Why not make Guild Wars and Fractions play at home off line

because "fractions" is not a game

Let's review why people think it's a bad idea...
1. It's an mmOrpg for "Online"
2. Unsecure because of hackers
3. Anet would have to make it from scratch

Well the point of an offline game is to continue Guild Wars when Guild Wars comes to an end (maybe in the late late future when many other MMO's are created). So an offline game for the final campaign would be a nice idea.

So it's an mmO, but they'd be the first to set a record for an mmO to make an offline game =). Of course it would unsecure if both offline and online play coexisted, which is why they should wait until the last last campaign to do it. Making a game from scratch would be well worth the last campaign as an offline because maybe by then, there would be very few left playing the game so this may help their last profitable attempt by bringing everyone back to buy it.

Even if making the offline campaign will make it moddable, that might be even better because one can customize it and have even more fun. Since the Heros system got introduced, many people have been doing missions/quests with them than humans which is a movement towards a single-player game.

I just realized that I'm buying campaigns that only last as long as a server hosts it. Say (for example) 40 years from now, I have this collection of Guild Wars campaigns but I will no longer be able to play them because Guild Wars servers have ceased. Sure, it was fun while it lasted, but why make it limited when you can continue playing Guild Wars forever with an offline game (addicts will be able to play it when they're old, your children can enjoy it, or even their children).

This is kinda like candy, you got your money's worth but once it's gone, it's gone. Why not make an offline game where your money can last?

At the moment it's not viable because of all the reasons above.
But when the Guild Wars franchise begins to wind down it would be a good idea if ANet released one final version of the game that allowed you to play offline - cheap enough for people to easily buy it and enough to cover costs.

It's not that much of a push - there's already one MMORPG (i forget the name) that allows you to play your first 20 levels of the game OFFLINE.

My final point is that World of Warcraft has had an unofficial emulator released for it (several actually). If ANet was to do that then they'd be able to make it far better than the buggy versions of WoWEmu, WoWWoW etc. That'd allow people to continue to play GW after it is no longer online.

If they do though, it should be open source so people can make mods etc.

Thre is no 'client side' data generators, no drop lists, no creature IA, no damage calculation... adding all those things client side, plus removing online players... not for this game.

Once GW finishes giving support, maybe then, they would 'free' the game and make offline versions and such (or maybe third party ones).

Lets assume they made the entire game offline playable because GWs2 had been out for a year and numbers in GW1 had fallen to a level that didnt justify keeping the servers up.

If they made GW1 offline playable it would require alot of work.

Repackaging the entire game with all 3 campaigns, the 4th expansion, all updates and map content = countless discs and possibly expensive.

They would have to re-engineer the game so it didnt use instances and regions, and it was all one large instance.
They would have to add dozens of AI characters into towns and cities to simulate them being busy, (Imagine LA with just you and some AI running around inside it alone).
The market and trading system would have to be changed to use set prices.
Drop rates would need to be increased, since there was no market to trade them on.

Anet would need to justify why its spending money on re-packaging and re-releasing a 4-5 year old game with dated graphics and AI.

The only people who would buy it, would be older players who were there from the start. New, fresh, younger players are going to go straight for GWs2 with its updated graphics and AI.

How many younger players would go out to the shops and choose the dated editions of Command & Conquer over the New updated 3D ones?

You might get the odd younger player thinking they want to try out the older version, but you wont have enough of them to make enough profit to justify the investment.

And alot of older players will simply move onto GW2 and forget their old characters.

I would personally love the idea of them making GW1 offline, when they close the servers and giving us our characters. But investment wise, I dont see it happening unless they could make a profit from it.

Perhaps make it an exclusive online offer, so they only produce copies for those who want them.

I would have to agree. It may not be done unless it was profitable. However, if it could be done, I will sign for it.

it would take just hours for someone to crack the data file and how it is read by the server.....

the problem wouldnt be trading from one version to the other or moving items

it would be as easy as cracking the data file on a white item, seeing how the data file reads and writes to it from the server and editing it....

