Subscription Fee

Where did you get your data from? As far as I knew they *chose* to halt development GW1. When GW was in full production they had two separate teams, each working on different campaigns. Then they chose to merge them and work solely on GW2.

I have seen no financial data regarding ANet/NCSoft confirming that they can't afford two development teams on GW anymore. And I don't think there is any.

Again the business model did not fail. ANet's business model is not an invention, it's nothing new actually; it is as old as game industry. The subscription business model is the *new* business model here. And so far it works for none but a very very few (if not just Blizzard). The vast majority of the games produced today are not subscription based and most are doing just fine.

1) How many other games sell content like sorrows furnace?

2) How many games with fees actually give out free expansions? From what I see with WoW and Lotro, you pay a fee and never get anything extra for free, you still pay for new expansions.

Also, I doubt it was ever within Anets intention to add new god realms to GW1. I think you would better enjoy a game with an editable creator / module pack like NWN2, I cant honestly think of a single game which follows the model that you propose.

As far as selling playable content goes, as I already mentioned there is only one game that currently does this, and that is DDO. Having played it, I agree that this method and what you propose does work very well, but what I do not accept is your inaccurate defense of wanting to pay fees just to get extra content which would never happen on the scale that you are wishing for (new fow like areas arent exactly going to be made just because people are paying fees.)

Daesu is right, Regina confirmed it in a few posts here on guru that they don't have the recources to get a team that can deliver playable content, because NCSoft doesn't want that. Maybe because the business model doesn't bring in enough cash to satisfy the shareholders in Korea?

Even if I found Regina's quote I wouldn't base my assumptions on that, I'd like to see real financial data to support such claims.

Greed of shareholders is a different issue than business model. Companies can commit suicide based on that. Subscription doesn't work (except for Blizzard), it's proven not to work by so many failed titles but "shareholders" like the idea because it provides a delusional constant income.

In reality subscription based services is a much tougher market. No one subscribes to two internet connections, two phone lines, two cable tv connections, etc. when one would suffice. Subscription based services are a totally different beast and attitude of consumers towards them are totally different too.

No Daesu is not right, and neither are you just because you shared your personal opinions with us.

GW has no more new content because a very long time before Regina said anything like what you appear to think she did, Anet themselves announced that they were no longer making anymore content for GW1 as they are now working on GW2. That was the decision by the developers of this game and had nothing to do with NCsoft or anyones share prices.

/Agree.

As he says, if you want to pay fees then what are you doing here? Why not go and play one of your so much better fee based games that give you free new content all the time equal to Sorrows Furnace / FoW / UW?

Oh wait ... Am I right to assume that no such game exists, which is why you are all here QQing about wanting fees in GW?

Well boo hoo to you, I can very gladly confirm that that is never going to happen. If you want to pay fees, then go off and shoo to WoW / Aion / Lotro / whatever else, and leave us people who want to play for free here with GW alone.

Also, I see no answers to the questions I asked you above:

Can you answer these please? I really want to know why you make such assumptions about GW that are so far not true about any single game at all.

The thing I never understood, even for WoW... So I like to play games with my friends and family, casually. So with subscription based games I would actually have to pay 5/6x subscriptions. It's like having to pay your internet provider a different subscription for every connected computer in your house, or your cable tv company a subscription for *every person watching*...

That'd never work for me... just can't possibly see how.

oops let me re say that.

GW will not go play to pay. if it did from the start i would keep paying. it is great game. love the community. love the support.

Yup.

How about we start paying our Internet providers $15 per month for every website we use? They have to pay for bandwith costs after all.

How about we start paying steam an additional $15 per month for every game ever downloaded from them that we play on our accounts? They have to pay to maintain their online services after all.

How about paying Microsoft and extra $15 per month to use Windows or Office? They have to pay for regular updates and designing new software after all.

How about paying the supermarket an additional $15 per month for providing us with food? Their staff are seriously underpaid and they have to pay rent and taxes on their store after all

How about paying your clothes store an extra $15 per month for providing you with clothes? Or Mcdonalds an extra $15 per month for allowing you to eat there? Same reasons as the supermarket above.

