Subscription Fee

^This...i agree with...completely...

The issue with GW is that Anet expanded the game beyond the ability of the player base to consume it.

You can't find a guild anymore that has more than 5 dedicated players. (If you know of one hit me up)

There are very few instances where you can find a full group to run through it with you except for the end-game because everyone is focused on items/equipment/wealth rather than the thrill of pure gaming experience.

I've played this game for 4 years (less Iraq/Afghanistan deployments) and just recently upgraded to the expansions which, in my eyes, have watered down the game so much that I've no reason to play outside of the proficies or core campaign game content.

The challenge of some areas still draws me back to play and I've never played a game like this that had such a rich back story/lore.

Good subscription based games, regardless of playability, will always be doomed to fail to the point that they are F2P except for elite content (Anarchy Online, Ultima Online [Free Servers], Shadow Bane) and will still thrive off of Micro transaction content or in game advertisements.

Guild Wars is an outstanding game, with limitless playability for the casual gamer. I'm surprised to see there are so many perceived problems with the game mechanics / business model of Anet.

Diablo II is still thriving 9-10 years after release.. And that game sucks compared to guild wars.

Never thought of it that way. Very valid. Throw in the fact they created the "unique greens" and it was like giving a junkie their fix for free to keep them hooked, lol.

But no one has yet answered what would be a fair price for Sorrows Furnace like content in the micro-transaction model. Whether or not it was supposed to be included n the real game is moot now. When people think of content updates they think of something the size Sorrows Furnace. So what is the retail value of "optional" content like that to a player?

I quote this to emphasize the truth in these words, because I could not possible agree more.

The fact is every game company would want to keep their gamers happy within reason. ANet didnt start out creating GW with the intention of pissing off all their customers on purpose.

If they have unlimited resources, why wouldn't they want to work on GW2 while providing lots and lots of GW1 content updates very often, at the same time? This would keep their GW1 customers happy and stick around till GW2 releases.

When you guys say they made the decision not to do that, then did you ever think of their MOTIVATION for not providing huge content update for GW1 every six months? Yes, they dont have the resources, but if they are as rich as you say, why not just hire more resources?

Could NCSoft invest all that money to hire more developers to give out free content update for GW1 or even provide new campaigns for GW1? Yes! If they wanted to, they could forget about their original plans to release Aion and just use that money to hire more GW1 developers. But if they do that, how much would GW1 bring in versus the opportunity cost of releasing a subscription based game like Aion? Which is more profitable and more worth while to invest money into?

This is a business reality we are talking about. The GW business model has to provide as much return on investment as the Aion subscription based business model. This means if the GW returns are lower, then their cost should be lower also, thus they would have less resources. If the GW business model is more successful than Aion's then it makes sense that more investment money should be put into GW.

Since GW customers are also against online store purchases, and ANet has not released any new expansion for the past 2 years, compared to Aion's $15/month/customer, it is quite obvious who brings in the greater return.

Most subscription-based MMOs are doomed from the beginning, no matter how great their content is, because WoW has a stranglehold on the market. It's like a Mom and Pop pizza place opening up next door to a Pizza Hut. Even if they have the better pizza, they're still not going to be able to keep up, simply because Pizza Hut has the advantage of being able to operate at a loss (it's a well-known fact that big businesses win wars of attrition).

The reason GW has been able to succeed in the face of WoW is specifically because they did NOT try to compete with it. They went for a completely different audience. If GW was pay-to-play, there would never have been a second campaign, let alone a third and an expansion. It would have died like so many other MMOs before it.

Making the game pay-to-play now would not bring in any new players (assuming there are a significant amount coming in now), and would drive out a huge portion of the remaining playerbase. Furthermore, it would completely sabotage any hope GW2 has of succeeding (as it is, there are significant hurdles for it to overcome to be successful).

If that is so, then Aion should fail based on your reasoning. Why is Aion doing well then?

