Simply put - the price reflects what the market will bear. People are entertained enough by whatever mmo world they play to feel it is worth a sub fee.
We could turn the question around and ask, would GW2 succeed if it had a sub fee? Or another way of putting it;
"MMOs with subscription fees....is GW2 missing a profitable opportunity?
Simply put - the price reflects what the market will bear. People are entertained enough by whatever mmo world they play to feel it is worth a sub fee.
We could turn the question around and ask, would GW2 succeed if it had a sub fee? Or another way of putting it;
"MMOs with subscription fees....is GW2 missing a profitable opportunity?
I don't think they are.
GW1's popularity was mainly due to the fact it was an 'MMO' without a sub payment. This was way before F2P was popularized in the western market.
It was a good way to get their product out there in the market, build up brand etc.
With GW2, I think the numbers came out that the sales lost if they went P2P was higher than if they stuck with B2P.
Gdemami - Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
Lol not sure what the problem is here if you like f2p go for it if you don't well don't buy it.
personaly i wont be buying it ,I did not like gw1 and from the looks of it i won't like gw2,If i liked the game would i still buy it sure,would i pay a sub if i liked the game sure i would.
FULL access to ALL content (and, yes, Fluff IS content) that is EARNABLE by PLAYING the game (in theory).
So, basically, the stuff GW2 will provide you without a sub fee.[ In theory]
Interesting.
Remains to be seen whether or not ArenaNet can operate a AAA MMORPG on a no -sub model.
As ofhers have said, if they do pull it off, it's likely to change the landscape of MMO payment models significantly.
Also GW2 will probally have a shop and yeah you might not have to buy from it but to keep up with other people you will probally ahve to spend at least $10 a month or somthing.. so most people will end up paying the same amount anyway each month..
Why do you even bother posting if you're not even informed about the game's cash shop... For god sake! THE DIRECTOR OF ANET SAID IT WILL BE PURELY COSMETIC! Noticed the words PURELY and COSMETIC there? The same thing as they have in GW1 now, the same freaking model is going in use for GW2... If GW1 managed to be alive for so long and it provided enough money (with some minor donations from "the fond for the dark days") for GW2 to be developed for so many years (YES! They used the funds from GW1 to fund GW2 dev from the beginning since they had no seperate staff at that time [since they didn't even know if they gonna do the game or not])... Please, try to be informed if you're already bullshiting about the game's mechanic of making money...
Actually, you're the one who is uninformed. If you'll read back through the thread, you'll find a lovely little quote about the cash shop, including the possibility of charging for additional stories, dungeons, maps, and there's even mention of XP potions. Sounds like a little bit more than "purely cosmetic". How ironic that you mention more than once how uninformed someone is, when you clearly have no idea what you're talking about.
"
Eric Flannum sent us a note to clarify a couple of things about their plans for Guild Wars 2 post-release content:
“We haven’t decided on what exactly we are or aren’t going to offer for money post-release. We’re open to whatever our players seem most interested in. If, after release, you guys would like more story content, more dungeons, more events, more maps or whatever, it’s something that we have to consider because ultimately making you happy is what makes us successful. Whether we release that in DLC (like the bonus mission packs in GW1) or whether we do it through expansions (Like Eye of the North) is yet to be determined. As to whether or not there are going to be items like XP boosts available in the in game store, I can only reiterate what we’ve said before (and will continue to say,) that we’ll release details on it when they are available"
Dude, I don't need quotations from what he said... I KNOW EVERYTHING what he said and EVERYTHING anyone of the devs EVER said about the game. I'm playing GW1 and there isn't a day which goes by without me checking every possible GW site to see if there's something new on the topic... So don't act like you know something I don't. You could watch the videos where he talks about the exact same topic and see what he REALLY is talking about. Do you even know how does the cash shop in GW1 look like or what kind of DLC he talks about when he mentions Bonus mission packs or when he says like Eye of the North? Do you know that this isn't different than any other SUBSCRIPTION GAME out there? He's saying that if we would want anything new they'd pack it up in a new expansion and give it to us, simple as that. And the only difference is: you buy the expansion but you don't pay the subscription. And I know devs said they will keep adding new dynamic events and contents to the game so it will never get boring.
If it's of any help, GW1 didn't need cash shop for quite some time, and it's not expensive if you really want to enjoy additional story (but with the content GW1 and all it's expansions have it's impossible to pass everything - i'm playing for few years now and I still have contents which I didn't do yet).
Yet after this post, he's the one providing proof in a quote, and you're the one giving us nothing. No one is going to believe you simply because you say to, and no one is going to to believe you know everything about something simply because you bitch and moan that this guy doesn't believe you. You're not entitled to respect simply because you believe it. You have no reputation here.
FULL access to ALL content (and, yes, Fluff IS content) that is EARNABLE by PLAYING the game (in theory).
So, basically, the stuff GW2 will provide you without a sub fee.[ In theory]
Interesting.
Remains to be seen whether or not ArenaNet can operate a AAA MMORPG on a no -sub model.
As ofhers have said, if they do pull it off, it's likely to change the landscape of MMO payment models significantly.
Also GW2 will probally have a shop and yeah you might not have to buy from it but to keep up with other people you will probally ahve to spend at least $10 a month or somthing.. so most people will end up paying the same amount anyway each month..
