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NC Soft Q4 earnings report. GW2 25% decline over Q3


Margol.3267

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@Daddicus.6128 said:So, lance doesn't count either? That makes it three months, and that time period included Wintersday and New Year, hardly the time for new stuff.

And isn't PvP getting something RIGHT NOW? I wouldn't know myself, but I keep seeing threads about something to do with Swiss.

It's a beta. That it took them 15 months to -start- a beta for a new PVP feature is astonishing!

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@maddoctor.2738 said:

@Daddicus.6128 said:So, lance doesn't count either? That makes it three months, and that time period included Wintersday and New Year, hardly the time for new stuff.

And isn't PvP getting something RIGHT NOW? I wouldn't know myself, but I keep seeing threads about something to do with Swiss.

It's a beta. That it took them 15 months to -start- a beta for a new PVP feature is astonishing!

15 months is nothing. The announcement about WvW-alliances had already its 2nd birthday and there is not even a beta announced. ;)

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@Daddicus.6128 said:So, lance doesn't count either? That makes it three months, and that time period included Wintersday and New Year, hardly the time for new stuff.

And isn't PvP getting something RIGHT NOW? I wouldn't know myself, but I keep seeing threads about something to do with Swiss.

Just stop. I get what you are trying to say, but telling players that them getting 1 breadcrumb constitutes as content, while the entire cake went to other parts of the game enjoyed by other players, some of which want even that last breadcrumb, does not prove or support your point. On the contrary, it just agitates the players who have been neglected for ages (or maybe not, most have already left the game).

Let's keep it simple: PvP and WvW have not seen significant content releases in years, in either form to sustain the game modes. That might be, and have been, justified from a revenue perspective, but it certainly has lead to those game modes losing significant amounts of more players. Let's not agitate this situation any further by telling players they should be happy they are getting something at all.

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@Zok.4956 said:

@Daddicus.6128 said:So, lance doesn't count either? That makes it three months, and that time period included Wintersday and New Year, hardly the time for new stuff.

And isn't PvP getting something RIGHT NOW? I wouldn't know myself, but I keep seeing threads about something to do with Swiss.

It's a beta. That it took them 15 months to -start- a beta for a new PVP feature is astonishing!

15 months is nothing. The announcement about WvW-alliances had already its 2nd birthday and there is not even a beta announced. ;)

Arenanet is spread too thin, they've been doing so much for non-Open World content that it's taking a toll on their resources. They need to focus their resources more on the Open World because the game will die otherwise, revenue is dropping so they must take action. Next PVP feature will come in 30 months now (if even that), to focus more PVP resources on creating PVE Story instances, meanwhile WVW-Alliances will be postponed -further- to create more Open World meta events.

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@Daddicus.6128 said:

@maddoctor.2738 said:I know people love finding scapegoats to justify the loss in revenue but this is getting ridiculous.

Last Raid was released June 2019, 8 months agoLast Fractal was released January 2019, 13 months agoLast time we got something (how matter small) for PVP/WVW was November 2018, 15 months ago

It's been a very long time that the game is almost exclusively focusing on open world PVE. So the reason for spreading so much and causing the revenue is because of the 5 Strikes they've released, out of which 2 of them were slight rehashes of story instance bosses. Meaning in almost 8 months the only non-open world content we got in the game was 3 platforms with a boss on top. Yes that can cause a massive split of resources and spread Arenanet too thin.

As for losing players, they are already losing players in troves because they only focus on the open world, we already see it in their revenue.

So, warclaw doesn't count as an update to WvW (no matter how small)?

You can count your points until they shut this whole thing down. What matters is the player response. Warclaw was a legitimate addition, but it's been a year since it released. That is not enough. But it's worse than that. Swiss Tournament? Alliances? This stuff has been promised for years. This is not how a game succeeds.

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@maddoctor.2738 said:

@maddoctor.2738 said:I know people love finding scapegoats to justify the loss in revenue but this is getting ridiculous.

