Subscription Fee

I never said it did, merely pointing out that it is entirely possible.

And if it did happen, I doubt Anet are going to have any difficulty finding another company instead.

This is not something like changing your shirt when it's dirty. Contracts, legal rights, money and jobs are involved. I wish it was that easy.

NCSoft, a giant MMO publisher (pay to play) that funds a free to play MMO...oh the irony.

most p2p mmorpgs ive tried i diddnt like tbh i chose gw in the first place not because it was free but because of what the game offered. to me when i played wow for all of about a month it was just kill kill kill level kill more kill..gw is a little different.

if they had decided to make it p2p maybe 2/3 years ago i might have. now..i wouldnt and i wouldnt pay to play gw2 either. now that im a student also and i cant even really afford food im glad i chose a game i dont pay for per month.

but people are right..guild wars is getting a bit outdated and we are having less and less content added. if they did decide to make us pay..which they wont i would be one if the first to leave. besides their whole model is based around 'free to play' not all of us have mommy and daddy pay for everything

I play for a couple weeks every few months or so as it is. XD The game hasn't put out an expansion or campaign in over two years now, and the vast majority of players are done. I'm not opposed to paying for a bit of content -- I got the BMP, storage, costumes, and a few other little fun things -- but I can't justify a monthly subscription for something I won't even be using half the time.

It's quite logical for an MMO publisher to develop its portfolio and not focus only on one product business model. And GW is not only its business model.

GW going pay to play this late is not feasible. GW2 on the other hand is possible (but not likely).

GW didn't survive because it was "free." It survived because it is fun for those who enjoyed it. The community kept it alive. Lineage II is still alive and thats pay. Ragnarok Online is still alive that's also pay but recently opened a free server. A pay to play game doesn't make a game "terrible."

Again GW going pay this late is not feasible. But lets look at GW2 shall we?

You wouldn't pay to play GW2 if they decided to go pay to play? Seriously? That statement you made just sounds like you're freeloading. You haven't even had a taste of GW2 yet and you say you wouldn't pay to play it if it did go that route?

I play games because I enjoy it. I wouldn't care if a game that I enjoy is pay to play or not, but when I'm bored of it or find something new I'll stop. The opening post has mentioned that we (or some of us) all go to movies and pay a fee for enjoyment.

I'm sure we all have "bought" games to play for enjoyment.

On the initial release of GW Prophicies it was around $50.00? Factions as well and also Nightfall. If all of us has bought from the beginning to end (I know I did) We've all pretty much have paid $150.00 each in total (not includeing GWEN or collectors). I am aware of price drop, but I'm talking about the players from beginning to end.

Sure call it a waste of money, but thats just you being ignorant. We live in a world of piracy. Oh the many options we have yet people still pay for certain things and you wonder to yourself "It's great, but why pay?". Silly Catface.

There are financial reasons why MMORPGs went pay to play vs micro transactions or none at all. Alot of MMORPGS that went Micro Trans tend to become unbalanced due to the shop items. Also going "pay to play" isn't up for the developer to decide but the publisher (I'm assuming).

You all do know NCsoft was a dying publisher up untill Aion's success correct? The amount of servers to keep running for all of their MMORPGs costs alot more then they could have handled. Right now NCsoft isn't even on the top 20 publishers.

Also, the term "Free to play" means we wouldn't even need to pay for anything. That means even the standalone releases they have been throwing at us which we ALL have bought.

Yes, I'm a student as well (I go to Art Institute for Game Programming). I have to pay for my own tuitions and so on. That doesn't stop me from "pay to playing" a game that I enjoy with my friends (Yeah, I don't have mommy and daddy to pay for everything too).


This argument can just keep going and going as the world is made up of people who aren't willing to pay for anything vs the people who would pay.

I can see the two groups are already throwing bullshit at each argument.

I doubt my post will knock any sense into people. It'll most likely make things worse, but I like doing it out of enjoyment.

Indeed, GW is the exception in NCSoft's portfolio and that's exactly the point.

What I meant is that they focus on a mix of things in MMOs and business model is not a core element of it (as GW proves, you can make money without asking for a subscription). And GW/Anet did inspire a lot of stuff in the whole lot of NCsoft's other games.

If your last release was 2+ years ago (GWEN in Aug 2007) and you have to wait for at least another year before GW2 is ready to be released, is it even making money?

The answer for that could have been micro transactions, through GW1, to support themselves until GW2 is ready, BUT just look at the flames in the micro transaction thread and how many people are asking others to boycott their store.

