Originally posted by Murtak

Artificial demand + hype.

"Look at us, our game is such a fantastic, polished and well executed WOW-Clone that we had to stop selling DIGITAL versions of it! You can't buy it, but you want to!"

 

Sorry not to be nasty but what an ignorant comment . When I say that I mean your ignorant of the facts

A) GW2 plays nothing like WoW its UI is totally different . WoW  has no dynamic events and certainly not the same type of PvP as GW2 . WoW has no personal story aspect to it in the way GW2 does .

B) Prior to WoW there were loads of mmorpgs that WoW borrowed its gameplay from . Ultima Online when you died had the same sort of ghostly grey look to is as WoW does . Everquest and Anarky Online had all the go out and kill X number of beasts type quests etc WoW borrowed nearly everything it is now and just polished it up and got rid of some of the boring bits .

WoW was just a part of an evolving style of game which started in 1996 with a game called Meridian 59 followed in 1997 by Ultima Online whos creator Richard Garriot coined the phrase massive multiplay online roll playing game . I could be wrong but I think the only original things WoW did was have two oposing factions that spoke different languages and had battle grounds . ( although dark age of camelot may have had them ? ) Every other idea in WoW had been done before in some way or another in every mmo released before WoW ever opened its first server .

As for artifical demand and hype wheres your proof of that ? Just because you think something( like you think WoW the first orginal mmo and everything else is a copy ) dosn't make it fact .

Just a little history lesson for you so you don't make ill informed comments in future .

The quote has already been posted, they stopped sales until they can expand the server capacities, also it's possible they ran out of digital keys. This happened when Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 came out, they sold out on digital keys.

Originally posted by SnarlingWolf

 You can buy a digital download version from places that aren't ANet. That means there is an infinite supply available so anyone who would buy from ANet will just buy it digitally somewhere else. That means no influx is actually slowed down at all. Which means that can't be the actual reasoning.

Actually Amazon stopped selling the Digital Standard version of the game 5 days ago, and as of this morning Amazon has ceased sales of the Digital Deluxe Download as well.

You can be cynical and conspiracy-focused all you want, but it is a fact that ANet is reducing availablity of the game.

My guess is that they do have a plan. In a game without subscription fees it makes a lot of sense for them to limit access as the current population expands across Zones and then let more people in after, especially as "hard-charging" early adopters declare "victory" over the game at 80 and quit (not all will, but even as a fan I expect many "content locusts" to leave the fold over the next weeks and months). Doing it that way allows them to operate with a steady hardware operating cost.

Also, if they are truly confident in their product (and I think they are) they know that "sustainable demand" will continue for quite some time. It did with GW1 and it did with WoW as well.

Think just for a moment how much better SWTOR would have been received as a B2P game. People would have enjoyed the Class Stories. PvP would've been mixed. People would have generally enjoyed the Flashpoints and Raids but questioned longevity with easy gear access. But NO ONE would have questioned whether it was or wasn't worth $15 a month, and it would probably still be selling decently today. GW2 is designed around a different business model than we are used to analysing and that has to be taken into account when viewing their decisions.

I think it has more to do with the fact they really screwed up their security for their software. As a result accounts are getting hacked right and left. The CS department is about 3 to 4 days behind in trying to resolve all of the issues from hacked accounts. Untill they get a handle on that, they probably wont be pushing out copies too hard.

I would say at least half the people playing right now have had a hacker attempt to change their password. This is based off the fact the username is an email address. I would guess that hackers are using programs to try every email address variant they can find and are making a list of good ones and then doing whatever they do to try to hack the account.

I only hope whoever was in charge of the software end of things for security stuff was fired and they got a new team in their fixing things.

Originally posted by Doomedfox

 

I guess it has something to do with Physical copys having to sell.

They claim that the game got more attention than they expected but who in there right minds would believe that if you have 1mil purchases already i doubt that they anticipated anything less but a huge crowd.

Seeing how huge sells numbers are one of the best sells tools do i dare question why no such numbers were used yet if the game really did in fact exceed expectations in sells.

I also think that as long as you can register a new gaming account it is not really doing anything in regards to try and get the players to have an as stable experience as possible.

But maybe i am wrong completely and NCsoft really did just screw up and were not able to draw the right conclusions based on preorders/purchases

 ^-- this right here.

Logical and correct.

They messed up big on distro and practices, they never should of done direct sales while selling keys in the early phase.

Some owners i know are sitting on 50,000 keys I kid you not.

Now they got those keys at a reasonable whole sale rate, the rate isn't as low as you think (think 2 dollars profit after cost).

I know businesses that are looking at 100k+ lost, and that's small time.

It's a very critical thing, it's the difference between a law suit and addmitance. If they admit publically they messed up every single one of us vested in this will jump a claim.

Once you look at it like a vampire you realize how brutally scared they are.

You cannot sell to a market and then undermine their marketing. Suppliers/manufacturers MUST stay out of the primary economy.  There is a reason. We do it better.

Originally posted by SnarlingWolf
Unfortunately I would also never quote a company to find the real answer either. PR is big in the corporate world and everything is spun into a positive no matter what it is.

