Clearly PWE is not appealing to me with CO because they only seek quick bucks from cash shop sales instead of creating a solid game that people want to subscribe to.
I didn't cancel my sub to strike fear into anyone, but instead to prove a point that ignoring gameplay issues in a video game can have an impact on sales.
PWE is a business, all business seeks money. It's kind of silly, to be blunt about it, that people have this notion that business actually cares about people in general. While individual developers might have goals for the people, the end result is, if they want to be paid they have to work in the budget, and they have to sell the product to get paid.
Therefor they develop where the money is at. That might change with Champions, that might not, but you'd have to come up with actual reasoning that bean counters will leap at to prove it will be a profitable venture to spend resources towards something that might not even turn a profit.
It's why they are putting out costumes and lockboxes, those make money. It's not a quick buck venture it's also for development of the game. But they have to pay those developers, artists, programmers, and engineers to, not to mention all other utilities for just keeping the servers open.
But they have to pay those developers, artists, programmers, and engineers to, not to mention all other utilities for just keeping the servers open.
What programmers? If we had those devoted to CO, we'd have a lot more bug fixes than just a small handful every couple of months.
This is another reason I'm cancelling. I'm not going to support this trend of cash shop reliant games. There are plenty of mmos in the past and present that never relied on such a business model, and if CO had some dedicated development and fixes, it wouldn't have to use its Z store as life support.
What programmers? If we had those devoted to CO, we'd have a lot more bug fixes than just a small handful every couple of months.
This is another reason I'm cancelling. I'm not going to support this trend of cash shop reliant games. There are plenty of mmos in the past and present that never relied on such a business model, and if CO had some dedicated development and fixes, it wouldn't have to use its Z store as life support.
Uhhh, I think I can count on one hand the number of MMOs not reliant on a cash shop now. Even the almighty WoW is reliant on a cash shop now.
And while you say there are no programmers I guess you missed key points that there are such as the blogs, the fact that CN is hiring more and so forth. So, yea, I think we can stop pretending there aren't any.
Uhhh, I think I can count on one hand the number of MMOs not reliant on a cash shop now. Even the almighty WoW is reliant on a cash shop now.
And while you say there are no programmers I guess you missed key points that there are such as the blogs, the fact that CN is hiring more and so forth. So, yea, I think we can stop pretending there aren't any.
I wouldn't call WoW reliant on their cash shop. I'm sure they could easily survive on subscriptions alone, seeing as they have for several years, and the cash shop is additional icing on the cake.
However, I highly doubt that CO can survive on subscriptions alone in its current form. That's a corner they may have backed themselves into.
And I just checked. Cryptic is currently only hiring one gameplay programmer, and there is no indication that they will be working on Champions Online. http://www.crypticstudios.com/openings
But I'll admit, one is better than none at all. :biggrin:
Hopefully, that Systems Designer opening is also for CO. We could definitely use one of those.
I wouldn't call WoW reliant on their cash shop. I'm sure they could easily survive on subscriptions alone, seeing as they have for several years, and the cash shop is additional icing on the cake.
However, I highly doubt that CO can survive on subscriptions alone in its current form. That's a corner they may have backed themselves into.
And I just checked. Cryptic is currently only hiring one gameplay programmer, and there is no indication that they will be working on Champions Online. http://www.crypticstudios.com/openings
But I'll admit, one is better than none at all. :biggrin:
Hopefully, that Systems Designer opening is also for CO. We could definitely use one of those.
No WOW can't survive without the cash shop. Over 2/3rds of their player base is in Asia which has a completely different subscription plan to American and EU. There is a reason the cash shop is a fully integrated feature in WoW and not a secondary web site thing anymore. There is also a reason MMOs have been swapping to cash shops. The amount of active subscriptions needed to be viable in this market flooded by many titles makes competition harder and harder. Since MMOs are suppose to be persistent, unlike single player games, the competition is rougher because they have a sea to compete with for the money.
And rate hikes aren't viable as people are just not wanting to pay subscriptions as much any more for titles. After all RIFT supposedly was doing quite well, but still went to the cash shop route.
No WOW can't survive without the cash shop. Over 2/3rds of their player base is in Asia which has a completely different subscription plan to American and EU.
Also, as you can see here, subscriptions still account for a healthy portion of their revenue. They haven't released any figures about cash shop revenue specifically, but considering it's so new, and wasn't even mentioned on the earnings call/Q&A, I really doubt it's very significant at this point.
Please keep making up spurious "facts" to try to sound like you know what you're talking about though. You never know, it's probably fooling some people.
LTS since 2009. Author of ACT parser module for CO. Founder of Rampagers. Resident curmudgeon.
"Without data, you're just another person with an opinion." -- W. Edwards Deming
Also, as you can see here, subscriptions still account for a healthy portion of their revenue. They haven't released any figures about cash shop revenue specifically, but considering it's so new, and wasn't even mentioned on the earnings call/Q&A, I really doubt it's very significant at this point.
Please keep making up spurious "facts" to try to sound like you know what you're talking about though. You never know, it's probably fooling some people.
8% of ATVI's revenue including CoD, Hearthstone and all the other stuff under their umbrella isn't really representative of WoW one way or another.
Although 8% is really low considering how much they wanted to push Starcraft 2 E-sports. League must've kicked their behinds pretty bad in Korea.
Wow, seriously. :rolleyes: It's evident you aren't bothering to read at this point, since at no point did I even say pets and minions being buggy is intentional design.
And just wow, you really think Masterminds weren't a dominating force in CoX? Maybe not in PvP, but PvE oh yea. They stopped being dominating when the incarnate stuff came out and were made worthless thanks to overwhelming AEs. And Masterminds didn't start getting fixes until they were finally made hero classes. And even then the major outstanding bugs were still present with them such as the pet AI breaking. Oh yea, the AI in CoX broke to at times.
Just a small point but Thugs Masterminds, and occasionally Zombies (in duels) saw a fair bit of play in team matches. Two Thugs (one Storm and one "healer") were hilariously obnoxious in small maps like Lab. I do 100% agree that the Incarnate stuff left them behind though, at least until they beefed their "virtual" levels to match your Incarnate level.
What programmers? If we had those devoted to CO, we'd have a lot more bug fixes than just a small handful every couple of months.
This is another reason I'm cancelling. I'm not going to support this trend of cash shop reliant games. There are plenty of mmos in the past and present that never relied on such a business model, and if CO had some dedicated development and fixes, it wouldn't have to use its Z store as life support.
Well. Speaking just for myself that has been playing for two or so years, with a little time off for other activities, you don't have to use the cash shop at all. I use my monthly stipend on a costume set and have just now bought Cosmic Keys of Power after deliberation with my play partner. I'm unlikely to get too many CKoP though since the lockbox odds aren't made available from the devs, but rather the hard work of CO gamers.
As for programmers, I'm sure there is some bug-fixing out there but with work on new Alerts and potential lack of personnel might make this harder. Still waiting for news of the rumoured fall update too...
______________________________________________
See me ingame under the following secret identities:
Amelie Layclaire - Lightning and Wind (40) Solution Five - Gadgets and Subterfuge (40) Dodgeball Kara - Support and Ebon Ruin (40) Relentless Pursuit - Fire and Force (35) Rear Window - Homage - Icy Disposition (20) Teaming with @shottymario and hoping to meet you all ingame.
8% of ATVI's revenue including CoD, Hearthstone and all the other stuff under their umbrella isn't really representative of WoW one way or another.
Although 8% is really low considering how much they wanted to push Starcraft 2 E-sports. League must've kicked their behinds pretty bad in Korea.
From the earnings report, Blizzard's online/WoW revenue was $201M. Show me the math as to how it's possible (let alone likely) for 2/3 of that to be from Asia, while combined revenue for all business units from Asia is only $86M?
