The Future of Guild Wars Micropayments - Suggestions? Comments?

this thread should be moved to Sardelac Sanitarium if its a Game Improvement thread

1 I don't care what is offered in the store as long as it is only cosmetic.

2 You said the Maple Store makes more money the GW. I though that was just funny. I would love to see your proof of that. It really hurts your argument when you pull facts out your rear end.

WoWs 1st expansion launches next week

thats very appealing for anyone who plays both games

http://www.gamestudy.org/eblog/?p=32 says:

"The total revenue during 3 service years is 200B Won(1,000 Won = 1 USD)"

This is as of February 2006 - or in other words, almost a year ago.

Considering Guild Wars just exceeded 3 million sold (December 13th press release), and its MSRP is $50, simple math tells us that Maple Story is making a good deal more than GW. Even if you factor in collector's editions (if everyone had bought collector's instead of regular), you'd be sitting at $210 million. This, of course, isn't true. Nor did people buy 5 million extra character slots to make up the difference. Hey, we'll never know for sure if Guild Wars is making making less than Maple Story, but it seems that the facts are on my side.

It hurts your argument when you pull arguments out of your rear end.

I think too many folks here are taking the "GW is dying" part too seriously.

@Str0b0,
I don't see much point in dwelling on whether there is substantial evidence or not, because there's probably no way to provide substantial evidence that "GW is not dying" either. I don't disagree with your posts though, it does point out facts that we should be careful when laying a statement (as opposed to most disagreeing posts that I find rather non-constructive).

For the sake of the discussion, at least OP has defined a context. Although we do not know if it's actual or not but it's still probable. So assuming if ANet's business model is indeed rather restrictive and that there's a tendency they will meet with obstacles, do we feel that micro-payment could be a feasible possibility to help fuel additional ANet's resources?
- If yes, what stuff do you think might work on micro-payment (without affecting ANet's direction of maintaining game balance, retaining the more interesting aspects of current PvE, e.g. vanity items, etc)
- If no, whay do you feel it will not help at all? Or perhaps, if you feel that it may backfire instead.

If there's no business model issues at this point for ANet, I feel there's no harm discussing it with a supposed context; it could be an interesting discussion and also help to crack our brains alittle. On the other hand, if ANet is indeed finding its own business model getting restrictive, whatever we discuss here could end up as a reference collating valuable general (player input) consensus which may be of use to them. For that purpose, it might also be good if we start off our little (or long) posts by pointing out "IF ANet's business model for GW is restrictive", so that we don't mislead anyone to think that it is the actual situation.

I agree with you there. I was felt the decline in GW in the sense of the creativity of later chapters. To give ANet the benefit of doubt, I'll attribute it to the commitment of releases that may require more costs or time to provide for better efforts (and that it's not an issue with talents).

If it was time, then pushing back release dates may help to give the devs and designers more quality time to think as well as less stress over the commitment.

Okay the more on-topic part, if costs were an issue, micro-payments could be a good avenue to fuel revenue additionally. Another way is to bring up the prices of the chapters so that they have more profits to buffer any additional costs associated with their planned endeavors. Basically, a way to negate any impact to content quality associated with limitations due to budget.

As for items to sell through micro-payment, I was playing with the thought of existing Unique items that would be customised on purchase which players can receive when they are in-game and using a certain command (as with pre-order items). Customization is the key here as it prevents those purchased items to be exchanged for in-game gold (which would be like buying gold indirectly). Unique items are fairly balanced albeit some may argue that it would be unbalaced for PvE to get in early stages. However, I see it as reasonable since if players do not purchase on the store, they could still do it in-game during low-levels anyhow. In addition, they do not make characters over-powered either.

In order to moderate for PvE, micro-paid unique items need to follow these rules:

- Must be customised when received
- List of purchasable unique items cannot include the ones that are obtainable from elite areas/missions (players need to work for it)
- List of purchasable unique items cannot include the ones that are collector-based, i.e. obtainable only with Amulet of Mist and Book of Forgotten
- List of purchasable unique items cannot include the unique collector items, i.e., Amulet of Mist and Book of Forgotten

Lazy players then have a choice of getting the unique items from the approved list if they don't want to waste time to wait in-game to buy or farm for them. It's a reasonable compromise to me (if a player wants something without working for it, at least they paid for it legally), although I'd most rather work for my items.

