well its out.
Anyone with financial education able to decipher it for me?
Can get it here:
http://global.ncsoft.com/global/ir/quarterly.aspx
Profits up, sales up however profit for the parent company's quarter (Korea) was actually negative.
Sales in the west actually exceeded sales in Korea for the quarter due to GW2.
B&S sales actually declined while Lineage surged significantly (yes the 15 year old Lineage).
huh, Ok so I did undertand that. Guess I was wondering how sales and profits could be up and they still lost money?
market doesn't seem impressed either. at 136k right now. 1k up from yearly low.
Quote from: Randomvector on February 05, 2013, 02:48:40 AM
huh, Ok so I did undertand that. Guess I was wondering how sales and profits could be up and they still lost money?
if it smells fishy it usually is.
other companies were doing the same thing (remember Enron?), they were buying thier own stocks to make it look like they were making big money but actualy it was a loss because each time they buy thier stock it raised the price causing them to buy the next share at a higher price than the previous, with each buy they lost more and more money.
could be possible that NCSoft has started doing something like this. Korea is one of those countries that is behind the curve but actively following the USA, they will implement now ancient USA financial scams cause they just aren't illegal in S. Korea yet, they will do the Enron now and in 10-20 years they will do the housing crisis. unless they are tryign to catch up to us speedily then they will do the housing crisis asap.
Quote from: Randomvector on February 05, 2013, 02:48:40 AM
huh, Ok so I did undertand that. Guess I was wondering how sales and profits could be up and they still lost money?
I'll wait for the full analysis, but the simplest explanation says 'expenses went even higher'.
Quote from: Randomvector on February 05, 2013, 02:48:40 AM
huh, Ok so I did undertand that. Guess I was wondering how sales and profits could be up and they still lost money?
The parent company lost about $5-6 million for the quarter. Overall the company made nearly $100 million profit for the quarter.
Why? Well looking at the detailed Profit/Loss spreadsheet of the parent company (IR_FactSheet_ENG(4QFY12)-public.xls, PL tab), there were two very large losses on 1) Disposition of Investments in Subsidiary and 2) Impairment of Investments in Subsidiary. Together it's around 37,300 million KrW. Cost of creating NC West Holdings by selling to it NC Interactive? I'm guessing here but I'm not going to listen to a long normally quite boring conference call to see if anybody asked about it. Also Foreign Exchange Losses were quite high relatively speaking, 2,059 million KrW, more than the three previous quarters combined.
Quote from: Randomvector on February 05, 2013, 02:48:40 AM
huh, Ok so I did undertand that. Guess I was wondering how sales and profits could be up and they still lost money?
Quote from: UruzSix on February 05, 2013, 04:50:44 AM
I'll wait for the full analysis, but the simplest explanation says 'expenses went even higher'.
Well, operating expenses are already deducted in calculating the profits. However, non-operating expenses aren't. So doing something such as buying a baseball team, purchasing real estate or capitalizing a new subsidiary may put the net income in the red. It depends on how exactly it is done and the accounting used. The red ink probably just comes from NCsoft converting income into assets.
Ha. Right now their stocks are sitting exactly where they were three years ago.
And their sales in the west would have been even better if they hadn't closed CoH. Idiots.
I couldn't get the conference call to stream or download. :(
Quote from: FatherXmas on February 05, 2013, 02:46:21 AMB&S sales actually declined while Lineage surged significantly (yes the 15 year old Lineage).
Old and actually not so busted preferrable to the new hotness? Gasp. Not like that's what we've been telling them since last August or anything.
Thank you FatherXmas for always having an insight into the financials. As a person who has mastered her bankbook, but can't sort through corperate jargon, I personally really appreciate it.
As I recall, there are actually some (underhanded) advantages to showing a loss, at least in the US.
Quote from: dwturducken on February 05, 2013, 04:36:48 PM
As I recall, there are actually some (underhanded) advantages to showing a loss, at least in the US.
