A Note on Microtransactions

There has been a lot of grief caused by NCSoft/ArenaNet's expansion of their game store. People are worried about exactly what they will be made to buy, and what it implies for Guild Wars 2.

I'd like to start by pointing out that the original Guild Wars business model (no subscription fees or microtransactions) was revolutionary for a top quality western MMO. Nobody had done it before, and nobody has done it since. If they feel they need to expand that business model into basic microtransactions then it's not like you can say 'Well X game gets along fine without doing that!'. Up until now we have all been riding the coat tails of ArenaNets success, enjoying a free MMO, and it remains free for those who don't choose to spend more.

Assuming they continue with their current model, any new player will be able to buy GW2 and play through all of the content without spending a dime over the box cost. They will get to enjoy the full game, and sink however many hundreds or thousands of hours into it. The things they wont get off the bat will be secondary functionality, with no real effect on actual gameplay.

The people who do decide to sink money into the in-game store will be helping to fund development of additional content. The ones who chose not to can just sit back and enjoy the extra content anyway. Even the people who choose not to take part in microtransactions will still be reaping the benefits of it.

There are only two situations where I could see it as a problem:

- Buying power. Essentially how the Korean microtransaction model works. You can go into the in-game store and buy a weapon more powerful than your opponents so you can beat them. I am pretty certain ArenaNet realizes doing something like that in the western market would be suicide.

- Buying actual game content. Technically this doesn't fall under the umbrella of 'microtransaction', because it is too big. Still, it's a deviation from the 'only have to buy the box' business model, so it's worth mentioning. So far they have only done this with the Bonus Mission Pack, which I wasn't crazy about, but they haven't done it since. I would much rather they keep actual game content (by which I mean additional zones, quests, missions etc) free.

For as long as they stick to avoiding those two situations then it is a win/win situation for anyone. Every player gets to reap the rewards of more money flowing into development. It will fund the release more free content updates, for everyone. It will pay for more programmers to fix bugs and develop new content. It will pay for more artists to make more armor sets and weapon skins. Right now it is helping contribute towards development of Guild Wars 2.

All of the content in this recent update, all of the development time that went into it, was probably paid for by the future promise of revenue from the additional microtransactions. Put simply, if it weren't for the additions to the in-game store I doubt the free content in this update would have been nearly as impressive.

If you decide that you don't care about something in the store enough to buy it, whilst also enjoying the lack of any subscription, it seems a little silly to be up in arms about it. Sure, some prices should probably be tweaked (some of them should DEFINATELY be tweaked...), and I'm sure they will be. This is essentially a practice run for ArenaNet and NCSoft, to trail ideas on this community and improve the business model for the roll out of Guild Wars 2, whilst also helping fund development.

The point I would like to make yet again is that every player, regardless of whether you choose to spend money or not, will benefit from a well thought out and well implemented microtransaction system. I have faith in ArenaNet not to make bad decisions about what they choose to sell, and I am happy to spend money in the in-game store knowing it is helping to support a fantastic developer.

/applauds

Well thought out and reasoned post.

I would rather pay for the box or pay a monthly subscription than pay for microtransactions. I like the idea of paying a set amount for total and extended content. If a developer is unable to provide content for the game I've purchased because of their model, that's their broken model, not mine.

Micros are a slippery slope...and we're seeing it now with Guild Wars....so many components of the game are now purchasable. No need to play the game to "earn", "discover" or "unlock" when you can just pay ten american dollars for it.

You can not please everybody

I am happy the game has changed lots over the years and this update is no different really but i still play because it's still fun.

The day it is not fun i will not play.

Just want to say (I'll read more carefully later, have to go now): be careful of what this could mean in the future. IF this update/product is very successful, Anet will listen even less to fansites and more to this particular market of GW players. It only makes business sense. But you know better than I do that following the market trend may mean loosing a bit of your "spirit" (e.g. move away from skill-based).

I don't have a problem with one business model or another, if that allows Anet to survive and me to play the game. What I'm worried about is that this update/product sounds "big" not from the content side, but from the business side. What kind of message is this sending to the community (in addition to the "you asked for it, now you can buy it")? I'm NOT asking Anet to ban the word "sell" from their lingo, I even said I'd be happy to buy a storage pane, if only I knew what they're doing with this. If only the CR/Ms were involved in the discussions by providing us a better insight into what's happening with GW1.

I still have a lot of faith in Anet, a lot. They haven't cheated us, they're still quite trustworthy. But...

