Can you bear with me? I'm going to try to put a stop to a persisting fallacy right now. I'm going to do it in a short post, and I want you to pay attention.
The fallacy: DLC is exactly equivalent to a subscription.
Logical response: Utter nonsense.
Why? I'm disappointed that I have to explain this but let's see how many can keep up. And since someone brought up New Vegas as part of the fallacy, well, let's go with that, shall we? I bought New Vegas, but I didn't buy Dead Money. I did, however, buy Old World Blues. So what's going on there?
In the case of DLC I'm making a payment and getting a product. In the case of a subscription I'm making a payment for continued access to a product I already owned. (With possible, potential 'free' content added in.) These two are not the same, and they are not the same for a number of very important reasons.
With DLC, I can see the content and I can decide whether I want to buy it.
Now if DLC was like a subscription then it would work like this: I'd buy New Vegas, and then to continue playing New Vegas I'd have to pay on a monthly basis. At some point down the road they may deliver Dead Money, but they have no obligation to do so. Dead Money isn't content that I like, so I skip over it, but I continue to pay on a monthly basis for New Vegas. Now, eventually they may release content that I do want to play, but that'll be... what, perhaps eight months subscription fees?
So I would have essentially paid one-hundred and twenty bloody dollars (8 * $15) for a new piece of content.
Wow. That would be so financially intelligent of me.
Now then, what I did do is skip all the NV content except the one I really wanted. I got Old World Blues for $10, that's $110 less. So how, how by any logical standards, can someone say that a subscription works in the same way as DLC? It's ridiculous. It's a fallacy. People who're supporting this are talking out of their rears, they're being billious dialectics and not thinking about what they're saying, because there's no way in hell a subscription is the same as DLC if one costs $110 more than the other.
Yes, the GW2 system is the same as DLC. It'll have silly cosmetic stuff (which I will probably buy some of, just because i like that, and I enjoy showing my support), and it'll have content, but what it won't have is a payment that is forced in order to retain access to a product.
How is DLC different from a subscription?
All together, now!
Bcause a product doesn't have a continued subscription cost in order to retain access to the product.
Herp. Derp. Truly. Because if anyone continues to propagate this argument now then we're just being trolled.
I am not forced to pay in order to retain access to New Vegas, I am not forced to pay to retain access to Guild Wars 2, I amforced to pay to retain access to a game like World of Warcraft. And if that's an important difference between DLC and subscriptions, I'd think. That's exactly why I prefer the Guild Wars 2 model. With the Guild Wars 2 model it is a purchase system. I see a product, there is a product, right in front of me, and I can either choose to buy the product or not. If I choose not to buy the product then that choice will in no way affect my ability to access previous products that I bought.
This fallacy is driving me insane because it's clearly fallacious and it's being propagated by people who're just throwing down chaff to destroy the discussion. It's not a valid point. From this post on I would suggest that we all just ignore any posts about this, and delegate anyone who still believes this to the status of 'Village Idiot.' DLC is the same as subscriptions indeed... good grief. What are they teaching kids these days?
My question did anyone actually say DLC is the same as a monthly fee?
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
No monthly fee can be a good thing or a bad thing too. Obviously it's a good thing for the customer since they save a bit pocket money every month, saving is always nice yes? It can also be a bad thing if it means that the dev team has to be smaller since there is no constant revenue, and content coming in at slower pace, unless the company is very *charitable and settles for less income (people need to get paid after the initial sales ofcourse too, who pumps out free content updates), or if the customer ofcourse is fine how things are because of no monthly fee.
*If this is the case with GW2 I'm very happy to see there's still someone in this world that does something without having to get paid for it, it's hard to believe though since our world today is only about profit.
Arenanet is no charity and the first Guildwars earned in many times it's production and running costs. You don't really think Wow uses all it's astronomical monthly fees for running costs (box sales are to cover the development cost)?
They are dumping the prices to get more players. Just a few years ago all games have the same monthly fees but with this and the F2P method prices wil go down for the average players.
Competition is a good thing.
I completely agree.
GW1 vastly outearned the P2P City of Heroes during the period when it was putting out content. GW1 was always intended to be a B2P game but even if it hadn't, it would have been a brilliant business decision in the face of WoW coming out four months earlier. Instead of being a game that we've all never played and limped along or perhaps even died with a hundred thousand subs, it's a game that 7 million units were sold of 4 boxes. That's 1.75 million people playing it at the bare minimum.
Being P2P is fantastic if your game is the big dog and still pretty great even if it isn't, but it's not necessarily a license to print money. The majority of people won't pay two subscriptions so a P2P game has to be better than WoW for people to want to switch over permanently, otherwise they might switch for a few months and then switch back.
People need to get past their initial assumption that P2P and B2P will have the same number of players. B2P sells more copies because it's cheaper, because people are going to buy it maybe in addition to a sub game, people can buy it as a gift or feel a lot better about buying a copy for each one of their kids. If you have a larger and more stable playerbase (people don't have to decide each month to go back to subscribing to some other game), then not everybody needs to buy expansions to earn the same amount of money.
But I was talking about mmorpgs. I could be wrong since I havent played it, but I heard GW1 is not a mmorpg. Is there any "real" mmorpg example that is a B2P and successful/good? Just curious.
This is better as it incentivizes ANet themselve to make an expansion that is actually good rather than a simple continuation of having people on the progression hook .
Also companies like SOE charge for expansions AND lie to you and say your sub goes to maintenance. The ANet devs are just honest enough and respect their players enough to believe we have basic math skills to be able to figure out that maintainance doesn't cost that much.
This is better as it incentivizes ANet themselve to make an expansion that is actually good rather than a simple continuation of having people on the progression hook .
Also companies like SOE charge for expansions AND lie to you and say your sub goes to maintenance. The ANet devs are just honest enough and respect their players enough to believe we have basic math skills to be able to figure out that maintainance doesn't cost that much.
Of course it doesn't, a big part of it is profit, I think that is fairly obvious. Though it does cost more than people around here like to admit. SOE is also one of the worst companies to mention in this debate. They're as greedy as they come, not to mention they're a company who offers little in the way of quality products or customer service.
Which also again brings up the fact with GW1 Anet had to skimp in the customer service area because they had no budget for it. Which meant no live in-game support, slow response to issues etc...
