On the surface, fourth quarter 2016 financials for MMORPG giant NCsoft look solid. Yesterday, the company released its investor report, highlighting hefty year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter growth in sales and operating profit, both setting records for the studio.
Among NCsoft’s chief games, Lineage as always drives performance, significantly so this quarter, but Lineage II, Aion, Blade and Soul, and Guild Wars 2 held more or less steady over their previous quarters too, though Aion and GW2 are down year-over-year.
Of note, WildStar’s performance is no longer being reported separately, so we can no longer track its downward trends; it’s now bundled unceremoniously into “other sales” — not a good sign, but presumably better than the alternative.
During the investor call, the company reported that Master X Master is expected to launch here by summer, while the global open beta and launch for Lineage Eternal will follow a Korean beta this year. MMO Culture notes that NCsoft’s North American division is plotting a simultaneous mobile launch of Lineage Eternal. Work on four other mobile MMOs — Blade & Soul Mobile, Lineage M, and Aion Legions — continues, with the former two suffering delays.
GW2 was slowly going down hill and HOT didn’t help it either. Talk about a game that lost its direction. Wildstar is just hanging on by a thread. I really think the plug will be pulled on it soon. GW2 had so much promise at launch and they just screwed it up badly. They should have stuck to the lie they made up at launch and it would be doing better. Everyone i knew that played mmo’s tried it at launch and quit it once they got a character to max level.
Poor Wildstar…a game that on paper should have gelled with my tastes but didn’t. Not a flame or troll or declaration of death post, but my heart goes out to those dev’s that poured everything they could into that game. The news regarding it is seldom ever what I’d consider ‘good’.
Whenever I get the urge to play Wildstar, I remember the time and buckets of money I wasted playing Shin Megami Tensei: IMAGINE Online. Low playerbase desperate for new players and new content, relying solely on the hope that things will turn around. Eventually the game disappeared from AeriaGames’ front page, the community staff suffered cuts, and the game was sold to Atlus Online (the MMO publisher equivalent of the River Styx). Once Atlus Online’s MMO publishing branch was shut down, no one wanted to buy the rights and the game faded from existence. Eventually, the original game shut down in Japan.
I don’t think it’s unreasonable to be wary about putting time and money into games that are in Wildstar’s position.
If they do pull the plug on Wildstar, I really hope they continue it in some fashion. Maybe give it to Dark Horse Comics and make a series with it. It has such a great setting and I would really hate to see it go to waste.
Hopefully this means Blade and Soul continues to get attention. You don’t see too many articles about it (not nearly as much compared to Guild Wars), but other than Lineage it’s the only one trending growth.
I really wish I could get back into GW2, I still have fond memories of launch week and months of happy gaming (and still have thousands of gems still in the game!)… I actually can’t remember why i stopped playing it!
I’ve heard so much negativity about HoT, can anyone who left and came back confirm if it’s worth a buy? Think I still have a toon just below the original level cap.
Roughly flat is better than plummeting. The major drop YoY was due to last 4th quarter was when the expansion was released.
Holy ouch.
GW2 continuing to drop in revenue, especially during Q4, is very concerning. Given that they’ve finally hit their stride with living story updates, it makes me wonder if much of the community that supported the game throughout the living story of classic has left. Because between the considerably lower launch sales and the considerable decline in post-launch sustained revenue, things are not looking too rosy for them right now. Extremely curious to see how they’re going to try to “reset” things with the next expansion now, which should be coming through quickly given the continued decline of their quarterly revenue. It’s such a shame to see, because they were performing so well pre-HoT, even during the long content droughts : (
Can’t say I really find the results too surprising though, I still think HoT overall has been a pretty piss-poor expansion to what was an absolutely incredible game. I’d have thought that restarting the LS would have stabilized things, but apparently that’s not the case.
And WildStar…yeah, I fear that game isn’t too long for the world. Hopefully I’m wrong, but the fact that it’s been folded into “other” indicates that revenue is still dropping for the game, which is not good in the slightest.
At least NCsoft is doing well overall, which bodes will for their library as a whole.
I think its largely due to all the players that would care about gw2’s story, have long given up on the game. They arent in the game to enjoy it, nor do they feel or trust that its worth coming back for.
I for one gave GW2 way more second chances than I should have, and its doubtful id go back again. After than HoT expansion, there is no way they could get me to buy another one.
