GW and The Sims series: Expansion Pack Philosophies

Anyone who plays The Sims or The Sims 2, will be very familiar with a new expansion coming out every 6 months or so.

Timeline of The Sims expansion packs according to Wikipedia:

1. The Sims: Livin' Large or The Sims: Livin' It Up in Europe (released August 2000):
2. The Sims: House Party (released March 2001):
3. The Sims: Hot Date (released November 2001):
4. The Sims: Vacation or The Sims: On Holiday in Europe (released March 2002):
5. The Sims: Unleashed (released September 2002):
6. The Sims: Superstar (released May 2003):
7. The Sims: Makin' Magic (released October 2003):

As you can see, theres a steady amount of 2 expansions per year after the initial first expansion.

TS expansions always add new content and ways to play game, as well as new items, with each expansion.

To me, it seems that Guild Wars is following this style of expansions quite heavily for its Chapters.

Guild Wars and its future Chapters are following the same basic timeline of every 6 months. Like TS, the new addons are NOT MANDATORY for enjoying the game. Each new chapter brings something new, and new features that the original doesnt have.

But heres the kicker, and im sure we all will agree.

GW's chapters are standalone, TS's expansions are not. This is both the strength and flaw of GW.

The TS user will be categorized by which expansion he/she has and these expansions limit what he/she can download in new objects because each expansion adds new features to the game and not everyone will have those features.

Which means, if i were to create an object for download for the community, i would probably make it as compatible as possible for ALL users because i want to have the biggest amount of people using my item as possible. However some content requires certain expansions to be usable. For example, pets weren't added until Unleashed, so all pet content can only be accessed by those users. However, Unleashed users still have the BASE game, which they can still download items for.

Because GW chapters are standalone, it would seem that any core changes to features should be accessible to ALL players, because commonly shared features already exist. But instead, Anet is opting to treat the userbase as if it were expansion packs. Prophecies users arent getting the material storage because its considered Factions only content. This would be the same as saying that Factions is an expansion pack and indeed, not standalone, because standalone would mean that that material expansion upgrade is NOT a problem of compability between users, so it should be available for all.

So...im starting to rant.

Point of topic: GW is using the same philosophy of TS in its Chapters. However since the chapters are standalone, it doesnt work so well.

What they should do? Stop releasing standalones and make PURE expansions that work with ANY of the standalones.

*goes back to typing up this report* >.>

The problem with this is that PURE expansions generally run about half the cost of the original standalone game. With some tweaking, GW is able to charge the full amount by labeling it as a standalone game.

I don't think GW is willing to sacrifice that extra revenue...but in the end, I would expect that the potential problems that using a standalone approach will start to outweigh the benefit of the additional revenue (especially if those problems start to disappoint their current customer base).

To be honest, I think you post was a long winded way of saying storage upgrades should be available to all chapters and I don't think the comparison is necessary to justify that. Note that this isn't a critisism of your post - it's a good viewpoint nonetheless. I would just like to put my accross viewpoint that the storage upgrades should be available to all players regardless of whether ANet's products are expansions or stand alone products.

I think the original poster used the storage accounts as an example to prove a point. That expansions would work better than stand alone games. The storage was not the point of the post.

Here's my personal view on it:

1. Prophecies took 2 years to develop, which in my opinion, warrants the name "full game" and deserves the full price.

2. Factions took 1 year to develop, which in my opinion, is a mix between "standalone" and "expansion".

3. ANet/NCSoft needs the additional revenue to sustain their no-monthly-fee business model.

4. Factions is being marketed and priced as a "standalone" game.

In the end, ANet/NCSoft is dictated, well, by business. Hence, I think it's a matter of necessity for them.

I'd hadn't thought of the storage upgrade like that before. I thought of it as being compensation for having more than 4 char slots, but a stand-alone Factions game still has the upgrade right? Good point. Also I myself wouldn't call the post longwinded, even though it's long, because I actually ended up reading it all the way through without skipping to main points. :P

Anyway, I do agree that GW should start changing something or the other about their methods of releasing and creating new content. They've only released one add-on from the original and already I'm seeming to feel a general let-down about the game and more discussion about whether or not to stay dedicated to the game or move on to something else; and I don't just mean all the griefers that have always been present.

