Guild Wars Server
Ard Wen
I really like the fact that this game doesn't have a monthly fee, and really turned me onto online gaming. I know this is not the case for others. What makes this game different so as not to charge monthly fees? Why do to others charge a fee? What do you think the future holds in store for online gaming and monthly fees. Thats the only reason I don't play WoW.
D.E.V.i.A.N.C.E
If its all client based; like Guild Wars can be(if you dont have the install disks)
game makers may have a monthly free; for all that bandwith people use up.
alot of people dont like games with STEAM... personally i really dont know what it is exactly; but a google search could tell me.
what I like about guild wars the most is NO CD; whoo no more CD check lag's
like Diablo 2 (spin up... spin down; make a new game; exit; spin up.... waiting..... spin down make a new game)
game makers may have a monthly free; for all that bandwith people use up.
alot of people dont like games with STEAM... personally i really dont know what it is exactly; but a google search could tell me.
what I like about guild wars the most is NO CD; whoo no more CD check lag's
like Diablo 2 (spin up... spin down; make a new game; exit; spin up.... waiting..... spin down make a new game)
RTSFirebat
Steam is a good system, streaming updates are use in this game all the time, a lot of people don't take note... you know that little yellow lighting bolt you see on the top right corner... that's a incoming update.
Major changes are made via patches...
STEAM has a bad rep due to it being very buggy in the early days and having poor bandwidth management. Making patching really annoying for some people.
Me... I used it for Half Life 2 and it worked wonders... never had any problems with Steam so I feel it works great, if a little slow sometimes, but bandwidth is limited.
If it wasn't for the Guild information, character storage and the towns the game could be full client based... but that is not the case.
Now others like World of Warcraft cost money since they are massive worlds with loads of people running about contantly, so bandwidth costs more money.
Major changes are made via patches...
STEAM has a bad rep due to it being very buggy in the early days and having poor bandwidth management. Making patching really annoying for some people.
Me... I used it for Half Life 2 and it worked wonders... never had any problems with Steam so I feel it works great, if a little slow sometimes, but bandwidth is limited.
If it wasn't for the Guild information, character storage and the towns the game could be full client based... but that is not the case.
Now others like World of Warcraft cost money since they are massive worlds with loads of people running about contantly, so bandwidth costs more money.
Pevil Lihatuh
generally the pay to play ones have a bigger community than GW. The thing is, pay to play makes you play more often so you don't feel like you're wasting money. This means more players online more often, meaning they need to run more servers and have higher bandwidth. This is all expensive. They also tend to release fewer expansions than GW is hoping to do, because they don't need the money from it to be honest.
GW can get away with it because as you're not constantly paying, you won't constantly play, so their server loads will be less, plus IF they can bring out 2 expansion packs a year like they originally planned, there will be a lot of revenue from those to pay for the servers.
And they have lots of other pay to play games which will supplement it of course
Really its just a slightly more involved version of battle.net, Sacreds multiplayer, Counterstrike online... all these you don't have to pay for, and all these aren't constantly used by billions of players. Difference with those ones are they're singleplayer games as well, so if the company gets fed up they can take the servers down. GW can't until GW dies.
GW can get away with it because as you're not constantly paying, you won't constantly play, so their server loads will be less, plus IF they can bring out 2 expansion packs a year like they originally planned, there will be a lot of revenue from those to pay for the servers.
And they have lots of other pay to play games which will supplement it of course
Really its just a slightly more involved version of battle.net, Sacreds multiplayer, Counterstrike online... all these you don't have to pay for, and all these aren't constantly used by billions of players. Difference with those ones are they're singleplayer games as well, so if the company gets fed up they can take the servers down. GW can't until GW dies.
EternalTempest
About Steam...
If you cheat or somehow you are flagged for violation (true or not true) you lose access to ALL your games. You have to hit the internet at least once to register steam and each time for any new games if there meant for offline or online play.
If you have an open connection it will try to communicate all your hardware specs, driver files etc including hard disk space.
Issue I had, I bought HL2 Plat in stores. Spend a long time installing the game from the dvd. Then spent 2+ hours for it to "verify / unlock" all my install files and I was required to have the dvd drive to play the game where someone who bought it via online could play w/o a disc. (this was latter corrected, I can play last time I fired it up w/o having the disc).
