119419-youre-kidding-me

== Content ==
			I finally got a little money set aside and decided to buy Wildstar today. I've been watching it for a week or so since it was on sale. I used my free 7 day pass to play it and I loved it. So I log in today to buy it and the sale is over!? Why in the world would they end the sale right in the middle of holiday shopping season? I can't buy it on principal now that it is twice as much as I was just getting ready to spend. I hope it goes back on sale sometime soon. That really sucked.	
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Sale's got to end someday.
 
Put in a support ticket anyway, though.  You don't need an active sub to do it, and they're sometimes pretty willing to work with people.  Since it's just a day out, you might get lucky.	
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			Ya I'll give that a try. that was quite the buzzkill today.	
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			That was the Black Friday/Cyber Monday sale.  I expect there's gotta be another sale on sometime soon for Christmas.	
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Sorry to hear Harmon! We put out some messages yesterday that the sale would be ending in 24 hours, but appreciate it might not have been seen as it was only on our social pages.
 
As mentioned, this was a Black Friday/Cyber Monday style sale so was never going to last long, we also have to structure the sales around when we do our Account Maintenance hence why it is midweek. Keep your eyes peeled for the future if you want to get WildStar at a lower price.	
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Keep your eyes peeled for the future if you want to get WildStar at a lower price.
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			this game should be selling for 20 bucks anyway	
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			I really enjoyed the game. Not that $40 is too much to ask to get in on the game but It's tough to spend double what I was ready to spend. I suppose cost is relative like everything else. I will wait and hopefully there will be another sale before the holiday. If so I'll see you guys then. Peacski Weaski.	
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Well.. Paid 70+ for deluxe preorder version. They got me on open beta. There is no day when I was regret about these 80 bucks. And I'm not a rich guy.
 
This game is freaking awesome. Even though I'm leveling now alone, with no one in general chat, I have no regrets. Totally worth every penny. 
 
Compare to some new game. 60 bucks for 15 hours gameplay? Pfffft, I'm enjoying this game for 3 months with some breaks, and I'm not leaving until last day.	
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I'm sorry you missed out on the sale!
Carbine did announce on the 0 to 50 stream and I'm assuming they tweeted it too (correct me if I'm wrong) that it would end at 8AM PDT today.
 
Hopefully they'll hear your situation and help you out! Looking forward to see you on Nexus :)	
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I finally got a little money set aside and decided to buy Wildstar today. I've been watching it for a week or so since it was on sale. I used my free 7 day pass to play it and I loved it. So I log in today to buy it and the sale is over!? Why in the world would they end the sale right in the middle of holiday shopping season? I can't buy it on principal now that it is twice as much as I was just getting ready to spend. I hope it goes back on sale sometime soon. That really sucked.
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this game should be selling for 20 bucks anyway
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You already bought it. You won't get a refund if they do cut the price. Quit crying about how you paid $40 more than you think you should have 7 months ago! Let it go, yo.
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Dude your delusional, I never said I wanted a refund. I said this game should be 20 bucks and it should. Get over yourself.
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Where's the reasoning behind $20? At $60 for standard games the publisher is 9 times out of 10 losing money. You're delusional if you think any standard game of this scale would be $20. 
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it's 6 months in the game is hemorrhaging players the likelihood of it making it past june of 2015 without having to go f2p is sketchy at best, if they sold the game for 20 bucks folks would buy it and play, they've already made the big money off box sales, people aren't going to pay 60 bucks for an iffy game, i certainly won't recommend it at 60.
 
 
edit: i'll check back in a few months to see how it's going
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Do you have facts on this or is this another doomsday speculation?
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			I know it is not ideal since you will have to wait a few days for shipping...but on Ebay you can get a brand new copy of Wildstar for $12.95 free s&h ;-p	
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Keep your eyes peeled for the future if you want to get WildStar at a lower price.
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Dude your delusional, I never said I wanted a refund. I said this game should be 20 bucks and it should. Get over yourself.
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Do you have facts on this or is this another doomsday speculation? Either way, have fun in your future endeavors!
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Overall, it's a lot better than the idea of trying to make all of your money with box sales and then having to find a way to pay for your long-term success.  I'm totally behind them stealing that idea from CCP.  The other account ideas they stole from EVE have worked pretty well.
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Look, Sno White doesn't make her points very well (obviously) but her basic idea does work out and I'd recommend it.  First and foremost as far as reasoning goes is that someone already does it, EVE Online.
 