I know JR was trying to make this thread for protecting the idea of purchasing new content and such, but we have to weigh the values here to see if any of it is really worth it. See I would have agreed more with the decision to bring them out if we could have them in package deals (like makeovers being unlimited or all 4 slots for a certain amount), but when you bypass what other competitors are doing in their respective properties, people will complain and they'll be quick to judge that it's just not worth wasting money when the equal amount could go towards another game.

I'm not going to make any criticisms here, but I'll note that Anet may need to think things over a bit before they take another step like the one they did just now. Making money to support their development is one thing, but we need to keep things in line here without setting off the whole community.

I must start by saying that I agree with most of what you posted.
There is an old saying "Money (GW Players Market) talks, Bologna (Forums) walks." Who would you listen to if you were ANET.

I'm failing to see how they would differentiate between the two markets? It's not like there would be a special forum set up for people with platinum accounts.

Now that's just discriminating....

I meant that if I were ANET I would use the purchase figures as opposed to what they would read on a fansite forum.

I really don't know why people are complaining, but then again, I've been playing Warcraft for 2 years, where monthly fees are 15$, server transfers are 25$, name changes are 10 and character changes are 15.

And barber shop visits are 50 copper, not $10.

I think a lot of people forget where some of these things come from. The possibilities to adjust/change the look of a character and character names is something that a number of people like myself have been wanting for a long time.

Anet did respond saying that it was a costly thing for them to do and people like myself had no problem with paying for these things. No I get the options and I have already used them. I gladly paid for this and am happy I got the option.

As the OP already indicated none of these things have an effect on how powerful your character is and thus don't give any unfair advantages in game. Furthermore I agree that Anet are a company and not a charity and I know all these changes take up a good amount of programming time to incorporate into the game and I full well understand that they want to charge for things that were not originally part of the game design and where they had to invest time into realising them.

I just gladly spent 22 Euro's and I got all my characters where I want them to be. Certainly worth it to me.

Now that I remember, we had someone from that game help out in the development of GW, so it's no coincidence we're seeing that here.

It all makes sense now.

This. I'd be cool paying a subscription if it'd get me better skill updates and free stuff such as the recently added changes.

Oh please.

I would expect that barber shop visits will cost in game money rather than real money when you already pay 15 bucks a month.

Secondly, 10 bucks gets you up to 25 changes. You get 5 credits and per credit you can change up to 5 features. Not that bad of a deal for a game without monthly fees.

Meh, I'd pay 10$ for Blizzard to have created some decent new hairstyles for Orcs. Payed a monthly fee for years (I took a break in '06), and all my character got was rehashed ugly Undead spikes.

I'd happily pay a subscription too, but it's not for everyone.

You've got to appreciate that a significant chunk of the people tempted to try out Guild Wars do so because there is no monthly fee. It also has the benefit of letting you put down and pick up the game whenever you want, without losing money. Then you have to consider the many people who have multiple accounts, and how that would be much more expensive.

Think of it this way. If I had been paying a $15 monthly fee, I would have given ArenaNet $720 by now. Actually it would have been $1440 with both accounts, but let's just take a more average case.

I haven't done the math, but I'm fairly sure $720 is enough to buy me all of the expansions, bonus mission packs and unlock packs, and rename/change the appearance of all of my characters as many times as I could possibly want.

Lack of monthly fee is more than just an interesting business model, it is the attraction that brings a lot of new players into this game. By using microtransactions instead of a sub they let you choose what you spend your money on.

hehe...gokku hair for orcs please!

I like the changes in the update, but also think some prices should perhaps be tweaked. But we'll see. I've read somewhere the new SW: Old Republic game will be micros as well. But a lot of games have that now. As others have said, as long as it doesn't give people with big pocketbooks an unfair advantage, I guess I can't complain. I'm not particularly fond of the system though.

I'm glad GW doesn't have a monthly fee. It's one reason I've played it so long. Others I paid a fee for, I ended up playing less and quit some months into it for various reasons. I won't go back to pay-to-play. If they all go that direction, I'll go back to my consoles.

Hey look, if Anet can get someone to pay $9.99 to change how fat their character is in a 4 year old game that one day will be shut down, then more power to them.

I personally think it's pretty ridiculous, but as JR put it in his original post - if it makes Guild Wars 2 that much better developmentally......YEAH!

JR, thanks for articulating the views I've been trying to formulate into something that I'd feel happy posting. My concerns are the same - as long as these transactions are restricted to cosmetic and/or convenience and/or other content not directly affecting gameplay then I'm all in support of them. So far no one has been at a disadvantage to their ability to have be competative, skilled player because of an optional item available only through microtransaction. Lets hope the designers and developers have the sense to continue this.

