Originally posted by zaberfangx 5 mil, is not a lot to keep the game updated as much there doing, if they don't change something soon NCsoft will do the same with wildstar they did with City of Heroes.
Damn!
Just when my tears finally dried over losing CoH, there you go bringing up those memories... <sniff>
Anyone want a Collectors Edition?
NCsoft isn't going anywhere. They just need to hire back those creative minds that pushed CoH from concept to reality.
I miss the CoH community a bit more than some of their expansions.
I am not a fan of wildstar - it's not my cup of tea - but I hate to see this happen to Carbine - I think they're a fine studio and WS is a decent game as far as themeparks go.
Just absolutely sucks when a game tanks like this
Everyone and their grandmother could predict this outcome, when they decided to focus on the so called Hardcore elite.
You didn´t need to be a rocket scientist to see it was Epic Fail from the get go to dedicate almost your entire development budget to hardcore Raiding and put all kinds of frustrating idiotic mechanics in Place to make the game artificially difficult (aka Hardcore).
It was absolutely stupid how ridiculously difficult they made the early Level Dungeons. Dungeons people only do once (or twice) before outleveling it again. Something you normally see for endgame Dungeons, when People are done with leveling their character and can solely focus on Dungeon mechanics and strategies. /shrug
Blizzard dropped 40-man raiding for a reason! It was the least popular and it´s extremely expensive to develop and maintain.
When only 0,5% of your entire population uses that kind of content, then it´s financial unsustainable to continue with that kind of content and dedicate a lot of resources on it.
How Carbine thought this was a good idea for Wildstar, still beats me today. /shrug
They really brought all this on themselves.
PS. Not to mention that the game client was terribly optimised and ran crap for a lot of People. Even people with high end systems! For a game with "stylized" graphics this was totally inexcusable.
They wanted to take on WoW but did so with a game based on how wow was in 2004-2006 and that 66% drop in quarterly revenue was most likely people returning to WoW because of Warlords of Draenor. The game world was dull, they made 40-man raiding with a lot of barriers and was buggy, and they failed to live up to their promises that solo-players would have a lot of interesting things to do at endgame.
The only thing I liked about Wildstar was their promotion videos, the game itself was a really dull themepark. Playing beta in that game was a brutal awakening.
Its funny to hear about all those crazy numbers on how much the game cost to make. I know the secret world cost somewhere around $30M and that Rift cost $50M to make, Wildstar has the same kind of production values as those games. There are no validated numbers on how much swtor and ESO cost to make, the $200M is an internet rumor that kept on going but simply repeating something doesn't make it true.
Iselin: And the next person who says "but it's a business, they need to make money" can just go fuck yourself.
I thought Wildstar was supposed to be the next WoW killer, now it's not even a threat to EQ Live lmao. This is why the hype trains on this website are so offensive.
It's too bad NCSoft is such a horrible company and closed the NA servers. They really hate their western customers.
It's not that they hate their western customers. They just don't give a shit. They are ruthless as f*ck. That's business. They don't factor in goodwill.
That may be true and I might just be a little bitter because they've closed more than a couple games I've played. It seems to go a bit beyond not caring, but almost seems like a tangible dislike. It's like they get this sadistic joy out of stringing us along, milking us, and then giving us the boot.
It kind of the business mentality where they are from. If they know you and like you they will bend over backwards to work with you and preserve the relationship even at a cost. If they don't know you, you are less than dirt to them. Business is that way in Korea.
Originally posted by Thebeasttt I thought Wildstar was supposed to be the next WoW killer, now it's not even a threat to EQ Live lmao. This is why the hype trains on this website are so offensive.
Any new game that come out, people call it the wow killer:) The real WoW killer is it self doing something drive people away.
Funnily eneough it's usually wow fans that use the term wow killer. The genre needed a game like wildstar to send a message that is loud and clear that mmorpg's based on end game raiding is a closed book, the style is legacy.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Originally posted by borghive49Wildstar is a boring theme park I'm not surprised.
It was not to boring when I played, was not like a new age of theme park mmo, but there target hardcore was there big misteak
Yes it was boring, linear, and generic themepark, and there was nothing hardcore in WS. People were on max level in couple of weeks from release. How is this hardcore?