Btw, I do not know if there's any legal issues on ANet's end. I'm simply assuming that legalities aren't a concern here (I'm none the wiser anyway). :P

what everybody (esp the op) ia forgetting is that it is not Anet having to worry about short term money

NCsoft owns Anet lock, stock, and barrel

NCsoft can afford to carry GW for several chapters if they need to

I'll give you that. I can't prove it isn't however I do resent the use of, to paraphrase an earlier poster, "Chicken Little" tactics in what could have been a fairly straight forward discussion about Micro Payments. I don't disagree with Micro Payments as a supplement to the business model. It has been proven successful. I honestly am not sure what else they could offer though. Anything beyond a cosmetic boon would unbalance the game. This begs the question though, would you pay even a small price for something that will not benefit you in any way? I know I personally would not. If I am going to shell out cash for something then I want something more than eye candy. The extra character slots and the PvP packs are nice. If they weren't, apparently, contractually obligated to DirectSong then I'd even say offer the music packs there as well. your idea of offering weapons that must be customized has some merit to it but I could still see some thorny reactions to even that.

One route they could go to avoid such reactions would be to use the Everquest model where they have entire servers where if you want to drop a dime and get a million gold or some uber rare piece of loot then you can. It's those servers and those servers alone on which you can use it but still. You are able to purchase items from other players for hard currency as well, thus mitigating the tendency of players to Ebay their goods.

The micro payment model of Maple Story has been mentioned and I'd also like to address that. Yes their earnings through that are impressive. The thing is though how much did they have to spend in development costs? What is their budget like for maintaining and updating the game? What was their development budget? How much did they have to make to break even and how much actual profit have they made? Without transparent books these questions cannot be answered and the figures provided, while impressive, are meaningless without the context of their books. You have to remember it's not necessarily how much you make so much as what sort of ROI you can expect off your initial investment of resources.

If it's true that Anet is owned by NCsoft then it's a good point considering that SOE didn't give up on EQ2 when the population didn't take off. In fact they pumped more resources into it and it's actually starting to shine.
Corporations are good like that. They don't drop potential cash cows. They really put some effort into keeping them afloat until they find their niche and take off with it!

straight from the GW site FAQ

Coming from someone who played all those "Free to play, but pay to get anything" games, the thing you're gonna have to realize that games built on purely the micropayment system like Maplestory and the Gpotato games (Rappelz, Flyff, Space Cowboy) are games on the barest minimum level possible.

They have as little built in content as possible. All the really good content must be purchased.

They really suck as games. They are pure grinds with no real plot or purpose.

Basically you take guild wars, remove ALL vanity items and armor. Remove all the missions, remove all the story, remove all the voice acting, remove any sense or purpose of anything.

Then you offer FoW Armor, 15k armors, rare skinned weapons, Festival items, and other such items in the store for real money.

This is something Anet does not want to be

Not true.

Linage and GW are the only titles that are holding NCSoft up. All their other releases are flops which only serve to bleed cash.

If something adverse happens to GW's profitability, you can rest assured that heads will start to roll and people will start getting desperate. Desperate people think short term. You can figure out for yourself the outcome from numerous short term decisions.

Why don't we look at it like this:

The 6 month release (I said release, not development) schedual is too short a time to finish chapters. We're what, 3-4 months after the release of Nightfall and they still haven't finished the chapter. That there points out they either are releasing deadlines just for the sake because it's impossible to put in that amount of work in that short time, they have too little manpower, or both.

Now taking that into account, with the resources of the company clearly being stretched, the outlook of chapter 4 doesn't look to bright. The solution adressing these problems is to either delay release schedual, hire more developers or both. Either way, they then would have the problem with either keeping the current workers payed long enough between release, being able to pay the old and new devs with the little money they get between releases or both.

The solution to that would be in Rust's first post.

