Guild Wars Surpasses 4 MIL Strong-and there's more to it

First I don't want to make a large post but then again mostly I just read your guys comments and rarely do I write one so please read it all.

When Guild Wars was first released I was deployed to Afghanistan I bought a copy for me and my lower enlisted soldier to help pass the time in the cold friged Mountains of Afghanistan, thankfully I was the network admin so needless to say It was a blast to play with my fellow americans at nite way out in the middle of nowhere.

That isn't what this post is about but I just wanted to share this Info with you guys, I have been playing GW since then and I want to say to the developers and founders of GW that I applaud them for there extraordinary game.

The 4 Million Strong Member news that has been all over the Internet ever since Guild Wars announced it is not just a "hey we have a successful game" its a wake up call to developers of other games that will be coming out in the future.

There is still such a thing as a business MODel in MMORPG's and GW has figured it out. Here's the Scenario- there's many many MMO's right now and most of us play atleast one if not two, i play 2 GW and Vanguard, as the market gets crowded which its about to get cramp by the end of this year with AOC and Warhammer beating there drums. The bad thing is that when we spend 15.00 on a game per month that game should be a fun experience not buggy and boring


And then there's GW, Free Subscription full of members, I think gamers are figuring it out, It's much easier to own "more" games and play them for free, then play 2 or 3 and pay 15 dollars a month. Too me that just doesnt make much sense, after all why pay 15.00 a month for a subpar game when GW is producing such awesome content.

Sure there will always be the naysayers that say GW isn't an MMORPG but lets see...It's Massive...It's mutliplayer...it's Online....and yes it's an RPG, it's a ROLE PLAYING GAME where you play the ROLE as a warrior, necromancer etc etc...

So my post is about this...GW is good for gaming because with a market already and getting more crowded with subscription fee based games, look for more Free Subscription games coming out in the future, what prompted my discussion here in GW is one that I read over at D&D online, where there is a heated discussion on why D&D should cost money when its not even that good....let me know what you guys think and see you IG...

First things first, there aren't 4 million "members" playing guild wars, just 4 million copies sold, in the other thread about this we figured there is at least 1.33 million accounts (4,000,000 / 3), but that the number in reality is higher than that since not everyone has all three campaigns.

Now for the rest of the post, I hope that the success of guild wars is a large wake up call because there are so many good online games out there and people are not going to pay $100+ a month in subscription fees to play them all. They are hurting themselves as they divide up their limited fan base.

Only the towns are MMO, everything else is instances and you only play with 8 or 16 max. Source: Wiki. Guild Wars is a game that ends though after you pretty much beat the missions and get prestiege stuff. There's really no endgame, yes I know pvp exists. You got to sacrifice some stuffs with no monthly.

There are other free Co-online games or free mmo's but they really are bad. Mostly because they're rushed translated so you get silly Chinese/korean-english. It's nice to see the new mmo's coming in, even though most of them are part of the MMO gold rush funded by business people who saw the profit potential. I've played most of the MMO's out there and am bored and new a good one.

Did anyone else see one of the Gw-en preview videos that showed one of the devs or something talking about Eye of the north and a reporter asked about the copies sold? The guy seemed kind of agitated when he asked about how many playing and which campaign they were from and replied that they don't release info about the campaign, but they would release the max number in like a week.

Yes, unlike the Great WoW, which has fabuolous end-game. That game doesn't end once you have beaten all the quests, and gotten prestigious high-tier armor.

There's always .... Um... Well, there's....

Wait. What exactly is in any other MMO after you've completed all the quests, and obtained all the high-end stuff?

PvP? Oh, right, GW has that as well. Except that it's not limited to 17 no-life zombies which gave up real world to be competitive by playing 23 hours per day for 2.3 years straight.

So what's your point?

ArenaNet has their stuff down. There is, one, and exactly one (not more, not less) Press Representative, who may release such information.

Nobody else, not even Gaile, developers, sales reps, their stock brokers or members of family may ever, under any circumstances, release any kind of information.

In corporate world, all employees are put under non-disclosure agreement - releasing any kind of proprietary information will result in immediate termination of employment, and possibly in a lawsuit. That is how it works, and should work.

Allowing every Tom, Dick and Harry to talk about internal business numbers is merely a display of company not having their business in grip.