Now, had they truly made WS a hardcore mmos as they promised and kept talking in public, this game might have had a chance. Action combat, dungeon finder, and cartoony art style were also mistakes if they targeted hardcore crowd.
Lesson to learn: Don't try to cater to everyone. Design your game for a certain group and stick with your design philosophy, and you may get players who keep subbing, playing, and enjoying your creation.
Did you forget that WS had terrible class balance, tons of bugs, super grindy end game, horrible itemization, updates that introduced even more bugs and patches that broke more things than they fixed?
To blame action combat or cartoony graphics for Wildstar's downfall is ridiculous.
I don't mind super grindy end game, but yeah.. those are also part of the issue.
And i don't blame action combat or graphics, they were just something among the other things.
i can only speak for myself and friends who gave this game a very fair try a couple of times and am actually messing around with it again now. The combat pace itself just makes you want to play less and less. Its a constant clusterfuck of skill telegraphs even on the weak mobs. I work hard all day and I think many others do to and the last thing I want to do when I game is have to constantly rip my hair out over combat or if I get lazy die to some stupid telegraph off a pack of mobs. Also on their own forums someone was bragging about clearing one of the dungeons in 3 hours....come on a dungeon taking 3 hours or more is just not fun to most players that have other stuff to do then game for 4 and 5 hours a day.
The good points I have seen addressed is the skill grind for amps is much lower now and they increased the random drop rate for them in regular pve. They increased experience gain across the board by 15% for monster kills. They also have seemed to balance the classes out more and got optimization down. But the core of the game is going to pretty much turn off most casual gamer side with large raids and learning very hard mechanics just to run a dungeon.
I honestly do not see much of a future for this game , they went for the targeted wow audience for sure but didnt take into account that majority of wows sub numbers come from casual players who do not want some super hardcore game. WoW killed their 40 man raids for a reason and I think this team has completely painted themselves into a corner that they cannot fix unless they completely redesigned combat in general and how they do dungeons which they will never do nor be able to afford.
Originally posted by borghive49Wildstar is a boring theme park I'm not surprised.
It was not to boring when I played, was not like a new age of theme park mmo, but there target hardcore was there big misteak
Yes it was boring, linear, and generic themepark, and there was nothing hardcore in WS. People were on max level in couple of weeks from release. How is this hardcore?
Now, had they truly made WS a hardcore mmos as they promised and kept talking in public, this game might have had a chance. Action combat, dungeon finder, and cartoony art style were also mistakes if they targeted hardcore crowd.
Lesson to learn: Don't try to cater to everyone. Design your game for a certain group and stick with your design philosophy, and you may get players who keep subbing, playing, and enjoying your creation.
Did you forget that WS had terrible class balance, tons of bugs, super grindy end game, horrible itemization, updates that introduced even more bugs and patches that broke more things than they fixed?
To blame action combat or cartoony graphics for Wildstar's downfall is ridiculous.
I don't mind super grindy end game, but yeah.. those are also part of the issue.
And i don't blame action combat or graphics, they were just something among the other things.
I'm aware action combat as seen as a liability on this forum where people regularly pine for the days of UO, SWG, and EQ1. But gw2 has done ok with action combat and 2013 data has Tera sitting at number three worldwide with earnings well ahead of any Western made MMO not named WoW so certainly some games have had success with action combat.
Originally posted by Bladestrom mmorpg's based on end game raiding is a closed book, the style is legacy.
That is sooooo silly it isn't even funny...WoW, RIFT, TSW, Tera, SWTOR....well, pretty much every single successful or semi-successful MMO out there (that is not PvP) is based on end-game raiding.
However, as people pointed out, this was to be expected. The game is more linear than a straight line. "Hardcore" is just "cumbersome" really. Yes, the raids and dungeons have good designs (not the best tho!), but loot management is absolute crap, class balance is non-existent (20-40% deltas in healing, dmg and tanking classes), and they have a stupid long attunement process.
They had a few smart ideas to be fair. Combat is very fun (not the best, but fun), as mentioned PvE is well-designed, CREDD is a smart thing to have, and an open API for addons is useful. But very weak and limited open-world environment, lack of mob creativity, lack of meaningful alternative progression, and a whole bag of stupid bugs killed this very fast.