I would like to see improvements to the store so that the optional packages can be made available to more people by payment being able to be made in other forms, which has already been discussed to death.

The thing is you are not paying for extra content with these microtransactions.

If you were to start 2 people at the same time with all 4 GWs one with unlimited real life money and the other with no extra money the only true advantage in the begining would be PvP unlocks. This was and is the only microtransaction that gives you an actual in game advantage over someone else.

As pointed out in a well though out post, GW is a business and if they don't make money it will cease to exist and cease to grow. Look at these microtransaction as an investment in your future GW enjoyment.

Indeed, and GW2 should be UAX from the start, so even that one wont be an issue.

Uh, what? Your comment makes no sense, seeing as the rest of that character-changing utility costs real life money. If you're already paying $15 a month, why do they charge extra for name changes or server transfers? :/

Just as there are people who will buy the tiny 20 slot panes for whole $10 each, there are people who would pay $10 to get a new dungeon or a region of a few explorables with quests added. Or another $10 for a new unique looking armor set...

And here comes the main problem and a great danger - just imagine them not releasing big fairly priced boxed chapters/expansions but instead dividing all the new content into small $10 'microtransaction' packages. Take for example Nightfall:

access to new Dervish profession: $10
access to new Paragon profession: $10
Istan - $10
Kourna land - $10
Vabbi - $10
the Desolation - $10
Realm of Torment (excluding DoA) - $10
Domain of Anguish - $10
2 additional character slots: $10 each
1 additional xunlai pane: $10

instead of $40-50 it's $110 - but they're all optional, right? - how not to love microtransactions?

And it's a very light vision of how they could do it, it could be much worse, divided into even more even smaller pieces, all priced at the same $10... And there would still be people who would buy that, telling others "stfu, don't QQ, it's all optional"...

There's a real danger GW2 may work like that... or even worse.

If it's build from the grounds up with the microtransaction model in mind, it may be a big pain to play for those who will want to ignore buying the small $10 addons and upgrades. Easiest example to imagine would be storage - they may provide very little inventory space for those who will just buy the base game, barely enough to play through the basic storyline once, but if a player gets hooked up, he'll discover that in order to play more he'll need to buy storage increase packs, very small and very pricy...
Adding small content updates where each gives you unique advantages, this may turn into a monthly-fee system in disguise, while you'll be able to play for free forever, they will make your game pointless if you won't keep buying the small extras.

A horror.

Are the days of great value for the amount of $$ spent (all 4 GW full products) are a thing of the past, never to return?
If players with their purchases will support changes going this way, it will be the nightmare come true, coming soon.

Pure far-fetched speculation your part. F2P Micro-transaction games do not sell the content, they sell items.

I have no problem with the microtransactions as long as they are optional and do not affect the playability of the game. All the stuff in the store is candy and not essential to the gameplay but for some it makes the game more enjoyable and I applaud A-net/NCsoft for giving people the choice and actually listening to the community on changes that could be made and then following-up with a solution. Are they always perfect? No but at least there is some effort. Heck they could have said screw it and left everything the same with no updates or anything, but I know that is the one thing that has brought me back for the past 4 years is the expansion and willingness to improve the game. Even if it is something I may not want now it is an option I can do down the road and I thank them.

You make it sound as if ANet's on the verge of releasing GW2, that this game is essentially over and all that's left to is RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO it up as much as possible in order to squeeze every possible penny out of it so that we can fund a game that most players may or may not be transferring over to, and one that will come out in no sooner than 2 years. You then defend it by comparing it to WoW, and how if this game had subscriptions you would have already spent 1500$ on it. But the thing is you wouldn't have, most players I know wouldn't have. Why? Simply because we'd all be playing WoW.

This update wasn't that much of a big deal, but if it's a sign of things to come there really won't be a reason to play GW over any other rpg.

I agree with a few points JR, like Anet not going for selling game-affecting features or something for everyone in this "update" (I'd rather say "product" at this point).

About the "buying actual game content" topic: the menagerie is new content, in the weakest form of the sense of course. But I though that creating such a zone required a lot of efforts on Anet's part, as Linsey once explained on her wiki journal. So the question for me would be: why not creating actually a zone where we can play?

But you forgot the law of the market. We came here because it was not only "free", but there was a whole package with it. We still have these great events and updates. The quality of the game is not going down any more than it was. BUT, IMHO there's a slight problem with this update. It doesn't feel like an update to me, although I perfectly appreciate how and why it does feel like it to many, including Guru-ers as the various threads can show. It feels a slight change of attitude in business.

