ArenaNet Sells Two Million Copies Of Guild Wars 2

Written by: QuintLyn (Twitter @QuintLyn - Google+) | September 13, 2012 1:24 pm

ArenaNet Sells Two Million Copies Of Guild Wars 2

30 Comments

Break out the party hats and champagne guys, because ArenaNet has cause to celebrate. The company announced this morning that Guild Wars 2 has sold more than two million copies. The two millionth sale was hit not long after the team reinstated sales for the game — which they were forced to close temporarily due to having an overwhelmingly higher number of sales than they’d anticipated.

Congratulations are obviously in order for the GW2 team. Now… Where’s that champagne?

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http://twitter.com/Deadalon Deadalon

I think every MMO player should buy GW2 just to get a new prespective on the genre. Its so refreshing and hits so many buttons in terms of key fresh features for an RPG world. And yet… the core systems work, are fun, and the game does not force you to play 15 dollars for just loging in every month.

No wonder some of the grumpy WOW fans might get pissed tho – since they spent 120 Dollars in sub fees since last major content update came out in WOW…
- http://twitter.com/dularr Dularr
  
  I’m loving GW2, the PVE seems worth the $60 box price, but I don’t think the game is worth a monthly sub. If Arenanet had charged a monthly sub, I would have waited for the game to go free to play.
  
  My feeling is if you are only into the GW2 sPvP, seems you are getting rip off. If you are really into lobby style PvP you seem to get more for your money from MOBAs like LOL, DOTA2, Smite.
  - Nick Cattane
    
    I agreed with everything you said here (in reality no MMO is currently worth a monthly sub) until you referenced GW2′s sPvP to a moba… Tournament play focus will come in addition to spectator mode, that’s always going to develop later in any MMO as metagame/balance are always the last to get fine tuned.
  - http://twitter.com/inkthedink INKS
    
    I agree but then again wow isnt worth it’s monthly sub, certainly not anymore. And Panda’s even with all the raid bosses and the 1 week of open world PVP (cause that is about as long as it will last) still isnt going to be worth the sub past the first month. I’ll be interested to see how quickly players become board with wow this time.
http://profile.yahoo.com/THJWE4XEXAMAPW3CUGPFYCUDHE Prime

Ok I have to be the logical one and I love GAMEBREAKER! but i think Gary and crew are not being logical about Free to PLay etc. BLIZZARD could not have released WOW as free to play.

Look GW2 is an experiment. A well done one. Free to Play can WORK but NCSOFT bankrolled GW2. It had full support from a very well established team/company. It is kinda UNIQUE. Yet Gary and crew are immediately latching on to it as “the jesus model/everyone can do it” and that is NOT the case.

SUB FEE based MMOs, successful ones like WOW, earn their money from SUBS mainly. And smaller companies CANNOT gamble that people will “buy stuff in a cash shop”.

Now im not talking about little junker free to play games…more power to them. Little dinky games can be sustained maybe like that becase their player base is tiny.

BUT if you are making a LARGE MMO, and you arent an established company like BLizz or NCSOFT… theres no way you can do it free to play.

Free to play is a model SOME games will take but PEOPLE are already complaining about END GAME of GW2. First theres no REAL end game pve in GW2.

Second PVP is getting BORING. Sreamers on TWitch are saying they are getting bored because theres no real incentive…no carrot.

Im keeping it real guys…sorry i like GW2 FUN AS HECK. But im not gonna gush …

GW2 will have alot of players and taper off alot…not as bad SWTOR…but i can see it having 1-1.5 mil sustained players later. Thats no where NEAR blizzards 9 million and more after MOP

Large player bases NEED 3 things:

1) END GAME PVE thats very well done (WOW did this right…GW2 doesnt have it)

2) PVP (WOW did this acceptably..GW2 does it acceptably)

3) LORE (WOW and GW2 do this well…wow wins due to pop culture mass appeal)

4) GEAR carrots — SORRY whether people admit it or not..complain or not…GEAR makes a difference. The quest to get better gear..uber gear has probably been one of the major aspects of why WOW and EQ did so well for so long… just now wow is doing silly “everyone gets a gold star and looks the same” and its numbers dipped…go figure.

Without ALL of those ANY game will b relgated to OK status even the great GW2 will soon (within a year) normalize and youll see an acceptable but low populace.

Blizzard will remain kind MMO until ANOTHER sub based MMO does what Blizzard did.

Blizzard took EQ/DAOC and did what they did but made it better and expanded on them.

THe next big sub based MMO has to do the same to WOW. thats it.
- Nick Cattane
  
  Is there a reason you had to type every sentence with a hard return and CAPS LOCK emphasis CERTAIN words like DOING THAT matters?
  - http://www.youtube.com/user/cpjontek cpjontek
    
    Lol I thought the same thing. Some people do not get paid much attention and thus feel the need to draw attention to themselves even if it’s in an inappropriate or negative way.
- http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=613400106 Francois Brisson
  
  Finally I found someone with brainpower ! And to your last point I think the next MMO to do that will be Titan from Blizzard, unless they go a way different direction with it .
- Thomas Monahan
  
  Pay to play and Free to play – this is the future. I have been to GDC,..this is the future. Game companies and publishers are getting better at getting players to pay money for items in shops.
  
