GW should have been pay to play.

I don't know how people can be "100% sure" that GW would have lost so many of it's sales if they charged, say, $5/mo. Now, it would be totally different if they charged more than that. I can think of a few games that are pay-to-play and only charge $5-10/mo and they have been around for years. Some of them still have decent sized player bases considering that 90% of them are made by a small group of people or even a single individual.

If ArenaNet had charged $5/mo right from the get-go I still would have played and I'm sure that a lot of others would as well. It's not the fact that GW is free that makes it fun, it's the game itself.

Either this or they could make a better in-game store where you can buy Items and Equipment that you can actually use. This seems to go over well in many no-subscription games.

It's not just the monthly fee it's the GM's and guides that most of these monthly fee games have. That's what gets rid of the riff raff like a Moriz ingame. If they just had GM's and guides without a monthly fee it would have worked and been better. Take volunteer players with good game standing and let them sort out the bad ones. That's how Everquest does it. I was a guide for them toward the end of my 5 year stand with them. I enjoyed it. Nothing more enjoyable than getting rid of griefers. I love how they lie too. I'm invisible watching them and then when I become visible they start telling me they weren't doing anything. lol

Yeah, it's really too bad they didn't take that example to heart.

For myself and plenty of other players i know in the game i wouldn't have even started playing GW if it had a subscription fee.

I had never even heard of MMO type games before i started playing, it just caught my eye in GAME as it was cheap and looked like it might hold my interest for a bit as i was bored at the time. Had it said sub fee i'd have chucked it back instantly as i hadnt even considered that someone'd pay to play a game.

if gw 2 is p2p i would consider looking into playing it. im sure ill play it a little but not as much after playing aion and paying t o play im very happy with it and the updates and the actions ....

Just don't use there online store you might get banned HAHAHAh j/k ANET

The principles are a whole issue by themselves. Either way you make some good points. Specifically, the fact that GW doesn't have a monthly fee allows it to exist without actually competing with WoW.

That being said, I still think the only true answer to this thread is that we don't really know. Perhaps if GW had a lower fee and claimed to be the MMO with a difference (like they did at release) in that ripe 2005 market things could have worked? Maybe, maybe not. We are asking the question could the game have survived, not could it have competed with WoW.

It arguably already has abandoned those principles just without the monthly fee. It is almost as if Anet has slowly determined that a move over to more general MMO principles with microtransactions and without the monthly fee is the best situation.

I really don't think you get the point of a competitive game.

And this is exactly the problem. Many people have chosen to do just that because of all the problems being brought up in this thread and elsewhere. You can say "just quit" and be done with it, but the majority of the PvP community has quit and that adds up to be a huge problem.

"I really don't think you get the point of a competitive game."
Don't give me that shit... you can't just go in and say "you just don't understand" seeing as I would clearly just throw the exact same sentence right back at ya. I know very well what competitive play means.

"And this is exactly the problem. Many people have chosen to do just that because of all the problems being brought up in this thread and elsewhere. You can say "just quit" and be done with it, but the majority of the PvP community has quit and that adds up to be a huge problem"
... are you even reading what I say? I say that you have options, dude OPTIONS! You have the liberty to improve your own skills, get more, play on without a care or quit. If you chose to quit you quit and that's the end. The point is that it was YOUR choice to quit, the same as it was YOUR choice to play on and YOUR choice to improve. I'm not just saying "just quit", I'm saying that A-NET DOES NOT FORCE ANYTHING ON YOU! What you so far have been saying is that A-net in some way forces their products on you, which you have no either proof or valid point to.

Let me repeat the very point I've been trying to get through: What you do is all up to you, and A-net can not be held responsible for that.

Actually it is based on market segment. GW appeals to a poorer (or cheaper) crowd of gamers (not saying all of you guys are poor in RL) because if they were to charge $15/month they would be competing in the same space as WoW. I doubt they can defeat WoW revenue at this time, with or without subscription, even with "actual accountants thinking of this stuff for them."

If GW were to charge a subscription, I would expect a lot more work from them. Otherwise there are lots of other $15/month MMO subscriptions out there. This way, they charge less, give less, and people expect less from them.

i consider this post dumb, if you want to pay to play, go to world of warcraft or Aion. Dont make a free game, a pay to play game, not alot of people can afford this, just because you can, does not mean everyone can. dont think about urself and be selfish like this.

