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Guild Wars 2 sells 3.8 million in China in 2 months time, game tops 7 million

Thorgal

Member
http://gw2.17173.com/content/2014-07-04/20140704155902215.shtml

the publisher of GW2 in China compiled a 2nd census today.

The first census saw 760k players on launch day.

Today (2 months later) there are 3.8 million Chinese players.
Bringing GW2 up to a whopping 7m+ sales in less than 2 years, meeting it's predecessor in a fraction of the time with no expansions. ( the other 3.5 million non Chines sales are from first anniversary . since then the game has got some crazy low discounts so the final number of ww sales might very well be higher . )

Server breakdown and population: (full star = T1 WvW empty star = T2 WvW)

De Weina 304,773 ★

Lion's Arch 302,635 ★

Blade of Destiny 285,065 ★

nightwatchman 240,464 ★

Dolma 206,009 ★

words of God to 175,404 ☆

deep sea dragon 137,967 ★

Abberton 135,404 ☆

Blessed City 133,117 ☆

of God swamp 130,578 fans

Balthazar 128,153 ☆

falling rock waterfall 125,193

Shield Cliff 115,783 ☆

Lisa 114,928 ☆

Zetan 110,809 ★

Titans Claw 107,033

Gulan Si 104,334 ★

Kemi Er 85,601 ☆

Merlin duo 85,240 ☆

Purgatory Canyon 85,169 ☆

soul York 78,565

Lata Som 69,575

passphrase Mission 65,787 ☆

Dawn Heights 62,455

Derman religious 55,089 ☆

fear Gulf 54,947 ☆

ash wasteland 48,444

betrayal abyss 47,796

green lake 46,666

camp Modesto 44,390 ☆

carat Cato 32,185

Eye of the North 31,588

Ed Byrne 11,097




This is an amazing accomplishment for ArenaNet so props to them .


Dragon Bash me if old .
 

Phazon

Member
Nice result. I hope NCSoft will give Arenanet more means to develop some great content in the coming years. It still has so much potential :)
 

Hawkian

The Cryptarch's Bane

kswiston

Member
Did the first guild wars launch in China? If not, I don't see how the sales btw GW1 and GW2 are comparable. People in China are paying a quarter of the regular retail price.
 

Vyrance

Member
It has its faults, but I really do enjoy the game. It also helps that GAF guild is the best ;)

If anyone is looking to join in on Guild Wars, hop over to the OT and let us know you want to join in so we can invite you to the family. We play on Stormbluff Isle server in North America region. We have a lot of people from outside NA that are with us as well.
 
Ed Byrne?

0IMsx7d.jpg


Check out my server!
 

Hawkian

The Cryptarch's Bane
Did the first guild wars launch in China? If not, I don't see how the sales btw GW1 and GW2 are comparable. People in China are paying a quarter of the regular retail price.
Of course it did. A more reasonable argument would be that the sales aren't comparable because the games used pretty dramatically different financial models (and GW1 wasn't actually even an MMO :p).

Still, GW2 is an MMO, and the pricing model in China is quite different from what they are used to across the board, so this is all in all a pretty big deal.
It has its faults, but I really do enjoy the game. It also helps that GAF guild is the best ;)

If anyone is looking to join in on Guild Wars, hop over to the OT and let us know you want to join in so we can invite you to the family. We play on Stormbluff Isle server in North America region. We have a lot of people from outside NA that are with us as well.
<3 Thanks Vyrance. Here's the thread for anybody interested: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?p=120018706#post120018706

New season of content just started! Log in now to get Episode 1 unlocked, Episode 2 hits a week from today.
 

drotahorror

Member
Good for them I guess. Never fixing mouse acceleration ruined the game for me though, er Camera Smoothing I guess it's really called.
 

Orayn

Member
No server transfers? That kind of sucks.

Not really surprising, a lot of MMOs have separate versions for China since they often have different publishers and need to accommodate a unique set of government regulations. That can make cross-play, server transfers, etc. kind of difficult.
 

Principate

Saint Titanfall
Did the first guild wars launch in China? If not, I don't see how the sales btw GW1 and GW2 are comparable. People in China are paying a quarter of the regular retail price.