I have no problem for games that are online play / online only but I collect games (all the way back from dos).
When it came out, not sure if it got fixed. The back up & restore (so I can back up the most current updated game versions) was busted and had to redownload it from scratch.. not doing the dvd install anymore, web is quicker.
Any offline game that I buy I want to be able to play 5, 10 years from now and if value kicks the bucket I have to hack / warez the game I own if the steam system is no longer functioning.
opps.. sorry rant off
- It does seem to work correctly know so the only valid point left is the long term keeping the game if steam goes away.
If you cheat or somehow you are flagged for violation (true or not true) you lose access to ALL your games. You have to hit the internet at least once to register steam and each time for any new games if there meant for offline or online play.
If you have an open connection it will try to communicate all your hardware specs, driver files etc including hard disk space.
Issue I had, I bought HL2 Plat in stores. Spend a long time installing the game from the dvd. Then spent 2+ hours for it to "verify / unlock" all my install files and I was required to have the dvd drive to play the game where someone who bought it via online could play w/o a disc. (this was latter corrected, I can play last time I fired it up w/o having the disc).
I have no problem for games that are online play / online only but I collect games (all the way back from dos).
When it came out, not sure if it got fixed. The back up & restore (so I can back up the most current updated game versions) was busted and had to redownload it from scratch.. not doing the dvd install anymore, web is quicker.
Any offline game that I buy I want to be able to play 5, 10 years from now and if value kicks the bucket I have to hack / warez the game I own if the steam system is no longer functioning.
opps.. sorry rant off
- It does seem to work correctly know so the only valid point left is the long term keeping the game if steam goes away.
Hanuman li Tosh
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Originally Posted by RTSFirebat
Steam is a good system, streaming updates are use in this game all the time, a lot of people don't take note... you know that little yellow lighting bolt you see on the top right corner... that's a incoming update.
Major changes are made via patches... STEAM has a bad rep due to it being very buggy in the early days and having poor bandwidth management. Making patching really annoying for some people. Me... I used it for Half Life 2 and it worked wonders... never had any problems with Steam so I feel it works great, if a little slow sometimes, but bandwidth is limited. If it wasn't for the Guild information, character storage and the towns the game could be full client based... but that is not the case. Now others like World of Warcraft cost money since they are massive worlds with loads of people running about contantly, so bandwidth costs more money. |
it costs anet 3 million per year to run its data centers, so 9 mil a year for everything. so right now its costing them about 9 bucks/client/year. there is no need to charge a monthly fee for that.
Omg Kthxbye
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Originally Posted by Hanuman li Tosh
do you have any idea how much bandwidth costs? for 90 dollars a month an individual person with no bulk discounts can get a dedicated server on a 10mb/s with unlimited bandwidth. that would support at least 40 clients (for wow not GW and i am being way generous). 40 x 15 = 600 dollars for a 90 dollar connection. they are making way more money off the monthly fee than the game.
it costs anet 3 million per year to run its data centers, so 9 mil a year for everything. so right now its costing them about 9 bucks/client/year. there is no need to charge a monthly fee for that. |
http://servers.aplus.net/
Check that site out. $350 a month for a top of the line server (needed for a popular online game), which still has limited bandwith per month. It's $100 a month just for renting a cheapo Celeron server with capped monthly bandwidth. Webservers are cheap, but not powerful dedicated server which are needed to host a large online game.
You have also failed to consider MANY things when it comes to ANet's income. First of all, ANet doesn't get most of the money from game sales. They have to pay publishers, distributers, etc. It's like music artists, they only get a fraction of the money from album sales. Second, they have to pay employees to maintain the servers, keep them updated, and develop new material. ANet does not make much money from each unit sold.
What's the point? It's not cheap for them to host servers for this game, definitely not as cheap as you claim. So why can they continue to host it without a monthly fee? Because it is an instanced world. Persistant worlds take a LOT more server power and bandwidth than instanced worlds. So, while it still may be expensive, it's not as expensive as most other online games with persistant worlds, which is why ANet can continue to host it.
jules
I'm pretty curious about how Anet profits from Guild Wars in spite of not charging monthly fees. They don't host adverts for other companies and only get paid a one off per customer. They have to pay developers, and quite a few members of staff not to mention maintaining servers and overheads etc etc..
