But the article also questions ArenaNet’s statement about their Q1/2022 performance:
The February 2022 launch of End of Dragons helped us land our strongest Q1 performance since the announcement of Heart of Thorns in 2015
– ArenaNet
At this point, we suspect the real figure being discussed here is something more like “strongest expansion-pack sales in any week during a Q1 since HOT was announced”
– MassivelyOP
The February 2022 launch of End of Dragons helped us land our strongest Q1 performance since the announcement of Heart of Thorns in 2015
That’s hilarious to me. They never recovered from their bait and switch from chill casual open world to hardcore get fucked instanced challenging content up until EoD, and even then only barely. That’s eight years! Of course, if you look at expansion box sales and not the numbers inbetween, then the sales spikes allow for an entirely different interpretation of what HoT did to the game.
I hope that ArenaNet understands, why WildStar (also ncsoft) died. I still think that by far the majority of GW2 (or rather MMO in general) players are not hardcore raiders but casual players who very much enjoy a chill open world experience with some optional challenges thrown in for good measure.
They should always strive to create a “chill open world experience with some optional challenges thrown in for good measure”, because that is what makes the game successful. Being able to play on your own time and feeling forced to login, is something GW2 does very well.
They had that. The Triple Trouble was the peak of chill game design. An optional sideboss on a map where it didn’t annoy anyone and rallied the entire community because it was just that fucking hard. Now Anet thinks slapping the main story resolution on raid-training difficulty and locking expansion features behind it is the same.
But the article also questions ArenaNet’s statement about their Q1/2022 performance:
True, but the numbers look good compared to earlier. Still a long way to HoT numbers though…
That’s hilarious to me. They never recovered from their bait and switch from chill casual open world to hardcore get fucked instanced challenging content up until EoD, and even then only barely. That’s eight years! Of course, if you look at expansion box sales and not the numbers inbetween, then the sales spikes allow for an entirely different interpretation of what HoT did to the game.
I hope that ArenaNet understands, why WildStar (also ncsoft) died. I still think that by far the majority of GW2 (or rather MMO in general) players are not hardcore raiders but casual players who very much enjoy a chill open world experience with some optional challenges thrown in for good measure.
They should always strive to create a “chill open world experience with some optional challenges thrown in for good measure”, because that is what makes the game successful. Being able to play on your own time and feeling forced to login, is something GW2 does very well.
They had that. The Triple Trouble was the peak of chill game design. An optional sideboss on a map where it didn’t annoy anyone and rallied the entire community because it was just that fucking hard. Now Anet thinks slapping the main story resolution on raid-training difficulty and locking expansion features behind it is the same.
Insanity.