Gw1 got to that point after several years standalone expansions and a regular expansion. Also most of it's sales were I imagine also at low retail costs. So even if it hadn't launched in china like it did it would be impressive since gw1 didn't even sell that great in china from most reports.
 
Shame it was such a disappointment.

Like clockwork.

"Guild Wars 2 Nabs ‘Fastest Selling Western MMO’ Crown, Looks East for More Records" thread:
Of the 20 or so people I know who bought the game, not a single person was playing after a month.

"Guild Wars 2 has sold over 3 million copies since August, 2013 content plans outlined" thread:
Stopped playing after a few weeks, and pretty sure all my friends did also. Removing the Trinity was one of the worst things about the game IMO.

"Guild Wars 2 | Year One By The Numbers" thread:
Thought the game was a huge disappointment, did get a good laugh when Moody made the OT and people lost their shit.

"'Has 'Guild Wars 2' become too complicated?' (Interview)" thread:
Pretty much the same here, was so excited to play it on release and lasted like 2 weeks. Everyone that I played with did the same, some got to the level cap but I don't know a single person who still plays.

"MMO/MMORPG Suggestions" thread:
I wouldn't recommend GW2 at all, combat is incredibly floaty and the updates (apart from the April Fools) have been pretty dull, most of the time you seem to be waiting around for them to start.

"Only have so much time+money: Guild Wars 2 or Mists of Pandaria?" thread:
GW2 most overrated game in a long time, same old MMO with some small changes.

We get it, you don't like it, and you don't like that it's successful. Are you going to threadshit like this for the rest of your life?
 

Westlo

Member
Didn't this sell like 3.5 million in it's first six months? Sounds like it sold f all after that until China came through and inflated numbers.
 

Orayn

Member
I was expecting a bigger WW number considering it doesn't have a subscription fee

Why? 3.2 million worldwide minus China could very well be the saturation point for the kind of game GW2 is. Just being an MMO doesn't really guarantee eight-figure sales numbers.
 

Hawkian

The Cryptarch's Bane
hahaha whoa, that is due diligence.
I was expecting a bigger WW number considering it doesn't have a subscription fee
That's kinda interesting, what sort of number did you have in mind?

Might be a little misleading to describe it as a "WW" number, because they do still have more region launches planned (Russia, Brazil/South America, etc.). From a regional marketing perspective it's NA, EU, and China in that number.
 

NeededSleep

Member
Are they allowed to have their store for micro transactions in China? Not familiar with their laws.
But grats to arenanet.
 

Orayn

Member
Didn't this sell like 3.5 million in it's first six months? Sounds like it sold f all after that until China came through and inflated numbers.

3 million in 9 months, which is pretty great for a PC exclusive that cost $50-60 during most of that time span.

Are they allowed to have their store for micro transactions in China? Not familiar with their laws.
But grats to arenanet.

No, China is a utopia where all games are single-purchase or completely free. Not a single microtransaction in sight.

...

Microtransactions in MMOs are the Chinese market's bread and butter. The regulations might be slightly different, but they comprise a huge amount of the revenue for online games over there.
 

Currygan

at last, for christ's sake
As compared to the hundreds of MMOs that not only don't have a subscription but also don't have any upfront fees?

yeah but almost none of them had the marketing push or the hype GW2 had so yes, I thought it was about ten millions already
 

Principate

Saint Titanfall
hahaha whoa, that is due diligence.

That's kinda interesting, what sort of number did you have in mind?

Might be a little misleading to describe it as a "WW" number, because they do still have more region launches planned. From a regional marketing perspective it's NA, EU, and China

Yeah the game hasn't launch in Korea yet which is very strange considering NCsoft is a Korean company.
 

Kai Dracon

Writing a dinosaur space opera symphony
I was expecting a bigger WW number considering it doesn't have a subscription fee

On the other hand I wonder if it will continue to be a slow burner due to that. You can get it so cheap during its regular sales it's practically an impulse purchase.
 