Now, the business model side of things, everything is fine and dandy. The problem is that with ArenaNet stretched thin like this, there has been little to no work on fixing up the crucial parts of the game. Skill balances as stated are few and far between which leaves a horribly stagnant metagame especially with the bunch of horribly overpowered skills that came with Nightfall release which should have been addressed in alpha yet haven't been touched.

Sure you can say this will all change with the update coming up, but can you please take a look at that statement? There hasn't been any indication about what exactly the update coming up is going to include, when it will be or anything about the extent of skill balance. Even when it does come, say by sheer chance it magically adresses every single current problem in GW. Yes it will be great and awesome, but what about the next skill balance? What about the next chapter release? I mean come on. There's wishful thinking and then there's having your head in the clouds.

#gwp, while being full of trash talking, arrogant assholes are the majority of the top level of PvP play. The PvP game is stagnant and because of that, the competition is fading. None of them want this and going to WoW is to feed their addiction with something to do. A game which focuses so much on being both in PvE and PvP, this outflux of top tier PvPers leaving the game does not bide well for Guild War's future if ArenaNet continues to put the same priority on both sides of the game without putting in the effort necessary for PvP.

I think what the OP has stated, and we have all seem to have missed is this.

The concept of micropayments should be limited to game edition updates.

Such as:

The is reissue such as the game of the year.

New faces and hair. Is the limit on faces and hair due to lack of creativivty or lack of funds to include those? If it is the latter, I think that most of us would be happy to buy a few more options. So if the devs announce that for $5 you can puchase xx amount of hair stles and for $5 you can purchase xx amount of faces I would buy that feature, I think that most of us would. Now the ability to change faces and hair with the exsistng ones would be a normal game update.

And I think in many situations, if the devs say "We would like to include this new cosmetic feature but we don't have the funds", they might see if it can be sold at the online store.

Now is GW in some sort of finacial bind, do they have to release every 6 to make payroll? Can the online store support GW durring the development (if that is an issue) so that they can take their time?

Only A-net can answer that. I can tell you this, with what I have bought I payed for a 4th game already.

So, um, now that we've pretty much all agreed that the "GW is dying!" part of the OP should be entirely disregarded...

...Where's our motivation? I can see plenty of ways in which ANet can make more money out of us. Heck, we could start a "Give poor ANet free cash 'cause we love them so much!" account via PayPal or something.

But why are we coming up with good ways for them to exploit us now?

Oh, and the next person who says something along the lines of "more choices can't be bad" is going to force me to breach Australian law on promoting violence on the basis of religion. Even though I'd have to make two religions up first, then assign one to me and one to you.

Can I point you to the XboX 360 Live! Marketplace(tm)? A cool little "optional" robust feature, that allows game creators to make some extra revenue and provide new features, means in practice that game creators are cutting bits out so they can charge extra for them later.

There are now multiple sports games where you need to spend cash just to end up with the same teams/tracks/racecars as the Playstation 2 version of the same game (which retails for 20% cheaper!).

...So yeah, telling a game publisher they can feel totally free to milk us dry with microtransactions is not a clever moove.

Microtransactions are here and they will be for a long time. It's up to us to say which microtransactions we will welcome, which we will tolerate and which we wont.

Whos agreeing that Guild Wars is dying?

Your talking about a game which has last 2 years and people are still purchasing. What other game can you think of which can say the same thing?

From my experience a game is lucky to last a year before a new better,
competitive game is released and suddenly its 15 minutes of fame are up.

Since this hasnt happened to Guild Wars, and there isnt any truely competititive MMOs on the market, it in a stable situation. And im not counting web based MMOs like runescape as the OP tried to counter-agrue me with a few days ago.

Why? because their not marketted the same was as GWs. They are "word of mouth" games that you would only know about if you looked and/or someone told you about them, and their aimed more at the traditional RPG/MMO players who like FF and Diablo and those old school looks.

Guild Wars is marketted in shops and in adverts, and on mazagines and on game review websites. Its out there in the public domain for everyone to know about.

It has the latest graphics which apeal to players. In that sense it has no competition at all for a free MMO which you only have to purchase to play.

