NCSoft Releases Quarterly Report - Guild Wars Surprises

I would be VERY surprised if the total active is 500,000, not just on at one time. I would guess the total still actively playing the game is LESS than 500,000.

Active being defined however you want... Logged in the last 30 days, play at least 10 hours a month, etc...

. Like it or not...this isn't a bad rate of growth dollar wise. Sure like to have my investments earning 12+ % right now

Whats the point in discussing is game dead,dying, not dead, almost dead, soon to be dead or whatever. You play or don`t and that`s it. I still love it, and always come back to it after some pauses. People are still playing, and you can always find someone to play with. Will be dead once when everyone leaves.

Weldone never have lost faith in you never will my love my precioussss

Keep up the good game!

Has there been anything about Carbine Studio in the quarterly report? (NCSoft's new Studio in California Tim Cain is working for.)

What a shame hundreds of those accounts are just for Xunlai.

With this info, it makes sense to wait few years with GW2.

I like how people argue about stupid speculation. What got posted people? Total sales. And those total sales tell us from December 2007 to December 2008, 1 million copies of Guild Wars were sold. One million sales is a huge success for 99% of games, especially one from a new company with a new IP, and they sold yet another million late in the games life. This is nothing but good news. I noticed that, and I take it as very good news. Good news in that they aren't being rushed by some pencil pusher in accounting who knows nothing about games. Good news that they have got the network working well to keep costs low to them and free online play to us. And good news that the game was so good and coming along at such a rate and that the old game was selling at such a rate, that they felt comfortable adding more content.

I'm not going to argue whether the game is dead or not. I'll jump in and play when I feel like it every week or two weeks, that's the nice thing, you can just come back after the boredom gets to you.
Anyway, I'm to lazy to quote whoever it was to point to Xfire's hours logged, but I figured I'd give the other lazy people a direct link.
Interpret how you want.
http://www.xfire.com/games/

Problem with Xfire hours is you don't know how many people contributed to those numbers. As well as the fact that a large majority of GW players probably don't use Xfire, so those numbers tell you nothing about overall activity of the game.

EDIT: I did find that Xfire does tell you how many players... Xfire users playing per day: 9,439 (this was for GW for yesterday). But as I said above not every player uses xfire so its still meaningless.

Yes, Xfire has some interesting stats for GW.

Xfire users playing Guild Wars per day: 9,439

Minutes played on Guild Wars per day: 1,603,569

So, let's just assume the number of people who use Xfire is 10% of players of GW.

That means almost 100,000 play GW actively everyday. That isn't that bad....

That's a pretty big assumption you are making there! I've never used Xfire..
I guess not even 1% of all gamers uses Xfire. (yes, a wild guess, not an assumption)

Should I pull out some ridiculous number like how current WoW's active subscribers are just 10% of people who've bought the game?

I lol'd.

Xfire has an average of around 10,000 users playing Guild Wars every day. For World of Warcraft it has 10,000. Assuming players of both games are consistent in their xfire useage (they may not be, but it should not be *too* far off), that suggests GW has 1/10 the players of WoW, which is actually a really impressive.

Xfire also has Guild Wars as their #8 most played game. With games like Valve's new Left 4 Dead (#9) and Mythic's Warhammer Online (#17) below it, it really doesn't sound to me like Guild Wars is dead. Considering its age and the fact that with no monthly fees, the devs have no reason to keep players addicted, that actually sounds like a fantastic success.

Don't forget the variable of having xfire affect hours played. A person going through the trouble of implimenting xfire is likely the kind of person who plays more often...like a person using vent, they may be more serious, less casual and therefore, play more hours...this makes non-xfire player hours irrelevant to your supposition as they lack a key variable.

Those claiming Guild Wars is dead game need to leave these forums. This is after all a forum for Guild Wars. I'm not saying people can't complain about the game, but as soon as you start making accusations that Guild Wars is dead, you've pretty much have nothing to contribute to these forums.

