Originally posted by Krytycal

Originally posted by grimal

Originally posted by Creslin321

I don't think anyone is going to be like "yeah I was really looking forward to GW2, but waiting 1 more week because they are sold out is just too much, so I'm never going to buy it."

Don't want to get in the middle of this but actually, that's called impulse buying and according to a study done in 2011 over a six-month period, 40% of video game purchases were made on impulse.

I know I've been guilty of this.

Was just going to say this. Thank you for pointing it out.

A game offering a digital version or not when I'm checking it out has often times been the difference between me buying the game or not. If you don't think halting digital sales is affecting potential sales for GW2, then I have a word for you. Starts with a D.

Well if you really want to be "fair and objective" you also have to acknowledge that the Digital Deluxe version of GW2 is (and has been for several days) #1 on Amazon's Bestsellers List and that the box version is #2.

Would they be selling more overall copies if the Digital Standard Edition were still available? Possibly. Possibly not.

Impulse buying is an important factor to consider. But so is Exclusivity. Hard Rock Cafe and top dance clubs have never struggled due to long lines. I'd make the argument that part of WoW's success was due to long login queues. I mean if people are willing to wait 5 hours just to play it's gotta be good, right?

GW2 doesn't have Login Queues. But stopping sales of the Digital Standard Edition does nicely achieve that same kind of exclusive feeling doesn't it?

Originally posted by Clob

Originally posted by papardelios
just face it guys. the game was (GW1) and will be (GW2) always an alt mmo for the most of the mmo genre players. with no open world pvp, no real raiding ang no real gear progression the game is a good, solid but always a second choice for non casual players

Well, I guess that means a lot of those people could be playing their "alt" game a lot then if we go by what's been happening to all of the 'real' mmo's by your standards in the past few years.  All there's been has been declining player bases to f2p versions and a handful of servers to go along with bitching and moaning with nearly every game.

As a serious question, where are all of these players at these days?  Practically every game is treading water and even WoW is down. 

I think the answer is that those players got tired of the casualization of the genre, including WoW.  While not hardcore raiders, a lot of these players wanted a real meaty challenge and over the years, games have deprived them of that.  IE: strict death penalties, having to figure out how to complete a quest and not having it shown on the map in a rainbow of colors, etc.  

In a sense, companies have alienated those players.  I don't agree with a game being too strict, but I think that if companies would provide more options for those ex-MMO'ers, we'd see a lot less complaining on forums, and a lot higher population in games.  It reminds me of all the people who are disgruntled about WoW not being like Vanilla or BC anymore.  How hard would it REALLY be for Blizzard to add a Vanilla server or two?  That's just an example. 

A similar example would be if ANet opened servers that didn't down-level you, allowing people who like one shotting mobs that alternative, though this example is far less likely.

Originally posted by itgrowls

have to laugh at all the nonsense.

"We don't really know what the sales were but it's fail none the less, believe us even tho we don't play"

"Even tho we know it's a good sign that they had to stop sales because of the sheer volume of new players all at once in order to squash bugs, it's fail and we don't want to hear the facts anymore LALALALALA"

"Even the rabid fanbois were right about it's launch and the current state of the game but we won't listen to the hype (hype that hasn't existed since the first BWE) but we'll still use the word hype just like California valley girls use the word Like"

 

smh

Classic fanboi logic right here:

When people say that selling more than expected is poor projection on part of the company and not necessarily a success or a failure, make it sound like they are saying that the game will crash, burn and it's fallout will make future generations born without limbs.

Originally posted by TalulaRose

Originally posted by Eir_S

Originally posted by papardelios
just face it guys. the game was (GW1) and will be (GW2) always an alt mmo for the most of the mmo genre players. with no open world pvp, no real raiding ang no real gear progression the game is a good, solid but always a second choice for non casual players

I'm not sure who denied this, I never have.  The idea here though is that there are far fewer hardcore MMO players than casual ones, thus GW2 and its payment plan are very doable and by all accounts, should succeed just fine.  That's who they're aiming this game at.