Why do you even bother posting if you're not even informed about the game's cash shop... For god sake! THE DIRECTOR OF ANET SAID IT WILL BE PURELY COSMETIC! Noticed the words PURELY and COSMETIC there? The same thing as they have in GW1 now, the same freaking model is going in use for GW2... If GW1 managed to be alive for so long and it provided enough money (with some minor donations from "the fond for the dark days") for GW2 to be developed for so many years (YES! They used the funds from GW1 to fund GW2 dev from the beginning since they had no seperate staff at that time [since they didn't even know if they gonna do the game or not])... Please, try to be informed if you're already bullshiting about the game's mechanic of making money...
Actually, you're the one who is uninformed. If you'll read back through the thread, you'll find a lovely little quote about the cash shop, including the possibility of charging for additional stories, dungeons, maps, and there's even mention of XP potions. Sounds like a little bit more than "purely cosmetic". How ironic that you mention more than once how uninformed someone is, when you clearly have no idea what you're talking about.
"
Eric Flannum sent us a note to clarify a couple of things about their plans for Guild Wars 2 post-release content:
“We haven’t decided on what exactly we are or aren’t going to offer for money post-release. We’re open to whatever our players seem most interested in. If, after release, you guys would like more story content, more dungeons, more events, more maps or whatever, it’s something that we have to consider because ultimately making you happy is what makes us successful. Whether we release that in DLC (like the bonus mission packs in GW1) or whether we do it through expansions (Like Eye of the North) is yet to be determined. As to whether or not there are going to be items like XP boosts available in the in game store, I can only reiterate what we’ve said before (and will continue to say,) that we’ll release details on it when they are available"
Dude, I don't need quotations from what he said... I KNOW EVERYTHING what he said and EVERYTHING anyone of the devs EVER said about the game. I'm playing GW1 and there isn't a day which goes by without me checking every possible GW site to see if there's something new on the topic... So don't act like you know something I don't. You could watch the videos where he talks about the exact same topic and see what he REALLY is talking about. Do you even know how does the cash shop in GW1 look like or what kind of DLC he talks about when he mentions Bonus mission packs or when he says like Eye of the North? Do you know that this isn't different than any other SUBSCRIPTION GAME out there? He's saying that if we would want anything new they'd pack it up in a new expansion and give it to us, simple as that. And the only difference is: you buy the expansion but you don't pay the subscription. And I know devs said they will keep adding new dynamic events and contents to the game so it will never get boring.
If it's of any help, GW1 didn't need cash shop for quite some time, and it's not expensive if you really want to enjoy additional story (but with the content GW1 and all it's expansions have it's impossible to pass everything - i'm playing for few years now and I still have contents which I didn't do yet).
Yet after this post, he's the one providing proof in a quote, and you're the one giving us nothing. No one is going to believe you simply because you say to, and no one is going to to believe you know everything about something simply because you bitch and moan that this guy doesn't believe you. You're not entitled to respect simply because you believe it. You have no reputation here.
Actually he is misinterpeting the quote so it isn't a very good use of the quote but you are entirely correct wIth the rest of your statement.
Yet after this post, he's the one providing proof in a quote, and you're the one giving us nothing. No one is going to believe you simply because you say to, and no one is going to to believe you know everything about something simply because you bitch and moan that this guy doesn't believe you. You're not entitled to respect simply because you believe it. You have no reputation here.
Oh yeah he needs to provide proof because the people in this thread are the ultimate knowledge of what is going to be in the GW2 store. Oh and they are the ultimate source of knowledge on ANet and NCsoft and the arrangement they agreed to when NCSoft purchased them. Like the comment that dungeons will definitely be in the store, yeah like there was no backlash from the community on it when that was mentioned months ago. Now does that mean there never will be dungeons in the store no it doesn’t, but it does say the fans are against the idea! But apparently with that quote it means that there will be dungeons no matter what! LOL Yeah that quote proves everything people are saying about the store in this thread is true; here is a quote “my name is hypocrisy”!
As for a quote providing proof of a cosmetic store in GW2 (Since apparently no one here can do there own research before they post their opinion):
Now this is just two of dozens upon dozens of interviews where ANet says the same thing over and over again. Of course then people might have to do some research and not believe all the crap written in forums. So with that said there is only two possible outcomes here ANet is telling the truth or like most of the people in this thread are suggesting ANet is a bunch of liars. I know which side of that possibilities I am going to choice I guess now you get to decide which side you are going to believe.
Originally posted by WSIMike
Do you (or anyone else for that matter) seriously think box sales alone cover bandwidth, employee payroll, insurance, overhead (rent, etc) and all the other day-to-day and month-to-month expenses that go along with running a company which, for an even moderately large company can add up very quickly could be covered by box-sales alone... especially as a MMO gets beyond its first few months and its new sales drop off?
And before someone brings up "Guild Wars!" as an example... I'll simply state it again: GW1 has a Cash Shop. ANet is not surviving on box sales alone.
Well besides for more servers and bandwidth gaming companies have been doing the rest for years on box sales. And if anyone is willing to do a little research bandwidth and servers are the smallest amount out of everything you mentioned. So it makes me wonder how the companies in the 90s turned a profit with box sales if it is impossible without subscriptions. After all it is not like those companies had to pay for rent (overhead), insurance, employee payroll, and other day to day and month to month expenses…oh they did. So that must mean in order to turn a profit now with the cost of servers and bandwidth the only new expense added they need subscriptions.
