NCsoft Q4 Report

[zito]

I could never figure out how to play it, there was a lack of direction? I could never figure it out and if an AI can't play it....

[Valeron]

well when they revamped the whole profession, it took me a bit to get used to, I preferred the Dervish before it but I still enjoyed it after the revamp. It became a lot more active playstyle afterwards though.

[Meledelion]

Note that I think the mechanics behind those classes are bad or not worked out fully, not the classes themselves.
I also think you mean N/RT healer and not rt/n.

RT was hella boring IMO, cast spirits in the back and don't do anything...
Derv was bad from a balance POV, scythe was the only cleave weapon + the combination of casts/strikes made it really easy to spike with a dervish and very hard to interrupt meaning the counter was pretty hard.
Paragon sort of suffered from the same thing as RT but had the added disadvantage of having to get relatively close to your target making the backline have to move up too which made you susceptible to AoE.

[hrugner]

Oh we're definitely getting an expansion, they just haven't decided what form it will take yet. New regions, new races, new professions, content and progression are all coming this year.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...r-guild-wars-2

They've expressly stated they have no plans of doing an expansion. This article has them expressly stating that they plan on releasing the sort of content you would expect in an expansion. Both can be true.

[Deleted]

I don't see why people think $30M a quarter isn't profitable.

The main expense gaming studios have is personnel costs.

Anet has 350 worker atm.

At an average of $100K per year spent with which worker, that is $35M a year.

Add to that electricity, water, marketing trips, office maintenance - lets say another $10M a year.

$115M revenue vs $45M expenses a year.

EVE for example has less revenue than GW2 per year (around $70M) and has 600 employees.

Additionally part of Anet staff (as much as two thrids) isn't exactly working in GW2 vanilla, so that is investment with hope for future revenue (boxed expansions or enough content to keep people playing and buying cash shop items).

[May90]

I don't see why people think $30M a quarter isn't profitable.

People compare all MMOs' profit to WoW's profit. WoW has, what, 10 millions subscribes each paying $15 a month. Even not taking into account microtransactions, we get $2 billion a year.
However, I don't think it is correct to compare revenues of a B2P and subscription-based games. Surely subscription-based game will have more revenue in a long term. Guild Wars 2 costs $60, 4 months of WoW subscription. Since many WoW players play for years, it is easy to see how GW2 will never reach WoW income. But it certainly doesn't mean the game is bad. Hell, Mass Effect series is considered to be one of the most profitable single-player series, and it probably doesn't even come close to GW2 in terms of profit, let alone WoW...

[Arlee]

Honestly the only question that matters for a MMO is "Is it making enough for the people calling the shots?" Outside of that it's all semantics.

[Deleted]

People compare all MMOs' profit to WoW's profit. WoW has, what, 10 millions subscribes each paying $15 a month. Even not taking into account microtransactions, we get $2 billion a year.
However, I don't think it is correct to compare revenues of a B2P and subscription-based games. Surely subscription-based game will have more revenue in a long term. Guild Wars 2 costs $60, 4 months of WoW subscription. Since many WoW players play for years, it is easy to see how GW2 will never reach WoW income. But it certainly doesn't mean the game is bad. Hell, Mass Effect series is considered to be one of the most profitable single-player series, and it probably doesn't even come close to GW2 in terms of profit, let alone WoW...

Profitability has nothing to do with total revenue, but with revenues-expenses.

Also there are different levels of profitability.

Blizzard had something like 4700 employees in 2012. Lets say 3500 of those employees work in WoW.
At an average of $100K/year that is $350M just in wages, dwarfing the $35M per year of wages Anet pays.

Also a most likely the Gross Margin of these games will be around 90%+ (source EVE online report) - that means it costs these companies $0.10 for each $1 they sell to their consumers (read players).


WoW doesn't make $2Bn revenue per year, not even close.
If you check the 4Q13 ActivisionBlizzard financial report (http://files.shareholder.com/downloa...ith_tables.pdf), you will see WoW+all other ActivisionBlizzard online revenue (includes CoD Elite) is around $1Bn ($912M following GAAP).

Obviously WoW is a money making machine.

[Deleted]

When you force transactions to actually see content, what do you think will happen?

To each their own.

Do you play WoW?