Is that why Funcom announced that TSW did poorly compared to their own expectations and that Metacritic users are big meanies?

Anyone who knows business knows not to accept selling 'too well' as an excuse for turning down money.  It's outright ridiculous. 

If a company is turning away money, it's because they absolutely HAD TO, not because they CHOSE TO.

Originally posted by adam_nox

Anyone who knows business knows not to accept selling 'too well' as an excuse for turning down money.  It's outright ridiculous. 

 

If a company is turning away money, it's because they absolutely HAD TO, not because they CHOSE TO.

    ^--- Another logical response.

Put the pieces together folks.

I literally am invested to informing you guys, it's a matter of money to me.  (Won't ever shameless promote though)

These guys are posting out of care and ugc response.

Both are correct, supply and the fact they HAD to stop selling.

When has a company ever denied money for "technical" reasons. Come on now. They admit they undermined their distro pattern they get sued, you have to make it spin positive like you care.

In reality 50 lawyers are barking constantly because of the huge investments being made into these keys and license rights.

Well keep this on the hush hush but its really because they found out that an ingredient in their online game keys causes cancer so they are quietly getting it fixed to avoid a massive lawsuit.

. . . .  OR you could believe that malarky that they are trying to stem the deluge of new accounts before it chokes their system, pissing all their customers off, and will start selling keys again once they've caught up to the rush. But where's the fun in that?

I appreciate everyone’s posts.

I consider myself rather intuitive and something just seemed odd about this whole scenario. I am not trying to play conspiracy theorist or anything of that nature. It just that something feels off, like something is going on behind the scenes that we don’t know about. Maybe we don’t need to but it’s just odd.  

Thanks Astropuyo for all the “real” information. I didn’t expect this but it’s refreshing to hear this kind of nuts and bolts logic.

I just wanted to get others thinking and their input.

That’s all.

Originally posted by adam_nox

Anyone who knows business knows not to accept selling 'too well' as an excuse for turning down money.  It's outright ridiculous. 

 

If a company is turning away money, it's because they absolutely HAD TO, not because they CHOSE TO.

 Exactly, and they are turning down money because their servers cannot handle a larger load.  Isn't that a perfectly reasonable explanation?

I'm not sure why everyone (not you) is conspiracy theorizing so much here...it seems pretty cut and dry to me.

1.  Product sells lots of copies, resulting in many concurrent users.

2.  Servers begin to buckle under the strain.

3.  Producer temporarily halts selling copies so that can increase their capacity.

Originally posted by Astropuyo

Originally posted by adam_nox

Anyone who knows business knows not to accept selling 'too well' as an excuse for turning down money.  It's outright ridiculous. 

 

If a company is turning away money, it's because they absolutely HAD TO, not because they CHOSE TO.

    ^--- Another logical response.

 

Put the pieces together folks.

I literally am invested to informing you guys, it's a matter of money to me.  (Won't ever shameless promote though)

 

These guys are posting out of care and ugc response.

Both are correct, supply and the fact they HAD to stop selling.

 

When has a company ever denied money for "technical" reasons. Come on now. They admit they undermined their distro pattern they get sued, you have to make it spin positive like you care.

In reality 50 lawyers are barking constantly because of the huge investments being made into these keys and license rights.

 Ever hear of "long-term" strategy?

Like you know...if we sell all these copies, the servers buckle, and the game becomes unplayable...then yeah we made money now, but it's going to be a huge blackeye for our game and may hurt future sales.

If you know that more sales may cause massive service denials across the board, then not stopping them is kind of dumb.

Originally posted by Astropuyo

When has a company ever denied money for "technical" reasons. Come on now. They admit they undermined their distro pattern they get sued, you have to make it spin positive like you care.

In reality 50 lawyers are barking constantly because of the huge investments being made into these keys and license rights.

Blizzard admits to 'grossly underestimating demand' for World of Warcraft in 2004

http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/02/12/blizzard-admits-to-grossly-underestimating-demand-for-world-of/2

Blizzard co-founder Frank Pearce was quite up-front with the studio's stumbles in 2004 as WoW launched to unprecedented demand; he's admitted that Blizzard execs "grossly underestimated" how many people wanted to play the game, forcing the company to cease shipping boxes to stores while tech was improved to deal with the influx.

"I don't think we had any idea what we were getting ourselves into," Pearce said at the recent DICE executive summit. The studio quickly ramped up from its 500-employee taskforce to 4,700 people in 11 cities across the world.

Originally posted by Nadia

Originally posted by Astropuyo

When has a company ever denied money for "technical" reasons. Come on now. They admit they undermined their distro pattern they get sued, you have to make it spin positive like you care.

In reality 50 lawyers are barking constantly because of the huge investments being made into these keys and license rights.

Blizzard admits to 'grossly underestimating demand' for World of Warcraft in 2004

http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/02/12/blizzard-admits-to-grossly-underestimating-demand-for-world-of/2

Blizzard co-founder Frank Pearce was quite up-front with the studio's stumbles in 2004 as WoW launched to unprecedented demand; he's admitted that Blizzard execs "grossly underestimated" how many people wanted to play the game, forcing the company to cease shipping boxes to stores while tech was improved to deal with the influx.

