The Future of Guild Wars Micropayments - Suggestions? Comments?

the 3 million sales shows the game *is not dieing* however you want to look at it

further showing GW vitality,
the amount of people putting in gametime during Wintersday (01/2007 PR)

Most MMORPG's rely on the very same shitty concept: Level character, do mission 1, level character some more, do mission 2, and so on. The steps between these fases are usually so long that people are going to talk about the 'grind' concept. Guild Wars has a whole other concept, so don't even try to put it next to World of Warcraft or something similair.

I suggest you go out and play some Final Fantasy XI Online if you like a very long PvE game... As much as i played and liked that game, i really hate to say that the story mode in missions and quests doesn't even come close to Guild Wars! Especially the quest part is just plain awful... Great community though, very great, and the best of all online games i played!!

Most MMORPG's are just typical 'kill, kill, kill, and kill some more untill i level to whatever, and i think that i am the 1337 because of my ultra high level and holy weapons' games. Guild Wars aint that! PvE aint, and PvP also isn't. It's about you, and your human, or computerised teammates. And as far as i am concerned, the PvE mode has more than enough content! Also, a lot of other MMO's have the usual monthly fee's, and you need to pay another €30/40/50 for the aditional expansion packs. Lastly, they do mostly NOT have such a fine development team that actually listens to most of the suggestions being made concidered gameplay improvements, and do NOT have such large FREE content updates like for example 'Sorrows Furnace'.

Whats your point? so what if a campaign can be finished in just a short amount of time? Any game whether it be on pc, xbox, ps, online or offline can be completed in a short amount time.

Does that mean it doesnt have replayability? No.

GWs is the one of the few games ive ever played that kept me coming back and back for more. Once youve completed the pve main storyline, you have countless other things to do. Titles, weapons, armor, exploration, heroes to equip.

And then another 6 or 7 professions to play through.

PvP is not the main aspect and only aspect of GWs. Your arrogant to suggest it is, and your arrogant to suggest that an online MMO cannnot have a PvE aspect. PvP and PvE are just as important as the other.

GWs is great because it caters for both sides. But if you dont like PvE in an online game, then dont play it, no ones forcing you too. But just because you dont find PvE enjoyable doesnt mean others dont too.

Obviously myself and countless others DO like PvE and we DO see it as the main part of the game. Does that mean the whole PvP side of it is pointless and should be removed, just because myself and others dont play it? No ofcourse not.

But by what your saying, are you suggesting that WoW or FF or SWO or any other MMO online dont have a PvE side to it? Ofcourse they do and they thrive and pull in loads of money.

If you want a purely PvP game, then go play unreal and frag someone to death continually. I dont get why your playing GWs if you dont like an RPG side to things.

I haven't seen any numbers or evidence to suggest that GW is dying. And I'm happy the dev's are pushing themselves to give us new content every six months, because I like new content.

As a player, I absolutely hate micropayments. Everyone frowns on using E-bay gold to buy Fissure armor - and for good reason - it cheapens the efforts of those who actually earned it. But what if somebody pays five bucks to Anet for the collector's edition, saves themselves 100k on hero weapons, and puts that savings towards Fissure armor? Is there really any difference?

If I had to choose between micropayments and GW dying, I'd choose micropayments, but this really seems like a false premise to me.

micropayments are a good idea to sustain GW, but I won't buy another thing for my account knowing how thin security ncsoft website and the client itself have

Especially Final Fantasy XI Online is PvE based. I played it for approx 500 hours in total, but never ever saw any PvP content that i could do. PvP content is more of a hidden aspect in this game. Almost all is PvE based. The in-game community is what saves this game the most in my opinion. The game has just an awful grind aspect to it, that gets very depressing in the end. Also you need tons of time to do anything in the game, especially traveling on foot or Chocobo is a time consuming concept. It's completely party based, and you can do absolutely nothing alone unless youre a Thief/Ninja with exeptionally super skills. Quests and missions also don't come even close to the way it's done in Guild Wars. Overall it's a good game, but some of the main things are very badly designed. The game was mainly based on the hardcore MMO players. And MMORPG's in general are mostly pretty for the hardcore audience.

