I know that Guild Wars has been relatively successful with it's "buy the box and that's it" strategy. As such, Arena.net seems to be content to go down that same road: pay something akin to $60 for the box and you're done paying.
But why? Many gamers would be more than happy to pay a lower price for the box and continue to shell out cash on a monthly basis for a quality game.
After all, a significant box price is a barrier-to-entry for a subset of players, espeically those currently heavily invested in other MMOs. The MMO world today is different than it was 5-10 years ago. People are, by-and-large, playing WoW, and have time, effort and friendships invested there. WoW is bringing the new customers to the MMO market and making the genre somewhat "respectable". The reality is that, to succeed, any new MMO is going to have do peel a considerable chunk of those players away from WoW. As such, the lower the barrier-to-entry of your game, the more likely you'll be able to get WoW players to give your game a try.
No new MMO is going to pull a new MMO market out of thin air. So new MMOs today need to have low barriers-to-entry to really succeed a pull players away from existing games. A significantly high single box price is such a barrier, and a totally unnecessary one given that millions are content paying a subscription. Given that they are no doubt in the realm of $100 million in development costs, you have to wonder if the potential market for box sales only to make this is a long-term win actually exists. Will 3-5 million people really pay for the box? It'll probably be less than a single year sub to Runescape, but $5/month is far more palatable than $60 up front.
To a consumer like me, no subscription means less revenue for the game. Less revenue means less future content, fewer devs, less customer support, etc. Arena.net is basically saying: This is pretty much it once you buy the box. Not much more to look forward to down the road.
Please don't get me wrong: I am all-of-a-sudden excited about Guild Wars 2 (didn't really like the orginal, though). I don't want to knock it. But this revenue model just seems all sorts of wrong and seems almost oblivious to the MMO market as it exists today.
If I like a game, I'll play it for years and be happy to shell out a monthly sub. Hell, like a lot of people I've paid for WoWs box and expansions, as well as $15/month for quite a while. So rather than charge $60 for the box, charge me $20 for the box and $5/ month and you'll make that $60 in less than a year, and have a gravy train for the future; gravy that I'm quite happy to send every month if the game is as good as GW2 is looking and sounding.
Look ladies and gentlemen, here we have someone who admits he knows nothing about Guild Wars or ArenaNet but claims he knows the right way they should run their subscription format, laughable to say the least.
I guest this is what happens when the devs release five top notch vids showing the world what we the followers already knew, guild wars 2 will kick ass.
Relatively successful, lol, 6 million boxes sold and you call that relatively successful?
The biggest flaw with your argument is that Arena.net has proven themselves devoted to GW over the past 5 years, even now running a major event to pave the way for GW2. There's an update/balance tweak almost every month, they do the holiday bashes and so on. If they hadn't already demonstrated their dedication, I would agree with you, but their track record makes me feel confident that GW2 will be fine and supported for years to come.
Totally agree with you. Anyway (To the OP)what is the problem? How you can compare B2P game with a monthly fee game? Every man with just a little brain in his head would prefer to buy a game and play it for life because you can stop whenever you want and later you can jump back without paying a single cent. IMO 15 $ a month for a game... which costs 100$ is complete rip off. I hope that there will be many games like that, but no one got the balls to do it. The market is different? How come? Didnt you paid 15$ 5 years ago for a sub based game? Yeah everyone did. How about now? We all do pay monthly fees like we did 10 years ago.
This game could well prove to be the catalyst to drag WoW into the Free-To-Play with microtransactions market. Guild Wars is a quality product, but its systems are rather restrictive. Giving this development team an open world to work with can only make a top-notch experience. I'm looking forward to it.
Uh, Blizzard already have Micro transitions. Read the my little pony article. I somewhat doubt that Activision will allow Wow to become a F2P game. Blizzard might make a F2P game themselves if that seems to be earning most money in the future but Wow won't change for the next 2 years.
Still, GW2 will be B2P as GW but it seems like they will release more mini expansions that you can buy for a few bucks, or at least so their faq have me thinking. As long as it is optional it isn't a problem for me.