I myself have reduced myself from obsessive to casual gamer and reduced my playtime, and am having trouble with the ammount of character slots growing and growing. I want to try new classes but I have all of my old characters that seem to become obsolete if I don't take time to bring them up to speed and cap/buy all the new skills.

That prolly isn't your main point, but those are just a few little thoughts of mine on the state of the game.

OR

Release standalones, at the same price as the original Prophecies, that are actually the same quality as the original Prophecies.

Honestly, I think that if people were less ZOMG RAGE about the "Factions disappointment", people wouldn't care so much... but the fact is, people do see Factions as inferior to the original Guild Wars, for whatever reason. Come into the #guildwarsguru channel in IRC sometime and ask "guys I am thinking about buying GW. Which version should I get?". I DARE you to find someone in chat, whether noob or moderator, who will answer: "omg Factions is better get that lawl!"

And so, as we pay the same price for (what is considered to be an inferior game with) less content, it is natural that players should feel... held hostage? I think that if the gaming experiences were more equal, we wouldn't feel "cheated" by the addition of storage to the Factions campaign. As it is, we feel like we're being coerced into buying it.

Final word: either publish as expansion OR make better standalones plzkthx

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Jetdoc & Milias:

What you say may or may not be true. I'd bet on the It Is True side.

But, a company can not function on the basis of "what must we charge to survive". It's fine to say that they need/want the money for whatever reason... but it does no good if they alienate customers. The price must be justified before (many/enough) customers will pay it. I can already think of several guildmates and ingame friends who, having been turned off by Chapter 2, are now either going to wait to buy Chapter 3 or simply not buy it at all.

Please see first section of this post. ^_^

Just think of the expansions as upkeep.

In WoW, for example, upkeep comes in the form of $15 a month payments, or $180 a year.
In Guild Wars, you buy 2 expansions a year for a total of $100 a year.

So not only is upkeep $80 a year less than games like WoW, but you get MUCH more new content for your upkeep money (new continents, classes, etc.). In fact, each expantion is large enough to function as a stand-alone game, and we get 2 a year. That's an ass-load of new content for our upkeep money.

The way I see it, it's pretty much impossible to complain about Guild Wars' expansion system when you compare it to how other games work.
We get much more new content, for much less money.

But we're not paying for electricity or punching in our taxes every few months. The game is not a need, it is an option to buy it and it's extensions. So if people feel like they're simply paying "upkeep" for a game they've already played out, they're not going to feel inspired to continue the upkeep; they'll just move on to another game.

The problem is that we have all seen what the company is capable of with Ch. 1. Despite all the cheesy cinematics, the original Guild Wars game was full of diversity, intrigue, and had a general aura of high quality work. Many feel that Factions, though it presented many new ideas, did not fulfill the same level or quantity of quality that they saw in the first, and are concerned that a game they truly fell in love with at first will do nothing but dwindle in stature over the years.

Well then, that's my last post for now. I've gotta fly back home now so I can play GW! Cya'll later.

To be honest, I really don't want a new expansion every 6 months a new gw every half year might be kinda rushed. I'd rather buy expansions than stand-alones.

Guild Wars required upkeep = $0

* Note: Unless you buy new slots, or you purchase [insert thing here]. But that's neither here nor there... and to be honest, I'm anxious to buy new slots.

BTW That Other Game = ($25 for two months * 6 cards for a year) = $150. The price gap suddenly shrinks, and all but disappears for CE.

I think that the char slots(when they come out) will be a great moneymaker fr them. pretty much no server space or programming for 10$. Pretty good.

ok now the reality...