Indeed, and you may note that NCsoft's consolidated line shows a drop in taxes despite an increase in pre-tax net income. As a percentage that dropped from 25% to 16%. The parent company's tax rate went up from 19.5% to 24.5% (note that the parent company had almost $70M in net income even after taxes, so they had a LOT of non-operating expenses to pull them down into the red). Obviously, this tells you little, as the detailed breakdowns aren't available (at least to my cursory search), but it is suggestive of a reason NCsoft may have deliberately shifted profits overseas, as many companies do. Usually to avoid US corporate taxes though, which prior to write-offs are the highest in the world. However, if you have a lot of deductions, say from writing off a subsidiary as a dead loss, then the byzantine US tax code may be beneficial.
Quote from: FatherXmas on February 05, 2013, 02:46:21 AM
Profits up, sales up however profit for the parent company's quarter (Korea) was actually negative.
Sales in the west actually exceeded sales in Korea for the quarter due to GW2.
B&S sales actually declined while Lineage surged significantly (yes the 15 year old Lineage).
Just my opinion but older games have more content . Players that burn thru things and then get bored and move on will find new games don't have the depth of content. I played COH for 8 years and never got thru all the content .
That's not really an opinion, Dex. It's largely a fact. It's very rare for a game to launch with loads of content. The only ones I can think of, off hand, that launched with a somewhat complete experience were World of Warcraft and City of Heroes. It seems like an increasing trend that games will launch half finished or with next to nothing to do. I'll say Guild Wars 2 -tried- to launch with a complete experience, and they did in that you could probably get one character to level cap without repeating content, but only one character. And even then, that would mean going and doing other races' content, otherwise you'd still have to repeat bunches of things.
I don't consider a 'complete experience' to be one that you can finish all of on just one character. But that's just my stance. I don't think it can be argued though that older games don't have more content than newer ones. It goes beyond opinion and into factual territory. Demonstrably so, even.
Unless you're talking about Champions which, three years after its launch, still has mostly nothing to do that you couldn't do at launch.
Quote from: Optimus Dex on February 05, 2013, 10:49:47 PM
Just my opinion but older games have more content . Players that burn thru things and then get bored and move on will find new games don't have the depth of content. I played COH for 8 years and never got thru all the content .
Older games had more substance, period.
It's all about graphics, sex appeal, and fast money grabs these days.
Quote from: Perfidus on February 05, 2013, 11:17:31 PMUnless you're talking about Champions which, three years after its launch, still has mostly nothing to do that you couldn't do at launch.
In a recent interview with Massively, Dan Stahl said: "Cryptic is focused on Star Trek Online and Neverwinter." Translation: We're pretty much ignoring everything else (Champions).
Ok, while I'm here... it's my hope that this report will stop people posting a ton of uninformed nonsense on these forums as they have been up to this point.
First of all, at 45% of NCSoft's profits can people please stop saying that Guild Wars 2 is dying or that it's a failure? GW2 has already made a TON of money and it looks like their player base is actually rising instead of dropping.
Another thing, Lineage. It's responsible for 24% of NCSoft's profit. It's 15 years old. It's just about the WoW of the asian world. No it doesn't make WoW type money, I mean that 15 years later and a ton of people still play it. It just keeps making money for NCSoft and it looks like it'll still be going strong for years to come.
Finally, NCSoft is making a ton of money. No matter what their stock price is, they're not in any financial danger whatsoever. Anyone who thinks so has no understanding of business.
Quote from: Peregrine Falcon on February 07, 2013, 09:09:48 AM
In a recent interview with Massively, Dan Stahl said: "Cryptic is focused on Star Trek Online and Neverwinter." Translation: We're pretty much ignoring everything else (Champions).
Ok, while I'm here... it's my hope that this report will stop people posting a ton of uninformed nonsense on these forums as they have been up to this point.
First of all, at 45% of NCSoft's profits can people please stop saying that Guild Wars 2 is dying or that it's a failure? GW2 has already made a TON of money and it looks like their player base is actually rising instead of dropping.
Another thing, Lineage. It's responsible for 24% of NCSoft's profit. It's 15 years old. It's just about the WoW of the asian world. No it doesn't make WoW type money, I mean that 15 years later and a ton of people still play it. It just keeps making money for NCSoft and it looks like it'll still be going strong for years to come.
Finally, NCSoft is making a ton of money. No matter what their stock price is, they're not in any financial danger whatsoever. Anyone who thinks so has no understanding of business.