Do you know that Aion now accounts for HALF of NCSoft's sales? Imagine if NCSoft had used the original Aion's investment on GW1 instead, would they get the same AMOUNT of return on investment?

http://www.incgamers.com/News/19534/...ar-one-million

This shows that there are still A LOT of gamers out there that support the subscription based model and they have voted with their money, not just words.

Funcom took the exact OPPOSITE route to save their game. Anarchy Online's still doing reasonably well at 8 years old, because they switched from being subscription exclusive to offering the game for free, subsidised by ingame advertising (Which can bbe disabled if you pay the subscription fee).
When you want to compete, you don't offer the same for a greater cost, you offer it for LESS. GW started out offering it for nothing, charging would simply drive away the remaining player base and kill it off entirely.

That statement is just very sad because when you offer it near nothing, yet your customers keep complaing of micro transactions, setup a campaign against you asking others to also not buy from your online store, and complaining about a lack of free content updates. If GW2 fails I think the GW franchise would certainly be over.

Aion is a fairly new game, released only a few months ago in most countries. I don't think it's had enough time for us to be able to accurately percieve how well it's been done/has done. MMO's tend to start off pretty well, and slowly sink. Look at games like Age of Conan, Anarchy Online or D&D Online, the latter two even had to revert to a F2P model in order to sustain themselves, and since then has seen a massive boost in popularity. I'm quite sure they're making far more money from the F2P crowd who are constantly buying bits and bobs from the online store, rather than the "premium" members who get most of it for free.

But of course NCSoft are currently expending much of their resources on Aion. Not only has it just recently been released, but the fact it has a subscription means those players are expecting new content added for the money they're spending. Guild Wars on the other hand is nearly five years old, and the only reason we're not seeing any new content released is because the GW engine began to show its age, hampering certain gameplay features that were supposed the be included in the third campaign, so these resources you speak of, were all shifted onto developing Guild Wars 2 - something that would have happened with or without a subscription.

Perhaps a more fair way to judge will be to wait until GW2 is released, and see how well it stacks up against Aion? I'd be willing to bet that the free to play system proves infinitly more popular, and I also wouldn't be surprised to see sales and support for Aion already drying up by that point.

Aion is working now. But that says nothing for a game like that which relies on long-term play in order to turn a lot of profit. Wait a year and then we'll see if it is truly succeeding.

Also, Aion is technically using a business model similar to GW in that it is not competing directly with WoW. It has angels and flying and crap like that. I recall there being a subscription-based superhero MMO that suceeded in the face of WoW for that reason.

If GW had been subscription-based, if would have died immediately, because players would have looked at it and said, "well, why not just play WoW?"

I don't see why you should even have to buy GW now. Seeing as how they're using an in game store.

See PWI for reference. Free to download, free to play. They make their money from their in-game store. Yeah they have more stuff that completely screws up game balance and economy as anyone with money can instantly have leet stuff, but now since these damn glitchy costumes have made a cash cow, Anet looks like they're the bad guy who's milking it. And playing PWI, you get free, constant expansions if you don't buy anything.

Just saying...

Aion is directly competing with WoW. Aion and GW has very different business model, Aion is subscription based, GW is not.

I dont think GW would fail immediately, I would pay for subscription for GW provided they use the money to pay for the resources for more frequent content update than what I am getting now. I can understand the current lack of update, since it is not subscription based. Besides WoW doesn't appeal to every gamer, my friends and I just dont like the cartoon appearance of WoW.

That is why some people have said that they prefer to pay a subscription than to support micro transactions.

I think ANet has been dumb as to not know how to exploit subscriptions, like Aion did. In the end, not only do they not bring in as much revenue as Aion, but they get blamed for micro transactions by their users as well so they are now between a rock and a hard place.

Exactly.

If ever GW1 becomes pay to play, I will no longer play. The main reason I've stuck with the game for so long is because I can leave and come back freely. Subscription based games give me too much pressure to play in order to get my money's worth, and ultimately I just leave them.

