The sales were good and while not as high as SWTOR or WOW. They were good enough to be considered a success. Now about the love/hate thing. Why do some people think it is the generic crap? - Unless you're a big Hardcore EVE player, every mmos are pretty much similar to each other. GW2 is a good game and deserve the praises. It pushes the enveloppe far enough to open new doors to inovation. GW2 will greatly influence other MMOs and this is a good thing.
The GW2 EGA sales exceeded SWTOR EGA sales. They execeeded WoW Month 1-3 sales, too.
Originally posted by papardelios just face it guys. the game was (GW1) and will be (GW2) always an alt mmo for the most of the mmo genre players. with no open world pvp, no real raiding ang no real gear progression the game is a good, solid but always a second choice for non casual players
I'm not sure who denied this, I never have. The idea here though is that there are far fewer hardcore MMO players than casual ones, thus GW2 and its payment plan are very doable and by all accounts, should succeed just fine. That's who they're aiming this game at.
Well, that and OCD completionists.
If you look at NCSofts financials GW is in the same group for profit as CoH. A thread in this forum shows that just under 70% of those responding have not spent anything in the cash shop. GW and the other poor performing games under the NCSoft umbrella have had the benefit of the profits of the big profit games Aion and Lineage/L2.
And of course you're going to tell me that this is a direct result of the latter games being sub-based...
Aion's profits comes from subs. Store sales were bad.
Lineage/Lineage2 profits come from store sales. (not sure if either of those games have a sub in their home country but the quarterly mentions store sales. WHich is interesting because thay are older games and their fans must really like them.)
Gw1 and apparently GW2...the fans say how amazing the game is but you have to wonder how amazing is it if they aren't willing to pay beyond the initial box price.
Not being forced to pay is not the same as not being willing to pay .
I already spent $35 in the gem store...
Based on the quarterly not many of the 6-7mil who bought the game were willing to spend more. Some may question why this is. Also have to wonder that if Anet didn't have the dollars from NcSoft and had to do it as their own company would they still be around? Would they have been able to make GW2?
Just something to think about.
Edit: And kudos to you for doing your part and supporting the game you like. Could you imagine how much more they could have done of more people did.
Not necessarily, because as you pointed out the people who really want the game can easily buy it at the local game store. It's not really being exclusive, in the way the examples you listed are. It's effectively cutting out impulse buyers and people who want to play it NAO, not tomorrow when you go to the store, not in 3 days when amazon ships the game. I've been in the place before, and I'm sure I'm not alone.
The fact that halting digital sales is affecting their potential sales should even be a debate to be honest, it's just a matter of by how much.
Notice I'm not saying the game is not a success, it most definitely is, but not because they had to stop digital sales. 1 mil + pre-purchases, #1 best seller on amazon and nearly 4 times more hours played than WoW on xfire are more accurate indicators.
Well, if I wanted to buy it NOW and I read that ANet suspended first-party digital sales but not digital from retail partners I guess I'd do a little searching for where to buy it digitally. Oh, then I'd see Best Buy is selling standard digital:
Reality - GW2 sold so many copies that they had to halt sales.
You realize that doesn't prove anything, right? All it shows is that they weren't prepared to accomodate the sales they did get, which if anything, is a failure on their part and will hurt them long-term. The longer they get into release, the more people realize GW2 is just another generic fantasy themepark on a nice wrapper. The difference is GW2 is not getting any more sales, and the rose-coloured glasses are coming off.
Doing better than expected in sales and having to halt for a while is a fail? wow I love your logic.
this isn't meant at you woopin it was just your post/quote which shows how funny this is, until Anet actually tells (which they problable won't), the argument is just as valid for both opinions, either it was so popular that it outsold alle expectiations or it failed becuase of bugs/not enough hamster to keep it all running.
until we actually hear from Anet, the arguments will never be settled
i really don't care about the game one way or another. simple google search for ncsoft projected sales of gw2. some might surprised.
KDB Daewoo Securities, which bills itself as a leader in the Korean securities market, issues regular financial statement on NCSoft and its wholly-owned subsidiary, ArenaNet.