GW does not charge a monthly fee, we all play online for free... free for us means cost for them to maintain the servers we play on... without those servers we could not play... how do those servers get paid for...

now... games that charge monthly fees have cheaper off the shelf games but again charge monthly to continue playing those games... they come out with expansions that require the origional to play or already include the full version and the newest addition... either way these companies charge you for core game a ($30) then charge you monthly ($15/mo) then charge you again for the expansion ($30) and continue charging monthly...
for a 6 month period they made $150 off of you... they make enough money to maintain the servers pay staff etc etc...

in order for GW to do this in a similar fasion they came up with the brilliant appeal of the free online play game for $50 and every six months you get another $50 addition you still saving if gw was pay per month you wouldnt be paying for complete games you would be paying for expansions that require you to buy the others to play the most recent... when they sell stand alone chapter 2 and those ppl get hooked they go buy the chapter they missed out on... by only making non standalone additions they push new players out of the market... they cant play the latest without buying the origional.. which deters some from buying...

make this all short... if things werent the way they are it wouldnt be GW and wed be paying monthly to play to get cheap expansions

remember as well that technically these arent expantions or additions they are seperate chapters that ingeniousely intertwine together into the same game by means of sea travel... they are seperate games..

Precisely. So unless ANet needs two chapters a year to maintain GW as a commercial success, I would rather have one chapter a year.

Thing is, we don't actually know how well the new business model is working out for ANet. We know the venture is profitable, but we'll never know by how much. So even if we think ANet is just rushing chapters to milk us, they could be rolling them out this fast just to keep the game afloat - or vice versa.

releasing standalones is a good business strat coz it gives prospects freedom of choice and each release is a working product while expansions coerce you to buy the original release to play new content.

The direction Anet adopts is a simple one:

We will continue to rip you off until we are forced to discontinue our services.

Free online game play? at least until they cant sell you any more products that are worth buying and are forced to close down their servers while laughing their way to the bank.

Need prove? buy and play Factions.

GW is my first online game, so I have to ask this. When a new expansion comes out for games like WoW, does it spread the player population too thin and make it more difficult to play the area you paid the first $50 for? Or do these expansions enhance the existing areas and keep the player population together? Also, do these other games have content added to them each month to justify the monthly fee?

Also, materials storage only being available to Factions owners makes me nervous about what Anet will do in the future.

Even if guild wars never has a monthly charge, who knows maybe one day they could rename it guild wars 2 Then charge us lol.

They seem to hype chapter 3 as a huge great thing, i hope it holds up or most of my friends will go to the evil WoW...

The founders and another programmer started working on the engine for Prophecies and subsequent games in 2000. Prophecies was released in April, 2005. I'm not sure where the "two years" comes from, but the game was in development for well over two years. Not quite accurate. Factions was in the works for more than a year. Remember, not all team members work on the same title.Accurate (and fair). We are not charging a monthly fee, and we're supporting a full development team to produce quality games on a twice-yearly basis. They're optional, but the revenue they generate allows us to continue to develop games.By every definition I know, Factions is a standalone game, so all is well.

Thank you for pointing out something that folks so often miss: Monthly-fee games cost, in two ways: They cost at the store (in my experience it's usually the price of a standard game, therefore $50) and they cost every month (often $15). So people comparing $180.00 versus $100.00 are forgetting the cost of the game itself! Then, when the monthly-fee game comes out with an expansion pack, are they giving out that new box for free? Not as far as I know. The difference in cost is a lot more than $100 to $180. Not to mention, nothing about that monthly fee is optional -- you don't pay, you don't play.

Bingo! The burden is on us to make a compelling game. The choice is purely yours.

This isnt a thread about how much money anet is making.

-------------------------

My point in comparing The Sims with Guild Wars is that both TS and GW treats its users in their access to content the same basic way. I used materials tab because its a very direct comparison.

The Sims: Basic core of the game. Can download and use any content for the original base only.

The Sims: Living Large: Adds new content and features like letting you hold more floor/wall tiles in game. Can download content for the original and the expansion.

Guild Wars Prophecies: Basic core of the game. Can download and use any content for the original.

Guld Wars Factions (used as linked account): Adds new content and features like you have a material tab. Can download content for Factions and also content for the prophecies chapter.

Ive said that being "standalone" is both a strength and a weakness.

Strength: It allows newer players to just grab the latest expansion without worrying about buying older versions and such.

Weakness: It fragments and divides the fanbase. RIght now we have 3 kinds of players. Prophecies, Factions or Linked accounts. Where is it most populated, which game gets updated, etc.

