How do they manage no monthly fees?

I've played BWE events, E3 bla bla. . .and the game just doesn't lag for me. And it's not a released game. And there is no monthly fee.

How do they do this? I already know their expansion pack model, but that is negligible (most MMORPGs have expansion packs + $ a month). I am considering WoW, but their servers are dealing with all manner of latency problems (among other things), and it seems they really need every dollar they get from their monthly fees to pay for their servers (been brainwashing myself). + I am sure there will be at least WoW: Lord of Destruction. Speculate. . .

Puhh thats easy their simply the best And definently know the whole set up i mean cmon they made diablo!!

The problem you're having is in what you're comparing GW to. GW is not an MMORPG like WoW. It's an MMORPG (if you can call it that) like Diablo II Realms. And they do it the same way. By not having a persistent world like MMORPGs have, and without having anything more than small groups playing together, they don't incur the kind of server resource drain that MMORPGs have to deal with. Their sytem is, in their own words, essentially "BattleNet 2.0", and working essentially the same way, it doesn't have a significantly higher resource usage. BattleNet ran numerous games for a decade without needing monthly fees, no reason why ArenaNet would need them.

Ok uhm i read that twice, while i read it a third time could you please give it to me in stupid people talk?

It's scary how brainwashed people are by monthly fees. When a game doesn't charge them, they think it's some scam or whatever, when the real scam is courtesy of those who openly charge you money every month to play a game you paid for already. I would never pay a monthly fee, I refuse to accept such a thing.

FF11 is evil. xD

Things like WoW (massive, persistant world MMORPGs) require a lot of server power to run.

Things like Diablo II Realms (non-persistent, small-group, instanced RPGs) require a lot less server power to run.

GW is a thing like Diablo II Realms, not a thing like WoW.

Therefore, GW is less prone to lag and server problems than WoW, and does not require significantly more money to run from month to month than Diablo II Realms.

Thus, there's no reason to wonder, "How do they do it with no monthly fees when WoW can't do it with monthly fees?" They do it the same way BattleNet has been doing it for a decade...

OoOoO okiez

It's all based upon their new network architecture. I don't understand how it all works, but they claim that it is significantly cheaper to run than a normal mmorpg server is. It's partly done by streaming technology, also by having instanced areas instead of massive persistent areas.

As others have said, it's essentially an even more streamlined version of battle.net.

Not everyone is on the same server at the same time. By limiting PvE to 8 person groups they limit the bandwith needed for those players. Limiting PvP to 24 limits again the bandwith because they do not introduce as many monsters or none at all.

Persistent=99 people in one group at the same time
instanced=2,4,6,8,24 people in one group at the same time

They are just good.

Actually, persistence is an independent issue from massiveness (how many people you have in the same game at the same time).

Persistent = When I walk into an area and flip a switch, it's in the position I left it in when you come by five minutes later. If I'm in an explorable area and drop an item, you can come pick it up later (limited by how often they "scavange" loose items, not by the fact that you're in a different instance). If I run through an area and kill all the monsters, when you come by, there are no monsters save those that may have spawned or wandered by since I left. The server maintains the state of the world independently of who is or isn't playing in it at the moment, and changes they make to it affect other people. If GW had a persistent world, you wouldn't need to find vine seeds in the Wilds to make bridges, the bridges would still be there from the last group that went through. That's persistence. Persistent worlds require server resources to maintain, in order to keep track of the state of the world. Since GW doesn't have one, it doesn't have to worry about it.

I was saying that the 99= in town.

They are maintaining that. All the warp points/districts. 99 people then another district opens up.

Hooray for no fees!

EVAR!!!

Hmm, is there someone here whose many reasons they play this game includes no monthly fees?

[raises hand frantically]

/pickme

It's not as much a reason why I play the game as a reason why I didn't not consider it in the first place.

I agree with Nash completely about the monthly fees. I absolutely refuse to conform to some Pay-To-Play pricing model. I think it's ridiculous and I don't feel that I'm missing out on much. I'll admit, if Guild Wars were a Monthly Fee charging game, I wouldn't be here right now.

I also agree how sad it is that people simply can't wrap their minds around a free online service. As soon as I heard that it wasn't a Monthly Payment thing, I immediatly expected the production value to be sub-par and the visual quality to be lacking. Both of my fears were quelled in the E3 event and utterly destroyed in World Preview Event.

I don't pretend to know how their servers worked but I think it just comes down to effecient net-code and server architecture... not that I can say anything about understanding any of it.

It also really amazes me how many people are quick to label this an MMO. It's ridiculous. I think on the official site it states that the game is NOT Massively Multiplayer, in a persistant world sense of the word. Yet, everywhere you go, it's either being bashed for "Not being a 'true' MMO" or some other such nonsense. I find it both disheartening and mind-boggling.

Personally, I think this MMO term is being thrown around too liberally. It's like Reality TV... I think that's the best parallel I can draw. "MMO"'s are taking over PC Gaming, much like Reality TV is taking over... well, TV. Is this a problem? I'm not sure. I think we're seeing an over-saturation of the market right now, however.

Big Franchises are going to Butt Heads and I can't predict the fallout. Everquest 2, World of Warcraft, Matrix Online, Middle-Earth Online, Star Wars Galaxies... countless others... all wanting a peice of the pie. Let me tell you, the PC Market isn't THAT big of a pie. I say that with sadness in my heart, as I prefer PC Gaming... but it's true, the Market isn't really that big, when compared to our console friends.

I'm not sure how I got onto this topic but whatever, :P.

