Let’s get the best news for western players in this NCsoft financial report out first: Guild Wars 2 just saw a bit of a welcome upswing in revenue, with its best showing since Q3 2018. We assume this is owing largely to the formal announcement of End of Dragons and its nostalgia-driven Cantha content this past summer.
The expansion itself isn’t expected until next year, most likely the back half of the year, given the timelines previously established. So it’s not clear whether these higher numbers will hold until that launch, but at least it should be a big clue for NCsoft that Guild Wars 2 revenue really does turn heavily on expansions (and hey maybe it shouldn’t go more than two years between them again).
Overall, NCsoft’s revenue is up by almost half year-over-year with a 9% increase quarter-over-quarter; NCsoft attributes the gains to Lineage 2 M’s launch as well as “balanced growth from Lineage M and main PC online games.” During its investor call, NCsoft defended its cadence for new games, which includes the delayed Aion 2, Blade & Soul 2, and Project TL, the last of which has been lingering in test phases since literally before we founded the new MassivelyOP in 2015. NCsoft told investors, however, that its most recent internal testing is “encouraging,” so maybe we’ll see that game in our lifetimes after all.
Since we’re talking about NCsoft… remember how NCsoft has a baseball team called the NC Dinos? They apparently just won the Korean Series. Check out that victory sword, my dudes.
The Korean Series Sword > All Professional League Trophies except the Stanley Cup pic.twitter.com/1l5P0liSyA
— Michael Piff (@Mike_PiFF03) November 24, 2020
https://twitter.com/sung_minkim/status/1331231232630222850