Peregrine, you are confusing sales with profit. We have no idea about profit and loss on a per game basis, just it's sales. The only thing we do know about profit and loss is the company as a whole, including all it's subsidiaries, the parent company sans subsidiaries and sometimes each subsidiary.
Now adding to your points.
NCsoft announced back on Dec 28th that Lineage exceeded 220,000 concurrent players. Four years ago, the last time they published concurrent user numbers, Lineage peak in Dec. 2008 was only 162,000. Not a bad uptick for a 15 year old game. Currently Lineage is the number two MMORPG in Korea.
Their cash on hand is up 108% to roughly $110 million USD. On the other hand they've only borrowed $11 million USD. Not a bad cash to debt ratio. They have $287 million USD in short term investments.
They have a 20% profit margin in 2012, that is they make 20 cents on every dollar of revenue as after tax profit. I'm sure they would rather have it at 25% like Nexon and Activision/Blizzard. I guess they just have to settle on the 36% profit margin they made in the 4th quarter.
The company is doing fine. They just had their first 100,000+ million KrW profit for a quarter ($93+ million USD). To put it into perspective, that's more profit in one quarter than CoH made in sales it's first 3 years. They have plenty of cash and short term investments, very little debt.
What we are seeing in the stock price are investors moving their money out of NCsoft because they believe in the short term it will make more money in other stocks or investments. They simply don't believe anymore that the stock will ever get back to 370,000+ anytime soon, if ever. The bubble burst. 14 months ago KDB Daewoo Securities set the 12 month price target at 600,000. Yesterday they set it at 200,000 (there were several reductions in the price target in those 14 months, it wasn't all at once). I think a number of investors are leaving until the analysts that follow NCsoft start guessing correctly again. Or at least in the ballpark.
Edit: One last note. NCsoft's stock in the last 6 months has declined from a peak of 286,500 on Sept 7th to today's close of 128,500, a 55% decline. Apple stock's high in the last 6 months was 702.10 on Sept 19th and it closed yesterday at 457.35, a 35% decline. I don't think anybody is saying Apple is going out of business.
Quote from: Peregrine Falcon on February 07, 2013, 09:09:48 AM
at 45% of NCSoft's profits can people please stop saying that Guild Wars 2 is dying or that it's a failure?
No.
Quote from: Peregrine Falcon on February 07, 2013, 09:09:48 AM
In a recent interview with Massively, Dan Stahl said: "Cryptic is focused on Star Trek Online and Neverwinter." Translation: We're pretty much ignoring everything else (Champions).
Yeah, but that's obvious. I really don't expect Champions to ever leave life support until they pull the plug, which could even be shortly after Neverwinter, unless Neverwinter really gets a lot of sustainable players. It just doesn't have the player base to justify many resources, even with the influx of ex-CoH people. As far as active players I'm pretty sure Champions' one server amounts to only the amount of people on Virtue alone, before the announcement. Maybe Virtue and a few of the lesser servers. But Virtue and Freedom almost certainly crushed Champions' numbers.
I say this all not as fact, however, but as opinions based on things I've seen and read.
That's kind of sad to hear, actually. Poor CO.
Champions had a chance at being something great. Atari made sure that never happened, and Perfect World never bothered to take steps to correct it once they took over.
Quote from: FatherXmas on February 07, 2013, 10:49:38 AMPeregrine, you are confusing sales with profit.
No I am not. I'm well aware of the difference between sales and profit.
Quote from: Knight Light on February 07, 2013, 03:05:34 PMNo.
They sold over 1 million boxes and they've repeatedly said that they're doing very well financially. MMOs, like most other products, are judged by how much revenue they generate. GW2 is generating a TON of money.
Look, I get that we all hate NCSoft around here. But calling GW2 a 'failure' is simply a lie.
If you want to say "I'll never try Guild Wars 2" or "I don't like it" then fine. But Guild Wars 2 is a financial success whose player base is actually increasing, it just won a ton of awards from a dozen or so websites, and no matter how much you hate NCSoft calling GW2 a failure is a lie.
Quote from: Peregrine Falcon on February 07, 2013, 09:09:48 AM
Finally, NCSoft is making a ton of money. No matter what their stock price is, they're not in any financial danger whatsoever. Anyone who thinks so has no understanding of business.