I'd say that is very impressive and very optomistic.

As for their business methods and all that jazz, who cares. It must be working because their still selling units and more people are playing it all the time.

The evidence of this? The countless new players in game asking for help all the time. Any idea of the company going bust and GWs dying is pure speculation started by scare-mungerers who are way tooo paranoid.

Just sit and enjoy your game, and have fun. Dont worry about stuff which doesnt or shouldnt cocern us. Let Anet deal with any issues like that.

I got flamed once for asking people what they thought about adding politics to GWs. The general responce was that GWs is a game you play to escape the real world and have fun.

So why are we even bothering to talk about Anets business techiniques and worrying about speculation like this?

The game is dead. Everyone please line up in LA and give me your ectos.

forgot City of Heroes / Villains - its not a flop
http://www.cityofvillains.com/

you misquoted Paperfly
Paperfly was saying we agree to *ignore* that rubbish

I don't agree that GW is dying, but on the micropayment idea:

* Skill unlock packs. Charge $1 for 5 PvP regular skill unlocks plus one 1 elite

* Bonus item packs. Charge $5 for 5 weapons with cool skins.

Different weapons skins or unique one that can't be found in the game can be put into this Micropayments system. Also special guild hall and maybe some kind of special armors for each of your characters.

Hm, why is monthly payments bad... if it is a choice?

It's my understanding that GW is using this scheme in the Asian countries. Just like WoW does all over the world. What if ANet/NCSoft decided to let you buy a "special" edition of GW which was cheap but cost something like US$10/month to play... BUT you would then get access to all chapters "free" (or a very minor upgrade fee like with WoWs update). This would be good for PvPers I think (as they then could just "play on" as they would with say WoW)... but I would have to be an option, because I like paying the big bucks for the collector's edition and playing when I feel like...

To me monthly payments are like "oh no, I have to play because if I don't I won't get enough playtime for my buck " But as an alternative/option I think it would be good...

IMO this a complete load of tosh, anyone who thinks Guild Wars is dying is merely at the end of their honeymoon period with the game,, I have over 8 new friends who bought prophecies around christmas and all of them intend to purchase the new expansions... do you REALLY believe in all of the guild wars world i am the ONLY guy who has pushed GW to all his friends? no way...

alot of people seem to assume ANET only make money from their current expansion... lol... the way I see it, Guild Wars should be going on *newcomers* cash for along time,

Re. that. Something I've been wondering, Anet said they've sold 3 million GuildWars... But which? Is that 3 million Prophecies? Or 3 million total for all "chapters"? Since they treat each as a seperate game I think they should tell us sell-thru numbers for each aswell... because if they have only sold 3 million of TOTAL, that would probably mean that they have 1 million players that have bought each chapter (give or take some thousands that only have 1 or 2...)

I'm in total agreement. Guild Wars can not survive with the current business model.

I'd much rather Anet work on one expansion a year and one or two major updates to existing campaigns. I've said in other threads and I'll say it here, I'd be more than willing to pay $10-$20 for a major update (like SF) and $50 for one expansion a year. Things like expanded storage and so on, I'd be happy to buy as well.

wrong...........just wrong

as officially explained they have to take into account the vast popularity of internet cafes over there.

they are paying by the hour of time played NOT BY THE MONTH

they also can go into a store, buy the game, and have unlimited use as well with no extra charge

@woody...............we have heard that from before chapter 1 was released.......proven wrong so far

I hope so Loviatar. I love playing GW and would hate to see it go away.

I read the first page, and bit of thesecond, so please excuse me if this has been stated:

In your original post you said that the topic on the IRC, about Guild Wars dying has been talked about for quite awhile. If so, why hasnt Guild Wars died. And another thing, ghost towns, there is already a simple solution to this, at the very core of the game. Guild Wars is built around guilds, players join them, and play the game together with guild mates. This concept was further built on with the introduction of Alliances. Anet must ahve realised that, yes, some towns/mission outposts will become ghost towns, so they made the 'guilds' bigger, allowing a wider player base to help out with your mission and quest. I was previously in a stand alone guild, and we recently joined an alliance. In the past few days,I managed to get one of my characters ascended, with help from members in my alliance. If people complain about ghost towns, and then state that they are in one man guilds, the answer is obvious, find a guild you like and join it. It may take a while, I was hopping around for around a year before I got into my current guild, and it is great. The community outside of the game can also help. i used these forums here (the guild ones at least) to find my guild.

