WildStar Shuts Down

Today is the day that WildStar faces the inevitable end and goes dark.

The news came back in September that WildStar would be shutting down.  The surprise wasn’t so much that it would shut down but that it lasted as long as it did, given how keen NCsoft has been in the past to terminate titles.  Many a City of Heroes fan still laments that the game was making money when it was closed.

Back when the announcement came I wrote a post that summed up the lift of the game, from the idealistic foundation to the harsh realities of the MMO market through to the seemingly inevitable demise. That post includes links out to many others doing the same.

The announcement of a game closing seems to be the point of reflection, the time for shock and acceptance, gloating and regret, nostalgia and dismissal.  By the time the actual closing date comes much of the emotion has run its course.

And so we say good-bye to WildStar today.  It has run its course.  Launched in June of 2014, it ran for nearly four and a half years.  Carbine Studios itself, founded back in 2005 by former Blizzard employees who had worked on World of Warcraft, was shut down back in September.

SuperData Shows PUBG Holding in PC Market

I have been waiting for SuperData Research to do their monthly chart blog post, but I guess they were serious when they said they were going to take the last two weeks of the year off.

So no post with supplementary data.  They did tweet the November 2017 chart before they went on their break, so I might as well put that up.

SuperData Research Top 10 – November 2017

On the PC side of the chart League of Legends remains glued in first place while PlayerUnknown’s Battleground held on to the second spot.  Not bad for a $30 game.  After reaching fourth place in October Destiny 2 dropped two spots, placing it just ahead of World of Warcraft which remained in seventh.  Call of Duty: WWII broke into the list at either, displacing World of Tanks, while Star Wars Battlefront 2, whose business model garnered so much attention last month, took the final position for November.  I expect those two EA titles will rise when we get the December chart.

On the console side of things Call of Duty: WWII topped the chart, displacing FIFA 18, while Star Wars Battlefront 2 grabbed third.   Meanwhile Fortnite: Battle Royale … I guess that whole co-op idea the started with is dead if they’ve put “battle royale” in the name now… made its way into eighth place.  It will be interesting to see if its rival, PlayerUnknown’s Battleground, which hit XBox One this month, will top it on the next chart.

On the mobile side Candy Crush Saga remained on the chart, popping up from ninth to fifth place.  More interesting to me is NCsoft’s Lineage M and Lineage 2 Revolution on the chart.  As we saw on the last NCsoft financial statement, mobile is taking off for them.  It makes you wonder if they might want to dump that whole MMO genre now that mobile is bringing in more revenue than any of their PC titles.

Friday Bullet Points – Financials Time

August, being the second month of Q3, is the herald of the Q2 financial results.

Activision Blizzard – Q2 2017

The quarterly results for Q2 2017 were out last week for Activision Blizzard.  Blizzard remains the big money maker in the A/B/K company mix.  You can find the data over at the company’s investor relations site.

Activision Blizzard Q2 2017 Financial Results Presentation – Slide 11

In the details the company reports that the Legion expansion continues to out perform the Warlords of Draenor expansion, which isn’t too surprising, given that players finished up the latter content and left in droves such that the company stopped reporting subscription numbers.

Apparently unhappy with monthly average users, MAUs, they also dropped a Daily Average Users claim, DAUs, on the report as well.  I am not sure why they felt the need, the nonsensical MAUs didn’t really need propping up so far as I could see, but maybe there was some empty space on the slide they felt they needed to fill.

Overall though, Blizzard remains the consistency champion in the company.  The mercurial Activision will blitz past it on quarters where it has a big release, but Blizzard delivers quarter after quarter with much less fluctuation.

SuperData Reasearch – 2017 So Far

I post the monthly chart from SuperData Research on the theory that even data of dubious completeness can be of value if collected consistently over time.  One problem is that the charts are just rankings and do not include hard numbers, so one cannot know how much weight to give the bottom half of the chart, the only portion that tends to change from month to month.

SuperData has thrown us a bone on that front with a six month roll-up chart for 2017 so far.

