Publisher NCSoft has announced that ArenaNet is working on the MMORPG Guild Wars 3. But the announcement was terrible, says MeinMMO author Schuhmann. Even the announcement of Diablo Immortal at the legendary terrible BlizzCon 2018 was a stroke of genius compared to this.
This is the situation: Guild Wars 1 is considered one of the best and most popular MMORPGs of all time. It was a standalone game, not a WoW clone, and many remember the game fondly to this day.
Also Guild Wars 2 is considered a good MMORPG, although not all fans of the first part warmed up to it. But it has had a good run, has been developed with love, and has earned a nice place among the best MMORPGs.
Because Guild Wars 2 did not appeal to those who liked Part 1 and is now already ten years old, many were waiting for Guild Wars 3 to be released. And finally, it was announced.
Parent company is in serious crisis
What was the problem with the announcement? The announcement was anything but dignified. Normally, when announcing a new MMORPG, one expects a presentation, nice concept artwork, a speech, and a trailer.
For Guild Wars 3, there was none of that. The announcement felt like a panic reaction.
It was not ArenaNet, the developers, who announced Guild Wars 3, but the parent company, the Korean publisher NCSoft. After great years with record revenues from mobile games, the signs at NCSoft have pointed to a crisis since 2021.
The last mobile games performed poorly, were criticized as ‘too greedy’, PC games such as AION, Blade & Soul, the Lineage titles, or Guild Wars 2 are getting older, the new MMORPG Throne and Liberty is doing moderately well, a release in the West is taking longer than planned.
The stock price has been declining for years, now NCSoft’s stock has lost about 80 percent of its value compared to the peak in February 2021.
Management comes under heavy fire at conference
This is how the conference went: And just now, at the worst possible time, they had to justify themselves again in front of investors: The quarterly conference call was due at the end of March.
The CEO didn’t even show up to take the flak; the representative had to step in. For the first time in many years, they kept the player numbers for all games under wraps. Not a good sign.
The representative from NCSoft, Park Byeong-moo, took hit after hit together with the CFO. The sometimes brutally honest summary of the “question and answer” session of the conference call can be read at inven. It almost sounds like a content warning should have been placed, as it got quite rough.
The poor man was asked: Is it fair for the managers to pay themselves high bonuses when the stock price is plummeting?
He was asked: What are they going to do about the damage that has been done to the brand?
One uncomfortable question after another was asked:
- So many developers have left now – What are you doing about it?
- And what about growth opportunities?
- Even the whales are leaving Lineage now. Is there a comment on that?
- It was even asked whether the CEO is fit for the job.
Barrage after barrage was showered upon NCSoft. They gave evasive answers: Yes, some would say NCSoft pays the managers too much money, but where there is performance, there must also be reward. They mentioned that they had already reduced salaries by 41 percent.
And yes, the image has suffered, and they had trouble with angry streamers, but improvement is on the way and the new games will then pursue different business models.
All not very satisfying.
NCSoft West has been in the red for 8 years
In response to a question, they could answer what was going on with NCSoft West; they wanted to know why they have only been making deficits for eight years.
And here, in this situation came the announcement, under heavy fire, that ArenaNet is working on Guild Wars 3. That could have a chance to succeed in the market.
Developers seemed not to support the announcement
How did it proceed from there? It was noticeable that the announcement of Guild Wars 3 apparently was not coordinated with ArenaNet.
Because they said in a statement somewhat tersely (via mmorpg.com) that they are a gaming company and therefore of course also working on new projects. However, they did not want to comment on Guild Wars 3. Right now, they are working on a new expansion for Guild Wars 2, which they will present soon.
“Don’t you guys have phones?”
This is what it’s about: There is often laughter about the botched announcement of Diablo Immortal . When everyone was waiting for Diablo 4 at BlizzCon and the “Don’t you guys have smartphones?” moment came.
But that was still high art compared to Guild Wars 3 now.
The poor developers at ArenaNet can’t be blamed, but they were left with a nice egg in their nest in South Korea.
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