  What you feel about GW2 as a game is your own opinion and only time will tell how the game does.
  
  As for Endgame….I prefer GW2 over the Raiding gear treadmills…It’s just my personal opinion. But at the same time there are players out there who are turned off by some of the old dogmatic mmo mechanics found in WoW, Swtor..etc.
  
  WoW will stay as a SUB,…..till they see their numbers.. fall. No MMO will kill WoW but the evolution in game design/mechanics and/or the Devs not creating content to hold the players…will end up making WoW in a 2 million SUB market. Game Market evolves.
  
  I’m sure Titan will show up on the radar once WoW starts to show large constant SUB loses..when ever this happens. Will Titan be a SUB base? I’m not sure..Blizzard might bundle WoW and Titan together to justify a SUB that gives you both.
  
  Blizzard needs a hit with MoP after the issues with D3 (which is a single/multiplayer game that is treated by Blizz as an MMO,..with releasing features later). Blizzard and Bioware both need a hit to help with their fanbase.
  
  And in time WoW will be like other past great MMOs, still there to play but it’s glory days have passed.
- http://twitter.com/inkthedink INKS
  
  Few points of contention. I know more about GW2 story than I do about wow, and I played it for 6 years. I am not saying this because of any hype train, but because you simply learn more but the idle chit chat in game from NPC than any quest and or story from wow.
  
  GW1 had no bank roll and not only did fine in sales but held onto a steady player base. There is no doubt that it will not hold 2mil players for any length of time, no mmo does. The difference is that wow players are paying 15 a month and simply not playing right now.
  
  The gear carrot is still there. You get plenty of better gear while leveling to 80 and at level 80 it because a hunt for better looking gear rather than a statistical advantage. The majority of players are used to neededing that advatage which is a shame.
  
  For the record no other MMO “will do what blizzard did.” They can’t. 1: The market is no longer ripe for the picking 2: Players are flavor of the month game players, and F2P / B2P games encourge this even further.
  
  As for streamers on Twitch saying they are getting bored there is no carrot. Probably true for them. To be a successful stream you need to play a crap ton of games. People are not going to come and watch you play the same game for 7-8 years. You have to evolve as quickly as game development does. Those players you are watching now will or are playing planet side 2 next, and wow when it comes out, and the next game when it hits shelves.
  
  As far as End game in GW2, it lacks classical raiding. But they told you this would be the case from day 1. Yet players are still surprised. Wow’s end game is raiding which most players dont even utilize properly.
- Deathstar2x
  
  “GW2 will have alot of players and taper off alot…not as bad SWTOR…but i can see it having 1-1.5 mil sustained players later. Thats no where NEAR blizzards 9 million and more after MOP”Game X is nowhere near Blizzard’s nine million!— people keep saying that, but what does that even mean? I’ve said this before, don’t compare a month old game with an eight year game (number-wise). No game from this point onward can achieve 9 million players in a month or two.. or twelve.”THe next big sub based MMO has to do the same to WOW. thats it.”That’s not possible. If you’re doing the same as World of Warcraft, players might as well play World of Warcraft with their already establish friends/community. Secondly, if you’re doing what World of Warcraft is doing, you’re competing with another game, and not seeing the big picture (the entire market). If you’re saying large companies cannot release MMOs with a Pay to Play (and/or Item Shop), which business model are you actually suggesting?Personally, I want to see payment based on time played or even 4.99 USD (or whatever) instead of the “standard” 15.99 USD as alternative payment plans.
http://twitter.com/dularr Dularr

Gratz Arenanet. Can someone point me to the Arenanet announcement, I can’t find it on the official NCsoft, Arenanet or Guildwars2 sites. So far, have only seen it in the gamer press.

It does seem odd they didn’t announce sales during the first 24 hours. Didn’t it sell 1.5 million pre-sales? If that is true, have they only sold 500k copies in two weeks?

Reason they shut down digital sales was they couldn’t support the pre-sales and they knew exactly how many pre-sales they had. Arenanet had to fix a lot of problems for the existing players, before they could consider new digital sales.
- http://profile.yahoo.com/W76UOX2IDTRMMYTPASSJDLXLRM Bob
  
  They did announce it about a day after launch that they had over 1 million in sales and 400k concurrent users playing at once.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=613400106 Francois Brisson

2 Million in the first ~3 weeks ? Not that impressive with the amount of hype that was behind the game I was expecting more than that. The fact that they stopped selling copy’s doesn’t matter, they should have been able to handle that amount of people. For the game itself, I mean there’s no endgame the dungeons are kinda…. sub par, exploring the world can be fun trying to complete the map etc. The quests (events + hearts) how ever are mostly kill / gather / escort quests I mean there’s less diversity / fun quests then WoW has. For the PvP I haven’t done much sPvP cause I wanted to level to 80 and learn my class first, WvW can be pretty fun when you go with your guild but the Q’s are way to damn long they need to open that up to let in way more people. I think the game is fine as B2P, and it’s pretty fun for the average gamer that will play it for like 40-60hours ?
- Jay
  
  ” I mean there’s less diversity / fun quests then WoW has.” I guess this statement explains a lot about your personal perspective.
  