SuperData Top Ten – First Half of 2017

This gives a somewhat better idea of who is in it for the long term as the sudden blips due to updates or promotions get ironed out over time.   World of Warcraft seems pretty secure in the fifth spot on the PC front, while CS:GO is on the cumulative list even though it dropped off the top ten monthly list last time.

On the mobile front, neither Pokemon Go nor Candy Crush Saga make the cut.

This chart isn’t up on the SuperData Research blog.  It went out to people who are on their mailing list along with another chart of data tidbits and an invite to download the associated report.

SuperData First Half of 2017 Highlights

Mobile is the largest digital platform, but League of Legends on the PC remains the biggest game.  Also, they could only come up with a big number for VR by projecting forward to 2020.

NCsoft sees Lineage Slump

NCsoft financials tend to be pretty predictable.  The 1998 title Lineage will be the big earner, the further we get from an expansion release, the lower the Guild Wars 2 revenue will be, and there will be that game we’re all pretty sure is going to get shut down because it has slumped so bad that it stopped getting its own chart.

But Q2 2017 changed things up. (Report available here)

NCsoft Sale by IP – Q2 2017

Okay, sure, GW2 is tracking to form, and has an expansion on the way, and we’re still pondering the future existence of WildStar, but the change with Lineage is nothing short of shocking in the context of the company’s history.

As it turns out, the only thing that can kill Lineage is Lineage.  Lineage is tanking because NCsoft released a mobile version of the game, Lineage M, which they track under “mobile games,” a category which is suddenly number one on their list.

And with that, the majority of the company’s income still comes from a Korean audience playing a variation on a 1998 title.

 

Friday Bullet Points – Numbers, Pokemon, and Phishing

Another Friday morning when I have a half a dozen almost done posts in my drafts folder, but no real drive to finish any of them.  So time for some bullet points.

Such Super Data

I do enjoy when SuperData Research puts out another blog post with titles ranked by revenue.  They just posted one for June.

SuperData Sez – June 2016

Of course, I enjoy their charts for odd reasons.  They are, in their own way, very effective trolling devices.  I can already predict a SynCaine response to this.

And then there are the questions raised.  What defines an MMO?  What defines a P2P MMO? (SWTOR claims to be F2P, right?) And, finally, how the hell is FarmVille 2 even a thing?  Is Zynga still a thing?

NCsoft Numbers

NCsoft put out their Q2 2016 earlier this week.  You can find them at their investor relations site.  The PDF summary is the usual 10 pages, with everybody’s favorite chart on page 4.

NCsoft revenue by title – Q2 2016

The surprise of the quarter is WildStar, which revived with a more than 40% boost in revenues over Q1’s all time lows.  Of course, WildStar’s revenue number is still pretty small.  GuildWars 2 dropped by more that 6.5 times the WildStar total and still pulled in 7 times as much revenue.

The numbers are in millions of South Korean Won (KRW), which makes the WildStar total about 2 million USD for the quarter.

Meanwhile, it looks like GuildWars 2 is going to be feeling some pressure to release another box and, as always, the 1998 title Lineage rules the revenue roost for NCsoft

(Hat tip to MMO Fallout)

Pokemon Nation Championship Restrictions

The 2016 Pokemon National Championships are being held not too far from where I live… just up in San Francisco… and Nintendo has asked me not to show up.

Pokemon come to Baghdad by the Bay – By Invite Only

Due to the limits of the venue and the popularity of the event, no outsiders or random visitors will be allowed in to view the competition.  So that is that.  Nothing can keep you from going up to SF to hang out, but if you think you’ll be seeing some sort of Pokemon competition, you had best plan on running it yourself.

Also on this front, the whole Championship series is undergoing changes for 2017 as well.

New Eden Phishing and Seabeasts

CCP has an alert out on a phishing scheme going about, with emails pretending to be from support asking players to log into their account via a dubious link.

Know your login pages

So, you know, don’t do the dumb.

On the upside, CCP also announced that the Matigu Seabeast SKIN is now available in the New Eden store for a variety of Caldari hulls.

And that is about it for Friday.  The weekend approaches.