Essentially, EVE Online is "free" to download; it has no box price.  However, it's impossible to play without an account set up.  It costs five dollars to set up the account.  Once it is set up, of course, you don't get a free month.  Thus, unless someone gifts you a PLEX, you also have to pay for your first month's subscription.
 
The upshot?  EVE Online has no box price, yet costs 20 dollars to start playing.
 
Why would this be a good idea for Wildstar?  First of all, it's a LOT better than the F2P model Sno mentioned.  There's nothing worse for a game than to do the reverse, keeping the entry barrier high and the subscription nonexistent means you have to make all the later money from players with promos on the back end, but you still have to convince them to buy the game.  Using the EVE model, you lower the barrier for entry, but you make sure that everyone pays for back end maintenance and development.  Of the two options, even we current players who already paid in benefit from the latter than the former.  We get a population boost of people, none of whom are technically "freeloading", they're all paying for continued development.  Another one is that some people want to buy their friends into the game, sort of pay for them to try it out, without actually tying their credit cards to those accounts.  Right now, it costs them 60 dollars minimum to do so.  Using EVE's system, it would cost them 20 dollars for the CREDD and their friend 5 dollars to set up the account.  That opens a whole new stream of people who might try the game out permanently (after the 7 day trial) because their friends will buy them in for the first month.  That simply doesn't happen right now.
 
And, of course, NCSoft can continue to sell the 15 dollar upgrade package to people who want the exclusive mount, dyes, and other sundries.
 
Overall, it's a lot better than the idea of trying to make all of your money with box sales and then having to find a way to pay for your long-term success.  I'm totally behind them stealing that idea from CCP.  The other account ideas they stole from EVE have worked pretty well.
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$60 is standard for a game; if you have a link to back up the statement that 9 out of 10 standard games with a $60 box price lose money, I'd love to see it.
 
This game charges for a box and the subscription and any extra plat that you want to buy. If you're still here from launch, odds are that you've paid way more than $60 by now.
 
That would be the reasoning. These games don't make their profits off the box, they make them off the subscription fees and the extra sales from item shops/CREDD.
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I never even thought of that, that's brilliant.
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This game really isn't worth $60 given that the only sustainable content it has is for endgame raiders. It's debatable whether it's worth the subcost with the snails pace that new content is being released.
 
Carbine really should try playing some of the more popular mmo's and try to figure out how they keep their customers.	
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While I agree with your later rationale, Psyknis is right about the 60$ box price of games.  He's not just talking about MMORPGs.  Most of the reason that games lose so much money sometimes is that advertising is expensive.  MMORPGs tend to be huge financial hogs during development, but since they take in money constantly, they tend to make it up on the back end.  However, a good example is Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.  That game cost 50 million dollars to develop, then Activision dropped 250 million dollars in advertising for it.
 
That game, for its worth, made money.  A lot of it.  I think it made over a billion dollars IIRC.  However, not every game is a jackpot.  For every game that makes their money back, a whole slew never do (sort of the way the film industry works).  I'm not sure if 9/10 is representative, but take a look at this article I remembered reading a few years ago.  Everything still holds true, AAA game companies essentially can make some decent profits, but it takes a HUGE amount of revenue to do that.  
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Look, Sno White doesn't make her points very well (obviously) but her basic idea does work out and I'd recommend it.  First and foremost as far as reasoning goes is that someone already does it, EVE Online.
 
Essentially, EVE Online is "free" to download; it has no box price.  However, it's impossible to play without an account set up.  It costs five dollars to set up the account.  Once it is set up, of course, you don't get a free month.  Thus, unless someone gifts you a PLEX, you also have to pay for your first month's subscription.
 