I've noticed there seems to be a growing trend for MMO gamers to want to pay more to play their games. They seem to be under the naive impression that the more money they fork over the more content they'll get in return when the devs would just pocket it as more profit...
It's like the Blizzard cash shop thing, they don't need more money for content, it's obvious that they're just pocketing it, yet there's a whole legion of players out there now who seem willing to bend over for them because they think more money = more content. It's a recurring defense I've seen used when players criticise Blizzard.
Now it seems someone wants A-Net to do the same...? O_o
I think you are confusing more content with more quality content. Most of my friends and I have no problem spending a little more money to play a game we enjoy. I'd love to find a game that kept me happy and playing for years without having to pay a monthly subscription, but I havent found one yet. F2P games just do not compare to subscription games when it comes to features, content, and stability.
I'm not a fan of WoW myself, but I've played it as well as GW and WoW by far has more AND higher quality content. Higher quality and quantity comes at a cost in everything we experience in life so why should MMOs be any different?
I know what you mean, but I wasn't trying to directly compare GW to WoW, I was just trying to give another example of a game that people have recently been trying to justify paying more to play.
Paying more money for a higher quality game = fine with me.
Paying 10x more for 1.00001x more of the same (exaggerated I know, but that's the idea behind what people seem to be advocating, the increase in content would never match the price hike) = ??? I just don't understand the mentality behind that.
Personally i had bought GW and all its expansions (all 4 boxes) about 1.5 year ago. It costed me about 70 Euro, and i played for about 5 months. Now if you do the maths you 'll see that for that amount of time i would have payed the same or even less on a sub based MMO. I don't blame them though cause yes i could have played more - i could be playing till today. And it's not that i didn't liked the game - the opposite, GW is one of my favorite games.
I started with Nightfall, really liked it and the same week i had ordered Factions and EotN. I was looking for Prophecies too but couldn't find anything at the stores. Next week i find a long forgotten Prophecies copy on a bookstore... I bought it without a second thought. I was playing all campaigns including the expansions slowly, then i joined a very nice alliance where i would "waste" a lot of time helping other people doing missions. What i am trying to say is that i saw all the game in these 5 months, i had fun with it but i felt there wasn't much more to see then so i stopped. I wasn't interested in fluff clothing or PvP.
So, what i am saying is that i may have the opportunity to play "forever", that doesn't mean i will do, even if i like the game. Add to this all the people that won't like the game at all and will quit in the first month - they will pay much more than the traditional sub-based MMO... It's doesn't seem that bad idea.
"Traditionally, massively multiplier online games have been about three basic gameplay pillars combat, exploration and character progression. In Alganon, in addition to these we've added the fourth pillar to the equation: Copy & Paste."
I'm not a fan of WoW myself, but I've played it as well as GW and WoW by far has more AND higher quality content. Higher quality and quantity comes at a cost in everything we experience in life so why should MMOs be any different?
A matter of taste, I personally liked the graphics of GW's environments and char models far more than that of WoW, also the animations made more of an impression to me than those of WoW. While it can be debatable whether GW + expansions (you counted Nightfall, Eye of the North and Factions too, right?) has more content than WoW + expansions, it is definitely the case that Guild Wars has better graphics, smoother gameplay and far more content than a large number of the other P2P MMO's.
It proves that quality and quantity at the same levels as other top title MMO's can be reached in different ways than the overly trodden way of the subscription model, if a company is willing to take that risk by following a different path and knows what it's doing.
ArenaNet doesnt have to prove that point with GW2, they've already done that with GW: whether it's a heavily instanced MMO or an open-world MMO, a server park is a server park, and it needs to be maintained and paid operators avaiable who keep it running. Even more, Guild Wars has the lowest downtime of any MMO since their patching process is streaming and doesnt involve servers to go down.
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums: Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
Comments
we need subs cuz we gotta feed him to run our servers!