So the question becomes, if GW2 fails, is NCSoft going to continue to support a money losing franchise?

From what I understand in MMO models is if you start out as p2p, you go f2p as a means to widen your audience, but give/limit specific features or run cash shop items. I hardly see anything about these games ever consider the pay route and if they did, it's a means to kill them off. That or they manage to really narrow down their user base as a way to manage servers.

For GW to do p2p, it just wouldn't work, not now, not ever. They can try this with a whole different game and have better luck with it.

I don't think that you can assess the updates' success by looking at the amount of dissatisfaction expressed on Guru. People buying these updates and happy with them are probably happily playing the game without complaining on Guru and there's no way to know how many of these there are. I bet that these updates pay more (if not much more) than what they cost, which is a nice bonus for Anet and NCsoft given the 5-year age of GW1.

Yeah but not enough to make it attractive for NCSOft to fund working on both titles at once and hire 25 more people for the live team while 200 work on GW2. And that sucks man, because it's the reason why we've had no more new playable content since EoTN. And now it's too late for the playerbase anyway, unless it takes another 3 years before GW2 gets released.

Regina posted here on guru that they would barely get out of the costs if they wanted to develop an area like SF.

Sure I want GW2 to be free to play, but not at the cost of my gaming experience. There are already enough cheap games out there. It's much harder to find a quality game that also delivers quantity to keep you busy for years.

Never underestimate the amount of dissatisfaction guru people can build up when they have decided to campaign against a feature, like the micro transactions. Some of them would go all out and complain in every single fansite they know of and recruit even more people to join them in their campaign against ANet's micro transactions.

So if they are successful, ANet's free-to-play business model would fail even more. Therefore, no subscription, no micro transactions, no new human resources to work on GW2 or Live team, implying fewer content updates.

/unsigned

I'd much rather to have Micro-transactions than Subscription-fees, GW1 and GW2.

The difference is obvious
- Micro-transactions - you can pick and choose what you want to buy/use, and simply skip everything else what you are not interested.
- Subscription-fees - you are stuck paying for everything whether you wanted/going to use them or not.

Yes, it already made the money back when EotN came out. Now they're coasting on it.

Just because they aren't making money for these particular years doesn't mean they aren't making money over the long run. It just means that instead of constant flows of small amounts of money, they get sudden bursts of large amounts of money.

And if GW switched to subscription fees, these people (plus many, many more) would do just that, and cause it to fail even faster.

Please, stop shooting your own foot.

You must think that they have made such HUGE billions of dollars from GWEN that they can just coast on it forever and ever. That is not the view that Regina presented to their customers, but of course your assumption would support your point that ANet is ALWAYS filthy rich and every content update from them has to be free.

Because of the fact that they have no new release since Aug 2007 and it would take about another year for GW2 to be released, they need to draw revenue to sustain themselves + hire new development staff to provide us with much needed GW1 content update and work on GW2 at the same time.

If they dont support subscription fees, and customers dont want them to provide micro transaction, and customers want them to provide free content update every 4-6 months? How are they going to achieve that without requesting for more money from NCSoft who has shown that they would rather invest in Aion which is subscription based?

some of us can say we wont pay to play gw2 without even seeing it because we cant afford to weither its a good game or not. i paid to play wow for a while because at the time i could afford it..like 3 or 4 years ago lol. i diddnt bother even trying aion cause i cant afford the 10 pound a month or whatever it is..i know it doesnt sound a lot but the whole point of this thread was something about paying to go see movies i dont even do that. its the reason i play gw and besides gw single player games every now and then that are either given as gifts or i already own.

now if and when it comes out in 2011 or whenever they get their act together and decide to go p2p and im in a better position to pay yes your right i would try it before saying i wont pay. as i said not all of us have mommy and daddys credit cards

Once again, you're listening to a very vocal minority. The vast majority of players will have no problem paying for little expansions. It's not going to destroy GW2. In the same way I could tell you to go to any random videogame forum, you'll see people bashing games like Halo or Final Fantasy to death, to the point where you'd assume nobody likes these games. However, when Reach and FFXIII come out, I still guarantee they sell millions within days.

The choice to drop support of GW1 almost entirely is a little odd. In my opinion they should have continued with another full campaign, instead of released the EOTN expansion, but they decided to focus full efforts onto GW2 so they can do more complex things, which probably also involves releasing mini-expansions, ala the bonus mission pack every few months via microtransactions.