To try to illustrate this point further to those who think NCsoft is in trouble...
Looking at NCsoft's 4Q report they (the consolidated companies that is) had 512,778 million Korean Won in reasonably liquid assets (cash, equivalents, financial instruments and accounts receivable) and their expenses for 2012 were 650,082 million Won (even including taxes). At that rate of expense they could literally give all their products and services away for
9 months, without cutting any costs at all, and only then would they have to start worrying about making payroll or keeping the lights on.
I'm sorry to have to say it, but getting CoH out of their hands at a fire sale just isn't going to happen.
KDB Daewoo Securities
NCsoft (036570 KS/Buy) New significant momentum in 2013
http://bit.ly/YXysgL (http://bit.ly/YXysgL)
"We attribute disappointing 2012 earnings to: 1) Blade & Soul's underwhelming performance (in contrast to the blockbuster hit of rival game League of Legends), and 2) a sharp decline in the number of players for existing games (Aion, etc.)."
huh...no fooling.
Quote from: Peregrine Falcon on February 07, 2013, 11:18:06 PM
No I am not. I'm well aware of the difference between sales and profit.
Quote from: Peregrine Falcon on February 07, 2013, 09:09:48 AM
First of all, at 45% of NCSoft's profits can people please stop saying that Guild Wars 2 is dying or that it's a failure? GW2 has already made a TON of money and it looks like their player base is actually rising instead of dropping.
Since NCsoft has NEVER EVER listed profits per game so where do you get your "45% of NCSoft's
profits can people please stop saying that Guild Wars 2 is dying" information from. All that the 4Q numbers list is 45% of game sales for GW2. Hence my comment.
Quote from: RuneSage on February 07, 2013, 11:57:32 PM
KDB Daewoo Securities
NCsoft (036570 KS/Buy) New significant momentum in 2013
http://bit.ly/YXysgL (http://bit.ly/YXysgL)
"We attribute disappointing 2012 earnings to: 1) Blade & Soul's underwhelming performance (in contrast to the blockbuster hit of rival game League of Legends), and 2) a sharp decline in the number of players for existing games (Aion, etc.)."
huh...no fooling.
Yep, mentioned that in this
post (http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php/topic,5250.msg104949.html#msg104949) on the NCsoft Stockwatch thread.
I really do appreciate your fact-based posts FatherXmas but man is it a bummer to read them sometimes.
Quote from: FatherXmas on February 08, 2013, 01:05:47 AM
Since NCsoft has NEVER EVER listed profits per game so where do you get your "45% of NCSoft's profits can people please stop saying that Guild Wars 2 is dying" information from. All that the 4Q numbers list is 45% of game sales for GW2. Hence my comment.
Oh ok, I see what the problem is now. That was just a case of imprecise wording on my part. Sorry about that. Completely my fault.
The article that I read was very specific in that they said that GW2 accounted for 45% of NCSoft's Q4 Total Sales. (http://www.vg247.com/2013/02/05/ncsoft-q4-guild-wars-2-accounts-for-45-of-total-sales/)
I put little faith in the stock market. The "old days" of goods and services being the true measure of the health of an economy are gone. If you had a hardware store and you needed money to expand or keep going at your current level, you borrowed from a bank. That was FINANCIAL. You sold more goods and services and paid back the loan at some interest. Banks kept rolling on and so did your business.
THEN...financal changed to what people thought your company was worth (if you were public) and that prediction aspect of our economy is what causes the markets to blow like a cape in the wind. So much of our economic health as a country and even world wide is based on fear and prediction. Why is Greece causing our market to fluctuate so much? Do we rely on Greece that much? The economy is damned by the people that worry that it is damned.
Yes, I know that other parts of the world buy our goods and services and if they do not have the money to pay for them, we lose out. I also know that unemployment causes fewer people to have access to income to purchase goods and services. There are real problems around the world, this we know. On the other hand we also know that the numbers of the stock market are not based on true fact as much as analyst and investors fears and predictions.
Not an economist, so feel free to correct my rant, but with all that is being discussed in this thread, I wanted to post my thoughts on just why NC Soft stock prices mean little to me. I want the company to fold under the weight of their own arrogance.