Oh wait, all of them are still cheaper then going to watch a movie at the cinema once every week, so that immediately justifies that all of these proposals will work and are good for everyone.


But would you have actually bought it in the first place if it had fees? I know I wouldnt have bought it, nor would I have carried on playing it, and I do assume that most of the GW community would feel the same way.

I wouldnt have even been in this game for any more than 4 months, as opposed to the 4 years I have been able to enjoy playing the game for free.

There are lots of times I feel like I want to really go back to playing WoW, Lotro, or AoC, but in each case I never will because I absolutely will not pay the fee.

Don't shoot the messenger, here you go:

source: http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/n...02#post3897602

That's only one of many quotes and it always comes down to the same thing: not enough recources. I'll see if I can find the quote where she states it's NCSoft that doesn't want them to expand the Live team.

This quote from Regina is very clearly worded. It definately states that Anet are not creating new content for GW1 as they are working on GW2:

This is the reason why they do not have the resources to allocate to the game, absolutely not one single thing whatsoever to do with fees or money as you and Daesu are completely lying about.

Thanks for proving me right, and you wrong. Even if we were paying fees, there would be no more new content for GW1 because:

Do you understand that a little clearer now? Maybe I should quote it one more time for you to read?

If we were paying Anet fees and they had the money to hire new developers, guess what those developers would be doing?

Lol what a stupid argument.

DDO is decent, but they are getting more people with the F2P with micro. Battleforge isn't actually an MMO, right...? Aion is a terrible example - the grind is the same as in other countries, but you PAY PER HOUR. Sure it's good when you don't play much, or don't want to be tied up for a month, but it also means that you must ALWAYS log out of the game, can't leave the shop up, and if you play too long and not notice it.... Bye bye, gotta pay. And you might be kicked out in the middle of an instance.

If anything, that means they don't trust they can sell a new campaign/expansion. Did they have enough resources to work on GW:Prophecies when nothing prior was sold? No.

They make money post-development/launch, not prior. Like any product, one might say. They have more than enough resources still from previous sells to start work on content for GW1. But they don't want to, either because they don't believe they can sell it anymore or because their dev teams are too slow or simply because they are betting everything on GW2 and see GW1 irrelevant and they abandoned it.

I find it funny as Regina tries to argue in that post that they didn't abandon GW1 Maybe they're in denial over there at ANet quarters.

They are still waaaaaay better than paying fees, that is for sure.

The genre of the game (MMO vs RTS) hardly matters in this discussion, the topic is subscription fees, not MMO vs RPG. Both are online with servers and developers to pay for and have some form of payment model to support the servers.

It prooves NCSoft doesn't give them the recources to work on both titles genius. Because it's not cost effective and efficient and why would that be? If the business model was such a success one would think it's good business to expand the live team to 20-30 peeps and cash in with some mini expansions while the other 190 employees work on GW2.

No it doesnt at all. It proves that Anet are choosing to devote all of their staff to get GW2 completed ASAP, which is their top priority right now over GW1.

Their choice in this matter is theirs alone. Your arguments are not valid.

They do not want to spend anymore resources on new content GW1 because they are placing everything they can into GW2. And why on earth would they even if they could? GW1 is a dead game now, new content is not going to improve or make it any better. The only thing it would do is spread the player base out even more.

It says 'There are issues of resource allocation within the team' Not 'We do not have enough resources'.

They could have all the resources in the world at Anet, but they would still choose to devote them all to GW2, not to GW1.

That's what I believe as well. It's a matter of choice not poverty.

PS: As a matter of fact I remember being stated that the live team was formed when they realized GW2 was not coming out as fast as they thought (go figure?)...

Once again proving the main ANet issue: unable to deliver on their schedules (new campaign every 6 months, GW2 in 2008/9 etc). Not that I blame them. And yet another fact to prove they dumped GW1 and ran hoping to be back in time with the new cake: GW2... but that never happened. So the only blame here is that they didn't foresee how long GW2 dev will take, which they should've. Their expectations were not realistic.

Except that big brother NCSoft is a multi million MMO giant that mainly publishes pay to play games. They didn't believe in a Live team that can deliver playable content and I think because it would not bring enough money in to even get out of the costs. And that's a shame for us players and GW fans as we're already waiting like 3 years for new content.

