GW2 is already over 3 million sales in EU and NA, making it bigger than Mists of Pandaria. This is not bad at all, but it is not surprising given that it is free to play so people just buy the box and get a ton of value for their one-time purchase.
When it releases in Asia, THEN we'll see some crazy numbers.
Think League of Legends type numbers (League has around 90 million players, most of them in Asia).
What source do you have for over 3 million sales? I am just curious. I haven't seen anything since the 2.2 million announced after launch.
Did Mike say 7 million come launch time? I believe he's saying GW2 will likely surpass GW1 in lifetime sales. As for trying to topple the number 1 (WoW), we'll see in the future. GW2 isn't out in China yet. Also, it's not like WoW reached 12 million subs in a month or two, so we should give GW2 more time before proclaiming failure.
#11 - $59.99 - also the most expensive on the top 20 bracket.
Big, huge, major problem with that statement.
You're comparing a Box+Sub game to a Box+No Sub game. Not really an even playing field.
GW2 doesn't have subscriptions. That has a number of implications and puts it in a completely different category from WoW. You can't meaningfully compare the two, unless you're talking unique box/account sales.
1. The most obvious being that there's nothing for ANet to sustain. They don't have to earn people's subscription money from month to month. You buy the game, you have lifetime access to it. Every account is, essentially "active forever" - even the ones who aren't playing anymore. This is something that's never taken into account when numbers are given for F2P MMOs. They'll boast "millions of accounts", but will never give the break-down of how many of those accounts are actually still being played, versus how many haven't been touched in weeks, or even months or years.
2. Would GW2 sustain the number of players it has if it had a subscription? For how long? People can only decide that for themselves. There are people who right now say 'I'll be playing this game for years to come', but they're also saying that about a game they will never have to invest another dollar in, outside of expansions. Add a monthly sub fee into that, and I think you'd find people have a very different outlook on it. With no sub fee comes reduced standards and expectations. This is why people will tolerate - even justify - crap in a F2P MMO that they'd never put up with in a sub-based one.
The only fair and equal statistic you can go by when comparing GW2 to WoW or any other retail MMO, is how many actual accounts (physical boxes and digital purchases combined). I don't know how many actual unique copies of WoW Blizzard has sold over the years - and I'm just talking Vanilla here, not even the expansions - but I feel pretty safe in saying it by far exceeds the number of active subs they have right now.
GW2 has a long way to go before they're hitting WoW-like numbers.
people love gw2 ,server are always 3/4 full!only thing missing?their phi brain puzzle should have some raid and pvp element in the hardest one aside from that?no change needed!
The game is currently quite succesfull, makes me wonder how many will join as they realise that the game is quite fun and casuall in nature.
If the true nature of the game becomes obvious, and the negatives proclaimed by the powergamers get treated with a game of salt, the game could actually become quite succesfull in the christmass shoppingperiode ahead of us.
After all cassuals are never the early addapters, but they are a huge majorrity of the gaming crowd
I am a casual player and I capped out at lvl 80 and full exotics in less than two months. Then I got bored and moved on so I think even for the casual player this game has two maybe three months before it is "done".
Powergamers? They will probably do the same in a week and they have moved on waaay before now.
As one has already said, sind launch it has been relatively quite in terms of anounced sales numbers. However, the game is fun and the servers are full. So I do not really care.
I dont think any of us or the developers expected the game to dethrone WoW overnight . If you compare sales of GW2 to Vanilla WoW they did dethrone WoW but then again so did ToR . However unlike ToR the game is abosolutly packed and if anything appears to be growing in its popularity . In its initial month it moved around 2 million units I wouldnt be suprised if when the q3 figures are released that will rise to 3-4 million . It does deserve to do well its a game . I've noticed no more lack of an endgame than say plenty of other mmos including WoW . Also unlike WoW it has some degree of challenge to it . It is however not a totally immersive world so in that respect its more a casual mmo that is great to play alongside a subscription based game . I find myself playing a couple of hours of Rift and a couple of hours of GW2 of an evening . MMO nirvana . Havn't enjoyed the genre this much since WoW Vanilla and TBC .I agree the game is pure fun and great valure for money .
