Guild Wars Hits 2,000,000!

Yes, I am well aware of the fact you need to "buy" WoW. But WoW doesn't come out with a new retail box release every six months either.

It just means that WoW has a greater initial cost. It still doesn't change the fact that each GW "chapter" is nothing more than a six month subscription instead of a monthly one. The only difference is GW is voluntary - yet the hardcore GW players will buy every chapter. If you bought chapter 1 and chapter 2 - chances are you're gonna buy chapter 3 - or quit entirely.

Second, I never said ANet is a charity. I'm simply pointing out that ANet is providing multiple money streams for their franchise, you can't compare GW and WoW without considering EVERY single method ANet is using to get money to change hands. People seem to think that GW is a real bargain to WoW - when the total cost of ownership isn't nearly disparate as people think, especially over time.

GW is cheaper, obviously. But that doesn't mean it's inexpensive.

Aside from overly exaggerated comparisons, that right there is what's wrong with too many things (including games). Sure, make money, nothing wrong with that but to just just dismiss and deflect claims of milking a franchise on that basis is wrong.

Some examples: the entire EA Sports line of games, more or less milking the genres for every penny they can extract. Unreal Tournament, another example of what used to be a great game gone down the "let's repackage it with fancy graphics and sell it" path. Hell, most modern games...

There's being a business, and there's taking the cake. Would you use the same logic for a Government that's taxing you up the wazoo? I'm sure you wouldn't, so it's perfectly reasonable especially in this day and age of games being a multibillion dollar industry (as opposed to how many early games were made) to post comments and thoughts as above.

But you don't have to buy every chapter, as you yourself stated in your previous post.

Sorry, but I still disagree. Many people here have played Prophecies for much more than 6 months, and will continue to play it, along with Factions. Some single-player games that cost $50 give you only 6-8 hours of gameplay. If you think $50 every 6 months to a year is too high a cost to play an online game as much as you like, you need a reality check.

So far, it's been much cheaper. We'll have to see if that holds in the future.

And nobody is saying it is. But so far, it's been cheaper than others.

That's not the situation here. I'd protest against unfair taxes or fees that I *have* to pay, but that has nothing to do with GW. You don't have to pay a dime if you don't want to. Nothing will happen to you if you don't. If you think you're being milked, you just have to stop buying. Remember, we're talking about a game, here. Looks like I'm not the only one who can make an overly exaggerated comparison.