Complain about skills or gameplay all you want, but don't come in here telling me the game I play on regular basis is dead. That's a flat out lie.

Take a look at this thread and answer me this: why should they? People are so horrifically bad at numbers - ESPECIALLY statistics - that confusing the general population with flashy graphs and marketroid numbers is like taking candy from a baby.

They have no motivation to do so. People are so undereducated when it comes to math, and so lacking in even basic critical thinking skills that MMO companies can release any half-assed nonsense they want (like Blizzard's undefined "active accounts" or NCSoft's entirely useless "units sold") and they'll immediately have dozens of foggy-headed fanboys pissing in their pants for a chance to show how this "proves" that they were right all along about how great things are.

What's really scary is that this sort of thing even works on the greater population for all sorts of other things: science, politics, economics... it's horrible how dimwitted people are when it comes to statistics.

These tries to say "GW is dying" or "GW is still doing well" by comparing sales and other statistics are funny.

The logic that GW is thriving because it has more copies/accounts sold overall in 2008/09 than in 2006 is pretty silly.

Guild Wars is sold in bundles, Prophecies+Factions+Nightfall+EOTN for little money all over the world.

Starters can still have some fun in GW, at least the PvE part does not really require other players to team up with. Getting into PvP nowadays might be harder, but they still get a good game for the money.

But what does this matter to me?

Till they release GW2 I am totally bored and done with GW1 and play other games, like Mount & Blade and Medieval 2 or Sins of a Solar Empire (I do not like the last one that much, despite all the praise it got). Which does not matter to GW/NCSoft at all, I already paid my one-time fee.

steam and xbox live says hai


1% means that 1million ppl play gw actively everyday....
i'd say rahja is more accurate with his assumption than urs
...if i can assume that theres only about ~2-3mil total existing accounts (active and not)

but the only thing that really can be deduced accurately from these numbers is gw is popular with xfire users
in other words...
^this

----

no, its not a lie
it is however, fairly subjective
they r entitled to their opinion as u r urs
many of these "complainers" say wut they say because they want a change for the better

Ok...not dead, but withering. I think people would be better off listening to the people with complaints about Guild Wars. Chances are many of them already quit the game due to these complaints.

Units sold isn't useless...its all Anet gives a crap about. People need to get over this mental block that "active accounts" means anything in a non pay to play game. Anet releasing that number would just prove how withering their game is, so yes they have no motivation to do so.

Almost a perfect response

However, you do hit the nail on the head: new accounts, new chapters added to existing accounts, and purchased character slots added to existing accounts are the ONLY numbers that matter for the actual health of the game.

It matters not a flea's fart what percentage of those 5.8 million accounts represent active players, Xunlai generating accounts, mule accounts, or duplicate accounts for the guy who just can't get enough GW action in a day with only one instance running at a time - as long as there is a steady influx of sufficient revenue for a largely completed game, the game IS healthy, period.

The only way the game is "withering" is if it costs more for them to run and support than it generates - whatever other spin people want to put on it, these numbers strongly suggest that point is nowhere near yet.

This is where I disagree. Just because the company is doing well has no bearing on whether or not the game is dying.

That's where you'd be wrong. If you have an online game with no sub fees running on company servers that is continually generating a profit, that right there is proof positive it's not dying because it's doing one of two things: either attracting brand new players, i.e. not dying, or still exciting enough of the player base such that they are motivated to lay out cash they are under no obligation to do so for some perceived benefit, i.e. not dying. On the other hand, no matter how giddy the jaded veterans on this board could potentially be with a game, if it's not turning a profit, it's going to be unplugged and that IS dying for a game of this type.

People need to stop projecting their own waning satisfaction and waxing bitterness onto the game. The beauty of this game's design is that you don't need gazillions of players to make it work just fine. People on this board continually make the mistake that this game's design makes the so-called community even relevant, let alone necessary. For 99% of the game's content, goals, etc., there could be nobody on the servers but the last guy to buy a copy of GW triology from the bargain bin and he's going to have nearly as good a time as anybody ever did (festivals might be a bit bland ). Buy a second copy for his roommate or friend and now he's having as good a time as anyone ever did. With the exception of the exceedingly optional elite areas, two or more people who know each other from real life with heroes are going to have about as optimal experience this game can offer.