Guild Wars however delivers something for everyone! It has the best known PvP concept in any MMORPG, and the PvE content is quite a lot. And you can enjoy it wether you are an elite player, or just a player who plays the game every once in a while. Thereby, every game has it's ends in gameplay options. Even World of Warcraft players are complaining about the lack of endgame options... As what i have heard, the only thing to do at endgame is doing raids and such. And i certainly know that Guild Wars has a LOT of endgame content! FoW, UW, PvP (which really has endless replay value), Domain of Anguish, The Deep, Urgoz's Warren, Sorrow's Furnace, Ruins of the Tomb of the Primeval Kings, Guilds, Master quests, etc etc etc...

As far i am concerned, there is more then enough to do in the Guild Wars PvE mode, after you worked yourself through all of the missions, quests, etc. And concidered it's a game without the monthly fee's, i think it's absolutely fantastic!

Prophecies sold 1 million copies, 2 million units sold was announced during Factions and sales just hit 3 million sales after the release of NF.

Now...I agree that a large percentage of sales are repeat customers but, even with some attrition, new players are being introduced. I don't see this as a sign that GW is failing and numbers are dropping. Quite the contrary. It appears to me that GW is growing and picking up pace. The 3 million mark was hit much earlier in the life cycle of NF then the 2 million mark was in Factions which was hit faster than the 1 million mark in Prophecies.

If the trend continues then I suspect eventually the number will look like x+1 million users will occur on x release. Growth Looks healthy to me.


As far as micro payments are concerned. I have no problem with the options that hav ebeen so far introduced. PvP unlock packs provide a way for new players to become competitive in PvP before they get discouraged and are turned off from GW entirely. Offereing a special skin already in the game doesn't hurt anyone and provides no advantage in PvE.

I don't care if they offer different faces and hair as a micropayment option. That won't affect gameplay in the slightest. What I would not like to see is a micropayment for storage option or micropay for keybinding option. Those would provide unfair advantage to gamers with cash. ANET seems to have a their finger on the pulse of the community and have handled micropayments fairly to date. I suspect that will continue.

YES! This is the first intelligent post in this thread. VERY well said!

It get boring REAL fast to hear ppl excessive whining about one of the best online games out there! If you dont like it QUIT for crying out loud so the rest of us doesnt have to LISTEN TO YOU ANYMORE!

If GW is dying I blame YOU for killing it! (but its not so I for one is NOT worried...)

I see discussions like this all the time and frankly they still amaze me. Ok so a few PvP guilds or teams are trying another game. That hardly constitutes the mass exodus the OP seems to be implying. Again this is a discussion fueled by internet rumors and gossip not by hard data. You show me numbers for this so called exodus versus the actual player base of the game and I'll be impressed if they represent a significant portion of the population. Even if all the OP's suppositions are true they have little if anything to do with the business model.

Let us examine the points made in the original post which the OP maintains are responsible for this so called exodus. First the point of expansions, new skills, unfairness to PvP and the obvious effectiveness of some builds versus others. Ok I'll address the expansions and their companion skills. This is not a problem with the business model but the player base. You get a shiny new toy and everyone wants to play with the shiney new toy instead of the old one, this leads to the toy being used more and thus you see it more often which no doubt gives the illusion that it is more effective, however I doubt this is really the case. I would be willing to bet that a close examination of past chapter skills would reveal counters to any of the new "unfair" skills of the expanasions. As for your point on builds I'm sorry what games have you been playing for the past few years? Almost any game like Guild Wars will have certain builds that just plain work. It's a fact. Certain skills synergize better with others. It is impossible, and stupid for that matter, to make all skills equal in utility. It's like playing paper, rock, scissors and you and your opponent always throwing rock. some skills are better than others, some skills work better with other skills and some combinations of skills are simply better at dealing damage, healing, or whatever the task may be than any random assortment of skills you can throw together. These are all just factors of the game and not ANet's business model. In fact these are pretty much facts of life in about any game. Go to the much vaunted WoW and you'll find out quickly that the same "issues" exist there. Some builds work better than others, some skills are better than others, people with TBC have neater stuff than people without.

Now to address Anet's staff situation. Believe it or not a lot of software companies do that, not just Anet. You have development teams and while one team is working on the newest, brightest and next best thing the others are working on patches, fixes and bugs. Let us say you purchase Adobe Photoshop. Ok you bought it, installed it and now it's yours with no monthly fees. Adobe still maintains staff to patch, and update that software even though it isn't "making money". There will always be sales of it here and there that's just a fact and if you think that no one is buying Prophecies anymore or that no one is buying Factions(well maybe Factions) then you are deluding yourself. Those games still sell, not as much as they did in their initial release but they still sell. They count on the initial release sales to pay most of the bills then use the trickle sales afterwards to make up the rest.