Is WoW a game about angels flying around killing one another? No? Thank you.

They appeal to slightly different audiences. WoW appeals to the standard MMO crowd. Aion appeals to people who want something different. GW appeals to the people who would be in the standard MMO crowd if they didn't hate pay-to-play.

Now, let's say you know nothing specific about GW or WoW (like a consumer would), and both were pay-to-play. All you would know is that WoW is tried and true, and has the lion's share of the market. Which are you going to play?

Nearly anyone in this situation would choose WoW. This is why WoW dominates the market. It feeds off of it's own success to create more success. This is true of any monopoly.

GW does not have this advantage. Literally the only thing GW had going for it in the start was it's lack of subscription fees. Regardless of where that leaves the game now, it has gotten this far only because it has not charged anything to play. Almost everyone who plays this game was either drawn to it because of this, or heard about it from someone who was. Without this, it would never have gotten off the ground. Look at the dozens of other MMOs that have failed over time, and you'll see what I mean. The only thing that separates GW from them when it comes to business strategy is that GW was free to play. Yet they failed and GW succeeded. The only logical conclusion is that GW's success is due to it's free-to-play nature. Taking that away would remove the only thing preventing it from being eaten by the WoW-beast.

This argument is stupid, Its not like Blizzard was a hugely successful gaming company raking in the cash before they released WoW, oh wait they were! All of their previous games were massive success D1,D2 WC2/3 and SC, you can still play SC online even though its like 14 years old and tons of people still play Wc3. When you look at WoW as an MMO its nothing revolutionary, grindfest, do dungeons for gear etc etc, the reason it has done so well is because of those previous games built up a reputation.

Another thing to realise is that all the lessons learned from GW1 will be taken to heart when making GW2 ie. not making a stupid number skills that are impossible to balance, making PvP and PvE totally separate etc etc.

You people are making it seem that games can't make money with no subscription fee, news flash, that's how it has worked for a long, long time.

And consider this, I'm sure this has been mentioned many times before, but I havn't read through all the posts. Would YOU have bought the game if it had a fee? Its easy to say a fee would help it now since you've already bought and played the game. I for one would most definately not have bought the game, I got this game just over 2 yrs ago after quitting WoW, at first I only bought factions to try out the PvP as I heard it was superior to WoW, now I've bought all the campaigns and the BMP Would I have done this if when I walked into the game store the box said Guild Wars Faction: $15 a month, first month is free or w/e, hell no therefore business model works on me at least, and I doubt I am an isolated case.

If it helps just think of GW2 as another massive expansion to GW1.

Also, does GW have a chance of competing with WoW, probably nothing does as most "new" mmos are labeled as WoW clones whether or not this is true or not is irrelevant the point is the mentality exists. With no subscription GW is not a direct competitor to WoW, Aion Warhammer etc etc, I know many people who play both WoW / Lotro / Aion AND GW theres no way in hell they would pay 2 subscription fees.

Whether there are angels flying around or not has absolutely nothing to do with the business model that the game is based upon. It is still a subscription based MMO.

Certainly not WoW because my friend and I simply hate their graphics.

And because of GW free to play business model, it is now forced into micro transactions to bring in much needed revenue. Therefore, its micro transactions hating customers would kill it, just look at the flames thrown in the micro transaction thread. The anti-micro transaction customers are already forming a campaign against ANet by asking everyone to stop supporting them and their online store!

Just watch, GW1 would not last long if GW2 fails. Its own customers would kill it, if NCSoft doesn't already.

And how would turning the game into pay-to-play change any of this?

All it does is show that if GW became pay-to-play, the community would abandon it. And if it had started as a pay-to-play game, it would have never had a community to begin with.

Basically, you're shooting yourself in the foot by bringing this up.

I would never pay a monthly fee to play a game....ever!