"What the hell is diversity?" - From Anchorman.

It's a good thing. Yes, GW is good for gaming.

It shows other publishers that a no-subscription model can work.

It's also a good thing that ANet is pushing the envelope with GW2 in making a more persistent world with a much broader scope than the original, while maintaining a no-subscription fee business model. I'm sure it'll blow everyone away, from the gamers to the press to the other developers.

Model of what, an MMO? That's what Guild Wars isn't, though.

Except for Andrew Patrick who states that there were 3.5 million individual players in june this year.

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...34#post2909634

And Robert Garriot, CEO of NCsoft of North America who gave us an estimate of numbers of players.
http://gigaom.com/2006/10/26/guild-wars/

Most of my friends in real life play GW because there's no fees attached. I think the idea is great and it proves that MMO companies don't have to charge x dollars per month to play a game.

Online fees made sense a long time ago (damn, I hate being old) when Ultima Online first came out. Back when servers had difficulty holding 1000s of people, and when broadband was a couple years away, it was reasonable to pay a fee for server costs. After other companies looked at UO and Everquest, they realized they could milk a proverbial cash cow.

Even though the usual formula of normal person + anonymity + an online populace = total idiot still thrives, I'm still glad GW is doing well.

You know what's sad? The Sims Online is still around...

if you like to RAID with 10-25 people WoW has a fun end game

otherwise WoW has zero end game

(I dont call WoW PVP end game material)

me? I have 4 WoW 70s across 3 different servers
-- bored and quit until next WoW expansion



other threads have already flogged this poor dead horse

ANet: Guild Wars reaches 4 Million sales
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10188849

WoW Vs GuildWars
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10188112

Lol but the mmo where you're a car is dead. I could never play auto assault.

Yeah RA was nice and AB too but it's pretty much the same olde I do when I need amber/jade for armor and RA I stoped after I got my title. I know your using /sarcasm with the 23 hrs but World of Warcraft has the easiest leveling compared to any other mmo, I laugh when people complain about how hard it is to level in that game to 20. Not that I like grinding or saying that I like WoW better than Guild Warz or Builde Wars if your talking pvp. Even going like 5 hours a day for like 6 months is enough to max you out in Lineage II, which is one of the hardest mmo's to level.
I'm just glad they release an expansion for Guild Wars or I'd have nothing to do in Guild Wars, but see that's where the no monthly fee's caveat is. You have to keep buying the expansions if you want stuff to doo. Well there's title grinding which I got sick of at 97% cartography and farming but I'm not into that stuff so that does'nt really count for me.

Don't argue over semantics. You'll just end up looking like a douche.

Not an MMO... I get so tired of these fanboys proclaiming this.

'M' - Massive; I often see hundreds of people in an outpost, then there are dozens of districts for that outpost to boot. Yeah, I'd say it's 'Massive'.

'M' - Multiplayer; often I party up with friends to adventure out into the wild. D'oh! Look, it's another 'M' this game's got. You're running out of letters, mate!

'O' - Online; oh dear, last time I checked there were other real people playing too. Online. On the internet. You struck out!

You say that like I mean it's a bad thing. Here's my quoted post from a while ago in the WoW thread (which supported Guild Wars):

Firstly, what am I a fanboy for? Secondly, with that logic, it sounds like Counterstrike or pretty much any game you can play on the internet is an MMO.

I always figured it was the people in charge of the network stealing all the bandwidth. That's why I don't play right now, its nice to let people talk to their families on the internet.

Anyway, on topic: You really have to watch out with those numbers, as there was a thread on here about a week ago that went really in depth into it. I think they usually get into the whole "copies not members" thing, which is probably fairly accurate. Regardless, GW is gathering a rather strong following, both in players and the industry.
Here's hoping that more online games will follow the business model to make high-class online games which are free to play. More variety is always better, and competition will mean we will always have something innovative ready to entertain us(and keep Anet on their toes).

But that's just my two cents

The thing about pay to play games is you get more service. If I had someone smak talking me in EQ I could have a guide/GM there to solve the issue or ban the player within a few minutes if he was persistant.

