GW2 Sales/Revenue/Earnings Report 1Q-2023

[Gibson.4036]

13 hours ago, Vayne.8563 said:

But how many of those stores add a Season 1, upgrade to DX 11 or work on something like alliances if they're planning to close. I'm not making my judgement based on just thinking on the game seems okay. I'm basing it on the actions of the company.  People say Anet is milking the game because Anet is coming out with stuff like Gyala, or because the expansion is smaller. Times have changed, that's true. And make no mistake, this is a niche game, but it's a big niche. There aren't many MMOs focused on the open world.

So they're future proofing the game to close it down? What sense does that make? Why do it at all? Why upgrade the trading post? Why DX 11? If the game is something they're not planning on going into the future with, why add Season 1. None of that was necessary, we were running without that stuff for eight years.  

The very lack of "new content" in the year plus since EOD, a strike mission, a single zone that a lot of people don't love (though I don't mind it), is indicative of a company working on something else. Why change runes?  It's not, as some people have implied, so sell us back something we already have. It's so we can move forward with new types of builds.  If you don't think they have plans for this that's fine, but I've been in business for a long time (even if I'm retired now) and I know what a company looks like when it's winding down. I've been there to help in that process.  This isn't what it looks like.

And at times when a company is future proofing or making changes, revenue does look different, because since the expansion, no one is buying Gyala. No one is paying for DX 11. The new system will be like a very small sub. You buy the new expansion and it keeps you busy for a while and it costs about 5 dollars a month. You get a new fractal, a couple of new strikes, a few new zones, and new stuff to play with in game, every year and a year and a half. That conversation is what they deem to make the game sustainable moving forward. 

Will that work? No idea. I've been in business too long for me to believe that crystal balls are real. Plenty of stuff I've thought would work didn't and a lot of stuff I didn't think would work did.  But I do know what a company looks like when it's winding down. Anet looks like they're building to something.  Just my two cents.

I get what you’re saying, but I’ve seen stores remodel shortly before going out of business. Or, as I mentioned, studios let creators plan out future installments without telling them they’re about to end the product.

Yeah, on a certain scale it only makes sense to renovate and future proof of you expect a future to benefit from those actions. The problem is that in our current world of layered ownership, management and workers may have every reason to expect that future and be acting on those expectations, while higher up the food chain shut downs are being weighed but not communicated.

At any rate, this is a little in the weeds, and doesn’t tell us anything about GW2. Mostly I’m just saying I wouldn’t count on LW1, DX11 and the like as guarantees.

I’d put more weight on the upward trend in GW2 sales over the past couple years.

[Vayne.8563]

9 minutes ago, Gibson.4036 said:

I get what you’re saying, but I’ve seen stores remodel shortly before going out of business. Or, as I mentioned, studios let creators plan out future installments without telling them they’re about to end the product.

Yeah, on a certain scale it only makes sense to renovate and future proof of you expect a future to benefit from those actions. The problem is that in our current world of layered ownership, management and workers may have every reason to expect that future and be acting on those expectations, while higher up the food chain shut downs are being weighed but not communicated.

At any rate, this is a little in the weeds, and doesn’t tell us anything about GW2. Mostly I’m just saying I wouldn’t count on LW1, DX11 and the like as guarantees.

I’d put more weight on the upward trend in GW2 sales over the past couple years.

Nothing is a guarantee, but occam's razor.  Out of all the stores that remodel, what percentage of them are going out of business shortly after? Pointing to the exception doesn't accomplish anything.  I'm looking at a pattern that I see.  Of course, humans see patterns where there are none, but I think that this was planned for. Anet has pretty much hinted at it. We'll see when Soto comes out, but I think this game is getting better, not worse, Gyala notwithstanding.

[Gibson.4036]

1 hour ago, Vayne.8563 said:

Nothing is a guarantee, but occam's razor.  Out of all the stores that remodel, what percentage of them are going out of business shortly after? Pointing to the exception doesn't accomplish anything.  I'm looking at a pattern that I see.  Of course, humans see patterns where there are none, but I think that this was planned for. Anet has pretty much hinted at it. We'll see when Soto comes out, but I think this game is getting better, not worse, Gyala notwithstanding.