So the OP makes yet another thread to try to give credit to his MMO of choice? What's this... the 50th thread now? *in reference to the OP as he has made numerous pro GW2 threads of purely opinion based*
No one doubted except the ignorant that GW2 would be a big success except maybe the haters who were foaming from the mouth for the game to fail. But GW2 certianly does have it's fair share of faults that plauges every MMO. GW2 will continue to be successful but it will have and certainly has it's defects. Time will tell if it will continue to have it's success momentum. No games in the foreseeable future are being released but this time next year people will likely be singing a different tune.
The game is currently quite succesfull, makes me wonder how many will join as they realise that the game is quite fun and casuall in nature.
If the true nature of the game becomes obvious, and the negatives proclaimed by the powergamers get treated with a game of salt, the game could actually become quite succesfull in the christmass shoppingperiode ahead of us.
After all cassuals are never the early addapters, but they are a huge majorrity of the gaming crowd
Where did you get this notion? they announced 2.2 million sales after about 2 weeks since then nothing, not a peep, its had its day in the limelight those first few weeks were as good as it gets I'm afraid.
Well it is still in the top 10 for PC games for most sites like Amazon, Best Buy, Game.... the highest out of any MMO, and World of Warcrafts expansion is nowhere to be seen. So obviously it is still growing, dispite what all you naysayers would like to think.
I still play GW2 more often than any other MMO on my computer (and I play a ton of them!)
If in 1982 we played with the current mentality, we would have burned down all the pac man games since the red ghost was clearly OP. Instead we just got better at the game.
The only fair and equal statistic you can go by when comparing GW2 to WoW or any other retail MMO, is how many actual accounts (physical boxes and digital purchases combined). I don't know how many actual unique copies of WoW Blizzard has sold over the years - and I'm just talking Vanilla here, not even the expansions - but I feel pretty safe in saying it by far exceeds the number of active subs they have right now.
GW2 has a long way to go before they're hitting WoW-like numbers.
The game is currently quite succesfull, makes me wonder how many will join as they realise that the game is quite fun and casuall in nature.
If the true nature of the game becomes obvious, and the negatives proclaimed by the powergamers get treated with a game of salt, the game could actually become quite succesfull in the christmass shoppingperiode ahead of us.
After all cassuals are never the early addapters, but they are a huge majorrity of the gaming crowd
Where did you get this notion? they announced 2.2 million sales after about 2 weeks since then nothing, not a peep, its had its day in the limelight those first few weeks were as good as it gets I'm afraid.
Well it is still in the top 10 for PC games for most sites like Amazon, Best Buy, Game.... the highest out of any MMO, and World of Warcrafts expansion is nowhere to be seen. So obviously it is still growing, dispite what all you naysayers would like to think.
The World of Warcraft MOP expansion is number 2 behind GW2 on Best Buy and GW2 isn't in the top ten games for GameStop. Do you just make stuff up? You should really check your facts before posting. I am not saying that GW2 is dying or even implying that. I just can't believe the amount of made up stuff that both haters and fanbois post just to try to prove a point. Your point is worthless when you use made up numbers and information to support your claim.
The only fair and equal statistic you can go by when comparing GW2 to WoW or any other retail MMO, is how many actual accounts (physical boxes and digital purchases combined). I don't know how many actual unique copies of WoW Blizzard has sold over the years - and I'm just talking Vanilla here, not even the expansions - but I feel pretty safe in saying it by far exceeds the number of active subs they have right now.
GW2 has a long way to go before they're hitting WoW-like numbers.
otherwise Everquest with its 19 expansions and 13 years of existence would probably be the #2 retail mmo
There are a couple of flaws here. First, you are comparing the time frame for WoW 2M subscription numbers to the time frame for 2M box sales for GW2. That is like comparing apples and oranges. In fact, box numbers is the only comparison you can make between the two games as it is the only common thing. You can't call a GW2 box sale a subscription because you have no idea if the people are still playing. You wouldn't need to count expansions as you had to have purchased the main game in WoW to be able to play any of the expansions. Also, the MMO market was much smaller at that time. A succesful AAA MMO would only have a few hundred thousand players. It was WoW that changed all of that. It was the game that brought MMOs to the masses.
