Pay to Play? Fact or Fiction?

A friend of mine just told me tonight that arenanet was going to start charging $15 to $18. a month to play when the next big patch comes out in order for you to play online and advance your characters levels...Is this true?
I for one, do not feel compelled to pay to play a game that I spent $80.00 to purchase in addition to the monthly internet fees I'm already having to pay to play online, (but that's just me). I've played Diablo and all of the expansions for the last 9 years and I love the game / Blizzard games, but part of the attraction is the fact that battlenet is free with Diablo and D2. I love Guild Wars, but if this is indeed true it's back to D2 for me!

One single word. No.

Well if they do they will go against all their advertising. Take a look at your box, it says FREE ONLINE PLAY in big writing on the side and inside. If ANet do start charging monthly fees it will go against all their advertising and effectively end a lot of their current user base.

I suspect your friend was messing with you.

Heh, he said someone working at Frys Electronics in Wa. told him that and was very serious.

Not gonna happen. A.net specifically created this game with no fees. The games free and will remain that way. The answer was "never" before so I doubt its changed.

if they start charging the people will leave and go to a competetor like WoW and everquest because those people are acustomed to paying. if anet starts charging they are commiting suicide so in a sense NO they will not be charging. its the same guys that brought you D2 and that's been free for almost 8 years. their mentality about paying for games isn't going to change. why would they sabatoge their ONLY sales pitch. yes the game is great but there are other's that are near as good and didn't lie to them about paying.

That and they would have a bunch of lawsuits. Mostly people that "JUST" bought the game and say they went against advertising, which is a pretty big wad of cash in courts if one were to win. So no way in hell.

So i would agree with psycore, your friend is playing you like a drum-happy percussionist in a marching band.

no offense but people from Fry's Electronics don't know jack about any games, all they know is to sell you products that you want. Secondly, maybe your friend didn't listen correctly and it could be for a different games not Guild Wars. Just my two cents

"false advertising" nuff said

Eh, its probably just one of the many sales tactics salesmen use. Such as the "Don't look at that game, look at this one becuase its more expensive and a company paid us to point at it more." tactic. :P Either that or he really didnt know jack about the game and confused it with another, as sir skulkcrasher said.

Point being that arena.net has been doing free online games(or for all i know) since d2.... I seriously doubt they would be making that choice. It would ruin them, in many ways.

If ArenaNet gonna charged. Then I wont play the game anymore. I am not the kind that will pay for a game monthly. Its just too expensive. And I am sure that arenanet will be sued. Because they said in their FAQ that they wont charged anything except we need to buy the new expansion, when they released it and we can still play the older original one if we didn't buy the new expansion.


So we are all gonna get rich people!

Thank you all for your replies...I feel much better now!

I feel sorry but you for playing D2 for 9 years and your willingness to go back to it

Never believe ANYTHING you read or hear from people unless it comes from the soruce, namely A.net.

Anet can't charge unless they are insane, just go read the devs logs of Dungeons & Dragons Online www.ddo.com and tell me if anything sounds familiar in terms of game mechanics. Now if we take DnD with all its PvE focus and take GW with a monthly fee..guess who's gonna loose...and i'm not even talking about GW going up against the likes of WoW as well [DDO i use because it seems to be using the same instance and quest-xp system as GW ....]

NO. Complete fiction. Arenanet was built on the premise of a free to play system, and it owes too much of its overwhelming success to that fact. otherwise we would all be playing Worlds of Warcraft. Its just not that different from EQ and WoW without that gimmick. and it would start losing again to the big boys with the baseball bat. Trust me the people that would be most happy if this was true would be the Blizzard people. cause it has been effecting their people buying subscriptions... Monthly subscriptions are down nearly 30% from before the launch of guildwars... So Arenanet is in fact having an effect with their strategy... And it is still flying off the shelves in most places around the world...

I tend to agree with the fact to take what people at gaming stores tell you with a grain of salt, until they prove themselves. For example, I have quite the repoire with a couple guys at my local GameStop. They've always told me factual information. Even when their computer gets updated with "release dates" they always tell me something like, "usually our computer dates are wrong until an official announcement is made from the publisher".

So, yeah, I doubt what he said has any basis in fact. >_>

But, truth be told, if they did start charging for Guild Wars, I'd pay to play it. I'm so used to it now. I wanted to play GW before I found out that it was going to be free to play. If you enjoy a game enough, you'll pay for it. Other companies like Square-Enix and Blizzard have absolutely no problem with a large player base and they charge for their games.

In fact, if ANet did charge for GW (not saying they will, mind you, just IF), you can bet there would be a lot of improvements and changes, a lot more than there are now, and they would possibly be inclined to include stuff in free updates that they would normaly put in an expansion and make you pay for. Not to knock GW or anything, 'cause I love the game, but you get what you pay for, and there are distinct, noticable differences in the quality of "free" games like GW compared to games like Final Fantasy XI which you pay monthly for.