It's purely subjective, but I think businesses looking like they are thriving up until the day they suddenly close is more prevalent now than it was, say, a couple decades ago. I could speculate on why that is, but it'd just be even more uninformed than anything I've written up to this point. 😄

I guess what I was trying to say is that I see signals in both directions, and wouldn't put my weight on the future-proofing without counterbalancing it with other signs. I think the evidence we have to go on is too muddled at this point to confidently point to GW2 either thriving or waning.

9 hours ago, Dante.1508 said:

 

If that is Korean numbers for a whole year we could be in bigger trouble than we gamers think.. Those numbers are really small for a MMORPG. and gaming in general. I wonder how NCSoft is taking all this in. Do we have figures for their other MMO's?

 

I don't think NCSoft is weighing GW2 returns against WoW or FFXIV. They're looking at their ROI, and comparing it to whether they could get a bigger return on the same investment in something else.

74M USD is not nothing, and it depends a lot on how much GW2 is costing to keep going. That, we can't see, because they don't break out expenses across their products.

Compared to their other MMOs, last year GW2 earned four times as much as Blade and Soul, 50% more than Aion, about the same as Lineage II, and a little under Lineage. Interestingly, it is the only NCSoft MMO that shows an upward trend in sales over the last three years, expanding 50% over 2020.

One disconcerting point, which is industry wide, is that mobile is beating MMOs by a large margin. NCSoft's mobile games earned three times as much in sales as all of their MMOs combined. Another negative is that NCSoft's profits and net income are significantly down overall, even while sales are rising slightly. That sounds like a recipe for cutting staff even more.

The most recent repot repeatedly attributes their increase in MMO sales to updates. This lines up with ArenaNet's plan to sell mini-expacs more frequently. Like any business, they're recognizing the benefit of a steady income rather than feast/famine cycles. If GW2 can deliver a steady profit over time, it doesn't have to bring in money equal to some of the larger MMOs.

Edited July 25, 2023 by Gibson.4036

[Ashen.2907]

2 hours ago, Vayne.8563 said:

Nothing is a guarantee, but occam's razor.  Out of all the stores that remodel, what percentage of them are going out of business shortly after? Pointing to the exception doesn't accomplish anything.  I'm looking at a pattern that I see.  Of course, humans see patterns where there are none, but I think that this was planned for. Anet has pretty much hinted at it. We'll see when Soto comes out, but I think this game is getting better, not worse, Gyala notwithstanding.

In the  NA corporate retail environment the decision to remodel, the planning that goes into such an activity, and the resource allocation for that remodel are almost always made much further in advance than is a decision to close a store. The decision to close a store might be made as little as three months in advance of the closure while the remodel might be planned and paid for as much as three years in advance.

[Lincolnbeard.1735]

@Vayne.8563
Beyond, Winds of Change, Dervish rework, Graphical update, 10 new skills, multiple QoL, does this mean GW1 has a bright future ahead?
The fact that theres a team working on GW2 doesn't mean they're preparing to ramp up, there will be these mini-xpacs and that's it.

Also ANerf isn't reinventing the wheel with these short period beyond xpacs. In GW1 it was 6 months between xpacs, until the "it's not working anymore".
 

[wolfof.1842]

18 hours ago, Vayne.8563 said:

But how many of those stores add a Season 1, upgrade to DX 11 or work on something like alliances if they're planning to close. I'm not making my judgement based on just thinking on the game seems okay. I'm basing it on the actions of the company.  People say Anet is milking the game because Anet is coming out with stuff like Gyala, or because the expansion is smaller. Times have changed, that's true. And make no mistake, this is a niche game, but it's a big niche. There aren't many MMOs focused on the open world.

So they're future proofing the game to close it down? What sense does that make? Why do it at all? Why upgrade the trading post? Why DX 11? If the game is something they're not planning on going into the future with, why add Season 1. None of that was necessary, we were running without that stuff for eight years.  