As I said already ANet false expectations is what made us the community wait. And now we feel like an abandoned child. Had they said: "no more content until GW2, GW1 is dead, GW2 will be out in 5 years" we would have found something else to do. But no, they said: no next campaign but GW2 beta in 2008.

So we stayed tuned and waited for something that never happened.

Bad bad marketing. Terrible way to treat your community ANet.

PS: And GW1 was never designed with replayability in mind, it was a success on a scale they never really expected and didn't really know how to handle it.

You can Impossibly expect a company to make a game In 2 years.
But I agree that we got treat terribly.

As long as GW2 is good, I would prefer that they do it this way, devote their staff to developing a great GW2 experience, rather than splitting them between GW1 and GW2.

I still dont get your argument with bringing NCSoft into this sorry:

No game has ever done this. You are just hypothesizing and presenting your own opinions and misinterpretations as facts which is never right to do.

Anet decided to stop making any new content for GW1 so that they could allocate all of their resources to GW2, it has never been stated by them or by NCSoft that this decision was due to not having enough resources to allocate to both, this is only your personal opinion and not a fact as you are presenting it to be.

This isnt bad marketing at all, just about every big title gets delayed like this. Every game studio presents unrealistic expectations and time frames within which to create a new game, and this is usually inaccurate by many many years.

It also doesnt classify as marketing as it isnt a tactic being to used to sell a product, since GW2 isnt even out yet

This question as to whether subscription based or not is better is one that I don't think has a right or wrong answer to. Everyone is entitled to their opinions but i think i'm of the same opinion gun...
Oh and here's an opinion i think is worth a read since it was from one of the co-founders of anet-
Jeff strain-

http://www.killtenrats.com/2009/11/2...d-undead-labs/

If you continue reading there are comments below. Here's a quote i agree with as well-
"F2P history has shown that he is right though, how many of those games are fun up to a point, and then either stop or slow down unless you start shelling out cash? Even the good ones like Atlantica are like that, and it’s sad to think just how much better a game like that would be if only it was $15 a month rather than designed around $2 XP pots."

Edit: just adding more opinions to this thread

Anet did it with GW1 and Surrow's Furnace, for free at the time and unfortunately they said they couldn't do that anymore. First signs that recources were limited.

And why NCSOft, because they fund development.

We have a different opinion on this and that's no problem, that's what happens on forums.

Guild Wars wont have many players if it has a subscription fee, the major selling point for the game is free online play.

they could have just opened a 'donation jar' so that all those 'ten bucks monthly is a slice of bread' trolls could aid ANet with their money and after reaching a certain peak, they'd work on a new content picked in a big poll made by and for donators.
it would meddle a lot here and there, is imho unnecessary and might shatter the gw community, but it's the only way that would work regarding money/content issue.

regarding the new content... *points at zaishen quests, points at nicholas, points at dhuum*

yet i still don't know what new content you'd want - when you buy majesty 2 or any other game, with no monthly fee or other payments but the one in the shop, you don't get any new stuff either. and if you do, you have to pay more. it's normal and no one forces you to play 40 months in one game just because it's mmo. heck, i'm glad that we have some events here, including the weekends and wintersday or halloween.


as for the OP itself - no, no monthly fee in GW or GW 2 ever, ANet is doing good. i just wish they made updates more often but less packed instead of 30 changes once a year that they balance out later anyways.

The gw business model is working as is. I don't know about you but all of my friends are going balistic trying to get gw, my one friend had his whole family get all the games and eotn. I have 3 other friends that want accounts too. The main catcher is the gameplay and graphics, throw in the no subscription fee and they're hooked.

If you want to support anet through a monthly fee then just buy a char slot every month or xunlai tabs and the like, there's enough aesthetic or decent things to get in the in-game store to effectively keep you paying 10 bucks a month for a while. (at least until gw2 comes out).

As someone who always had a dislike for pay per play games i now find myself totally agreeing with Fenix.

I took a break from GW for 3 months recently and played WoW instead at a cost of ~£10 a month.