LTS since 2009. Author of ACT parser module for CO. Founder of Rampagers. Resident curmudgeon.
"Without data, you're just another person with an opinion." -- W. Edwards Deming
Do you have any sources to substantiate your "2/3 from Asia" claim?
You mean other than what Activision/Blizzard has stated in the past? But because they use a completely different subscription model, IE they pay by the hour (last I heard) instead of just pay a month and done, they substitute that also with a cash shop. This was from 2010 one of their last demographic things I can find since digging through dev posts is never fun, and I doubt it's changed much even in the wake of them losing subscribers. At the bottom it states that that graph doesn't even include 5.5 million from Asia that just pay by the hour. Hell, there was a big hubabaloo in the news about Chinese law and WoW having to shut down there because their distributor there did something naughty a couple of years ago and they had to work through Chinese channels before the game could go back up again.
Furthermore, Asia is made up of more than just China, Korea, and such, Russia is also considered apart of Asia to, as well as India.
From the earnings report, Blizzard's online/WoW revenue was $201M. Show me the math as to how it's possible (let alone likely) for 2/3 of that to be from Asia, while combined revenue for all business units from Asia is only $86M?
I believe the original quote was that 2/3 of the players are from Asia, which may not necessarily equate to 2/3 of ActiBlizz revenue. Afaik the WoW provider in China isn't ActiBlizz - NetEase is the licensed publisher so naturally it won't be 100% of Asian players' revenue reflected in ActiBlizz's accounts. We don't know how they split the Azerothian pie between them.
In other words, nothing conclusive pointing one way or the other.
Also, as you can see here, subscriptions still account for a healthy portion of their revenue. They haven't released any figures about cash shop revenue specifically, but considering it's so new, and wasn't even mentioned on the earnings call/Q&A, I really doubt it's very significant at this point.
Please keep making up spurious "facts" to try to sound like you know what you're talking about though. You never know, it's probably fooling some people.
for your second source, I think you need something different, people who are looking at it cannot see the graph
This[/url] was from 2010 one of their last demographic things I can find since digging through dev posts is never fun, and I doubt it's changed much even in the wake of them losing subscribers. At the bottom it states that that graph doesn't even include 5.5 million from Asia that just pay by the hour. Hell, there was a big hubabaloo in the news about Chinese law and WoW having to shut down there because their distributor there did something naughty a couple of years ago and they had to work through Chinese channels before the game could go back up again.
"But those numbers are down from 12 million players in October 2010, and Activision said in May that it lost 1.3 million users in the first quarter of 2013, largely in Asia. A July 2 report by investment bank T.H. Capital estimated that World of ******** users in China may increase slightly in the second quarter but warned that user engagement, measured by hours played, is likely to keep falling. The user drop-offs raise concerns, Activision said in a May 8 statement. The company declined requests for further comment."
LTS since 2009. Author of ACT parser module for CO. Founder of Rampagers. Resident curmudgeon.
"Without data, you're just another person with an opinion." -- W. Edwards Deming
"But those numbers are down from 12 million players in October 2010, and Activision said in May that it lost 1.3 million users in the first quarter of 2013, largely in Asia. A July 2 report by investment bank T.H. Capital estimated that World of ******** users in China may increase slightly in the second quarter but warned that user engagement, measured by hours played, is likely to keep falling. The user drop-offs raise concerns, Activision said in a May 8 statement. The company declined requests for further comment."
"But those numbers are down from 12 million players in October 2010, and Activision said in May that it lost 1.3 million users in the first quarter of 2013, largely in Asia. A July 2 report by investment bank T.H. Capital estimated that World of ******** users in China may increase slightly in the second quarter but warned that user engagement, measured by hours played, is likely to keep falling. The user drop-offs raise concerns, Activision said in a May 8 statement. The company declined requests for further comment."
Actually you ignored the part I pointed out that the chart didn't include 5.5 million of the Asian demographic because they weren't including those that just pay by the hour. So including the 5.5 million, that would easily have trumped the 2/3rds on that graph alone and considering the last couple of years there has been worry because the loss of subscriptions has been in NA and EU now, I again doubt the chart has substantially moved from the 2/3rds market claim.
So 1.3 away from the 5.5 million unaccounted for pay by the hour users that the pie graph talked about. And if only 1.3 million is from Asia, what about the other 2.7 million that they've lost since 2010?
So subtracting from said pie graph the 5.5 million from 12 million gives 6.5 million. That means 48% of Asia was 3.12 million subscribers of the WoW pie. Add back in the 5.5 million that is 8.62 million for the Asian side of things that is roughly 71.83% or over 2/3rds.
I believe the original quote was that 2/3 of the players are from Asia, which may not necessarily equate to 2/3 of ActiBlizz revenue. Afaik the WoW provider in China isn't ActiBlizz - NetEase is the licensed publisher so naturally it won't be 100% of Asian players' revenue reflected in ActiBlizz's accounts. We don't know how they split the Azerothian pie between them.
In other words, nothing conclusive pointing one way or the other.
If you're arguing that you think there are a lot of players in Asia that don't contribute to revenue, I guess that's possible. But in the original context of "WoW can't survive without a cash shop because of Asia", I'd say that players that don't generate revenue are not supportive of that argument.
LTS since 2009. Author of ACT parser module for CO. Founder of Rampagers. Resident curmudgeon.
"Without data, you're just another person with an opinion." -- W. Edwards Deming
If you're arguing that you think there are a lot of players in Asia that don't contribute to revenue, I guess that's possible. But in the original context of "WoW can't survive without a cash shop because of Asia", I'd say that players that don't generate revenue are not supportive of that argument.
Considering they are pushing hard for a cash shop, and considering how many different development teams and projects they have going on over there lately. They've already dropped the recruit a friend program, included a instant level 90 item in their cash shop, it has all the ear marks of looking heavily to free to play.
And no, I didn't say there are Asian's who don't contribute, that report with the pie graph specifically stated they don't include pay by the hours. That is because there are actually quite a few net laws in place, such as some regions only allowed to play a certain amount of hours at a time since several deaths in the past have been attributed to exhaustion due to over playing games in China and Korea. Furthermore, your report is off, as pointed out earlier, because NetEase handles all that and as stated it isn't sure how they divvy up that pie, nor how it is reported in the annual report.
If you're arguing that you think there are a lot of players in Asia that don't contribute to revenue, I guess that's possible. But in the original context of "WoW can't survive without a cash shop because of Asia", I'd say that players that don't generate revenue are not supportive of that argument.
There's a difference between not contributing revenue at all and not contributing revenue to ActiBlizz.
For all we know NetEase WoW may indeed live or die based on the presence of a cash shop, but since the exact terms of the WoW license in China is unknown, there's no way to tell how that affects ActiBlizz.
NetEase's FY13 results do mention a decline in revenue from WoW. Whether that's due to Asian tastes shifting towards fancy Korean offerings or the lack of a cash shop or something else is anyone's guess though.
That said, I have no doubt WoW can live as a sub-only game in the West. I'm just not sure whether it makes a lot of business sense to avoid dabbling in microtransactions, especially given Bob Kotick's penchant to "exploit" his cash cows.
There's a difference between not contributing revenue at all and not contributing revenue to ActiBlizz.
For all we know NetEase WoW may indeed live or die based on the presence of a cash shop, but since the exact terms of the WoW license in China is unknown, there's no way to tell how that affects ActiBlizz.
NetEase's FY13 results do mention a decline in revenue from WoW. Whether that's due to Asian tastes shifting towards fancy Korean offerings or the lack of a cash shop or something else is anyone's guess though.
Now you've reframed the original question from whether or not "WoW can survive without a cash shop" to whether or not "WoW's affiliate in China can survive without a cash shop", which is quite different.
We don't need to know the specifics of the arrangement with NetEase to know how it affects the parent company. The parent company's revenue bottom-line will include their revenue from the Netease arrangement.
