How Disposable are Guild Wars Players?

[Disclaimer : NOT a complaint thread.]


I am merely curious what our individual worth actually IS to A-Net these days. How far along the chain from individual personages to the error-margin on a statistic have we become by now?

One tends to notice in smaller communities that individuals do have some measure of worth, since loss of an individual will significantly deplete the community... and when one does something disapproved of, there tend to be measures taken to reindoctrinate the individual.
In larger communities like this one (yes, Guru) and as is becoming the trend in online games, it becomes gradually easier to just get rid of the folk who act against the social norms or make a mistake here and there.... as they will easily be replaced by new users within a short space of time, and their loss won't make the slightest dent in the community. People gradually become as itchy skin cells to merely be scratched off and replaced with new ones.


So just how far along this line of thinking ARE A-Net now?
Is it getting as extreme as it had at Neopets for example: a site where, due to a minor infraction on the part of my ex-wife's younger sister, both of their accounts AND several of mine were permanently banned (and I'd been playing it since the very beginning)?

How much of its player-base will A-Net quite willingly ostracise or eradicate in the course of progress?



I cling to the game presently, and actually forcibly control myself to a level of discomfort in order to just play the game... but I have no doubt it is just a matter of time until I am flicked aside as if I'd never existed.

Eh?
Sorry but I lost you there ...
Is your question about Anet's policy on banning accounts?
About the EULA?

Do you phrase your question about "individual worth" from an ethical or financial point of view?

What the hell do you mean by "control myself ... in order just to play the game"? What else should you do with a computer game?

Is this what people call trolling?

Does this make any sense to somebody out there?

It's just a game. There are more important things you can do, like find a cure for cancer, or plant 1000 trees.

Your individual worth to Anet = merch value.

Already paid when we bought the game so we're not worth anything to them

$50 minimum, $200 maximum.

It's not a question of disposablity, it a question of what an indiviual impact one person could have?

Answer would be nothing, not one, two, or even ten customers really mean anything.

For one person to really make a difference, that one person would have to reach out to a new audience of consumers not biased by GW already, and explain to them all the negative reasons Anet's product, Guild Wars is not a smart investment, and if you do it right, then and only then will you impact them to a point of responce.

Anet is a company and a business and its profit and money comes above anything else. Including its customers and those who play their games.

Yes they need to maintain a certain degree of PR and to keep ther customers happy, but at the end of the day.. profit is more important. Any PR relations are purely to ensure they dont get a bad name.

The Cheif Execs at Anet arent sitting in their Office worried about whether the last 100 people who bought one of their games are enjoying it and will stick around for the next 2 years.

Their enjoying the fact they just made another wod of money and couldnt care less whether you play it or not.

It might be a different story if a game was subscription, but even then... its simply about keeping you hooked and nothing to do with caring about the player.

But im sure some Anet staff are extremely dedicated to making the gaming experience fun and enjoyable and like to think people stick around, but unless they know you personally, their not going to give 2 hoots to whether Joe Blog leaves tomorrow.

They still have another 1000+ players to keep happy.

But I dont understand why your connectin the guru to Anet?

If people leave or join the guru, its no concern of Anets. There are dozens of GWs fan-sites online and hold 100s of players. Guru isnt the only one and how guru conducts its business is not Anets concern either.

Aslong as the guru doesnt break copy-write issues or posts anything illegal, that is all Anet is bothered about.

Even Gail posting every now and again is purely PR. It not because she has any huge love affair with every single player ingame or member of guru. Its purely to give this impresson the Anet staff listen to us.

So the simple answer is no, we dont matter to Anet. Atleast not the chief execs and the share holders who only want a quick profit.

We might matter to the odd game developer or mayb Gail, but not on a personal level. No offenc, but I doubt the CE or Gail would break down in tears if you or I left the game.

Aslong as they continue to sell copies and they get new customers, their happy.

All these updates we get arent just to make the game better, their to keep us interested. Not because we necessarily need them, or because Anet wants to impliment them. But because they want to keep us relatively happy.

The weekend events being a perfect example. Their hardly well thought out, but they do the job of pulling people back in for the weekend atleast.

The same for festivals. Anet only does that to get us back into playing, not because its a nice thing to do! Its all advertising and keeping the customer happy.

I expect alot of Anet staff scream blue-murder at some of the stuff we ask for and the way some poeple behave, but they have to keep smiling and do as we ask... to a degree.

You forgot "or at least step outside and get your annual dose of sunshine", hra-hahahaha.

Hahaha, omg... why is it the first thing that came to my mind after reading that was of a someone in LA/KC/or wherever spamming "WTB player for 400g or best offer"

Your disclaimer made me curious about your post. After reading it I concluded that the disclaimer and the content of your post do not match.

QFT, i dont understand what u want to accomplish with this thread

Soticoto, take a break man, get out of London for awhile.

Hey! you never know, she might has a hot for one of the mod here.