The very lack of "new content" in the year plus since EOD, a strike mission, a single zone that a lot of people don't love (though I don't mind it), is indicative of a company working on something else. Why change runes?  It's not, as some people have implied, so sell us back something we already have. It's so we can move forward with new types of builds.  If you don't think they have plans for this that's fine, but I've been in business for a long time (even if I'm retired now) and I know what a company looks like when it's winding down. I've been there to help in that process.  This isn't what it looks like.

And at times when a company is future proofing or making changes, revenue does look different, because since the expansion, no one is buying Gyala. No one is paying for DX 11. The new system will be like a very small sub. You buy the new expansion and it keeps you busy for a while and it costs about 5 dollars a month. You get a new fractal, a couple of new strikes, a few new zones, and new stuff to play with in game, every year and a year and a half. That conversation is what they deem to make the game sustainable moving forward. 

Will that work? No idea. I've been in business too long for me to believe that crystal balls are real. Plenty of stuff I've thought would work didn't and a lot of stuff I didn't think would work did.  But I do know what a company looks like when it's winding down. Anet looks like they're building to something.  Just my two cents.

hello I don't think they would "close" the game but keep it online for long time like GW1. 

GW1 graphics were still updated many years later in 2018:

• Max draw distance doubled
• Ground cover vegetation pushed even further.
• Added a new 8X MSAA anti-aliasing option.
• 16x Anisotropic filtering
• Added an Ultra shadow setting.
• ...

https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Game_updates:2018

Even though GW1 was in maintenance for a decade already. I think DX11 for GW2 is fair when is still active now.

But update alone does not say how much content game will get in future.

Could be one, two, three more expansions but game is getting older and older, how many people want to start play queensdale GW2 in 2030?

[Shadowmoon.7986]

16 hours ago, Vayne.8563 said:

You made three statements, and none of them are correct.

The writing is not on the wall.

Steam and LS 1 did do the game favors.

LS 6 was not cut short.

Kanaxai being a cut strike boss contradicts this statement. LS6 was cut short like IBS. 

[Zok.4956]

21 hours ago, Vayne.8563 said:

So they're future proofing the game to close it down? What sense does that make? Why do it at all? Why upgrade the trading post? Why DX 11? If the game is something they're not planning on going into the future with, why add Season 1. None of that was necessary, we were running without that stuff for eight years.

First: I don't think they are closing down the game. With this good revenue NCsoft would be crazy to shut down the game. 

However, I see your reasoning differently. Some of the changes were probably seen as important for last year's Steam update and the new players coming via Steam. Some of the changes were probably important for the expansion. Or it was bug fixes that were prioritized by the new management because they took far too long and had been planned for a long time.

So I don't think they're future proofing the game. I think it's a "normal" further development, without major innovations, but still useful/necessary.

If GW2 were to switch to the current Unreal engine (won't happen, just as an example) I would consider that something like "future proofing". Because the cost of doing so is probably so high that it would take many years to amortize and the benefits will only really matter in a few years (when the current engine is less and less supported due to old software).

 

[Gravitron.7982]

9 hours ago, Gibson.4036 said:

I get what you’re saying, but I’ve seen stores remodel shortly before going out of business. Or, as I mentioned, studios let creators plan out future installments without telling them they’re about to end the product.

Yeah, on a certain scale it only makes sense to renovate and future proof of you expect a future to benefit from those actions. The problem is that in our current world of layered ownership, management and workers may have every reason to expect that future and be acting on those expectations, while higher up the food chain shut downs are being weighed but not communicated.

At any rate, this is a little in the weeds, and doesn’t tell us anything about GW2. Mostly I’m just saying I wouldn’t count on LW1, DX11 and the like as guarantees.

I’d put more weight on the upward trend in GW2 sales over the past couple years.

Yup that is a very good point. Games like Firefall, Tabula Rasa, Everquest Next, and most recently The Cycle: Frontier all shut down, some of them before they were even really launched. But the reality of the industry is that sometimes, the writing is on the wall that a game is probably going to shut it's doors soon. Most of the time though, it's usually always a sudden surprise. 