The game experience is *changing* with the shifts in player base, but that's all you can say.

I don't agree at all with your definition of dying. You definition is essentially "the game is alive until Anet pulls the plug" which I think is dumb. To me the population is the determining factor in the death of an online game, especially in Guild Wars because the game is supposed to be a team/guild based game. The moment it becomes a "I have no choice but solo" game, it is dead to me and many others. Some would argue it is already there...at least in many areas. Whether or not the game is still selling is irrelevent to that point if more players are leaving than joining.

Many people would argue that the "change" IS the death. That is one of the flaws with the no pay to play model...Anet essentially has no accountability to its playerbase once they buy the game. Even if their game is dying, they don't have to care as long as their units sold number is high.

You are defining the health of the game as having a semi-random pickup multiplayer component in a manner that pleases YOU, and to put it bluntly, that's crap.

Guild Wars is about as far from a multiplayer team based game as solitaire, and that's why it's great. You want a team based game, go play WoW where huge swathes of the content require 10 or 20 people to get together at the same place at the same time with the right gear and the right skills with 3 or 4 hours to devote to one area. GW? Load up the right templates on your heroes, pick the right henchies and go - or you and a friend, or you and two friends, but at no point will this game ever be genuinely team based for anything other than PVP.


Wrong; there is a critical mass of players required to keep the game "alive", this is more or less true. Below a certain population there's nobody selling enough of the right runes to the rune trader and enough of the rare materials to the material trader and it becomes more hassle than fun to play. However, so long as the critical mass of players is maintained, it doesn't matter if the active player base experiences 60 straight months of decline, it's still going to be just as fun for everybody who doesn't make the mistake of thinking you need random human beings with your precise viewpoints to play the game.

If more players "leaving" a game than buying it was a factor, then 99% of games are, at best, on life support. Games experience growth, if they're lucky, for a few months, after that it's all down hill. Every blue moon you might get a Half-Life or a WoW, but these sort of "snowballing" games are exceptional exceptions. Effectively, all games decline in their player base almost from the start.


I'm rather amused by this. Anet is 100% accountable to their players and I find it sad that people are too blinded by their own selfishness to see that. If the game sucked and wasn't a good value it wouldn't still be moving units. This isn't some magickal universe where units sold has nothing to do with the quality of the game. Plenty of games might sell well for a month or two based on hype, but then they genuinely do die as their actual merits become known. However, to keep moving 70K of units a month - that's more than most games ever sell in total - nearly four years after the game first launched, that's not just "not dying", that's downright healthy. More, it's proof that you and all the other "omigod it's so dead!" people are simply wrong. Obviously people are impressed enough with the game that it keeps on selling better than the majority of the games out there new or otherwise, so take your own personal dissatisfaction and admit to yourself that it's a personal problem and stop projecting so much.

I'm more than confident that 70K new accounts a month is enough new blood to keep the game going indefinitely, maybe not YOUR game, but certainly the actual game that exists independent of our own skewed viewpoints. Heck, even if I give the naysayers the benefit of the doubt and accept that most of those new accounts are existing players buying storage and/or Xunlai betting accounts, that still means there's tens of thousands of existing players excited and confident enough in the game as is to keep investing significant funds and commit to enough future time played to justify these expenses. Upwards of 70,000 human beings (re)committing to Guild Wars each and every month is a lot more important to the health of the game than the - at most - 189,000 dissatisfied Guru members

To be honest, this is the kind of attitude that is sad to me. You seemingly have no concept of how this game started compared to how it is today. It ABSOLUTELY started as a team based and guild based game in PvE and PvP. A game where forming teams and guilds was not only recommended, but usually required. That to me (and many others) is when this game was at its peak. I could go into a long rant about heroes (which have been a blessing and a curse), but it would get way off topic and would be beating a dead horse, so we will leave it at that.

