No monthly fee?

I'm curious, how's GW going to maintain its server without any monthly fee? doesn't GW need to pay Internet bills for its server?

I knew a game named "Legal Crime". It costs US$20(one-time buy, play forever, as they promised). It is a online RTS game. You need to connect to its master server in order to play multi-player. What master server did only connects the players and the game is hosted by the player who created the game table. This means, "Legal Crime" server needs lesser amount of internet bandwith than a MMORPG game server. But still, they were forced to shut down the server, because they were unable to support the server anymore without any monthly fee.

So, I guess, the main thing I need to know is, how long is GW going to survive without monthly fee?

If it's for a very-very-very long time, i'd be gladly to buy the game.

From reports they will gain money from the expansion packs that are going to come out every 6-8 months. From what they are saying the expansion packs are not going to be obligatory. They say you will still be able to play and be competitive even if you don't buy the expansion packs.

The revenue model is fairly simple, really: every 6-9 months, they release a supplement with significant new content, costing about as much as the original game.

Craving novelty, we all buy it.

Fifty USD per six months comes out to the same as a monthly fee of 8.33 USD out-of-pocket.

It's a pretty clever idea, actually. The only way I can think to improve on it is if they'd take your credit card info in-game to pay for the supplements.

—Siran Dunmorgan

Awesome IMHO. These developers will get my money, just as long as the lag doesn't become bad

Hmm... say there's a new player who wants to play GW after 2 years of running. 2 years = 4 expansion packs. This new player have to buy all those 4 expansion packs in order to play the game? what if it've been 5 years? 10 expansion packs? dang!

They will most likely allow you to buy a "battle chest" type expansion @ one point, that will get you all the content up to now.

also as far as i know they only have 1 server or a few linked together. they just use instances and districts to keep the load off of them allowing them to do this. games like WoW that have 30+ servers take a lot of money to keep them up and running

besides, a server which hosts a game of many versions, is a very heavy task.

I also think the way the game is implemented helps cut down on server costs / traffic. When doing missions / quests you run the game on your computer on via a network between your party members with communication to the main server. The nitty gritty isn't handled by the remote server though.

My two cents.

YL

I'm actually disappointed that there isn't even an option to pay monthly fees. Maybe they could give access to special areas, and/or a larger storage bank, etc for "premium" members. I'm certainly willing to pay a monthly fee in order to ensure the long term survival of this game.

i wouldn't agree as much, they stream the additional content and update your client. The main difference between your current version and the updated version will be your account being able to access new content and new items.

Fortunately you don't have to buy them as items will be more updated art than anything else. The storyline based part will be important for those who are strictly pve, however it may be just as equally important for your pvp player too. If you are like me and don't feel like rolling hellah alts you could effictively get all the skills for all the classes by doing an expansion or two and then utilize them on your pvp toon. The only time you would need to roll an alt to get a specific skill is if its in a primary line and you want it for a pvp only toon.

To put it simply, No. If Guild Wars is still running 10 years from now and you want tp play it, you can go pick up the original version and still be able to play. The Expansions are an [officailly] optional, and you don't need them in order to play....

That's the real question, eh? What happens when something else comes along, when the developer moves on to something else and the game/expansions are no longer sold in stores? There is no residual monthly revenue to keep the servers alive at that point, and the people who want to continue to play will not longer be able to when they shut the servers down (unless the load is distributed amongst the clients partipating in an instance).

Does that really matter to us? I don't think so. When Guild Wars 2 or The Next Big Thing(TM) comes along, we'll move games, just as we moved from our existing game to Guild Wars. And we'll have had a good run of it!

What are you talking about. This game will last forever

Well, remember... these are the guys that run/ran battlenet (I think?) and battlenet has been running forEVER and I doubt starcraft/diablo2 sales have been that hot lately

True the bandwidth demand here might be more than battlenet, but then again, they do get money twice a year from expansions...

So hopefully, it'll work out and we have this game for as long as we want.

You got it! I'll be here!

You could always donate money to them.

I would but I'd rather see them take some from everybody else too. Somehow I think it would go farther than my pocketbook alone.

Don't you get it?? There will be no Guild Wars II!

The only reason ArenaNet was founded was to produce the game we now call Guild Wars: they have no plans to make any other games ever because everything they want to do they can do with this game.

The client uses a two-pass update: the first thing it does is check to see if there's a new version of the client loader available. If there is, it downloads it, and re-starts itself as the new version. The new version of the loader then checks to see if there's a new version of the engine, and if there is, downloads and starts it. Once the engine is loaded, it checks to see if there's new content; if there is... well... you hopefully get the idea.

The point is that ArenaNet will never have to release a new version of the client. I'm still running the same client program in the same directory I downloaded for E3 last year; the CD from release has never been near my computer.

All the new content comes down as soon as it's available on the live server; even with the expansion packs, all you're paying for is access to the new content: the new content itself will already be on your system by the time you've paid for it.

If they want to update the graphics engine and models... well... they can do so. Very nearly without anyone noticing.

All we need to do is pay for the new content, and ArenaNet stays in business. If, three years down the road, they want to turn Guild Wars into a space adventure game (think "Warhammer 40,000"), well, then the new content streams down, and I pick the option to create a "space" character.

So... moving on to the Next Big Thing™? Guild Wars will be the next big thing for as long as ArenaNet chooses to make it.

—Siran Dunmorgan

That was just awesomely encouraging. The one MMORPG I really liked before was text based and I stuck with it for 6 years. After all these failed graphical-MMORPG's there may finally be something to take its place.