Will that be the case with GW2? I really don't know, it is an area of concern for me though.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
No monthly fee can be a good thing or a bad thing too. Obviously it's a good thing for the customer since they save a bit pocket money every month, saving is always nice yes? It can also be a bad thing if it means that the dev team has to be smaller since there is no constant revenue, and content coming in at slower pace, unless the company is very *charitable and settles for less income (people need to get paid after the initial sales ofcourse too, who pumps out free content updates), or if the customer ofcourse is fine how things are because of no monthly fee.
*If this is the case with GW2 I'm very happy to see there's still someone in this world that does something without having to get paid for it, it's hard to believe though since our world today is only about profit.
Arenanet is no charity and the first Guildwars earned in many times it's production and running costs. You don't really think Wow uses all it's astronomical monthly fees for running costs (box sales are to cover the development cost)?
They are dumping the prices to get more players. Just a few years ago all games have the same monthly fees but with this and the F2P method prices wil go down for the average players.
Competition is a good thing.
I completely agree.
GW1 vastly outearned the P2P City of Heroes during the period when it was putting out content. GW1 was always intended to be a B2P game but even if it hadn't, it would have been a brilliant business decision in the face of WoW coming out four months earlier. Instead of being a game that we've all never played and limped along or perhaps even died with a hundred thousand subs, it's a game that 7 million units were sold of 4 boxes. That's 1.75 million people playing it at the bare minimum.
Being P2P is fantastic if your game is the big dog and still pretty great even if it isn't, but it's not necessarily a license to print money. The majority of people won't pay two subscriptions so a P2P game has to be better than WoW for people to want to switch over permanently, otherwise they might switch for a few months and then switch back.
People need to get past their initial assumption that P2P and B2P will have the same number of players. B2P sells more copies because it's cheaper, because people are going to buy it maybe in addition to a sub game, people can buy it as a gift or feel a lot better about buying a copy for each one of their kids. If you have a larger and more stable playerbase (people don't have to decide each month to go back to subscribing to some other game), then not everybody needs to buy expansions to earn the same amount of money.
But I was talking about mmorpgs. I could be wrong since I havent played it, but I heard GW1 is not a mmorpg. Is there any "real" mmorpg example that is a B2P and successful/good? Just curious.
Not that I know of, but this interview would suggest that it's beside the point.
PC Games: "How do you plan to do this? Building such a complex world which is shared by all players without having monthly fees?"
Strain: (laughing) "A very good question! Interestingly many people believe that the completely instantiated world was the reason for Guild Wars 1 to not need monthly fees. This is completely wrong! The existence or lack of a persistent world is totally unrelated to the running expenses which are needed to maintain an online roleplaying game."
PC Games: "What do you mean by that?"
Strain: "Really important are the innovative technologies which we developed for Guild Wars 1. They allow us to keep the running costs very low which then results in the huge advantage for the player: the absence of fees. We continue with that principle for Guild Wars 2: as soon as the game is available, we will begin our work on new content. Such content for which the player is free to decide if he wants to have it or not. Maybe that will be add-ons or complete campaigns or online-extensions with costs, we don't know. But one thing is very certain: we will again have in Guild Wars 2 the comprehensive support our fans are already familiar with!"
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it."-Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007
What you're cleverly not pointing out however is that almost every big subscription MMORPG out there pockets subscription money as profit anyway, and only a few, small, indie developers actually put it back into the game. WoW had atrocious customer support, so did Everquest II, and LOTRO wasn't any better when it had a subscription either. Having a subscription does not necesssarily make for good customer support.
What you have to understand is that there are a lot of people playing a game and regardless of the game or how much money goes into CS, you'd still have to wait a while under any conditions. What I did find however was that whilst slow, the ArenaNet CS guys were pretty nice. Unlike in one subscription game where I sent a bug report ticket and was insulted over a tell.
Not that I know of, but this interview would suggest that it's beside the point.
PC Games: "How do you plan to do this? Building such a complex world which is shared by all players without having monthly fees?"
Strain: (laughing) "A very good question! Interestingly many people believe that the completely instantiated world was the reason for Guild Wars 1 to not need monthly fees. This is completely wrong! The existence or lack of a persistent world is totally unrelated to the running expenses which are needed to maintain an online roleplaying game."
PC Games: "What do you mean by that?"
Strain: "Really important are the innovative technologies which we developed for Guild Wars 1. They allow us to keep the running costs very low which then results in the huge advantage for the player: the absence of fees. We continue with that principle for Guild Wars 2: as soon as the game is available, we will begin our work on new content. Such content for which the player is free to decide if he wants to have it or not. Maybe that will be add-ons or complete campaigns or online-extensions with costs, we don't know. But one thing is very certain: we will again have in Guild Wars 2 the comprehensive support our fans are already familiar with!"
Only if you buy into this hook, line and sinker. As much as this might be true, he's leaving out the part that they could not offer every service a typcial MMO company has available. Namely on the customer service side of things, which I'd guess these "innovative technologies" would in part be what they had in place for it, which has been reported to be less than stellar, even from glowing reviews of the overall game.
I think we're already seeing something they've opted out of doing for budget reasons. Forums, and what goes along with them, a community team. Where's our relay with the devs? Guru?
IMO all of his statements about this are a fancy way of saying, we've cut corners.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
What you're cleverly not pointing out however is that almost every big subscription MMORPG out there pockets subscription money as profit anyway, and only a few, small, indie developers actually put it back into the game. WoW had atrocious customer support, so did Everquest II, and LOTRO wasn't any better when it had a subscription either. Having a subscription does not necesssarily make for good customer support.
What you have to understand is that there are a lot of people playing a game and regardless of the game or how much money goes into CS, you'd still have to wait a while under any conditions. What I did find however was that whilst slow, the ArenaNet CS guys were pretty nice. Unlike in one subscription game where I sent a bug report ticket and was insulted over a tell.
I will not deny this what so ever, as I said earlier SOE is a horrble company to use as an example, as they are greedy bastages. My argument is more or less coming from the angle of companies like CCP (in the past ofc), or other companies that grew from and along with this genre, not these corps that have been swimming in money all along.
I would never use Acti-Blizz or companies like that to argue this point, that would be a futile effort, they're all about profit and lowest common denominators, they don't care what you experience as long as you'll pay.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Not that I know of, but this interview would suggest that it's beside the point.
PC Games: "How do you plan to do this? Building such a complex world which is shared by all players without having monthly fees?"
Strain: (laughing) "A very good question! Interestingly many people believe that the completely instantiated world was the reason for Guild Wars 1 to not need monthly fees. This is completely wrong! The existence or lack of a persistent world is totally unrelated to the running expenses which are needed to maintain an online roleplaying game."