The upshot?  EVE Online has no box price, yet costs 20 dollars to start playing.
 
Why would this be a good idea for Wildstar?  First of all, it's a LOT better than the F2P model Sno mentioned.  There's nothing worse for a game than to do the reverse, keeping the entry barrier high and the subscription nonexistent means you have to make all the later money from players with promos on the back end, but you still have to convince them to buy the game.  Using the EVE model, you lower the barrier for entry, but you make sure that everyone pays for back end maintenance and development.  Of the two options, even we current players who already paid in benefit from the latter than the former.  We get a population boost of people, none of whom are technically "freeloading", they're all paying for continued development.  Another one is that some people want to buy their friends into the game, sort of pay for them to try it out, without actually tying their credit cards to those accounts.  Right now, it costs them 60 dollars minimum to do so.  Using EVE's system, it would cost them 20 dollars for the CREDD and their friend 5 dollars to set up the account.  That opens a whole new stream of people who might try the game out permanently (after the 7 day trial) because their friends will buy them in for the first month.  That simply doesn't happen right now.
 
And, of course, NCSoft can continue to sell the 15 dollar upgrade package to people who want the exclusive mount, dyes, and other sundries.
 
Overall, it's a lot better than the idea of trying to make all of your money with box sales and then having to find a way to pay for your long-term success.  I'm totally behind them stealing that idea from CCP.  The other account ideas they stole from EVE have worked pretty well.
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Having already had Nazryn lead me on a merry chase around EA's financial statements looking for game-specific breakdowns that weren't there, I'm not terribly keen on repeating the experience. I'm sure that you can point to games that were big successes and games that were big flops; every industry has some products that do both. But the reality is that the overall financial records for a company like EA or Activision aren't broken down by game, and none of the numbers provided in that article say anything at all about how many games a publisher releases that make money and how many lose money. NCSoft does have a game-by-game breakdown, and they aren't even remotely in the 9 fails / 1 success territory.
 
So when you say "9/10 isn't that far off", you're doing the exact same thing Psykins is doing. Link, please.
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This game really isn't worth $60 given that the only sustainable content it has is for endgame raiders. It's debatable whether it's worth the subcost with the snails pace that new content is being released.
 
Carbine really should try playing some of the more popular mmo's and try to figure out how they keep their customers.
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if you really want to buy the game for around 20 bucks then best bet is to buy a cd key ( eg: http://www.allkeyshop.com/blog/buy-wildstar-cd-key-compare-prices/ ) but keep in mind that if you do this then the dev team loose out on making some money to put towards the game, i dont see how 40 bucks for the standard edition is much of a hefty price tag, i have seen and played most games even with a very hefty price and they were complete shit, this game is actually well made and has good content, if you want the content and good flow of regular updates then the company needs to make some kind of profit, i know it took blizzard 50 thousand dollars to get world of warcraft made and running, and the game back then wasnt cheap, if you really like the game then just buy it, the money goes towards helping the team make future content and updates which keeps us all happy, i have been playing for 5 days now and i honestly would be happy to spend 100 bucks on buying this game because its an actuall mmo thats not corrupt with micro transactions (pay to win)
give it a little though and welcome to wildstar :)	
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			I may be a little late to the party here but online game codes for Wildstar still appear to be on sale for $19.99 on Amazon.	
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This game is already losing players faster than you can annihilate a roan in the starting area at level 30. They need to do something to kick start more player interest, and retain their currently fading player base. 
 
I have to agree with Sno White and VicVanMeter the game is at that time where the company should consider it's next financial stage 5-10 dollar buy in with a five day pass (so friends can send a credd to them with 14.99 first month subscription (making the game 19.99-24.99 to start) would get alot more players in I would certainly be willing in pay for some friends to play.
 