And so, for you, like me, who cant reall be bothered to read alot of long posts, I will sumarise:

Guild Wars is not dead, whatever your IRC has to say
Guilds mean you dont need to form a PUG in ghost towns
ANet saw the ghosting of towns (:P) in advance and allowed Alliance to be formed.

And whatever you may say, ANet are the people who ultimately what is going to happen to the game, and they are probably the best people to deal with problems they may foresee.

Heya!

I read the first few pages also, and I would like to honor Rustjive's request for some suggestions! I thought of a few things that people might be willing to pay for. Some of them are probably impractical, true.

1) PvE skillset unlocker for campaigns not in your account.

It would be nice if, after purchasing this unlocker, a Skill Master NPC would allow you to purchase any normal skills from those campaigns that you do not own. That way, people who are on a budget and cannot afford to spend another $50 on the next chapter, but who want to have the benefit of the skills that chapter offers, are more likely to do so. What to do about elite skills from other chapters, I'm not sure. That's a tough one, since you have to capture them from elite creatures and they wouldn't show up in legacy campaigns. Someone will think of something there!

2) Character appearance manager.

Buying this appearance manager would activate an Edit button that would display in the bottom right corner of the screen once you log in and see your character roster. Just click the character, click Edit, and you would see the that page of the character creation screen where you were able to set the height, complexion, face model, hair type, and hair color.

3) A dance tool!

Holy cow, this may be a really dumb idea. Okay, I've always wondered what it would look like if my monk did those crazy assassin dances. Sell a customized tool that, for a modest price of $9.99 or something, unlocked all of the dances (both genders please) for your characters. Then the player could double-click on the dance tool and pick the dance from a little box. There may be some animation / modeling issues that I'm not aware of, naturally. And if a tool isn't practical, design some extra switches in the chat box that give access to the dances.

4) A Mini-Me Pet!

Make a customized, dynamic mini pet that looks like the player herself, replete in the armor the character is currently wearing. That would be kind of crazy, and I bet people would pay a little extra for that.

5) Xunlai Armor Locker.

Xunlai upgrade that allows two or three sets of armor PER CHARACTER to be stowed.

6) Xunlai Dye Locker.

Xunlai upgrade that allows dyes to be stowed seperate from normal inventory, just like materials.

7) Xunlai Auctioneer!

Why not! Rather than jack with auction houses and auction merchants, how about designing an Auction tab that can be purchased and applied to your Xunlai agent? If you want to sell something, drag it to a slot on your auction tab and give it a price. (More on descriptions later.) If you have a stack of items that you drag to a slot on the auction tab, you should be able to specify the cost per either unit OR per stack if you want to sell stackable items piecemeal. This will allow people to buy materials from you in whatever quantity they need. Things in your Auction tab could automatically populate in the Trade section of the Search feature for the zone you're standing in. Last, provide buyers who use the search feature a way to automatically buy from you if they agree to your buy price.

Language barriers between buyers and sellers? Ahh, here's an idea: As for descriptions... The description should be *automated* so that common sales terms could be supported in any language that GW supports. That would allow for dynamic language localization so that sellers and buyers who speak different languages can still perform a trade. The nomenclature for item descriptions is already localized for every language that GW supports, isn't it? Well if it is, this shouldn't be too hard to implement! And with enough refinement, this could really add some spark to the GW economy.

8) Undercut ebay farmers.

Players take some risk when they buy GuildWars crap on ebay. Rather than nerf skills and change AI behavior to counter professional farmers who sell GuildWars stuff on Ebay, ANet should get out there on ebay, see what the farmers are selling, figure out what people will pay for it, and then undercut those professional farmers by selling the same stuff themselves for less money. Farmers sell 200k for $10? ANet should consider selling the same thing for $8. See what I mean?