PC Games: "What do you mean by that?"
Strain: "Really important are the innovative technologies which we developed for Guild Wars 1. They allow us to keep the running costs very low which then results in the huge advantage for the player: the absence of fees. We continue with that principle for Guild Wars 2: as soon as the game is available, we will begin our work on new content. Such content for which the player is free to decide if he wants to have it or not. Maybe that will be add-ons or complete campaigns or online-extensions with costs, we don't know. But one thing is very certain: we will again have in Guild Wars 2 the comprehensive support our fans are already familiar with!"
Only if you buy into this hook, line and sinker. As much as this might be true, he's leaving out the part that they could not offer every service a typcial MMO company has available. Namely on the customer service side of things, which I'd guess these "innovative technologies" would in part be what they had in place for it, which has been reported to be less than stellar, even from glowing reviews of the overall game.
I think we're already seeing something they've opted out of doing for budget reasons. Forums, and what goes along with them, a community team. Where's our relay with the devs? Guru?
IMO all of his statements about this are a fancy way of saying, we've cut corners.
I just love how the only possible explanation always seems to come back to "Arenanet is lieing". I will say this much. If that is the case, it will be a first for them. Arenanet is one of the few mmo developers with any genuine credibility. Something they seem to realize and try very hard to maintain. It is the very reason why they never talk about features that are not currently present in the game. On the rare occasion they have made changes differing from previous pronouncements, they have been very clear as to the reasons why and i have always been rather satisfied and even impressed with there reasoning.
People on this forum who try to play the part of the cynic when it comes to GW2 are always surprised by the "Blind Devotion" people have for Arenanet despite there having only made GW1. The honesty with the players is the reason why. We give them credibility we would be reluctant to give other developers because Arenanet has genuinely earned it. They dont treat the players like we dont matter. The seem to treat us with a genuine level of respect as fellow gamers and that is rare to see in such a profit driven industry, and i feel we do them a diservice by not reciprocating that respect.
Not that I know of, but this interview would suggest that it's beside the point.
PC Games: "How do you plan to do this? Building such a complex world which is shared by all players without having monthly fees?"
Strain: (laughing) "A very good question! Interestingly many people believe that the completely instantiated world was the reason for Guild Wars 1 to not need monthly fees. This is completely wrong! The existence or lack of a persistent world is totally unrelated to the running expenses which are needed to maintain an online roleplaying game."
PC Games: "What do you mean by that?"
Strain: "Really important are the innovative technologies which we developed for Guild Wars 1. They allow us to keep the running costs very low which then results in the huge advantage for the player: the absence of fees. We continue with that principle for Guild Wars 2: as soon as the game is available, we will begin our work on new content. Such content for which the player is free to decide if he wants to have it or not. Maybe that will be add-ons or complete campaigns or online-extensions with costs, we don't know. But one thing is very certain: we will again have in Guild Wars 2 the comprehensive support our fans are already familiar with!"
Only if you buy into this hook, line and sinker. As much as this might be true, he's leaving out the part that they could not offer every service a typcial MMO company has available. Namely on the customer service side of things, which I'd guess these "innovative technologies" would in part be what they had in place for it, which has been reported to be less than stellar, even from glowing reviews of the overall game.
I think we're already seeing something they've opted out of doing for budget reasons. Forums, and what goes along with them, a community team. Where's our relay with the devs? Guru?
IMO all of his statements about this are a fancy way of saying, we've cut corners.
Maybe some of us have taken the bait but if GW2 comes out and i's as good as it looks, then everything he said will make most people question the developers that are charging the subscription fee. Plus it's a little unfair to compare features from a game that they have openly said they would greatly reduce the focus on in order to work on GW2. I believe they made that announcement in 2007. Also we could bring up the extended experience that they have talked about that will be providing some features not yet present in MMO's.
BTW, the forums is a week arguement. They really don't provide much of a benefit. One could argue that the community and other sites do a much better job. Lets take WoW for an example, if you want to look up something about the game or a build, would you go to the forums or would you go to WoWhead, WoWiki, Elitist Jerks, etc.
Besides a support forum, forums are just for people like you and me that enjoy rambling about nonsense.
Not that I know of, but this interview would suggest that it's beside the point.
PC Games: "How do you plan to do this? Building such a complex world which is shared by all players without having monthly fees?"
Strain: (laughing) "A very good question! Interestingly many people believe that the completely instantiated world was the reason for Guild Wars 1 to not need monthly fees. This is completely wrong! The existence or lack of a persistent world is totally unrelated to the running expenses which are needed to maintain an online roleplaying game."
PC Games: "What do you mean by that?"
Strain: "Really important are the innovative technologies which we developed for Guild Wars 1. They allow us to keep the running costs very low which then results in the huge advantage for the player: the absence of fees. We continue with that principle for Guild Wars 2: as soon as the game is available, we will begin our work on new content. Such content for which the player is free to decide if he wants to have it or not. Maybe that will be add-ons or complete campaigns or online-extensions with costs, we don't know. But one thing is very certain: we will again have in Guild Wars 2 the comprehensive support our fans are already familiar with!"
Only if you buy into this hook, line and sinker. As much as this might be true, he's leaving out the part that they could not offer every service a typcial MMO company has available. Namely on the customer service side of things, which I'd guess these "innovative technologies" would in part be what they had in place for it, which has been reported to be less than stellar, even from glowing reviews of the overall game.
I think we're already seeing something they've opted out of doing for budget reasons. Forums, and what goes along with them, a community team. Where's our relay with the devs? Guru?
IMO all of his statements about this are a fancy way of saying, we've cut corners.
I just love how the only possible explanation always seems to come back to "Arenanet is lieing". I will say this much. If that is the case, it will be a first for them. Arenanet is one of the few mmo developers with any genuine credibility. Something they seem to realize and try very hard to maintain. It is the very reason why they never talk about features that are not currently present in the game. On the rare occasion they have made changes differing from previous pronouncements, they have been very clear as to the reasons why and i have always been rather satisfied and even impressed with there reasoning.
People on this forum who try to play the part of the cynic when it comes to GW2 are always surprised by the "Blind Devotion" people have for Arenanet despite there having only made GW1. The honesty with the players is the reason why. We give them credibility we would be reluctant to give other developers because Arenanet has genuinely earned it. They dont treat the players like we dont matter. The seem to treat us with a genuine level of respect as fellow gamers and that is rare to see in such a profit driven industry, and i feel we do them a diservice by not reciprocating that respect.