I could just as easily ask you, when sales for Aion start to dry up and people stop playing the game, will NCSoft continue to support that? GW2 using microstransactions means people can choose to purchase content whenever they want. It means a lot more casual fans who only play the game occasionally might come back with some friends and start playing again for another month or two and purcahse a few of these packs. It'll distribute the earnings through-out the games lifespan a lot more eevenly. And at least in my opinion, is a far better way to run a game.

Again, you're basing this completely on assumption. How do you know they'd rather invest in Aion? Because, it was released three months ago, as opposed to a game that's nearly 5 years old?

Obviously, they can survive on it at least until GW2 is released, otherwise we wouldn't be having this discussion, because they would have pulled the plug. Unless, of course, there is more to this than just money, and they're also trying to keep us interested for when GW2 hits? Have you ever considered that?

Who says NCSoft is more willing to invest in Aion? Stop assuming that it is such a huge cash cow. It just started. It'll be at least a year before we know whether or not it is a flop or a hit.

And stop assuming you know how much money Anet has or needs to keep GW running. For all we know, they might already have enough in the bank from sales to keep it going for 5 more years. We have no freaking clue. All we know is, this game succeeded where so many others failed, and that the primary difference between it and those others was it's business model.

Even if you were correct that micro-transactions were going to kill the game (you aren't), that doesn't change the fact that going to subscriptions would kill it even faster, and destroy any hope GW2 has of succeeding.

Yes you have a choice to pay for what you want with Micro Trans, but alot of games with this method of income has a tendency to make the game itself really unbalanced and forces players to buy from shop in order to play properly or even level up to keep up with others.

There are both pros and cons in Subs and Micros but it really comes down to whether or not it is right for the game and target audience.

This topic is an ongoing debate as we're all in different categories of a gamer with different views as to what a satisfying game is.

Because GW1 has been around far longer than Aion and it has always been a trade off decision for them either to invest more money and resources into updates for GW1 or to create a new subscription based game like Aion.

History has shown that NCSoft decided to go with Aion instead of pouring the resources into more frequent GW1 content updates that GW customers have been asking for. Obviously NCSoft must have thought that creating Aion, as a subscription game, is a more worthwhile investment.

As far as I know, games from NCSoft are all subscription based except for GW, so I can conclude that NCSoft games business model are mostly subscription based.

And that is where your ASSUMPTION differs from Regina's statements.

Past history already provided proof that they have decided to create subscription based Aion rather than hiring more staff for GW1 content updates.

NCSoft could have dropped Aion, and provided ANet the extra money to hire more development staff instead for the FREE content update every 4-6 months that you guys are asking for. So why didn't they do that?

And if they are so unlimited wealthy from GWEN sales back in 2007 as you seem to indicate, then why dont they just expand ANet's development staff so that we can all enjoy fresh content update every 4-6 months in GW1, instead of having players leave the game due to the lack of fresh content, and yet have GW2 ready by next year all at the same time? Don't they want to keep us around until GW2 is ready?

Hi everyone! I just joined ^_^

I decided to start by simply just posting in a decent topic. Hope you don't mind the rush in just diving in and posting. So here I go.

ArenaNet developed guild wars, NCSOFT published the game. This is important to remember because I remember ArenaNet claiming they were not working on new content because their own internals prevented them from doing so.

If some of you recall, I'm sure you remember that ArenaNet wanted to make content that could go beyond the level 20 range, but stated that they were in too deep to make the content they wanted as pushing beyond the level 20 system would actually break the game itself.

We shouldn't pick on Korean-Based NCSOFT simply because they published ArenaNet's game. It would be the same as picking on Electronic Arts for Publishing Square-Enix's game in the 90s before they built their Honolulu branch office.

The problem with hiring fresh staff is that no matter how good they are, they will have to undergo training to keep the art and style of guild wars consistent. Such training takes six to twelve months on average. What ArenaNet saw was a system that in the short term was a success but in the long term would eventually crumble into failure, so they stopped making new content and started working on a new game.

I believed this was the right thing to do.

As for Subscription Fees vs Non-Subscription Fees.

I've played many MMOs and for a long time. I can tell you that subscription fees do not matter in the Quality of a game outside of the population itself. In Lineage 2 there were more bots than one could imagine. Everquest had its arguments between EQ1 and EQ2 players. Phantasy Star Online and the game which followed it, Phantasy Star Universe had extremely poor support and they are P2P games...In fact currently in updates they are a full year behind the Japanese. Final Fantasy XI also has its share of problems..Be it P2P or F2P does not change the internals of a game outside of a user paying money to enter a server.