  Riiiiiight…
  - http://twitter.com/dularr Dularr
    
    The hearts are okay, they are mostly kill 10 rats, gather 10 item quests. They are just mixed together. They are okay, just not very compelling. The only ones you remember are the funny ones, throw snowballs at kids, turn into a puppy and play with other puppies, kick bunnies that try to steal your bunny food.
    
    The Dynamic Events are much more compelling. But they are terrible at tying together a story across an entire zone.
    - http://www.facebook.com/people/John-Sardella/1422784105 John Sardella
      
      Just wanted to pop in and say the hearts are meant as filler so you can hang around for an event to show up. A lot of dynamic events do have some pretty neat chaining together. I don’t think there really is one story across an entire zone, which may confuse you.
      - Jay
        
        I was gonna respond, but you hit the nail on the head. Thanks
    - http://twitter.com/inkthedink INKS
      
      not to mention that many events happen around POI’s and not necessarily at hearts, the even better ones happen in places that have nothing around it. This is all on purpose you are supposed to go and find it, follow npcs after an event etc. Hearts as has been said is all filler. So for filler they arent too bad, as you mentioned. Also not all DE’s are meant to tie togeather story. When you go and rescue a little girl from pirates, that is more or less the story right there, it isnt meant to be tied to the larger picture.
- lee long
  
  remember that they block sales
- Josh Rosenvelt
  
  You do realise wow only has 4 million subs outside of China and probably less now since June with more and more realms dying out. So selling 50% of wows entire current playerbase is amazing when you consider games like TSW sold 200 000 and Rift just over 1 million and that’s been out for a year. If I am not mistaken SWTOR sold 1.7 million in the 1st month and that game has a huge IP behind it.
  
  2 million copies is really really impressive.
  - http://twitter.com/dularr Dularr
    
    GW2 sale numbers were fine. GW2 is nicely setup for players who play multiple MMOs. Should do well for a long time.
    
    No SWTOR sold over 2 million copies within the first 24 hours and had 1.7 million subs in the first month.
    Rift peaked with at 800k subscribers and quickly dropped to 200k subs, (the expansions looking really good, hope it helps with the subs.)
    
    TSW, what can you say. really to bad.
    
    WoW has 9 million subs, (Can you imagine how may boxes Blizzard has sold.) That is simply amazing for a 7 year old game.
    
    I am finding there is a significant player base that subs for 4 or 5 months out of the year, so the number of players that play WoW during a year, is probably much higher. Not sure how you could count that.
    - Jay
      
      Pretty sure Blizzard counts those people that only play a few months out of the year… So actually the number of full time players is actually much lower.
      
      WoW is still doing well financially though. People have invested way too much time and money to let go easily.
      - http://twitter.com/AnesthesiaOlogy Josh E
        
        Also consider how Blizzard did the annual pass trap to then release the biggest disappointment in online gaming since forever (D3) and tell people “yeah, so remember how we said we’d give you more content after Dragon Soul? Now we’re not. You just committed to a year of our game and the first 8 months of that year will all be the exact same content you have now.”
        
        While many of those people stopped playing, they’re still stuck paying for it. Blizzard can still count them as a subscription.
    - Josh Rosenvelt
      
      It would be interesting to see how well GW2 would do in China.
- http://twitter.com/inkthedink INKS
  
  which wow have you been playing? diversity / fun quests? not as of recent. No end game; they told you what “end game” was like in their game and yet players are surprised. There is no raiding which is all wow has at end game. I agree people will come and go from GW2, with wow about to release you’ll see an influx leaving for at least a little while to go and see wow. Lets hope blizzard doesnt have another D3 launch.
- Deacon1979
  
  2 million for a pc only title is huge, only one other game on the pc has sold more this year and thats diablo 3, only one game sold more last year and thats minecraft, and this game has only been out for 3 weeks with restricted sales
Jado Cast

I think this is going to be one of the few MMO’s to actually increase player base as time goes on. I know I’m going out on a limb here but it just seems right considering how Anet designed the game so they can swap out Dynamic Events, add more content (hopefully at a good pace), jumping puzzles, sPVP, and OMG WvW. Dub v Dub is so much fun in this game compared to others, and the Queue is always full. That’s what’s going to keep me around when I max level all the toons I want.
Revanhavoc

Must be fake Chinese accounts or something…Ya that’s it…
H S

If I am going to pay 15$ a month, then I would expect an entire new GW2 world every 4 months. Otherwise I am not getting my money’s worth. How many people lease cars? Those that do, are laughed at unless they have a business reason to do so. Same goes for sub based games.

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