No I didn't say he was lying, not at all, I even acknowledged what he said may be true. If anything went wrong here, it certainly wasn't a lie, it was poor questioning on behalf of the interviewer. Had he asked "what sacrifices have you had to make in order to offer this service? ", we may have been given a completely different answer.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
you mad? arenanet charges you only for the game and you are concerned? blizzard charges you for content updates + monthly fee, why is nobody concerned about that?
Not that I know of, but this interview would suggest that it's beside the point.
PC Games: "How do you plan to do this? Building such a complex world which is shared by all players without having monthly fees?"
Strain: (laughing) "A very good question! Interestingly many people believe that the completely instantiated world was the reason for Guild Wars 1 to not need monthly fees. This is completely wrong! The existence or lack of a persistent world is totally unrelated to the running expenses which are needed to maintain an online roleplaying game."
PC Games: "What do you mean by that?"
Strain: "Really important are the innovative technologies which we developed for Guild Wars 1. They allow us to keep the running costs very low which then results in the huge advantage for the player: the absence of fees. We continue with that principle for Guild Wars 2: as soon as the game is available, we will begin our work on new content. Such content for which the player is free to decide if he wants to have it or not. Maybe that will be add-ons or complete campaigns or online-extensions with costs, we don't know. But one thing is very certain: we will again have in Guild Wars 2 the comprehensive support our fans are already familiar with!"
Only if you buy into this hook, line and sinker. As much as this might be true, he's leaving out the part that they could not offer every service a typcial MMO company has available. Namely on the customer service side of things, which I'd guess these "innovative technologies" would in part be what they had in place for it, which has been reported to be less than stellar, even from glowing reviews of the overall game.
I think we're already seeing something they've opted out of doing for budget reasons. Forums, and what goes along with them, a community team. Where's our relay with the devs? Guru?
IMO all of his statements about this are a fancy way of saying, we've cut corners.
They've opted out of discussion forums because they don't want to have official discussion forums in favor of wanting fans to come up with their own sites. They do have official support forums.
As far as customer service is concerned, what exactly is lacking? They fix bugs all the time. Unlike other P2P MMOs, their servers are NEVER DOWN. Their technical support is integrated with the rest of NCSoft's, and in my experience the response is pretty rapid. Not that I've ever had an in-game problem (my problem was with NCSoft's store website).
Have you ever had a problem in GW1 that wasn't addressed? Or are you just trying to stir up trouble because you can't wrap your brain around the idea that GW1 made more money as a B2P than it ever would have as a P2P?
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it."-Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007
They have every incentive to keep you playing for the purchase of the packs and other content. If you do not play you will not buy them. I suppose the frequency of such content would coincide with their needing cash perhaps.
Only if you buy into this hook, line and sinker. As much as this might be true, he's leaving out the part that they could not offer every service a typcial MMO company has available. Namely on the customer service side of things, which I'd guess these "innovative technologies" would in part be what they had in place for it, which has been reported to be less than stellar, even from glowing reviews of the overall game.
I think we're already seeing something they've opted out of doing for budget reasons. Forums, and what goes along with them, a community team. Where's our relay with the devs? Guru?
IMO all of his statements about this are a fancy way of saying, we've cut corners.
Maybe some of us have taken the bait but if GW2 comes out and i's as good as it looks, then everything he said will make most people question the developers that are charging the subscription fee. Plus it's a little unfair to compare features from a game that they have openly said they would greatly reduce the focus on in order to work on GW2. I believe they made that announcement in 2007. Also we could bring up the extended experience that they have talked about that will be providing some features not yet present in MMO's.
BTW, the forums is a week arguement. They really don't provide much of a benefit. One could argue that the community and other sites do a much better job. Lets take WoW for an example, if you want to look up something about the game or a build, would you go to the forums or would you go to WoWhead, WoWiki, Elitist Jerks, etc.
Besides a support forum, forums are just for people like you and me that enjoy rambling about nonsense.
Not exactly, yes forums are abused there's no question there, they may be far more work and require far more than they're worth. However they do offer benefits as well, especially when a mistake has occured in development. That wouldn't be their only benefit either. Especially when it comes to tech support, which you or I could most definitely find. For those who do not frequent forums/sites, that isn't exactly the case. They're stuck dealing with phone supoort or other less than reasonable time consuming approaches. The great thing about offiical tech forums is they're alive with players willing to help others out, as well as in some cases staff.
For the first part, I just want to clarify, I don't doubt GW2 will be a great game, or that Anet will fulfill many of their promises, that's not what My posts are about. I'm just looking at the reality of these comments about the age old sub model, and pointing out the benefits it has offered.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Not that I know of, but this interview would suggest that it's beside the point.
PC Games: "How do you plan to do this? Building such a complex world which is shared by all players without having monthly fees?"
Strain: (laughing) "A very good question! Interestingly many people believe that the completely instantiated world was the reason for Guild Wars 1 to not need monthly fees. This is completely wrong! The existence or lack of a persistent world is totally unrelated to the running expenses which are needed to maintain an online roleplaying game."
PC Games: "What do you mean by that?"
Strain: "Really important are the innovative technologies which we developed for Guild Wars 1. They allow us to keep the running costs very low which then results in the huge advantage for the player: the absence of fees. We continue with that principle for Guild Wars 2: as soon as the game is available, we will begin our work on new content. Such content for which the player is free to decide if he wants to have it or not. Maybe that will be add-ons or complete campaigns or online-extensions with costs, we don't know. But one thing is very certain: we will again have in Guild Wars 2 the comprehensive support our fans are already familiar with!"
Only if you buy into this hook, line and sinker. As much as this might be true, he's leaving out the part that they could not offer every service a typcial MMO company has available. Namely on the customer service side of things, which I'd guess these "innovative technologies" would in part be what they had in place for it, which has been reported to be less than stellar, even from glowing reviews of the overall game.
I think we're already seeing something they've opted out of doing for budget reasons. Forums, and what goes along with them, a community team. Where's our relay with the devs? Guru?
IMO all of his statements about this are a fancy way of saying, we've cut corners.
They've opted out of discussion forums because they don't want to have official discussion forums in favor of wanting fans to come up with their own sites. They do have official support forums.
As far as customer service is concerned, what exactly is lacking? They fix bugs all the time. Unlike other P2P MMOs, their servers are NEVER DOWN. Their technical support is integrated with the rest of NCSoft's, and in my experience the response is pretty rapid. Not that I've ever had an in-game problem (my problem was with NCSoft's store website).