Last Raid was released June 2019, 8 months agoLast Fractal was released January 2019, 13 months agoLast time we got something (how matter small) for PVP/WVW was November 2018, 15 months ago

It's been a very long time that the game is almost exclusively focusing on open world PVE. So the reason for spreading so much and causing the revenue is because of the 5 Strikes they've released, out of which 2 of them were slight rehashes of story instance bosses. Meaning in almost 8 months the only non-open world content we got in the game was 3 platforms with a boss on top. Yes that can cause a massive split of resources and spread Arenanet too thin.

As for losing players, they are already losing players in troves because they only focus on the open world, we already see it in their revenue.

So, warclaw doesn't count as an update to WvW (no matter how small)?

Someone already responded to my post so editing it afterwards would make future posts make no sense.

Here you go:

Last Raid was released June 2019, 8 months agoLast time we got something for WVW was March 2019, 11 months agoLast Fractal was released January 2019, 13 months agoLast time we got something for PVP was November 2018, 15 months ago

I'm not sure how adding the Warclaw actually changes the results of my post though. The last 8 months, Q3 2019, Q4 2019 and Q1 2020 so far only contained open world releases. Exclusively. And yet there is talk about Arenanet spreading too thin to cater to all types of players.This is it. The point is that it's been a while since those modes got much of anything added to them. And that's the focus point I think.

At the same time, I've got the feeling that this is not a new development for PvP/WvW. For those modes it's a bit of an ongoing thing that they get ignored which is normal in casual oriented MMOs but it can't be good for the populations in PvP/WvW that they get so little attention outside of balancing updates, so I can understand they are not happy with the game and might leave. I feel this is a bit of a vicious cycle because when PvP/WvW doesn't get much in updates, those modes lose players over time and then because of that, there is no business case to invest more. The same has happened in SWTOR where PvP has been treated poorly over the years and because of the reduced numbers in battlemaps they call warzones, all they got is some reskinned versions of old maps and only a handful of new ones over the years. Different game but similar issue where the game actually causes the decline of population and then causes the numbers to be too low for investing into it.

Raiding, as ArenaNet said themselves, is niche content that only a small amount of players participate in so that player group is less significant in the total picture and they can't commit too many resources there. I believe their strike missions are an attempt to create a business case to be able to go on with that content because it seems to me that raids are not attracting enough players for them to keep going. This is worrisome because I think this isn't the right approach and it won't work and what happens then with raiding?

Fractals is the one that suprised me most. It's a year ago now and they did say that a new one will be made soon...whatever that means but it's a type of content I thought was pretty popular and warranted regular releases. So I didn't expect this to've gone without anything new for over a year. But once a year might be all it's gonna get.

I find it difficult to say too much with regards to these content modes you listed because only for raids I know (because they said so) that there is only a small group of players there. I do not know if there are that many people still playing WvW or PvP and I certainly have no clue about Fractals. I sometimes do feel that if there are a lot of people playing something they leave it be and when there's not enough people playing it...they leave it be.

I guess that the story and open world content is easier for them to make and to replicate into new maps so that's what they do, but the irony is that the players who enjoy that aren't that happy either but for different reasons. They get content but it often isn't long-term or appealing/enjoyable for them. I personally really like Bjora Marches visually, didn't care for the high repetition of the same events to level the masteries and don't care about the strike missions either and the Drakkar fight has lost my interest also. Beautiful map to look at, just nothing I really care to repeat there anymore. It is a bit sad that I finally raised the masteries to get the best level of rewards and now that I can get those rewards I stopped playing... because the content already is stale and the RNG set up of rewards doesn't really feel useful. It's mostly geared towards the crafting of boreal weapons but I don't care for those. The better versions are rare drops in that drakkar fight but those have the wrong color for me (yellow). So I have to choose between blue (which I do like) but lesser effects or better effects but a color I don't like. Just to highlight that even though I'm a more casual player, the content that I do get isn't working as well as it should either.

So in summary, WvW and PvP rarely get content, raids and fractals have been a while as well, and we do get story and open world content but it's not done right.

Did I miss something?

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@Gehenna.3625 said:I do not know if there are that many people still playing WvW or PvP and I certainly have no clue about Fractals.