So basically I agree with your point, that studios don't often give advanced warnings that their game is going to shut down...they often put up new merchandise, maybe renovate part of their store (so to speak) often weeks or even days before they announce their closure. Is this going to happen to GW2? It's a definite possibility. I mean, eventually GW2 will close it's doors down for good, but it could be sooner than later. And I don't think Anet is going to give everyone a 6 month notice....it will more than likely be a few weeks notice at best. 

But with these sales reports.....things aren't in the red exactly, but they aren't in the green either, and the trend is that it's making less and less money every year in general, is a pretty clear sign. I mean, we've all been playing MMORPG's for years now, this isn't new, we've all had our favorite MMO at the time eventually shut down for XYZ reason. GW2 is not immune from this, and now there is data that at least highlights the fact that it's best years are way behind us. 

[Vayne.8563]

6 hours ago, Lincolnbeard.1735 said:

@Vayne.8563
Beyond, Winds of Change, Dervish rework, Graphical update, 10 new skills, multiple QoL, does this mean GW1 has a bright future ahead?
The fact that theres a team working on GW2 doesn't mean they're preparing to ramp up, there will be these mini-xpacs and that's it.

Also ANerf isn't reinventing the wheel with these short period beyond xpacs. In GW1 it was 6 months between xpacs, until the "it's not working anymore".
 

And yet so many people tell Anet to stop reinventing the wheel. What XPac of which MMOs are actually revinventing the wheel?  Silly comment is silly.

I'm talking about core things like the underlying TP software and alliances, which are coming even if you don't think they are, and DX 11. This is background stuff. And the changes they're making to runes. I think that just might be reinventing the wheel, anyway.  GW 1 was being updated slowly, over years, by some people in their spare time who enjoy it. It's not planned upgrades to bring it to the present.   You're seeing a couple of individual things over many years. I'm seeing a bunch of stuff,  including the return of season 1, all in the same year.  I know you have a theory and you'll use whatever there is to support it, but the situations of Guild Wars 1 and Guild Wars 2 are completely different.  I guess in a couple of years we'll see.

[Vayne.8563]

18 hours ago, Dante.1508 said:

Broadsword manages maintenance mmo's two at this time, very old ones. So many people are saying SWTOR is in maintenance mode, is it? Time will tell. Hopefully GW2 will have a longer shelf life but if SoTO isn't received well, who knows. 

  

If that is Korean numbers for a whole year we could be in bigger trouble than we gamers think.. Those numbers are really small for a MMORPG. and gaming in general. I wonder how NCSoft is taking all this in. Do we have figures for their other MMO's?

I was told this week by a EB Games staffer that Guildwars 2 Gem cards in Australia have been discontinued.. Which means we can no longer get them, he told me to buy what i can because when their supply ends its gone forever..

I'm not sure how to take that as once my gem cards are gone i honestly cannot buy anymore Gems now due to the crazy conversion prices added to them.. I might need to stop, which means i might not be playing much in the future. which means even less money to this game..

I heard that same news from an EB staffer five years ago though, and they're still here.

[Zok.4956]

20 hours ago, Shadowmoon.7986 said:

On 7/25/2023 at 2:44 AM, Vayne.8563 said:

LS 6 was not cut short.

LS6 was cut short like IBS. 

From the HoT/LS3 and PoF/LS4 pattern I was expecting something similar with LS after EoD which would be in Cantha and I was very disappointed with their Cantha mini-episode-release(s) after EoD.

My opinion is that Anet wanted to end the Cantha theme in the same surprising way that Anet ended the IBS to put all GW2 resources into the new expansion(s).

But, technically, LS6 was not cut short because LS6 does not even exist (and probably never will). The mini releases are part of the EoD expansion.

[Izzy.2951]

Tbh i dont see any future expansion in Cantha. Basically cos after what they made with it, specially Gyala Delve and Kanaxai i dont see people expending money on a second cantha expansion. And i love cantha but meh..