Have you ever had a problem in GW1 that wasn't addressed? Or are you just trying to stir up trouble because you can't wrap your brain around the idea that GW1 made more money as a B2P than it ever would have as a P2P?
How am I stirring up trouble?
As far as what is lacking, live support, as in, in the game.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Only if you buy into this hook, line and sinker. As much as this might be true, he's leaving out the part that they could not offer every service a typcial MMO company has available. Namely on the customer service side of things, which I'd guess these "innovative technologies" would in part be what they had in place for it, which has been reported to be less than stellar, even from glowing reviews of the overall game.
I think we're already seeing something they've opted out of doing for budget reasons. Forums, and what goes along with them, a community team. Where's our relay with the devs? Guru?
IMO all of his statements about this are a fancy way of saying, we've cut corners.
Seriously, they offer a new model of MMO where you do not pay a monthly sub and you expect them to offer every service that a sub-based company would provide? I'm curious if you expect to get genuine woodgrain panels in your Ford Focus like you do in a BMW?
GW is run on a totally different financial model, of course it will not be able to offer all the same services as a sub-based MMO would. WHY would you expect all the same services and level of support when you do NOT pay a monthly fee?
"Sean (Murray) saying MP will be in the game is not remotely close to evidence that at the point of purchase people thought there was MP in the game." - SEANMCAD
Only if you buy into this hook, line and sinker. As much as this might be true, he's leaving out the part that they could not offer every service a typcial MMO company has available. Namely on the customer service side of things, which I'd guess these "innovative technologies" would in part be what they had in place for it, which has been reported to be less than stellar, even from glowing reviews of the overall game.
I think we're already seeing something they've opted out of doing for budget reasons. Forums, and what goes along with them, a community team. Where's our relay with the devs? Guru?
IMO all of his statements about this are a fancy way of saying, we've cut corners.
Seriously, they offer a new model of MMO where you do not pay a monthly sub and you expect them to offer every service that a sub-based company would provide? I'm curious if you expect to get genuine woodgrain panels in your Ford Focus like you do in a BMW?
GW is run on a totally different financial model, of course it will not be able to offer all the same services as a sub-based MMO would. WHY would you expect all the same services and level of support when you do NOT pay a monthly fee?
Wouldn't that be my overall point, as in don't expect it? I surely don't...
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Not exactly, yes forums are abused there's no question there, they may be far more work and require far more than they're worth. However they do offer benefits as well, especially when a mistake has occured in development. That wouldn't be their only benefit either. Especially when it comes to tech support, which you or I could most definitely find. For those who do not frequent forums/sites, that isn't exactly the case. They're stuck dealing with phone supoort or other less than reasonable time consuming approaches. The great thing about offiical tech forums is they're alive with players willing to help others out, as well as in some cases staff.
For the first part, I just want to clarify, I don't doubt GW2 will be a great game, or that Anet will fulfill many of their promises, that's not what My posts are about. I'm just looking at the reality of these comments about the age old sub model, and pointing out the benefits it has offered.
Thats why I said besides support forums. Below is a list of Arenanets support resources. Looks like they certainly had most of your concerns covered. Plus I think how they banned botters makes up for rest.
Support resources
Email support - Request help from the game support team via email
Web support - Use your web browser to request help from the game support team
Guild Wars Support Forums - For help with account and technical issues; and for game, website, and forum bug reports
Guild Wars Wiki - Read articles about Guild Wars written by other players
Knowledge base - Search the official technical notes to find answers
But I was talking about mmorpgs. I could be wrong since I havent played it, but I heard GW1 is not a mmorpg. Is there any "real" mmorpg example that is a B2P and successful/good? Just curious.
Not that I know of, but this interview would suggest that it's beside the point.
PC Games: "How do you plan to do this? Building such a complex world which is shared by all players without having monthly fees?"
Strain: (laughing) "A very good question! Interestingly many people believe that the completely instantiated world was the reason for Guild Wars 1 to not need monthly fees. This is completely wrong! The existence or lack of a persistent world is totally unrelated to the running expenses which are needed to maintain an online roleplaying game."
PC Games: "What do you mean by that?"
Strain: "Really important are the innovative technologies which we developed for Guild Wars 1. They allow us to keep the running costs very low which then results in the huge advantage for the player: the absence of fees. We continue with that principle for Guild Wars 2: as soon as the game is available, we will begin our work on new content. Such content for which the player is free to decide if he wants to have it or not. Maybe that will be add-ons or complete campaigns or online-extensions with costs, we don't know. But one thing is very certain: we will again have in Guild Wars 2 the comprehensive support our fans are already familiar with!"
I see, if they say this, it must be true, which is great for Anet if they offer the same as everyone else for less $$, this time around with a title that everyone can truly call a mmorpg.
Does anyone know what this means exactly? Was it like this with GW1 and what was the content update interval aprox? I mean, there will be regular content updates under the B2P, or does this mean that additional content (patches) are going to cost money?
Just trying to form a picture how stuff are going to really work to get a better look at this P2P Vs. B2P, the info is getting new flavours constantly heh.
I see, if they say this, it must be true, which is great for Anet if they offer the same as everyone else for less $$, this time around with a title that everyone can truly call a mmorpg.
Does anyone know what this means exactly? Was it like this with GW1 and what was the content update interval aprox? I mean, there will be regular content updates under the B2P, or does this mean that additional content (patches) are going to cost money?
Just trying to form a picture how stuff are going to really work to get a better look at this P2P Vs. B2P, the info is getting new flavours constantly heh.
tl;dr: Both.
----------
They released 2 stand alone campaigns and an expansion after the initial release of Guild Wars. They also released a small bonus mission pack. All of this did and does cost money, obviously adjusted to what it's supposed to be. The expansion did cost less then the campaigns, and the bonus mission pack does cost even less.
But they also released two new areas with new bosses, a new item type (unique green weapons, opposed to the randomly generated others. Really really rare and wanted back then) and, when it was released and for quite some time a really hard dungeon with several quests and a fulminating boss like no other. This was just a few months after release.
They also introduced a small series of quests that continued the story line of the first game back then.
Later they continued to introduce new stuff with things like the "hard mode", which did not introduce new areas or similar, but provided a means to enjoy playing the old stuff again.
Distributed over the year 2010 they introduced the "War in Kryta" with a viral marketing campaign, bringing with it new areas, new enemies, new weapon sets, and continuing the story once again. They are currently in the progess of introducing the next chapter of "Guild Wars Beyond" with the "Winds of Change", being the Factions counterpart of "War in Kryta".