Come on out you tech wizards and economics majors...
edit: oh wait I just read the post above mine.. still, if anyone can explain how they make money out of this I'm all ears.
Come on out you tech wizards and economics majors...
edit: oh wait I just read the post above mine.. still, if anyone can explain how they make money out of this I'm all ears.
Overnite
The reason why GW doesn't have monthly fees is because it's instanced. Instances allow to greatly reduce the client-server traffic, therefore reducing the upkeep costs.
There have been quite a few posts where the posters wanted "more people outside of the towns". This is not going to happen for a simple reason: instanced areas keep the game free.
There have been quite a few posts where the posters wanted "more people outside of the towns". This is not going to happen for a simple reason: instanced areas keep the game free.
Ard Wen
Not playing any other online RPG, what is instanced?
Omg Kthxbye
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Originally Posted by Ard Wen
Not playing any other online RPG, what is instanced?
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A persistant world is one like WoW, where the entire map is live with other players.
Mimi Miyagi
Instanced is how GW (or Diablo, to name another one) deals with the players on their servers.
Normal MMORPGs have a virtual world, where when you're playing either alone, or in a group, can see every other player in your area that are on the same server. Thus, in WoW, for example, you could see thousands of different players running around fighting monsters. In GW, when you leave town, you and your party are given their own "instance" of the game. You can't see other players, or other groups. The world is the same every time you leave town, with the same monsters int he same place moving in the same direction.
Normal MMORPGs have a virtual world, where when you're playing either alone, or in a group, can see every other player in your area that are on the same server. Thus, in WoW, for example, you could see thousands of different players running around fighting monsters. In GW, when you leave town, you and your party are given their own "instance" of the game. You can't see other players, or other groups. The world is the same every time you leave town, with the same monsters int he same place moving in the same direction.
Pevil Lihatuh
well WoW is half n half. Most of it is persistant, dungeons are instanced. But yes, things like Ultima Online or Asherons Call are just a world, one world, with millions of people running round in it.
Hanuman li Tosh
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Originally Posted by Omg Kthxbye
You are confused. I think you are talking about a WEBSERVER. Dedicated servers (especially ones with the necessary disk space to store game databases) are much more expensive.
http://servers.aplus.net/ Check that site out. $350 a month for a top of the line server (needed for a popular online game), which still has limited bandwith per month. It's $100 a month just for renting a cheapo Celeron server with capped monthly bandwidth. Webservers are cheap, but not powerful dedicated server which are needed to host a large online game. You have also failed to consider MANY things when it comes to ANet's income. First of all, ANet doesn't get most of the money from game sales. They have to pay publishers, distributers, etc. It's like music artists, they only get a fraction of the money from album sales. Second, they have to pay employees to maintain the servers, keep them updated, and develop new material. ANet does not make much money from each unit sold. What's the point? It's not cheap for them to host servers for this game, definitely not as cheap as you claim. So why can they continue to host it without a monthly fee? Because it is an instanced world. Persistant worlds take a LOT more server power and bandwidth than instanced worlds. So, while it still may be expensive, it's not as expensive as most other online games with persistant worlds, which is why ANet can continue to host it. |
Omg Kthxbye
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Originally Posted by Hanuman li Tosh
no, i know exactly what im talking about. nocster offers dedicated servers for 90 bucks a month on a 10mb/s connection. just because you cant find it doesent mean it dont exist.
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Hanuman li Tosh
well, there are 1 million people with anet accounts, and ncsoft released the cost of the 3 datacenters as 3 mil each per year. so that comes out to 9 bucks a head according to the numbers they released. if you know more about running their datacenters than they do then you are right. but according to them its 9 dollars a year/person.
Omg Kthxbye
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Originally Posted by Hanuman li Tosh
well, there are 1 million people with anet accounts, and ncsoft released the cost of the 3 datacenters as 3 mil each per year. so that comes out to 9 bucks a head according to the numbers they released. if you know more about running their datacenters than they do then you are right. but according to them its 9 dollars a year/person.
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BurningPants
In the end though it all comes down to the customer. Who knows, if the Guild Wars experiment turns out to be a success then we may not see as many monthly fees for the next generatin of MMORPGs (CORPG to make you people happy).