The more standalone chapters we get, the further it fragments the fanbase. We get more kinds of players and the other kinds of players who dont get content (arguably the ones with older versions) will no doubt get annoyed.

This leads me back to my end point: We need to stop getting standalones after a certain point and get expansions only that will work with the standalones.

We need to stop increasing the number of kinds of players in the game, because we're gonna end up with this:

Prophecies only
Factions Only
Nightfall Only
Pro/Fac Linked
Fac/Night Linked
Pro/Night Linked
Pro/Fac/Night Linked

Assumming that Prophecies took that long to develop into the great game it is and it took more than a year to develop Factions, it makes me very fearful of the quality of the contents in future chapters and though you may say the choice is mine not to buy it is as good as telling me to go play something else. And what of the friends i made ingame? should i tell them to go play something esle as well?

It will be interesting to see how the player base will divert around different continents after 3-5 standalone chapters & I wouldn't be surprised if that would be one of the main topics/cases to be solved in developer meetings at the AN office.

Couple things that will keep players adventuring in older chapters despite possibly lack of updates:

* Want to do quests & missions with characters from other chapters
* Armours
* Favourite farming points
* Pure exploring
* Make a new character if other chapters don't have so beautiful face-/hairstyles
+ and many other things

When the excitement factor of new chapter fades a little bit after couple months and players have finished the storyline & armour gatherings, it wouldn't be absurd to see ppl coming back i.e chat to Fisherman's Heaven, do some Troll farming, FoW/UW, trade Fiery Dragon Swords in Ascalon ...etc...

Despite the possible lack of updates for the older chapters, I think the nostalgy and fond memories will keep some players coming back and make sure that older chapters will not be deserted.

Hi Gaile! First of all, thank you for taking the time to respond. I think it serves the community well to clear up and correct misconceptions that may have been floating around recently. Here're my responses based on my own observations from reading forums.

I apologize for the misinformation. "two years" is what I have been hearing on the forums, and I hope this misconception has been dispelled once and for all. So since Prophecies was released in 2004, it follows that Prophecies was in development for four years, not two years.

However, this piece of information seems to solidify the perception that the development cycle for Prophecies was much longer than that for Factions, which I will get to next.

I stand corrected once again. Could you let us know how long the development cycle for Factions was in actuality? I was under the impression that after Prophecies, ANet will follow an aggressive cascaded release cycle of 2 releases per year, with two separate teams each working on a different chapter. The development cycle for each chapter will be one year. Maybe I misunderstood, did Factions not follow this development cycle? Also, what I said did not only apply to Factions, but to future chapters as well. Even if Factions was under development for more than one year, it appears that all future chapters will be.

My question is how will the shortened development cycle of future chapters compared to the original Prophecies weigh in on their respective quality and content? Granted, some of the original 4 years taken to develop Prophecies was used to lay the ground work, write the game engine, etc.; however, it's difficult for me to believe that 3 years worth of work was spent on the ground work, and only 1 year was spent on other things that make up Prophecies.

I'm not trying to argue for one or the other. If ANet chooses to call Factions a standalone, standalone so be it.

I have always liked ANet's innovative no-monthly-fee business strategy. I hope that it will prove itself to be a viable (and profitable) paradigm for the MMORPG industry.

I would be very interested in knowing what definitions are being used by ANet to define what standalone means. I think one of the main reasons that people do not think Factions is a standalone is that we the players tend to compare Factions with Prophecies. Some of the comparisions are:

1. Factions map is smaller than Prophecies.

2. Factions has 13 missions, while Prophecies has 25.

3. Factions has 2 professions, while Prophecies offers 6.

These were some ones that I saw while looking through the forums. It would be great if you could comment on some of these.

Now you know I'm gonna have to hug you

*hugs Gaile*

*hugs Gaile again*

*hugs Gaile for a third time*

*gets slapped with a restraining order*

the "fragmentation" that youre referring to is also similar with that of the expansion concept. say if some players owns game+expansion1 and some players owns only game, you will also get 2 kinds of players.

prophecies only and factions only can still play together (battle isles), communicate freely and belong to a same guild.

the fanbase will still be solid with standalones. if one only owns prophecies and wanna stay to play in game, he will buy factions for the new skills and new content. if one only owns factions, he will buy prophecies for the missing skills and content.

there is no weakness in standalones, imho. only strength, which you pointed out.