That is true, but in single player games it hardly matters for several reasons. But that aside, the entire flaw in your argument is that your starting point is Guild Wars as a single player game. Your argument falls apart right there because MANY people buy (or bought) Guild Wars for the purpose of NOT playing a single player game. It is fine that Guild Wars can be played single player, but a lot of people feel that Guild Wars as mainly a single player game means it is dead (read that again). If I was a newb buying Guild Wars today and seeing all the empty outposts, my immediate first thought would be "wow I bought a dead online game". It wouldn't be "wow this is cool I can solo the whole game".

I'm amused by the fact that you are blinded to the downside of the non pay to play system. If you think Anet is 100% accountable, I can only laugh because I could probably type an essay on why you are wrong, but I won't here. You said it yourself...all that matters to them is units sold and not active accounts. What does that tell you? Regardless, all that matters is Anet is successful in what they do (moving units) so far and that is good for them, but are they good at keeping a game alive and being accountable to the players (active accounts)?

Nobody said the game sucks. I have always thought the game is good (or even great in the past). But the game being good has no bearing on whether or not it is dying. As many people have said, those numbers are skewed beyond belief for several reasons. Between players with multiple purchases, several expansions, bundled and clearance units sold, etc etc etc. But even if they weren't skewed, it still wouldn't prove anything about the game dying.

Here is your flaw...if you assume Guild Wars is a single player game, then the GAME CAN'T DIE. Single player games are rarely considered dead or not dead. We are talking about Guild Wars in the context of a MMO...that is a game where there are a lot of players online. I don't care if Guild Wars is selling 10 billion units a month...if 50 billion players a month are leaving the game (or just not playing the game), the game to me and many others is dead. But hey...as long as Anet is making money right? That is exactly the line of thinking that the non pay to play model creates...a line where it doesn't matter if the game is dying or if the PvP is stupidly inbalanced or Ursan is dominating PvE or any other stupidly bad things we can think of, as long as the quarterly report looks good.

i think the 2 of you r both rite in ur own ways
the problem is that ur arguing for 2 different definitions of "alive"

if alive simply means interest in the game itself, then yesh, guild wars is alive
and u r correct channum

if alive however means interest in playing the game with other ppl (since guild wars is an online multiplayer game) then guild wars is dying
and so dreamwind would be correct



gw turning into an online single player game is exactly why ppl think its dying
cuz u kno...once upon a time, gw actually used to be a multiplayer game that ppl liked to play together

They should create a PuG server in this game (like american, european servers) and give better rewards to people who pug (no heroes). They would also 'find' eachother better that way. See how that experiment would work out.

Business wise GW is indeed still selling a lot of copies. And that's good for Anet to minimise the pressure from NCsoft for an early release of GW2. And to increase the trust factor (share holders and co) ofcourse.

Interesting. Ursan dominating PvE? Been a while since you've played?

Pay to play has its own problems. For example, it can introduce a reverse incentive for implementing updates that would improve the game overall, but might upset a portion of the player (paying customer) base.

GW is clearly a successful game. Some links of potential interest with regard to MMO life cycle:

The Life-Cycle of an MMO

New MMO Model

Player Life-Cycle

What goofball logic is this argument? It's not an MMO, it never was an MMO, and that some deluded people who are way too wrapped up in the game can't see that isn't my fault, nor Anets. I find it unbelievable with how many threads I've seen come and go pointing out exactly why GW isn't an MMO that someone is still clinging to the falacy. It emulates many MMO characteristics, which is why I gave up WoW for GW because it gives me everything I want from an MMO with none of the garbage I don't want, namely forcing me to party up with strangers. The very beauty of GW is that it's NOT the game you want it to be.