In summation, any so called "exodus" cannot be rightfully attributed to Anet, or it's business model. It is even doubtful that the "exodus" itself is even as big a deal as the OP makes it out to be. In fact there is an utter lack of evidence for any "exodus" aside from internet rumors and gossip which is hardly a Neilson poll. All the "issues" that the OP claims are reasons for this "exodus" are in fact simple facts of life in the software industry and in particular online games such as GuildWars and even the much vaunted WoW. In my opinion this is just someone who heard a rumor and got a little over excited about it. Perhaps if some hard data could be provided to back up the claim of this "exodus" then it might be a bit more compelling, but as of right now I remain utterly unconvinced.

I haven't given much thought to the ideas (at the end of the post) that OP brought up but this is an interesting read. Micro-payments do seem to be a nice way to help ANet sustain the business; after all, players do have an option to buy or not buy, ANet is also helping to facilitate more options to the game. The business model that ANet is using definitely tends to feel restrictive since they earn a 1 time profit only from sales and they definitely need to balance out on budget, development and other server maintenance neccessities.

Development requires costs to justify and this also relates to server maintenance, etc. Micro-payment looks like another avenue to which ANet can get revenue to support continued efforts instead of just relying on selling the regular chapters. As for whether GW is dying, I simply do not know. But as a GW player, I definitely feel the game is on its decline (just a hunch).

Given the number of "I just stopped here posts" and "the Guild Wars is NOT dying" posts, the number of people who made it through the whole thing can't be more than 3. For which I congratulate you.

Reasons like "I see discussions like this all the time and frankly they still amaze me. Ok so a few PvP guilds or teams are trying another game." are not the reasons I enumerated as to why Guild Wars is dying. Nor did I say anywhere that the Guild Wars business model is a failure financially. Look it up! It's really not there!

What I did say, however, is that a 6 month release schedule is bad. A few of you like this - but what it is is something that's unheard of within the game industry. The result is a rushed product - Factions and Nightfall both suffered as a result. A 6 month release schedule is so bad that some of the ArenaNet devs have mentioned that it would be better if it wasn't this way.

But why is it this way? Well, get through the rest of the first post...

To recap:

- Micropayments are: Things you buy from the online store.
- Suggested micropayments: Things you buy from the online store that keep with the tenet of the game - skill over time spent. To a degree, vanity skins become no-nos for suggestions.
- Why micropayments: The Guild Wars business model calls for a 6 month release schedule. This is restrictive and slowly killing Guild Wars. The hope is that increased revenue on the side will let them ease off of this schedule.
- The point of the thread: Post the things that ArenaNet could potentially offer, without bitching and moaning about the things they obviously would not offer (gold, powerful items, items in general, etc.) You're free to disagree with the premise - if you've read through and aren't just disagreeing with something I did not say.

With a six month development cycle they can afford to rely on one time sales profits. They get their initial take from the large boom in release sales and then as the titles experience trickle sales, new players buying the newest release, old players who couldn't get their copy on the release date or who took a wait and see attitude, it gives them more money to sustain maintenance and other aspects of the business. All this micro payment stuff though seems to forget the GuildWars store. It is a sustainable business model and they have already captured a die hard fan base who will buy these things into perpetuity if they make them.

The Guild Wars business model is just fine, thanks. This kind of crap, namely paying for features or content that should already be included, is exactly what Bethsoft started doing with Oblivion that drove me off their products for good. I'd hate to see Anet take a similar tack. Fortunately I suspect they have a much better sense of their business model's success than the OP.

The whole "Guild Wars is dying" thing is really starting to get old, seeing as it's been around for about as long as the game. I've never understood it and I still don't. Anet's business model with this game is the best I've ever seen for an online game, others should learn from it.

No however as evidence of the decline that you seem so dead set on proving you provided your "exodus". If not evidence then at the very least an indicator.