Well, that and OCD completionists.

If you look at NCSofts financials GW is in the same group for profit as CoH. A thread in this forum shows that just under 70% of those responding have not spent anything in the cash shop. GW and the other poor performing games under the NCSoft umbrella have had the benefit of the profits of the big profit games Aion and Lineage/L2.

And of course you're going to tell me that this is a direct result of the latter games being sub-based...

Originally posted by Krytycal

Originally posted by itgrowls

have to laugh at all the nonsense.

"We don't really know what the sales were but it's fail none the less, believe us even tho we don't play"

"Even tho we know it's a good sign that they had to stop sales because of the sheer volume of new players all at once in order to squash bugs, it's fail and we don't want to hear the facts anymore LALALALALA"

"Even the rabid fanbois were right about it's launch and the current state of the game but we won't listen to the hype (hype that hasn't existed since the first BWE) but we'll still use the word hype just like California valley girls use the word Like"

 

smh

Classic fanboi logic right here:

When people say that selling more than expected is poor projection on part of the company and not necessarily a success or a failure, make it sound like they are saying that the game will crash, burn and it's fallout will make future generations born without limbs.

 

 

 

 Almost every single post you have made in this thread has the same two messages:

1.  Fanbois are delusional, you are a fanboi because I said so, your argument is invalid.

2.  Selling out of a product is an epic fail for the producer.

Originally posted by QSatu
Anybody remember how ANet was teasing this picture of en eye before release. Everyone expected some kind of launch trailer. i wonder why they didn't do anything with it. Maybe b/c they had problems and didn't want to hype the game more until they fix some of it.

 I really don't think the GW2 problems are that bad...

REAL problems with MMORPGs are when things just don't work at all, or are completely broken/missing, like...

   AoC's complete lack of leveling content

   SWTOR's completely broken open world PvP

Having lag and having the AH down for a week after release is not that bad of a problem...it is easily fixed with more server infrastructure.  The problems that AoC and SWTOR had required months of development to fix.

Originally posted by Creslin321

Originally posted by Krytycal

Originally posted by Creslin321

Reality - GW2 sold so many copies that they had to halt sales.

You realize that doesn't prove anything, right?  All it shows is that they weren't prepared to accomadate the sales they did get, which if anything, is a failure on their part and will hurt them long-term.

 When you sell more than you thought you would...that's called being successful.  No, it doesn't prove that the game is "TEH WoW KILLAH!" or anything like that, but it proves that the game is doing well.

Do you honestly believe that after years of development, ANet's server infrastructure was so crappy that it couldn't support enough sales for the game to be considered a success?

They launched with a trading post that took over a week to handle any sort of load so I do not think it is too far fetched that their servers did not hold up to the load they thought they would.  Noone knows it could be sales were bigger than expected or that the servers did not perform as expected.  Just cause they have exp running a MMO does not mean they correctly calculated how much stress the live game would have.  With this game being more global in terms of cross realms and overflows and WvW and server transfers and all that I'm sure server performance is a lot harder to calculate then even for the average AAA MMO.

Originally posted by Krytycal

Originally posted by Creslin321

Reality - GW2 sold so many copies that they had to halt sales.

You realize that doesn't prove anything, right?  All it shows is that they weren't prepared to accomodate the sales they did get, which if anything, is a failure on their part and will hurt them long-term. The longer they get into release, the more people realize GW2 is just another generic fantasy themepark on a nice wrapper. The difference is GW2 is not getting any more sales, and the rose-coloured glasses are coming off.

Doing better than expected in sales and having to halt for a while is a fail? wow I love your logic.

Originally posted by Thralia

Originally posted by Creslin321

MMORPG.com forum sentiment - GW2 has failed, OMG the false prophet!

Reality - GW2 sold so many copies that they had to halt sales.