They probably will do a similar thing in Nightfall, the third campaign, too.
And this is all for free. I can not tell you the intervall of all those updates, and there was stuf in between, too, but as there is no sub, you are not "forced" to play all the time anyways.
They said they are not yet sure how exactly they are going to do it with Guild Wars 2, like, more expansions, more like a DLC/buying a new dungeon in the shop, or full blown campaign once a year, but they talked a bit about what they except themselves.
I also can not see where there would be a lack of support or anything. I don't see Blizzard devs or Valve or whoever posting in a fan forum, they often do not even answer threads in their own.
You also find some of the devs in the guildwarswiki irc channel, and when i had some trouble with my account it was solved quite fast, too, so i would say support is there, especially with the wiki and the guildwars support forum, and the devs are closer to their player base then most.
They have already proven their business model in the last 6+ years, whereas others are total newcomers to MMOs or to such a huge budget, or both, and yet you doubt them and not the others?
I don't think Guild Wars 2 is the second coming, they will not even be able to keep every promise ever made, but if someone showed they can do it, it's ArenaNet.
I'll wait to the day's end when the moon is high And then I'll rise with the tide with a lust for life, I'll Amass an army, and we'll harness a horde And then we'll limp across the land until we stand at the shore
Only if you buy into this hook, line and sinker. As much as this might be true, he's leaving out the part that they could not offer every service a typcial MMO company has available. Namely on the customer service side of things, which I'd guess these "innovative technologies" would in part be what they had in place for it, which has been reported to be less than stellar, even from glowing reviews of the overall game.
What? The innovate technologies he is referring to is for the servers and code not customer support, how could anyone miss that in what Jeff Strain is saying he is a programmer for the love of all that is good and holy. And in no way shape or form can anyone say what they did is less than stellar, they have had like 1 day of downtime since the servers went live in 2005. As for the customer service side I have had to use it two times since I bought guild wars and I got quick friendly replies that fixed the problem. Of course some people might have had different experiences with their customer service, but that can be said about any customer service on the face of this planet.
And honestly if I do not have a sub fee and lose in game support I really do not care. In ever MMO that I have played I always get the same copy and paste answer from in game support, oh no that is heart breaking I will not have the same conversation with in game support every time I have a problem. /sarcasm off /woohoo bye bye in game support I will not miss you ever!
Originally posted by Kuinn
Does anyone know what this means exactly? Was it like this with GW1 and what was the content update interval aprox? I mean, there will be regular content updates under the B2P, or does this mean that additional content (patches) are going to cost money?
Just trying to form a picture how stuff are going to really work to get a better look at this P2P Vs. B2P, the info is getting new flavours constantly heh.
GW1 had of course free bug patches and a few free additions to the game like sorrows furnace, war in Kryta, Heart of the North, and Winds of change. As for the time period for paid content updates GW prophecies launches on April 28, 2005 and had its first standalone expansion come out April 28, 2006 with GW Factions, a full year later. Then on October 27, 2006 the last standalone expansion was released with GW Nightfall about 6 months after Factions and a year and a half after initial release. Then the decision was made to make GW2 and a small team started working on the new Engine and the rest of ANet started working on GW Eye of the North which was released August 31, 2007. As an expansion Eye of the North cost less than the standalone updates and set the stage for GW2. So in 2 years and 4 months ANet produced 3 standalone expansions and 1 expansion to the game.
Now if we look at GW2 we know ANet team has grown in size since they first started making GW1 and its standalone expansions. With that we know at launch the team is going to be split in half where one side will make purchasable expansions and the other will be producing live content updates for free. So with that Knowledge we can guess there will be more live content updates since there will be a larger team than GW1 had. And with another rough guess we might be getting purchasable expansion ever 9 months to a year with cosmetic items added to the shop of course. The reason I am guess every 9 months is because GW2 is on a way larger scale then the first GW, so it theory it should take more time to make additional content. My guess is that each expansion will add in a new Elder Dragon with roughly the same amount of content as the initial launch of GW2. With maybe a small expansions every once in a while to add in small areas of the map, with the amount of money ANet made during the first two years of GW1 I do not see them having a problem funding this as long as the game is good (since GW1 was making more than City of heroes).
Only if you buy into this hook, line and sinker. As much as this might be true, he's leaving out the part that they could not offer every service a typcial MMO company has available. Namely on the customer service side of things, which I'd guess these "innovative technologies" would in part be what they had in place for it, which has been reported to be less than stellar, even from glowing reviews of the overall game.
What? The innovate technologies he is referring to is for the servers and code
I was referring to the code in place to handle CS, bug reports and things like that. As far as no one saying they did less than stellar just look at the recent video review here, specifically the section at the end where he brings up support and how it's handled in GW1.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Only if you buy into this hook, line and sinker. As much as this might be true, he's leaving out the part that they could not offer every service a typcial MMO company has available. Namely on the customer service side of things, which I'd guess these "innovative technologies" would in part be what they had in place for it, which has been reported to be less than stellar, even from glowing reviews of the overall game.
What? The innovate technologies he is referring to is for the servers and code
I was referring to the code in place to handle CS, bug reports and things like that. As far as no one saying they did less than stellar just look at the recent video review here, specifically the section at the end where he brings up support and how it's handled in GW1.
It's not even worth it to look through that 10 minute video to find out what one random person has to say about customer service. I'm tired of looking at this argument. Maybe when a company actually codes their game well and alpha tests it for 3+ years so that it isn't a broken, buggy piece of shit they figure it's a waste of money to have in game customer support.
If not having in game customer support is such a dealbreaker for you, don't play.
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it."-Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007
Comments
My question did anyone actually say DLC is the same as a monthly fee?
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
But I was talking about mmorpgs. I could be wrong since I havent played it, but I heard GW1 is not a mmorpg. Is there any "real" mmorpg example that is a B2P and successful/good? Just curious.
ANet doesn't release free expansions.
You pay for the new content.
This is better as it incentivizes ANet themselve to make an expansion that is actually good rather than a simple continuation of having people on the progression hook .
Also companies like SOE charge for expansions AND lie to you and say your sub goes to maintenance. The ANet devs are just honest enough and respect their players enough to believe we have basic math skills to be able to figure out that maintainance doesn't cost that much.
Of course it doesn't, a big part of it is profit, I think that is fairly obvious. Though it does cost more than people around here like to admit. SOE is also one of the worst companies to mention in this debate. They're as greedy as they come, not to mention they're a company who offers little in the way of quality products or customer service.