Great thing about not having subs is the illusion that the game will continue to grow, box sales will always go up.
What you don't see is the people who have purchased the game but no longer play.
The only way to judge is for Anet to regularily release concurrent player numbers but I doubt that will happen.
Yep, the comparisons are flawed because you are comparing a sub. based B2P game to a non sub.based B2P game. The closest game to GW 2 to compare with is Diablo 3 because both are B2P and both are online only. Still the comparison is not good because D3 is not an MMO.
Concurrent player numbers wont be good either because GW 2 is new so it will have more players playing due to just this fact. What needs to be seen is how many players have logged on the last X weeks and that would be somewhat comparable to subscription numbers of MMOs. But like this guy said, wont ever happen.
I guess if you qualify huge success as number of boxes sold then SWTOR was a blockbuster that GW2 has yet to outsell.
Then if we say my server's full look at the indicators, then SWTOR with several times more servers kept equally populated by the second month landmark.
But then if we see graphs of actual in game concurrent users and hours played according to those same graphs that were given statistical weight by GW2 fans analyzing SWTOR performance over time, it's been clear to see that the dropoff in actual concurrent users has beeen singnificantly faster/sooner than that for that P2P game, that kept bringing in monthly sub earnings.
Oh, but that's because the game is B2P they can come back at any time - but they are not playing GW2 then so - for the moment they are not interested in the game or making it any money - so does that make GW2 a huge success?
Pffft. Hype can launch a game. Hype cannot sustain a game. It's barely two months in . . . the shine's wearing off faster than it did for SWTOR.
otherwise Everquest with its 19 expansions and 13 years of existence would probably be the #2 retail mmo
There are a couple of flaws here. First, you are comparing the time frame for WoW 2M subscription numbers to the time frame for 2M box sales for GW2. That is like comparing apples and oranges. In fact, box numbers is the only comparison you can make between the two games as it is the only common thing. You can't call a GW2 box sale a subscription because you have no idea if the people are still playing. You wouldn't need to count expansions as you had to have purchased the main game in WoW to be able to play any of the expansions. Also, the MMO market was much smaller at that time. A succesful AAA MMO would only have a few hundred thousand players. It was WoW that changed all of that. It was the game that brought MMOs to the masses.
of course it flawed primarily due to 2 factors
#1 different time frame (GW1 launched during same time frame gaining 1m in its 5 months but gw1 is not mmo)
#2 China WOW subs are not required to buy the WOW box
im in agreement
you cannot easily compare GW2 to WOW due to different business models -- unless its strictly financial based
I guess if you qualify huge success as number of boxes sold then SWTOR was a blockbuster that GW2 has yet to outsell.
Then if we say my server's full look at the indicators, then SWTOR with several times more servers kept equally populated by the second month landmark.
But then if we see graphs of actual in game concurrent users and hours played according to those same graphs that were given statistical weight by GW2 fans analyzing SWTOR performance over time, it's been clear to see that the dropoff in actual concurrent users has beeen singnificantly faster/sooner than that for that P2P game, that kept bringing in monthly sub earnings.
Oh, but that's because the game is B2P they can come back at any time - but they are not playing GW2 then so - for the moment they are not interested in the game or making it any money - so does that make GW2 a huge success?
Pffft. Hype can launch a game. Hype cannot sustain a game. It's barely two months in . . . the shine's wearing off faster than it did for SWTOR.
Did Mike say 7 million come launch time? I believe he's saying GW2 will likely surpass GW1 in lifetime sales. As for trying to topple the number 1 (WoW), we'll see in the future. GW2 isn't out in China yet. Also, it's not like WoW reached 12 million subs in a month or two, so we should give GW2 more time before proclaiming failure.
#11 - $59.99 - also the most expensive on the top 20 bracket.
Big, huge, major problem with that statement.
You're comparing a Box+Sub game to a Box+No Sub game. Not really an even playing field.
GW2 doesn't have subscriptions. That has a number of implications and puts it in a completely different category from WoW. You can't meaningfully compare the two, unless you're talking unique box/account sales.