Originally posted by zaberfangx But the cost to make the game, was maybe over 400 mil or even more.
Have people lost their minds? 400 mil?
These games do not cost that much to r&d.
I maybe little over the top, eso was like 200mil, wildstar can be more or less. SWTOR was 500 mil, the more one add to a mmo as candy for people to drool over the more it cost.
TOR was 300 mil according to a relatively trustworthy source, but that includes its aggressive marketing campaign. ESO had a long a troubled development cycle. GW2 allegedly cost somewhere around 50-100 mil and it was NCSoft's flagship project. WS's budget was probably way under 100 mil.
Don't worry though, as some fanboys already announced that "population has doubled omg", these info must be wrong. Fanboys always know the truth.
Stages of a new mmo: 1) It's just beta. It still has plenty of time before release. 2) It just launched. Give it time. WoW wasn't built in a day. 3) We don't need you anyway. 4) F2P announced. 5)Huge influx of players. 6) Look how much has changed. 7) Cash shop is the only thing developed lately. 8) It has been a long journey and we thank everyone who was part of it. Shutting down in 3 months. (Courtesy of Robokapp.)
But yeah I guess WildStar will serve as a lesson for any developer that wants to focus only on the "hardcore" folks. Too bad the experiment costs so much. And some really good people will get fired over this.
On the bright side ... WS retains sub, while TESO goes B2P
Not surprised. New IP + sub equals dead game, unless it's of exceptional quality, which Wildstar certainly wasn't.
I've bought the game on launch, but hardly ever played it. I only remember horrible optimization and irritating humor. Sad to see it fail though.
Rift have horrible optimization and still holding it's ground then wildstar, people keep playing the game if it buggy or horrible optimization, just the game play at endgame didn't keep that % of people it needed to keep stable.
But yeah I guess WildStar will serve as a lesson for any developer that wants to focus only on the "hardcore" folks. Too bad the experiment costs so much. And some really good people will get fired over this.
On the bright side ... WS retains sub, while TESO goes B2P
Don't think developer will not learn there lesson, happen to rift little in 3.0 if wanted wanted gear even to pvp, needed to be in some type of raiding guild, even hardcore if wanted to catch up. Took the players to point that out to them, now with 3.1 there moving away the idea have that you have to raid to get anywhere.
Originally posted by zaberfangx But the cost to make the game, was maybe over 400 mil or even more.
Have people lost their minds? 400 mil?
These games do not cost that much to r&d.
I maybe little over the top, eso was like 200mil, wildstar can be more or less. SWTOR was 500 mil, the more one add to a mmo as candy for people to drool over the more it cost.
TOR was 300 mil according to a relatively trustworthy source, but that includes its aggressive marketing campaign. ESO had a long a troubled development cycle. GW2 allegedly cost somewhere around 50-100 mil and it was NCSoft's flagship project. WS's budget was probably way under 100 mil.
Believe most of the people claiming 500 million have an over 300 million development cost with the marketing campaign pushing it up to 500 million. I don't believe there are any official sources a lot of it comes down to whether people believe EALouse.
It's difficult to call ESO's development cycle long when Wildstar was in development since 2005, which I assume is where people are getting the very high cost figures from.
Did you forget that WS had terrible class balance, tons of bugs, super grindy end game, horrible itemization, updates that introduced even more bugs and patches that broke more things than they fixed?
To blame action combat or cartoony graphics for Wildstar's downfall is ridiculous.
Not even close to ridiculous.
Those reasons may have been the cause for you guys who played, but there's even more of us who never bought into the hype because cartoony graphics and wierd action-spam combat.
Reading the replies to the OP so far it seems that Wildstar mostly "failed" because:
The heavy focus on the hardcore player base killed it
The emphasis on endgame raiding killed it
The cartoony graphics killed it
The action-combat killed it
The "failed" attempts at humour killed it
The required monthly sub killed it
The themepark design killed it
Good too see we are all in agreement then !
There's a saying: "The whole is greater than the sum of it's parts". Unfortunately, in the case of Wildstar it seems to be the reverse. The parts all seemed interesting and fun when viewed as snapshots, but when experienced all together they became unbearable very quickly for a variety of different reasons. It simply didn't have mass appeal in the end.