Anet is your best friend until you buy their product. I was sold when they said that we would get to level 25. Then as I was a few hours into the game, I asked my guildmates on coms where my levels are and they said that anet changed their minds just before the game release. I felt I was scammed at that point.

All publicity is publicity, no matter if it's good or bad. If someone rants about a game, other people will go and check it out. If you make a rant about the game and how from the start up to date how it's gotten worse, skills messed up, ect and 20 people read it, half of those go and check out the game and they all like it. Anet lost you but gained 10 new players, They have your money so it doesn't really matter if you stay or leave.

I reckon GW players are as disposable as WoW players that pay $13/month.

One one hand, they can be worth pocket change after they hand over their money, on the other hand, they might be worth the whole company.

Sorry, but you have shown in the past that do not understand the limits, are not willing to compromise, and will push forward to the degree that breaks every single rule there is for starters, and gets even further to a personal degree.

Sorry, but this isn't true. You don't get mass banned anywhere of "minor infraction". If you rob a bank, but only steal $17, that counts just as much as robbing $17 million. It's the nature of violation within the context.

When you say "almost as bad", then realize that mods here are surprisingly reasonable. With the degree of violations gwguru faces daily (just against the rules of the site), people really don't get banned often. You really need to break something in a very blatant fashion.

When people cry about "they don't care", they don't realize what it looks like on the other side.

Who should I care about? A fish? A freaked out fish? Well, it makes me chuckle to image a fish freaking out. But that's it.

There is no face behind the forum handle, not a person. There is nothing I could touch and relate to.

To establish any kind of relation, one must first have a face next to a name, as well as history. This is why people love grind and titles. Those give an anonymous character history. Something that defines them.

Or better yet: Do you matter to every person you meet on the street? Would you notice if one of them vanished? If you simply wouldn't meet one of them anymore?

People too often mistake what $40 buys. It buys a product. And company develops a product. They have demographic analysis, user feedback, long-term strategy, costs, and all that stuff, which is then used to develop a product.

But ultimately, the product is on the shelf. At that point, people will buy the product for the product - not the company that makes it.

MMOs are quite dangerous, since they toy around with certain social aspects which can cause certain side-effects. Or perhaps, due to social nature, they just bring those in plain sight.

Ultimately, how much do you matter to a coal miner that is responsible for providing heat to your house? Or the oil miner that supplies you with fuel for car? Or the farmer, that sows wheat that makes your bread? The question is irrelevant - they make a product, and try to improve the product.

Same thing here, things are just more compact, and the distance between producer and consumer is much shorter.

I'd buy a few pre-nerf players for 1 ecto each. It could improve both PUGs and PvP.

Boy, this thread is really a testament to how great a game Guild Wars really is! Several people here have expressed what I would precieve as great hatered and distrust of Anet, yet the product they have produced is of such great quality these people cant bring themselves to leave the game or community. In fact, several of these "haters" are very active posters here at Guru!

Today's world seems to have developed a deep mistrust of any business. I don't blame people considering the decade of corprate corruption and scandle we have had. But I tend to trust small companies much more, and Anet, with under 1,000 employees, is a small company. A small company's prioritys need to be 1)Employees 2)Customers 3)Profit, because without good employees, you wont keep your customers, and without customers theres no profit.

Now Anet may be put in a slightly diffrent position being owned by NCSoft, a large international corparation you can mistrust all you like, but I belive their core values are still that of a small company.

But to end this rant before I go on forever; to answer the OPs question, check my list of priorities of a small company...that is how the individual is valued by Anet.

Anet's business plan is built around getting customers to buy the game and then getting them to stay and keep buying more expansions/chapters. They require players to become attached and actually LIKE the game and become interested in the other chapters.

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If you want to make a profit, you need customers. If your business plan requires REPEAT buyers, YOU DONT DRIVE THEM AWAY.

The fact that Anet bends over backwards to please this community (who is never happy with anything they do anyway) is proof of that.

Each player is valuable to Anet because we are all potential repeat buyers.

I think I actually agree with the general scope of what you're saying (a sign of the Apocalypse, I know), but I just had to point out the fallacy in this concept that just keeps coming up.

Subscription or not, all games companies have an interest in keeping their customers happy: Because they want their customers to keep buying new product. In ANet's case, they want people to buy GW2, and then the expansions that follow. In the case of a subscription-based game, they want people to renew their subscription.

Either way, they both have an interest in keeping their customer base happy enough to continue buying product - but if given the choice of, say, gaining a million new players at the cost of engine goreding off a hundred thousand old players enough to make them quit, the difference between a subscription-based model and a non-subscription-based model isn't going to change their decision.

In short, there is no intrinsic reason why a subscription-based model encourages the company to care more about its existing players. At best, a subscription-based model just makes them a little more sensitive to those players they do lose - but I'm sure most companies with non-subscription models realise that just because they already have the money for game X doesn't mean they're not at risk of losing sales for game Y if they get a bad reputation. It just means they'll feel the difference a year or so down the track rather than in the next month.