FACT: $86M (8%) of ATVI's revenue in Q1 came from Asia
FACT: Revenue from WoW was $201M*
FACT: Net profit for Q1 was $141M
Sure, nothing is conclusive, but a reasonably informed person can make reasonable inferences from the data that "2/3 of the market being Asia" or that WoW would as of now "not survive" without a cash shop are utter fallacies.
Believe what you want, I think this horse has been beaten.
* consists of revenue from all World of ******** products, including subscriptions, boxed products, expansion packs, licensing royalties
LTS since 2009. Author of ACT parser module for CO. Founder of Rampagers. Resident curmudgeon.
"Without data, you're just another person with an opinion." -- W. Edwards Deming
Can you tell me how much of that $201 million was made from subscriptions and how much of it was made from their $25 dollar cash shop items? As a for instance, when the "disco lion" as Darnell called it went up, I believe it was stated that 650,000 of those sold in the first day. That would be $16.25 million.
Other items range from $10 on up in their cash shop with several cosmetic items having appeared at around $15 a pop. How many of those sell do you think? And later when WoD if they haven't already, they are planning on selling level 90 characters at $60 a pop. You can in fact pre-purchase multiple copies of WoD now for an instant level 90, which itself is $50 just for the basic digital edition now, not the digital deluxe.
And I just checked. Cryptic is currently only hiring one gameplay programmer, and there is no indication that they will be working on Champions Online. http://www.crypticstudios.com/openings.
Actually, there is some indication - the position is in Seattle, therefore with Cryptic North, which is supposed to focus primarily on CO (although there's probably going to be at least a little STO time in there too, with their big expansion coming late this year).
If only I had C++ experience...
"Science teaches us to expect -- demand -- more than just eerie mysteries. What use is a puzzle that can't be solved? Patience is fine, but I'm not going to stop asking the universe to make sense!"
Actually, there is some indication - the position is in Seattle, therefore with Cryptic North, which is supposed to focus primarily on CO (although there's probably going to be at least a little STO time in there too, with their big expansion coming late this year).
If only I had C++ experience...
I remain skeptical, if only for three things:
1: Cryptic's policy of moving any developer to any game at any time. For all we know, the ratio of CO:STO:NW devs is just as lopsided in Seattle as it is in Los Gatos. And if the develop-to-revenue model applies to staff levels as well as project time, the payrolls of each game probably look like the Yankees, Dodgers, and Astros. All of this has happened before...
2: Dan Stahl's Super Secret Project. How far along is it, and who's working on it? (In Cryptic's defense here, Stahl is still based in California AFAIK, so there's probably not many Cryptic North folk working on that.) (And no, I don't think it's the Xbox One port of NW, since Velasquez and Robobo are doing the press for it. If Stahl was involved, his name would be in there somewhere.)
3: How many of these job postings are Cryptic actually enlarging its development team, and how many are merely replacing departed employees? Just because forum-active Gold Names aren't leaving doesn't mean that rank-and-file coders and modelers aren't moving on.
Has anybody else noticed that it's been about a year since Fatal Err0r? Carrier Wave went live in early August 2013, and the Cybermind stage launched around the end of the month. After the bug-fix pass we knew was coming last autumn, we've gotten one 10-man boss fight, a few holiday events full of busy work but no real challenges, and lots of trinkets in lockboxes and C-Store with no events or even a common thread. (Unless you consider "NPC hero comes to town and tries to sell you a raffle ticket for a hoverbike" to be a common thread.)
I've been railing on about player base attrition for a while now. If the level and speed of development we've seen is any indication, either attrition is showing up on the balance sheet now, or that Next Big Thing that seems to be perpetually on the horizon is taking the lion's share of the money. I really hope it's the latter, and I hope it gets here soon, because as things stand right now, people are going to make their summer vacations from this game permanent ones.
C'mon, Cryptic. Only you can prevent forum fires. Manage the message a little better than "Soon".
Choose your enemies carefully, because they will define you / Make them interesting, because in some ways they will mind you
They're not there in the beginning, but when your story ends / Gonna last with you longer than your friends
It kinda bugs me that we've started seeing lock boxes with no associated content, I'm not gonna lie. Who gives a crap who Sekhen or Steel Shadow is, if we've got nothing to actually do around their stories? This is a new development, I think the last time we got a bag without an associated event was way back in the grav bike box days. Considering how long the grab bags tend to stick around, I'm curious if we're gonna get a new one for the anniversary. Or any changes in the anniversary event itself, for that matter.
It probably doesn't help that whenever they'd do events people would complain because it wasn't "real content". I dunno about anyone else, but I'd kill for a new event right now. And not "anniversary new" or "turn on bloodmoon" new. I mean new as in the sort we were getting every 2-3 months for a while there.
As for the pandacraft comparisons, there are a few factors that we're not keeping in mind here. They have a sub model primarily, their "free to play" is only to 20. We give the full experience right off the bat, barring freeform. They've got cash-based expansions you need to buy, before you get the privilege of paying them monthly to play it. We made even the paid adventures free and nerfed the living *crap* out of em, so nobody would even want to play them in the first place. We were going to have a paid expansion, but I was like one of 3 people who didn't freak the hell out at the idea of paying for expansions like every other mmo on the planet. Wow sure doesn't allow you to buy one character for a one time fee that can push to max level. We do.
It's not incorrect to state that we can't support ourselves with a sub only model. As a player base, we asked for this. We wanted freeforms for silvers. We didn't want to pay for expansions. We wanted adventure packs to be open for everyone, and called BS that the best gear came from serpent lantern on elite, which is something not everyone can do. So we paved, nerfed, and homogenized everything. Cut out a few major sources of profit at the same time.
I'm not saying this is bad, it's nice that a free player can basically do everything a paid player can. But it's definitely a reality that if we want everything open and free? We're gonna see cash shop stuff and not a lot of other content to make up for it. That cash shop money is going to keeping the lights on. Developing other cash shop stuff. I find it flat out hilarious when people say "I'm not buying any of the new costumes, because they're not bug fixing" and the like, because if we're doing badly enough that we're mostly getting cosmetic items right now? Yeah, boycott. Having even less money is SURE to make those bug fixes happen.
As for the doomsaying? PWE just announced a closure the other day, and one of the people in a channel I'm on noticed that the game hadn't gotten a patch since 2010. 4 YEARS without an update before they closed it down. I'll repeat: PWE doesn't like shuttering games. So let's stop the doomsaying, CO isn't going anywhere. And if you think we're in maintenance mode now? 4 years without a single update.
In game, I am @EvilTaco. Happily killing purple gang members since May 2008. RIP Caine
Shutting down a game costs money. You have people to fire or relocate, servers and data to deal with, and who knows what other costs.
I do see OP's point in that he is paying for a game that isn't getting content or bug fixes, but just more stuff to buy in addition to his sub. He feels like he's not getting anything in return for the money he was spending.
I don't agree in having people pay for content or expansions in a F2P game, especially for a company that wants a world wide presence. A $50 expansion is not $50 everywhere. It may be double or triple in price. Not only that, gating content behind money segregates the population. Companies need players even if not all of them are paying. More players = more exposure = more people know about the game = more new players = more people that will throw money at the game.
PS: His name is King Sellout. And his story is that he blew all of his money on those fancy arms and chariot, before he could pay for his other ... problems. That's why he's wearing the diaper. He doesn't like to talk about it.
This is like watching people standing over a dead pony yelling about whether or not it's dead and bickering over who loved it the most. Just walk away op, you'll be doing yourself a favor. Trust me. And FWIW pets always worked fine for me.
Now you've reframed the original question from whether or not "WoW can survive without a cash shop" to whether or not "WoW's affiliate in China can survive without a cash shop", which is quite different.
You need to explain how it's different here, considering it's the same game, barring censorship, just in a different market.