Given NCSoft's track record with underperforming titles, the future for Wildstar is not looking bright. If it gets unceremoniously canned, I expect it will be a very long time before anyone has the cojones to attemp another AAA MMO with a "Loony Toons" design style...
I think there are 2 things that stand out from the earnings statement.
1. NCSoft has yet to release a game that is as good as the original Lineage, at least in the eyes of those who play their games.
2. NCSoft does not have a single game released in the US/EU that is doing all that well, when you look at earnings per game by region, the earnings are pretty much in decline, not that they appear to have been that significant anyway.
If things carry on the way they appear to be, it would not surprise me at all if more game servers outside of Korea were shut down, and this is generally, not game specific, as interest in any of their games outside of Korea does seem to be remarkably muted, and definitely not improving in any way, that can't be good
Aside from all the obvious "Wildstar is dead" talk, which was expected by most players very shortly after release...
(no, not by the masses of idiots coming to these forums to tout "death to themepark" or "death to *insert random description* art-style"..but by the actual players).
Look at how much focus they're putting on Blade and Soul, and how much money they're making off it!!
Damn NCSoft, release it in the West already, there is a market for it here as well!!!
Originally posted by Salute One more evidence that P2P, with the exceptions of WoW and FFXIV, cant stand in the market anymore. If huge IP's and higly cost to make games like SWTOR, ESO etc moved to a F2P/B2P model, then imho there is no space for a mmo with sub.
FF14 don't seem to be pushing it doors any longer, it may go free to play or buy to play how people losing interest in that grind, Had many people I know been playing FF14 over a year, getting bored with the grind. But who know this year.
lol what? gold saucer patch this month , expansion in spring
Originally posted by Salute One more evidence that P2P, with the exceptions of WoW and FFXIV, cant stand in the market anymore. If huge IP's and higly cost to make games like SWTOR, ESO etc moved to a F2P/B2P model, then imho there is no space for a mmo with sub.
FF14 don't seem to be pushing it doors any longer, it may go free to play or buy to play how people losing interest in that grind, Had many people I know been playing FF14 over a year, getting bored with the grind. But who know this year.
lol what? gold saucer patch this month , expansion in spring
Not to mention in FFXIV;ARR, prime time evenings on the server i am on, there are often login queues, not huge, but definitely occuring regularly, i think anyone waiting for FFXIV;ARR to go F2P is going to be in for a very very long wait, as in, probably never.
I think there are 2 things that stand out from the earnings statement.
1. NCSoft has yet to release a game that is as good as the original Lineage, at least in the eyes of those who play their games.
2. NCSoft does not have a single game released in the US/EU that is doing all that well, when you look at earnings per game by region, the earnings are pretty much in decline, not that they appear to have been that significant anyway.
If things carry on the way they appear to be, it would not surprise me at all if more game servers outside of Korea were shut down, and this is generally, not game specific, as interest in any of their games outside of Korea does seem to be remarkably muted, and definitely not improving in any way, that can't be good
1) original lineage is the basically the east's wow....its one of those things that just isn't going to happen again.
2) GW2 is doing well in the US/EU its earnings have plateau'd and once the expansion comes out will rise again. also you can't go by region vs region for general health of games within a specific region. the Asian market is the biggest gaming market for most PC game specific genre not just NCsoft.
Comments
Damn!
Just when my tears finally dried over losing CoH, there you go bringing up those memories... <sniff>
Anyone want a Collectors Edition?
NCsoft isn't going anywhere. They just need to hire back those creative minds that pushed CoH from concept to reality.
I miss the CoH community a bit more than some of their expansions.
-Two cents!
Everyone and their grandmother could predict this outcome, when they decided to focus on the so called Hardcore elite.
You didn´t need to be a rocket scientist to see it was Epic Fail from the get go to dedicate almost your entire development budget to hardcore Raiding and put all kinds of frustrating idiotic mechanics in Place to make the game artificially difficult (aka Hardcore).
It was absolutely stupid how ridiculously difficult they made the early Level Dungeons. Dungeons people only do once (or twice) before outleveling it again. Something you normally see for endgame Dungeons, when People are done with leveling their character and can solely focus on Dungeon mechanics and strategies. /shrug
Blizzard dropped 40-man raiding for a reason! It was the least popular and it´s extremely expensive to develop and maintain.