A couple of hours a week of work won't kill you and you'll have enough time left to play. When I was a teen, I washed a couple of cars in the neighbourhood to fuel my needs, not to mention a summer vacation job for 4 weeks from the moment I was 15-16 yo. That's enough income to pay 4-5 times a yearly subscription and you're safe for the rest of the year.

Just saying, if you want it, you can do it. 'Yes you can!'

Umm.. let me see... Dragon's Age? Mass Effect? *insert a name of korean/chinese mmos here*? Sure, the first two games are offline. But for asian MMOs, many of them offer this kind of things and they rarely are popular in the west.

Define: Getting something extra for free.

FACT: WoW and LoTro get new patches/updates every so often. All of which are free and contain both new content AND bug fixes.
FACT: WoW AND LotRO have MORE content than what GW has now on their first day of release.

So in a sense, content updates in Subscription-based games are free. Only major expansions would cost money. In the case of GW, major expansions also COST MONEY but you get miniscule/0 content update whatsoever.

If money isn't your concern, which game would you choose, really?

And that's where this so-called business model FAILED to be what Jeff Strain told the world it would be: "The future of MMOs business model".

You're listening to a very vocal minority. GW2 will support microtransactions to a much wider degree and will not suffer because of it, despite what some people on these forums would lead you to believe.

1) Those games you mentioned are offline and are developed around working on a took kit that makes creating new adventures so easy that even the gamers can make them themselves. MMOs are not single player games with community accessible tool / mod kits, comparing the two is stupid.

2) I played WoW / Lotro / Sub based DDO / AoC for about 3 months each. They didnt have any new content added for free within this time, and new content came around every 6 months. Also, the free content that was added to Subscription MMOs is never a large expansion pack, rather it is content that was intended to have been in the game from the start, but not developed in time.

The reason why those games may be larger to you is because they ALSO sold full price expansion packs like Wrath of The Lich King, Mines of Moria, and AoCs first pay for expansion is coming out next year.

So basically, people defending fees are saying that those fees get you lots of new content like sorrows furnace, when this is entirely untrue because fee based games are still selling just as many expansions as GW has.

People say that paying fees and never buying expansions is preferable to them rather than buying expansions, but every major fee based game is still selling expansions.

With GW you bought expansions and pay no fee. In WoW, Lotro, AoC, you pay fees and you still have to pay for expansions.

Also, I cant really understand how people can be so blind to think that GW is not getting new content or updates for free. Where are all the skill balance and bug fixes coming from? Where did Zchest / Zmissions come from? Where did fow / UW end chests come from? Where did Dhuum come from? Where did HM come from? Where did PVE skills and consumables come from? Where did summons / sweets / DP reducing items come from? How about Hero Battles and Codex Arena? New maps for HA and GVG? What about the festivals for halloween, wintersday, canthan new year? Where did those come from?

I am sure I didnt pay for any of these, they were all extra content added for free. People who can genuinely sit and play this game and say that it doesnt get free content and regular updates must be blind as bats or just plain ignorant.

By the way, for all the people who genuinely think subscription games are better, why are they here? Why not go play your superior WoW / Lotro / AoC / Aion instead?

This I cannot understand. You waste your time trolling GW forums asking for fees in this game to make it better, but you actually only came here either because it is free to play, or because it is actually better than every other subscription based game out there, as you arent playing those game instead.

However, lets consider what you are saying for a moment. Lets imagine GW implementing optional fees similar to the DDO model, but rather that both F2P and P2P players get exactly the same content and game to play. How many of you would actually pay to play the game as opposed to playing it for free? I can imagine that the vast majority of you would actually not pay to play this game, rather the same as how you choose not to pay for or support micro transactions.

Ok, how about this - completely remove micro transactions and instead place a 'Donate to this game' store, where you can simply send Anet money whenever you like but without actually buying anything. How many of you people who support fees would actually support this? Because the only difference between the two is that fees force everyone to pay to play, whereas microtransactions / donations still allow you to play without paying.