Well back in the "old days", value was the play. If a company made steady earnings, keeping up with inflation, sending some of those earnings back to investors in the form of dividends, a stock was relatively stable.
Then came the pharmaceutical and high technology booms around 40 years ago (God it's been that long? Apple turns 37 this year). Growth then became the hot thing to invest in. It wasn't good enough to have a "reasonable" profit, it needed to grow every year. That meant either your sales had to increase either by attracting new customers or raising prices or lowering costs, or a combination of both. Problem is at some point your market reaches saturation and it devolves into stealing customers from your competitors while not losing any of yours. As for costs technology can and did improve productivity which was a way of keeping costs under control but once that was tapped to it's limits someone realized it was cheaper to ship your parts to poorer countries where cheap (relative to the US) labor could assemble and then ship back the final product. Problem with that is now fewer people can afford your product since all the well paying (relative to retail or food service) manufacturing jobs have been shipped off shore.
As for Greece the problem with them (and Spain) goes back to the formation of the EU and when most of its members (the Eurozone) switched to the Euro. Before that countries with poor economies didn't really impact on other countries in Europe because the exchange rate between currencies could be adjusted as the economies of each country fluctuated. That changed in 1999 when all the exchange rates between each country became fixed from that point on. Now when the economy of Greece falters due to it's crushing debt it doesn't just affect themselves but all the member states in the EU. Since the EU is a major trading partner with the US, even if the US doesn't have a significant amount of trade with Greece, Greece's actions affect the EU which then affects US.
Quote from: FatherXmas on February 11, 2013, 10:28:18 AMGrowth then became the hot thing to invest in. It wasn't good enough to have a "reasonable" profit, it needed to grow every year.
And 20 years ago I thought that was a stupid concept to run a business by. Not that I'm a business person, then or now.
I'm just saying that I would be happy with a reasonable profit, not necessarily a percentage of profit growth every year. As long as I make more than what I spend, I'm good.
Of course, that's basic economic good sense. Something the world seems to have lost...
Quote from: Twisted Toon on February 11, 2013, 08:21:14 PM
And 20 years ago I thought that was a stupid concept to run a business by. Not that I'm a business person, then or now.
I'm just saying that I would be happy with a reasonable profit, not necessarily a percentage of profit growth every year. As long as I make more than what I spend, I'm good.
Of course, that's basic economic good sense. Something the world seems to have lost...
This problem happened because new rapidly growing industries couldn't be evaluated the same way as large old businesses. It was better for them to constantly reinvest profits back into the company to keep growing instead of giving some of that back to the investors. So analysts started using earnings growth to judge what a fair price would be for a "new" company in a new market. Eventually someone decided it would be better to rate all companies on that criteria.
Going back to Apple for example, they didn't have dividends until Jobs passed because he always believed it was better to keep investing it back into the company. Plus IIRC he believed dividends were part of what old stodgy companies operated (ie IBM). However when a company as $10 billion in cash on hand at the end of their 2012 fiscal year (and earning another $5 billion in cash in their first quarter 2013, which is after the $2.5 billion they paid in dividends), enough is enough.
Quote from: FatherXmas on February 11, 2013, 10:04:54 PM
This problem happened because new rapidly growing industries couldn't be evaluated the same way as large old businesses. It was better for them to constantly reinvest profits back into the company to keep growing instead of giving some of that back to the investors. So analysts started using earnings growth to judge what a fair price would be for a "new" company in a new market. Eventually someone decided it would be better to rate all companies on that criteria.
It's not really a problem. It's simply a recognition by investors and analysts of a new reality brought about by a technical revolution. I personally don't hanker for a return to valuing dividends over stock splits, as that will indicate that the period of vast opportunity provided by the onset of the Information Age has come to a close. What happens then is that the upstart companies don't attract investors due to limited return potential and the industry leaders remain unchallenged. This allows them to produce something like Windows 8 or Blade & Soul every year or two and still make a reliable profit due to investor timidity limiting competition. Thanks, I'll take revolutionary economic times over that, even with all the stock chaos and nutty Daewoo analysis that comes with it.
Quote from: Peregrine Falcon on February 07, 2013, 09:09:48 AM
at 45% of NCSoft's profits can people please stop saying that Guild Wars 2 is dying or that it's a failure?