Truth is, I don't know exactly how many they sold.  But the fact that they had to STOP sales means they obviously sold more than they expected.  I would hardly call that a failure ;).

this is simply a wrong and untrue statement. thy had to halt DIGITAL sales because they fucked up BIGTIME on their launch. and that is not because of too many ppl..please..there were way way bigger launches that went smooth because there were enough STABLE servers.

no they fucked up because they hyped the game into oblivion and did not provide enough STABLE servers.

 

ppl slowly start to realize that  gw2 is in fact as far away from being the NEXT BIG THING. same for sales..

Bull hockey.   No MMO has ever launched as big as this one.  Bar none.   Not AoC (700k first month), not Warhammer )800K first month), not SWTOR 900K EGA.   

We're not even in our first month to see if it's bigger than SWTOR in first-month sales. But what we do know it is also the largest concurrent users online in a lauch ever.

Originally posted by Stx11

Originally posted by Krytycal

Originally posted by grimal

Originally posted by Creslin321

I don't think anyone is going to be like "yeah I was really looking forward to GW2, but waiting 1 more week because they are sold out is just too much, so I'm never going to buy it."

Don't want to get in the middle of this but actually, that's called impulse buying and according to a study done in 2011 over a six-month period, 40% of video game purchases were made on impulse.

I know I've been guilty of this.

Was just going to say this. Thank you for pointing it out.

A game offering a digital version or not when I'm checking it out has often times been the difference between me buying the game or not. If you don't think halting digital sales is affecting potential sales for GW2, then I have a word for you. Starts with a D.

Well if you really want to be "fair and objective" you also have to acknowledge that the Digital Deluxe version of GW2 is (and has been for several days) #1 on Amazon's Bestsellers List and that the box version is #2.

Would they be selling more overall copies if the Digital Standard Edition were still available? Possibly. Possibly not.

Impulse buying is an important factor to consider. But so is Exclusivity. Hard Rock Cafe and top dance clubs have never struggled due to long lines. I'd make the argument that part of WoW's success was due to long login queues. I mean if people are willing to wait 5 hours just to play it's gotta be good, right?

GW2 doesn't have Login Queues. But stopping sales of the Digital Standard Edition does nicely achieve that same kind of exclusive feeling doesn't it?

Not necessarily, because as you pointed out the people who really want the game can easily buy it at the local game store. It's not really being exclusive, in the way the examples you listed are. It's effectively cutting out impulse buyers and people who want to play it NAO, not tomorrow when you go to the store, not in 3 days when amazon ships the game. I've been in the place before, and I'm sure I'm not alone. 

The fact that halting digital sales is affecting their potential sales should even be a debate to be honest, it's just a matter of by how much.

Notice I'm not saying the game is not a success, it most definitely is, but not because they had to stop digital sales. 1 mil + pre-purchases, #1 best seller on amazon and nearly 4 times more hours played than WoW on xfire are more accurate indicators.

Originally posted by Eir_S

Originally posted by TalulaRose

Originally posted by Eir_S

Originally posted by papardelios
just face it guys. the game was (GW1) and will be (GW2) always an alt mmo for the most of the mmo genre players. with no open world pvp, no real raiding ang no real gear progression the game is a good, solid but always a second choice for non casual players

I'm not sure who denied this, I never have.  The idea here though is that there are far fewer hardcore MMO players than casual ones, thus GW2 and its payment plan are very doable and by all accounts, should succeed just fine.  That's who they're aiming this game at.

Well, that and OCD completionists.

If you look at NCSofts financials GW is in the same group for profit as CoH. A thread in this forum shows that just under 70% of those responding have not spent anything in the cash shop. GW and the other poor performing games under the NCSoft umbrella have had the benefit of the profits of the big profit games Aion and Lineage/L2.

And of course you're going to tell me that this is a direct result of the latter games being sub-based...

Aion's profits comes from subs. Store sales were bad.

Lineage/Lineage2 profits come from store sales. (not sure if either of those games have a sub in their home country but the quarterly mentions store sales. WHich is interesting because thay are older games and their fans must really like them.)