Its most recent entries have included some interesting predictions — including a potential launch window — regarding Guild Wars 2.
Perhaps you should have READ the article. KDB Daewoo made the prediction. They didn't even ask NCSoft, but used other metrics to determine this number.
The sales were good and while not as high as SWTOR or WOW. They were good enough to be considered a success. Now about the love/hate thing. Why do some people think it is the generic crap? - Unless you're a big Hardcore EVE player, every mmos are pretty much similar to each other. GW2 is a good game and deserve the praises. It pushes the enveloppe far enough to open new doors to inovation. GW2 will greatly influence other MMOs and this is a good thing.
The GW2 EGA sales exceeded SWTOR EGA sales. They execeeded WoW Month 1-3 sales, too.
Reality - GW2 sold so many copies that they had to halt sales.
You realize that doesn't prove anything, right? All it shows is that they weren't prepared to accomodate the sales they did get, which if anything, is a failure on their part and will hurt them long-term. The longer they get into release, the more people realize GW2 is just another generic fantasy themepark on a nice wrapper. The difference is GW2 is not getting any more sales, and the rose-coloured glasses are coming off.
Doing better than expected in sales and having to halt for a while is a fail? wow I love your logic.
There's people who get paid to prognosticate the sales of a particular product. GW2 and NCsoft have these people on their payrolls. They forecasted X number of sales, the sales were much higher than they projected. These people failed, and in a way so did ANET for not having the infrastructure to accomodate the actual demand the game had due to an inaccurate forecast, thus missing out on potential sales.
It's really not that hard to grasp.
What seems to be hard to grasp for you is that your logic is flawed. Most businesses like to have their sales go higher than their projected sales. Even if it causes problems in the short term. Those are good problems to have. To have a waiting list of people who want to buy your product is only a good thing.
By your logic, every time a product sells out it's a failure.
You want me to pay to play a game I already paid for???
Edit: And kudos to you for doing your part and supporting the game you like. Could you imagine how much more they could have done of more people did.
I'm not particularly fond of this line of reasoning. If NCSoft made so much money off of Lineage and L2 as you say they did, why wasn't Aion a better game? I don't think money has anything to do with it, otherwise Indie games like Minecraft wouldn't be selling millions of copies. It's the dev team that stretches the buck in the end.
There is more bs flying around in this thread than at a DNC or RNC rally
Impressive to say the least
LOL for real...
Normally I think that both the "hater" and "fanboi" sides of an argument get spun out of proportion. But honestly...I relaly only see the "hater" side going crazy with the BS in this thread.
All we on the "fanboi" side of this argument are saying is that I wouldn't really call a game with a 93% metascore, and so many sales that they had to halt first-party sales a failure. No, it doesn't mean that the game is the best MMORPG ever...but I can't see how you can get "failure" out of this evidence.
And the responses to this are...
"ANet said they would sell 3249083920 bajillion copies, and they didn't...FAIL!"
"Other themeparks failed, so this will too! FAIL!"
"Terrible server infrastructure. FAIL!"
Who's saying GW2 was a failure? Definitely not me. It'll probably be more successful than Rift and SWTOR, that's definitely not a failure.
I was merely pointing out someone's delusion in believing that stopping sales for your product is considered a success in the business world. It's actually a failure to forecast sales, doesn't mean the product failed, doesn't mean it shattered every human expectation. It just means some people at the marketing and finance departments didn't do their jobs right. Happens all time in businesses.
You keep throwing around this 'business world' stuff. It's clear though that nothing you say matches the real world.
Businesses who are wildly successful beyond their projections frequently run into capacity issues. Which cause product shortages. This is Management 101, a Freshman Level course. With MMOs the capacity issue is server hosting, not copies of the game to sell. That's actually without limit. They can sell this game as many times as they want with a digital download and the issue for that is down-load bottle-necking.
So, GW2's issue is like WoW's early issue --- too many players over-loading their servers. That's their real capacity issue. And the only way to mitigate that issue in the short run is to slow down the sales.
So they did.
