new business model for guild wars 2.

I honestly don't think that's going to work for ANet/NCSoft. They need that initial influx of revenue to pay for development costs.

I'm also not a big fan of monthly fees.

I like the present model just fine - but then again I never bought a single thing by installments!
Furthermore I presently do not have a credit card or similar, that works for international payments.

I actually wasn't expecting them to do that. I was thinking more along the lines of the cost of each new expansion, e.g., $30 (or whatever) for The Burning Crusade Basic (excluding elite areas) and, say, $40 for The Burning Crusade Deluxe (including elite areas).


You're probably right. But then if not enough people are playing to justify their development, that would mean a whole lot of people are paying for something (i.e., the elite areas) that they never play.

Visit the WoW forums at all and you will quickly see that this has led to a "great divide" in WoW between casual players irritated at all of the new WoW content being constantly added that's "leet", areas and instances that they are paying for with their subscription fee but cannot realistically ever expect to play. More dedicated gamers, of course, just love the high-end material. I imagine it is a very fine line for Blizzard to walk trying to keep such divergent player types all "fat and happy." ArenaNet, too, for that matter.

/notsigned

Look at WoW or any other subscription based game. Aside from the monthly fees, you still have to pay a certain set amount(usually $30-50) to access the content. Its to the cover the development costs, so that even if you decide to only play for a month, the game company does not end up losing money. Under your "layaway" Anet would end up losing money, up to the point that they shut down the servers. The loses will be from players who can finish all the content in less then a month, players who only want to try it out(at only twice the price of the current trial dvds), players with short attention spans, etc..., all of whom can quit before the development costs can be recouped. And Anet has no further sources of income after that.

Besides, $4 is hardly enough money to cover the infrastructure behind a subscription system(nevermind the upfront costs of running their servers and continued tech support/updates/balances), so Anet sees even less of that money. Besides, its only $50(or whatever the going rate for a game will be in 2 years). If you can't afford that up front, there are other priorities you need to put first.

dear oh dear how wrong you are.

Ok Mr Retard. let me tell you why i play GW and not any other MMO subscription based game.

1) GW is my type of game - fast, casual and suitable

2) I do not pay for subscription based things because that simply means i have to make a commitment...think about it. Once you subscribe to something you have to commit a lot of time to it.

Think of it in terms of a prostitute . WoW-type prostitutes would require you to pay by the hour for entertainment. GW on the other hand, just wants a payment upfront and will be yours for eternity.

/AGREE 100%

12 chars

there's an old saying "if it works, don't change it !!"

current business model is working very well for ANet , so i'm sure they will be sticking to it. full stop.