Granted you offered other reasons however, it is sloppy research to take a small segment of the population, in this case GWP, and based on the actions of that segment determine the disposition of the rest of the population. Unless you can conclusively prove that the GWP exodus to WoW represents a valid and diverse cross section of the entire Guild Wars population then you cannot use them as a valid indicator of an exodus. Now we begin to see the point of my post. Your thesis is moot, that being that players are leaving GuildWars in enough numbers to constitute a decline and that the reasons for that decline are the ones you enumerated. So if your thesis is moot then your entire argument is also moot. That is the point of my post. Show me evidence of an exodus and then maybe your position will be more tenable. As it stands now though what you are basically saying is that Anet should institute a micro payment system to fix a problem that can't even be shown to conclusively exist.

first give us the devs names and links to their statements

as for rhe rest get your fact right or give it up

1 it is a ONE YEAR DEVELOPMENT ON EACH CHAPTER not six months.

they have the game engine and a huge artwork/animation/SF library to drag and drop instead of starting from the ground up with each chapter.

each chapter gives them more experience and a bigger library to draw on for the next chapter giing more time foe extras

2 they have hired more people to work on each separate chapter than the entire crew that produced that produced chapter one.

3 there is yet a third event team.

4 it was stated from the start by JEFF STRAIN that this new model was unique so thank you for stating the obvious

rushed NF?...............i guess that is why it got high rateings and playerl like it

I hope I've not been mistaken for implying that each round of sales do not turn in as profit for ANet. I do in fact feel that sales for each chapter more than breaks even for the company. However, I feel that micro-payment is another channel that helps to fuel ANet additionally. I haven't really touched on what they should sell as I haven't given much thought myself, but they shouldn't be selling new/specialized content on the in-game store as that will upset to ANet's customer base. However, if there are possibile items/features/etc that ANet may find appropriate for selling on the stores and is aligned to their direction for GW, I think it's a good thing.

Whether their business model is a success or not is not something that we (as players) can really comment on. On one hand, we can't rightfully say that their business model is failing; on the other, we can't also prove that it is a success. It's still too early to say and we may never know the real story. A business does not flop overnight unless there's really no thought given upon its attempt, and it's clear this is not the case with ANet. However, no one can rightfully prove that ANet's business model is successful since we don't have actual numbers to decide (and how many years down the road are we talking about?); on the other hand, if the business model is indeed showing signs of failing, no ANet employee would be sane enough to come forth and tell everyone. Hence, I'd suggest not taking opinions stated by players on touchy issues such as business model too seriously; in-game experience is more valid imo.

Anyway, I'd rather see ANet's business model work since I hold a strong belief that it will impact the future MMOs to come. I feel that GW being what it is today is impacted by how much ANet is able to do (within the budget that is), and sometimes I wonder that if ANet had more revenue to provide for better development/equipment, would GW be a much better game than it is now. GW is already a good game but it also needs to scale up along the way to meet its competitors. After all, ideas can always be copied by another game company; continuous innovation may be the key to ANet's success and this requires $$$. As for the 6-months release cycle, I think it's fine as long as ANet deems that the window period more than allows for innovating the game; although I don't mind if they need to take longer than that.

Granted, micropayments are an option however I don't see how much more they could offer. As you said offering special, or exclusive purchasable content will upset players who don't use the store. What they have in place, PvP unlock packs and extra slots is honestly the best they can do in my opinion. Anything more than that will unbalance the game. I still see no conclusive evidence of a decline as posited by the OP and even if there were I'm not sure what micro payments will do to prevent said decline.

unheard of? according to who? you?

SOE does rapid expansions too
- Everquest had 2 expansions last year
- Everquest2 also had 2 expansions last year

Oh? I trust you're enjoying the elite missions in the Realm of Madness; if you recall correctly though, those weren't even finished when NF was released. Think about that, the elite missions intended for Nightfall were not done when the game was released because there wasn't enough time.

Sure, Nightfall did have a lot of content and game (some pretty cool stuff to) when the release date came up, but the fact that they weren't able to get *everything* they wanted done at release should be quite telling that they didn't have enough time.

You took the words right out of my mouth Only A-Net insiders know how well or how poorly the GW business model is working. We has players only have our opinions without many business facts to back them up.

That being said, I think the whole idea of micropayments is a great idea. Whether or not the GW business model is failing, I'm surprised that A-Net hasn't moved on this idea more quickly, if for no other reason than to make some incremental profits off the game. The extra slots and collector edition bonus items are a start down this road, but as described above, it could be a lot more. Players have shown that they'll pay cash for vanity type items, and more would better.

That's not necessarily true. They may very well have had more than enough time provided everything had gone to plan. We have no idea what goes on in their development groups. For all we know the Elite content had to be left out in order to correct a serious issue before release. These things happen. How many times have you had a deadline and things just kept popping up that absolutely required your attention? All we can do is speculate on why the elite content wasn't there on release day. It's not a telling point, it tells us nothing. All it does is give us something to speculate on and nothing more.