Gw1 and apparently GW2...the fans say how amazing the game is but you have to wonder how amazing is it if they aren't willing to pay beyond the initial box price.

Originally posted by Creslin321

Originally posted by Krytycal

Originally posted by itgrowls

have to laugh at all the nonsense.

"We don't really know what the sales were but it's fail none the less, believe us even tho we don't play"

"Even tho we know it's a good sign that they had to stop sales because of the sheer volume of new players all at once in order to squash bugs, it's fail and we don't want to hear the facts anymore LALALALALA"

"Even the rabid fanbois were right about it's launch and the current state of the game but we won't listen to the hype (hype that hasn't existed since the first BWE) but we'll still use the word hype just like California valley girls use the word Like"

 

smh

Classic fanboi logic right here:

When people say that selling more than expected is poor projection on part of the company and not necessarily a success or a failure, make it sound like they are saying that the game will crash, burn and it's fallout will make future generations born without limbs.

 

 

 

 Almost every single post you have made in this thread has the same two messages:

1.  Fanbois are delusional, you are a fanboi because I said so, your argument is invalid.

2.  Selling out of a product is an epic fail for the producer.

1. He's not saying, "You're a fanboi because I say so." He's saying that fanbois blow rational arguments out of proportion in order to 'debunk' the argument. Look at the quote. That's exactly what happened.

2. They didn't sell out. They stopped digital sales for a few distribution sites. There is a difference.

Originally posted by krakra70

Originally posted by DiSpLiFF

I went on a 10 day cruise so I missed the "big" launch of GW2. Did it live up to the hype and break all the records, smash WoW, and all the other stuff people were saying it was going to do?

I tried searching for any big news on it and found nothing other than  decent pre-launch numbers. 

We are currently at the stage where we realize it's another TERA, TSW, SWTOR etc, just without a monthly fee.

Whats with the "WE" your certainly not qualified to speak on my behalf.

Originally posted by TalulaRose

Originally posted by Eir_S

Originally posted by TalulaRose

Originally posted by Eir_S

Originally posted by papardelios
just face it guys. the game was (GW1) and will be (GW2) always an alt mmo for the most of the mmo genre players. with no open world pvp, no real raiding ang no real gear progression the game is a good, solid but always a second choice for non casual players

I'm not sure who denied this, I never have.  The idea here though is that there are far fewer hardcore MMO players than casual ones, thus GW2 and its payment plan are very doable and by all accounts, should succeed just fine.  That's who they're aiming this game at.

Well, that and OCD completionists.

If you look at NCSofts financials GW is in the same group for profit as CoH. A thread in this forum shows that just under 70% of those responding have not spent anything in the cash shop. GW and the other poor performing games under the NCSoft umbrella have had the benefit of the profits of the big profit games Aion and Lineage/L2.

And of course you're going to tell me that this is a direct result of the latter games being sub-based...

Aion's profits comes from subs. Store sales were bad.

Lineage/Lineage2 profits come from store sales. (not sure if either of those games have a sub in their home country but the quarterly mentions store sales. WHich is interesting because thay are older games and their fans must really like them.)

Gw1 and apparently GW2...the fans say how amazing the game is but you have to wonder how amazing is it if they aren't willing to pay beyond the initial box price.

If I'd known how awful Aion was, I would never have paid a sub for even the few months I played.  I'm not willing to pay a sub for GW2 because of the philosophy behind their payment model, not because it isn't good enough.  Frankly, I'm wondering what you're getting at... just because a game is more profitable does not make it more fun.  If GW2 doesn't make as much money as Aion, I wouldn't care.  It's still a better game to me.

Originally posted by Woopin

Originally posted by Krytycal

Originally posted by Creslin321

Reality - GW2 sold so many copies that they had to halt sales.

You realize that doesn't prove anything, right?  All it shows is that they weren't prepared to accomodate the sales they did get, which if anything, is a failure on their part and will hurt them long-term. The longer they get into release, the more people realize GW2 is just another generic fantasy themepark on a nice wrapper. The difference is GW2 is not getting any more sales, and the rose-coloured glasses are coming off.

