Is GW business model really unique?

Although I like Guild Wars a great deal more than I liked WoW and EQ2, I do think Guild War's marketing falls way behind EQ2's.
And that's really bad!
WoW's marketing is probably the best I've seen for a video game.
Even 70 year olds who do nothing but watch Matlock reruns know what WoW is.
I didn't even know Guild Wars existed until my friend showed me.

Because it is, as much as any of them. Yes, there are differences between GW and most of the others, but the game design, the mission design, the play mechanics, etc. are very, very much MMORPG regardless of what you happen to think about it. You also have a very warped sense of casual gamer. The words "raid" and "casual" do NOT go together, and raiding three or four nights a week can only be considered casual next to the morons who do it for six or seven. Raiding three or four nights a week looks, considering the time involved each night, nearly insane to the general populace, even those that like games.

It's also wrong to dismiss the issue the way you do. The player community largely divided into two separate camps over the issue: those who raid and laugh at those who don't, and those who don't and would laugh at those who raid but are too peeved that Blizzard takes their money every month and gives them nothing compared to the raiders.

I liken what most sub based developers do with their games akin to the callousness of American sports. First, find an incredibly tiny percentage of people with something the vast majority doesn't have (for MMOs that's a little bit talent, but generally translates into a decided lack of what most people consider a life) and shower them with all the phat loot. Second, collect all the money from those people who aspire to be similarly elite even though they don't stand a snowball's chance because they're "cursed" with a normal life.

GW gets it right, let *everyone* get equal access if they just put in the time and make sure the time isn't unnecessarily dragged out by lazy game design (whoever said respawns weren't a problem in WoW never spent two hours fighting through a dungeon only to die and find they had two more hours worth of fighting the same things all over again just to get to where they were 30 seconds before). Best of all, because of the sales model, you get to that content at your own pace. If you can only play an hour a week, it may take you forever, but you'll never be out anymore than the hardcore gamer that "beat" it in a week.

Although I have to agree with many points from both sides of the fence here, I had an issue with customer service and I felt powerless to do anything about it. GW support basically told me, in the nicest formal business email reply, to go attempt procreation with a certain bodily orifice. They already have my money and Id just be replaced by a new customer with future releases. Yes, they cant please everyone and they know it as any company does. In the case of GW, they know any customer lost already paid them something and thats better than nothing. All in all, even if i never buy another product from ANET, its definitely better than buying a sinlge player PC or other platform game where you spend 30-60 bucks for maybe a few hundred hours of replay value where GW is virtually infinite.

May I ask the details of this issue?

(post-edit: noticed that it is your first post here)

Guild Wars is skill > time spent. No MMORPG has ever been like that, only older and tradional RPGs have done so. That right there nearly kicks it out of the MMO camp. Second, no aggro system, a chief thing MMORPG players rely on.

Besides that, the only thing I can compare it to is the time it takes to complete the harder dungeons.

Compared to most raiders on my servers, and in general? That's very casual friendly. Three nights, 2 hours each, I can set aside that time and I love playing with my friends. I just can't do it during the day.

You'd then have to ask to the latter group: Why are they still paying for a game that they're not playing? It's not like Blizzard will change their course in design. But then again, raiding isn't the only thing to do in WoW, so maybe they're having fun.

Likewise, it sounds like you never found a very good group. I've only ever experienced that twice in pre BC and once post BC.

Here is one of the reasons why GW's and WoW's business models are very different:
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/new...hp?story=16760

It's not only a question of scale, but monthly fees open that kind of business.

Will this truly unique business model carry over to Guild Wars 2?

Back to the subject. I don't think it is as unique as it is extremely marketed. Guild Wars is perhaps one of the first successful MMORPG's to go with a one time purchase fee then free play model. I mean Anarchy Online charged for expansions and stuff and then let you play for free, but that is different because the game isn't as commercialized and marketed.

Guild Wars just worked better than other games that used this plan.

I disagree. Originally, GW's expansion skills were not supposed to better, just different. However, Anet used the expansions to balance out holes in the original skill base, by adding things that never existed in the original (teleporting, mass hex removal, ect). However this is much different then a micro-payment system where players spend money to get better armour. Micro-payment based games have no ceiling, and you can literally spend $1000+ dollars in a few short months and still not have the best items, or be max level. This is how micro-payment games produce money, and believe me, people who spend $100's and $1000's on these games exist, and are fairly frequent. So no, Anet's model isn't the two other ones combined, it is unique in it's own right.

And GW2 wont be subscription based, no matter how many people ask.

Just like The Sims...upgrade...upgrade...upgrade...end of line
...sims 2 expect various things like...upgrade..upgrade...upgrade...end of line
nop just a copycat model.