As for the especially as a MMO gets beyond its first few months and its new sales drop of, oh my god they might have to make a expansion to increase their profit margin again. Oh the horror a gaming company making content to make money, this is blasphemy no company should have to actually make something and sell it to customers to make a profit. This is two mindboggling to even consider MMO companies would actual have to produces content in order to make money like all other game companies, say it ain’t so Joe!
Yet after this post, he's the one providing proof in a quote, and you're the one giving us nothing. No one is going to believe you simply because you say to, and no one is going to to believe you know everything about something simply because you bitch and moan that this guy doesn't believe you. You're not entitled to respect simply because you believe it. You have no reputation here.
Oh yeah he needs to provide proof because the people in this thread are the ultimate knowledge of what is going to be in the GW2 store. Oh and they are the ultimate source of knowledge on ANet and NCsoft and the arrangement they agreed to when NCSoft purchased them. Like the comment that dungeons will definitely be in the store, yeah like there was no backlash from the community on it when that was mentioned months ago. Now does that mean there never will be dungeons in the store no it doesn’t, but it does say the fans are against the idea! But apparently with that quote it means that there will be dungeons no matter what! LOL Yeah that quote proves everything people are saying about the store in this thread is true; here is a quote “my name is hypocrisy”!
I was more arguing against the guy's shitty attitude than about what will or will not be in GW2's cash shop. Way to miss the point.
But thanks for being more helpful by posting the links.
It isn't 'greed' per se, but a need/want to make money and a profit.
I think people OFTEN miss the fact that Corporations are made by People. People want and need money. To cover expenses, and to have fun. I know for a fact that if I get a job, I want to make as much as possible so that I can have enough to cover basic living expenses, AS WELL as making more to spend on hobbies, and extra 'fun' things. Thats what people, and ultimately companies/corporations do.
That being said, I pay $15 a month for WoW for:
- Content, which gets updated fairly often. WoW, so far, has added new content every 3-6 months, if not shorter via Patches. And every 1-1.5 years for expansions. Now, in said expansions we get new zones, new classes, new abilities, HUNDREDS of new quests, new achievements, new mobs, new pet options, new gear, new dungeons/raids/bosses. Granted we don't get ALL of this at once, we do get a lot of new stuff each patch/expansion that a full team of developers spend MONTHS on creating and thinking of. I pay to play through all this. You can argue that the game is crap, but compare it to other F2P games which are really just clones of each other with, in my experience, lack-luster content updates. We even get PTR's to beta test patched before they come out.
- Lore; I put Lore seperate from Content because, personally, I LOVE the lore of Warcraft. It's VERY extensive and deep. You can't just throw anything in and call it Lore, it takes time and thought to make a good backstory/story for a video game series.
- Stable Servers; I've hardly ever seen WoW down outside of their weekly maintanence.
- Support; WoW does weekly maintenance, and fixes problems relatively fast. If an encounter is bugged, they work on getting it fixed and offer patches or hotfixes, most of the time we don't notice them cause they don't have to tak the game offline to apply them, which interrupts play time. They have GM's that help with problems, In-Game AND via the Forums, AND representatives available when you call in for support. They might be a bit slow, but its a game with at least 9-10million active players, thats a lot of traffic, expect times when they're busy or you can't get through with a call. At least it isn't all outsourced. We even get regular posts on the state of things from the dev's via Dev Watercoolers, Ghostcrawlers articles/blogs, and patch F.A.Qs.
- Community: WoW might have it's idiots that play, but EVERY game has them. No matter where you go you'll ncounter retards. But that doesn't mean the community as a whole is bad.
85 Levels of content that you pretty much HAVE to play through with multiple characters to xperience all f it as it was meant, meaning that one play-through to 85 isn't going to let you experience all of the content, unlike other games I've playd that were F2P where all classes/races get the same starter zones/quests, and have no real backstory to said class/race/zone.
I pay also to pay the Dev's I mentioned above for taking their time to do something that I, an end-user, have enjoyed for (what...) 7? years now, and from the looks of it, many more to come.
I played GW1 because it was free, it was funa nd cool, but that all died off eventually cause it IMO, didn't have the content WoW did. It didn't entice me to keep coming back. I pretty much set it and forget it.
We'll argue on and on about F2P and B2P games, and people will claim, as usual, that every new F2P game to be released will be a B2P/Sub killer. The game will be released, and 6 mnths to a year down the line, you wont hear hardly as much about it.
The reason we still pay $15 a month is because it WORKS. I'm not saying F2P doesn't, but if it ain't broke, don't 'fix' it. $15 can be a lot or a little to some people, especially now-a-days, but .50cent a day to play isn't much. You can find that walking on the street. Some of you are really over-exaggerating about it being a lot. And honestly, if you're complaining that you shuldn't have to pay 15 per account for 4 people in a family, maybe you and your family need to cancel subscriptions and just go outside for free, lol. Or not play a sub game at all, cause I'm pretty sure F2P has LONG been an option.
Pay to Play = Buy the box in order to have the right to rent the game. Stop paying rent, no more access to the game.
Buy to Play = Buy the box and own the game. Play it when ever you want, you own it.
Even if there is a cash shop that offers fluff and maybe even some content, as long as you don't need to buy anything from the shop to be competitive with other players and enjoy the game you purchased, your purchase is not devalued by the existence of the cash shop.
