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NCSoft Earnings Report - WildStar Ever Nearer The End
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
So it turns out that MMOs can still make a lot of money. Who’d have thought it? After the release of the NCSoft Earnings Report for the first quarter of 2016, it seems they’re in good shape. Unless your part of the WildStar development team or playerbase, things are looking particularly rosey. Sales are up by around 30% from the year before, with profits having jumped 70% on the previous period. That’s a sizeable improvement and one NCSoft’s shareholders are likely very pleased about.
Post edited by SBFord on
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Did you actually read the article or just skim it and make some bias assumptions... all I gather from your comments is you have a hatred for Blizzard and must be a sour GW2 or WS fan.
Considering how poor the GW2 expansion was received (I thought it was disappointing too) - I'm actually surprised it did as well as it did. BnS (which I have been playing but taking a break as of late) did really well but they have already resorted to massive amounts of RNG boxes to push sales for the current quarter, probably due to a drop in active players with all the bot/hacker issues. WS is in dire straights because they simply can never seem to get anything right... hopefully the Steam release "saves" the game for the diehards but most players have (understandably) moved on.
Now onto the article. I personally thought Wildstar was a fun game, for awhile, but it began to become very repetitious. It's only saving grace for me was the humor. That's just not enough to keep people to stick around though
How? Paid expansions are always a revenue bump for the quarter they launch in, followed by a revenue decline as box sales slow and it returns to relying on the sub/cash shop (the latter in this case) as its primary source of revenue. This is like, the most expected of behaviors.
>but one that that simply launched too early
If I ever see this argument again on a major game...This is the most overused, cop-out argument ever. The game was launched when Carbine felt it was ready, not when NCsoft forced them to push it out. GW2 saw more delays than I can remember because NCsoft gives their Western devs a ton of leeway. But seriously, seeing this critique on why the vast majority of MMO's stumble right out of the gate is stupid and tiresome.
>Carbine made some mistakes, notably the “hardcore” marketing barrage, while itemization was particularly poor.
Yes, this. The games struggles were mostly tied to terrible development decisions and the devs not listening to playtesting feedback that was critical. Terrible marketing on the part of Carbine/NCsoft and devs that really should have kept their mouths shut so they didn't stick their feet in there so often didn't help in the slightest either.
>As a Free to Play game there’s still a wealth of amazing content there and I’m glad I had the opportunity to play it.
Same, but at the same time their F2P transition, while fantastic for us free players, was terrible for the potential growth of the game. It was /too/ free. There weren't enough "pain points" to drive people to the cash shop, nor was there enough in the cash shop to sell at its transition. Between that and basically handing out omnibits to free players and keeping omnibit prices on cash shop outfits/etc. super low.
It's sad to see WS fading away like this, because it's a solid game overall and there's a lot to love, but Carbine has pretty much screwed up at every opportunity to turn things around/not screw up : /
-so much on point here. hoping Wildstar sticks around in f2p its a very good mmo. would love to someday hear what "Frost' has to say what REALLY went on while he was there at carbine= he was the face in the videos of wildstar passionately talking about the classes and the game.
Just remember even in the wow community people that are so pro wow. Still called wow is dying even still being the top sub mmo. Unless Blizzard open them a vanilla server thinking that would bring people back from a new mmo back to a old mmo to replay the same thing over again. Back on Wildstar it still haves a long battle ahead of it self.
MMOs are supposed to be digital living worlds. That said, they have events in them that change with the season (even if they're the same as last year's of the same time). Players need those things to make the world feel less static. And to charge money monthly while not having provided them makes a consumer just walk off to one of the many options out there that does provide them. Look at GW2 as a prime example of doing it right, launching late August 2012 to then have Halloween barely 2 months later. No reason why they couldn't put that to whiteboard and then program for Wildstar sometime during it's 5+ year development. There needs to be developmental foresight on what a living, breathing MMO world should have and events needs to be on that list in the top 3 things.
/Cheers,
Lahnmir
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
not one to speculate- but if that was the issue these guys would not be leaving carbine, rumor is that the name change was due to blade n soul also using ncoins name.
really hoping wildstar stays around- id like to revisit this game again- but now a lead writer has also left.. maybe they can stay independent.
Because Valve takes a 30% cut of all sales through Steam, so NCsoft would be losing 30% on their currency that's usable across all their first party games as well. That's likely why Aion/L2 got pulled from Steam, because folks were buying NCoin there but using it for B&S.
This way, all purchases of cash shop currency through Steam will work only for the specific game(s) released through Steam, not NCsofts entirely library (minus GW2).
21 year MMO veteran
PvP Raid Leader
Lover of The Witcher & CD Projekt Red
It's like why read the article when you can scroll to the comments to watch the ... I don't know. I want to say bullying but it's more like team ups.
거북이는 목을 내밀 때 안 움직입니다
Maybe Perfect World will pick it up for a bargain price. With their Cash Shop skillz, I'm sure they can turn a profit on any game, lol
It actually forced me to take a second to think about the time I was wasting on reading text for a quest that would be over in a few minutes. After that, quest text became meaningless to me.
Actually IMHO this is what Wildstar's problem was from the start, too many were turned off by it's graphics.