2 hours after standalone release , GW online would be ruined forever...

lol, I would also like to play that too
/Not signed for the idea anyway

I would think that after GW2 comes out for a while, or even right at release, the Hero Cap would be removed to the point where it will be possible to have 1 PC and 7NPCs. The game would remain online.

This is just so people can utilize the Hall of Monumnets from GW;EN. Wouldn't want to forget that GW1 impacts GW2...

/unsigned

to many hacks. unless like Diablo 2 you have online char and offline ones. even then there would be hacks.

~the rat~

/notsigned

It's an online RPG and you can play by yourself with heroes and henchman, what's the big deal?

This problem will hopefully soon be solved when GW2 comes out. Absolutely no offline crap in that game.

ANet isn't going to recode the whole game so it can be played off-line. It won't happen. There's absolutely no incentive to do it.

Folks, the future of gaming is online play, or at the very least "connected" games that can be dynamically updated or expanded.

And even if I secretly liked the OP's "suggestion", I'd still be publicly against his idea because I find the use of the word "Fractions" very annoying.

Screw you ppl.I want to play it off line so i wont have to see you in the game i like.
/signed
When Anet decides to shut the servers down i want them to make it off line so i can play it like D2 with my freinds if i want to or make private server.
For stupid i repeat again.I want to play offline AFTER the servers will go down.
Yes i may hack it off line,cheat and all that but i dont see how it is anyones concern.

/not signed

IF Anet were to plan to turn of the GW servers at some point in the distant future, then I might support this idea. Until then, no.

When they shut down... How long will that take?

Sorry, but you don't know a single thing about MMOG architecture. They don't have to do that at all, either from financial stand point or technological stand point, I don't want to take too much time to explain, but check Ishmaeel's post, it might enlighten you a little.

Now back to the topic, I really hope Anet could make GW1 open source by the time(Like FreeSpace2), so that we can make a server side emulator that emulates the server activity and database interaction(although it is still doable atm, just a lot harder.).

So you never buy FPS, or stratergy games that you place once and then maybe never play again?

If you do, then your above statement is hypercritical.

It means you're quite happy to waste £20-£40 on an FPS game that you play once and then never play again. So why is that any different to paying £40+ to buy GWs, playing it for 2-4 years and then letting it gather dust on your shelf?

Its a computer game!!!!

GWs has done astoundingly well to have lasted 2 years. If it lasts until 2008-9 then it will be amazing. Most games get about 12 months at most, until the next/better one comes along and its 15 minutes of fame are up.

Now be honest right.....

If they did make GW playerable offline.

The minute that a new, better, flashier, nicer-looking, RPG came along (which it would, because GW1 would would be very old graphicaly by that time)......

....you would dump GWs in a second.

You would uninstall it, and stick it on your shelf to gather dust. All to make way for this better, nice looking game.

Computer game players are very fickel people. They want the latest games and if GW1 was made offline, it wouldnt last more then a month before people lost interest.

At the minute, people play GW1 because it has a huge chunk of the MMO market because there are very few, decent ones out there other then GWs and WoW.

Its a limited market.

If GWs1 was made into an RPG offline game, it would be competing with hundreds of similar games. It wouldnt survive and again Anet would have to justify releasing a dated game.

I think the important thing to remember is that the OP referred to a game called "Fractions" and he did so more than once without a flinch or an apology.

Yet, here we are playing a long. Let's end the madness!

By the way, you think I can get Bethesda Software to make Elder Scrolls 3 into a MMORPG? I didn't want to move on to Oblivion when it came out.

Thread necromancy FTL

Why god, WHYY?

It's named Factions not fRactions

ff-aahck-schionss

GuildWars: FACTIONS
And to the topic: Not signed, GW is a online game and we best keep it that way.