I can quote Risk Your Life, Eve Online, Ragnarok Online and City of Heroes/City of Villains and even Tabula Rasa and Ultima Online...All of those games with their fees had their own internal problems and their quality was good at first because it was something new but over time it just died out.

Seems like these games offer something eye popping for the first three to six months and then they start to die out...Usually one has to wait until the first expansion of a game..

What I loved about Guild Wars was the fact that when Guild Wars Prophecies was released, it was a Full Game from beginning to end. I loved that more than the F2P system. Each time a campaign was released, it was full.

In short you could play through the game without having to buy an expansion to continue the basic story in each campaign. EoTN added its own story altogether and closed some loose ends, but Prophecies, Faction and Nightfall were complete games. I hated having to buy multiple expansions to other games in order to finish one story...its like paying $150 - $300 for a near-neverending story + fees and such a system just didn't work for me...

..So I give ArenaNet credit for being able to play completely through a campaign upon release and hope they continue doing that.

Unlike most fools who part with their money so easily I don't goto the movies and waste $10-$20 watching the crappy movies they make today (Avatar anyone?) I wait until they are .99 cents at my local video store or even smarter method wait until they come on the movie channels of cable and/or direct tv which I already pay for. Then I can copy them in the comfort of my home at no added extra cost.

Paying to play a silly game online is foolish and a waste of money. With $15 a month I can buy many games a year and they will be MINE all MINE and give me YEARS of entertainment as opposed to a few hours a month. I don't have to play them everyday to get my moneys worth either or get value from them as they are there ready to play when I'm ready at no extra charge.

I've never understood the consumer mind that buys a game and then continues to pay $15 a month to continue to play it. lol That is the laugh of a lifetime.

The thing about GW though is you can bet your bottom dollar that if they had had a monthly fee like the others it wouldn't have sold 6 million copies and wouldn't have much of a population of online players either. It just isn't that great for a mmorpg type game. Not enough content, no character or loot evolving or growth either. It's the romper room mmorpg of online gaming at best since there is no monthly fee. It gets the majority of 8 year olds and pre teens of all of them as you can see by the forums and ingame player base attitudes and comments.

Not true. Again, you're focusing on the Korean model for micro-transactions. But there's no reason they couldn't simply add things like mini-expansions to GW2, that add new areas and quests with new weapons and armour to obtain. It doesn't put you at a disadvantage for not buying it, you don't need to buy it right away, but it has worthwhile content, if/when you do want it.

Once again, you're completely failing to realise that Aion has been running for a very short period. You cannot begin to assume that NCSoft have chosen to focus on that game more. While they have done so far, we're comparing a game less than three months old, to a game more than 5 years old. They're obviously going to support the newer game more, just as they did with Tabula Rasa. Will this be the case when GW2 launches? Who knows.

I'm not sure you understand how a business like this works at all. It was Anet's choice to scrap development on the expansions to focus all their efforts into GW2. GW is done now, and again, while even I might question why they decided to cap things with a half hearted expansion rather than a final campaign, this was their choice.

But I also think you're greatly underestimating the appeal of GW2. If they keep releasing new boat loads of new content for the first GW, right up until the release of GW then a lot of people are going to grow tired of it. People aren't just going to lose interest and not care about the sequel, if anything it's going to make them want to play it more.

Look at something like Starcraft, for example. Do you think people don't care about SCII because it's been so long since the first game? What about Diablo III? Your arguments here are very flawed, based on a lot of assumption, ignorance.. and I'm not even sure what you're trying to argue. Is it that you think GW2 is going to be a failure?

If I want to play GW, anytime, I just need Internet connection and a computer.

If there were fees, I would have to pay while I play, and stop paying when I'm going to leave the game for a while.
And in some games that means losing the characters too.

So, no, thanks. I'll keep my pay-once.

And once again you have failed to realize that GW1 has been around far longer than Aion has. Therefore, you have repeatedly failed to understand that when NCSoft decided to create a brand NEW game known as Aion, they could have used the resources for GW1 updates but have chosen not to.

Wrong again. It has always been NCSoft that owns the purse strings, not ANet. ANet is a wholely owned subsidiary of NCSoft if you know what that means.

So you are saying the more content update they provide for GW1 the more people would grow tired of the game? Then they should not provide any update, so people would stick around longer in GW1? Sure....

bhavv is 110% correct on every account. Anet makes plenty of money off the GW franchise. If you look at games who do use the monthly fees, alot of them still have update problems and tipically are spammed by hackers and bots. Mind you that could happen to any popular game, the pay per month games do not have any commentment to an account, so if they are banned their outt 10 bucks, while they made 100 or so from selling the items and gold they farmed. With Guild Wars, they must purchase an account for 40 or more with the same if not a lessor result. Not very productive. For that reason alone I am against the pay per month idea.

