Tag: Guild Wars

Go Back And Revisit Old Events In Guild Wars 2


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To date, Arenanet has introduced more than two dozen living world updates to Guild Wars 2. The feature is great, for those of you who can keep up with it. For others, missing a week or two due to real world obligations or simply taking a hiatus means missing out on rewards and the world’s ongoing evolution. Thankfully this is set to change for (most) affected players. Beginning with the launch of Season 2 on July 1st, as long as a player is able to log in during the two week period, they are able to “bank” the living world to return to at any time after. If you aren’t able to log in during the period, you are still able to access the content for a small fee of in-game currency.

“The Living World exists to drive the story of Guild Wars 2 forward and create a sense of speculation, wonder, and intrigue around the world of Tyria and its characters. We want to create the feeling that anything in Tyria can change and get players looking forward to what might happen next. A natural system that provides story and context for these changes makes sense when we regularly expand the experiences in our game”.

Season 1 will not be included at the launch of the new journal, as it was not built with the journal in mind, but Arenanet hopes to add it in at some point in the future. Season 2 will move away from the concept of meta-achievements entirely, replaced with story-mode achievements accompanied by open world event achievements with each step.

(Source: Arenanet Press Release)

NCSoft Annual Revenue Chart


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I’ve been meaning to create this for quite a while now, but I finally got around to compiling a chart for NCSoft’s yearly sales figures on a per-game basis. Looking at the chart on a yearly basis rather than quarterly makes the difference in income all the more obvious, especially when you see that Lineage alone makes more than Lineage II, Guild Wars 2, and Aion combined. Lineage is also NCSoft’s only game to provide a consistent and growing cash flow, with Blade & Soul’s progress too early to tell, especially since the game’s exceptional overseas performance is not reflected in the figures above.

Over the next few weeks, I will be working on expanding our charts from NCSoft, Perfect World Entertainment, Funcom, and more.

Guild Wars Is In Maintenance Mode


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I think most of us got the hint that this was coming around the time that NCSoft stopped listing Guild Wars on their quarterly financial releases. With the rousing success of Guild Wars 2 and the ever advancing age of Guild Wars, Arenanet has posted today to reveal that their ongoing updates to Guild Wars have had a secondary purpose: To teach the game to run itself. With Arenanet’s views moving elsewhere, Guild Wars is being updated to run on automation, or maintenance mode as many of you know it. The game will no longer be updated, except to better service the automation.

So what does this mean for players? Foremost, handing out trims at tournaments and the map rotation of the tournaments themselves will be completely automated. Weekend events will be extended to full week events and run on automated rotations as well. Basically everything that used to require the hand of Arenanet to start will be fully automated. The goal is to get Guild Wars to a point where it can operate mostly by itself, allowing the game to run in maintenance mode for “years to come.”

(Source: Guild Wars)

 

Funcom Follows Arenanet: The Secret World Is Buy To Play


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Good news, bears. As of…now, The Secret World is buy to play for all. Like Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2, this means that all you have to do is purchase the client and you have full access to the game for as long as you desire (or as long as the game is up and running anyhow). This means all content in the original game, plus that in the first four DLC packs.

“Buy the game before December the 31st and all the content in Issue #5, which will be released shortly, will also be included and you will receive the Initiate Pack, which includes strong starter weapons, a Blood Raven pet and extra social clothing.”

Being a subscriber now offers extra bonuses, from a bonus experience item to $10 worth of Bonus Points monthly for the cosmetic cash shop, an item-of-the-month gift, and a 10% discount to everything in the store. Lifetime subscribers will receive a bonus 10% discount to everything in the store.

Since this is a transition to a new payment model, that means new items being added to the cash shop. Players will now be able to buy bonus AP potions which double ability point gain, as well as a run speed upgrade which works the same as the item that can be bought through the secret society. The first paid DLC will release in January for $5, but anyone who has purchased The Secret World before December 31st will receive it for free.

(Source: The Secret World)

NCSoft 3rd Quarter Finances: Significant Growth From New Products


The folks at Arenanet and Team Bloodlust must be breaking open the champagne today, as NCSoft’s financial statements for the third quarter of 2012 reveal that Guild Wars 2 and Blade & Soul aren’t just bringing home the bacon, they are weaving it and frying it to perfection. Guild Wars 2 launched strong in the United States and Europe, while Blade & Soul ripped up the carpeting in Korea. Both games contributed to a massive 50% year over year gain in profits for NCSoft, pulling the developer up from its operating loss from last quarter that saw heavy corporate restructuring and the cancellation of City of Heroes. Both titles should receive a bump in revenue, as Guild Wars 2’s sales do not include Asia, and Blade & Soul has not launched in the West.

On the other hand, every rose has its thorn. As you have likely noticed, both Guild Wars and City of Heroes are no longer listed. Aion continued its free fall in sales while Lineage II continues its considerably slower downturn. The bump that Lineage received in the second quarter is clearly over and done with, as sales fell to below the fourth quarter sales trough in 2011.

Guild Wars 2 Talks Bots, Gold Farmers, And Bans


As many players of Guild Wars 2 will tell you, a recent explosion in botting has blown into a serious problem for Arenanet and its community. In a post on the official forums, Security Coordinator Mike Lewis went on to discuss recent bans and action taken by Arenanet to curb the legion of bots currently taking up space in his game. Over the past week alone, Arenanet has banned over 1600 bots, and are currently tracking the most commonly used bots while gathering information on additional programs.

We are actively improving our means of detecting ‘bot’ activity in the game automatically. This includes tools for our customer support team to help them verify ‘botting’ reports and efficiently issue account terminations. Recently we have also hired a team of data specialists who will be helping us create more effective tools for analyzing reports of ‘botting.’

