Something else from the Earnings Report:
The contribution of item sales to the total sales is much stronger than the box sales. The revenue will weaken over time. The second expansion should address this fact.
While I'm sure a not-insignificant chunk of those sales are whales, there's still something to be said for players buying things because they
want to rather than because they
have to. It seems obvious that players are more likely to spend real money on a game when they think they'll be playing it for a while (i.e. they'll invest in the game when they're invested in its future). Expansions create content droughts, though, which give players a reason to step away from the game for extended periods of time. Players who aren't playing regularly aren't invested in the long term and are thus less likely to buy gem store items, which this report shows can surpass gouging every player $50 just to keep up with everyone else every year or so.
Am I crazing for thinking gem store revenue wouldn't weaken so much if they gave players a reason to stick around, i.e. the Living World? To say nothing of the fact that selling the Living World chapters to lapsed players would be another source of gem store profits, especially if those chapters were
consistently good enough to be worth buying ( which some of them have definitely
not been, because people and resources were clearly being pulled away for HoT). There's also a lot of room for them to expand the Gem Store into new areas with things like player housing (the tools for which already exist in guild halls) and new cosmetic slots (adding something as simple as gliding to the game allowed them to start selling wings which I think we all can agree has made them a lot of money).
Or, you know, we can go 6 months to a year with nothing to do, bleeding players the whole time and making them wonder
if it's worth dropping $50 to
come back instead of asking themselves if they want to blow $10 every month or so all year long because they're
already playing and plan to continue doing so.
Does that seem logical to anyone else or is it just me?