It seems pretty difficult to say that the choice is ours whether we buy the new expansions or not when the older chapters recieve no updates whatsoever. Will there even be bug fixes?

And I say expansion because I think the the new chapters are far too small to be considered completely new games. They only defend the title of "Stand-alone Game" so zealously because they want to charge us the $50 of a full game for it, rather than the $30 of an expansion.

some could say factions has 2, i don't know, i think really of it as 8, optimism perhaps ?

I got a cold, so add in a hug for me lol

If a Sims player wants to play. He must have The Sims original.

This gurantees that the original, The basic core start of the game will always have new players. New players getting new expansions needs the core.

Even if newer content only shows up for the new expansions the sims, there is still a SINGLE UNIFIED FANBASE of all sims owners, regardless of the expansions they optionally own.

This cannot be guranteed in Guild Wars since every chapter is a standalone.

How are we going to maintain a population in Prophecies when theres 10 chapters worth of players spread out across the servers?

well the possibility to "unify the fanbase" exists, thanks to account merging/linking. again, a.net made it possible to do so and it still boils down to players. buy or not to buy. our choice.

Satisfaction is the reason you would want to buy GW future chapters. i am a satisfied customer of prophecies and i bought factions. i love them both and will buy Nightfall. and i know im not alone. :P


and yea, "freedom" and "choice" sound more positive than "needs the", "dependent on" or "forced to buy"

Out of the topic - Dudes, noone can Beat sims sells. Maybe except some sort of fishing simulator or new deer or maybe RABIT hunter. And those games are even not comming close to the balance thinking, tunning, fixing and so on compared to many other games that have sales 10 times less than them.

On the topic - every thing got their cons and pros. It is how the things are, not even in games.

Most of the time mthe content pubs each month consist of all the things they promissed at release but never finished bug fixes and constant rebalancing and events... all of whish guildwars has and does as well minus the monthly fees... we usually have at least one update adressing several of these every month..

as far as players migrating you could say...absolutely... and most of these other games have multiple seperate servers that characters cannot cross populate and have smaller server populations...

im not sure completely but last time i knew for example Ultima Online has 20+ servers and each server being capped at a couple thousand player population.. the game has had 5+ expansions added onto it since its birth and has now adopted the every 6 months thing... areas that used to flourash have been replaced with new areas leaving the old stuff to the new players for a short time and the old players that just cant part with their memories of the past...

Anet has the right idea of adding content to the previous chapters upon release of each new chapter... I hope with Nightfall they keep conscious about the benefit of adding more content to phophacies and factions... this pomotes players to purchase earlier chapters if they have done so already and also promotes veteran players re-exploring origional areas

it would be cool to have "elite" missions that actual cross chapters.. yet another way to promote haveing the complete series up to current...

as far as storage... i have a feeling (based on the tendancies of other games) that as soon as the earlier chapters and content tweaks get older they will be adobted universally... aka when chapter 3 comes out i wouldnt be surprised if a faction purchase included prophacies free or that all factions owners will get prophacies free down the line...companies tend to do such things as aniversary gifts and aniversary editions

Hmmm I can see you kinda see eye to eye with me, we have 2 threads now both asking for the same thing.

Anyway when you think about it, eventually when enough chapters are released people might decide to stop buying the new chapters as they are busy with previous chapters or have no interest in starting over only to restart and so on.

when anet pull in new customers on newer chapters, do they expect that they are going to go re buy the older chapters because theres different skills there?
I would but thats because I play pvp but what about the ordinary pve player.

Merging and linking means nothing and brings hardly andy benefit to the game or play experience besides you can have more skills and run your character around a new map, seing theres no point in linking past games to new ones why dont anet just pull out random maps anywhere and not even bother to link them.
I wonder if they will even go to the simplest of forms to link the games toghter.

All im saying is:

Id rather have no monthly fee and pay more to get the game, no matter what the content, then have more in the expansion or whatever you want to call it, and have a monthly fee. That would be the ONLY REASON i didnt buy WoW.