About WvW:Because a lof of WvW players left the game already and some servers became ghost-towns, the problem of population imbalances between servers became a much bigger problem and that is why Anet has put several servers together that then play as one server, the server-links. And over time more and more servers are linked, so this is a sign, that more and more players continue leaving WvW.

The servers-links do not really solve the existing population imbalances very good, so Anet presented the idea of the alliance-system, that should replace the WvW-servers, more than two years ago, as a solution.

So yes, there are (a lot of) players still playing WvW. But how much of a niche content it already became compared to other game types? I do not know.

So in summary, WvW and PvP rarely get content, raids and fractals have been a while as well, and we do get story and open world content but it's not done right.

Did I miss something?

We do get regularly new skins and other things (like templates/loadouts) we can buy in the gem-shop. ;)

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@maddoctor.2738 said:As for losing players, they are already losing players in troves because they only focus on the open world, we already see it in their revenue.

This may not correlate. Lower revenue doesn't necessarily mean the loss of players. It could be that the player base is relatively stable, but just aren't purchasing anything. I still believe that players gravitate toward those events that bring them the most gold per hour and that those players never need to spend real money on anything as they have plenty of gold to convert to gems.

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@kharmin.7683 said:

@maddoctor.2738 said:As for losing players, they are already losing players in troves because they only focus on the open world, we already see it in their revenue.

This may not correlate. Lower revenue doesn't necessarily mean the loss of players. It could be that the player base is relatively stable, but just aren't purchasing anything. I still believe that players gravitate toward those events that bring them the most gold per hour and that those players never need to spend real money on anything as they have plenty of gold to convert to gems.

I agree, but with provisos.

WvW, PvP, and high-end content (hard-core) are the least populated in the game. Best guess based on surveys is a smaller portion of the player base.

However, I suspect that the hard-core players average per player spending in the gem store is significantly higher than the spending of the more casual population in open world. So, while I don't think they should focus heavily on those players, they should probably focus more highly than they do on them. (See my post on finances and communication somewhere on page four.)

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@Daddicus.6128 said:

@maddoctor.2738 said:As for losing players, they are already losing players in troves because they only focus on the open world, we already see it in their revenue.

This may not correlate. Lower revenue doesn't necessarily mean the loss of players. It could be that the player base is relatively stable, but just aren't purchasing anything. I still believe that players gravitate toward those events that bring them the most gold per hour and that those players never need to spend real money on anything as they have plenty of gold to convert to gems.

I agree, but with provisos.

WvW, PvP, and high-end content (hard-core) are the least populated in the game. Best guess based on surveys is a smaller portion of the player base.

However, I suspect that the hard-core players average per player spending in the gem store is significantly higher than the spending of the more casual population in open world. So, while I don't think they should focus heavily on those players, they should probably focus more highly than they do on them. (See my post on finances and communication somewhere on page four.)

You also have to think about how much effort it is to keep each player happy and spending money. If I were to wager, i would bet that casuals require significantly less effort to please and extract money from and significantly outnumber hard core players.

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@Zok.4956 said:

@Gehenna.3625 said:I do not know if there are that many people still playing WvW or PvP and I certainly have no clue about Fractals.

About WvW:Because a lof of WvW players left the game already and some servers became ghost-towns, the problem of population imbalances between servers became a much bigger problem and that is why Anet has put several servers together that then play as one server, the server-links. And over time more and more servers are linked, so this is a sign, that more and more players continue leaving WvW.

The servers-links do not really solve the existing population imbalances very good, so Anet presented the idea of the alliance-system, that should replace the WvW-servers, more than two years ago, as a solution.

So yes, there are (a lot of) players still playing WvW. But how much of a niche content it already became compared to other game types? I do not know.Well that could then mean they think WvW is doing fine so doesn't need attention. In the end loyalty tends to get rewarded with being taken for granted.

So in summary, WvW and PvP rarely get content, raids and fractals have been a while as well, and we do get story and open world content but it's not done right.

Did I miss something?

We do get regularly new skins and other things (like templates/loadouts) we can buy in the gem-shop. ;)

Hah, yeh, I think game companies do call that content now.