Which also again brings up the fact with GW1 Anet had to skimp in the customer service area because they had no budget for it. Which meant no live in-game support, slow response to issues etc...
Will that be the case with GW2? I really don't know, it is an area of concern for me though.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Not that I know of, but this interview would suggest that it's beside the point.
PC Games: "How do you plan to do this? Building such a complex world which is shared by all players without having monthly fees?"
Strain: (laughing) "A very good question! Interestingly many people believe that the completely instantiated world was the reason for Guild Wars 1 to not need monthly fees. This is completely wrong! The existence or lack of a persistent world is totally unrelated to the running expenses which are needed to maintain an online roleplaying game."
PC Games: "What do you mean by that?"
Strain: "Really important are the innovative technologies which we developed for Guild Wars 1. They allow us to keep the running costs very low which then results in the huge advantage for the player: the absence of fees. We continue with that principle for Guild Wars 2: as soon as the game is available, we will begin our work on new content. Such content for which the player is free to decide if he wants to have it or not. Maybe that will be add-ons or complete campaigns or online-extensions with costs, we don't know. But one thing is very certain: we will again have in Guild Wars 2 the comprehensive support our fans are already familiar with!"
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it." -Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007
@Distopia
What you're cleverly not pointing out however is that almost every big subscription MMORPG out there pockets subscription money as profit anyway, and only a few, small, indie developers actually put it back into the game. WoW had atrocious customer support, so did Everquest II, and LOTRO wasn't any better when it had a subscription either. Having a subscription does not necesssarily make for good customer support.
What you have to understand is that there are a lot of people playing a game and regardless of the game or how much money goes into CS, you'd still have to wait a while under any conditions. What I did find however was that whilst slow, the ArenaNet CS guys were pretty nice. Unlike in one subscription game where I sent a bug report ticket and was insulted over a tell.
This right here.
Only if you buy into this hook, line and sinker. As much as this might be true, he's leaving out the part that they could not offer every service a typcial MMO company has available. Namely on the customer service side of things, which I'd guess these "innovative technologies" would in part be what they had in place for it, which has been reported to be less than stellar, even from glowing reviews of the overall game.
I think we're already seeing something they've opted out of doing for budget reasons. Forums, and what goes along with them, a community team. Where's our relay with the devs? Guru?
IMO all of his statements about this are a fancy way of saying, we've cut corners.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
I will not deny this what so ever, as I said earlier SOE is a horrble company to use as an example, as they are greedy bastages. My argument is more or less coming from the angle of companies like CCP (in the past ofc), or other companies that grew from and along with this genre, not these corps that have been swimming in money all along.
I would never use Acti-Blizz or companies like that to argue this point, that would be a futile effort, they're all about profit and lowest common denominators, they don't care what you experience as long as you'll pay.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
I just love how the only possible explanation always seems to come back to "Arenanet is lieing". I will say this much. If that is the case, it will be a first for them. Arenanet is one of the few mmo developers with any genuine credibility. Something they seem to realize and try very hard to maintain. It is the very reason why they never talk about features that are not currently present in the game. On the rare occasion they have made changes differing from previous pronouncements, they have been very clear as to the reasons why and i have always been rather satisfied and even impressed with there reasoning.
People on this forum who try to play the part of the cynic when it comes to GW2 are always surprised by the "Blind Devotion" people have for Arenanet despite there having only made GW1. The honesty with the players is the reason why. We give them credibility we would be reluctant to give other developers because Arenanet has genuinely earned it. They dont treat the players like we dont matter. The seem to treat us with a genuine level of respect as fellow gamers and that is rare to see in such a profit driven industry, and i feel we do them a diservice by not reciprocating that respect.
Maybe some of us have taken the bait but if GW2 comes out and i's as good as it looks, then everything he said will make most people question the developers that are charging the subscription fee. Plus it's a little unfair to compare features from a game that they have openly said they would greatly reduce the focus on in order to work on GW2. I believe they made that announcement in 2007. Also we could bring up the extended experience that they have talked about that will be providing some features not yet present in MMO's.
BTW, the forums is a week arguement. They really don't provide much of a benefit. One could argue that the community and other sites do a much better job. Lets take WoW for an example, if you want to look up something about the game or a build, would you go to the forums or would you go to WoWhead, WoWiki, Elitist Jerks, etc.
Besides a support forum, forums are just for people like you and me that enjoy rambling about nonsense.
No I didn't say he was lying, not at all, I even acknowledged what he said may be true. If anything went wrong here, it certainly wasn't a lie, it was poor questioning on behalf of the interviewer. Had he asked "what sacrifices have you had to make in order to offer this service? ", we may have been given a completely different answer.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
you mad? arenanet charges you only for the game and you are concerned? blizzard charges you for content updates + monthly fee, why is nobody concerned about that?
They've opted out of discussion forums because they don't want to have official discussion forums in favor of wanting fans to come up with their own sites. They do have official support forums.
As far as customer service is concerned, what exactly is lacking? They fix bugs all the time. Unlike other P2P MMOs, their servers are NEVER DOWN. Their technical support is integrated with the rest of NCSoft's, and in my experience the response is pretty rapid. Not that I've ever had an in-game problem (my problem was with NCSoft's store website).
Have you ever had a problem in GW1 that wasn't addressed? Or are you just trying to stir up trouble because you can't wrap your brain around the idea that GW1 made more money as a B2P than it ever would have as a P2P?
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it." -Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007
They have every incentive to keep you playing for the purchase of the packs and other content. If you do not play you will not buy them. I suppose the frequency of such content would coincide with their needing cash perhaps.
Not exactly, yes forums are abused there's no question there, they may be far more work and require far more than they're worth. However they do offer benefits as well, especially when a mistake has occured in development. That wouldn't be their only benefit either. Especially when it comes to tech support, which you or I could most definitely find. For those who do not frequent forums/sites, that isn't exactly the case. They're stuck dealing with phone supoort or other less than reasonable time consuming approaches. The great thing about offiical tech forums is they're alive with players willing to help others out, as well as in some cases staff.
For the first part, I just want to clarify, I don't doubt GW2 will be a great game, or that Anet will fulfill many of their promises, that's not what My posts are about. I'm just looking at the reality of these comments about the age old sub model, and pointing out the benefits it has offered.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
How am I stirring up trouble?