With GW's you just have to deal with the riffraff all the time 24/7 and Anet doesn't really do anything about it. I tested it myself with one account I have that I don't use anymore just to see what they actually do. For a year now I have berated annoyed aggravated called people names ethnic slurs you name it I did it on that one account and you know what I've gotten for all of it? Two 72 hour bans lol that's it (It would appear the ethnic slurs get some action for both times were after calling someone an ethnic slur and not even proper spelling). So, Anet/NCsoft just don't really do anything about it. When I played EQ if you did that sort of stuff you got banned and banned permanently in a hurry. I know it makes me sound like a bad person, but, you know what they say to find out what's really going on you have to act like something you're not sometimes. Good reporters would do this type of activity in a heartbeat to get a story. But, I'm not in journalism any longer.

EDIT: Also would you like to read my conspiracy theory on these no monthly fee games that are probably going to start cropping up? Ok I'll tell yah anyways. lol See it is my thinking that they will become part of the gold selling system...(shock) I mean think about it. They tell us they are getting rid of the bots, but, do you really see a big population drop in them? Do you see a large population drop of the gold being sold online? Plus we can never know the ingame names of the individuals they socall banned. Why not? What the hell is knowing an ingame name of someone going to invade their privacy you see everyones ingame name anyways lol what a load of bunk they tell us. It should be public information like going down to the courthouse.

My conspiracy theory is these companies will setup third party organizations to sell gold (or whatever the ingame money is and even ingame items) online. It's the income for the monthly fee they don't charge AND they don't have to provide any extended services like your normal pay to play game does with GM's and guides and heavy content. Selling gaming gold is big business now. Last I read it was bringing in over 6 million dolllars a year. THat's a lot of cash for SOMEONE. You think these gaming businesses are just going to let that slide by without putting their hands into the pie? Now EQ2 just upfront went and done it. Made specific servers to allow this activity WITH SOE lol. Sorry, but, I just don't trust the other guy. If there's a buck to be made someone is gonna make it.

Because on Counter Strike you frequently have 200+ players on the same server...?

I wish we could have that many in GW battlefield somewhere. What an awesome battle. I would stomp so many people down. lol

I personally think its just semantics

look at a game like Dungeons and Dragons Online

it shares many "instance" similarities with GW and DDO is considered a mmorpg

DDO also has a smaller player base

DDO
- most the content is instanced
- people see each other in outposts (just like GW)

Reallllyyyyy, this is verryyyyyy harrrddddddd to believe.

See? I was right. People are now arguing about the definition of MMO.

Anyway, I didn't say GW1 is a MMO. Besides Anet always refers to it as a CORPG.

It does look like GW2, however, will be a MMO. In part at least.

That'll show those subscription developers the what for.

Categorising is a human condition imposed on things. What really is an RPG? It's role playing.

In theory, Counterstrike is an RPG because you're role playing the terrorist or counter terrorist.

To conclude, arguing about what is and isn't a MMO is pointless.

Not really, especially if you've been playing for a reasonable amount of time.

Are there 200+ players when you're in an explorable area in Guild Wars?

It is???

If people want to talk about the MMO market, then yeah it does matter.

Playing monopoly is role playing, you're role playing an entrapaneur attemtping to become the Tycoon master of the game. The definition of role playing is pretty exact. It's individual people who claim it is something else their own definitions. Same with MMO MMORPG they are exact in all things basic, there are only differences in fees and how players meet up with one another and crafting that really make a difference. They all are go out and kill floozie and get his loot so you can level up and go out and kill flooze and get his loot so you can level up and go out an.... well you get the picture. Time is the factor in GW vs the others really. You can do a lot more in a shorter amount of time playing GW than any other, but, on the same token you can easily become bored quicker playing GW if you play a lot of hours per day.

I'd say that there just isn't much endgame.

70 Human Warlock,Nazgrel server
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...azgrel&n=Nadia
70 NE Hunter, Nazgrel server
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...azgrel&n=Tanya
70 Human Rogue, ShadowCouncil server
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...Council&n=Jasi
70 Blood Elf Hunter, Trollbane server
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...ollbane&n=Lyna

these 4 70s are all on the same account along with many other lvl50+ chars

nothing special - I can level any wow class to 70 in under 12 played days
(as can many other people)

WoW is easy to level if you know where all the quests are