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The new Glacial Harvesting Tool is a great example why revenue might be dropping.

We simply can no longer trust the store for having quality items.

1.) Unbound Harvesting Tool (Multiple Hits One Press)2.) Volatile Tool Harvesting Tool (Multiple Hits One Press)3.) Skyscale Harvesting Tool (Mulitple Hits One Press)4.) Glacial Harvesting Tool (Have fun waiting and pressing over and over....)
PSA: Do not use Bountiful with Glacial Harvesting Tool.

When new items are all the sudden inferior to old items, smart consumers stop buying things blindly. A lot of times, I just forget to buy something because I haven't verified if something works the way I expect it to.

I would never use the animation for the Glacial Harvesting Tool. Which is the prime reason for buying the tool. I would buy it for the look, if it was the same or better than the current tools I have to chose from; yet, for no apparent reason, it is worse than other tools that I own. So even on the characters wher eit would fit the theme, I would not use it.

I won't even discuss how bad the glyph is...

We can add numerous other recent debacles like the advertised "Charr" chair. The legionnaire chair looked epic with a Charr sitting in it in the advertised image on the store. When you bought it, it looked like an adult sitting in a child's play chair. The fix...the advertised image was changed to an Asura.... There have been quite a few other debacles recently... Loosing players trust is costly.

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I'm probably going to be the oddman out here in the comments, but for me there are a few contributing factors like mmorpgs losing popularity in general but Guild Wars 2 has never had good advertising and has had to rely on word of mouth. Who are the most vocal and visible right now, and what are they saying about this game these days?

The economy in north america and it's aging player base may be affecting things. The cost of living is on the rise while wages are not rising fast enough to meet that cost. Time is now a commodity some of us don't have. I went from living with 2 other people at launch to living on my own during the past couple of years. That has changed my income and how much time I have. That is no fault of the game at all. I think it's prices are fair and attainable for the game and it's expansions. I think it's gem shop is also extremely fair. But - since it is skins and we have a finite amount of characters and no incentive to make more there will come a point when we may like a skin but have nowhere to display it since we are already happy with the aesthetics we achieved on our current alts.

Which brings me to the next point; the lack of incentives to play again or make a new character, except if you want to display some new set of armor or weapon skins. Achievements are account wide, so I can't go for them again. There is no reason not to use Tomes of Knowledge to instantly level my character. Guild Wars 1 solved this to a degree by creating an iron man achievement (get to max level without dying to unlock an achievement) and creating the Hall of Monuments where you could display your miniatures, your armor sets, your weapon sets and various other achievements - which you could show off to your friends. It was very satisfying.

Guild Wars 2's home feature could potentially have this and I think that would at least temporarily increase replayability or maybe gem shop purchases. It would be a pain for developers but potentially extend the longevity of it's game.

Finally, a more subjective view, at least for me is the complete tonal shift from what the game story was like from launch to what it is now. The threat of Zhaitan loomed but never took away from the light aspects of the story and characters; humor, wholesome fun - silliness that makes the story and characters endearing. There were always dark elements but the overtone was bright. That is completely shadowed now. The current story telling and atmosphere is gritty to a degree that makes it oppressive with no relief. When you think about what is going on in the news globally and you think about why people play games - is Guild Wars 2 bringing the escapism people are looking for? I logged in to Bjora Marches and watched a kodan kill himself so I mean...yeah. Not to quote the kodan intentionally but I feel that balance has been lost.

What HAS kept me playing and making gem shop purchases? I love mounts. I love mapping. Guild Wars 2 inspires me as an artist and a writer. Even though it was never marketted for my particular denomination for a time, as a creative person this was a font of endless material to work with. It was escapism, and catharsis and it was beautiful and full of life and humor. That is sort of gone now. I still play because it's one of the few things me and my LDR bf can do together. But many other aspects of the game isolate and exclude me because I don't have the time anymore to dedicate - my work schedule is too random to allow me to join a raiding guild for example so I have never been able to try that.

There are many things. This game is still beautiful and one of a kind and I play it exclusively. I want it to come back strong. I think it can but we need some fresh eyes on this. That is what made it a success in the first place. It started as a breath of fresh air.