Hawkian

The Cryptarch's Bane
Didn't this sell like 3.5 million in it's first six months? Sounds like it sold f all after that until China came through and inflated numbers.
Nah, 3 million in 9 months- 3.5m by the one year mark. That was the last official report (August 2013) so the numbers being used to say "7m" are actually sort of dated (after all, 3.2 million + 3.8 million would be 7) so it's "somewhere more than that" but we don't really know.
Yeah the game hasn't launch in Korea yet which is very strange considering NCsoft is a Korean company.
ArenaNet is a completely American developer, though. Almost everything else in NCSoft's lineup has an Asian development studio at its heart. It might even be every other game? Don't quote me on that one though.
Now, how much of that is fraudulent purchases?
Whoa, what now?
 

Principate

Saint Titanfall
Nah, 3 million in 9 months- 3.5m by the one year mark. That was the last official report (August 2013) so the numbers being used to say "7m" are actually sort of dated (after all, 3.2 million + 3.8 million would be 7) so it's "somewhere more than that" but we don't really know.

ArenaNet is a completely American developer, though. Almost everything else in NCSoft's lineup has an Asian development studio at its heart. It might even be every other game? Don't quote me on that one though.

Whoa, what now?

The point is it's strange that such a significant mmo publisher in Korea still hasn't launched one of it's major games in said region for what is approaching 3 years. Obviously it takes a lot of time to translate and localise the game but still, this is a Korean publisher we're talking about here.

Not as if there isn't demand for it I remember some articles a while back in regards to fan response of gw2 launching in china before Korea. Obviously I imagine they care less about localisation because the Korean market is their bread and butter but it's still kind of weird.
 

Einbroch

Banned
Does China still have those stupid laws where you can't show skeletons or whatever? Because I remember GW2 having a fair amount of them.
 
Obviously it takes a lot of time to translate and localise the game but still, this is a Korean publisher we're talking about here.

It's a bit more than just localizing - there's partnerships to set up, infrastructure, tax situations, companies to hire to manage the region, ArenaNet would have to hire more staff themselves to oversee another region's codebase, etc. ArenaNet isn't that large of a company, and I think they intentionally run a pretty tight ship due to the nature of the game's money-making systems.

WoW launched in 2004 in NA/AUS, but took until 2009 to come out in China, and only came out in Brazil in 2011.

It's a massive undertaking to launch an MMO in a new region, and if you muck it up, you can almost kill the brand there - look at Dungeon Fighter Online's horrid initial NA launch.

Does China still have those stupid laws where you can't show skeletons or whatever? Because I remember GW2 having a fair amount of them.

That wasn't so much law - correct me if I'm wrong - but a political push from an extreme right-wing faction at the time. But I do think a lot of GW2's necromancer imagery and descriptions were changed in the GW2 client.
 

Hawkian

The Cryptarch's Bane
The point is it's strange that such a significant mmo publisher in Korea still hasn't launched one of it's major games in said region for what is approaching 3 years. Obviously it takes a lot of time to translate and localise the game but still, this is a Korean publisher we're talking about here.

Not as if there isn't demand for it I remember some articles a while back in regards to fan response of gw2 launching in china before Korea. Obviously I imagine they care less about localisation because the Korean market is their bread and butter but it's still kind of weird.
Not approaching 3 years, end of August will be 2 years ;)

But yeah, I know the China launch was a huge deal and consumed a lot of bandwidth even using KongZhong as a local intermediary.
 

Principate

Saint Titanfall
It's a bit more than just localizing - there's partnerships to set up, infrastructure, tax situations, companies to hire to manage the region, ArenaNet would have to hire more staff themselves to oversee another region's codebase, etc.

WoW launched in 2004 in NA/AUS, but took until 2009 to come out in China, and only came out in Brazil in 2011.

It's a massive undertaking to launch an MMO in a new region, and if you muck it up, you can almost kill the brand there - look and Dungeon Fighter Online's horrid initial NA launch.

I understand this but ANet is a wholly owned subsidery of NcSoft. NCsoft has numerous mmo's running currently in korea and they're adding more. As far as infrastructure and well everything they should have far less issues launching in Korea than China. China clearly got precedence in priority for seemingly good reason. But still it should take 3-4 years for a Korean mmo publishers to launch a mmo from a developer they own in Korea.

Not approaching 3 years, end of August will be 2 years ;)

But yeah, I know the China launch was a huge deal and consumed a lot of bandwidth even using KongZhong as a local intermediary.

Ah yes makes sense mistyped it..
 
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