An idea has occured to me...

Umm...

I wasn't suggesting splitting builds. As for what ANET CAN do, well... If a player has Prophecies only, not Factions or nightfall, the NPC's to travel to Cantha and Tyria are in LA, yes? They give a standard response, but offer no quests to travel to the other continents UNLESS YOU HAVE THE OTHER GAME.

If you have purchased Nightfall, the Linro has quests for you. if not, he has nothing. The game never fragments, but the account had Nightfall unlocked, which means the quests to get to Elona are unlocked. No difference in what I suggested: new NPC's appear, but you can only get their quests, or travel to the areas they are guarding, if you have bought the expansion. It's nothing that they haven't ALREADY done in the game, and certainly nothing that is impossible in the game engine.

And all these things are what new chapters are about, If new chapters are not delivering as expected, then you have a problem with the game itself.

Why would giving the same developers the same amount of money or more, suddenly make them more talented and take the game in an opposite direction.

The fact is if you dont like how guild wars has changed, then the problem is the game itself, not how we pay for it.

Personally im finding guild wars has improved in some respects, but has become far to restrictive in others, and thats because of the INTENDED game design, its how they WANT the game to be, im not paying more money for something im liking less. (and also some new alternatives to fow/uw have not been added, but new areas i dont personally enjoy as much, but thats me)

As it is ill still buy chapter 4, because for all its faults its still amazing value for money when most games for the same price last me a few days or a week. Monthly fees would kill guild wars, Mostly because people like me cant be arsed to set up payments, or go buy game cards, and it completly loses that value for money.

sadly nothing will kill these threads from cropping up.

Just a reminder, C4 will be done by the Factions team again. We all know how that turned out... if factions will be a yardstick what we can expect is to do a quest, talk to a gate NPC to be ported into a 2 x 2 metres zone, talk to another NPC to get a new quest, and then do a few more quests before we even enter the damned zone.

Which is part of the restrictiveness theve added which i hate, i hate not being able to run to certain mission and aviod some of the simply crap or repetative missions.

The reason I play guildwars is because it's not got monthly fees. I think you can work out what I'd do if they added monthly fees.

What you're conveniantly forgetting is the team who did chapter 1, which let you run all over the place, was also the team who did chapter 3, which also had 'the restrictiveness'.

Instituting a monthly fee is the worst idea ever. All the back seat video market analysts and popocorn economists (whose totally understanding of economics is the equivalent of a college freshman course of microeconomics 101 or macroeconomics 101 or less) really need to look at the GW customer, who they are and what they want. Also, you are making the mistake of throwning money at issues, instead of identifying an isolating core probelms and solving them (like my govermenet, lol).



It is my belief that Anet makes more money on this model than is possible with a pay per month plan. The overhead of processing monthly invoices, even if contracted out to a 3rd party quickly will bring the profit margin to an all time low. Atm they are generating less revenue , but making higher profit margin, therefore more money.Not to mention the lawsuits and legal ramifications of unsatified customers and their credit card issues will even cost more.

About the customer that Anet is targeting, They are going after people who have a busy life but don't mind a little online action. PvP is easy to get involved in just log on and play at your earning skills and titles as you go, for the more devoted player scheduling a gvg match with the guild is still doable and enjoyable for most players. Many older guys change their poker night to GvG night and still maintain their normal life while enjoying the online envronment that GW has to offer, younger players schedule around their class schedule in the same manner. These are not people who want the grindfest of your average MMO. The same thing on the PvE side, the fast paced missions are short and challanging doable in around an hour in most cases easiliy fit into the schedule of the target audience, as do the entertaining side quests which are just getting better and better (losing that fed-ex feel) weaving nice subplots to the storyline.

They have a nice niche in the market and are not an MMO but a CORPG and thus, not having a monthly fee keeps them out of competion with the MMO monstrosities in which the participents are actually living in the game 24/7.
I think the unrest comes from the people whom Anet did not target who want a virtual life in the game.They come from MMO's where their is endless grind and are trying to fufill a need that GW is not there to fill. GW is a pickup and go game. When you finish the campaign in PvE you just wait for the next one, yes its still going to be GW, the mechanics are not going to change much only the backdrop , but that is what many players want. Many people arn't living in the game looking to be entertained from sunrise to sundown every waking moment of thier lives. When they come to GW with that type of expectation then they are going to be dissapointed cause they are in the wrong game.