Regarding earnings its really dissapointing they are earning more money than in 2015 with the game at its prime, f2p and their 1st expansion coming. But they are not investing it into the game, making raids, pvp, pve etc

Its like we are trying to win as much money as we can making the less posible effort.

Edited July 26, 2023 by Izzy.2951

[kharmin.7683]

Just because the studio isn't crafting content that one likes does not mean that they are not investing in the game.

[Gravitron.7982]

16 hours ago, Vayne.8563 said:

I heard that same news from an EB staffer five years ago though, and they're still here.

And I remember the Wildstar Devs saying they were going to be around for years and years.....they crumbled like 3 years after launch. 

[wolfof.1842]

16 hours ago, Vayne.8563 said:

I'm talking about core things like the underlying TP software and alliances, which are coming even if you don't think they are, and DX 11. This is background stuff. And the changes they're making to runes. I think that just might be reinventing the wheel, anyway.  GW 1 was being updated slowly, over years, by some people in their spare time who enjoy it. It's not planned upgrades to bring it to the present.   You're seeing a couple of individual things over many years. I'm seeing a bunch of stuff,  including the return of season 1, all in the same year.  I know you have a theory and you'll use whatever there is to support it, but the situations of Guild Wars 1 and Guild Wars 2 are completely different.  I guess in a couple of years we'll see.

They said "DirectX11 support is a project that has been a long time in the making." when beta released. 

So when they actually start working, 2017, 2019,.. and dx11 finish in 2023? 

Whole GW2 game developement was 5 years only

look like same slow updated, over years by few people (dx11, alliances,..)

[Gravitron.7982]

22 minutes ago, wolfof.1842 said:

They said "DirectX11 support is a project that has been a long time in the making." when beta released. 

So when they actually start working, 2017, 2019,.. and dx11 finish in 2023? 

Whole GW2 game developement was 5 years only

look like same slow updated, over years by few people (dx11, alliances,..)

Yeah pretty much. Meanwhile, the rest of the world is already on DX12. 

[Zok.4956]

1 hour ago, kharmin.7683 said:

Just because the studio isn't crafting content that one likes does not mean that they are not investing in the game.

True. However, no one denied that content is currently being created in GW2 and Anet is investing in this content.

[Batalix.2873]

On 7/25/2023 at 6:34 AM, Gibson.4036 said:

It's purely subjective, but I think businesses looking like they are thriving up until the day they suddenly close is more prevalent now than it was, say, a couple decades ago. I could speculate on why that is, but it'd just be even more uninformed than anything I've written up to this point. 😄

I guess what I was trying to say is that I see signals in both directions, and wouldn't put my weight on the future-proofing without counterbalancing it with other signs. I think the evidence we have to go on is too muddled at this point to confidently point to GW2 either thriving or waning.

 

I don't think NCSoft is weighing GW2 returns against WoW or FFXIV. They're looking at their ROI, and comparing it to whether they could get a bigger return on the same investment in something else.

74M USD is not nothing, and it depends a lot on how much GW2 is costing to keep going. That, we can't see, because they don't break out expenses across their products.

Compared to their other MMOs, last year GW2 earned four times as much as Blade and Soul, 50% more than Aion, about the same as Lineage II, and a little under Lineage. Interestingly, it is the only NCSoft MMO that shows an upward trend in sales over the last three years, expanding 50% over 2020.

One disconcerting point, which is industry wide, is that mobile is beating MMOs by a large margin. NCSoft's mobile games earned three times as much in sales as all of their MMOs combined. Another negative is that NCSoft's profits and net income are significantly down overall, even while sales are rising slightly. That sounds like a recipe for cutting staff even more.

The most recent repot repeatedly attributes their increase in MMO sales to updates. This lines up with ArenaNet's plan to sell mini-expacs more frequently. Like any business, they're recognizing the benefit of a steady income rather than feast/famine cycles. If GW2 can deliver a steady profit over time, it doesn't have to bring in money equal to some of the larger MMOs.