Okay so there's my two cents! I hope I haven't rehashed stuff that was already suggested. Have a great day!

Kate Soulguard

My suggestions and ideas which could gain Anet alot of cash and every idea is optional and doesn't provide a bonus to those who buy them through the shop.
There's also various ideas for expansions etc thrown in, both new and old.

I suggest a hobby/crafting/tradeskills expansion pack.
All the people that want to do the stuff from "other MMORPG's" will get it, Anet gets more money without even making new areas and best of all IT DOESNT CHANGE ANYTHING FOR PVE OR PVP BALANCE.
Anet could play it smart too by adding in new skins for weapons and armour which can only be created with materials gotten from mining etc.

What a sense of adventure there is to be had from roaming the land (and clearing it too of course!) and looking for a good spot to drop your next survey probe to check for the presence of minerals.
Believe me, mining is an awesome experience in an online game, so long as it's done right.
The long adventures to find that elusive "mega deposit" is what drives you on.

IF mining we're to be introduced, i'd advise Anet to go test out Entropia Universe, if that still exists, lol. The coding and system behind that is brilliant.
You don't go looking for the dots on your radar or "jump in that pool because there's a gold node in there usually".
It's more random but requires a great deal of players judgement and studying of the terrain, or else you lose cash from wasted materials.
You'd get just enough minerals and gems to break even but eventually you'd find a huge deposit that takes 30 minutes to dig up and you almost wet yourself with excitement.

"Forming UW mining group, invite self"

Free $$$ Anet, free $$$.....

************************

Another idea or two before i wrap this up would be a pet expansion pack for level 20 rangers (edit, all characters). In that pack you get all pets that are in Guild Wars. Ability to swap pets when needed, especially since different animals have different stats.

Player housing with additional storage. Though i have no opinion on the housing thing. That not my own personal wish but i respect the wishes of others, especially when it doesn't harm anything.

Elite auras for non-PvP. I wanna glow green when i choose to and will pay $1 for it.

Unlock all quests to make them repeatable. I miss lots of quests and feel sad that my character can never go back and relive those happy days.

Guild Wars art and posters. I'd seriously consider buying these.

Guild wars bosses head trophies. EVERY monster with an aura will unlock a trophy (except presearing because that wouldn't be fair, unless Anet provides a way to warp back and kill them).
The trophy page would look like the skills page. Perhaps make trophies tradeable? Players would return to the older areas to kill bosses.

Random idea thrown in, yeah wrong forum but i know Anet will read this thread - remove the loading screens when zoning. This will remove some of the feeling of the world being chopped up into zones.
Half life anyone? That's chopped up but the world still feels connected and there's only a pause in the action when zoning.

Respawning monsters for those who choose to, if members of your party have selected not to have monsters respawn, then they won't.
This is for the hardcore grinders with a taste for blood.

Pet armour (eye candy only?).

Perhaps time to start advancing Guild Wars technologically? WTS 16-27, 15>50, req 8, furious musket of dwarfslaying.

Rebuilding of Ascalon. Tree planting, masonry... i don't know, build on that idea (excuse the pun, i'm off to bed soon :P ).

Open PVP/PVE areas where people gank and be ganked and guilds battle for control of outposts/objectives.
Logging out will return a player to the neutral safe town to prevent spawn camping. No death penalty in this mixed zone of carnage.
If the player cap is reached for that zone, you can choose to go in a queue.
Alterac valley anyone? Yeah, you can flame me, but you know it works.

night night.

You cant be making microtransactions for a game that you no longer play or is bored of playing.

No sense throwing more money in a sinking boat.

A balanced game only has that much replayability, and when playing a game turns into frustration instead of having fun it cease to become a game.


_____________________________
playing something else thats fun

oh my! GW only has a couple million people who own 1 or more campaign, ALL of its campigns were voted for GotY in at least one major industry publication, AND if you do the math, if a person buys all the campaigns (which almost ALL competitve pvp players do), then Anet makes as much money off of them per year as blizzard does per person per year in WoW.