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Wages are up, on average, more than the cost of living in the US.

Personally it is pretty simple. I have not liked gemstore additions much for some time. Content additions have not been of a sort for me to be inclined to spend real money for those things that might have been of interest to me. The game is alt-unfriendly for me so I tend to focus on one character, meaning that all of the various items of value to multiple characters are not much of interest to me.

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@"Josiah.2967" said:The new Glacial Harvesting Tool is a great example why revenue might be dropping.

We simply can no longer trust the store for having quality items.

1.) Unbound Harvesting Tool (Multiple Hits One Press)2.) Volatile Tool Harvesting Tool (Multiple Hits One Press)3.) Skyscale Harvesting Tool (Mulitple Hits One Press)4.) Glacial Harvesting Tool (Have fun waiting and pressing over and over....)

PSA: Do not use Bountiful with Glacial Harvesting Tool.

When new items are all the sudden inferior to old items, smart consumers stop buying things blindly. A lot of times, I just forget to buy something because I haven't verified if something works the way I expect it to.

I would never use the animation for the Glacial Harvesting Tool. Which is the prime reason for buying the tool. I would buy it for the look, if it was the same or better than the current tools I have to chose from; yet, for no apparent reason, it is worse than other tools that I own. So even on the characters wher eit would fit the theme, I would not use it.

I won't even discuss how bad the glyph is...

We can add numerous other recent debacles like the advertised "Charr" chair. The legionnaire chair looked epic with a Charr sitting in it in the advertised image on the store. When you bought it, it looked like an adult sitting in a child's play chair. The fix...the advertised image was changed to an Asura.... There have been quite a few other debacles recently... Loosing players trust is costly.

Well, I like the idea of a glyph for karma. Speed might be valuable, but it's not the only glyph out there.

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@Bassdeff.1895 said:

@maddoctor.2738 said:As for losing players, they are already losing players in troves because they only focus on the open world, we already see it in their revenue.

This may not correlate. Lower revenue doesn't necessarily mean the loss of players. It could be that the player base is relatively stable, but just aren't purchasing anything. I still believe that players gravitate toward those events that bring them the most gold per hour and that those players never need to spend real money on anything as they have plenty of gold to convert to gems.

I agree, but with provisos.

WvW, PvP, and high-end content (hard-core) are the least populated in the game. Best guess based on surveys is a smaller portion of the player base.

However, I suspect that the hard-core players average per player spending in the gem store is significantly higher than the spending of the more casual population in open world. So, while I don't think they should focus heavily on those players, they should probably focus more highly than they do on them. (See my post on finances and communication somewhere on page four.)

You also have to think about how much effort it is to keep each player happy and spending money. If I were to wager, i would bet that casuals require significantly less effort to please and extract money from and significantly outnumber hardcore players.

You could be correct, but I'll bet the hardcores spend more money when they get convinced.

ANet would have to tell us the facts. My hope is that they are actually viewing them in a way that helps increase revenue.

And most importantly, they need to TELL US!

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@Daddicus.6128 said:

@"Josiah.2967" said:The new Glacial Harvesting Tool is a great example why revenue might be dropping.

We simply can no longer trust the store for having quality items.

1.) Unbound Harvesting Tool (Multiple Hits One Press)2.) Volatile Tool Harvesting Tool (Multiple Hits One Press)3.) Skyscale Harvesting Tool (Mulitple Hits One Press)4.) Glacial Harvesting Tool (Have fun waiting and pressing over and over....)

PSA: Do not use Bountiful with Glacial Harvesting Tool.

When new items are all the sudden inferior to old items, smart consumers stop buying things blindly. A lot of times, I just forget to buy something because I haven't verified if something works the way I expect it to.

I would never use the animation for the Glacial Harvesting Tool. Which is the prime reason for buying the tool. I would buy it for the look, if it was the same or better than the current tools I have to chose from; yet, for no apparent reason, it is worse than other tools that I own. So even on the characters wher eit would fit the theme, I would not use it.

I won't even discuss how bad the glyph is...