The reality is that GW2 stopping development wouldn't be a shutdown like a store, either. They would still maintain some profitability from late adopters and gemstore purchases well after the game went into maintenance mode.

Albeit DX11 is an uncharacteristically large investment, quite an anomaly against the rest of the game's low-effort content-pushing. But both DX11 and the WvW overhaul could easily just as much be means of futureproofing *maintenance mode*, not necessarily *active game development*.

[Vayne.8563]

11 hours ago, Gravitron.7982 said:

And I remember the Wildstar Devs saying they were going to be around for years and years.....they crumbled like 3 years after launch. 

The devs haven't said that. I'm not listening to what the devs say. I'm looking at what they're doing.  This is why I said there'd be another expansion when everyone said there wouldn't be, including Anet. The same thing actually happened with HoT. I never listen to companies. I watch what they do.

[Vayne.8563]

11 hours ago, wolfof.1842 said:

They said "DirectX11 support is a project that has been a long time in the making." when beta released. 

So when they actually start working, 2017, 2019,.. and dx11 finish in 2023? 

Whole GW2 game developement was 5 years only

look like same slow updated, over years by few people (dx11, alliances,..)

And the revamp of the gem store? Why do that? And adding LS 1, why do that?   Pick the one thing you think supports your theory and run with it, got it. Honestly, we'll see. You don't have a crystal ball and neither do I. I made my prediction. I think people are going to be surprised. I acknowledge I could be wrong, but I'm right more often than I'm wrong on these forums, even when I'm saying stuff most people disagree with. I'm happy with my track record.

[Vayne.8563]

12 hours ago, Izzy.2951 said:

Tbh i dont see any future expansion in Cantha. Basically cos after what they made with it, specially Gyala Delve and Kanaxai i dont see people expending money on a second cantha expansion. And i love cantha but meh..

Regarding earnings its really dissapointing they are earning more money than in 2015 with the game at its prime, f2p and their 1st expansion coming. But they are not investing it into the game, making raids, pvp, pve etc

Its like we are trying to win as much money as we can making the less posible effort.

That's the thing. From your point of view they're not investing in the game cause there are no new raids. What do you think will get more players, finishing the story by adding Season 1 or adding a raid, which most people will never touch. That's the question. Updating the trading post. Adding DX 11. Adding Season 1. That will make it so that more people can enjoy the game when they actually get here.  There investing in the game's structure. It's the same with alliances. Yes, it's taking forever, buit the next test is meant to include alliances. We've already seen it in the menu before they took it out.

You think these things don't take effort, but they do. Once these things are in, it's all content. But you need to make sure the rest of the game is there for the content to be played by people.  Strike missions are content too.

[Alsandar.7420]

I watched bad devs destroy WoW by departing from classic lore, classic characters, and basic classic gameplay.

WoW was great and very consistent and the devs on the inside killed it.

Devs at Anet have made some very unpopular decisions in EOD - when otherwise EOD was pretty great. 

Devs need to recognize core attributes and not change them. Iteration and gradual progress is much more acceptable than big ideas and revolution
 

 

[Izzy.2951]

12 hours ago, Vayne.8563 said:

That's the thing. From your point of view they're not investing in the game cause there are no new raids. What do you think will get more players, finishing the story by adding Season 1 or adding a raid, which most people will never touch. That's the question. Updating the trading post. Adding DX 11. Adding Season 1. That will make it so that more people can enjoy the game when they actually get here.  There investing in the game's structure. It's the same with alliances. Yes, it's taking forever, buit the next test is meant to include alliances. We've already seen it in the menu before they took it out.

You think these things don't take effort, but they do. Once these things are in, it's all content. But you need to make sure the rest of the game is there for the content to be played by people.  Strike missions are content too.

You take one word out of my post and completly smash what ive said.