Otherwise, id probably never be posting here ^.^

Once you are stuck in an unpopulated town, desperately taking hench with you, knowing very well that you will fail, you understand what the OP is heading at.
I am highly addicted to Sims 1 and 2. Upgrades and add-ons are much better, imho. It keeps us together and the towns populated.

I'm not gonna install 5 GW versions, but I'm perfectly allright with buying add-ons for a new pet, new faces for your characters, more towns or more weapon skins. The best I like about Sims 2 is the great liberty in character customization. An endless scource of faces, bodies, clothes and hairstyles. You can even change make-up on their faces. I am prepared to pay money for that.

I will eventually stop buying GW3, GW4, GW5, GW6, GW7, if they are all stand-alone games, completely seperating me from my other players.
Don't get me wrong; I like playing alone, but since GW is a coop game, and the henchmen are completely retarded, buying several stand-alone versions of the same game doesn't appeal to me.

Not every GW version will be equally good as the other, so we will eventually be more and more seperated from our fellow GW players.

GW just has to bring out new chapters to make enough profit. 50$ every 6 months or 10 every month is all the same.
But they cant make new professions every chapter so they are gonna have do other things to make sure ppl will buy the chapters.

But anyway, GW has a loyal fanbase (espacially the pvp base) that will keep playing GW. I say pvp because the pvp aspect in GW is the best in the world. And if you want a good pve game, maybe gw isnt the best choice. Thats how i think about it. if i want to play a good rpg pve game i would buy another game.

There isn't necessarily a relationship between development time and quality.

They can alleviate this by giving us some simple henchie commands, something players have always asked for, and by ensuring that all missions/bonuses and quests are doable with hench. But that won't do anything for those who play GW because they want to socialize and do missions/quests with real people.

I don't mind buying standalone games as long as I'm able to complete missions/quests in both the old and new areas using hench. If old areas start dying off, or if I can't accomplish what I'd like to in the new areas because there aren't enough folks and I can't hench it, there will be no point to playing. I'd buy expansions, too. Basically, I'll buy any type of content as long as it's good. I agree with Renly that the Factions fiasco has worried us and made us wonder if we want to shell out money for more content, and how. Hopefully GW will be redeemed with chapter 3.

i like factions better, worth the $50 to me.

First of all let me say that I had not touched any MMORPG style games until GW came out! (Not counting Diablo 2 and LOD expansion). Why you might ask - simpy pure fact that there are no monthly fees and I love that about the game.

Comment #1: I see people getting upset about the changes aka nerfs and I say makes us a better player - keeps us on edge - makes us think outside the box to come up with newer builds rather than using the cookie cutter ones out there!

Comment #2: The whole storage thing - deal with it, pay $50 and add Factions to your account and get the update!! Support your GW developers! Nuff said

Comment #3: Additional slots for merged account. Ok this was a bit of a sore point for me that when you merged the account you only got 2 slots but I got over it! A while back I had heard that you could "purchase" additional slots for like $10 - or maybe something like that was in the works. I'd still be interested in seeing that!!

Comment #4: A Sad Story!! I used to play GW with this guy who quit and gave away his account. A few months later wanted to get back and factions was out so he went and purchased a copy of Factions ($50) and decided he wanted to get prophecies as well. So he went on eBay and bought an account (understanding it is a no-no but only after he had purchased it)-costing him $51. He wanted to merge to two account only to realize that it wouldn't work so being out $101 he decides to go buy a Factions Key for PlayNC and add it to the eBay bought Prophecies account ($40-$50 not sure on the cost of just the key) and voila he has prophecies+factions merged account that he starts building up. A month after the purchase one day he can't log in!! Contacts me via email and contacts ANet for support and finds out that his account has been reset by the previous owner who still has the CD-KEY for the original eBay sold account! Although the guy can't produce the Factions Key (which was bought by my friend) - Support couldn't do anything. My friend even provided them with the Factions Key, the NCPlay email with the purchase information and the eBay link to the selling of the account! Support was like sorry closed issue not even trying to get the guy to give them the Factions Key on that account or even better suspending the account! So needless to say my friend lost about $100+ all the items and such that were on his account. Just FYI this is now the new GW SCAM where people sell account on eBay and then turn around and reset them after a month (multiple documented cases)! Anyways, just wanted to more share this with folks then anything.