Of course with the success that WoW is right now, I doubt thats going to be the case. I would defintley be into WoW if it wasn't the monthly fee issue, I just dont have that kind of money to piss away on a video game. But if the companies can just slap a brand name onto any monthly fee MMORPG then people are probably gonna buy it.
Oh well, join the monthly fee boycott and only buy games that you only have to pay once for.
Of course with the success that WoW is right now, I doubt thats going to be the case. I would defintley be into WoW if it wasn't the monthly fee issue, I just dont have that kind of money to piss away on a video game. But if the companies can just slap a brand name onto any monthly fee MMORPG then people are probably gonna buy it.
Oh well, join the monthly fee boycott and only buy games that you only have to pay once for.
EternalTempest
Not only that, NCSoft (there publisher - City Of Villains, City of Heroes and some others) may be paying for things as well from profit from there other paid online games or using from the same servers not buying all new but getting at cheaper price, expansion of there systems just for GW.
GW was highly optimized to use as little bandwidth as possible to play the game, one of the reasons why modem dial up users can play ok on this game. They also sold more then a million accounts below there expected target date to reach it. Once chapter 2 comes out you will have a flood of new sales from new players and existing players who still play.
GW was highly optimized to use as little bandwidth as possible to play the game, one of the reasons why modem dial up users can play ok on this game. They also sold more then a million accounts below there expected target date to reach it. Once chapter 2 comes out you will have a flood of new sales from new players and existing players who still play.
germanturkey
the only downside i can see to GW i the lack of the ability to raid.. thats one of the staples of MMORPGs, but you know, i don't really care about that.
i thought it would be really interesting if there was something like FFXI's land claim system. where you could fight certain things and make gains for your country. like, for guild wars, it would be, your guild could serve under the nation, and the map would be constantly changing because guilds would fight for their nations and make gains. but of course, the nation assignments would be random to make it fair... but thats a problem too. its hard to do. but if its done right, its excellent
btw, SOE (sony online entertainment) is taking a leaf out of GW's book and releasing MMORPGs next year that don't require a subscription fee
i thought it would be really interesting if there was something like FFXI's land claim system. where you could fight certain things and make gains for your country. like, for guild wars, it would be, your guild could serve under the nation, and the map would be constantly changing because guilds would fight for their nations and make gains. but of course, the nation assignments would be random to make it fair... but thats a problem too. its hard to do. but if its done right, its excellent
btw, SOE (sony online entertainment) is taking a leaf out of GW's book and releasing MMORPGs next year that don't require a subscription fee
xxreaper008
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Originally Posted by RTSFirebat
Steam is a good system, streaming updates are use in this game all the time, a lot of people don't take note... you know that little yellow lighting bolt you see on the top right corner... that's a incoming update.
Major changes are made via patches... STEAM has a bad rep due to it being very buggy in the early days and having poor bandwidth management. Making patching really annoying for some people. Me... I used it for Half Life 2 and it worked wonders... never had any problems with Steam so I feel it works great, if a little slow sometimes, but bandwidth is limited. If it wasn't for the Guild information, character storage and the towns the game could be full client based... but that is not the case. Now others like World of Warcraft cost money since they are massive worlds with loads of people running about contantly, so bandwidth costs more money. |
I dont like steam, its too hard to crack. I've done it once, then they fixed the "exploit"
neoteo
im predicting a lot mmorpg kind of games will come out with no monthly fee ... i can imagine already . games like counter strike with a GW kind of play , same way to meet people , and then go team death match , or capture the flag .. and even pve , like Invasion and other cooperative games.its as not been done before cose internet speed changes a lot a FPS game ... but with time they will come out .... MMOCFPS.
Omg Kthxbye
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Originally Posted by xxreaper008
I dont like steam, its too hard to crack. I've done it once, then they fixed the "exploit"
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xxreaper008
Now that I notice it, I want to see a GW tv commercial!
torquemada
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Originally Posted by neoteo
im predicting a lot mmorpg kind of games will come out with no monthly fee ... i can imagine already . games like counter strike with a GW kind of play , same way to meet people , and then go team death match , or capture the flag .. and even pve , like Invasion and other cooperative games.its as not been done before cose internet speed changes a lot a FPS game ... but with time they will come out .... MMOCFPS.