We don't need to know the specifics of the arrangement with NetEase to know how it affects the parent company. The parent company's revenue bottom-line will include their revenue from the Netease arrangement.
We actually do, considering the nature of how the Netease partnership came about, i.e. after government intervention with the service under the previous partner, The9. Most importantly, the amount of the WoW license that's fixed, based on the right to distribute and host the game in China and the proportion that's variable, based on a cut of revenue i.e. subscriptions paid/timecards sold.
For all we know, WoW may have become less lucrative for ATVI under the new partner because the fixed amount may be greater, but the NetEase partnership would still be important for them in order to retain their presence in China and be able to distribute new games there.
Apart from NetEase, WoW distribution across Asia seems to be handled by a number of partners, including Asiasoft for Southeast Asia.
FACT: $86M (8%) of ATVI's revenue in Q1 came from Asia
FACT: Revenue from WoW was $201M*
FACT: Net profit for Q1 was $141M
Sure, nothing is conclusive, but a reasonably informed person can make reasonable inferences from the data that "2/3 of the market being Asia" or that WoW would as of now "not survive" without a cash shop are utter fallacies.
Believe what you want, I think this horse has been beaten.
* consists of revenue from all World of ******** products, including subscriptions, boxed products, expansion packs, licensing royalties
I'm not doubting your conclusion about whether or not WoW will survive. It's a possibility, but too much speculation was needed to arrive at it. I'm choosing to have a healthy amount of skepticism for both you and CSW at this point.
"2/3 of the market being Asia" - that's a misquote and I think CSW proved quite conclusively that it's very possible 2/3 of WoW players are in Asia.
Furthermore, due to distribution/licensing agreements, that $86M from Asia may be the result of mostly royalties with little costs involved, compared to say, NA revenue, where ATVI is their own publisher and has to bear the costs of publication, including a larger physical presence to accommodate a sales and marketing team, advertising, box printing, server and database hosting etc etc. So revenue would logically be greater, but offset by higher costs.
Then we have to consider that other ATVI titles like CoD may not be as big in Asia as WoW, so that would skew Western revenue even further. In the most extreme scenario, suppose all of that $86M are royalties/licensing fees with no costs involved, and therefore accounts for 61% of of the $141M profit. Then suppose WoW accounts for a bigger slice of ATVI's Asian pie than it does for the West. It becomes possible that 66% of the WoW market does exist in Asia.
So without full disclosure from ATVI, both what you say and what CSW says are within the realm of possibility. There's too many unknowns to conclusively point one way or the other.
However, I think it's safe to assume the following:
1. Cash shop proceeds come with little cost and are contribute to a growing amount of WoW's profit.
2. The number of WoW's players in Asia is much bigger than 8% of WoW's total playerbase across all countries and partners, and the net profit from Asia is much larger than 8% of $141M
Fighting over this is pointless. The parent company who should be handling things is acting like an absentee landlord. The Wow comparisons are never gonna go away if only because it's the triple a standard for the model. Atari fed things up badly and PWE while not infusing the game with content has kept the lights on. Jesus H, move on already.
The WoW comparisons should go away because they're completely off base. Remember that that game requires a monthly sub to play, plus a large infusion of cash with every major update. They've got a tad more to work with. As well as server farms around the world, so the entire game experience doesn't have to get fracked up because two internet services are feuding with each other...
Really, it's a bit like complaining that your Hyundai Sonata, a perfectly serviceable and sturdy car, is a POS because it doesn't have the acceleration or top end of a Ferrari Testarossa - a significantly more expensive vehicle.
"Science teaches us to expect -- demand -- more than just eerie mysteries. What use is a puzzle that can't be solved? Patience is fine, but I'm not going to stop asking the universe to make sense!"
As for the doomsaying? PWE just announced a closure the other day, and one of the people in a channel I'm on noticed that the game hadn't gotten a patch since 2010. 4 YEARS without an update before they closed it down. I'll repeat: PWE doesn't like shuttering games. So let's stop the doomsaying, CO isn't going anywhere. And if you think we're in maintenance mode now? 4 years without a single update.
Choose your enemies carefully, because they will define you / Make them interesting, because in some ways they will mind you
They're not there in the beginning, but when your story ends / Gonna last with you longer than your friends
That's what he's talking about. But the last update was like 1 or 2 years ago, not 4 (I was there during the conversation and it was a bit of a miscommunication).
Thing about Rusty Hearts is, I wouldn't be surprised if literally no one played it. I couldn't get it to work after I switched to Windows 8 and apparently I wasn't alone. So yea, kind hard to keep a game open if players can't actually play it.
I mean ... it's kinda' like Groundhog Day all over again. We've been having the same conversation of, "I like it!" and, "It could be better!" for years.
Personally, I think if you like this game, you should, at this point, largely be happy it's still around given how lulzy bad it's been managed (note: Emmert even admitted the game's release was improperly handled in interviews leading up to STO's launch).
If you don't like the game? Seriously, it's unlikely that Cryptic will ever change it so it will suit your tastes; they just aren't into the game enough to invest a pile of money into a game with a largely unknown IP and a poor reputation among the MMO community.
The game has settled into ... I'm not sure what. It's something more than maintenance mode (we still see patches and some new things added), but something less than what most people would see as active development (15 or 20 hours' worth of content added per year, some new powers, an expansion every 2 or 3 years, etc.). Cryptic doesn't seem to be doing much to bring new people into the game ... but they are better at not actively antagonizing loyal players (seriously, the first few months were, in retrospect, funny / bad).
That's what he's talking about. But the last update was like 1 or 2 years ago, not 4 (I was there during the conversation and it was a bit of a miscommunication).
Fair, but when you measure your updates in *years* I think it's at the point where... Yeah we're not there yet.
Notburningchick, lol I think the funniest part about them irritating the players in the very beginning is that they were by and large listening to what we asked for when they did it. See also: the Telepathy nerf. We're all "Telepaths don't need anyone else, they could solo this game if they want to" and so nerf hammered so hard that it killed Jean Gray twice.
That and I wonder if they pulled their first coders from a high school class. Kitchen sink. Eef.
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We all know the dramatic tale of why the files are called "Fight Club", right? That semi-sordid story of time stolen from working on the game they knew they were about to get fired from, in order to begin work on the one thing they had that might keep their studio afloat? (Only to then be backstabbed and abandoned by Marvel and Microsoft...)
I believe the quality of that early coding clearly reflects the situation in which it was coded. It's difficult to do your best work when you can't let your current boss know what that work is. And since the original, rather grandiose plans had to be dumped when they lost their two corporate backers (ah, the Marvel MMO that could have been!), there hasn't really been the opportunity to throw everything out and start over.
So yeah, if you dislike this game and would need major changes made to it in order to make it something you would like, my advice is to simply walk away, because that's not happening. As for me? Finally picked up my LTS a few days ago. Happily leveling two new characters, as I learn how the Freeform system works.
"Science teaches us to expect -- demand -- more than just eerie mysteries. What use is a puzzle that can't be solved? Patience is fine, but I'm not going to stop asking the universe to make sense!"
You need to explain how it's different here, considering it's the same game, barring censorship, just in a different market.
Seriously? OK. A different market is everything: cultural differences, the fact that N. American gamers tend to be more affluent and generate more revenue per customer, different regulatory environments (i.e. The9), taxes, currency exchange rates, etc.
We actually do, considering the nature of how the Netease partnership came about, i.e. after government intervention with the service under the previous partner, The9. Most importantly, the amount of the WoW license that's fixed, based on the right to distribute and host the game in China and the proportion that's variable, based on a cut of revenue i.e. subscriptions paid/timecards sold.
For all we know, WoW may have become less lucrative for ATVI under the new partner because the fixed amount may be greater, but the NetEase partnership would still be important for them in order to retain their presence in China and be able to distribute new games there.