Please, STOP WITH THE STUPID "Gw is dieing omg!!!11!!!!eleven!!!1! Only I can save it!!!!1111!" THREADS.

Teger. You're an idiot. Did you even read the OP?

Rust, the problem with making a post like this, is that 99% of the people who will reply do not understand that Guild Wars is a PvP based game. So straight away the replies are going to be uninformed and wrong. What the other problem is, is that because all the replies are from PvErs, they do not know the situation in PvP, which is what this thread is all about.

In terms of PvE, it would seem that Guild Wars gets better and better. But being a PvP game, that is simply not the case. More and more of the top PvP players are quitting, because Anet are not improving the game where they should, and GvG seasons are becoming slower and slower with less reward for competing.

Another thing about this, is that ALOT of people are just not reading the OP, so their opinions are based on incorrect assumptions. Micro-payments would improve the game because at the moment Guild Wars is going to run out of steam and be dead within 2 more chapters. This is simply because too much is being introduced too quickly, and it is becoming more attractive to play games that move at slower paces in terms of new content.

For the sake of new readers, here is the sum-up:

Right or wrong: people are starting to believe (hence this thread and the dozen or so others) that the "every six months" is stretching the company resources to thin. If so, this could eventually doom the game.

Right or wrong: people are starting to believe that the only way to "save the game" is to slow down the release schedule and include more content per game. Since the "every six months" is required to maintain payroll, that could present a problem.

Right or wrong: people are starting to believe (hence this thread) that selling in-game content will solve the above problem and "save the game".

Assuming we are right: to do this the in-game store will expand it's inventory to include option content and that we players will buy the stuff to maintain profits during development downtime.

Let's use my account as an illustration:

3 slots, $9.99 per slot $29.97
Prophecies Goty upgrade $4.99
total content upgrade $34.96

That's just about the total of another game.

PvE is rolling along strongly, not even noticing any problems.

PvP seems to get more and more dead every time I look at it. I don't believe extra money from players is going to fix anything, high end PvP is plagued by elitism, a steep learning curve, heavy time requirements and high requirements just to get started. All this combined means it's almost impossible for a new player to start high end PvP. Anet has been trying to drum up more interest with events lately, and I've read some comments by Gaile about getting rid of rank discrimination, but I'm not sure if that's going to be enough. Perhaps UAX for PvP characters would help take away some of the intital barrier?

From the population in the lower end arenas, namely RA, there's clearly a large number of people interested in PvP, but somewhere along the line in the battle isles, everyone gets bored and frustrated with grind and an inability to get into groups.

Yes PvP may be a more major part in GW than in most MMORPGs, but that dosn't mean it is entirely PvP based. Take Nightfall for an example. It di not add anything new to PvP, except Hero Arenas, which are a tie in to a PvE mechanic. PvP is a major part of GW, but i'd say the balance btween pvp and pve, the importance of it to GW, is roughly 50/50. It is a hybrid game, one born of the need for a PvP MMO, but also including PvE as a major part.

Some people have been saying that the price for a years subscription (plus game) to WoW, or most MMOs, is the same as buying all chapters in a year for GW, but let's do the math:

25 euro for WoW, plus one month free
15 euro a month x 11 = 165

165+25=180 euro

Two chapters for GW @ 45 euro each = 90 euro

hmmm, 90 euro does not equal 180, in fact it is half of it.

Now, i dont know why this was brought up in this thread, but anyway.

And, each chapter has a year long development cycle. With no engine to make, or redo, it would be very easy to make a quality game, especially with an experienced team. Since ANet onlymakes money from sales of the game, they need to make sure sales of their games are high. To do this, they need a large influx of cash, releasing games on a six month cycle would ensure this, and would make sure they can support the servers and make patches and improvements to the game.

15 Euro a month?! In Australia it work out almost exactly the same cost for WoW per month as it is GW every 6 months.

Yes, Guild Wars is both PvE and PvP, and to be honest, is slowly becoming more and more based only on PvE (as this is where Anet make their money). This is part of the problem, Guild Wars wasn't designed as PvE only, but at the current rate PvE is going to be the only content worth playing.