Course Carbine isn't getting any money from me for 3 months due to the issue with the trade skills and failure to answer questions regarding it. Once my subscription is up on the 19th I'll only be watching the forums till march.	
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Well, we could pick a company.  It's a pretty easy assumption to make.  You can pull overall sales results and extrapolate information.  Activision, one of the most profitable video game companies in existence (they own WoW, CoD, Skylanders, and a whole host of big hit games).  Last quarter, they made 8 million dollars in raw profit.  That's on the back of their Destiny launch, and as they stated strong sales in D3:RoS and Skylanders.  So why only 8 millions dollars?  WoW is a billion dollar franchise alone, right?  What they don't like to talk about are operating costs.  Essentially, to make their games, Activision spent 745 million dollars and earned back 753 in revenues.  That means their net income is 8 million, or 1% profit margin over their costs last quarter.  Luckily, they had a pretty good year so far.  This year, they are 2.833 billion in revenue on top of 2.088 billion in costs, so year to date, they're earning 745 million, or about a 35% profit.
 
So why 8 million this quarter when they were up 35% the combined year?  Games underperformed their budgets spectacularly.  They just don't want to tell you which ones.  I can guess, though.  Activision claimed Destiny was the biggest game launch in video game history with something like 11 million copies sold.  It also cost 140 million dollars to develop, on top of 360 MILLION dollars in advertising.  How successful would Destiny have to be to actually make back that amount of money?  How many of their titles have lost money that they made up on the back end, or how many titles do you think fail in one company that all that revenue gets whittled down to 8 million in a quarter?
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I have an alternative explanation for you. Maybe they don't care how much a game makes in its first quarter, because they're not hypercaffeinated chipmunks like bloggers and the game press. Maybe they care about the game making its money back over a timespan longer than its first weekend. Maybe gaming is like every other retail business in the universe and has sales that spike in the holiday season, which matters far more than the rest of the year.
 
Maybe that's why their profits are negligible in one quarter and 35% over a year.
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Except that's not what I just said.  Year to date doesn't include the Christmas season.  What you're saying is that, instead of profits being vastly differentiated, with only a few making a lot of profit, you're proposing that all games make a roughly equal amount of that profit.  8 million in profit for a quarter doesn't split many ways.
 
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Missed my point completely. I don't care about YTD and neither does Activision, because--as you rightly note--YTD doesn't include the Christmas season, which is the biggest money-maker of the year.
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-snip-
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I dunno, considering new single player games are 60 freaking dollars and have maybe 10~30 hours of gameplay and wildStar offered me 230 in the first month even before I started actually working on attunement...
97 hours of speed leveling content in 6 days...
I'd say 60$ is pretty god damned worth it.
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I vaguely remember buying Star War Force Unleashed II for £40 (don't know what that is in dollars, sorry) and i completed it in 3 hours.
 
So yeah, $60 for a game that will give you 50 hours + is cheap in retrospect. 
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Actually when it comes to MMORPGs, the largest money making season for MMOs is the summer season.
This is why so many MMORPGs try to release during or near(early) the summer season.
 
This is why ESO, TERA, Guild Wars 2, RIFT, Final Fantasy XIV:ARR and WildStar(and many others, such as Prius Online and many more) we're released, during the late spring or early Summer to catch the MMORPG release season.
This is the timeframe in which MMORPGs make the most money.
 
You can't directly compare a Company like Activision that publishes a vast amount of titles, versus NCSoft that specializes in MMORPGs.
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Friendly reminder that perhaps the current discussion/debate is going nowhere and ALL sides should move on. ;)
Either go back to the original point (which frankly has long gone past being a viable discussion), make a new thread to discuss gaming business practices and financial reporting in Off Topic, or just let the thread die peacefully. ;)	
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			Erased in deferment of Anlath.	
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Person A: You missed my point, here allow me to make it again.
 
Person B: Thanks for responding to something I didn't say, here's what I'm saying.
 
Person A: Thanks for rebutting a rebuttal I didn't make, allow me to expand.
 
Person B: You totally didn't get anything I said, and I'm pretty sure I'm right, time to smug up and restate.  /stretch
 
 
This concludes the internet.  Tune in next time for more monologues.	
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