"I don't think we had any idea what we were getting ourselves into," Pearce said at the recent DICE executive summit. The studio quickly ramped up from its 500-employee taskforce to 4,700 people in 11 cities across the world.

 Also, in response to Astro's legal theory about sales being stopped...

If this were true, then ANet would simply say that they will not be selling GW2 directly anymore, but it is available at your friendly neighborhood game store or website.

Saying that they "sold out" when the real issue is a legal dispute is absolutely stupid because people are going to expect them to start selling again.  If they never sell a single copy of their game directly again, then everyone is going to realize that it was BS...it's not like they could hide that forever.

No...ANet "sold out" because their servers got slammed.  You can spin that positively by saying that they sold more than expected, or negatively by saying that they failed to forecast demand.  The reality is somewhere in the middle there.

Too much demand at launch, the math supports that. These people who call this a theory probably believe that creationism is a scientific theory as well instead of a hypothesis. 

The fact is and they posted this, their sales were entirely too high compared to what they were prepared for at launch and in order to facilitate larger capacity servers and fix the bugs without taking the game down, they had to stop the flow, which was more digital copies then anything else. It's actually a brilliant idea. 

Once they get the bugs out completely (the occasional DE bug) they'll bring it back.

Originally posted by SnarlingWolf

Originally posted by Dfix

Originally posted by SnarlingWolf

I will say I am amazed at how many people will just accept what a company says at face value.

Sorry, but not all of us run around with tin foil hats in our back pockets. 

 Difference between tin foil hats and rational thinking.

 

Physical copies are still for sale -> therefore stopping digital sales doesn't stop queues from increasing. -> their reasoning makes little sense.

 

How many products have you bought where the commercials say something like "Best coffee ever" or other similar things. Since it would apparently require a tin foil hat to think that maybe they are exagerating the claims that it is the best coffee ever.

 Physical copies have a limit. The online download from Arenanet did not. By stopping their downloads it cut down on their traffic and server load. They are not limiting other points of sale because those points of sale are not problematic.

You are actually claiming something Arenanet never did. You are putting words in their mouth to make your debate point.

Originally posted by Creslin321

Originally posted by Nadia

Originally posted by Astropuyo

When has a company ever denied money for "technical" reasons. Come on now. They admit they undermined their distro pattern they get sued, you have to make it spin positive like you care.

In reality 50 lawyers are barking constantly because of the huge investments being made into these keys and license rights.

Blizzard admits to 'grossly underestimating demand' for World of Warcraft in 2004

http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/02/12/blizzard-admits-to-grossly-underestimating-demand-for-world-of/2

Blizzard co-founder Frank Pearce was quite up-front with the studio's stumbles in 2004 as WoW launched to unprecedented demand; he's admitted that Blizzard execs "grossly underestimated" how many people wanted to play the game, forcing the company to cease shipping boxes to stores while tech was improved to deal with the influx.

"I don't think we had any idea what we were getting ourselves into," Pearce said at the recent DICE executive summit. The studio quickly ramped up from its 500-employee taskforce to 4,700 people in 11 cities across the world.

 Also, in response to Astro's legal theory about sales being stopped...

If this were true, then ANet would simply say that they will not be selling GW2 directly anymore, but it is available at your friendly neighborhood game store or website.

Saying that they "sold out" when the real issue is a legal dispute is absolutely stupid because people are going to expect them to start selling again.  If they never sell a single copy of their game directly again, then everyone is going to realize that it was BS...it's not like they could hide that forever.

No...ANet "sold out" because their servers got slammed.  You can spin that positively by saying that they sold more than expected, or negatively by saying that they failed to forecast demand.  The reality is somewhere in the middle there.

You people are dim, Oddly enough after today, over 4 colleagues have sold out.

Theory? There is no magical theory. It is fact.

This is where some of you are really stupid, like class A-stupid.

You need to look up self incrimination.

Now you need to recognize they sold us keys for a rate.

They then sold keys at a churn out rate, by passing their resellers/(retailers).

In turn they sold us, those of us who sell digital downloads/retail boxes.

We I say "we" bought a ton of keys and they could not be moved because anet has been selling them direct using sites like mmorpg as the "Buy now".

It's like debating with tables with some of you folks, there is no theory. It's fact. You clearly have no concept of how key purchasing (rights) works, if you did you'd see this as a very simple issue.

They messed up distro, they pre-sold keys and advertised a BUY NOW option that went direct to manufacturer.  (Publisher)

Which on average is fine for a normal mmo, however the sold based on hype release to people.

They then have effectively used this hype to? Sell for themselves and leave those who purchased keys with a very large bill.

It's sad I'm explaining such a basic principle to some of you, most of you got it. Cheers on that, but you table heads need to calm down. Stop acting like you have a vested interest in this, it's kinda sad.

I'm sitting on active inventory that for the first time since launch is moving. It was not moving before A-net shut down their direct sales. We also had been looking in civil action.

One again my "Exp" trumps your "Assumption".