Apart from NetEase, WoW distribution across Asia seems to be handled by a number of partners, including Asiasoft for Southeast Asia.
None of which would change the core fact that Asian revenue is a flat-to-downward-trending proportion of ATVI's total revs, and if it were excluded from the P&L, ATVI would still be very profitable.
Furthermore, due to distribution/licensing agreements, that $86M from Asia may be the result of mostly royalties with little costs involved, compared to say, NA revenue, where ATVI is their own publisher and has to bear the costs of publication, including a larger physical presence to accommodate a sales and marketing team, advertising, box printing, server and database hosting etc etc. So revenue would logically be greater, but offset by higher costs.
Then we have to consider that other ATVI titles like CoD may not be as big in Asia as WoW, so that would skew Western revenue even further. In the most extreme scenario, suppose all of that $86M are royalties/licensing fees with no costs involved, and therefore accounts for 61% of of the $141M profit. Then suppose WoW accounts for a bigger slice of ATVI's Asian pie than it does for the West. It becomes possible that 66% of the WoW market does exist in Asia.
So without full disclosure from ATVI, both what you say and what CSW says are within the realm of possibility. There's too many unknowns to conclusively point one way or the other.
You forgot to include in your scenario the possibility that NetEase could have a magical unicorn that craps Skittles. But even your unrealistic scenario fails to address anything about cash shop sales vs. subscription revenue. Look, I didn't make the original claim(s), and it's not my burden to have to disprove every hypothetical possibility you can come up with, when we've seen no substantial evidence to support either "2/3 players in Asia" or "would not survive without cash shop".
However, regarding your sceniario, if you choose to do your homework in the financial reports you'll find that: other titles like Diablo III were identified as being strong in Asia, ATVI does have property and expenses tied to the Asia region, not to mention R&D, marketing, and COGS line-items for all major product lines; and average subscriber revenue in Asia is lower than in the West. Also even though the online revenue is not broken down by type, I believe if you compared the number of mentions of subscriptions throughout the text of the reports vs. the references to cash shop sales and the like, you would get an idea of how important the former is currently, compared to the latter.
I think CSW proved quite conclusively that it's very possible 2/3 of WoW players are in Asia.
You mean the jpg from 2010 that shows Asian players account for 48%, knowing that multiple sources, including ATVI, say that Asian subscribers account for most of the subscriber losses for the last couple of years? Well Selphea, no disrespect, but if that's what you consider conclusive proof, I definitely need to wrap this up because that means we're outside of the realm what I would consider reasoned or constructive discussion.
1. Cash shop proceeds come with little cost and are contribute to a growing amount of WoW's profit.
2. The number of WoW's players in Asia is much bigger than 8% of WoW's total playerbase across all countries and partners, and the net profit from Asia is much larger than 8% of $141M
Yeah, I don't have a fundamental problem with the idea of cash shop sales, and have no personal interest in WoW one way or the other. For some historical perspective, early in my career when I was a marketing manager responsible for online games, for what was the largest global online service at the time, about 20 years ago and pre-Internet commercialization (yes, I am an old fart/curmudgeon), customers paid $12.50/hour to play mostly text-based games over a 2400 baud modem. Business models evolve, just like the technology does. However, I do think there is an ethical way and an unethical way to utilize microtransactions and communicate with your customers; as a CO player, that is more where my concerns are focused.
LTS since 2009. Author of ACT parser module for CO. Founder of Rampagers. Resident curmudgeon.
"Without data, you're just another person with an opinion." -- W. Edwards Deming
Seriously? OK. A different market is everything: cultural differences, the fact that N. American gamers tend to be more affluent and generate more revenue per customer, different regulatory environments (i.e. The9), taxes, currency exchange rates, etc.
None of which would change the core fact that Asian revenue is a flat-to-downward-trending proportion of ATVI's total revs, and if it were excluded from the P&L, ATVI would still be very profitable.
In other words, you're arguing from an ATVI perspective rather than a global WoW perspective. However, I already said I'm sure WoW can survive in the West without a cash shop. And I take it you're admitting that a sub-based WoW may very well be dying in Asia.
You forgot to include in your scenario the possibility that NetEase could have a magical unicorn that craps Skittles. But even your unrealistic scenario fails to address anything about cash shop sales vs. subscription revenue. Look, I didn't make the original claim(s), and it's not my burden to have to disprove every hypothetical possibility you can come up with, when we've seen no substantial evidence to support either "2/3 players in Asia" or "would not survive without cash shop".
However, regarding your sceniario, if you choose to do your homework in the financial reports you'll find that: other titles like Diablo III were identified as being strong in Asia, ATVI does have property and expenses tied to the Asia region, not to mention R&D, marketing, and COGS line-items for all major product lines; and average subscriber revenue in Asia is lower than in the West. Also even though the online revenue is not broken down by type, I believe if you compared the number of mentions of subscriptions throughout the text of the reports vs. the references to cash shop sales and the like, you would get an idea of how important the former is currently, compared to the latter.
They do, but not proportionate to the revenue they're getting from the region. They are outsourcing many functions in Asia to their partners. Which is why I regard both the case for and against the claims with healthy skepticism.
You mean the jpg from 2010 that shows Asian players account for 48%, knowing that multiple sources, including ATVI, say that Asian subscribers account for most of the subscriber losses for the last couple of years? Well Selphea, no disrespect, but if that's what you consider conclusive proof, I definitely need to wrap this up because that means we're outside of the realm what I would consider reasoned or constructive discussion.
In the very same jpg, it did state that 48% doesn't include a further 5.5 million players in Asia.
So...
48% of 11.5 = 5.52 mil
5.52 + 5.5 = 10.02 mil total Asian players in 2010
And 11.5 + 5.5 = 17 mil total players in 2010
10.02 mil / 17 mil = [B][U]59% Asian players in 2010[/U][/B]
And the 1.3 million players supposedly lost in China are defined as "subscribers", according to their annual report. In other words, they may very well still be players, just not on a subscription basis.
Also, APAC revenue seems to be consistent with the numbers from 2 FYs ago when the playerbase was higher. In other words, something happened to cause a spike from Q4 2012 which lasted till Q3 2013. My guess is CoD Online. But otherwise it seems Asia revenue has always hovered around the mid $0.3bn mark despite WoW supposedly bleeding subscribers, so I don't think those 1.3 million lost subs were truly lost.
In the very same jpg, it did state that 48% doesn't include a further 5.5 million players in Asia.
So...
48% of 11.5 = 5.52 mil
5.52 + 5.5 = 10.02 mil total Asian players in 2010
And 11.5 + 5.5 = 17 mil total players in 2010
10.02 mil / 17 mil = [B][U]59% Asian players in 2010[/U][/B]
Sorry, I thought it was pretty obvious from the jpg that the "other 5.5 Million Subscribers in Asia" not included refers to the graphic immediately above that text comparing Samoa's revenue to "If you only took the players in America and Europe".
5.5M is 48% of the the 11.5M worldwide subscribers stated at that point in time, i.e. it matches the number of Asian subscribers in the pie chart.
It's corroborated by various other sources that refer to the approximately 50% of Asian subscribers in the 2009-2011 time period, which seems to have been the peak.
Sorry, I thought it was pretty obvious from the jpg that the "other 5.5 Million Subscribers in Asia" not included refers to the graphic immediately above that text comparing Samoa's revenue to "If you only took the players in America and Europe".
5.5M is 48% of the the 11.5M worldwide subscribers stated at that point in time, i.e. it matches the number of Asian subscribers in the pie chart.
It's corroborated by various other sources that refer to the approximately 50% of Asian subscribers in the 2009-2011 time period, which seems to have been the peak.
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PWE is a business, all business seeks money. It's kind of silly, to be blunt about it, that people have this notion that business actually cares about people in general. While individual developers might have goals for the people, the end result is, if they want to be paid they have to work in the budget, and they have to sell the product to get paid.