I bet hes thinking of Gaile commenting about rumors of Chapter4 being Mayan and released in August

here's what Gaile *actually* said
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...0083395&page=3
I dont know of any statements by ANET staff preferring otherwise to a 6 month schedule

but hes welcome to show us otherwise

This is not what I'm talking about at all. I'm not going to show you otherwise, because IRC chat is easily forged, not official, and anyways - the privacy of alpha testers and their forums and anet employees looking just to shoot the breeze is going to be respected. Just leave it at the fact that this 6 month release schedule is working some people to death.

I don't know... A-Net has enough wealth to avoid doing Micropayments and their business model (hasn't changed yet) is to provide a MMORPG (more like COORPG) free of charge for us to play. We won't know what A-Net has planned for us until we see Chapter 4.

What fact?!? That's the problem with your entire thesis and argument. It has no supporting facts. It's all based on hearsay and the only "evidence" which you could provide you admit that it is easily forged. If this was a court of law or a moderated debate you would have already lost your case. If you cannot cite your sources then you should not bring up a point supported by those sources in a debate of any sort and you most certainly should not bandy the word fact around unless you can provide evidence that what you say is indeed a fact and not just hearsay. Once again I challenge you to provide evidence to back up your points otherwise your entire argument is moot.

Clearly you have no idea what I'm talking about, let me spell it out for you: today we're paying for unlocks and extra character slots, maybe in six months we're paying for access to special 15k armor, and in a year? Skins and green weapons that nobody else can get, special guild halls, and what else? The sky is the limit, and it's only a few steps beyond these things that will have us paying cash for exclusive skills, extra player levels, and more powerful weapons. This is the business model for many successful Asian MMO's, don't doubt that ANet hasn't at least considered it.

The day that I have to pay extra money (above expansion purchases) just to be able to compete is the day I stop playing this game.

I agree, if there is monthly charges or anything that force me to pay over the price of exisiting chapters. I'll stop playing this game and move on to something else.

If this is your attitude, I'm inclined to say that you're just making things up.

The burden of proof is on you, my friend. I'd rather see a possibly forged screenshot than having someone say "Hey, just take my word for it." You've made a whole mess of statements stated at fact, and have provided absolutely nothing to back them up as more than opinion. Your word is not fact, unless you have proof to back it up. Possibly forged or otherwise.

well, i see the point and the necessity of micropayments, but i will never ever buy anything from the gw store ever again since i got screwed over with the non-modable weapons from the fairly expensive weapon pack.
5 bucks for unuseable weapons has done it for me.

i bet anet keeps screwing players over with these micropayments!

Then they should give themselves extra time. That's what most companies do that don't force themselves on a deadline they can't always meet. They delay release a month, sometimes less, sometimes more; that way when the game is released, it's all finished, and everything is working. Not mostly finished, please wait while we update/change/add things (although patching is common, usually they don't add a large series of missions and content that didn't quite make it in, they fix bugs that were not found).

Now admittedly, NF didn't release unplayably unpolished or anything like that, and the elite missions weren't in the center of the game and needed to be done right away. The point I'm trying to make is that you can tell the time isn't there to get all of it done, just most of it.

I doubt ANET has considered it

one of the primary features of the game is that competitive success is not primarily about gear -- your skill bar is more influential

regarding the future of online store, here's a Gaile statement
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...0037244&page=5

GW is dying not due to its business model but due to lack of support, for a PvP game when was the last time you saw a new PvP map outside of the RA? Or a new core game mode? or free skills to balance the game vs having to buy a new chapter to do it? never.... and thats why GW is dying.

Look at epic, they go out of there way to make sure their users get plenty of maps, mods, new vehicles, and balances well well well well after their games sold and passed any real obligation, and now they're considered the top studio there is. You support your product or itll die.

NF and Factiosn are great examples of ANs lack of support... NF in made up of a huge amount of reused content when for the price we payed we should have gotten original content. And as for factions... its dead.... no support, no new maps, populations down, faction system still broken, elite areas still locked and no sign of change.

Granted, and I'm sure they did try to provide for unforseen circumstances, however you can't plan for every unknown and what they may have thought was adequate time might not have been in the face of unknown problems. Once again this is all speculation as is the supposition that the elite content was left out for no other reason than lack of time. Only the development teams know for sure why the elite content was left out at release. I honestly don't think that they would maintain an unsustainable development cycle though. If they didn't think their teams could handle it they wouldn't have done it. Game makers have learned over the past few years that it is better to turn out a polished game late than to release a flop on schedule. Again though that is speculation on my part. For all I know they might have implemented the development schedule without regard for workloads or sufficient development time.