Quote from: Knight Light on February 07, 2013, 03:05:34 PM
No.
Quote from: Peregrine Falcon on February 07, 2013, 11:18:06 PM
They sold over 1 million boxes and they've repeatedly said that they're doing very well financially. MMOs, like most other products, are judged by how much revenue they generate. GW2 is generating a TON of money.
I stand by my "no".
People have been spending perfectly good money on worthless utter crap for a long time, I had no expectations of that stopping any time soon. Last week someone got into the Guinness Book of World Records for most money ever spent on a dog wedding. People throw away money, it's what they do. You're not gonna convince me Guild Wars 2 is not a failure just cause it's selling; for the RIDICULOUS amounts of money they pumped into its development the damn thing better be selling. The sheer amount of money NCSoft rammed into that glitchy mess was a very likely factor leading into the decision to close City of Heroes, so f GW2 for that. Furthermore, even though NCSoft bought all the licensing they needed for CoH2 in 2009, when the time came they showed Paragon Studios zero support for that project in favour of developing Guild Wars 2, so f them for that too.
However, let's put aside the fact that I hate NCSoft so much that at this point physical proximity to me causes some things to burst into flames.
My main reason for believing Guild Wars 2 is a failure is entirely anecdotal but the phenomenon is still there. Its gameplay does not seem to lend itself to any real longevity. I'm sure there's people who, when City of Heroes was released, burnt through the content in two months and took a break however I'm fairly certain the great majority of that crowd eventually came back. It was a "too much of a good thing" burnout.
Guild Wars 2 may not be hurting for players but the frequency at which I'm encountering people who have genuinely given GW2 a chance and by their second character just don't care any more is alarming. In one particular instance, when they first made the announcement, a girl I know told me that CoH was dead, Guild Wars 2 was the future; get with the program. GW2 had everything and there was nothing I could do to save CoH. Six weeks later, there she was on the steps of Atlas City Hall, emoting holdtorch and attempting to save the game she wasn't abysmally bored with.
September to October was all it took for her to realise GW2 doesn't really have "it" and no amount of new content will change that.
I believe these figures should not be taken as an achievement of success but as an indication that Guild Wars 2 simply hasn't failed enough yet. That's okay, all it really needs is time.
But hey, if you like it, it shouldn't matter that I think it's an utterly worthless piece of garbage that should never have been allowed to exist.
Have a nice day.
Well you are going to love the projected next quarter sales for GW2 because it's projected to be 1/6th of 4th quarter because box sales will have plummeted and the sales stream will mostly be the item store. The thing is with the item store, I don't really see anything that I what to buy beyond another character slot. There are unique little items like roses for V-day (which isn't given to another player but is used as a weapon) or a cute backpack for your character. Or bunny ears. Plus you can buy gems, the store currency, with in game gold. However new cute items in the store tend to give rise to an ever less favorable gold to gem exchange rate.
(https://dviw3bl0enbyw.cloudfront.net/uploads/forum_attachment/file/45544/roses3.jpg)
I just don't get bunny ears. In CoH, they were fun for silly, themed characters, but, by silly, I mean super-powered gentleman's club waitress. That little short whateveritis with the bunny ears is just a little bit disturbing...
Quote from: FatherXmas on February 12, 2013, 08:37:10 PM
[...] like roses for V-day (which isn't given to another player but is used as a weapon) [...]
That seems strangely appropriate for B&S. Do the roses have tiny heads and elongated stems?
Quote from: dwturducken on February 12, 2013, 09:00:14 PMI just don't get bunny ears. In CoH, they were fun for silly, themed characters, but, by silly, I mean super-powered gentleman's club waitress. That little short whateveritis with the bunny ears is just a little bit disturbing...
There are a pair of videos that were created for a Japanese convention, 'Daicon', specifically for Daicon III and Daicon IV, by a group of fan animators that later became the studio Gainax. You should be able to find both videos on YouTube (because of site blocking at work, I'm unable to locate them at the moment). Watch the Daicon III video as an intro to the Daicon IV video (and see how many of the things in both you can identify -- like the USS Enterprize, the various monsters from the Godzilla movies, the powered armor from 'Uchū no Senshi', the Japanese OVA of Heinlein's novel 'Starship Troopers', etc.) The second one is more appropriate to your comment about 'super-powered gentleman's club waitress'...