I was playing a couple of hours per day so probably 75-80 hours a month at least for £10 and I came to the conclusion that in real terms paying for your server time is not even close to expensive as most other hobbies or pastimes that i could partake in - I could watch 3 ppv movies , ~15 minutes of live football , drink 3 pints or go to the movies for the same amount.

If GW2 was released as pay per play then I would try it to make sure i liked it and then hand over my cash with no qualms , aslong as regular content was added.

I see a lot of players that say they would support the micro transaction model if it were to provide new content other than utility and aesthetics. Content like Sorrows Furnace and the Bonus Mission Pack seem to be more what people want.

My question is, what do you players feel is a realistic schedule on the release of such content? How fast or slow would obviously affect the quality of such releases. Sorrows Furnace for example. What do players feel that content was worth?

Obviously there can be a middle of the road between players and developers. Granted if both sides can admit that the initial vision of GW was a little off, and adjustments need to be made.

I see the micro model working if they did Furnace type releases, as well as bell and whistle type content. But I get the feeling that even then people would still bitch and moan. Which why I asked how fast would said content need to be put out to keep the QQer's content?

And then. How long do you run the game before you move on to the next generation of the game? Other than screwing the pooch on the release of GW2. I had thought GW was right on schedule to that point.

So what say the masses? How much and how often would you be willing to pay for "optional" content?

theres already a topic on this lol...

The best business model imaginable is the one GW1 was originally meant to have - releasing only MASSIVE content packages worthy of being called complete games, full boxed products that got reviews in media so had to maintain highest quality to be worth the $ spent. This system offered by FAR the biggest bang for your buck possible in an MMO AND at the same time the game was perfectly *FAIR* for it's players in that it didn't provide any ingame advantages to players who would spend more $$$ on it than just purchasing all the content expansions.

Of course keeping that dream business model requires a whole big development team to keep working on new expansions/campagins but players then get the best value possible.

Now problems start when the devs can't keep up with releasing enough quality content - in case of GW it meant selling smaller and smaller content packages which offer LESS value per $ spent, and eventually going into the hell of microtransactions. The hell where you pay real amounts for absurdly small gains.

I'd much rather have them release one large final expansion to GW1 than multiple smaller ones for the simple reason that getting all the smaller ones would SURELY cost way more than 1 big one.

Now it would be completely different if GW1 was a subscription based game - so much differen't it's practically impossible to speculate how would it look like now. Whole game would have to be completely different or it would fail miserably.

If you're willing to pay a subscription, what's the problem with microtransactions?
Being able to afford it or not isn't really the problem, I'm sure most gamers could afford it..

But at least with the microtransactions, you're only having to pay for new content if/when you want it, rather than paying constantly for everything, regardless of if you want it, or if you're even currently playing the game. I'm not really a fan of these costume packs, it's okay as a one off thing, but I'd rather see more substantial content added, along the lines of if they added things like new areas, quests with new armour sets, etc, I'd gladly pay for little "mini-expansion" packs occasionally.

Even if in the end that turns out to be the same price, I much prefer that to paying a set subscription every month.

The only reason my son and I bought GW when it came out was that it did not have a monthly fee. Since then we, and my daughter, have purchased each campaign and EOTN. I love playing this game.

As hard as it would be, I would not buy GW2 if it was a pay-to-play model. For those of you who compare the money spent for subscription fees to movies, dinners out and drinking at bars, well, I don't do those things. Can't afford to, even if I wanted to.

I can justify (to myself ) the money spent on each GW game as very inexpensive entertainment, amortized over the 4+ years I have played. But, paying a fee each month, whether or not real life lets me play? Can't do it. Too cheap.

I dont know why anyone would want to pay more for a game. So Id go with a monthly fee, its just cheaper. You get access to ALL the content for a flat rate instead of buying it in pieces when you want it which end up costing more.

Id really rather just have the current model where you buy the box and that it, you get access to all the games content. It worked for GW1 why not GW2?

But anything is better the F2P games where you compete on how much real money you spend, thats the game, and Id pay $15 a month not to have that in my game.

Partially true. All you have to do is replace release with designed.

GW isn't designed to support a subscription based model.