So, please, stop throwing around your 'business' observations. They're just laughably wrong.
The difference being WoW never slowed down their sales. It didn't hurt them that people had to sit for 2 hours in a queue because they had already paid upfront for the game. Eventually servers settled and people forgot about the queues, they didn't lose any potential sales to their infrastructure bottleneck because they didn't have much choice after they had bought the game.
In addition to infrastructure issues at launch GW2 also halted first party online sales, effectively cutting off impulse buyers and people who want to play NAO, banking on those players buying a physical copy somewhere or buying it later when ANET digital sales are restored. In other words, grossly overestimating the dedication of the average impulse buyer and very likely not getting as many sales as they could.
If you don't see the difference, and how GW2 hurt their potential sales by stopping digital version purchases, then I don't know what to tell you.
Well after looking at my inbox it broke my all time unread emails in less then week record. 832 Authorize Login Emails. All from China. Good thing they put this new security measure in or I would have ended up with a hacked account.
Edit: And kudos to you for doing your part and supporting the game you like. Could you imagine how much more they could have done of more people did.
I'm not particularly fond of this line of reasoning. If NCSoft made so much money off of Lineage and L2 as you say they did, why wasn't Aion a better game? I don't think money has anything to do with it, otherwise Indie games like Minecraft wouldn't be selling millions of copies. It's the dev team that stretches the buck in the end.
Based on profits, more people think Aion/Lineage/L2 are better games and are willing to spend money on them. Its your opinion Aion wasn't a better game for you.
Not necessarily, because as you pointed out the people who really want the game can easily buy it at the local game store. It's not really being exclusive, in the way the examples you listed are. It's effectively cutting out impulse buyers and people who want to play it NAO, not tomorrow when you go to the store, not in 3 days when amazon ships the game. I've been in the place before, and I'm sure I'm not alone.
The fact that halting digital sales is affecting their potential sales should even be a debate to be honest, it's just a matter of by how much.
Notice I'm not saying the game is not a success, it most definitely is, but not because they had to stop digital sales. 1 mil + pre-purchases, #1 best seller on amazon and nearly 4 times more hours played than WoW on xfire are more accurate indicators.
People who want to "play it NAO" can... by purchasing the Digital Deluxe Download - #1 on Amazon Sales.
"You want to play? You want to play now? Well, that's going to cost you a bit more..."
In BWE2 they had twice the number of Servers they used in BWE3. I think if they really wanted more Servers up and running there would be. It's my opinion that there are some very smart people at ANet, and they know their Server Load and strain is based on Zone not "Game Server" so they have created a "higher barrier to entry" by locking down Digital Standard sales while the initial population rush moves through those early zones.
When they see a dropoff in the number of players in those starting zones they can always make Digital Standard available again, generating another influx of new players based on impulse buying priniciples. The secret for them is in maintaining a stable in-game population. They know some are going to rush through the game and quit. Timing it right so that the people leaving are replaced by those "coming through the front gate" means you never see Server Merges - which is the true sign of poor forecasting on an MMO's part.
Not necessarily, because as you pointed out the people who really want the game can easily buy it at the local game store. It's not really being exclusive, in the way the examples you listed are. It's effectively cutting out impulse buyers and people who want to play it NAO, not tomorrow when you go to the store, not in 3 days when amazon ships the game. I've been in the place before, and I'm sure I'm not alone.
The fact that halting digital sales is affecting their potential sales should even be a debate to be honest, it's just a matter of by how much.
Notice I'm not saying the game is not a success, it most definitely is, but not because they had to stop digital sales. 1 mil + pre-purchases, #1 best seller on amazon and nearly 4 times more hours played than WoW on xfire are more accurate indicators.
People who want to "play it NAO" can... by purchasing the Digital Deluxe Download - #1 on Amazon Sales.
"You want to play? You want to play now? Well, that's going to cost you a bit more..."
In BWE2 they had twice the number of Servers they used in BWE3. I think if they really wanted more Servers up and running there would be. It's my opinion that there are some very smart people at ANet, and they know their Server Load and strain is based on Zone not "Game Server" so they have created a "higher barrier to entry" by locking down Digital Standard sales while the initial population rush moves through those early zones.