Therefor they develop where the money is at. That might change with Champions, that might not, but you'd have to come up with actual reasoning that bean counters will leap at to prove it will be a profitable venture to spend resources towards something that might not even turn a profit.
It's why they are putting out costumes and lockboxes, those make money. It's not a quick buck venture it's also for development of the game. But they have to pay those developers, artists, programmers, and engineers to, not to mention all other utilities for just keeping the servers open.
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What programmers? If we had those devoted to CO, we'd have a lot more bug fixes than just a small handful every couple of months.
This is another reason I'm cancelling. I'm not going to support this trend of cash shop reliant games. There are plenty of mmos in the past and present that never relied on such a business model, and if CO had some dedicated development and fixes, it wouldn't have to use its Z store as life support.
Uhhh, I think I can count on one hand the number of MMOs not reliant on a cash shop now. Even the almighty WoW is reliant on a cash shop now.
And while you say there are no programmers I guess you missed key points that there are such as the blogs, the fact that CN is hiring more and so forth. So, yea, I think we can stop pretending there aren't any.
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I wouldn't call WoW reliant on their cash shop. I'm sure they could easily survive on subscriptions alone, seeing as they have for several years, and the cash shop is additional icing on the cake.
However, I highly doubt that CO can survive on subscriptions alone in its current form. That's a corner they may have backed themselves into.
And I just checked. Cryptic is currently only hiring one gameplay programmer, and there is no indication that they will be working on Champions Online. http://www.crypticstudios.com/openings
But I'll admit, one is better than none at all. :biggrin:
Hopefully, that Systems Designer opening is also for CO. We could definitely use one of those.
No WOW can't survive without the cash shop. Over 2/3rds of their player base is in Asia which has a completely different subscription plan to American and EU. There is a reason the cash shop is a fully integrated feature in WoW and not a secondary web site thing anymore. There is also a reason MMOs have been swapping to cash shops. The amount of active subscriptions needed to be viable in this market flooded by many titles makes competition harder and harder. Since MMOs are suppose to be persistent, unlike single player games, the competition is rougher because they have a sea to compete with for the money.
And rate hikes aren't viable as people are just not wanting to pay subscriptions as much any more for titles. After all RIFT supposedly was doing quite well, but still went to the cash shop route.
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HOT DAMN :eek:!
I'm applying for this. Wish me luck!
Really? Because according to their most earnings report, only about 8% of their revenue came from Asia.
Also, as you can see here, subscriptions still account for a healthy portion of their revenue. They haven't released any figures about cash shop revenue specifically, but considering it's so new, and wasn't even mentioned on the earnings call/Q&A, I really doubt it's very significant at this point.
Please keep making up spurious "facts" to try to sound like you know what you're talking about though. You never know, it's probably fooling some people.
"Without data, you're just another person with an opinion." -- W. Edwards Deming
8% of ATVI's revenue including CoD, Hearthstone and all the other stuff under their umbrella isn't really representative of WoW one way or another.
Although 8% is really low considering how much they wanted to push Starcraft 2 E-sports. League must've kicked their behinds pretty bad in Korea.
Just a small point but Thugs Masterminds, and occasionally Zombies (in duels) saw a fair bit of play in team matches. Two Thugs (one Storm and one "healer") were hilariously obnoxious in small maps like Lab. I do 100% agree that the Incarnate stuff left them behind though, at least until they beefed their "virtual" levels to match your Incarnate level.
Well. Speaking just for myself that has been playing for two or so years, with a little time off for other activities, you don't have to use the cash shop at all. I use my monthly stipend on a costume set and have just now bought Cosmic Keys of Power after deliberation with my play partner. I'm unlikely to get too many CKoP though since the lockbox odds aren't made available from the devs, but rather the hard work of CO gamers.
As for programmers, I'm sure there is some bug-fixing out there but with work on new Alerts and potential lack of personnel might make this harder. Still waiting for news of the rumoured fall update too...
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So, do you have a report that is strictly just WoW? I'd be impressed if you did actually.
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From the earnings report, Blizzard's online/WoW revenue was $201M. Show me the math as to how it's possible (let alone likely) for 2/3 of that to be from Asia, while combined revenue for all business units from Asia is only $86M?
"Without data, you're just another person with an opinion." -- W. Edwards Deming
Please, continue!
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Do you have any sources to substantiate your "2/3 from Asia" claim?
"Without data, you're just another person with an opinion." -- W. Edwards Deming
You mean other than what Activision/Blizzard has stated in the past? But because they use a completely different subscription model, IE they pay by the hour (last I heard) instead of just pay a month and done, they substitute that also with a cash shop. This was from 2010 one of their last demographic things I can find since digging through dev posts is never fun, and I doubt it's changed much even in the wake of them losing subscribers. At the bottom it states that that graph doesn't even include 5.5 million from Asia that just pay by the hour. Hell, there was a big hubabaloo in the news about Chinese law and WoW having to shut down there because their distributor there did something naughty a couple of years ago and they had to work through Chinese channels before the game could go back up again.
Furthermore, Asia is made up of more than just China, Korea, and such, Russia is also considered apart of Asia to, as well as India.
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I believe the original quote was that 2/3 of the players are from Asia, which may not necessarily equate to 2/3 of ActiBlizz revenue. Afaik the WoW provider in China isn't ActiBlizz - NetEase is the licensed publisher so naturally it won't be 100% of Asian players' revenue reflected in ActiBlizz's accounts. We don't know how they split the Azerothian pie between them.
In other words, nothing conclusive pointing one way or the other.
for your second source, I think you need something different, people who are looking at it cannot see the graph
48% in 2010 is reasonable. They've actually been losing market-share in China since then. Still pretty far from 2/3, but what's ~18% and 4 years between friends.
"But those numbers are down from 12 million players in October 2010, and Activision said in May that it lost 1.3 million users in the first quarter of 2013, largely in Asia. A July 2 report by investment bank T.H. Capital estimated that World of ******** users in China may increase slightly in the second quarter but warned that user engagement, measured by hours played, is likely to keep falling. The user drop-offs raise concerns, Activision said in a May 8 statement. The company declined requests for further comment."
"Without data, you're just another person with an opinion." -- W. Edwards Deming
page not found
Actually you ignored the part I pointed out that the chart didn't include 5.5 million of the Asian demographic because they weren't including those that just pay by the hour. So including the 5.5 million, that would easily have trumped the 2/3rds on that graph alone and considering the last couple of years there has been worry because the loss of subscriptions has been in NA and EU now, I again doubt the chart has substantially moved from the 2/3rds market claim.
So 1.3 away from the 5.5 million unaccounted for pay by the hour users that the pie graph talked about. And if only 1.3 million is from Asia, what about the other 2.7 million that they've lost since 2010?
So subtracting from said pie graph the 5.5 million from 12 million gives 6.5 million. That means 48% of Asia was 3.12 million subscribers of the WoW pie. Add back in the 5.5 million that is 8.62 million for the Asian side of things that is roughly 71.83% or over 2/3rds.
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Fixed, thanks. Apparently World of ******** is censored in URLs here.
"Without data, you're just another person with an opinion." -- W. Edwards Deming
If you're arguing that you think there are a lot of players in Asia that don't contribute to revenue, I guess that's possible. But in the original context of "WoW can't survive without a cash shop because of Asia", I'd say that players that don't generate revenue are not supportive of that argument.
"Without data, you're just another person with an opinion." -- W. Edwards Deming
Considering they are pushing hard for a cash shop, and considering how many different development teams and projects they have going on over there lately. They've already dropped the recruit a friend program, included a instant level 90 item in their cash shop, it has all the ear marks of looking heavily to free to play.