If the GW2 cash shop does offer some sort of content, people will have to decide if the price is worth the amount of content being sold. GW2 will also feature free content updates between expansions. How much free content do most P2P MMOs offer between expansions, to justify the monthly fee? Not much and if you don't like raiding, usually pretty much nothing at all.
Well besides for more servers and bandwidth gaming companies have been doing the rest for years on box sales. And if anyone is willing to do a little research bandwidth and servers are the smallest amount out of everything you mentioned. So it makes me wonder how the companies in the 90s turned a profit with box sales if it is impossible without subscriptions. After all it is not like those companies had to pay for rent (overhead), insurance, employee payroll, and other day to day and month to month expenses…oh they did. So that must mean in order to turn a profit now with the cost of servers and bandwidth the only new expense added they need subscriptions.
As for the especially as a MMO gets beyond its first few months and its new sales drop of, oh my god they might have to make a expansion to increase their profit margin again. Oh the horror a gaming company making content to make money, this is blasphemy no company should have to actually make something and sell it to customers to make a profit. This is two mindboggling to even consider MMO companies would actual have to produces content in order to make money like all other game companies, say it ain’t so Joe!
The thing is that servers and bandwidth were expensive in 96 & 97 at the release of Meridian 59, The Realm and Ultima Online. That is why the P2P model was invented. Bandwidth and server costs have been reduced to almost nothing since then, that is why so many FPS games can afford to have their own servers nowadays without monthly fees. In the 90s players hosted the serversthemselves instead, but it tends to reduce the ping and make cheating easier.
So there was actually good reasons behind the P2P cost not that long ago, but can you honestly say that if you were Morhaime or Smedley, would you suddenly cut the monthly fees just out of kindness? I doubt it.
Wow was actually originally meant to be B2P as well, but Blizzards suits thought it was a bad idea, which lead to many of the original dev team quit including Jeff Strain, Wows first lead designer and the guy who perusaded Blizz to make a MMO in the first place.
B2P do have one big disadvantage: You really need to sell a lot of copies fast to get in money. Companies like SOE can run games with few players like Vanguard forever, while they slowly get their investment back even if it never sold as they hoped it would, but for that they needed to cut down the dev crew to close to zero. If VG would have been B2P it would hqave been gone a long time ago.
But B2P games tends to sell more than P2P games, and are very popular gifts.
Intersting, looking through a lot of the posts people have either a) not read or listened to what Anet developrs have said b) Not watched any or read anything on gameplay, content and endgame c) all became anet developers and know everything on the development on MMO's and how the company ticks, d) Have become bussiness executives without any knowledge whatsoever or figures, charts, graphs, evidence of any sort to back up their claims to all the assumptions made.
Not bad considering most of the opiniated are either still at school or out of work layabouts who sit and play games all day or troll MMORPG.com. And yes that statement ironicly is an assumption.
The greater the subscription fee or box cost I pay, the most rational expectations I would have for the company are these (not neccesarily exclusive, may or may not be inclusive):
greater percentage of profits earned, provides an incentive to the company to stay longer in the industry
more financial resources to invest in new MMO investment projects
provides an incentive to encourage innovation and improvement for the MMO genre for the company
more attractive incentives to attract and retain intellectual talent within the company
more dividends paid out to shareholders of the company to encourage them to invest in the company further for future growth
Whenever you are really bored and don't wanna play an MMO game, go to: http://librivox.org/
all those lines like pay subs to play is the only option make me laugh out loud.
I have never payed subs and will never pay. Why? only m***ns can pay subs. Its like you buy one game every month again and again :-D see how it is ridiculous? :-D go to store and buy modern warfare 12times! :-D :-D :-D so you can play it every month :-D LOL :-D and guess what? that companys survivng pretty well even making profit! :-D
Its understandable if you are kid with plenty of time. You can easily fall for this brainwash "pay subs to play" especially when there arent enough good games (MMOs). If you are adult its unreasonable to pay for gaming time if you can play max 3-4hours a week. Yeah from 99% 2-3hours if wife is in good mood you have no friends, relatives, kids, pets, hobbies, job, etc.
Thats why i love guild wars adult concept. Im GW player for almost 5 years and will come back because i can play whenever i want. I bought the game and i can have year pause and then come back in 3 am after nightmare for 30min, do quest or two and go to bed again. And theyre adding new content for free. Yesterday the new winds of change part 2 pack was added :-D :-D :-D even the GW 2 is coming they add new stuff in their 5-6years old game :-D im just rolling on the floor laughing everytime ppl start talking about pay subs to play is the only option :-D arenanet is not scratching their asses while kids pay like mad company like blizzard.
I read something about how they are going to start charging more for the internet some providers are doing this and getting resisted in Canada and England. Don't recall where I read this wish I could go get the link but apparently the internet is not as large as we think and we are perhaps soon going to come to a point where bandwidth will start to cost a lot of money again like it did before.
If they introduce legislation like they intend to do in Canada in other places then we might not exactly be in a position to continue getting free servers. Just a thought is all. Ahh here it is....
"Canadians have been faced with deteriorating bandwidth caps for years now, but a recent decision by countries telecommunications regulator has put the final nail in the coffin for heavy users. Most of the countries large established Cable and DSL providers have been offering caps that range anywhere from 25-80GB for quite some time now, but those in search higher limits have always had the option to turn to the smaller ISP’s which offered higher or unlimited plans to differentiate themselves from the competition.