When only 0,5% of your entire population uses that kind of content, then it´s financial unsustainable to continue with that kind of content and dedicate a lot of resources on it.
How Carbine thought this was a good idea for Wildstar, still beats me today. /shrug
They really brought all this on themselves.
PS. Not to mention that the game client was terribly optimised and ran crap for a lot of People. Even people with high end systems! For a game with "stylized" graphics this was totally inexcusable.
They wanted to take on WoW but did so with a game based on how wow was in 2004-2006 and that 66% drop in quarterly revenue was most likely people returning to WoW because of Warlords of Draenor. The game world was dull, they made 40-man raiding with a lot of barriers and was buggy, and they failed to live up to their promises that solo-players would have a lot of interesting things to do at endgame.
The only thing I liked about Wildstar was their promotion videos, the game itself was a really dull themepark. Playing beta in that game was a brutal awakening.
Its funny to hear about all those crazy numbers on how much the game cost to make. I know the secret world cost somewhere around $30M and that Rift cost $50M to make, Wildstar has the same kind of production values as those games. There are no validated numbers on how much swtor and ESO cost to make, the $200M is an internet rumor that kept on going but simply repeating something doesn't make it true.
It kind of the business mentality where they are from. If they know you and like you they will bend over backwards to work with you and preserve the relationship even at a cost. If they don't know you, you are less than dirt to them. Business is that way in Korea.
Any new game that come out, people call it the wow killer:) The real WoW killer is it self doing something drive people away.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Now playing GW2, AOW 3, ESO, LOTR, Elite D
I don't mind super grindy end game, but yeah.. those are also part of the issue.
And i don't blame action combat or graphics, they were just something among the other things.
i can only speak for myself and friends who gave this game a very fair try a couple of times and am actually messing around with it again now. The combat pace itself just makes you want to play less and less. Its a constant clusterfuck of skill telegraphs even on the weak mobs. I work hard all day and I think many others do to and the last thing I want to do when I game is have to constantly rip my hair out over combat or if I get lazy die to some stupid telegraph off a pack of mobs. Also on their own forums someone was bragging about clearing one of the dungeons in 3 hours....come on a dungeon taking 3 hours or more is just not fun to most players that have other stuff to do then game for 4 and 5 hours a day.
The good points I have seen addressed is the skill grind for amps is much lower now and they increased the random drop rate for them in regular pve. They increased experience gain across the board by 15% for monster kills. They also have seemed to balance the classes out more and got optimization down. But the core of the game is going to pretty much turn off most casual gamer side with large raids and learning very hard mechanics just to run a dungeon.
I honestly do not see much of a future for this game , they went for the targeted wow audience for sure but didnt take into account that majority of wows sub numbers come from casual players who do not want some super hardcore game. WoW killed their 40 man raids for a reason and I think this team has completely painted themselves into a corner that they cannot fix unless they completely redesigned combat in general and how they do dungeons which they will never do nor be able to afford.
Not surprised. New IP + sub equals dead game, unless it's of exceptional quality, which Wildstar certainly wasn't.
I've bought the game on launch, but hardly ever played it. I only remember horrible optimization and irritating humor. Sad to see it fail though.
I'm aware action combat as seen as a liability on this forum where people regularly pine for the days of UO, SWG, and EQ1. But gw2 has done ok with action combat and 2013 data has Tera sitting at number three worldwide with earnings well ahead of any Western made MMO not named WoW so certainly some games have had success with action combat.
That is sooooo silly it isn't even funny...WoW, RIFT, TSW, Tera, SWTOR....well, pretty much every single successful or semi-successful MMO out there (that is not PvP) is based on end-game raiding.
However, as people pointed out, this was to be expected. The game is more linear than a straight line. "Hardcore" is just "cumbersome" really. Yes, the raids and dungeons have good designs (not the best tho!), but loot management is absolute crap, class balance is non-existent (20-40% deltas in healing, dmg and tanking classes), and they have a stupid long attunement process.
They had a few smart ideas to be fair. Combat is very fun (not the best, but fun), as mentioned PvE is well-designed, CREDD is a smart thing to have, and an open API for addons is useful. But very weak and limited open-world environment, lack of mob creativity, lack of meaningful alternative progression, and a whole bag of stupid bugs killed this very fast.
