Guild Wars Hits 2,000,000!

reached 2 milion because of botters who keep buying the game

I'm glad GW is doing well...it's the only online PC game that I play. No mothly fee ftw!

extreme cynicism for the win!

we need more of the 1st chapter and less of the 2nd IMO. Thats 80% - 20%.

This was the first real MMO that I ever played, and have LOVED it since beta! Gotta give Anet kudos on making this a free game, cause I think that for a game of this calibur, people would pay...

Its called a "press release"
Written by the company for the press.
Press includes audio (radio), video(tv), written (newspapers), and electronic formats (websites, such as guru) among others. Might shock you to know many articles which you read about products and milestones of those products were actually written by the companies themselves. Stops people from being sued or something. Thought I would share.

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Onto the 2 million
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Well done!
Question : Population Cantha? (500k?) Population Tyria (1.2Million?) Just curious...

Guild Wars is not a MMO by Anet's own admission and very unlikely to do well in a pay to play package. Guild Wars doesn't have the persistant world and treadmill that gives you things to do keep you constantly playing (and paying).

Which I'm glad of, the last thing we need is another endless treadmill games where the only people who win are the people who are getting all your subscription fees. The market is glutted with MMOs, so instead of trying to put Guild Wars against them, I think it's players should be more thankful for what it is -and- what it isn't and not pay World of Warcraft any mind.

For your question about population levels between the two continents (games).

There is a fundamental problem with ANet's game design with "standalone" chapters. Bear with me, this might be a bit confusing.

In order for the game to self sustain, it not only must sell, but it must give the impression that the world is alive and active. Not too many people will play on empty servers, or more directly, zones/towns that are ghost towns.

In a typical MMORPG, everyone starts out at level one in a newbie area, and progresses through the game in a linear, familiar path. We saw this in chapter 1.

At the start of a game release, everyone is at the beginning, leveling up, and moving forward in the realm. As game sales increase, so does the population.

But typically, the first 10-20 levels of any MMORPG is fairly fast. The developers want you to get out of the sewers fighting rats and out into the countryside hunting orcs and exploring. Newbie areas are well populated at a constant rate, as new sales come around, and the refresh from current players that may start a second character (for whatever reason). The game will usually have parts of the game that will start to slow down advancement, whether by design, or by happenstance. In GW, one of the first milestones is getting to Lion's Arch, and that's one or the reasons why it's a popular area. Players that are treading water tend to stay in that area for a while, until they reach a point where progression starts up again.

Thus, the population levels across the continent at the beginning will be high in lower areas, then start to rise as time goes on from the bottom up. There will be peaks and valleys as population piles up behind a stumbling block (THK for example, or the desert missions) as the gamers progess within the game.

Finally, you'll have the first groups finish the game, and as times goes on, a more stead stream of players will "catch up" and fill up the top of the game's zones. If the game has a definite "end" the population will eventually congregate towards the top, evening out the entire world population levels.

Now, a typical MMORPG would issue an expansion pack. To play the game as a new customer, you'd have to buy both, and start from the beginning. Thus, the game will always have a steady stream of new players filling up the "pipe", with a momentary valley in the former areas that used to be the limit as the top players go off to explore the new areas int he expansion. Eventually, things will smooth out again, until the next expansion pack.

But with GW, it's a much different model.

We saw the normal progression, and the eventual evening out over the past year.

But what happens when you release a second chapter that is independent of the first?

You'll see a mass exodous of the chapter 1 veterans to chapter 2, leaving huge voids of areas, and a severe population decrease across the entire continent. In addition, your vital beginners pipeline (presearing players) in chapter 1 start to dwindle down, and could eventually dry up completely. At some point, the vast majority of chapter 1 players will rise to the top (get to the end), and the population levels from droknar's back will slowly dry up to almost nothing.

In addition, not everyone that bought chapter 1 will buy chapter 2. Not only that, but if you never bought chapter 1, there is a much lesser chance you'd buy chapter 2. If the game presentation and mechanics didn't grab you to begin with, chapter 2 isn't going to change that, espeically since (as in GW) fundamentally, chapter 2 is not much different. Sure, there will be new buyers, and SOME may even go back and buy chapter 1, but the damage has been done.

Now, in chapter 2, we'll see the same scenario as chapter 1, but in Faction's case, there isn't as much content (contrary to what ANet states), and not nearly as many buyers.

To make matters worse, ANet decided to split the player base into two sides. This not only decreased the town population levels dramatically (because half the players are on the other side of the map) but made things much harder on the players as they progress through the game. The towns at the bottom of the map are almost completely deviod of life.

Chapter 3 faces even more problems, as you'll find yet another drop in purchases, draining of chapter 2's population as everyone runs off to chapter 3, and even more of a feeling that the game world is empty.