Thanks,
Marc

People can afford it, they don't want to.

everyone? not really, i know ALOT of people who play this game, even tho they would rather play WoW...why? because of those 15 bucks a month...for u its not much, for someone else it is...so dont put words in someone elses mouth.

I think people are being too quick to reject a monthly fee $15 is not a lot for a month as tther hobbies can cost way more than that. You can choose to not eat a nicer meal once a month and would probably have an easy $15, or not drink 3 cups of Starbucks. If your life seriously depended on the $15 a month I think you should have other things to worry about other playing a game.

I have tried other pay to play games and never stayed because I didn't enjoy the game play. I wouldn't mind paying a monthly fee for Guild Wars if it improved the quality of the game, and content kept coming out. The game has run its course for me, and without new content I don't have a real reason to play the game anymore. If a monthly fee could change that I enjoy Guild Wars enough to pay for it.

Maybe you do, but your posts aren't showing it. Non level playing field = bad competitive play. Hell it is arguably bad PvE play when people have better options than you. Until you realize this, your argument that "Anet doesn't force anything on you" is pretty much irrelevent and off topic.

Let me repeat the very point I've been trying to get through: What many people have done is quit the game, and A-net can be held responsible for that. We know Anet has made questionable decisions. We know some of this is in part due to the marketing model. The question this thread is asking is would monthly fees solve things, and the answer is we don't know.

The monthly fee for one game may not be much, but GW isn't the only game I play. If I had to pay monthly for everything, it would quickly add up to something significant. That's not something I want, and I will vote with my wallet for free-to-play business models like GW. I refuse to support the monthly fees business model.

There is only one reason that GW still has an active playerbase after four and a half years:

No subscription fees.

/thread

The fact that makes guild wars stand out is that its such a good game and yet still F2P.

I've been playing aion since its release over the past couple of months and I can tell you, it holds none of the magic of GW. Combat is clunky and zergy, the player base is demanding and whiney (i know, so are most MMORPG player bases, but in GW I found an alliance/guild who were laid back and friendly), grind is epidemic. I'm considering migrating back to GW at the end of my 3 month subscription because even with its shiney new graphics and p2p content, Aion can't hold a candle to GW.

The nuances of combat; chiizu stepping, cancel casting, interupting, protting, hexing, enchantment covering, movement controlling, combined with the restrictive build system - having to cram all you can into 8 skills and use them effectively rather than just taking every skill your class can have and spamming them whenever you want feels more like you're playing the game than the Aion system.

If I had to pay for GW I think it would lose its shine somewhat, I can pick it up and play and not feel like I have to get my moneys worth. I've got the £50 or so I've paid over the years back one hundredfold through immersive and interesting gameplay, fast paced PvP, an intruiging storyline and a mostly friendly and accomodating player base.

What it should have been (IMO) was a locally stored character game that can operate on LAN or on hosted Internet servers. Look up Titan Quest, Dungeon Siege, Dungeon Siege 2...etc..etc..they operate this way. Character on HDD, play single player, LAN or a hosted Internet server at your own leisure. Back up your characters. Immortality. Imagine if GW were like this.

And at OP... most of your points are great but when I played EverQuest II ($15/mo) the hacked account horror stories were as bad as they are in GW now and the GM's didn't do shit for people who suffered. One of my friends got his entire account wiped. What did SOE say? Screw you, rebuild it. Nice eh? SOE also did a lot of other bullshit things to it's playerbase in EQ2 like completely ignore the casual playerbase to the point many of them (like me) quit. They concentrated on the elitists and hardcore players instead, making it impossible for casual players with their "crappy gear" (that they didnt spend hours grinding for) to get into groups. Even laughed at us too.
Two years was enough of that shit for me for the treatment I received, the bugs that were not fixed, the causal players ignored..etc..So imagine what even 5 bucks a month would have done for us in GW? Probably nothing different than now, You'd still get hacked and lose all of your hard earned achievements. And one more thing. "More CM's that interact with players." Well..in my TWO long years at EQ2 this happened exactly twice, and you guessed it..still was paying 15 a month. They managed to have at least one GM that I talked with who ever knew what they were doing (out of probably 60 GM's) and honestly needed to be promoted to the CEO of SOE to fix that terrible company.

