[Grand Discussion]Would Guild Wars go open source when Guild Wars 2 come out?

The complexity of the gw source code is OVER NINE THOUSAAAAAAAAAAAND!

Another reason to not give it away, anet had to develop the engine from scratch and it's one of the most low resouce / great graphics, highly optimised (dialup still works for playing.. not updates) communation, hard to hack (despite dupe bug with re-connect it's been one of the most hack proof), and easy streaming updates It's a beautful game engine / design.

Only way I can see this happening as well is if Google bought them out, and google gave out the code while running the "official" gw server.

the quake games can be downloaded but full content isnt avalible with out the cd key wich u need to buy with the actual game not a download get your facts straight

He was just stating games that had their source released that were successful.

some of you are confusing freeware and open source ^^

anyway, an offline play would be great
(not more 007 and lags for me <3 )

I think that's the only thing I could ever imagine happening.

But if EQ is still up and running, I doubt GW will ever go out.

ya i doubt they will shut down gw 1 when gw 2 comes out i remember when runescape 2 came out awhile back.....but they still left 2 servers for original runescape accounts to use (not that many peopel still do)

ANet has said that as long as one person still wants to play, they'll keep the servers open for that person. Granted, it's a hyperbole, but as long as they've got a userbase, they won't disappoint it.

I don't get HoM argument against OSing GW ... how would that affect HoM in any way?

Anyway, IF anyone wants solid reasons it is:
* Security throught obscurity. Devs didn't do exactly good job at making secure protocol ... lots of stuff that server should take care of (and which is exploitable for profit) is taken care of at client side, making it vulnerable to all sorts of weird hacks like 32-man party.
* Competition. Anet has lots of technology that other companies would like to get their hands on ... whole server architecture, neat graphics engine, etc etc ... Why be at disadvantage, why save their competitors big bucks?

This is why.

Link to Guild Wars 2

* This feature does not allow characters to be transferred between Guild Wars 1 and Guild Wars 2. However, it allows character names to be reserved and a character linked to a Guild Wars character will inherit some of the original character's accomplishments.
* It does not support transfer of armor, items, characters, or gold. However, acquiring some items in GW1 will confer benefits in GW2 via the Hall of Monuments.
* Each of your GW1 characters has its own Hall of Monuments.

Yes, that is how it is supposed to work. But how does that connect to open sourcing game?

I hope you are not suggesting that anet would be stupid enough to allow people to tinker with official servers ...

Quake and Quake II weren't in the last 10 yearsSame.

Basicly, games only go open source once they've exhausted their funding and releasing the code won't cause problems or reveal anything already unknown that may be used in future products. An MMORPG is even less likely to go open source, particularly because it would become a competitor to it's own sequal in the hands of the public, and could expose some of the network communication to hacking.

The only way it might go open source, is once the very last GW server is dead on A-net, which is most likely only going to happen around the time of GW3 or 4.

I believe Half-Life 2 had it's source code leaked about a month before launch. Not an official release by the company, but the source was still out there in something close to it's launch state.

lol bump ?

It wont or atleast i hope it wont.

I heard about a rumor that the Hom gets "closed" the moment GW2 goes online.

Does not make much sense, but someone said he quoted Jeff Strain. Maybe someone can find the source...


GW made good money, and I see no reason why every aging MMO should go open source. GW still has quite some value, after all.

I am interested in hearing denial/confirmation on that rumor too.

I don't remember exactly what was said, but if I'm not mistaken, it was something like:

Your character's HoM is 'closed' as soon as you link that character (ancestral line) to a new character in GW2. So you could technically keep working on your HoM as long as you never link that character to a newly made one in the sequel.

Doom--and Quake, and all those--went open source years and years after their main popularity died down. GW will never release its source code--no MMO has, to my knowledge--and definitely not at GW2 release.

There's no discussion here--and definitely not a 'grand' one.

There are two different things, client and server code. Something like the graphics engine that is implemented on the client side cannot hold any deep secrets because it can be disassembled at will but that is not the case with servers. What makes GW servers special is their ability to toss the client data and connection seamlessly between them. Opening up those protocols as long as the official servers run would be foolhardy.