And yet another unsupported statement about the decline of GuildWars. Maybe I just haven't been playing the correct game. Perhaps I somehow link into some super secret server somewhere, but I still play Factions along with lots of other people. I have long since passed into the faction controlled territories and lo and behold there are groups of people waiting to do the missions there and quests too. OMG! Factions is so dead! As for Nightfall the re-use of a few character models hardly constitutes a rip off, particularly not when it is tied into the storyline. So they took a few monster models big whoop. I know I don't feel ripped off and most of the other people I encounter feel the same way. We got our money's worth in Nightfall. Unless you can show me hard numbers in the form of Neilson polls or some other respected polling and data gathering institute documents that the GuildWars player base has dramatically decreased then you're just blowing smoke and nothing more. Prove your position. Show me numbers. Show me hard data.

I agree with everything you say except "large free updates".Since Sorrows Furnace about a year ago i haven't seen other large updates like that.

A doom post, but a rare one at it. Well argumented, and constructive ideas. The little touch of humor by pointing out Beo didn't hurt either.

I read it, and I agree with the points. They make a lot of sense. Altough I wouldn't express myself in such strong words. It is still an 'outsiders view'. You simply lack the real data to make a stern claim to say that ANet's business model is failing. But you do come up with good arguments, especially the staff. Hearing that Izzy is the single person that is in charge of gamebalance, and besides that has several other tasks to do is mindboggling.
It certainly wouldn't hurt to have someone helping out on that front, that also could furfill a 'gaile role' towards the pvp crowd.

*If* Anet's business model is so stringent that it can't adept itself to an ever increasing complexitiy of the game, then I agree with the OP that the business model is failing.
However, looking with an open mind, there are ways to change parameters without collapse of the business model. One of them the OP already pointed out: micro payments.
Another option I could see is raising the price of the expansions.

Or to summarize: The OP brings a lot of good points to the table, but the connection between points A and B and the conclusion that the business model is failing is questionable.

It's at this point, I say, never mind. 75 posts into the thread and people are getting hung up on the concept that Guild Wars is dying. It doesn't matter if you agree with that or not, it's not the point of the thread at all. The point is that micropayments seem to have fallen by the wayside, even though as a financial model it's much more successful that Guild Wars'. There are some forum warriors arguing tooth and nail over minor points that don't matter in the slightest, using concepts like "court of law". It's an internet forum, get over it. Reporters don't need to reveal their sources, I'm not looking to publicize the names of people when they're just chatting online. If you don't believe it, fine, just address the concepts directly. You can ignore 'Guild Wars is dying' and talk about micropayments directly - it's not as if micropayments should only exist if Guild Wars needs it to survive.

I swear to God, 90% of the people in this thread are talking about things that have nothing to do with anything: Monthly payments, financial failure, etc. This thread in a nutshell is why it's completely stupid to even post again - a utter lack of comprehension on the part of most posters, anal retentive nitpicking, a general failure to see the forest for the trees. Consider this thread dead.

Edit: <3 Makkert

conflicting messages

want to get your point made?
leave the Chicken Little "Sky is Falling" out of your abstract

Rustjive the issue of whether GuildWars is dying or not is the important aspect of this thread. Your position is that it is dying and that MicroPayments are a means to finance solutions to keep this from happening. You offer no supporting evidence for this supposed decline. You offer no hard data to support your claims. So without this supporting evidence of a dying GuildWars your entire micropayment argument becomes moot. You offer a solution to a problem you cannot prove exists and therefore your solution itself becomes pointless.

Exactly.

I could easily say the moon is plotting the destruction of Earth, and that the only way to stop it would be to destroy it first. Then people would say "Where's your proof of the moon plotting to destroy Earth?", and I would reply "It doesn't matter. Point is, we need to destroy the moon to keep this from happening!"

See the problem?

Lets just dump that he ever said that Guild Wars is dying

Micropayments do work.

How many people bought extra player slots?

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

Imo. It is naive to believe that Arenanet's implementation of purchasable player slots and PvP unlock packs is merely to please the gaming community.

Imo, it is to supplement and add to their business model of expansions per 1/2 year cycle.

Now.

Instead of bickering over wether GW is dying or not, lets go back to an issue Gaile herself posted about before?

What would you like to see in the GW store?

Thats what the OP is all about.