I went off topic but mostly, this post wasn't to flame OP, just to share my experiences and thoughts on why P2P is a steaming pile of crap that wouldn't make a difference anyway.

While you might have part of that /thread correct, that is arguably NOT the only reason that you see people still running around in the game.

EDIT: I really enjoy playing a game everyday that has the most unhappy/questionable playerbase in the history of online games.

But it is the majority reason and that's all that matters is what the majority thinks and does. If the majority goes the minority will soon have to follow as they would shut down the servers.

Off topic huh? Wasn't the topic that You said that people pay monthly fees because of the extra campaigns comming out and then you feel compelled to buy it? How the hell is "Anet doesn't force anything on you" off topic there? The reason people have better options than you is that they payed money, meaning the gave something away to gain something and people who did not buy it chose the thing they had over the thing they could gain. So there you go: They have same RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOing options, one part just chose another.

There's one thing we can partly agree on though: We don't know whether fees would be the way to go or not, since we can not see alternative presents.

That is the topic of the THREAD overall. I commented on YOUR POST and not the thread. I think YOU are the one who have gone off from your own topic.

But RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO it. You know I like having debates and such, but this shit is getting ridiculous. I'm not commenting on you more from now on, because clearly your sense of reality is malplaced. And btw don't give me that "you are just running away" shit because so far you have been using the same surreal points over and over again and I'm simply tired of that.

Friend, the Majority you or anyone else speaks of is so strongly exaggerated at any rate anyway. It always comes down to what one person thinks or does, than they assume everyone else feels that way, so their opinion is no longer an opinion to them, but a fact. And this is sad.

I said people feel compelled to buy it, but I didn't say anything about paying monthly fees for it. The reason you are off topic is because your point doesn't matter. My point was in the current model people who are playing competitively or who want to keep up in PvE must buy the expansions. If Anet continued to follow their model, many people essentially have a fee paid every 6 months. That is all I said. Your constant rambling about "you have options" is irrelevent. You have options in WoW too but I'm not rambling on about that.

Yes, we agree on that. Which is why this thread is mostly useless.

You are just running away.

In my opinion it would have been great if they made it only $5 A month or something. A lot of people would pay because its such a low amount and they also would be able to afford to keep upgrading the game with more new weapons, dungeons, missions, etc.

Do you actually think Guild Wars wouldof had the success it enjoyed if it had a monthly fee ? Hell no.

time to lock this stupid thread points have been made and no amount of whining is going to make Guild Wars SHOULD have been pay to play .

should is too pompous a word to use here, imho.

But facts you can see on paper. Opinions just come out of rear ends. ) The majority clearly rules in the majority of cases that's just facts of life. ) Get used to it.

More 'DLCs' priced like BMP, offering more dungeons and aesthetic content.

No game should have fees anymore. They are NOT worth it unless you are an obsessed junkie addict who plays them 24/7, and with so many MMOs out now with the gaming population spread between each, fees mean that gamers are never going to get to play each one and instead the only method of playing is to completely devote yourself to one at a time for several months, which is neither enjoyable nor worth the money to any normal person.
We are in a complete economical crisis at the moment as well. If you think that paying $100 extra every year just to play your online games is a good deal, you are either a minority in the top 10% wealth bracket, or you are still a child with no sense of fiscal responsibility.

No one cares anymore about how many people play WoW, let the rich people / MMO junkies play it if they want. Normal gamers do not want to be paying fees on every single game that they want to play, and playing just to get your moneys worth takes all the enjoyment out of a game, which you shouldnt even be able to do if you have a full time job.

For people who simply dont care about their money and want to pay fees, a model like the one Turbine recently released for Dungeons and Dragons online is a good one - where you can choose to either pay fees and access all the content, or buy seperate parts of the game as you would buy expansions.

Yes, some douchebag will soon comment 'OMG DDO SUX WAT A CRAP GAME', when I am not even discussing the game, but its choice of having both a P2P or Fees based option to access all of the games content.

You have your opinions and desires to pay however you want with such a model - play for free and grind points to buy content, buy mission packs, or pay fees and get full access, best MMO payment model ever.

Nope, the game would have been dead within a few months since 80% of people would rather have just gone to WOW. There wouldnt have been a strong enough player base to make parties of 4 - 8 to accomplish everything, and PVP would have been completely dead, with maybe 3 or 4 groups max running in HA, and having to wait several hours to find a GVG opponent.
Instead, sorrows furnace should have been a P2P mini expansion, as with the other elite areas in Factions / NF. Green weapons and Elite tomes should have never been made to drop outside of these areas, but they would have a much higher drop rate inside them.