And no, I didn't say there are Asian's who don't contribute, that report with the pie graph specifically stated they don't include pay by the hours. That is because there are actually quite a few net laws in place, such as some regions only allowed to play a certain amount of hours at a time since several deaths in the past have been attributed to exhaustion due to over playing games in China and Korea. Furthermore, your report is off, as pointed out earlier, because NetEase handles all that and as stated it isn't sure how they divvy up that pie, nor how it is reported in the annual report.
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There's a difference between not contributing revenue at all and not contributing revenue to ActiBlizz.
For all we know NetEase WoW may indeed live or die based on the presence of a cash shop, but since the exact terms of the WoW license in China is unknown, there's no way to tell how that affects ActiBlizz.
NetEase's FY13 results do mention a decline in revenue from WoW. Whether that's due to Asian tastes shifting towards fancy Korean offerings or the lack of a cash shop or something else is anyone's guess though.
That said, I have no doubt WoW can live as a sub-only game in the West. I'm just not sure whether it makes a lot of business sense to avoid dabbling in microtransactions, especially given Bob Kotick's penchant to "exploit" his cash cows.
Now you've reframed the original question from whether or not "WoW can survive without a cash shop" to whether or not "WoW's affiliate in China can survive without a cash shop", which is quite different.
We don't need to know the specifics of the arrangement with NetEase to know how it affects the parent company. The parent company's revenue bottom-line will include their revenue from the Netease arrangement.
FACT: $86M (8%) of ATVI's revenue in Q1 came from Asia
FACT: Revenue from WoW was $201M*
FACT: Net profit for Q1 was $141M
Sure, nothing is conclusive, but a reasonably informed person can make reasonable inferences from the data that "2/3 of the market being Asia" or that WoW would as of now "not survive" without a cash shop are utter fallacies.
Believe what you want, I think this horse has been beaten.
* consists of revenue from all World of ******** products, including subscriptions, boxed products, expansion packs, licensing royalties
"Without data, you're just another person with an opinion." -- W. Edwards Deming
Can you tell me how much of that $201 million was made from subscriptions and how much of it was made from their $25 dollar cash shop items? As a for instance, when the "disco lion" as Darnell called it went up, I believe it was stated that 650,000 of those sold in the first day. That would be $16.25 million.
Other items range from $10 on up in their cash shop with several cosmetic items having appeared at around $15 a pop. How many of those sell do you think? And later when WoD if they haven't already, they are planning on selling level 90 characters at $60 a pop. You can in fact pre-purchase multiple copies of WoD now for an instant level 90, which itself is $50 just for the basic digital edition now, not the digital deluxe.
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I remain skeptical, if only for three things:
1: Cryptic's policy of moving any developer to any game at any time. For all we know, the ratio of CO:STO:NW devs is just as lopsided in Seattle as it is in Los Gatos. And if the develop-to-revenue model applies to staff levels as well as project time, the payrolls of each game probably look like the Yankees, Dodgers, and Astros. All of this has happened before...
2: Dan Stahl's Super Secret Project. How far along is it, and who's working on it? (In Cryptic's defense here, Stahl is still based in California AFAIK, so there's probably not many Cryptic North folk working on that.) (And no, I don't think it's the Xbox One port of NW, since Velasquez and Robobo are doing the press for it. If Stahl was involved, his name would be in there somewhere.)
3: How many of these job postings are Cryptic actually enlarging its development team, and how many are merely replacing departed employees? Just because forum-active Gold Names aren't leaving doesn't mean that rank-and-file coders and modelers aren't moving on.
Has anybody else noticed that it's been about a year since Fatal Err0r? Carrier Wave went live in early August 2013, and the Cybermind stage launched around the end of the month. After the bug-fix pass we knew was coming last autumn, we've gotten one 10-man boss fight, a few holiday events full of busy work but no real challenges, and lots of trinkets in lockboxes and C-Store with no events or even a common thread. (Unless you consider "NPC hero comes to town and tries to sell you a raffle ticket for a hoverbike" to be a common thread.)
I've been railing on about player base attrition for a while now. If the level and speed of development we've seen is any indication, either attrition is showing up on the balance sheet now, or that Next Big Thing that seems to be perpetually on the horizon is taking the lion's share of the money. I really hope it's the latter, and I hope it gets here soon, because as things stand right now, people are going to make their summer vacations from this game permanent ones.
C'mon, Cryptic. Only you can prevent forum fires. Manage the message a little better than "Soon".
They're not there in the beginning, but when your story ends / Gonna last with you longer than your friends
It probably doesn't help that whenever they'd do events people would complain because it wasn't "real content". I dunno about anyone else, but I'd kill for a new event right now. And not "anniversary new" or "turn on bloodmoon" new. I mean new as in the sort we were getting every 2-3 months for a while there.
As for the pandacraft comparisons, there are a few factors that we're not keeping in mind here. They have a sub model primarily, their "free to play" is only to 20. We give the full experience right off the bat, barring freeform. They've got cash-based expansions you need to buy, before you get the privilege of paying them monthly to play it. We made even the paid adventures free and nerfed the living *crap* out of em, so nobody would even want to play them in the first place. We were going to have a paid expansion, but I was like one of 3 people who didn't freak the hell out at the idea of paying for expansions like every other mmo on the planet. Wow sure doesn't allow you to buy one character for a one time fee that can push to max level. We do.
It's not incorrect to state that we can't support ourselves with a sub only model. As a player base, we asked for this. We wanted freeforms for silvers. We didn't want to pay for expansions. We wanted adventure packs to be open for everyone, and called BS that the best gear came from serpent lantern on elite, which is something not everyone can do. So we paved, nerfed, and homogenized everything. Cut out a few major sources of profit at the same time.
I'm not saying this is bad, it's nice that a free player can basically do everything a paid player can. But it's definitely a reality that if we want everything open and free? We're gonna see cash shop stuff and not a lot of other content to make up for it. That cash shop money is going to keeping the lights on. Developing other cash shop stuff. I find it flat out hilarious when people say "I'm not buying any of the new costumes, because they're not bug fixing" and the like, because if we're doing badly enough that we're mostly getting cosmetic items right now? Yeah, boycott. Having even less money is SURE to make those bug fixes happen.
As for the doomsaying? PWE just announced a closure the other day, and one of the people in a channel I'm on noticed that the game hadn't gotten a patch since 2010. 4 YEARS without an update before they closed it down. I'll repeat: PWE doesn't like shuttering games. So let's stop the doomsaying, CO isn't going anywhere. And if you think we're in maintenance mode now? 4 years without a single update.
RIP Caine
I do see OP's point in that he is paying for a game that isn't getting content or bug fixes, but just more stuff to buy in addition to his sub. He feels like he's not getting anything in return for the money he was spending.
I don't agree in having people pay for content or expansions in a F2P game, especially for a company that wants a world wide presence. A $50 expansion is not $50 everywhere. It may be double or triple in price. Not only that, gating content behind money segregates the population. Companies need players even if not all of them are paying. More players = more exposure = more people know about the game = more new players = more people that will throw money at the game.
PS: His name is King Sellout. And his story is that he blew all of his money on those fancy arms and chariot, before he could pay for his other ... problems. That's why he's wearing the diaper. He doesn't like to talk about it.
[at]riviania Member since Aug 2009
You need to explain how it's different here, considering it's the same game, barring censorship, just in a different market.
We actually do, considering the nature of how the Netease partnership came about, i.e. after government intervention with the service under the previous partner, The9. Most importantly, the amount of the WoW license that's fixed, based on the right to distribute and host the game in China and the proportion that's variable, based on a cut of revenue i.e. subscriptions paid/timecards sold.
For all we know, WoW may have become less lucrative for ATVI under the new partner because the fixed amount may be greater, but the NetEase partnership would still be important for them in order to retain their presence in China and be able to distribute new games there.
Apart from NetEase, WoW distribution across Asia seems to be handled by a number of partners, including Asiasoft for Southeast Asia.