When I want to sell destroyer cores for 350G a pop, there's never a shortage of buyers. When I go to the rune trader, there's always what I want in stock with one lone exception in over a year of playing. When I want to buy booze or whatever after some holiday, there's always somebody selling.

But, when my 1 y.o. wakes up from his nap and we're halfway through whatever area we're at, at worst it will be my brother or my real life friends and they understand - heck, the person who has to leave can usually just map out and their heroes will stay and revert to following the (new) party leader, and that usually lets the remaining players finish. Often it will be just me and the H/H, and they certainly don't care if I have to leave the computer unattended for hours. When I'm already to tackle area <FOO> but no one I know is on, no problem, I'll H/H it. When they are on, cool, multiplayer with friends and family.

The game is fine, it is exactly what was promised on the box, and that's all you can expect. Wishing that a largely fixed set of more or less linear content with next to none of what makes something WoW or DAoC into a full blown MMO could ever sustain your own MMO desires indefinitely is foolishness. Admire the game for what it was supposed to be and is, not what a short lived "golden age" where the lacking game design to live up to the promise on the box forced people to group together in spite of their personal wishes made you think. That most people today evidently would rather play with H/H and/or real life friends instead of the way you think the game should be played says you're the square peg, not them.


Yup. You don't like it, there's a "door".


You just don't get it and obviously won't. First off, it's a myth that pay to play games do any better of a job at responding to the player base. WoW did a great job of driving me off since nearly 100% of their content updates in the period from it's launch until shortly before Burning Crusade launched (when I quit) were inaccessible since at the peak of me and my friend's interests we had about 7 guys, and that number rapidly fell to 3 after five months. In WoW, three people for the BIG content is nothing, but in GW, that's a whole gosh darn party once people discuss heroes.

By the time they got around to addressing the other 99% of their player base, I was already gone. Of course, in that time Blizzard managed to milk more money off of me than Anet ever will, so I'm beyond more than happy to accept the trade offs of the non-pay to play because I've been there, done that, and it was a far less fair result: the pay to play game designers favor the idiots who feel the need to play 10 hours a day, seven days a week because those dumbasses are never going to cancel their account until they do unplug the servers. They are confident they can ignore the majority of the player base because they were never going to keep their account active for more than six months or so anyhow no matter what they did. You contrast that to Anet and you get the opposite result: they lose money on the hard core MMO crowd and their bread and butter is the beer and pretzel guys like me and my friends who see this as an incredibly fun way to kill evenings shooting the breeze over TeamSpeak. They work to provide a polished game experience that leaves people satisfied and ready to buy more if/when there is more and, most importantly, will leave most people ready to recommend it to a friend as a great value. They do not and should not cater to someone like you, because you represent the smaller slice of the pie, and their money isn't made on you at all.

And many more could write essays why ANet is accountable to their player base. All game companies are. If ANet piss off their player base, no one buys their new game, they go out of business. If Blizzard pisses of their player base, people stop paying the monthly fee, people stop buying the expansions, they actually have to put out Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3 in a reasonable amount of time or they will risk going out of business (it will just take longer since they got several billion dollars of WoW money in the bank to burn through).

They did, they called it "loot scaling"

They in essence made it more profitable to play in a group. Or at least made it less profitable to solo. And what happened? Did PUGing improve? nope.

People are going to play the way they are going to play. If they made some area with great drops that required a full team. You would end up with "speed clear" teams. They would power through, and then rinse and repeat. That is hardly PUGing.

LET PEOPLE PLAY THE WAY THEY WANT...

Yeah sure, but some of those people want to pug and they could in the past. Btw, I'm a solo player myself most of the time.

I wasn't pushing solo players to pug. I was trying to find a way so pug people would find eachother better through a pug server.

But Ok I understand, you find it a bad idea. I'm happy my nose is still on my face, because you almost bit it off there

I was just making a point... Changing the game to force play styles is kinda what got us in this mess to begin with. Especially doing it by making it more lucrative.

Pugging primarily fails because of maturity levels of players. It just isn't worth the pain, even with increased rewards.