When they see a dropoff in the number of players in those starting zones they can always make Digital Standard available again, generating another influx of new players based on impulse buying priniciples. The secret for them is in maintaining a stable in-game population. They know some are going to rush through the game and quit. Timing it right so that the people leaving are replaced by those "coming through the front gate" means you never see Server Merges - which is the true sign of poor forecasting on an MMO's part.
Your logic is sound, but it assumes the public perception of GW2 will be the same two weeks from now as it was right before release and that people who don't buy it now will be willing to buy it then. I personally don't think it will be entirely the case, as with every themepark more and more people get bored with the content, which can tarnish the image of the game. Yes, GW2 is the best themepark out at the moment, but it is still a themepark and history has shown week 1 is the prime window to sell the game. It rarely goes back up after that.
Of course this is all guesswork at this point, the only thing for certain is that GW2 already is a success. What happens afterwards, no one will know until the numbers are out.
If i couldn't beat SWTOR in sales and didn't come close to any blizzard game, i would halt digital sales and claim we ran out or wanted to keep servers stable too.
MMORPG.com forum sentiment - GW2 has failed, OMG the false prophet!
Reality - GW2 sold so many copies that they had to halt sales.
Truth is, I don't know exactly how many they sold. But the fact that they had to STOP sales means they obviously sold more than they expected. I would hardly call that a failure .
There's a difference between "more than expected" and "more than they can handle". GW2 did the latter, not the former.
Darkfall too had to halt sales in its launch week. Doesn't mean it sold a ton.
And bad-example is bad example. Darkfall was a fart in the air conditioner of life.
GW2 prepped for more than million and they were still overwhelmed.
Edit: And kudos to you for doing your part and supporting the game you like. Could you imagine how much more they could have done of more people did.
I'm not particularly fond of this line of reasoning. If NCSoft made so much money off of Lineage and L2 as you say they did, why wasn't Aion a better game? I don't think money has anything to do with it, otherwise Indie games like Minecraft wouldn't be selling millions of copies. It's the dev team that stretches the buck in the end.
Based on profits, more people think Aion/Lineage/L2 are better games and are willing to spend money on them. Its your opinion Aion wasn't a better game for you.
Based on subscription profits because if you didn't pay, you couldn't play. Again, that does nothing to show that a game's quality is better, and it's a huge assumption to say that because it made more money, more people enjoyed it, when it charges you for playing whether you want to pay or not. Your argument is unprovable.
Your logic is sound, but it assumes the public perception of GW2 will be the same two weeks from now as it was right before release and that people who don't buy it now will be willing to buy it then. I personally don't think it will be entirely the case, as with every themepark more and more people get bored with the content, which can tarnish the image of the game. Yes, GW2 is the best themepark out at the moment, but it is still a themepark and history has shown week 1 is the prime window to sell the game. It rarely goes back up after that.
Of course this is all guesswork at this point, the only thing for certain is that GW2 already is a success. What happens afterwards, no one will know until the numbers are out.
You're right in that none of us know for sure, but here are a few reasons I have for why GW2 can break the current trend for you to think about.
GW2 is a Virtual World. No, it is in no way a Sandbox. But it isn't a WoW-Clone Themepark either. Once you hit 80, you can literally go anywhere in the game world and experience activities and meanful content. You will still gain XP and Skill Points. There are some wicked cosmetic grinds for completionists. And if their Live Team is as sharp as I'm expecting them to be, you will also have a decent chance of finding something you never saw before in the game. They have already said they won't as a general rule be including content update notifications in patch notes - they want people to find and discover them while playing.
GW2 is also B2P and just like Skyrim continued to enjoy sales for some time even after the "early adopters" beat it, GW2 can follow that trend as well.
WvW and sPvP also offer "game modes" that have the potential to retain people who otherwise would leave.