Its unreasonable to roll up 10 toons, and do the same storylineline 10 times and expect not to be bored, or complain that the content is grind because you have too many toons and obviously can't do everything 10 times.

you say gw isnt makign any profit or money atm ? ^_^ i beg to differ i know countless people who go to the guildwars online store and buy a second account .. or buy more character slots so if half of every one bought more character slots every months and every chapter that comes out ^_^ there making one hell of a profit at 10 bucks a pop for 1 char slot ..
secondly alot of pvp people have the option to buy skill packages from the online store ranging from like 24.99 -39.99 ^_^ you say gw isn't making any money to inprove the game your wrong ..

Gw is getting over welmed with what people want done .. in one instance alot of people want the game done this way and in another instance some want it done the other way .. which resolves into a conflict of intrest in the game meaning one group of peopela re gonna be happy and the other isnt ..

so guikldwars takes the time to think on what would be best for both sides and no one individually .. and yes i admit .. theyy havent always suceeded . but they try and fix it as times goes on ..

alot of you say doa is a failed expeirment .. i fail to see this .. yes it hard we all know that .. but alot of these peopel who stoped doing it went back to get other chars threw the game that will better suit this area ^_^ give it time things will be come more clear when every one has cooled down and are ready to go at it from a clear point of view ^_^

So yeah improvments in the game are needed .... paying a monthly fee . i do not think so ... for guildwars profits from many different aspects .. like gw merchandice .. you dont think they take a precentage of that stuff your wrong ^_^ do please dont feed us a bunch of crap they make more then you imagine

Put it this way.

Completly forget about the diffuculty level (which is what people complain about).

Take a look at sorrows furnace, the obvios attention to detail, the good layout, the general polished feel about it (its not to my taste, but you cant deney its quality), now look at DOA. If you forget about the difficulty level and simply look at whats left, it complety pales in comparison, guild wars needs to improve, not get worse.

And thats why threads like this are born.

Excellent point. And I'm starting to get to grips with it. As such, Nightfall was the last chapter I preordered. I'm going to wait until it's perfectly clear what I'll be buying next time, and if I don't like what I read on sites like this one, I won't be buying at all.

Guildwars is moving further away from delivering stuff I enjoy with every chapter, when it comes to end game PvE content.

Prophecies: Sorrow's Furnace, Underworld, Fissure of Woe: fun places one can freely explore. Multiple quests, none of which are required to be taken, straightjacket style, to have a good time. Moderately to quite challenging depending on party build, and more reliant on player skill than micromanaging every single skill slot on every character in the party. The areas look great too.

Factions: Two elite missions that consist of traveling from A to B and killing everything in the way, taking quite a lot of time.

Nightfall: A group of elite areas with all the restrictions of the Factions elite missions, with an extra helping of awfulness to make it the worst yet.

I see a design trend there that started with the Tomb of Primeval Kings PvE addition, but one can't complain about that because if was a free addition to an already complete game. If this trend continues, I've bought my final chapter. It's a good jump-off point anyway, all 3 chapters being tied up in one overarcing story.

Monthly Fee’s is the extremely right hand way of accomplishing more in guild wars. However what I would say would be to do the left hand option. Give players the option to create their own world with a toolset that would benefit the company. Here is the thing just like monthly fees this won’t happen, “no way no how.” Oblivion does the whole lets add new content and have players pay for it way, but many people have already started to get bored with oblivion. So do these affect the games outcome in the future, maybe a little but really it’s just pointless “hogwash.”

That would work because everything is instanced, but I don't know if Anet has considered it. I support that idea though sindex, it would keep things very fresh.

Pretty interesting discussion. I haven't gone through all the repiles but I know enough to comment. Unfortunately i generally disagree with the OP and would add that I hope he doesn't feel ganged up on, but it's a bit too late for that

From what I understand of the many interviews I've read and heard with the Anet big wigs (Jeff Strain, etc.), GW was from the very beginning designed to be different from the typical MMO. They intended almost from the get-go to offer a MMO-style game that did not require a monthly fee and the franchise would be kept alive by selling optional, stand-alone expansions.