Anet cant seem to find a middle ground between appeasing their current players, and appeasing NEW players (both new and returning)
I think GW2’s problem is the same as it’s been for a long time: They aren’t stocking the cash shop with stuff I’d buy. I’d love to support them, but I’m not buying ugly buttcape costumes and $10 harvesting tools. They have too many people working on the expansion and not enough people left to work on the stuff that actually makes money between those expansions. That seems to be the model they are OK with, but I would really prefer to see it kicking more ass.
I’m desperately hoping they can draw folks, myself included, back in in a big way with their next expansion. They’re not in dire straights by any means, and can easily continue going for a while before needing to consider any major cuts to staff, but they really need to rebound with the next expansion rather than repeat the lackuster “success” of HoT. It’s going to be a tough sell after how divisive HoT ended up being.
I’m hoping those 70ish people (IIRC that’s about how many they said) are putting in some serious work on the expansion, because their presence on the live-teams are sorely missed : (
And agreed on wanting more stuff that’s actually appealing in the cash shop. I’ve considered some of the gliders, but mmmeeeeehhhhhh. Think the last things I bought were that aristocrat garb (the one that’s a FABULOUS DRESS OH GOD YES) and like, the black wings things. So…years ago? Though part of that is me not wanting to spend money in the cash shop in protest of my dislike of HoT.
Same, haven’t spent money in the cash shop in ages, and I play daily and have more than 5600hrs in the game. I wanna support them I just don’t care about ugly one-piece outfits and black lion weapon skins, and I REFUSE to spend 700 gems on a single account wide inventory slot.
Wish they still released armor skins in the gemstore.
True. Even for me, a supporter even post the HoT mess…especially after they finally picked up the pace with patches etc, had little to no chance to actually support the game.
All the tasty commodity stuff has been already released. So unless they end up in the P2W section the only thing they could do is release the new xpac asap , without it being another mess like HoT. If they only put armor sets in the store instead of outfits…sigh.
GW2 problem is that there’s also just not a lot going for it for super casuals like me when ESO is doing such a good job these days.
Fuck, if they offered a sub to Guild Wars 2 that was like, “unlimited stacks in the crafting tab, harvest tools that don’t break because they’re not made of garbage, and token bonuses for cosmetic gear from dungeons.” I’d be all over that for like 15 a month.
Not this time, unlike HoT. Still roughly a staff split of 2/3 live, 1/3 expansion.
Problem with the Gem Shop is anything new must be “cheap” enough to make so it’s development cost is paid off ASAP so additional sales go toward game development. So we get bundles and returning items with a smattering of new gliders, dye kits and outfits.
I’m not sure if the overhaul of the black lion chest was a net positive in terms of key sales. Many feel the new rewards aren’t … rewarding. The roughly 10% chance for an uncommon or rarer hurts.
In regards to http://massivelyop.com/2017/01/05/rumor-ncsoft-might-be-working-on-aion-2/
In the conference call, NCSoft said
Is the A2 rumor just Aion Legions of War or something else?
https://trademarks.justia.com/870/86/aion-legions-of-87086619.html
Seems like this is just a mobile game, especially with references to a “soft launch” (common in mobile to test games in smaller markets before their global/larger regional launch).
Derp, of course. TY. NCSoft is even having two different mobile B&S games from different dev teams; At least there are a lot of MMO-related games in their push into mobile.
Maybe there are some serious behind the doors negotiations on selling Wildstar.* I’m not sure who would buy it unless the folks at Carbine are able to get some backing to go independent with it. It might even be able to turn things around. But as long as it’s an NCSoft property the game simply isn’t going to be able to attract new players because of the perception that it’s next for the chopping block.
* There were such negotiations going on with Paragon Studios trying to buy CoH that Matt “Positron” Miller et al. hoped would be successful right up until the closure was announced.
In the best of all possible worlds, Bree wins a lottery and buys up SSG, Funcom, DBG, Trion-deved (not published), Wildstar and GW2 for the MMO equivalent of the “Island of Misfit Toys.” I included GW2 not because it was doing poorly but it does not seem to fit that well with NCSoft.
In the worst of all possible worlds, which looks a lot like this one, any of the above except GW2 which survive end up at DBG.
Well….one of my 2017 predictions in the comment-system-that-was involved Bree quitting MOP to found Elf Butt Games.
Daybreak of course.