Here is clearly why the micro transaction model works better. Yes it has been poorly implemented in other games where you have to pay to enjoy the game (eg double exp and drop purchases otherwise you have to grind forever), but this is the case with games that are completely free to download. With Guildwars you pay for the game, and the store simply sells things that are convenient - more storage, more character slots, makeovers for people who dont want to restart their character, bonus weapons and mission packs that hand out free weapons, and now for the first time, seasonal wintersday amputmes, which many many people actually like and have bought.

This is absolutely no different to people who do not and will never support fees. Guess what? These people play GW.

The people who dislike micro transactions as much as this as to try and boycott the game are people who feel the exact same way about fees, not hypocrites like yourself who support fees, but oh noes! Paying for extra storage, character slots and other conveniences is just bad.

Adding fees to GW will completely destroy the game, as maybe a hundred times as many people will then start boycotting the game and leave.

People who support fees but not microtransactions are hypocritical clowns. People who do not support either model and dislike both are not in the same category as you, they actually have a point and are not in any kind of agreeance with you over the opinion that this game should have fees.

Also, people can whine about fees and microtransactions all they like. The last time I checked, LA, kamadan, RA and HA are completely jam packed with players who are not bothered in the slightest about what is sold through the ingame store as long as they can play for free, just like every other successful F2P MMO.

There is nothing wrong with this games model at all, it is actually far superior to fees, and it is never changing, so get over it.

Debating the business model of GW is stupid because most of the arguments are based off of assuming about what would or wouldn't happen in some alternate reality. Some arguments like "Many people wouldn't have even bought GW in the first place if it had a subscription" are pretty likely scenarios but it doesn't change the fact that you can't prove it and it's still just some guess on an alternate reality. This is a battle of opinions which makes it is completely futile because neither side will ever be able to provide any hard evidence. Even if someone got some good evidence anything could be countered with "You don't/can't know that for sure".

The fact is GW is successful enough to warrant a sequel so you can't say it has a bad business model when it turned a good profit. The point of a company isn't to keep us happy at all times it's to make money which GW clearly did. And there are more than enough pay to play mmos for people who like that better. Don't complain and try to change GW when you can easily solve the problem by buying a different game.

$10-15 is a rip off IMO £5 is the most i'd pay for a P2P MMO. also remember that the internet fees and electricity bills add up too ^^. you don't have to grind in movies either
ooh and don't forget the rate at which GW expanded, within 2 years and a bit they had already released 3 expansion-ish products and announced a sequel whereas WoW had only burning crusade EP (dunno about other MMOs)

But, to be fair, WoW already had as much "content" in it's first iteration as GW did after 3 campaigns.

RE: what J I L T said - this is sort of true. All these people who say they will stop playing, or would never have played are ignoring one very simple fact. It all comes down to which way ANet can make more money.
If, for example, ANet started charging monthly fees and half the (resource draining) players left, would they make more money than they do now on the half that remain?

I didn't know that, thanks for the info. It makes sense now, that's why Gaile announced soon after that there won't be more free updates like that.

Still I think the current business model doesn't leave much room for extras, like working on 2 titles at once.

Anyway, I just hope they don't put GW2 on life support after 2-3 years and move onto another project.

The fees wont work in GW... id rather have it free with microtransactions for little things like costumes and all the superficial stuff that DOES NOT impair the gameplay of others. Because if u can buy a sword for 5$ and a player that doesnt have that money cant buy it, the game would suck and it would be worst than having fees. It would be unfair to everyone...

Or if ppl want fees, it should be by minutes and not pay-to-play by months. Id rather buy 500mins of game play than to pay for month, because i dont always play GW.

Anyways they said and its confirmed that GW2 wont have fees. Its their model and they wont change it.

- Captain Scrat

Go play WoW or some other lame P2P game.

I'm curious as to what you call GW.

A cheap game for the poors?

It's cheap indeed, though, on so many levels.