As far as what is lacking, live support, as in, in the game.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Seriously, they offer a new model of MMO where you do not pay a monthly sub and you expect them to offer every service that a sub-based company would provide? I'm curious if you expect to get genuine woodgrain panels in your Ford Focus like you do in a BMW?
GW is run on a totally different financial model, of course it will not be able to offer all the same services as a sub-based MMO would. WHY would you expect all the same services and level of support when you do NOT pay a monthly fee?
Wouldn't that be my overall point, as in don't expect it? I surely don't...
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Thats why I said besides support forums. Below is a list of Arenanets support resources. Looks like they certainly had most of your concerns covered. Plus I think how they banned botters makes up for rest.
Support resources
Email support - Request help from the game support team via email
Web support - Use your web browser to request help from the game support team
Guild Wars Support Forums - For help with account and technical issues; and for game, website, and forum bug reports
Guild Wars Wiki - Read articles about Guild Wars written by other players
Knowledge base - Search the official technical notes to find answers
Account Security - Tips to keep your account safe from thefts.
I see, if they say this, it must be true, which is great for Anet if they offer the same as everyone else for less $$, this time around with a title that everyone can truly call a mmorpg.
Does anyone know what this means exactly? Was it like this with GW1 and what was the content update interval aprox? I mean, there will be regular content updates under the B2P, or does this mean that additional content (patches) are going to cost money?
Just trying to form a picture how stuff are going to really work to get a better look at this P2P Vs. B2P, the info is getting new flavours constantly heh.
tl;dr: Both.
----------
They released 2 stand alone campaigns and an expansion after the initial release of Guild Wars. They also released a small bonus mission pack. All of this did and does cost money, obviously adjusted to what it's supposed to be. The expansion did cost less then the campaigns, and the bonus mission pack does cost even less.
But they also released two new areas with new bosses, a new item type (unique green weapons, opposed to the randomly generated others. Really really rare and wanted back then) and, when it was released and for quite some time a really hard dungeon with several quests and a fulminating boss like no other. This was just a few months after release.
They also introduced a small series of quests that continued the story line of the first game back then.
Later they continued to introduce new stuff with things like the "hard mode", which did not introduce new areas or similar, but provided a means to enjoy playing the old stuff again.
Distributed over the year 2010 they introduced the "War in Kryta" with a viral marketing campaign, bringing with it new areas, new enemies, new weapon sets, and continuing the story once again. They are currently in the progess of introducing the next chapter of "Guild Wars Beyond" with the "Winds of Change", being the Factions counterpart of "War in Kryta".
They probably will do a similar thing in Nightfall, the third campaign, too.
And this is all for free. I can not tell you the intervall of all those updates, and there was stuf in between, too, but as there is no sub, you are not "forced" to play all the time anyways.
They said they are not yet sure how exactly they are going to do it with Guild Wars 2, like, more expansions, more like a DLC/buying a new dungeon in the shop, or full blown campaign once a year, but they talked a bit about what they except themselves.
I also can not see where there would be a lack of support or anything. I don't see Blizzard devs or Valve or whoever posting in a fan forum, they often do not even answer threads in their own.
You also find some of the devs in the guildwarswiki irc channel, and when i had some trouble with my account it was solved quite fast, too, so i would say support is there, especially with the wiki and the guildwars support forum, and the devs are closer to their player base then most.
They have already proven their business model in the last 6+ years, whereas others are total newcomers to MMOs or to such a huge budget, or both, and yet you doubt them and not the others?
I don't think Guild Wars 2 is the second coming, they will not even be able to keep every promise ever made, but if someone showed they can do it, it's ArenaNet.
I'll wait to the day's end when the moon is high
And then I'll rise with the tide with a lust for life, I'll
Amass an army, and we'll harness a horde
And then we'll limp across the land until we stand at the shore
What? The innovate technologies he is referring to is for the servers and code not customer support, how could anyone miss that in what Jeff Strain is saying he is a programmer for the love of all that is good and holy. And in no way shape or form can anyone say what they did is less than stellar, they have had like 1 day of downtime since the servers went live in 2005. As for the customer service side I have had to use it two times since I bought guild wars and I got quick friendly replies that fixed the problem. Of course some people might have had different experiences with their customer service, but that can be said about any customer service on the face of this planet.
And honestly if I do not have a sub fee and lose in game support I really do not care. In ever MMO that I have played I always get the same copy and paste answer from in game support, oh no that is heart breaking I will not have the same conversation with in game support every time I have a problem. /sarcasm off /woohoo bye bye in game support I will not miss you ever!
GW1 had of course free bug patches and a few free additions to the game like sorrows furnace, war in Kryta, Heart of the North, and Winds of change. As for the time period for paid content updates GW prophecies launches on April 28, 2005 and had its first standalone expansion come out April 28, 2006 with GW Factions, a full year later. Then on October 27, 2006 the last standalone expansion was released with GW Nightfall about 6 months after Factions and a year and a half after initial release. Then the decision was made to make GW2 and a small team started working on the new Engine and the rest of ANet started working on GW Eye of the North which was released August 31, 2007. As an expansion Eye of the North cost less than the standalone updates and set the stage for GW2. So in 2 years and 4 months ANet produced 3 standalone expansions and 1 expansion to the game.
Now if we look at GW2 we know ANet team has grown in size since they first started making GW1 and its standalone expansions. With that we know at launch the team is going to be split in half where one side will make purchasable expansions and the other will be producing live content updates for free. So with that Knowledge we can guess there will be more live content updates since there will be a larger team than GW1 had. And with another rough guess we might be getting purchasable expansion ever 9 months to a year with cosmetic items added to the shop of course. The reason I am guess every 9 months is because GW2 is on a way larger scale then the first GW, so it theory it should take more time to make additional content. My guess is that each expansion will add in a new Elder Dragon with roughly the same amount of content as the initial launch of GW2. With maybe a small expansions every once in a while to add in small areas of the map, with the amount of money ANet made during the first two years of GW1 I do not see them having a problem funding this as long as the game is good (since GW1 was making more than City of heroes).
I was referring to the code in place to handle CS, bug reports and things like that. As far as no one saying they did less than stellar just look at the recent video review here, specifically the section at the end where he brings up support and how it's handled in GW1.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
It's not even worth it to look through that 10 minute video to find out what one random person has to say about customer service. I'm tired of looking at this argument. Maybe when a company actually codes their game well and alpha tests it for 3+ years so that it isn't a broken, buggy piece of shit they figure it's a waste of money to have in game customer support.
If not having in game customer support is such a dealbreaker for you, don't play.
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it." -Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007