Simply counting the active districts in the major hub cities will tell you the health of Guild Wars. It's stronger now than it was a year ago.

Nah...it was just an example of something clearly broken that too far too long to fix (of which there have been many over the years).

LoL...you want to confirm it isn't an MMO with Anet or with any other definition of MMO for me? (Hint: Good luck you'll need it).

The beauty is its the game YOU want it to be? Sounds logical. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and your definition of the game is ugly to me.

I think you missed my point. I don't mind that the game can be played single player. My point was that if the game becomes a single player game, it is dead to a lot of people. Please re-read and understand this.

I chuckled.

I think you are misunderstanding what I am trying to say (again). I am not proposing a rigid view of how the game should be played. This thread got off topic from the sales of the game to whether or not the game is dead. I think snaek put it best in his post. While the game may be alive for you and seem alive by sales numbers, it is certainly dead for me and a lot of other people. Every time somebody wanders into a outpost with nobody in it or has to wait an hour to get a GvG game, it is simply another reminder. Not only dead compared to other games, but dead in comparison to its former self.

And what is the game "supposed" to be? Your position is worthless because you are essentially saying the game is supposed to be what you want it to be regardless of anybody else and regardless of what Anet says it is/was.

Which many people have already gone through and is exactly the point. Just because you choose to ignore the problem and tell everybody to go away doesn't mean the problem isn't there or goes away.

I didn't say they do, and I didn't say GW should be P2P. I was simply pointing out the downside of the ANet model and how it pertains to this thread. Essentially, these numbers mean almost nothing.

You're assuming that WoW has that massive subscriber base because everybody only keeps their accounts for 6 months. We'll put that aside. Now some people don't agree with the next thing, but its basically true. Anet is confident they can ignore the playerbase (especially the hardcore and PvP and purist playerbase) as long as they can get masses to buy the next expansion. I'm not saying (in this thread) that they do specifically ignore, but they can. They hardly care if people leave the game. They really care if people don't buy the next game. It is all about having a fresh stream of new players, with keeping the old players around a second priority.

You do realize that the bread and butter of every game in existence including WoW is the casuals (not just GW). That isn't the problem. The problem came when Anet specifically attracted a hardcore crowd, then mostly shut them out for the casuals. The problem came when Anet specifically attracted an MMO crowd, then shut them out for the soloers. The problem came when Anet heavily attracted a PvP crowd, then shut them out for the PvE crowd. I suppose if you are a casual soloing PvE player (like you), you wouldn't give a good damn or even see anything. But Anet has affected everything else with various levels of disregard.

Here is the thing...they don't piss of their playerbase obviously, they simply keep them wanting more. They can have shortcomings with their playerbase as long as the next expansion or game promises to fix all these shortcomings (kind of like GW2 does)...and the cycle continues.

Your experiment is more or less what people have been requesting ever since the first BWE (some kind of "global" LFG interface). Hell, your suggestion seems to need a lot more development time.

Not gonna happen, really.

My estimate of 10% of players using XFire was generous, simply to prove a point. What it means is that 100,000+ people play GW everyday. 100,000 is like the bare minimum considering 10% of users having XFire is a rather high estimate. The lower that percentage, the more users are actually playing GW.

I'd say 1% is more likely, i havent heard of anyone using XFire for a while, especially not for an MMO with contact networking as part of the game.

Guild Wars is doing just fine.

I plotted the unit sales here:



The tags of P, F, N, and EN show when the new chapters came out. The game sells pretty darn steadily, in and out of holiday season. They are on course to hit 7 million by the end of the year. That's about equal to the number of copies of Pac-man sold on the Atari 2600, and many more copies of Halo sold on the Original Xbox.

Guild Wars as a franchise has sold about as many copies as Half-Life 2.

Comparing Franchises, it's easily sold more than Turok, Ninja Gaiden and Baldur's Gate.

And you know what, the year it comes out, Guild Wars 2 will be one of the many games I buy.

Lighten up.