I'm not doubting your conclusion about whether or not WoW will survive. It's a possibility, but too much speculation was needed to arrive at it. I'm choosing to have a healthy amount of skepticism for both you and CSW at this point.
"2/3 of the market being Asia" - that's a misquote and I think CSW proved quite conclusively that it's very possible 2/3 of WoW players are in Asia.
Furthermore, due to distribution/licensing agreements, that $86M from Asia may be the result of mostly royalties with little costs involved, compared to say, NA revenue, where ATVI is their own publisher and has to bear the costs of publication, including a larger physical presence to accommodate a sales and marketing team, advertising, box printing, server and database hosting etc etc. So revenue would logically be greater, but offset by higher costs.
Then we have to consider that other ATVI titles like CoD may not be as big in Asia as WoW, so that would skew Western revenue even further. In the most extreme scenario, suppose all of that $86M are royalties/licensing fees with no costs involved, and therefore accounts for 61% of of the $141M profit. Then suppose WoW accounts for a bigger slice of ATVI's Asian pie than it does for the West. It becomes possible that 66% of the WoW market does exist in Asia.
So without full disclosure from ATVI, both what you say and what CSW says are within the realm of possibility. There's too many unknowns to conclusively point one way or the other.
However, I think it's safe to assume the following:
1. Cash shop proceeds come with little cost and are contribute to a growing amount of WoW's profit.
2. The number of WoW's players in Asia is much bigger than 8% of WoW's total playerbase across all countries and partners, and the net profit from Asia is much larger than 8% of $141M
Really, it's a bit like complaining that your Hyundai Sonata, a perfectly serviceable and sturdy car, is a POS because it doesn't have the acceleration or top end of a Ferrari Testarossa - a significantly more expensive vehicle.
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Not trying to undermine you here, but PWE announced today that Rusty Hearts will shut down next month.
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That's what he's talking about. But the last update was like 1 or 2 years ago, not 4 (I was there during the conversation and it was a bit of a miscommunication).
Thing about Rusty Hearts is, I wouldn't be surprised if literally no one played it. I couldn't get it to work after I switched to Windows 8 and apparently I wasn't alone. So yea, kind hard to keep a game open if players can't actually play it.
I mean ... it's kinda' like Groundhog Day all over again. We've been having the same conversation of, "I like it!" and, "It could be better!" for years.
Personally, I think if you like this game, you should, at this point, largely be happy it's still around given how lulzy bad it's been managed (note: Emmert even admitted the game's release was improperly handled in interviews leading up to STO's launch).
If you don't like the game? Seriously, it's unlikely that Cryptic will ever change it so it will suit your tastes; they just aren't into the game enough to invest a pile of money into a game with a largely unknown IP and a poor reputation among the MMO community.
The game has settled into ... I'm not sure what. It's something more than maintenance mode (we still see patches and some new things added), but something less than what most people would see as active development (15 or 20 hours' worth of content added per year, some new powers, an expansion every 2 or 3 years, etc.). Cryptic doesn't seem to be doing much to bring new people into the game ... but they are better at not actively antagonizing loyal players (seriously, the first few months were, in retrospect, funny / bad).
Fair, but when you measure your updates in *years* I think it's at the point where... Yeah we're not there yet.
Notburningchick, lol I think the funniest part about them irritating the players in the very beginning is that they were by and large listening to what we asked for when they did it. See also: the Telepathy nerf. We're all "Telepaths don't need anyone else, they could solo this game if they want to" and so nerf hammered so hard that it killed Jean Gray twice.
That and I wonder if they pulled their first coders from a high school class. Kitchen sink. Eef.
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I believe the quality of that early coding clearly reflects the situation in which it was coded. It's difficult to do your best work when you can't let your current boss know what that work is. And since the original, rather grandiose plans had to be dumped when they lost their two corporate backers (ah, the Marvel MMO that could have been!), there hasn't really been the opportunity to throw everything out and start over.
So yeah, if you dislike this game and would need major changes made to it in order to make it something you would like, my advice is to simply walk away, because that's not happening. As for me? Finally picked up my LTS a few days ago. Happily leveling two new characters, as I learn how the Freeform system works.
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Seriously? OK. A different market is everything: cultural differences, the fact that N. American gamers tend to be more affluent and generate more revenue per customer, different regulatory environments (i.e. The9), taxes, currency exchange rates, etc.
None of which would change the core fact that Asian revenue is a flat-to-downward-trending proportion of ATVI's total revs, and if it were excluded from the P&L, ATVI would still be very profitable.
You forgot to include in your scenario the possibility that NetEase could have a magical unicorn that craps Skittles.
However, regarding your sceniario, if you choose to do your homework in the financial reports you'll find that: other titles like Diablo III were identified as being strong in Asia, ATVI does have property and expenses tied to the Asia region, not to mention R&D, marketing, and COGS line-items for all major product lines; and average subscriber revenue in Asia is lower than in the West. Also even though the online revenue is not broken down by type, I believe if you compared the number of mentions of subscriptions throughout the text of the reports vs. the references to cash shop sales and the like, you would get an idea of how important the former is currently, compared to the latter.
You mean the jpg from 2010 that shows Asian players account for 48%, knowing that multiple sources, including ATVI, say that Asian subscribers account for most of the subscriber losses for the last couple of years? Well Selphea, no disrespect, but if that's what you consider conclusive proof, I definitely need to wrap this up because that means we're outside of the realm what I would consider reasoned or constructive discussion.
Yeah, I don't have a fundamental problem with the idea of cash shop sales, and have no personal interest in WoW one way or the other. For some historical perspective, early in my career when I was a marketing manager responsible for online games, for what was the largest global online service at the time, about 20 years ago and pre-Internet commercialization (yes, I am an old fart/curmudgeon), customers paid $12.50/hour to play mostly text-based games over a 2400 baud modem. Business models evolve, just like the technology does. However, I do think there is an ethical way and an unethical way to utilize microtransactions and communicate with your customers; as a CO player, that is more where my concerns are focused.
"Without data, you're just another person with an opinion." -- W. Edwards Deming
In other words, you're arguing from an ATVI perspective rather than a global WoW perspective. However, I already said I'm sure WoW can survive in the West without a cash shop. And I take it you're admitting that a sub-based WoW may very well be dying in Asia.
They do, but not proportionate to the revenue they're getting from the region. They are outsourcing many functions in Asia to their partners. Which is why I regard both the case for and against the claims with healthy skepticism.
In the very same jpg, it did state that 48% doesn't include a further 5.5 million players in Asia.
So...
And the 1.3 million players supposedly lost in China are defined as "subscribers", according to their annual report. In other words, they may very well still be players, just not on a subscription basis.
Also, APAC revenue seems to be consistent with the numbers from 2 FYs ago when the playerbase was higher. In other words, something happened to cause a spike from Q4 2012 which lasted till Q3 2013. My guess is CoD Online. But otherwise it seems Asia revenue has always hovered around the mid $0.3bn mark despite WoW supposedly bleeding subscribers, so I don't think those 1.3 million lost subs were truly lost.
Sorry, I thought it was pretty obvious from the jpg that the "other 5.5 Million Subscribers in Asia" not included refers to the graphic immediately above that text comparing Samoa's revenue to "If you only took the players in America and Europe".
5.5M is 48% of the the 11.5M worldwide subscribers stated at that point in time, i.e. it matches the number of Asian subscribers in the pie chart.
It's corroborated by various other sources that refer to the approximately 50% of Asian subscribers in the 2009-2011 time period, which seems to have been the peak.
Here's some commentary from the most recent annual report about the loss of WoW subscribers in Asia being partially offset by CoD.
"Without data, you're just another person with an opinion." -- W. Edwards Deming
Ah the graphic was misleading, they should've separated it with a border or different color.
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You are technically correct, the best kind of correctness.
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