So, instead of a very robust game world that constantly funnels players through the same "pipeline", GW is simply more like dividing up a pie into smaller and smaller bites.

Shrug, it will be very interesting to see if they're able to address this fundamental flaw with subsequent chapters.

The "smarter" way of doing this business model would be to simply reduce the price of chapter 1 to bargin bin prices, or as a re-release compilation pack or bundle with chapter 2's release. This should've been done when chapter 2 was released in the stores. You make the rabid players pay full price (because they will buy each chapter as it's released) but give subsequent new owners of each successive release the content previous to it. Perhaps as part of the package, previous owners get added bonuses (emotes, divine auras, etc) when buying chapter 2 and adding that key to chapter 1.

Shrug, that's why I have such a bleak outlook for GW's future, and why I think chapter 3 will be the watershed release, it will sink or swim the franchise.

Yep, talked it over with a couple (husband+wife) of WoW-playing friends. They need their daily xp farming in the game, they just can't understand that GW is about playing your cards right.

Not that the GW basis is unknown is more classic games : poker is still 5 cards per player, and you can't just go "I'm a level 35 ches splayer ! I have 3 rooks and 5 knights ! I am 1337 !!"

Inventory has gas behavior : with twice the character slots, you'd still be as strapped for space, but with twice the junk. GW is actually therapetic for retensive people I guess (I know it is for me).

Super Mario, Double Dragon, Street Fighters, Mortal Kombat, Tomb Raider, and so on and so forth. Not counting the numerous animaton projects. Nope, they don't learn ; I guess they actually manage to turn a profit with those things ..

After buying the 3rd Factions account I strongly doubt that all of us triple-account-owners are botters... I just love to have one of each profession, and even then like to try out different builds (Mo/E, Mo/N, Mo/Me, Mo/W, Mo/A, Mo/r, Mo/Rt)... and accomplishing that with all the profs demands for more than one account... and believe me, I do not possess the skill for botting, I just love to play the game, a lot.

Grats, ANet

*** And without a doubt... part 3 will be bought thrice by me

Why is everyone so negative? They are just stating the sales. They never said that they are unique players...

Mostly because of posters who use this somewhat disingenuous press release as a launching pad to go "In your face, WoW! We're catching up in the internet popularity contest!"

It's not like video game/console/operating system wars are anything new, but it's still of annoying to see it sprout up when you're someone who is able to enjoy more than one thing at the same time and don't feel the need to make everything a pissing contest.

While I have long since stopped playing World of Warcraft and would not saying I necessarily have fonder memories of it than I do Guild Wars, just different. That said, I'm just as confused why some people always look for an excuse to trash it. Especially since the games don't have all that much in common.

Frankly I think you're stuck in the 'persistent world' line of thinking. The instancing-with-shared world means that ANet can adjust player density within wide limits - first by lowering the number of instances of, say, Lions Arch, then, if need be, by combining the various realms in which Lions Arch exists (EU could meld with US, for instance).

But more importantly, ANet, unlike a company running a persistent world, will not WANT to keep people playing the original areas indefinitely. The ideal scenario is having the entire player base migrating to the new areas every time a new expansion is released, while the older areas become ghost towns requiring very little support & resources. In the real world they of course realize some people will never migrate, and have allocated resources to keep some servers running old areas, but the way to make "constantly new areas" work is by having the playerbase follow.

EDIT: And I don't need an excuse to trash WoW: It's fugly.

But it has around 4 million ppl playing, compared to roughly 1 million of ppl playing GW. You need some real arguments if you want to discuss with those numbers...

ANET may not be a standard MMO but they are competing with MMOs

why else have this statement in their earlier press release?

Guild Wars Factions #1 Game in North America and Europe
http://www.guildwars.com/press/relea...2006-05-23.php

Notice that they said MMOG (Massively Multiplayer Online Game, which Guild Wars certainly is.. all 1 million people on 1 server, instanced or not is massive) rather than MMORPG like you will find for WoW or EQ2.

My explanation had NOTHING to do with "instanced" worlds.

And the ideal isn't that "everyone migrates to the new world", in fact that would be suicide for the game.

Ghost towns in the GW universe = BAD. It doesn't matter if it's in the first or last chapter, but it's certainly WORSE that chapter 2 has ghost towns already. It's a player's perception that is important.

I feel that your scenario leaves out something important to Chapter 2: that many quests come back to the same cities as before, i.e. you will be returning to Keineng even after getting to Cavalon to do quests. This keeps old outposts stocked. Except for the "throw-away" outposts in the middle of Echovald or The Jade Sea, all of the missions and outposts are stocked. This is because missions are repeatable with a good reawrd, some are contest high-score missions, and many other cities offer good quests or convenient farming/capping spots.