They are making a profit, that is not the problem. It takes time to create content, they can't be working on both games at the same time.

I like how you picked only some inferior/dead p2p games to compare with GW.

Either you did it to make your point or because GW is on the same level of quality as those games is beyond me.

All a sub fee would get you would be more mandatory grind in the game (have to keep people playing to pay those subs) and maybe 5 fresh GM's. Woo?

Where are you getting this idea that NCSoft chose to take money away from GW and put it towards Aion? There's no indication of this. If anything, they took money that wasn't being used by anyone and made a new game with it.

Why would you hire more people to update a game that is about to have a sequel come out? A game that is nearing the end of it's lifespan, no less? And before you mention it, no, the addition of more support personnel would not significantly increase the game's longevity. And even if it could, that would not mean it would be worth the cost.

Seriously, all I'm hearing from you is "NCSoft made Aion, a subscription-based game! Clearly, free-to-play games must suck then!".

Have you ever heard the phrase "Don't put all your eggs in one basket"?

By your line of logic you could say "Nintendo made a Zelda game, instead of a Mario game. Clearly, Mario games must suck!".

Or you could say "The army made another tank, instead of a crapload of rifles. Clearly, infantry weaponry sucks!"

Or how about "I bought some pizza, instead of some hamburgers. Clearly, I must not like hamburgers!"

Do you see what I'm getting at? You're making a jump in logic that is, well, not logical. The situation is not that simple, and the connection may not be there. Maybe the projected profits of a new game outweigh the projected profits of more support for an old game. That does not, however, mean that the old game isn't still more profitable. It only means that it's not worth the extra support (or doesn't need it), and that those resources would be better spent in other ways.

Also, please stop double-posting. Do like I do, and open that quote button in another window, copy it, and then paste it in another quote reply.

ArenaNet should put a donate button on the log in page and/or their website, I am sure lots of willing players will donate

First of all Guild Wars is a successful MMORPG/online game with no subscription fees, and do not need us to pay the subscription fees. Even up to a month ago, new players still come on here to ask for advise, or just to say "hi! I am new!"

4+years without a subscription fees and the game is still running with constant updates + holidays events + weekend events + balancing.

It is a successful MMORPG because even when they do not need our subscriptions fee, lots of players still willingly want to throw money at them.

So, the best way is put a donate button on their website and let the proceed go to charity.

It's called product over saturation. In the same way I could ask why should Bethesda have made Fallout 3, when they could have expended those resources on creating Elder Scrolls V? By this same logic you could say Elder Scrolls IV was unsuccessful and they have no faith in a 5th game, so they've decided to focus on the Fallout series instead. After all, they've said there's no plans to even work on a 5th title at this stage. Why don't they at least continue releasing content for Oblivion? It must have been a failure.

Eye of the North was released as the final set of content for GW, so they could concentrate their efforts on GW2. I'm not sure how much clearer you need this to be. Your logic makes no sense and your evidence is non-existant.

And you will get exactly what you payed for; which is 1/10 the experience you would have gotten had you viewed it in full 3D on a movie theater screen!

On topic. I dont care to pay for play. That's why I play WG.
/ NOT Signed.

okay.. think about this: you say 12-15 a month.. you play for 3 months then 3 x 12 = 36, 3 x 15 is 45.. you just bought yourself a complete campaign in those few months. Im not going to pay over and over for a game i should have to pay for once. In a year youve paid 180 bux and bought the game 4 times over.

Another thing about the "free to play"/subscription games versus micro transactions. Most of them cripple the game.. sure you can play the game without ever paying a dime but all you are really is fodder for the paying players cause you are so restricted you never have any hope of making any real progress up the player ladder.

With GW you dont have to worry about the other guy having the upper hand due solely on the fact he can afford that fee the one month you cant. While all the things you can buy with micro transactions are nice to have they are not *required* to win the game as nothing in the GW store can significantly improve your skill as a player (eg getting a makeover isnt going to up your AL, it will just leave a prettier corpse). Anet doesnt punish/cripple you because you didnt buy anything more than the game and they dont withhold "premium" items that might actually allow you to progress. In the end, you still must earn your place on the ladder the old fashioned way.. by working for it.

In GW, all players are on a level playing field. Its not a 2-tiered system.

I buy my games, i dont rent them for exactly that reason. Just my 2 cents.