I didnt think it was cheaper than any single player game that you would buy once and never pay towards again. And since when did the ridiculously overpriced subscription model system suddenly determine that any game that costs less than $100-$150 per year to play is cheap?

You missed some other meanings of "cheap" I tired to imply there, lol.

But nevermind, it was a response to the guy calling P2P games "lame". So if those (most of which actually have MORE content than GW's 4 games COMBINED) games are lame, I wonder if he would call GW "CHEAP" too.

Because I do feel that it's just that, CHEAP.

Then they are not being realistic. I want to my house, my cars and everything in life to be free too but is that going to happen?

In the same way, I dont want to pay for anything and maybe through some magical means ANet employees would get paid well and their servers run on air.

Also if NCSoft realizes that Aion is earning a lot more money than GW, then that puts GW in the danger zone. Why continue to throw money on a money losing venture, without micro transactions, or fees? At the same time customers DEMAND that content update should happen very often for free. How are all these things suppose to happen in reality?

You're assuming Aion will earn more money than GW, and that it will succeed. Neither of these is certain. You're also assuming that if Aion succeeds, it will be due to it's business model rather than it's unique gameplay. This, too, is uncertain.

In theory, yes, if GW and Aion ran side by side forever, eventually, the subscriptions of Aion would outweigh the one-off costs of GW (and probably the microtransactions of the latter, as well).

But do you honestly believe that GW will continue running as it is now forever?

This is why they're making GW2; because GW1 is no longer as profitable as it once was.

So, if it makes you feel better, think of GW as being a game that has "subscriptions" in the form of new campaigns and expansions. When the costs begin to outweigh the profits of the last bundle, they release a new one. The cost of that is the "subscription fee" for the next X months until they put out a new one.

GW has been a success for over 4 years. Aion has been a success for maybe 3 months.

How exactly can you say that Aion is anymore succesful that GW yet?

And why exactly do you assume that NCsoft will abandon such a successful game as GW? Your assumptions are not in any way factual and are more pointless than anything else.

The game has micro transactions. And where did you get this information that GW is losing money?

According to this article, NCSoft are very proud of the success of Guild Wars. It seems incredibly unlikely to me that they would ever drop such a succesful game just because they have had Aion out for a few months:

http://www.totalvideogames.com/Guild...-X5-12320.html

According to NCSoft;

'Guild Wars is a proven success and has set new standards in online RPGs'.

That doesnt sound in any way to me like they would ever drop the game.

Because they'd surely say otherwise about a game they've (mistakenly?) invested in and is about to have a sequel coming out, right?

If it hadnt sold any copies and was a complete flop, I am sure they would have dropped it by now. But there is no way that you can think that 5 million sales is a mistake in anyway for a PC game, or that NCSoft would ever drop such a successful title.

5 million copies does sound good on paper but the fact is that if those 5 million copies havn't earned the revenue that NCsoft was looking for the game is going to look like a failure regardless of what 3rd party critics might say. There have been plenty of great TV shows that have gotten rave revues but were canceled after one or two seasons because the exec's didn't find it brought in enough cash to justify holding on to it...

Then please feel free to prove with any evidence / links that GW has not earned enough revenue for NCSoft before making things up based on zero evidence based purely on your personal opinions.

Also, the last time I checked, GW has not been cancelled yet. Surely if it was not making enough money, it would have been cancelled within 4+ years.

Comparing a television show based on reviews to a PC games sales is a false comparison, the correct comparison would be based on how many people watch the programme, or comparing the tv programmes review to a GW review in a magazine.

5 million copies sold is not a review, in the video game industry that is a solid success, and GW is still NCSofts most successful title in Europe and America.

Also the review I posted was not based on a third party critic, but a spokesperson from NCSoft stating that Guild Wars has been a great success for them. You, nor anyone else have provided any evidence against this, or for the claim that NCSoft are not making enough money from GW and are going to be dropping it. So far, it is far more likely that the world is going to end in 2012 than NCSoft dropping Guild Wars.