Have fun storming the castle! - Miracle Max
Look ladies and gentlemen, here we have someone who admits he knows nothing about Guild Wars or ArenaNet but claims he knows the right way they should run their subscription format, laughable to say the least.
I guest this is what happens when the devs release five top notch vids showing the world what we the followers already knew, guild wars 2 will kick ass.
Relatively successful, lol, 6 million boxes sold and you call that relatively successful?
Next time OP , DO YOUR HOME WORK.
Furious Fighters
http://www.biblebelievers.org.au/13trindx.htm
Totally agree with you. Anyway (To the OP)what is the problem? How you can compare B2P game with a monthly fee game? Every man with just a little brain in his head would prefer to buy a game and play it for life because you can stop whenever you want and later you can jump back without paying a single cent. IMO 15 $ a month for a game... which costs 100$ is complete rip off. I hope that there will be many games like that, but no one got the balls to do it. The market is different? How come? Didnt you paid 15$ 5 years ago for a sub based game? Yeah everyone did. How about now? We all do pay monthly fees like we did 10 years ago.
Uh, Blizzard already have Micro transitions. Read the my little pony article. I somewhat doubt that Activision will allow Wow to become a F2P game. Blizzard might make a F2P game themselves if that seems to be earning most money in the future but Wow won't change for the next 2 years.
Still, GW2 will be B2P as GW but it seems like they will release more mini expansions that you can buy for a few bucks, or at least so their faq have me thinking. As long as it is optional it isn't a problem for me.
I know what you mean, but I wasn't trying to directly compare GW to WoW, I was just trying to give another example of a game that people have recently been trying to justify paying more to play.
Paying more money for a higher quality game = fine with me.
Paying 10x more for 1.00001x more of the same (exaggerated I know, but that's the idea behind what people seem to be advocating, the increase in content would never match the price hike) = ??? I just don't understand the mentality behind that.
Personally i had bought GW and all its expansions (all 4 boxes) about 1.5 year ago. It costed me about 70 Euro, and i played for about 5 months. Now if you do the maths you 'll see that for that amount of time i would have payed the same or even less on a sub based MMO. I don't blame them though cause yes i could have played more - i could be playing till today. And it's not that i didn't liked the game - the opposite, GW is one of my favorite games.
I started with Nightfall, really liked it and the same week i had ordered Factions and EotN. I was looking for Prophecies too but couldn't find anything at the stores. Next week i find a long forgotten Prophecies copy on a bookstore... I bought it without a second thought. I was playing all campaigns including the expansions slowly, then i joined a very nice alliance where i would "waste" a lot of time helping other people doing missions. What i am trying to say is that i saw all the game in these 5 months, i had fun with it but i felt there wasn't much more to see then so i stopped. I wasn't interested in fluff clothing or PvP.
So, what i am saying is that i may have the opportunity to play "forever", that doesn't mean i will do, even if i like the game. Add to this all the people that won't like the game at all and will quit in the first month - they will pay much more than the traditional sub-based MMO... It's doesn't seem that bad idea.
"Traditionally, massively multiplier online games have been about three basic gameplay pillars combat, exploration and character progression. In Alganon, in addition to these we've added the fourth pillar to the equation: Copy & Paste."
A matter of taste, I personally liked the graphics of GW's environments and char models far more than that of WoW, also the animations made more of an impression to me than those of WoW. While it can be debatable whether GW + expansions (you counted Nightfall, Eye of the North and Factions too, right?) has more content than WoW + expansions, it is definitely the case that Guild Wars has better graphics, smoother gameplay and far more content than a large number of the other P2P MMO's.
It proves that quality and quantity at the same levels as other top title MMO's can be reached in different ways than the overly trodden way of the subscription model, if a company is willing to take that risk by following a different path and knows what it's doing.
ArenaNet doesnt have to prove that point with GW2, they've already done that with GW: whether it's a heavily instanced MMO or an open-world MMO, a server park is a server park, and it needs to be maintained and paid operators avaiable who keep it running. Even more, Guild Wars has the lowest downtime of any MMO since their patching process is streaming and doesnt involve servers to go down.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."