Last week however, the CRTC sided with Bell Canada who asked the regulator to implement the same caps on smaller wholesale customers, which essentially ends the era of unlimited bandwidth in Canada. To put this in perspective, a typical 5Mbps plan from a DSL reseller in the Toronto area cost about $40 for unlimited service as of last week, a plan which has been replaced today by a $32 package which grants a mere 25GB per month.
According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, Canada joins Australia and New Zealand as one of three member countries where unlimited Internet service is practically impossible to find, and a lack of competition means this won’t be getting better anytime soon. Bandwidth caps in the US haven’t yet reached this level of oppression, but it’s the start of a disturbing trend that could very well make its way across the border eventually. Canadians who wish to fight the decision should check out the Open Media petition which, at last count, was over 137,000 strong. "
Does anyone think if the USA introduces measures like this would the developers who are relying on the unlimited bandwidth so far enjoyed be in any position to continue to operate sans charging.
- Content - GW2 will be updated after release with free content updates...additional dynamic events, more gear sets, etc as well as paid expansions just like any P2P game.
- Lore - GW2's lore is extensive, and will provide much more visceral and innovative ways of experiencing that lore (personal story, dynamic events, extensive voice acting, facilitating role-play)
- Stable Servers - Check
- Support - Check - ArenaNet's balancing and bug fixes have continued through all the years of GW1, they will offer the same support and account services as any other MMORPG.
- Community - Saying that community is one of the things a subscription pays for has been debunked several times already in this thread. GW2 will offer much more encouragment and incentive to play together with other players and form new relationships than WoW ever has throughout the leveling curve, and GW2 won't force you into an exclusive clique (guild raid instances) exclusively for endgame content like WoW does. Due to this, and the fact that communities are formed based on the GAME, not the payment model (there are plenty of P2P MMORPGs with terrible overall communities in terms of maturity and longevity, and WoW is one of them) will lead to GW2 having a much better community than WoW, and they'll do it without a sub fee.
85 Levels of content that you pretty much HAVE to play through with multiple characters to xperience - GW2 will have 80 levels of content, including multiple branching dungeons and personal story variations which can only be played with multiple characters.
We'll argue on and on about F2P and B2P games, and people will claim, as usual, that every new F2P game to be released will be a B2P/Sub killer. The game will be released, and 6 mnths to a year down the line, you wont hear hardly as much about it.
The reason we still pay $15 a month is because it WORKS.
GW2 will offer everything you mentioned and more without a subscription fee.
So you believe six months after GW2's release, nobody will be talking about it? I hope you like your words with ketchup.
The only thing $15 a month works for is giving the game company more of your money for no reason. The whole point of this discussion and the article in the OP was to show that you're getting LESS because of the sub fee, not more.
If the subscription fee works so well in WoW, and pays for everything you mentioned, why did they start offering the cash shop? Why do they make you pay for expansions at full box price? Why did they add all these additional sources of revenue, when the subscription fee alone provides them with more than $150 million a month?
A few things that don't make sense and cause skepticism:
-$15 per month is about the price of 1 and a half starbucks coffees a week for 4 weeks. It's not really a lot.
-Currently, the ingame quality and atmosphere of most non subscription fee games versus subscription games feels... different.
-Games that are B2P or F2P still strive to be as monetarily successful as P2P games. They just have a different approach. Instead of expecting their long term revenue coming from subscriptions they expect it to come from the cash shop or frequent paid expansions.
-While some players can and will in the long term play for free in B2P and F2P, that's possible because of the type of player that will buy anything and everything in the cash shop. It breaks game immersion to me when you have players parading around in game items that they bought with real cash. The game becomes about status and social class, instead of about gaming.
-I'm also skeptical whether the top B2P/F2P AAA MMO can churn out constant content at the rate and level of the top subscription AAA MMO. Guess we'll see.
One response could be that you are paying for support staff, which seems to be severly lacking in many games without a sub (at least in my experience.)
One response could be that you are paying for support staff, which seems to be severly lacking in many games without a sub (at least in my experience.)
those no sub games that have very little support are normally asian p2w and have no interest in the users as long as you spend in cash shops. RoM a classic example. I give you a challenge. Go and look at the rune system for that game and tell me how much you would need to spend in real money to have the top tier runes in your gear. I'll let you of lightly and only ask for the cost of one top tier rune. You will kak ur pants when you see the cost. And the person who responds with you can grind for them for free, tell me how long on a casual basis (some of us work and have families to be blessed to sit at our pc's for 18 hrs a day) it would take to fully slot every item.
The same set up for them type of games is nearly always the same. sorry for going of track
I recently cancelled my wow sub(today) because I spent alot of time doing nothing. I hated doing the fireland dailies, although they did try and mix it up some, the bulk of it was meaningless repetative task. Raiding was equally frustraiting, due to the fact that most guilds foundi it cool to be only 10 man "core" groups and felt no need to rotate out of it, and even rarer was the 25m raid groups which were pointless and took much longer to accomplish both with pugs and guildmates. Most people constantly ask for people to join there raid, accompanied by the strick requirements, even worse, the whole "PST ACHIEVE"(how can I pst achieve if I can't ever get in a raid to get it?), and even funnier is you can still get the "achieve" if your a scrub who dies early frequently and/or bad and the mechanics. Some of you might say, "find better players to play with", That unfortunately isn't the solution. I've been tanking and healing and just found that people play with a "core" and rarely go outside that and the larger guilds have harsh requirements to join their guild. Trinity does that. Hell my guild leader told me "doesn't look like we're setting up that 2nd raid group, and might need someone if a core raider doesn't show up, but we are looking for a mage". <Best statement ever.