Finally, their release window was perfect - just about the time early adopter interest will really start lagging, the holiday season will begin. There's a reason Blizzard likes releasing in the Fall - SWTOR "shot their wad" right at Christmas so the only way it would get a large influx of players after that was incredibly strong retention. Both GW2 and MoP will see "2nd Wave Sales" in the holiday period.
There are no guarantees, but this game definitely has a chance to "develop legs" and keep running for a long, long time.
what gw2 did well was manage to be competitive in sales with SWTOR such that they can be compared. i would not have predicted such a thing would happen earlier this year and its really quite a feat considering the Star Wars IP. it may not be the #1 best selling MMORPG of all time, but that isn't the metric that makes a game great and successful.
GW2 had as much hype and marketing behind it as SWTOR did, if not more. They were also had the B2P model going for them. You're delusional if you think they weren't shooting for SWTOR's numbers. IPs don't have nearly as much weight on the success of the game as people think. Look at all the "successful" MMOs now days, most of them are in-house IPs. Now look at the ones with strong IPs, yeah.
Does this mean that GW2 out-sold SWTOR on launch weekend? Nope, not necessarily, but it does mean that there is good reason to believe that it might have.
If they pass that we'll hear about it.
[Update: Darth Hater has compiled some additional TOR-related statistics and Q&A from today's EA earnings call:, 1 million concurrent." ]
IF there's one thing we know when milestones are reached we get announcements of them. Like the 400k concurrent. IF they break TORs 2 mil sales or 1 mil concurrent we'll know about it as it would be considered the fastest selling MMO of all time as TOR was.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Originally posted by Creslin321 Originally posted by Krytycal Originally posted by Creslin321 Reality - GW2 sold so many copies that they had to halt sales.
You realize that doesn't prove anything, right? All it shows is that they weren't prepared to accomadate the sales they did get, which if anything, is a failure on their part and will hurt them long-term.
When you sell more than you thought you would...that's called being successful. No, it doesn't prove that the game is "TEH WoW KILLAH!" or anything like that, but it proves that the game is doing well.
Do you honestly believe that after years of development, ANet's server infrastructure was so crappy that it couldn't support enough sales for the game to be considered a success?
Not in the business world it isn't. There it's called failure to project sales. It can irreparably hurt companies and people get fired over it. Shutting down sales is not a success. Especially not for an MMO themepark, where they need to sell as many copies at launch before the drop-off hits them. It will be no different with GW2 and it's already showing. Only difference is they did not grab as many sales as they possibly could, which I guarantee you months from now we'll be looking back and listing that as a reason why GW2 didn't do as well as everyone expected.
You have no idea what you are talking about. With the digital sales offline and scarcity in stores, the end result is essentially going to be a "second launch" when all the pent up demand is released. The million preorder sales is just the tip of the iceberg. Even you will eventually buy it.
Reality - GW2 sold so many copies that they had to halt sales.
You realize that doesn't prove anything, right? All it shows is that they weren't prepared to accomadate the sales they did get, which if anything, is a failure on their part and will hurt them long-term.
When you sell more than you thought you would...that's called being successful. No, it doesn't prove that the game is "TEH WoW KILLAH!" or anything like that, but it proves that the game is doing well.
Do you honestly believe that after years of development, ANet's server infrastructure was so crappy that it couldn't support enough sales for the game to be considered a success?
Not in the business world it isn't. There it's called failure to project sales. It can irreparably hurt companies and people get fired over it. Shutting down sales is not a success. Especially not for an MMO themepark, where they need to sell as many copies at launch before the drop-off hits them. It will be no different with GW2 and it's already showing. Only difference is they did not grab as many sales as they possibly could, which I guarantee you months from now we'll be looking back and listing that as a reason why GW2 didn't do as well as everyone expected.
You have no idea what you are talking about. With the digital sales offline and scarcity in stores, the end result is essentially going to be a "second launch" when all the pent up demand is released. The million preorder sales is just the tip of the iceberg. Even you will eventually buy it.
There is no pent-up demand. Anyone who really wants to buy the game can already buy it if they search well enough. Will sales increase when they reinstate the digital version? Of course, anything is higher than the 0 digital sales gw2.com is getting right now. However, there's no guarantee they will get as many sales two weeks down the road as they could be getting now. If MMO history has taught us anything, it's actually not likely to happen.