We can add numerous other recent debacles like the advertised "Charr" chair. The legionnaire chair looked epic with a Charr sitting in it in the advertised image on the store. When you bought it, it looked like an adult sitting in a child's play chair. The fix...the advertised image was changed to an Asura.... There have been quite a few other debacles recently... Loosing players trust is costly.

Well, I like the idea of a glyph for karma. Speed might be valuable, but it's not the only glyph out there.

3 karma per strike, extremely insignificant vs the other resources due to karma costs.

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All yall saying the devs are spread too thin, picking game modes, blah blah blah.

Its proven they had been pulling devs from gw2 to work on outside projects for years while game modes were being neglected.

Ncsoft did the lay offs and we were told more people would be put back on gw2 and less than 3 months later they started hiring unreal engine, and console devs so they are still obviously working on things other than gw2.

Every time us PvPers and WvWers complained we were shut down, deleted, or told to speak with our wallets.

Well guess what. Now all of you are feeling the neglect.

So. Speak with your wallet.

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@"Bassdeff.1895" said:Anet needs and better PR department. Players would prbably be more willing to open up their wallet if they felt confident that the game wasn't being put into maintenance mode. With all the drama that happened in 2019 and their historical ability over hype and under deliver many players are on the fence with a "I'll believe it when I see it and then maybe I will spend money" attitude.

This is one of the most obvious reasons, we need to see more action then words on improvements for the game without adding more qol features, we have plenty of that.

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@Kurrilino.2706 said:

@arkinia.6952 said:Offer a subscription as an option.

We already have that. It's called Gem's.You can buy monthly if you desire so.

The ship has sailed but you missed the point, we don't have that. This is not the same. In a sub model you would get gems, but you would also gain other benefits since you were now a planned income. Businesses run on budgets and sub-models plan for that income to determine how they will manage that business. In this model proposed by various threads over time it would provide gems and additional features. The additional might come in the form of discounted gems, access to missing Living World material, extra storage and other features. What makes that different from someone just spending extra cash on buying gems is that a business could count on that whereas with just gem sales they can't so they pay a bit more premium on the planned sales. Aka they would have to create value that players would sign up for that wouldn't impact the B2P playerbase they have.

@kharmin.7683 said:

@arkinia.6952 said:Offer a subscription as an option.You can already do this. Spend $20/mo on gems and there is your subscription. Optional for you and not mandatory for everyone else. The whole "optional subscription" idea is tiresome.

@kharmin.7683

Most of the time I can relate to your posts, but I disagree with your position and word choice here. You state"You are a very casual gamer." and that this "is tiresome". These conflict, your point is moot since this about non-casual gamers, which is not you. Its about getting support of people spending more time in game and what they could have done better. I already support the game via gem sales, but they have no optional value add model and will therefore lose sales. Casual gamers don't have to spend money on B2P games because there are offers to non-casual gamers to support those additional free features. If want people to pledge to spend ongoing money on development you have to give them more. This is less gaming and more business. If I want investors to buy my stock I need to pay in dividends else expect less people to buy my stock. Its ok to be B2P player that doesn't want to spend more on the game, but stop trying to drive away previous supporters that are looking for more reasons to continue to spend real money on future development.

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@"Margol.3267" said:Ncsoft quarterly earnings are up Guild Wars 2 down by 25%. It was probably the lowest quarter in games history, yearly revenue is down aswell

KtaYnru.png

Without expansion this game future doesn't look good. Cantha!

Honestly the main issue with Anet when it comes to GW2 is the monetization... One cheap expansion that includes all past expansions/core isnt gonna pay the bills..And Living World comes free if you simply log in.. Only the Gemstore makes money, but even that is for convenience or cosmetics

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5 year player reporting.I agree the ice brood saga hype was a disappointment but the content itself I enjoy a lot. I've definitely added storms and drakkar meta into my daily rotation and concert is something I hop into when I'm bored.I'm here though. For the end game. I've played BnS and BDO and Tera and old school wow/bc/wotlk and cata. But i'm here in the end because this game just hits all the right marks for me and what I want.

I hope for the best and whether or not this is the downfall of GW2, I'll be here to ride it out to the end baby.

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