Point of this post? Thats why I stopped my subscription. Why waste my money on a business model designed for me to login and not feel accomplished after a play session, with the allusion that raiding and end game content is there; but to the majority it isn't. When I pay 15 bucks a month to blizz, I sit here and look at how much fun I've had vs how much I paid and fell like a sad panda. Thats what it's all about. How much fun you have when you play. Because to be honest, I would pay for GW2 if they had a sub feel so long as I felt accomplished when I was done playing. But games like wow that have the trinity system, it's easy for them to force players in a dependant state and thus can ensure their subscription. Same with F2P games. You limit player powers/progression, and leave them feeling the need for more, thus ensuring someone will buy their cash shop items. It's sad but thats all we have to look forward to in games. Anet has peeked my intrest with their business model, and I hope it's sucessful. Because they are getting my support 100%. I am glad they are moving away from the standard of statistics, linear gameplay, horrible allienation in games and forcing players to be extremely selective in an MMO.
-I'm also skeptical whether the top B2P/F2P AAA MMO can churn out constant content at the rate and level of the top subscription AAA MMO. Guess we'll see.
The difference between B2P and P2P really is straightforward. Box sales (hopefully) pay for initial development. Future development is paid for by the things they develop. In a P2P model, you pay a subscription and get periodic updates. With a B2P model, they generate additional content which is a voluntary purchase.
We know that bandwidth and servers and rent aren't much, only requiring a footnote in NCSoft's quarterly report. We know that GW1 vastly outearned the P2P City of Heroes during its prime.
The one thing that people seem to not get past when they think about a B2P system is that they assume that B2P and P2P will have the same number of players. P2P players generally don't subscribe to more than one game, so it's a competition for that player's sub money. If you're WoW and you've gotten there first, yes, P2P is the best model clearly. But if you're not, and you need to fight WoW for subs, B2P is an extremely attractive business model because you no longer need to fight.
Instead of GW1 being the game that peaked at 100k or 200k subs, it's the game that 2-3 million people bought 7 million units of. GW2 is a fantastic looking AAA MMO and is also B2P. I'm sure it will have no trouble moving millions of units. After that, there's no question they'll be able to support all kinds of expansion content.
Not everybody is going to buy the expansions, but it doesn't matter. There will be more players than there would if it were P2P. Players are either going to stick around longer, or be more likely to come back and buy every expansion and play it for a month without having to worry about resubbing.
Even if a person buys everything, it'll undoubtedly be cheaper than a sub ($100 a year in GW1's case compared to $180) and the quality has to be super high in order to get people to make voluntary purchases instead of just taking what the subscription gives them.
Which clearly encourages complacency. Rift is trying very hard to hold on to its 500k subscribers, so they're putting out content seems like every month. WoW, despite having 20x the subscriber base historically has put out content every 3-4 months. They don't need to earn your money like a B2P does.
Whatever the payment system, with enough players, it's eventually going to go from supporting development to pure profit, it's the nature of business. What a B2P model does is offer more flexibility to the consumer, very likely a cheaper overall price, and forces the company to come up with high enough quality content people will voluntarily purchase it. It's simply better for the consumer than 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
I love how every time a discussion of GW2's payment model gets started, one side always turns into a comparison between subscription-based games and free-to-play games. GW2 is neither of those. If you want to argue against GW2's payment model, you should probably understand what it is first.
GW2 is not a F2P game. You buy the box and you buy the expansions.
Subscription-based games still require you to buy the box and buy the expansions...it IS NOT just $15 a month for a subscription-based game. People seem to forget this when they are making the "$15 is super cheap" arguments.
GW2's cash shop will have only cosmetic items available which provide no in-game advantage or lift one character above another in any way. This has always been ArenaNet's philosophy, and there's no reason they would change it now.
Based on what I've heard, it appears that most, if not all, of the cash shop items will be available to earn in-game. The only "exclusive" cash shop items will be account services like name changes or extra character slots. This is not unlike many other P2P MMORPGs.
Those who refuse to try a GW2 simply because it has no monthly fee are only hurting themselves. They'll end up playing once their friends and family let them in on the secret...GW2 is actually going to be a better game, with more available content, and with a much better community, than whatever P2P games people have played in many years. The payment model doesn't make the community, the game mechanics, systems, and world do.
It's a B2P game with a cash shop, cosmetitc or not, needed or not it is still a cash shop. Which means it will be more expensive than many F2P games - not that the cost is a lot or even particularly relevant.
GW1 let you buy skills for pvp;
I agree. I love GW but lets not pretend it's business model is anything more then standard 'F2P' with a box cost attached.
I personally have no idea why folks proclaim 'B2P' as mana from heaven and superior to 'F2P'. It is just the same.
A huge difference here is that the F2P games have monetary "walls" in the way... you can't advance to this or that zone or content without forking out cash. This is something GW2 won't have... you'll have full access to all content with the purchase of the game. There's no pay-to-win in GW2 either... no items bought that make you more powerful or advance you. Cosmetic only.
This B2P model is markedly different than the generic F2P model out there.
Considering GW has playable content in it's store I don't think you can say it has no monetary walls.
GW also has skill unlocks in it's store.
It has already been said the CS in GW2 will be 'very similar'.