Doing better than expected in sales and having to halt for a while is a fail? wow I love your logic.

There's people who get paid to prognosticate the sales of a particular product. GW2 and NCsoft have these people on their payrolls. They forecasted X number of sales, the sales were much higher than they projected. These people failed, and in a way so did ANET for not having the infrastructure to accomodate the actual demand the game had due to an inaccurate forecast, thus missing out on potential sales.

It's really not that hard to grasp.

Originally posted by TalulaRose

Originally posted by Eir_S

Originally posted by TalulaRose

Originally posted by Eir_S

Originally posted by papardelios
just face it guys. the game was (GW1) and will be (GW2) always an alt mmo for the most of the mmo genre players. with no open world pvp, no real raiding ang no real gear progression the game is a good, solid but always a second choice for non casual players

I'm not sure who denied this, I never have.  The idea here though is that there are far fewer hardcore MMO players than casual ones, thus GW2 and its payment plan are very doable and by all accounts, should succeed just fine.  That's who they're aiming this game at.

Well, that and OCD completionists.

If you look at NCSofts financials GW is in the same group for profit as CoH. A thread in this forum shows that just under 70% of those responding have not spent anything in the cash shop. GW and the other poor performing games under the NCSoft umbrella have had the benefit of the profits of the big profit games Aion and Lineage/L2.

And of course you're going to tell me that this is a direct result of the latter games being sub-based...

Aion's profits comes from subs. Store sales were bad.

Lineage/Lineage2 profits come from store sales. (not sure if either of those games have a sub in their home country but the quarterly mentions store sales. WHich is interesting because thay are older games and their fans must really like them.)

Gw1 and apparently GW2...the fans say how amazing the game is but you have to wonder how amazing is it if they aren't willing to pay beyond the initial box price.

 Not being forced to pay is not the same as not being willing to pay ;).

I already spent $35 in the gem store...

Originally posted by Krytycal

Originally posted by Creslin321

Originally posted by Wickedjelly

Wow

There is more bs flying around in this thread than at a DNC or RNC rally

Impressive to say the least

 LOL for real...

Normally I think that both the "hater" and "fanboi" sides of an argument get spun out of proportion.  But honestly...I relaly only see the "hater" side going crazy with the BS in this thread.

All we on the "fanboi" side of this argument are saying is that I wouldn't really call a game with a 93% metascore, and so many sales that they had to halt first-party sales a failure.  No, it doesn't mean that the game is the best MMORPG ever...but I can't see how you can get "failure" out of this evidence.

And the responses to this are...

"ANet said they would sell 3249083920 bajillion copies, and they didn't...FAIL!"

"Other themeparks failed, so this will too!  FAIL!"

"Terrible server infrastructure.  FAIL!"

Who's saying GW2 was a failure? Definitely not me. It'll probably be more successful than Rift and SWTOR, that's definitely not a failure.

 

I was merely pointing out someone's delusion in believing that stopping sales for your product is considered a success in the business world. It's actually a failure to forecast sales, doesn't mean the product failed, doesn't mean it shattered every human expectation. It just means some people at the marketing and finance departments didn't do their jobs right. Happens all time in businesses.

You keep throwing around this 'business world' stuff.   It's clear though that nothing you say matches the real world.

Businesses who are wildly successful beyond their projections frequently run into capacity issues.   Which cause product shortages.   This is Management 101, a Freshman Level course.   With MMOs the capacity issue is server hosting, not copies of the game to sell.   That's actually without limit.   They can sell this game as many times as they want with a digital download and the issue for that is down-load bottle-necking.

So, GW2's issue is like WoW's early issue ---  too many players over-loading their servers.    That's their real capacity issue.  And the only way to mitigate that issue in the short run is to slow down the sales.  

So they did.  

So, please, stop throwing around your 'business' observations.     They're just laughably wrong.