TOR was 300 mil according to a relatively trustworthy source, but that includes its aggressive marketing campaign. ESO had a long a troubled development cycle. GW2 allegedly cost somewhere around 50-100 mil and it was NCSoft's flagship project. WS's budget was probably way under 100 mil.
Stages of a new mmo: 1) It's just beta. It still has plenty of time before release. 2) It just launched. Give it time. WoW wasn't built in a day. 3) We don't need you anyway. 4) F2P announced. 5)Huge influx of players. 6) Look how much has changed. 7) Cash shop is the only thing developed lately. 8) It has been a long journey and we thank everyone who was part of it. Shutting down in 3 months. (Courtesy of Robokapp.)
I'm surprised it isn't bcbully posting this
But yeah I guess WildStar will serve as a lesson for any developer that wants to focus only on the "hardcore" folks. Too bad the experiment costs so much. And some really good people will get fired over this.
On the bright side ... WS retains sub, while TESO goes B2P
Rift have horrible optimization and still holding it's ground then wildstar, people keep playing the game if it buggy or horrible optimization, just the game play at endgame didn't keep that % of people it needed to keep stable.
Don't think developer will not learn there lesson, happen to rift little in 3.0 if wanted wanted gear even to pvp, needed to be in some type of raiding guild, even hardcore if wanted to catch up. Took the players to point that out to them, now with 3.1 there moving away the idea have that you have to raid to get anywhere.
Believe most of the people claiming 500 million have an over 300 million development cost with the marketing campaign pushing it up to 500 million. I don't believe there are any official sources a lot of it comes down to whether people believe EALouse.
It's difficult to call ESO's development cycle long when Wildstar was in development since 2005, which I assume is where people are getting the very high cost figures from.
Not even close to ridiculous.
Those reasons may have been the cause for you guys who played, but there's even more of us who never bought into the hype because cartoony graphics and wierd action-spam combat.
Reading the replies to the OP so far it seems that Wildstar mostly "failed" because:
Good too see we are all in agreement then !
There's a saying: "The whole is greater than the sum of it's parts". Unfortunately, in the case of Wildstar it seems to be the reverse. The parts all seemed interesting and fun when viewed as snapshots, but when experienced all together they became unbearable very quickly for a variety of different reasons. It simply didn't have mass appeal in the end.
Given NCSoft's track record with underperforming titles, the future for Wildstar is not looking bright. If it gets unceremoniously canned, I expect it will be a very long time before anyone has the cojones to attemp another AAA MMO with a "Loony Toons" design style...
I think there are 2 things that stand out from the earnings statement.
1. NCSoft has yet to release a game that is as good as the original Lineage, at least in the eyes of those who play their games.
2. NCSoft does not have a single game released in the US/EU that is doing all that well, when you look at earnings per game by region, the earnings are pretty much in decline, not that they appear to have been that significant anyway.
If things carry on the way they appear to be, it would not surprise me at all if more game servers outside of Korea were shut down, and this is generally, not game specific, as interest in any of their games outside of Korea does seem to be remarkably muted, and definitely not improving in any way, that can't be good
Aside from all the obvious "Wildstar is dead" talk, which was expected by most players very shortly after release...
(no, not by the masses of idiots coming to these forums to tout "death to themepark" or "death to *insert random description* art-style"..but by the actual players).
Look at how much focus they're putting on Blade and Soul, and how much money they're making off it!!
Damn NCSoft, release it in the West already, there is a market for it here as well!!!
lol what? gold saucer patch this month , expansion in spring
Not to mention in FFXIV;ARR, prime time evenings on the server i am on, there are often login queues, not huge, but definitely occuring regularly, i think anyone waiting for FFXIV;ARR to go F2P is going to be in for a very very long wait, as in, probably never.
1) original lineage is the basically the east's wow....its one of those things that just isn't going to happen again.
2) GW2 is doing well in the US/EU its earnings have plateau'd and once the expansion comes out will rise again. also you can't go by region vs region for general health of games within a specific region. the Asian market is the biggest gaming market for most PC game specific genre not just NCsoft.