I do not think you demonstrate the part in red at all in the points you have made.
A huge difference here is that the F2P games have monetary "walls" in the way... you can't advance to this or that zone or content without forking out cash. This is something GW2 won't have... you'll have full access to all content with the purchase of the game. There's no pay-to-win in GW2 either... no items bought that make you more powerful or advance you. Cosmetic only.
This B2P model is markedly different than the generic F2P model out there.
Considering GW has playable content in it's store I don't think you can say it has no monetary walls.
GW also has skill unlocks in it's store.
It has already been said the CS in GW2 will be 'very similar'.
I do not think you demonstrate the part in red at all in the points you have made.
It's true, in GW1 they did add skill and item unlock packs. In GW2 structured PVP, you'll be level 80 and have access to everything as soon as you're done with the tutorial, so it's not the same situation at all as GW1.
Even in GW1, it's kind of a gray area. It's definitely not pay to win because everything is available in game. The unlock packs really just give you more breadth of ability. If you had your heart set on a particular armor build and skillset, it really wouldn't be hard at all to obtain that one particular set, through campaigning and probably a little trading. After all, max armor is easy to come by and you can only bring 8 skills to a fight. What the unlock packs would let you do would be to quickly switch your build and skills to try other combinations without having to do the additional work.
In any case, as I said, GW2 is getting rid of this and structured PVP is a totally level playing field.
"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
That was a terrible article. I kept hoping he would discuss that a MMO requires a live team whereas on a offline title, once the project finishes the team moves on to the next project. But like I said, on MMO there is a live team fixing bugs, feeding you more content, tweaking the game. The article never discussed this.
Comments
Can't say I agree with the article but then again, I don't really care why I'm paying for it.
If a game that I want to play is charging an amount I agree with, great, here's my CC/Paypal/cash. Give me!
If not, bye bye.
Don't think most people care as well.
Gdemami -
Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
Simply put - the price reflects what the market will bear. People are entertained enough by whatever mmo world they play to feel it is worth a sub fee.
We could turn the question around and ask, would GW2 succeed if it had a sub fee? Or another way of putting it;
"MMOs with subscription fees....is GW2 missing a profitable opportunity?
I don't think they are.
GW1's popularity was mainly due to the fact it was an 'MMO' without a sub payment. This was way before F2P was popularized in the western market.
It was a good way to get their product out there in the market, build up brand etc.
With GW2, I think the numbers came out that the sales lost if they went P2P was higher than if they stuck with B2P.
Gdemami -
Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
Lol not sure what the problem is here if you like f2p go for it if you don't well don't buy it.
personaly i wont be buying it ,I did not like gw1 and from the looks of it i won't like gw2,If i liked the game would i still buy it sure,would i pay a sub if i liked the game sure i would.
I SAY PUT A SUB ON GW2
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Yet after this post, he's the one providing proof in a quote, and you're the one giving us nothing. No one is going to believe you simply because you say to, and no one is going to to believe you know everything about something simply because you bitch and moan that this guy doesn't believe you. You're not entitled to respect simply because you believe it. You have no reputation here.
Actually he is misinterpeting the quote so it isn't a very good use of the quote but you are entirely correct wIth the rest of your statement.
Oh yeah he needs to provide proof because the people in this thread are the ultimate knowledge of what is going to be in the GW2 store. Oh and they are the ultimate source of knowledge on ANet and NCsoft and the arrangement they agreed to when NCSoft purchased them. Like the comment that dungeons will definitely be in the store, yeah like there was no backlash from the community on it when that was mentioned months ago. Now does that mean there never will be dungeons in the store no it doesn’t, but it does say the fans are against the idea! But apparently with that quote it means that there will be dungeons no matter what! LOL Yeah that quote proves everything people are saying about the store in this thread is true; here is a quote “my name is hypocrisy”!
As for a quote providing proof of a cosmetic store in GW2 (Since apparently no one here can do there own research before they post their opinion):
http://www.g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/714117/guild-wars-2-preview-special-the-mmo-report/ @12:47 to 13:45 you get your answer!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7r_oAx7zg98 @ 15:08 to 16:44 you get the same answer again, oh my god this is forming a pattern!
Now this is just two of dozens upon dozens of interviews where ANet says the same thing over and over again. Of course then people might have to do some research and not believe all the crap written in forums. So with that said there is only two possible outcomes here ANet is telling the truth or like most of the people in this thread are suggesting ANet is a bunch of liars. I know which side of that possibilities I am going to choice I guess now you get to decide which side you are going to believe.
Well besides for more servers and bandwidth gaming companies have been doing the rest for years on box sales. And if anyone is willing to do a little research bandwidth and servers are the smallest amount out of everything you mentioned. So it makes me wonder how the companies in the 90s turned a profit with box sales if it is impossible without subscriptions. After all it is not like those companies had to pay for rent (overhead), insurance, employee payroll, and other day to day and month to month expenses…oh they did. So that must mean in order to turn a profit now with the cost of servers and bandwidth the only new expense added they need subscriptions.
As for the especially as a MMO gets beyond its first few months and its new sales drop of, oh my god they might have to make a expansion to increase their profit margin again. Oh the horror a gaming company making content to make money, this is blasphemy no company should have to actually make something and sell it to customers to make a profit. This is two mindboggling to even consider MMO companies would actual have to produces content in order to make money like all other game companies, say it ain’t so Joe!