Yes the population will spread out over time. This is why there are henchmen. But you forget that also down the road, not only will there be existing players buying chapter 4 and moving there, but also those players will eventually move their ch4 only chars to chaps 1-3. Also, new players will buy ch4, then in a month buy chapters 1-3 in the bargain bin for $15 each, and try them out.

Congrats on reaching the 2 million mark!

one small correction.

you will never see ANY chapter in the bargain bin for the simple reason that each account created has a definite cost to the company.

they have a set price that they will not ship product under rather than incur a loss on each sale

I doubt it will be as seruous as WoW considering that WoW has +6Million players, and has amazing custmer support due to hits huge budget.

But the trend seems to be to design quests and missions that require a group unless you want to be completely frustrated or be shut out of trying for bonuses. This trend has to be reversed in chapter 3.

I'll say congrats Anet on the 2 mil milestone, but I also agree with those that say it's not a very meaningful number in terms of how "healthy" the game and community are. I own 2 accounts--I had to buy a second one to get more character slots since the number they give you is so cheap (you get 50 with a WoW account). And at least half of the members in both my guilds haven't logged in for over a month. So 2 mil doesn't mean 2 million active players.

That's all well and good but where are those players? Yes I know, different time zones and people play at different times of the day etc. Prophecies had the same thing, but there seemed to be a lot more people around in the PvE campaign.

Factions by comparison in quite a lot of places it's relatively empty (euro servers, dunno about elsewhere). Ended up doing quite a lot of it with henchies or guildies helping out. Hoping the next one isn't like this.

RISE FROM YO GRAVE

Incredible display of thread necromancy.

I have been pushing a couple of my factions toons thru Tyria lately to get all the
skills I want, and I have to say it is kind of sad when you can go to places like
Ice caves, THK, Abbaddons mouth, and find quite a few ppl there to pug with and
then you go to Unwaking waters or eternal grove and the places are ghost towns.
Very clear sign that factions pve came up short, good thing the new Splintercell
game had a big delay or Mr. Fisher and I would be saving the planet from certain
destruction.

-Sirshadowrunner

You guys fail at realizing why we pay $15/month to play WoW. WoW has 6.5 million Subscribers(Estimate) they need that $15 to hire and pay GMs to take care of 6 million players, and they need to constantly create new servers, due to WoW's raising popularity. And That $15 also helps to pay to fix the bugs,add new content,pay other blizzard employes, and pay for the expansion.

You guys fail at realizing why we pay $15/month to play WoW. WoW has 6.5 million Subscribers(Estimate) they need that $15 to hire and pay GMs to take care of 6 million players, and they need to constantly create new servers, due to WoW's raising popularity. And That $15 also helps to pay to fix the bugs,add new content,pay other blizzard employes, and pay for the expansion.

How many are mulitple account? How many are bots?

Those need to removed from the 2 mil units count.

Fraltieny:

GW manages to do that with the 50 dollars per game that it gets, but I understand where you're coming from. You pay for a service and you get a good one, whereas we pay for a porduct and get a service throwen in there for free, which is as good as it can get for the money it gets. I dont want this thread to descend into another WoW vs GW thread, so I'll just leave it here.

Congratulations on getting the 2,000,000 A-net

we shouldnt be comparing gw to wow yet anyway how much longer has wow been than gw hmm its a couple of years.

WoW is five months older (it just *looks* retro).

WoW is also probably the most profitable game ever. It will have cost about in the region of $20-40M to develop and market, plus perhaps another $10M in support since, tops, and has sold over 5M units at $40 each (that's $200M, although only half of that will have gone to the developers), and has had an average of 2-4M subscribers for two years paying an average of roughly $12 per month (that's another $300+ million).

WoW Guesstimated Result: +$450-500M.

Meanwhile, Guildwars cost 10-20M to develop, has sold 2 million units at $40 each, and is probably considerably cheaper to maintain (wild guess: $5M since release).

GW Guesstimated Result: +$20-30M.


Conclusion: They're both financial successes, but GW isn't a runaway financial success like WoW is.
WoW is guaranteed to get successorS, GW is pretty certain to get a successoR.
Personally I find it bizarre that people accept a monthly payment which is equal to what they'd pay if they'd had a $1000 credit card debt just to play a $40 game, but nonetheless the take home message is, and remains:
people are perfectly happy to both pay full price for a game, then pay an additional 25% of the cost of the game per month to be able to play it.

For this reason I do not think the successor to GW will be free to play, nor do I expect to see other MMORPGs using that approach.


EDIT: The search is working, which is why we get thread necromancy.

EDIT 2: WoW is still fugly. I don't care what else it is, the graphics are butt-ugly.