Cash shop selling weapon skins and weapon upgrades for 99p per weapon skin and 49p per upgrade should have been made, with exclusive cash shop only skins for both weapons and armors - Anet hire good weapon / armor designers, they make money for creating desirable content.

Nothing wrong with that at all, the purchases are optional, and the artists get some money. The better the design, the more people would want to pay for it.

There should be more Mission packs made and sold like the BMP, more missions and content that you pay for, with each rewarding a set of gold items. These could be made in different difficulties for beginner to elite, and remain mostly solo / hero / henchable content.

They could maybe also have sold henchmen skillbars instead of having put in heroes, design your own henchmen in the ingame shop, customise everything from looks, weapons and armor, OR buy each one normal weapons and armor ingame as you would on your character. Pay to design your own henchman skillbar which can be reset once a week for free, plus whenever there is a skill update, so you could buy 7 custom hench and skill bars and make your own AI team as you choose with the limited once a week reskill for balance purposes. These purchased henchmen would be usable on all your characters anywhere in the game, but have their level and attributes reduced to the same as the player you use them on.

Of course it is a completely stupid idea with heroes in the game, but it could have been an option instead of them in the first place, and one that people would have paid for if the price was reasonable.

I'm all for it if it would allow Anet to hire a better skill balancer.

In a word, no. Jump in the way back machine and go tack a p2p fee on prophecies and i just can't see it going for more than a year on the given content. Now if they added more to justify the cost, then ya, it could be worth it but then that's not really GW then is it?

I wouldn't play a p2p, I'm more than satisfied with the rate of expansion and think that this game is working and is still growing despite the views of some.
(Hey, my friend just started and he loves it, a few of my other friends seriously want it but, their computers are actually that bad)

When anet releases something it has to be good because they don't have the resources to take a risk with something that isn't good.

If it were p2p I'd feel like I was forced into it and wouldn't be able to play my other games.

The way gw is designed and with the company that runs it, it wouldn't be beneficial to run a p2p model. This is the best way for GW and Anet. One must keep in mind that gw is aging and GW2 is literally around the corner. GW is still a great game and I'm glad that support for its servers will continue.

Can and will are have different meanings; the people you know have the money to play, but they have higher priorities they're investing in.

I think that this would be much better than an monthly fee. If you want the new area you're going to have to pay, but if you don't have to if you don't want it.

No, it would not have worked. Prophecies on release was really just a polished beta, still lots of bugs. Nobody would have paid a monthly fee for it. Besides, the game was designed with bandwidth requirements such that it could be free to play online.

Take Aion as an example of pay to play. Will it be around four years from now? I mean, seriously.

Wanders if Aion uses the same low bandwidth requirements thingy like GW

Bandwidth requirements are mostly a non-issue nowadays.

And it's 'wondering' btw, not 'wandering'

NCsoft does not provide proper support, even for pay-to-play games. It is a terrible company that relies on box sales for revenue and gives preferential treatment to NA players over EU ones. I bought into the "Aion is pay to play so it will have in-game GMs and regular content updates" bullshit and that's exactly what it was - bullshit. GW has better support than Aion, thanks to ANet staff like Lindsey actually caring about their game and going the extra mile in their own time.

I seriously doubt that GW2 would have the sort of support you're looking for if it did come with a subscription fee, and even if it did I wouldn't pay to play it after my experience with Aion. I really hope they don't go back on their statement that it will be free to play. I also really wish that ANet wasn't owned by NCsoft.

Me, bitter? Nah.

A questionable decision in your eyes might have been a great one in others' eyes.
And I also think if it had been p2p, many current players would have never bought GW in the first place. It would have been a different game allround.
I prefer it the way it is. Go anet for free2play!

certainly glad this bloke is not in charge of development as all his ideas are stupid ones. Buying skins for 99p? lmfao The whole point of playing a game is playing it not buying things in it for real life dollars and cents moe.

Only thing that needs to be added to this game is allow for 7 heroes and open up all the elite areas to them and/or henchies if players want to play them.

You would be astounded if you knew how many games/companies are using this model, and thrive on it, like Runes of Magic or Rappelz.