They've invested in the GW1 Live Team to produce these game elements. Honestly I won't be unfair to them, I'm getting my fair share of the update. I won't blame people for wanting to pay for name or appearance change, or storage tab convenience. But if Anet enters this world of features-to-pay, this has 3 practical consequences:
1) they're in competition with other MMOs; although they're still very far from the greediness of many of these companies, there's the beginning of a trend; one can even venture to say they may start targetting the average WoW player who is already used to pay for realm transfer, hair change or whatever else is to come;
2) they may invest more time/effort to satisfy those players rather than me, not I actually require a lot, but I'm also a potential GW2 customer (like you or many others); as such, the way they handle these "updates" has an impact on their future business. I'm not too worried about the business model at this point, more about CR/M and marketing;
3) directly in relation with the previous point, Anet becomes more dependent on the people who're going to pay; they delimit better their "business target", while as you said a lot of players will continue to enjoy free the game. What happens if an MMO comes later this year that proposes a better offer? Or if this population simply go to the next level and moves to WoW?

GW is not only the game itself, it's a community. The daily quest will hopefully remind us of that, in the best way I hope. But then there's going to be grind for bags? I was suggesting that we'd pay bags with "zoins" (we can still have 5 slots for very little, but I'm going to go for 20 if I can enjoy the daily quests). But one may even take the extreme view that the CR/Ms should pay more attention, read more and answer more to people who pay for the game.

I guess my questions may have simple and obvious answers. But I'm not seeing them atm. Or I'm simply seeing too much behing all this. Or as you said it's going to gradually come back to a more "approachable offer" as prices are lowered with time (similarly to the campaigns, but at that point these features may be useless since GW2 will be quite close to be released?).

The question is, where do they draw the line?

How many char slots for free are reasonable/acceptable, one for each profession or less?
Is the ability to buy more storage really only cosmetic and not affecting gameplay? It is already borderline IMO.

The problem is that micro-transaction based games actually do not just sell "cosmetic" upgrades. And GW is slowly pushing the line towards more and more items for sale.

Runes of Magic sells mounts - only for real money.
Navy Field sells better ships and crew - I doubt ANet will go so far.
I do not know what they sell in Rappelz and Silkroad.

A lot of people are standing around the hair dresser in the Temple of Balthazar right now. Many already hate to register to the store to get the free storage tab. And many would like a haircut, but are definitely not going to pay the price and feel NOT so happy about it.

Dunno, this is somehow not making me trust and believe in ArenaNet.

Changing the way your character looks using old models and colours already available in the game is far from revolutionary and does in no way excuse charging the fans IRL dollars. This would have been acceptable had the option to use "in game currency" were available as well, just like the way elite/skills packs are available in the online store as well as from a priest of Balthazar.

Charging for additional storage is expected as it does physically effect the servers on which the game runs.

Do you think ANET can pay their bills with in game money?

It's an excellent question, and one that is VERY hard to answer.

At what point are you selling people extra content, and at what point are you removing content from the game to sell it back to people?

Guild Wars doesn't really have this dilemma, because it was designed without microtransactions in mind. The game released the way it released, and that was that. For GW2 they will have to think very carefully about it.

Again, I have enough faith in ArenaNet that they will make the right decisions to get this right, and not let the additional microtransactions hurt the basic game.

So this is how they will pay the bills from now on? Well good luck to them. Giving us a weak "major" update and expecting everyone to pay for it is a poor economic strategy. There is very little keeping people in this game right now. It WILL take another expansion to keep people online. Tedious and cheap updates like the Nick and Yakkington will not stop people form going to other games that are releasing proper content.

Guild Wars is a 4 year old game from a developer that has now mostly shifted focus to the sequel, people leaving is pretty much inevitable.

So this justifies charging people for old content?

I am fine with paying extra for upgrades to what we already get for free (such as the free storage tab - everyone can get it but if you want more you can pay). I haven't paid anything for this game except the campaigns and expansion in 4 years. Even if the OPTIONAL extras are $10-$15, it's still not a bad deal. TINSTAAFL.

How is it old content? People have been asking for the ability to change names, appearances and genders for four years. It's a shame that it took them until now to do it, but it's not old content.

I'd agree that the prices need adjusting in some cases, but as I explained in the first post, I think the idea has a lot of merit for everyone if it is well executed.

A 4 year old game that is still their bread-and-butter, unless NCSoft is subsidizing it with their other games. If ANet is on its own and it semi-abandoned GW to work on GW2 before it had the all resources to devote, that was a risky decision that bit them (thus creation of the live team). It's a common cause of death among software development companies.

If the F2P model of Silkroad/Maple Story is sufficient to keep them afloat and in development of GW2, I'll be surprised, honestly.