There's also a huge pun built into the videos -- 'Dai' means 'big', so 'Daicon' is 'Big con' (as in 'convention'), and 'daikon' is a large Japanese radish.
Bunny ears in the Daicon videos go back to the look of Playboy Club bunnies. That said the bunny ears on the Asura (the "little short whateveritis") look less silly than on the large Charr (the cat like creature).
And yes Daicon Bunny Girl == super-powered gentleman's club waitress.
Quote from: FatherXmas on February 12, 2013, 08:37:10 PM
Image
"Yo dawg, I heard you like ears..."
Regardless of game, wearing costume ears while your actual ears are visible is just tacky
Quote from: Knight Light on February 12, 2013, 08:05:53 PMYou're not gonna convince me Guild Wars 2 is not a failure just cause it's selling...
Then you're using a different definition of the word 'failure' than the one that appears in the dictionary.
I completely understand the NCSoft hate. Believe it or not, I feel the same way. I play GW2 because my friends and I all thought it was a good game and I'm not interested in trying to punish ArenaNet for the actions of NCSoft. You obviously feel differently and I understand and respect that.
However, you know as well as I do that MMOs are measured in terms of financial success and player retention. GW2 has been reported to be a huge financial success and their player base is reportedly growing. Since you know this to be true then you also know that calling GW2 a failure, using the dictionary definition of that word, is a lie.
Calling your statement a lie isn't an insult or personal attack. By your own admission
you're intentionally saying something that you know isn't true. Therefore it's a lie.
I do understand and respect your opinion on NCSoft. I just personally have a problem with people, intentionally or otherwise, spreading untrue information.
I think I've made my point though and won't comment on this further.
- Peace fellow Paragonian -
I think the point he's trying to make is not that it's already failed, but that it's a certainty that it's going to fail faster than most MMOs. Which I'm not sure I agree with, personally, but meh.
But even that isn't true. FatherXmas showed in numbers and graphs that Guild Wars, while performing above City of Heroes, only did so in a marginal sense. Not a blow out in any way. NCSoft still chose to back a fully funded sequel and continue to keep Guild Wars online.
Yes, I know NCSoft, and that they're jerks. But this much is clear - they feel that ArenaNet and the Guild Wars franchise are an asset. And neither are likely to go away any time soon.
I don't like saying these things, but it's the truth. I don't want anyone losing their jobs, not now, not ever, so good for ArenaNet at somehow passing some arbitrary measure and making themselves seem to be an asset. Doesn't mean I'll be playing it any time soon, though.
Quote from: Peregrine Falcon on February 13, 2013, 06:54:33 AM
Then you're using a different definition of the word 'failure' than the one that appears in the dictionary.
Maybe, maybe not. Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't believe it can actually be declared a success until its sales pay back what was invested into its development. Has it done that yet? It's Guild Wars 2 so I don't really care enough to bother to check.
Even if it has paid it back, I don't believe the retention rate on GW2 is anything to be proud of. Only time will tell how well it does.
As for their failure being a lie, if you want to apply your dictionary definition then you would have to ask NCSoft if Guild Wars 2 has met their intended objectives. As sales are stronger in the west this quarter than at home, I would bet not but of course I could be wrong.
I do have slightly mixed feelings about this; I do recognise that I do not want more people losing their jobs but on the other hand I do want Guild Wars 2 to rot in the abyss for the rest of eternity.
Guess we'll just have to agree to disagree.
Peace be with you. It's currently not with me and I know precisely who to blame for it.
Oh and on a sidenote, thank you for understanding and respecting my position however unless NCSoft's decision has irreversibly separated you from someone that means absolutely everything to you, torn a hole in your soul and removed you from the only life path you ever wanted then I think we might be on slightly different levels of hate.
I'd rather not try and quantify your level pain.
Let us also look at MMO sucess in terms of CoH. Player retention-CHECK...Profitable-CHECK...still they killed it. Yes, I know there are different ideas about PS being a money drain or PS breaking even, but CoH made money and kept players.