Could GW2 be the exception to the rule? Your guess is as good as mine. Only time can tell.
[Update: Darth Hater has compiled some additional TOR-related statistics and Q&A from today's EA earnings call:, 1 million concurrent." ]
IF there's one thing we know when milestones are reached we get announcements of them. Like the 400k concurrent. IF they break TORs 2 mil sales or 1 mil concurrent we'll know about it as it would be considered the fastest selling MMO of all time as TOR was.
Yes they will be shouting this from the rooftops if they can beat TOR.
(And it's fine to celebrate a milestone like that)
Now if TOR could ditch their subscription soon, they could maybe make it a bit of a fight.
GW2 had as much hype and marketing behind it as SWTOR did, if not more.
Sorry i think the Pinocchio thread is that way ---->
Originally posted by Krytycal
They were also had the B2P model going for them. You're delusional if you think they weren't shooting for SWTOR's numbers.
They didn't tell how much they were expecting to sell. "A lot" is ... kinda vague.
What we know for now is that the had 1 M Prepurchase... and this leaves out the preorders and all the sales they had since the 25th August.
The game topped the charts and did even better than swtor on some.
They had 400k concurrent users at start topping the 350k from Swtor.
For all we know it's doing extremely well.
Originally posted by Krytycal
IPs don't have nearly as much weight on the success of the game as people think. Look at all the "successful" MMOs now days, most of them are in-house IPs. Now look at the ones with strong IPs, yeah.
Wait you are confusing things.
IPs don't make a game successfull... that's true. Where IP matter are the initial sales. And Swtor had a huge VERY huge pusth in the initial stage from the IP. They even closed SWG to push it even more.
To sell well at start and being successfull in the long run are two different things.
I went on a 10 day cruise so I missed the "big" launch of GW2. Did it live up to the hype and break all the records, smash WoW, and all the other stuff people were saying it was going to do?
I tried searching for any big news on it and found nothing other than decent pre-launch numbers.
NO. is even behind swtor on sales, and is B2P wich mean, for an overhyper game like gw2 should had sold more copies, i remember NCsoft talking about 3-5mill of copies at launch, is far behind that number.
Do you ever get tired of spending SO much time talking about something you do not like? Nothing says I need mental help more than spending all your time on something you hate instead of on something you enjoy.
Comments
The GW2 EGA sales exceeded SWTOR EGA sales. They execeeded WoW Month 1-3 sales, too.
Any more 'facts' you want to make up?
Based on the quarterly not many of the 6-7mil who bought the game were willing to spend more. Some may question why this is. Also have to wonder that if Anet didn't have the dollars from NcSoft and had to do it as their own company would they still be around? Would they have been able to make GW2?
Just something to think about.
Edit: And kudos to you for doing your part and supporting the game you like. Could you imagine how much more they could have done of more people did.
Well, if I wanted to buy it NOW and I read that ANet suspended first-party digital sales but not digital from retail partners I guess I'd do a little searching for where to buy it digitally. Oh, then I'd see Best Buy is selling standard digital:
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Guild+Wars+2+-+Windows+%5BDigital+Download%5D/1000002442.p?id=1000002441&skuId=1000002442&st=Guild Wars 2&lp=1&cp=1
this isn't meant at you woopin it was just your post/quote which shows how funny this is, until Anet actually tells (which they problable won't), the argument is just as valid for both opinions, either it was so popular that it outsold alle expectiations or it failed becuase of bugs/not enough hamster to keep it all running.
until we actually hear from Anet, the arguments will never be settled
KDB Daewoo Securities, which bills itself as a leader in the Korean securities market, issues regular financial statement on NCSoft and its wholly-owned subsidiary, ArenaNet.
Its most recent entries have included some interesting predictions — including a potential launch window — regarding Guild Wars 2.
Perhaps you should have READ the article. KDB Daewoo made the prediction. They didn't even ask NCSoft, but used other metrics to determine this number.