Yes, every bit of what everyone said is true, I considered playing a few other MMO's like WoW and SWG and UO, but it all came down to prices, and when I pay 50-60 dollars for a game, I intend to own that game, I don't rent it, I own it. Where in all MMO's , you more or less rent the game, you pay for it every month even though you've already paid for it. I feel like I'm getting robbed of money, I refuse to pay that...And like Shrapnel said, if GW was a monthly fee based game, I definatly wouldn't be playing this. This game has so much more to offer it's players for such a small amount of money, people argue with me that play WoW that the game will lag immensley once it's released because it is only in beta right now, but that's because their assuming it's an MMO like WoW...Which really, their making themselves look ignorant, either that, they refuse to accept a really good game that doesn't have a rediculas fee attached.

...Conformists... Forget em.

Besides the great answers above...

You definatly don't need 10 bucks a month + 50 dollars for the game from hundreds of thousands of players to run a server. WoW is swimming in cash they don't deserve.

I agree with Magnet I would Never pay $50-60 for a game and then pay $10-15 a month to play it. So if I get what you are saying is that GW only has small amount of people playing at one place at the same time. After they leave It resets. Now a few questions: What hapens to the stuf I drop or don't pick up when the game area resets? If you can only have a small number of players at once what happens in the towns is there a set number of Dist. So if Dist 1 has 99 players and I am i Dist 3 I cant go to Dist 1? Then how do I talk to people in Dist 1 Is GW that good or are all the other MMO games just ripping off everbody.

Ren

i dont know if 99 people is the set # on any such district, but i think it works like this, if you enter ascalon city, the game selectrs the best district for you, wit hthe least amount of people and the least amount of lag. then if you prefer, you can switch districts to another district, but the lag may be substantially different from the district you were just in. as for what happens to the stuff that you drop or dont pick up i na certain area when you leave, it gts deleted by the server. remember that the area you enter is made solely for you and your group only. so once you leave that particular area whatever was there, will not be there anymore. as to your question of taling to players in other districts, theres the whisper system if you know there names, and yes GW is that good, and yes, everyone else is just ripping us off and have been for years, im glad ANET has finally stood up for the little guy's. theyre real gamers at heart and know its a bunch of BS to charge for something you've already bought, plus the fact that they dont charge a fee will probbably drag a few everquesters away, same goes for every other MMORPG out there. it was said in an earlier post i think, but think of it this way, if 250,00 people buy GW at 49.99 each, ANet has just secured its finacial future for years to come, then come the expansions/chapters which will be comparable to a new game, not just a regular expansion, now say only 150,000 people buy this at 49.99 thats still an incredible amount of money for a game that charges no fee's.

It is a good idea. Do you think this will hurt the other MMO's and mabe make them change thee ways. Or maby other games will copy style. Still I like GW too much to play in others if they do.

Ren

if it was a mission that you successfuly completed and there were items lying around it gives them to you automatically (a reward inventory comes up and you can hit "accept all" or wait a moment if you need to clean out your inventory).

as for dis, you can use "whisper" which is like a PM or you can switch (it takes a hell of a lot to fill up but dis 1, LA did at the last hour of march beta.)

Most of the people here have probably read this, but for the original poster and any others who haven't, there's a great article on IGN in which Jeff Strain gets into all the nuts and bolts of the technology behind Guild Wars. Very detailed and pretty fascinating stuff. A good read for anyone (and they are out there) who think that ArenaNet doesn't know what they're doing.

You me and many others I cannot stand P2P. Why would you pay for something when you Pay for the Game & all the services to run it already? Keep in mind how much Blizzard made.

This revolves around the fact that EQO was the first to charge in its class. Diablo and the lot were not of this class they were more forced to work as a team or directly against each other. (PvP or PK's)

This is a really intresting subject and many are trying to figure it out. Well here's the Laymans idea: Did you ever noticed that when someone starts a mission if they drop the mission still runs? Hee hee it's a brilliant idea that I don't know made but it's the best... How do you take pressure of the server? By creating other servers. So when we generate our own instances we become our own servers. Now the only thing the Guild Wars servers have to do is act as an anchor to each of the users. You see this a lot in LAN games.

Yeah, the Reality-TV hit it right on the nose. I support this completely. I do feel that the one single word is Multiplayer. When people try and label Guild Wars the problems becomes one of many keeping it simple will make it funner.

Your right the market will get ugly specially with Guild Wars coming out. With NO Fees it's going to kill business. With the PC market I wish I could agree on this, but I cannot. I have watched the most lame PC users become avid PC users. Also, I have watched every kid I know start with a console systems (Atari, NES, Sega, etc.) and become avid PC users. Now If you look at the way games are evolving the avrage console games graphics and processing is not keeping up. In a few years they'll become computers opss that would be the PS2 it can use Linux... Hmm... So much for that idea. Well look at it this way if it weren't for MSoft the average PC could be set up for $500 custom, but windows in itself is as expensive as the computer. Well you just never know what will happen....



The same reason I did. We like Guild Wars and want its future bright!

I have to disagree with this. The Xbox fixes all your gripes. It runs Linux uses usb and %50+ of the games are online. $50/yr for xbox live and they offer voip with every online game. It is a console computer for less than $150 + $50 for the online portion.

Some people can't take a hint.

Closed.

A final note. Companies like Blizzard and ArenaNet, are in the end, not charitable organizations but companies out to make money. Further to note is that Blizzard is owned by Vivendi [a rather large corporation] and ArenaNet is being published by NCSoft [a publisher wields quite a bit of sway, and NCSoft is also a corporation in the end]

If Blizzard wants to charge monthly for WoW or ArenaNet does not want to charge monthly for Guild Wars, that is their perogative. As it stands, the monthly model is profitable and the ArenaNet model is right now unknown in terms of profit.

As a consumer you still have choice. If you want to pay Blizzard, go ahead. If you don't want to, go ahead. As it stands though, Guild Wars will not have monthly fees.