1. The most obvious being that there's nothing for ANet to sustain. They don't have to earn people's subscription money from month to month. You buy the game, you have lifetime access to it. Every account is, essentially "active forever" - even the ones who aren't playing anymore. This is something that's never taken into account when numbers are given for F2P MMOs. They'll boast "millions of accounts", but will never give the break-down of how many of those accounts are actually still being played, versus how many haven't been touched in weeks, or even months or years.
2. Would GW2 sustain the number of players it has if it had a subscription? For how long? People can only decide that for themselves. There are people who right now say 'I'll be playing this game for years to come', but they're also saying that about a game they will never have to invest another dollar in, outside of expansions. Add a monthly sub fee into that, and I think you'd find people have a very different outlook on it. With no sub fee comes reduced standards and expectations. This is why people will tolerate - even justify - crap in a F2P MMO that they'd never put up with in a sub-based one.
The only fair and equal statistic you can go by when comparing GW2 to WoW or any other retail MMO, is how many actual accounts (physical boxes and digital purchases combined). I don't know how many actual unique copies of WoW Blizzard has sold over the years - and I'm just talking Vanilla here, not even the expansions - but I feel pretty safe in saying it by far exceeds the number of active subs they have right now.
GW2 has a long way to go before they're hitting WoW-like numbers.
Lol...I didn't actually make the comparison. It was Mike O'Brien who stated that their goal was to be number one. I would imagine that means anything from copies sold, concurrent players, player accounts, etc.
If you were just being pedantic about my mention of subs against a game with no sub, that's just because the 12 million is the known figure by which WoW was measured. Like you, I don't know how many copies were sold as of 2012.
The game is currently quite succesfull, makes me wonder how many will join as they realise that the game is quite fun and casuall in nature.
If the true nature of the game becomes obvious, and the negatives proclaimed by the powergamers get treated with a game of salt, the game could actually become quite succesfull in the christmass shoppingperiode ahead of us.
After all cassuals are never the early addapters, but they are a huge majorrity of the gaming crowd
Where did you get this notion? they announced 2.2 million sales after about 2 weeks since then nothing, not a peep, its had its day in the limelight those first few weeks were as good as it gets I'm afraid.
lol. I'ts not like gaming companies announce every sale...
You get big milestones: First week sales. Every million units. That sort of thing. They announced that they'd hit the 2 million mark in early September. Since then, they've added servers and (kind of 'duh obviously') sold even more units.
I know right, the CEO trying be funny telling Forbes they want to beat the best in their industries, lol.
Sigh, the Ceo assume that GW2 will sell more than 7 million like GW1 did.
As one has already said, sind launch it has been relatively quite in terms of anounced sales numbers. However, the game is fun and the servers are full. So I do not really care.
Yea how could the server be full all the time with only 51 server that cater to 2 million ++ players.
I hope someone with a brain could figure whether Anet is playing with server populations.
They didn't sell 7 million in the first two months... It took years of box/digital sales.
I know right, the CEO trying be funny telling Forbes they want to beat the best in their industries, lol.
Sigh, the Ceo assume that GW2 will sell more than 7 million like GW1 did.
As one has already said, sind launch it has been relatively quite in terms of anounced sales numbers. However, the game is fun and the servers are full. So I do not really care.
Yea how could the server be full all the time with only 51 server that cater to 2 million ++ players.
I hope someone with a brain could figure whether Anet is playing with server populations.
They didn't sell 7 million in the first two months... It took years of box/digital sales.
And people forget that alot of that 7 million were sold to the same people as expansions so it's not 7 million individual players.
Comments
You mean 'Circle of Strife'....
Been playing since release and hit lvl 30 on my warrior last night Weee!
Yeah I lvl slowly so GW2 is a good match for my lazy casual playtime right now.....
I still dont see how these kids today hit max lvl in pretty much any mmo they play in under a week.
Under a week? No wonder they go to whining and moaning on the forums...
Under a week?
You got to be freakin kidding me!
What source do you have for over 3 million sales? I am just curious. I haven't seen anything since the 2.2 million announced after launch.