Sadly, many of the bots being used are likely through stolen accounts. Remember to practice safe surfing, kids. And if a bot approaches you on the street, don’t get into his van.

(Source: Guild Wars Forums)

Guild Wars 2: Now On Mac!


Blah blah blah, no gamers on Mac, etc etc. With that out of the way, Arenanet has good news everyone! As of right now, Mac players will be able to download and play Guild Wars 2 on a native client. Currently in beta, the client supports all of the features that Guild Wars players enjoy on Windows. In order to download the client, players need an active Guild Wars 2 account, and the game can be downloaded through the account management section of the Guild Wars website.

The Mac Beta client is available immediately for all Guild Wars 2 players. It shares the same features and connects to the same live game servers as the PC client. Anyone who purchases Guild Wars 2 can now play it on both PC and Mac.

Check it out. Keep in mind that this is a beta client, and may have bugs that are not present in the Windows client. Guild Wars 2 on the Mac requires OSX 10.7 or later, Intel Core i5 or later, at least 4GB of ram, 25GB of hard drive space, and runs well on a variety of Mac computers from iMacs, Macbook Pros, and Mac Mini.

(Source: Guild Wars 2)

Guild Wars 2 Headstart First Impressions


We interrupt your Saturday broadcast for a piece about Guild Wars 2. The early beta weekends are a long distant past, so much so that I can’t honestly remember anything that I did in them.

1. Saving Features For Next Time…

I can’t get to everything in this hands-on. As no doubt a few hundred thousand players all attempt to force their way through the teeny tiny door that is the login server, not all of the features are presently working. Foremost, I was unable to get into any of the World Vs World or player vs player instances. Secondly, I was also unable to access the gold transfer service and auction house due to connection outages.

Despite these setbacks, the actual servers themselves held up rather well. My server is the second most populated in the North America region, and rubber banding was almost nonexistent. I can also count the number of times I was disconnected from the server on one finger, although I don’t presume that my experience is universal.

2. World Quests Beat Warhammer Out Of The Water

I catch a lot of flak whenever I refer to Warhammer Online, but the quests in Guild Wars 2 do bear a strong resemblance to the public quest system. Unlike Warhammer Online however, where public quests didn’t serve much purpose other than a repetitive distraction from the normal quest grind, Guild Wars 2 revolves around public quests.

And to separate the two even more, the great majority of quests have numerous ways to complete them. For instance, a farmer may ask you to help him, which you can accomplish by feeding his livestock, killing pests, putting out fires, or watering seeds. While you are doing this, you may find yourself in the middle of a live event where bandits raid the farm. So you put down your tools and finish the spur of the moment quest, and then go back to what you were doing.

Live events are spontaneous and not marked on the map. Unlike Warhammer Online, if you fail at one of these events, the timer doesn’t just reset. Instead the event moves down a completely different path. Say, for instance, that you fail to push back zombies rising in a swamp. They populate and the next event has you defending a town that they attack. Fail that and the town is destroyed.

In theory, anyway. Failing events is rather difficult this weekend when people outnumber the event mobs by an easy 10:1 margin.

3. Overflow Is Obnoxious

I understand the need for Overflow in a game with as massive of a community as Guild Wars, and I would prefer to have overflow servers instead of having to sit in a queue line. But as usual, the concept in practice is not the same as in theory. Overflow is based on zone, not server, so in the time since the Guild Wars servers went live, I have experienced the following:

  1. Enter game, immediately put in overflow.
  2. Finally travel to home server.
  3. Enter city, instance, or new zone. Immediately put back in overflow.
  4. Enter regular server.
  5. Return to city, leave instance, or new zone. Immediately put back in overflow.

You don’t spend a lot of time in areas like the city, so to have the game constantly put you back in overflow just because you changed zones becomes incredibly annoying after a while. Again: Better than the alternative, but in need of improvement.

NCSoft Q2 2012: Profits Down, Revenue Up


NCSoft has released its finances for the second quarter of 2012, and considering that the major MMO news sites suddenly care enough to report on it, I can only assume that there is some drama to be had. Compared to last quarter, revenues are up thanks to solid Lineage sales and royalties, however NCSoft is in the red on operating profit and net income due to what the company refers to as “one-off labor costs.” Here are the bullet points of important details to explain why NCSoft’s profits sunk so low:

  • Lineage sales were strong Korea, however Aion sales tanked due to “scaled back in-game item sales.”
  • Labor costs surged 27% this past quarter due to severance-pay.
  • Royalty expenses increased 35%
  • Marketing expenses were up 112% over last quarter due to Blade & Soul
  • D&A increased 28%
  • NCSoft’s acquisition of Ntreev also ended up being a major cost.

While sales in Korea and Japan held strong, sales in North America continued a slight decline over last quarter. Europe has been hit the hardest, with sales decreasing to virtually nothing (less than 1% of sales for the quarter).

The launch of Guild Wars 2 is expected to make up for any losses incurred this quarter.

Shadowrun Online Is Not Free To Play, Adopting Guild Wars Model


Have you backed Shadowrun Online? Judging by the game’s current $100,000 raised in ten days, I’d have to guess “probably.” With 21 days left to go on the Kickstarter campaign, Cliffhanger Productions has some rather major news to announce: Shadowrun is shifting business models. While Shadowrun will still sport a free to play option with microtransactions, players will be able to pay a one time charge for the “campaign” edition, and play on a separate server where cash shop items do not cost real money (they are purchased with in-game cash).

The full game will cost $39.99 at launch, but for Kickstarter we’ll have it in a $25 dollar reward tier. Major updates (Add-on packs) will be launched every 3 to 4 months and will be priced at $14.99 USD.

Check the list below for the difference between free to play and Campaign.

(Source: Kickstarter)