I agree with you on the most part, but you have to consider that fact that those 5+ millions accounts exists whether all of them are actively subscribed or not... let's say someone bought the game, paid for 1 month, and never paid for any thereafter, that account STILL (this goes for GW/GWF also) exists. But even with that said, WoW is undoubtedly dominating this market. I'm happy for ANet/NCSoft regardless though =p Like some others pointed out, WoW had an INSANE foudnation to build upon, GuildWars had nothing.

Like you said, if chapter 3 doesn't blow us away (and their target niche is obviously the fanbase that has been around since Prophecies) they'll surely not make sells > active acounts registered (meaning "us", the active loyal fans :P). It's unlikely that they'll attract new people to buy the new chapters. Okay, I don't know where I'm going with this anymore :P haha I'll just end it here.

I don't think Prophecies will ever go bargin bin I believe that sometime in the future (4 or 5 probably) Prophecies as it stands now will simply be overwritten. The cities will be fixed up the map will change slighty, what we see as Old Ascalon will be the newbie area. At that time you will be forced to buy that chapter, because there is no place else to go.

As far as keeping us happy, we are both their market base and their advertising base. How many of us came to GW because of an add in a gaming magazine, or an in store display, or browsing on the self; or because your friends play?

I have a friend at work, and as soon as he get his internet up he will join or not based solely on my feeling towards GW at that time.

And they are still probably making truckloads of pure profit.

No it won't, because it has no staying power. With a limited, entirely online game that has been already forgotten by its developers, there is no reason to buy it now, much less in the future. Arena Net's business model prevents them from selling more games than they would be able to sell if they supported old chapters. Any attempt to reprint it by Arena Net without supporting it is throwing money away.

It's *ALL* profit, every cent, $50M worth of it per month. To put that into perspective, that's equal to the devlopment cost of Doom3 PLUS all the combined sales of Doom3. Or put another way, WoW generate as much profit per month in subscriptions alone as GW has during its whole history.
The WoW game sales alone made the devs about $150M, more than sufficient to pay for the development of WoW and support for the next 20 years or so.

Gamers seem to be an odd bunch in that they'll accept things that others wouldn't (like show-stopping bugs at release). If paying monthly guaranteed frequent content updates, quality, etc., maybe it could be justified, but I recently took a peek at the WoW forums, plus tried it out using a 10-day guest pass someone gave me, and all I can say is I don't get it, either. It doesn't seem, to me, that the monthly fee is getting them all that much more than what we get with GW (except a hell of a lot more character slots).

My partner, who doesn't game but occasionally watches over my shoulder and thinks the GW graphics are great (and loves the dances), took one look at the WoW graphics and said, "a bunch of amateurs must have programmed that game." LOL.

Some folks don't realize that while we're not signing up a credit card for a monthly $15 dollar withdrawal to play GW, ANet has effectively hidden their own version of a subscription fee and revenue stream into their game. It's just voluntary.

They release a new chapter every six months, that's roughly 8-10 dollars a month spread out over the life of the chapter. The only difference is that the consumers can pick and choose which chapter they buy or not. At least in theory. Hardcore GW players will buy every chapter until the game dies.

Oh, and the retail price of each chapter at release is $49.95, not $39.95. Collectors Editions are $69.95. It's not a "40 dollar game", it's an A-List title selling at 50 dollars. Hell, Chapter 1 is still selling at $39.95, over a year after release, when almost all retail software gets heavily discounted to bargain bin prices six months after release, or bundled into "battle packs".

And of course, ANet always finds some way of milking even more money out of their franchise, such as the purchase of additional "slots" instead of providing them in the game itself. Just how many folks will be shelling out another $10 bucks for yet another slot to create a PVE character in, or more? You're going to soon have 8 professions and only six slots, and in a year, potentially 10 professions and still six slots. Whoever came up with the idea of selling slots to their fan base probably deserves a big fat raise. Talk about a cost effective revenue stream.

I'm sure ANet is scratching their heads, trying to find a way of sucking this franchise dry of even more money out of their player base.

No they haven't. When you play a game like WoW, you have to pay the $40-50 for the game *AND* a subscription fee every month. I mean, what do you want, to play GW for free? GW doesn't cost you any more to play than a single-player game, and nobody will say you're paying a subscription when you buy KotOR or NWN or a game like that.

Anet is a business, not a charity. If gamers are willing to pay for content and upgrades to their account, why not?

you get what you pay for.

As a rule, I'd agree. But last weekend I went down to Cleveland and I compared some prices while I was there. Many fast food chains have the exact same prices, dollar for dollar - except 1 $USD is worth ~1.2 $CDN. This week I've looked at prices for computer components at a couple stores.

ATI X1600 Pro PCI-E card, retails for A: $209.99 or B: $229.99

Therefore you do not always get what you pay for. B is more expensive. But it is the same thing.

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