Big, huge, major problem with that statement.
You're comparing a Box+Sub game to a Box+No Sub game. Not really an even playing field.
GW2 doesn't have subscriptions. That has a number of implications and puts it in a completely different category from WoW. You can't meaningfully compare the two, unless you're talking unique box/account sales.
1. The most obvious being that there's nothing for ANet to sustain. They don't have to earn people's subscription money from month to month. You buy the game, you have lifetime access to it. Every account is, essentially "active forever" - even the ones who aren't playing anymore. This is something that's never taken into account when numbers are given for F2P MMOs. They'll boast "millions of accounts", but will never give the break-down of how many of those accounts are actually still being played, versus how many haven't been touched in weeks, or even months or years.
2. Would GW2 sustain the number of players it has if it had a subscription? For how long? People can only decide that for themselves. There are people who right now say 'I'll be playing this game for years to come', but they're also saying that about a game they will never have to invest another dollar in, outside of expansions. Add a monthly sub fee into that, and I think you'd find people have a very different outlook on it. With no sub fee comes reduced standards and expectations. This is why people will tolerate - even justify - crap in a F2P MMO that they'd never put up with in a sub-based one.
The only fair and equal statistic you can go by when comparing GW2 to WoW or any other retail MMO, is how many actual accounts (physical boxes and digital purchases combined). I don't know how many actual unique copies of WoW Blizzard has sold over the years - and I'm just talking Vanilla here, not even the expansions - but I feel pretty safe in saying it by far exceeds the number of active subs they have right now.
GW2 has a long way to go before they're hitting WoW-like numbers.
I've been playing since 25 of August and have a lvl 57 ranger and a lvl 73 warrior and I have played casual.
The ones hitting 80 in 1-2 weeks are usually people who are single,living at home,going to school,unenployed,no kids.
They can easly put in 5-6 hours a day and with those hours It's indeed easy to hit 80 in a week or 2.
If it's not broken, you are not innovating.
I am a casual player and I capped out at lvl 80 and full exotics in less than two months. Then I got bored and moved on so I think even for the casual player this game has two maybe three months before it is "done".
Powergamers? They will probably do the same in a week and they have moved on waaay before now.
My gaming blog
I dont think any of us or the developers expected the game to dethrone WoW overnight . If you compare sales of GW2 to Vanilla WoW they did dethrone WoW but then again so did ToR . However unlike ToR the game is abosolutly packed and if anything appears to be growing in its popularity . In its initial month it moved around 2 million units I wouldnt be suprised if when the q3 figures are released that will rise to 3-4 million . It does deserve to do well its a game . I've noticed no more lack of an endgame than say plenty of other mmos including WoW . Also unlike WoW it has some degree of challenge to it . It is however not a totally immersive world so in that respect its more a casual mmo that is great to play alongside a subscription based game . I find myself playing a couple of hours of Rift and a couple of hours of GW2 of an evening . MMO nirvana . Havn't enjoyed the genre this much since WoW Vanilla and TBC .I agree the game is pure fun and great valure for money .
So the OP makes yet another thread to try to give credit to his MMO of choice? What's this... the 50th thread now? *in reference to the OP as he has made numerous pro GW2 threads of purely opinion based*
No one doubted except the ignorant that GW2 would be a big success except maybe the haters who were foaming from the mouth for the game to fail. But GW2 certianly does have it's fair share of faults that plauges every MMO. GW2 will continue to be successful but it will have and certainly has it's defects. Time will tell if it will continue to have it's success momentum. No games in the foreseeable future are being released but this time next year people will likely be singing a different tune.
Well it is still in the top 10 for PC games for most sites like Amazon, Best Buy, Game.... the highest out of any MMO, and World of Warcrafts expansion is nowhere to be seen. So obviously it is still growing, dispite what all you naysayers would like to think.
If in 1982 we played with the current mentality, we would have burned down all the pac man games since the red ghost was clearly OP. Instead we just got better at the game.