The only true problem with Anets business plan is that hardcore gamers break it. When you could get to level 20 in 1-2 days (now down to like 6 hours), it completely breaks the pace of the game. For casual gamers, the business model worked. I knew a couple people who would dabble in the game and love it. By the time they finished the first one and maybe farmed up some elite armor, the next expansion was out.

But if you strictly play the content, and play it fast, you could be done with an entire campaign in a week. Now multiply that by the four expansions. And you have a month before you've exhausted everything but HM, Elite Areas, farming, and pvp. Even if you took it slow and finished all of HM and Elite Areas once in two months, that leaves all the other time to farm and play pvp. If that satisfied you for 3 months before getting bored (mostly at lack of changes, you've played the game for a total 6 months. A game that was released over a course of 4 years.

Thats the true problem with the model. With most P2P models, I see generally see LOTS of grind straight from the start, which of course lengths the amount of time most people will play the game. Then you have the grind for items and gear like in WoW. In micro-transaction games, you generally see an imbalance between paying and non-paying users especially Korean "beta"-MMOs.

Personally, I wouldn't object to a hybrid platform. Something like standard $50 for the game, and a $2-5/monthly that could be prepaid as a maintenance fee. Thats $30-60 a year. So you end up paying between 80 and 110 a year. Compared to the standard $15/month ($180 + expansion prices), its still cheaper. Plus Anet has always been gracious about returning favors to its players. I mean lets be honest here, they gave us festivals every year, Sorrow's Furnace, Hard Mode, Storage, Costumes, Character Stylists, the Bonus Pack. I mean there's plenty they didn't have to do for free. And If an extra $30-60 a year + micros can help keep the servers faster and new content I'm all for it.

I'm just against P2P, where i end up paying for bug-riddled, incomplete, half-assed, terrible, or grind-excessive games. Its among the reasons I never bought, WoW, AoC, Tabula Rasa, or Aion to name a few. At $180, theres no way i'd feel like i actually got my moneys worth. For the same price, I can buy CoD:MW 2 and another game plus Xbox live for a year, and still get more for my money.

I think people need to know what Sorrow's Furnace really was, because it was NOT really what most of you think.

First and foremost it was an extremelly clever marketing move that proven to be a huge success - not only because of what it did to the game itself but what it did to the way people thought of the game, it's business model and it's future.

In fact it was just an unfinished part of the game that didn't make it into the release. But from a failure to deliver a complete game on time they made a huge marketing success of providing a free content update!

Please note that they released a movie trailer advertising it mere DAYS after GW release, the areas were already designed and built. Obviously it wasn't finished and required much work and they couldn't afford to push the release date of the whole game because of that, so they did what they did, an epic win.

Starting from the release of the trailer movie the effect on the way players were thinking of GW's business model was tremendous - it felt like a MagicalChristmasLand with no monthly fees to play AND with FREE content updates incoming. For years since then players kept that in their minds and waited for more free updates like that...

Or they can add more to their store. It would be nice if Anet were to finally take more advantage of the store and finally add more selection.

$12-15 a month is really nothing for a game that you enjoy playing.

Unfortunately, I wouldn't pay that much for the current GW because I have nothing to do. It would just be a waste.

We all do realize gw2 is comming out in maybe a years time correct? Around the holiday season i pray

If you want to complain about unfinished games and not being able to help the community and please them... you should head over to 2k. Rofl so many problems there.

I think I have a rather simple answer.

I expect GW to be free, and GW2 based on how they hyped that as part of the game, in addition to the skill > grind concept. (and by grind I mean less then traditional mmo's).

If it were not to become free...

Subscription - Maybe, the problem will be the game will have to be so good to not only be a "good" game but overcome the sense anger / frustration at this change.

GuildWars competes with my Xbox360/Wii/PS3 because of the concept of the game, and the free nature of it. Note I've already cancel my auto renew on Xboxlive, and have no plans to go to PS3 "preimum" service (online game play still free).

Free Mode/Paid Mode - I HATE these. The design just bugs me and I will likely avoid any game that has it (no matter how good or bad).

It's great, apart from the fact that a lot of teenagers, like myself, play the game. A teenager, in the U.K., at least, does not have a dependable source of income. Yes we can go and get a job stacking shelves or at the checkout... But then when can we play GW?