Not NCSoft. Not ANet.
Fail. Fail. And more fail.
Yeah pwned with some hard cold facts brah!!
What seems to be hard to grasp for you is that your logic is flawed. Most businesses like to have their sales go higher than their projected sales. Even if it causes problems in the short term. Those are good problems to have. To have a waiting list of people who want to buy your product is only a good thing.
By your logic, every time a product sells out it's a failure.
You want me to pay to play a game I already paid for???
Be afraid.....The dragons are HERE!
I'm not particularly fond of this line of reasoning. If NCSoft made so much money off of Lineage and L2 as you say they did, why wasn't Aion a better game? I don't think money has anything to do with it, otherwise Indie games like Minecraft wouldn't be selling millions of copies. It's the dev team that stretches the buck in the end.
The difference being WoW never slowed down their sales. It didn't hurt them that people had to sit for 2 hours in a queue because they had already paid upfront for the game. Eventually servers settled and people forgot about the queues, they didn't lose any potential sales to their infrastructure bottleneck because they didn't have much choice after they had bought the game.
In addition to infrastructure issues at launch GW2 also halted first party online sales, effectively cutting off impulse buyers and people who want to play NAO, banking on those players buying a physical copy somewhere or buying it later when ANET digital sales are restored. In other words, grossly overestimating the dedication of the average impulse buyer and very likely not getting as many sales as they could.
If you don't see the difference, and how GW2 hurt their potential sales by stopping digital version purchases, then I don't know what to tell you.
Based on profits, more people think Aion/Lineage/L2 are better games and are willing to spend money on them. Its your opinion Aion wasn't a better game for you.
People who want to "play it NAO" can... by purchasing the Digital Deluxe Download - #1 on Amazon Sales.
"You want to play? You want to play now? Well, that's going to cost you a bit more..."
In BWE2 they had twice the number of Servers they used in BWE3. I think if they really wanted more Servers up and running there would be. It's my opinion that there are some very smart people at ANet, and they know their Server Load and strain is based on Zone not "Game Server" so they have created a "higher barrier to entry" by locking down Digital Standard sales while the initial population rush moves through those early zones.
When they see a dropoff in the number of players in those starting zones they can always make Digital Standard available again, generating another influx of new players based on impulse buying priniciples. The secret for them is in maintaining a stable in-game population. They know some are going to rush through the game and quit. Timing it right so that the people leaving are replaced by those "coming through the front gate" means you never see Server Merges - which is the true sign of poor forecasting on an MMO's part.
Your logic is sound, but it assumes the public perception of GW2 will be the same two weeks from now as it was right before release and that people who don't buy it now will be willing to buy it then. I personally don't think it will be entirely the case, as with every themepark more and more people get bored with the content, which can tarnish the image of the game. Yes, GW2 is the best themepark out at the moment, but it is still a themepark and history has shown week 1 is the prime window to sell the game. It rarely goes back up after that.
Of course this is all guesswork at this point, the only thing for certain is that GW2 already is a success. What happens afterwards, no one will know until the numbers are out.
If i couldn't beat SWTOR in sales and didn't come close to any blizzard game, i would halt digital sales and claim we ran out or wanted to keep servers stable too.
And bad-example is bad example. Darkfall was a fart in the air conditioner of life.
GW2 prepped for more than million and they were still overwhelmed.
Based on subscription profits because if you didn't pay, you couldn't play. Again, that does nothing to show that a game's quality is better, and it's a huge assumption to say that because it made more money, more people enjoyed it, when it charges you for playing whether you want to pay or not. Your argument is unprovable.
You're right in that none of us know for sure, but here are a few reasons I have for why GW2 can break the current trend for you to think about.
GW2 is a Virtual World. No, it is in no way a Sandbox. But it isn't a WoW-Clone Themepark either. Once you hit 80, you can literally go anywhere in the game world and experience activities and meanful content. You will still gain XP and Skill Points. There are some wicked cosmetic grinds for completionists. And if their Live Team is as sharp as I'm expecting them to be, you will also have a decent chance of finding something you never saw before in the game. They have already said they won't as a general rule be including content update notifications in patch notes - they want people to find and discover them while playing.