WOW didnt have "WOW like" numbers initially
took WOW 8 months to reach 2m subs, June 2005
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=5696#.UJEWi4aM-yo
when WOW launched in China, the subs almost doubled, July 2005
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=5989
many China WOW subs did not buy a box, because WOW is accessible in internet game rooms
GW2 is 2 months old - i have no idea how successful GW2 will be a year from now
after GW2 China release it will probably spike up but its too early to know
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2012-08-30-arenanet-signs-deal-to-take-guild-wars-2-to-china
you cant go just by box #s,
otherwise Everquest with its 19 expansions and 13 years of existence would probably be the #2 retail mmo
EQ2 fan sites
The World of Warcraft MOP expansion is number 2 behind GW2 on Best Buy and GW2 isn't in the top ten games for GameStop. Do you just make stuff up? You should really check your facts before posting. I am not saying that GW2 is dying or even implying that. I just can't believe the amount of made up stuff that both haters and fanbois post just to try to prove a point. Your point is worthless when you use made up numbers and information to support your claim.
Great thing about not having subs is the illusion that the game will continue to grow, box sales will always go up.
What you don't see is the people who have purchased the game but no longer play.
The only way to judge is for Anet to regularily release concurrent player numbers but I doubt that will happen.
There are a couple of flaws here. First, you are comparing the time frame for WoW 2M subscription numbers to the time frame for 2M box sales for GW2. That is like comparing apples and oranges. In fact, box numbers is the only comparison you can make between the two games as it is the only common thing. You can't call a GW2 box sale a subscription because you have no idea if the people are still playing. You wouldn't need to count expansions as you had to have purchased the main game in WoW to be able to play any of the expansions. Also, the MMO market was much smaller at that time. A succesful AAA MMO would only have a few hundred thousand players. It was WoW that changed all of that. It was the game that brought MMOs to the masses.
Yep, the comparisons are flawed because you are comparing a sub. based B2P game to a non sub.based B2P game. The closest game to GW 2 to compare with is Diablo 3 because both are B2P and both are online only. Still the comparison is not good because D3 is not an MMO.
Concurrent player numbers wont be good either because GW 2 is new so it will have more players playing due to just this fact. What needs to be seen is how many players have logged on the last X weeks and that would be somewhat comparable to subscription numbers of MMOs. But like this guy said, wont ever happen.
My gaming blog
I guess if you qualify huge success as number of boxes sold then SWTOR was a blockbuster that GW2 has yet to outsell.
Then if we say my server's full look at the indicators, then SWTOR with several times more servers kept equally populated by the second month landmark.
But then if we see graphs of actual in game concurrent users and hours played according to those same graphs that were given statistical weight by GW2 fans analyzing SWTOR performance over time, it's been clear to see that the dropoff in actual concurrent users has beeen singnificantly faster/sooner than that for that P2P game, that kept bringing in monthly sub earnings.
Oh, but that's because the game is B2P they can come back at any time - but they are not playing GW2 then so - for the moment they are not interested in the game or making it any money - so does that make GW2 a huge success?
Pffft. Hype can launch a game. Hype cannot sustain a game. It's barely two months in . . . the shine's wearing off faster than it did for SWTOR.
of course it flawed primarily due to 2 factors
#1 different time frame (GW1 launched during same time frame gaining 1m in its 5 months but gw1 is not mmo)
#2 China WOW subs are not required to buy the WOW box
im in agreement
you cannot easily compare GW2 to WOW due to different business models -- unless its strictly financial based
EQ2 fan sites
Pretty much this.
Lol...I didn't actually make the comparison. It was Mike O'Brien who stated that their goal was to be number one. I would imagine that means anything from copies sold, concurrent players, player accounts, etc.
If you were just being pedantic about my mention of subs against a game with no sub, that's just because the 12 million is the known figure by which WoW was measured. Like you, I don't know how many copies were sold as of 2012.
lol. I'ts not like gaming companies announce every sale...
You get big milestones: First week sales. Every million units. That sort of thing. They announced that they'd hit the 2 million mark in early September. Since then, they've added servers and (kind of 'duh obviously') sold even more units.
They didn't sell 7 million in the first two months... It took years of box/digital sales.
And people forget that alot of that 7 million were sold to the same people as expansions so it's not 7 million individual players.