In 2015 they were earning less money than nowadays. While they were not just only doing raids (which we all know its costy), pvp content, pvp sports, HoT/LWS3 that added 100 more content and quality than EoD, Gyala Delve and the expansion to come (and with no reuse assets, animations etc), they made the game F2P. It is not just raids its A LOT OF THINGS, and the few things they are doing right now are clearly showing low quality and effort, if you know a bit about how videogames are done. Instead of adding an easy/story mode to raids they just add a emboldened buff (which doesnt even make raids easy also) why? cos its cheap and fast like 90% of their updates, instead of wasting hundred of hours on making something good and useful they waste 25 hours on making a emboldened buff that its not useful, not helpful, no1 cares about and its not making raids more active and nothing.

Direct x11 is not as hard as dx12, it was neccesary cos soon windows are not gonna support direct x9 anymore. So it was just more survavility and making another thing cheap to keep earning money "and hype with engine rework to a lot of ppl" while their new projects arrives. LS1 probably took somework but nothing near close as making a new LWS, just tweaking here and there. And again another "we are fully working on gw2 fake" when you see whats really happening as ive said on the 1st pharagraph. WvW alliances have been years in development just to change matchmaking and making a few new icons UI, indeed it is being done by 2 people multi-employeed on other anet stuff.

 

13 hours ago, Vayne.8563 said:

And the revamp of the gem store? Why do that? And adding LS 1, why do that?   Pick the one thing you think supports your theory and run with it, got it. Honestly, we'll see. You don't have a crystal ball and neither do I. I made my prediction. I think people are going to be surprised. I acknowledge I could be wrong, but I'm right more often than I'm wrong on these forums, even when I'm saying stuff most people disagree with. I'm happy with my track record.

Survivability mate. Making a fake hype on we going hard on gw2 when all the stuff is cheap and half of the game is abandonned, not just raids. Dx11 was obligatory cos soon there will be no support to dx9, while all the rest of the world is in direct x12 already.

Edited July 27, 2023 by Izzy.2951

[Vayne.8563]

27 minutes ago, Izzy.2951 said:

You take one word out of my post and completly smash what ive said.

In 2015 they were earning less money than nowadays. While they were not just only doing raids (which we all know its costy), pvp content, pvp sports, HoT/LWS3 that added 100 more content and quality than EoD, Gyala Delve and the expansion to come (and with no reuse assets, animations etc), they made the game F2P. It is not just raids its A LOT OF THINGS, and the few things they are doing right now are clearly showing low quality and effort, if you know a bit about how videogames are done. Instead of adding an easy/story mode to raids they just add a emboldened buff (which doesnt even make raids easy also) why? cos its cheap and fast like 90% of their updates, instead of wasting hundred of hours on making something good and useful they waste 25 hours on making a emboldened buff that its not useful, not helpful, no1 cares about and its not making raids more active and nothing.

Direct x11 is not as hard as dx12, it was neccesary cos soon windows are not gonna support direct x9 anymore. So it was just more survavility and making another thing cheap to keep earning money "and hype with engine rework to a lot of ppl" while their new projects arrives. LS1 probably took somework but nothing near close as making a new LWS, just tweaking here and there. And again another "we are fully working on gw2 fake" when you see whats really happening as ive said on the 1st pharagraph. WvW alliances have been years in development just to change matchmaking and making a few new icons UI, indeed it is being done by 2 people multi-employeed on other anet stuff.

 

Survivability mate. Making a fake hype on we going hard on gw2 when all the stuff is cheap and half of the game is abandonned, not just raids. Dx11 was obligatory cos soon there will be no support to dx9, while all the rest of the world is in direct x12 already.

I don't think half the game is abandoned, so much as the game has evolved. Dungeons were replaced by fractals. You could say dungeons are abandoned but fractals are not.  DRMs aren't abandoned, because they were only intended for the purposes of finishing that story. I didn't expect more of them. Strikes are still coming out, that's the 10 man instanced content instead of raids. WvW isn't abandoned but yeah, it takes forever to update it, for sure. PvP might be abandoned but we know from past dev interaction that a minority of players play it.  I don't know if that's changed obviously.

I'm interested in why your guesses are better than my guesses, because that's all it is. You're guessing and I'm guessing. I guess we'll see what happens.