As I said I love the game - you can call it an addiction if you wish but I do enjoy playing it! Keep up the good work and thank you!!

LOL - Too funny - but I guess it would be a virtual restraining order since it was a 3 virtual hugs in a row!

*hug Gaile too*

Gaile I know you like running around town in a chain so as a thank you for all the fun times and the bits of information - we will start a chain of hugs for ya!!

*Hugs Gaile*

I want in on the fun!!!

Anyway, I really Apperecate this game, Even though factions wasn't up to par.

I've been playing MMO's for too long. Beta of the first EQ (I skipped that mess of a game Ultima Online due to it's "griefable" play) and constantly since then. Every single game out there had the population thinning problem. Most of the time, as was already stated, the games spread across multiple servers and the people never saw each other. When the player numbers dropped too much and no one could group up (no henchies in other games) they would merge servers to increase player base onto fewer servers. EQ is still releasing addons, but some of their addons return players to older areas. Lost Dungeons of Norath was the first to do this, and population in older zones surged.
EQ's expansion can be argued as "must haves" by all but the complete addict. I had all expansions up untill I finally got tired of the game. I never even got close to completing all the content even from the very first release (grind excluded). Note: I'm not saying EQ is better than anything, using it as an example.
GW is now stepping into a problem with it's content. Lack of content. This is not a blame or finger point; so don't get defensive. The Lack of content is; as I see it, a direct side effect of trying to get more players to PvP. Not everyone likes to PvP for a plethora of reasons, so all the work the devs put forward in trying to make PvP "meaningful" and part of the story in Factions is what killed the quality and amount of content we have in the game. This also caused the quality and possiblity of PvP to degenerate a great deal. Hence we got watered down slop with almost no replay value.
Now the above is stated so this makes since; with so little to keep players playing in Factions towns and outposts are nearly void of life. PuGs have become a nightmare and I flat refuse to group with anyone I do not already know. After too many times of someone running off to unmap a section, pull five groups of mobs on us at once then drop from group; or get the cap and drop... yea PuGs... Then not to mention the rudeness of most of the players in most PuGs. So that leaves the henchies who are just too dumb to pull off even some of the bonuses in Tyria and forget even trying to get Masters in Cantha. That means more frustration and more players leave.
No content. No players. AI is too dumb. And finally...

This is a major concern of mine as well. If Anet will release half baked product that needs a sales push; and Anet will spin a named feature into a chapter only feature, then have the nerve to rename it as content to help it sell... I have little hope for future releases.
In practice a good product will sell itself. It was already stated that in IRC, Proph will sell itself via word of mouth. Factions needs a gimick such as increased storage to help it sell. What will we get next if Chapter 3 is crud? Will we finally get the stylist? More players leave in frustration.

I know this is long, but here's my close and it's just something to think about.
GW is a great game, it has a lot more potential if the devs will return to listening to the player base and see what the highest requested features are and what the player base is wanting the most. GW is going to need to get players from other P2P games to play GW if it is going to succeed. GW has 2million copies sold. How many of those are mule accounts due to lack of core storage? How many of those are dead accounts now? How many of those were bot banned accounts. And lets not forget that the 2 million includes both Proph and Factions (press release said GW, not GW:F or GW:P). So that's 1 million players world wide in different time zones and in different regions.
As can be seen in this thread alone, the selling point of the game is PvE content and "fluff" (new skins ect). Since Anet sells to the PvE crowd, but seems to cater more to the PvP; we have a rift between the player base and more frustration. Time for Anet to cater more to the PvE side by adding the content and fluff so more players will come... Factions tried it the other way and we see an exodus of players and empty towns.

As always just my opinion and a statement of what I currently see in game.

First time I post on this forum ... but i seems appropriate to add a comment to this thread.
If A-Net is coming up with new stand alone expansions - will the GW community spread over all continents with the risk you that you cannot form proper PuG teams in co-operative missions?