This is very unique and so far, I have to see it has benefited consumers very well. The barrier to entry is low (I myself was introduced to GW thru Factions first) and players can get involved with as much or as little as they please. It is a very flexible system and Anet has admitted that no, they make less money per player than MMOs like WoW. To balance that, they probably have to spend a lot less money maintaining their servers. The world is not persistent, so there's less need to staff gamemasters because everything is instanced.

I digress. As far as I'm concerned, Anet IS adding new content with the release of new chapters every 6 months. Every time a new chapter comes out, refinements are added to the overall core game. The ingenuity behind this business model is that (ideally), they bring in new players with each new release as well as cultivate renewed interest with their established fan base.

I don't see how suddenly charging players a monthly fee would help Anet's cause. Think of what would happen if one day, all your favourite websites that you surf for free asked that you pay them a monthly fee to view their content. We'd see these website lose serious traffic to their pages.

The OP suggests adding a monthly fee to further develop existing content (i.e. Prophecies), but I have to wonder about the magnitude of these improvements. I mean, for $15/month, they had BETTER add some pretty impressive things to the game because it perfectly fine before as a "free" game. Furthermore, how do they market this change so they retain existing customers and entice new players to the existing 3 GW games? With a monthly fee added, I will expect fundamental gameplay enhancements. And if that happens, why not just release an all-out sequel instead?

I get the sense the OP loves GW enough to want it to last indefinitely... but nothing lasts forever. Even a game like WoW will eventually fizzle out. Time will go on, technology will advance and new games will be created to raise the bar for MMOs.

It doesn't make sense to ask people to start paying for something they've been getting for free. And if you do, you better add something that makes it worthwhile. And if you do that, why not just go all out (for example, make Guild Wars 2)?

you want a game with monthly fee?

solution1: go play WoW

OR

solution2: destroy one of GWs major selling points (no monthly fee)

btw, I like how youre able to 'safely predict' all sorts of things, I can do the same; I safely predict that if GW goes monthly fee all the whining and crying ever seen on these boards so far will only be a fraction of the whining and crying that will be unleashed (this time, it will actually be justified).

Yay, someone else said what I was thinking before I posted. Now I don't have to type all that out. <3

i dont know if someone said this before(i am bored of reading so many posts :P ),but i ll say it as simple as it can be...gw is created based on this economical model...if u want to make an online game based on monthly fee u need at least two basic things...first,cap lvl at 100 at least(hard to reach in other words) and secondly hard to get top items(Armors,weapons etc).so u can understand why gw is never gonna have monthly fee...maybe gw2 :P

I don't agree with the OP. I mean, anet would actually lose money from all the players who quit if monthly fees came in. And as to the new content you want? Fish that give a hp bonus? Not worth anything? I guess you haven't checked a rune trader lately, cause 9 hp is about 25K. And a morale bonus needs favour. Or skill slots in your 8 slot bar. Put this in and people would either grind and fish all day or buy them from those who do. Not seeing how this makes things fun. Then you also have to change the monsters to do more damage, to compensate for all these heroes with more hp.

And mining? For ectos? Farming at least takes some effort, but this? Do you know how easy it would be to set a totally defensive and running build and then just run for the mine. Even if you get some get some AI aggro problems you can easily just run in a click as fast as you can to get as many ectos as you can. Harder to do in the UW then the FoW, but I'm sure there are plenty who could do it. Just look at how may chest runners there are. Think, instead of chests you got ecto/shard/gem deposits. You don't even have to buy keys. Tell me how that wouldn't break the economy. And think of the outcry from people who have slaved to get FoW armour. Would be worthless now. Seems to me you just want a way to get free materials.

And adding stuff to old chapters? Sure, it'd be nice. But is it needed? New players who have just bought old chapters? All new to them. Old players? Do you know the number of players who get run cause they've done tyria to death. And some areas are just hated, but thats because of spawns, not content so your idea does nothing. The maguma? After the missions were done the only reason to go back was for totem axes. Most just go straight for sanctum cay. Why? Cause its annoying and tight and spiders just won't leave you alone. So you either run it, or spend time killing stuff for crap drops. The only good drops in the place is titan farming. If you want to admire the scenery, you can do that now. You just seem to want to force players to go back cause you want to.

If it came down to a new chapter or some extra quest tyria, I'd take a new chapter all the time. And I don't think you can do much for factions unless you change practically the whole structure of the chapter. Do you really want the developers putting more time into kaineng city rather than a new continent? Especially if you have to pay every month on top. No thank you.

QFT..