got bumped up due to HoT.  30,557 = korean won, so when converted to USD = $26 million.

I wouldn't be surprised if it drops back down to 20k korean won, or below, or if converted, $17 million.

B&S obviously did good but that was for their western launch.  I wonder how it's doing since Black Desert came out.

This doesn't reflect population numbers, just money.

Already seen the numbers.

I was saying if anybody wants to know how the game is doing check the reports.

I do not know of any mmo that releases sub numbers. Now it is all about revenue. Cant make money if you do not have players.

Mikeha

ESO is on Xbox One, PS4 and PC

Guild Wars 2 is only on PC.

That is 3 platforms compared to 1

Guild Wars 2 is also older releasing in 2012 while ESO released in 2014.

filmoret

I believe it had to do with a few things.  First was the population balances.  ESO solved this problem.  Second was the fact that you had to hold down the RMB the entire time you were trying to fight.  ESO also solved this problem.  Then they changed the borderlands into a maze/pve game.  They also encourage the blob.

ESO's main problem was the huge boost in seige damage which you do not have to suffer through in GW2 since its more balanced there.

Overall I believe GW2 is just a better game but lacked those important things for their WVW to keep strong.

aslan132

I can say from personal experience, no. I was in a guild that had left GW2 for ESO. It was something new, and we thought they would have a major focus on the 3 faction PVP, as the maps and campaigns sounded good on paper. Unfortunately, thats where the good times ended.

Of course there were launch issues with ESO, just as there was with any MMO, so we mostly ignored those. But then it got silly with "Emporer Trading", which then devolved into just each faction owning a different campaign, and just not fighting each other. Then they took campaigns away to force fights, and we saw alot of cheating, hacking, and broken builds. Forward camps made sieges useless, and zerg fights were won by whoever had more oil pots on the ground, or someone exploiting vampire skills.

Honestly, we gave it a shot, then we went back to GW2 just before HoT. And we never looked back since. 

So I cant speak for the whole players base, but personal experience, I can say for myself, and my guild of 135 people, we did leave ESO for GW2, and GW2 in our experience is not only the much more balanced game, it runs smoother, and has better gameplay elements. ESO definitely did not kill GW2 for us.

Agnhar

I thought i wouldn't live to see the day an MMO would be called killer besides WoW.

SalmonMan

WvW seems to be heaving in GW2 right now. i dont WvW much, but need the gift of battle from tne WvW reward track, and often have to que.

Kaneth

I would say much of ESO's population was built in via the Elder Scrolls series, much the same way Blizzard and SQEnix have their fan bases baked in. I would hazard a guess that a good portion of ESO players are Elder Scrolls fans, with then the usual core group of game hoppers and mmo players in general.

GW2's biggest mistakes were 1) alienating their baked in fan base from GW1, 2) trying too hard to be different, 3) continuing to more or less beta test systems well after launch, but using live servers to do so. I don't think the content drought between the final living story chapter and HoT had that much impact, simply because content droughts are fairly common in mmos. HoT, while I enjoyed the hell out of it, really wasn't enough to keep many of the die hard fans interested for more than a month or so. The large focus on PUGs doing large meta events was a huge mistake as well. Good portions of the HoT content were also locked behind completion of said meta events too.

HoT released last Oct. and there hasn't been a story update since, as far as I know. This second content drought so soon after the initial I would think has far more impact since it's on the heels of an xpack release, and no word of anything really coming down the pike soon.

ESO has nothing to do with GW2's problems. ANet has everything to do with GW2's problems.

Octagon7711

I have about the same amount of fun with GW2 and it costs less money.  

GeezerGamer

Why, in 2016, are we still talking about MMOs killing each other?  

zaberfangx

GeezerGamer said:

Why, in 2016, are we still talking about MMOs killing each other?  

There must be a winner!. I think whats going on.

xyzercrime

GeezerGamer said:

Why, in 2016, are we still talking about MMOs killing each other?  

Because talking about MMO that kills itself is too mainstream.