Will GW spark off more MMORPG's without subscription fees?

Monoface

i am just curious whether or not guild wars will effect the way people pay for mmorpg's in the future.

If GW makes a profit, and by the number of potential players, it may well do, will other games developers see this and think, "hmm, maybe we can make a better game and get away without subscription fees?"

Would just like to know what ppl think about this

 

Kentaro

I wouldn't really put them in the same category.  Maybe as a new genre sure they may be breaking new ground(although Diablo2 was first and arguably NWN/UO but they aren't as similar to GW as D2) and more companies will adopt this way.

Maybe this is what Diablo 3 will be like .

BigPeeler

all depends whether or not its a huge success or a massive flop... if it sells millions of copies and practically everybody buys a copy of it then ya... expect alot more games doing the same in the near future... however if it flops big time (which im somehow doubting it will anyways) then dont expect to see many games fallowing its example =p

no matter where u come from... no matter where u are now... no matter where ur going... its all about the EXP

numatic

I dont think GW will be anything groundbreaking. It is a great game and definately something different, but the only other option for an MMO is to release an expansion pack every like 5-6 months. For GW to make a decent profit, around 85% of the playerbase would need to purchase an expansion pack.

bsherlock

Also it is very very dangerous to not have a monthly fee. You need absolute confidence that your product is the best on the market in order to pull this off, and that confidence is simply not there in most copanies (This goes for any business not just MMORPG's).
With a monthy fee you dont take such huge risks, and no company takes huge risks.

This above will be regardless of how well GW performs.

Elite Member - MUAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Shagsbeard

I think that the deciding factor will be if players like the idea of a game that is published and then pretty much left alone.  It hasn't been done yet.  GW will patch to fix bugs and all, and will have paid expansions, but we won't be seeing the monthly patches that we're used to.

wendyX

hopefully

Admin

I think the answer to this is "yes" and "no"

Yes - because you will see more MMO games like Guild Wars where players spend a lot of their time in small groups, in isolated zones.  These will likely have no monthly fees (see below)

No - Games like DAoC and EQ cannot be free because of the massive loads of bandwidth and machines needed to run them.  I have been in the SOE network room and let me tell you - it takes millions and millions of dollars to setup the architecture and then hundreds of thousands each month in bandwidth fees.  I will explain this below.

I have done a little network programming in the gaming world and I can assure you that the more players that exist in a given "world" or "zone" your amount of data transmission grows *exponentially* - in other words, 100 players don't use 10 times the bandwidth that 10 players do - it uses 1000 times the bandwidth.

Basically, each time a player moves there is a myriad of data that needs to be sent - X,Y,Z,Orientation,Velocity,etc.  If there are 3 other players in eyeshot of this character - it needs to be transmitted 3 times, so if all 3 players move at the same time that is 9 transmissions.  Now assume there are 4 players and all move - that is 16 transmissions.  Get 8 players in a zone and now it is 64 simultaneous transmissions (per second might I add).  50 people would be 2500 transmissions and 100 people in a zone would require 10,000 simultaneous transmissions.  Do you see where this is going?

I know many of you don't have a clue what bandwidth costs...but it is NOT cheap.  This web site alone  gobbles over $1000 worth of it every month and we use a teeny tiny fraction of what even a low populated MMORPG server uses.

Ok, school is out

- MMORPG.COM Staff -

darkman

Admin is of course right, bandwith costs for MMORPG servers are just ASTRONOMICAL to say the least, words cannot describe how much bandiwith costs for a game like EQ, even a small game it costs A LOT. The reason why it is easier for Guild Wars to incorporate a no monthly fee is that missions and PvP mission and everything else except towns and outposts are all instanced, so instead of having 100 players on a map, you have 4 or 8 players on a map, and since bandwith is raised exponentially like Admin said, Guild Wars will reduce bandwith A LOT.

That said, unless you follow a similar game type as Guild Wars, we really won't see many other no monthly fee games, unless companies can figure out a way to significantly reduce bandwith while retaining the principal EQ like MMORPG qualities.

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