GW2 is also B2P and just like Skyrim continued to enjoy sales for some time even after the "early adopters" beat it, GW2 can follow that trend as well.
WvW and sPvP also offer "game modes" that have the potential to retain people who otherwise would leave.
Finally, their release window was perfect - just about the time early adopter interest will really start lagging, the holiday season will begin. There's a reason Blizzard likes releasing in the Fall - SWTOR "shot their wad" right at Christmas so the only way it would get a large influx of players after that was incredibly strong retention. Both GW2 and MoP will see "2nd Wave Sales" in the holiday period.
There are no guarantees, but this game definitely has a chance to "develop legs" and keep running for a long, long time.
If they pass that we'll hear about it.
[Update: Darth Hater has compiled some additional TOR-related statistics and Q&A from today's EA earnings call:, 1 million concurrent." ]
IF there's one thing we know when milestones are reached we get announcements of them. Like the 400k concurrent. IF they break TORs 2 mil sales or 1 mil concurrent we'll know about it as it would be considered the fastest selling MMO of all time as TOR was.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
You realize that doesn't prove anything, right? All it shows is that they weren't prepared to accomadate the sales they did get, which if anything, is a failure on their part and will hurt them long-term.
When you sell more than you thought you would...that's called being successful. No, it doesn't prove that the game is "TEH WoW KILLAH!" or anything like that, but it proves that the game is doing well.
Do you honestly believe that after years of development, ANet's server infrastructure was so crappy that it couldn't support enough sales for the game to be considered a success?
Not in the business world it isn't. There it's called failure to project sales. It can irreparably hurt companies and people get fired over it. Shutting down sales is not a success. Especially not for an MMO themepark, where they need to sell as many copies at launch before the drop-off hits them. It will be no different with GW2 and it's already showing. Only difference is they did not grab as many sales as they possibly could, which I guarantee you months from now we'll be looking back and listing that as a reason why GW2 didn't do as well as everyone expected.
You have no idea what you are talking about. With the digital sales offline and scarcity in stores, the end result is essentially going to be a "second launch" when all the pent up demand is released. The million preorder sales is just the tip of the iceberg. Even you will eventually buy it.There is no pent-up demand. Anyone who really wants to buy the game can already buy it if they search well enough. Will sales increase when they reinstate the digital version? Of course, anything is higher than the 0 digital sales gw2.com is getting right now. However, there's no guarantee they will get as many sales two weeks down the road as they could be getting now. If MMO history has taught us anything, it's actually not likely to happen.
Could GW2 be the exception to the rule? Your guess is as good as mine. Only time can tell.
Yes they will be shouting this from the rooftops if they can beat TOR.
(And it's fine to celebrate a milestone like that)
Now if TOR could ditch their subscription soon, they could maybe make it a bit of a fight.
Sorry i think the Pinocchio thread is that way ---->
They didn't tell how much they were expecting to sell. "A lot" is ... kinda vague.
What we know for now is that the had 1 M Prepurchase... and this leaves out the preorders and all the sales they had since the 25th August.
The game topped the charts and did even better than swtor on some.
They had 400k concurrent users at start topping the 350k from Swtor.
For all we know it's doing extremely well.
Wait you are confusing things.
IPs don't make a game successfull... that's true. Where IP matter are the initial sales. And Swtor had a huge VERY huge pusth in the initial stage from the IP. They even closed SWG to push it even more.
To sell well at start and being successfull in the long run are two different things.
Another example: Warhammer.
Do you ever get tired of spending SO much time talking about something you do not like? Nothing says I need mental help more than spending all your time on something you hate instead of on something you enjoy.
Oh you have the GW2 sales data ? care to share the link?
Since we only know that they had 1 M prepurchase it could be interesting to read your source.
Care to share the link for that too?Memory loss is a real pain these days...
Well he realized Guild Wars 2 is a themepark mmorpg... took him long enough. lol
Who would have guessed?