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And it was a great fun for awhile....before kids started conquering bases at 4am in the morning while older and experienced players were sleeping...
Sectus
The reason why Guild Wars has no monthly fee has nothing to do with the game itself. While the game is instanced, it still runs completely from anet's servers, and those costs money to maintain. Comparing it to other MMORPGs isn't gonna help to solve the mystery of why this game has no monthly fee... the reason is as simple that it's just another business model.
Anet still needs money to be able to pay their development team to keep updating the game and making new expansions, they need money to maintain all those servers, and other misc stuff. Instead of having a monthly fee they're planning to release two campaigns each year. If all goes well, and those campaigns sell well, they can continue to develop the Guild Wars series. If the new campaigns doesn't sell at all, then anet will be closed down rather quickly.
Anet still needs money to be able to pay their development team to keep updating the game and making new expansions, they need money to maintain all those servers, and other misc stuff. Instead of having a monthly fee they're planning to release two campaigns each year. If all goes well, and those campaigns sell well, they can continue to develop the Guild Wars series. If the new campaigns doesn't sell at all, then anet will be closed down rather quickly.
Esprit
Because ANET chose to make Guild Wars free, it will eventually attract more players than a MMORPG that has a subscription fee (WoW).
To me, it seems the potential of having more people buy Guild Wars, because it is a pay-once-and-free-for-life game, will offset the cost of server and staff costs.
As Guild Wars becomes more popular and well known, as well as developing a larger and larger fan base, if a gamer who is considering buying an MMORPG is given the choice to buy Guild Wars (no monthly fee) or WoW (or Everquest or etc...) the gamer is more likely to buy Guild Wars, because the game will only hit his wallet once.
Even if Guild Wars releases an expansion pack once a year, for $50, the online gamer would still be ahead, monetary wise.
And a note on STEAM - Even if you play Half Life 2 Single Player mode, STEAM requires an internet connection still. Which is silly if you want to play some HL2 while you are on vacation or somewhere with no net connection.
To me, it seems the potential of having more people buy Guild Wars, because it is a pay-once-and-free-for-life game, will offset the cost of server and staff costs.
As Guild Wars becomes more popular and well known, as well as developing a larger and larger fan base, if a gamer who is considering buying an MMORPG is given the choice to buy Guild Wars (no monthly fee) or WoW (or Everquest or etc...) the gamer is more likely to buy Guild Wars, because the game will only hit his wallet once.
Even if Guild Wars releases an expansion pack once a year, for $50, the online gamer would still be ahead, monetary wise.
And a note on STEAM - Even if you play Half Life 2 Single Player mode, STEAM requires an internet connection still. Which is silly if you want to play some HL2 while you are on vacation or somewhere with no net connection.
Age
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Originally Posted by Pevil Lihatuh
generally the pay to play ones have a bigger community than GW. The thing is, pay to play makes you play more often so you don't feel like you're wasting money. This means more players online more often, meaning they need to run more servers and have higher bandwidth. This is all expensive. They also tend to release fewer expansions than GW is hoping to do, because they don't need the money from it to be honest.
GW can get away with it because as you're not constantly paying, you won't constantly play, so their server loads will be less, plus IF they can bring out 2 expansion packs a year like they originally planned, there will be a lot of revenue from those to pay for the servers. And they have lots of other pay to play games which will supplement it of course Really its just a slightly more involved version of battle.net, Sacreds multiplayer, Counterstrike online... all these you don't have to pay for, and all these aren't constantly used by billions of players. Difference with those ones are they're singleplayer games as well, so if the company gets fed up they can take the servers down. GW can't until GW dies. |
Unkemptwolf
Now someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought Anet doesnt maintain the GW servers. The servers are maintained by NCsoft (who owns Anet), along with the servers for City of Heros, City of Villans, Lineage, Lineage II, etc. NCsoft is also the publisher/distributor, so they eleminate steps between the developer (Anet) and the consumer (you). If NCsoft is the publisher/developer, that means there is only one company taking money off the top of the $50 you paid for the game, and thats the retailer you bought it from. So the retailer takes their part ($5-10 at most, if I remember right), and then NCsoft/Anet (which is really the same), get the rest. Right?