I was more arguing against the guy's shitty attitude than about what will or will not be in GW2's cash shop. Way to miss the point.
But thanks for being more helpful by posting the links.
It isn't 'greed' per se, but a need/want to make money and a profit.
I think people OFTEN miss the fact that Corporations are made by People. People want and need money. To cover expenses, and to have fun. I know for a fact that if I get a job, I want to make as much as possible so that I can have enough to cover basic living expenses, AS WELL as making more to spend on hobbies, and extra 'fun' things. Thats what people, and ultimately companies/corporations do.
That being said, I pay $15 a month for WoW for:
- Content, which gets updated fairly often. WoW, so far, has added new content every 3-6 months, if not shorter via Patches. And every 1-1.5 years for expansions. Now, in said expansions we get new zones, new classes, new abilities, HUNDREDS of new quests, new achievements, new mobs, new pet options, new gear, new dungeons/raids/bosses. Granted we don't get ALL of this at once, we do get a lot of new stuff each patch/expansion that a full team of developers spend MONTHS on creating and thinking of. I pay to play through all this. You can argue that the game is crap, but compare it to other F2P games which are really just clones of each other with, in my experience, lack-luster content updates. We even get PTR's to beta test patched before they come out.
- Lore; I put Lore seperate from Content because, personally, I LOVE the lore of Warcraft. It's VERY extensive and deep. You can't just throw anything in and call it Lore, it takes time and thought to make a good backstory/story for a video game series.
- Stable Servers; I've hardly ever seen WoW down outside of their weekly maintanence.
- Support; WoW does weekly maintenance, and fixes problems relatively fast. If an encounter is bugged, they work on getting it fixed and offer patches or hotfixes, most of the time we don't notice them cause they don't have to tak the game offline to apply them, which interrupts play time. They have GM's that help with problems, In-Game AND via the Forums, AND representatives available when you call in for support. They might be a bit slow, but its a game with at least 9-10million active players, thats a lot of traffic, expect times when they're busy or you can't get through with a call. At least it isn't all outsourced. We even get regular posts on the state of things from the dev's via Dev Watercoolers, Ghostcrawlers articles/blogs, and patch F.A.Qs.
- Community: WoW might have it's idiots that play, but EVERY game has them. No matter where you go you'll ncounter retards. But that doesn't mean the community as a whole is bad.
85 Levels of content that you pretty much HAVE to play through with multiple characters to xperience all f it as it was meant, meaning that one play-through to 85 isn't going to let you experience all of the content, unlike other games I've playd that were F2P where all classes/races get the same starter zones/quests, and have no real backstory to said class/race/zone.
I pay also to pay the Dev's I mentioned above for taking their time to do something that I, an end-user, have enjoyed for (what...) 7? years now, and from the looks of it, many more to come.
I played GW1 because it was free, it was funa nd cool, but that all died off eventually cause it IMO, didn't have the content WoW did. It didn't entice me to keep coming back. I pretty much set it and forget it.
We'll argue on and on about F2P and B2P games, and people will claim, as usual, that every new F2P game to be released will be a B2P/Sub killer. The game will be released, and 6 mnths to a year down the line, you wont hear hardly as much about it.
The reason we still pay $15 a month is because it WORKS. I'm not saying F2P doesn't, but if it ain't broke, don't 'fix' it. $15 can be a lot or a little to some people, especially now-a-days, but .50cent a day to play isn't much. You can find that walking on the street. Some of you are really over-exaggerating about it being a lot. And honestly, if you're complaining that you shuldn't have to pay 15 per account for 4 people in a family, maybe you and your family need to cancel subscriptions and just go outside for free, lol. Or not play a sub game at all, cause I'm pretty sure F2P has LONG been an option.
Pay to Play = Buy the box in order to have the right to rent the game. Stop paying rent, no more access to the game.
Buy to Play = Buy the box and own the game. Play it when ever you want, you own it.
Even if there is a cash shop that offers fluff and maybe even some content, as long as you don't need to buy anything from the shop to be competitive with other players and enjoy the game you purchased, your purchase is not devalued by the existence of the cash shop.
If the GW2 cash shop does offer some sort of content, people will have to decide if the price is worth the amount of content being sold. GW2 will also feature free content updates between expansions. How much free content do most P2P MMOs offer between expansions, to justify the monthly fee? Not much and if you don't like raiding, usually pretty much nothing at all.
Want to know more about GW2 and why there is so much buzz? Start here: Guild Wars 2 Mass Info for the Uninitiated
The thing is that servers and bandwidth were expensive in 96 & 97 at the release of Meridian 59, The Realm and Ultima Online. That is why the P2P model was invented. Bandwidth and server costs have been reduced to almost nothing since then, that is why so many FPS games can afford to have their own servers nowadays without monthly fees. In the 90s players hosted the serversthemselves instead, but it tends to reduce the ping and make cheating easier.
So there was actually good reasons behind the P2P cost not that long ago, but can you honestly say that if you were Morhaime or Smedley, would you suddenly cut the monthly fees just out of kindness? I doubt it.
Wow was actually originally meant to be B2P as well, but Blizzards suits thought it was a bad idea, which lead to many of the original dev team quit including Jeff Strain, Wows first lead designer and the guy who perusaded Blizz to make a MMO in the first place.
B2P do have one big disadvantage: You really need to sell a lot of copies fast to get in money. Companies like SOE can run games with few players like Vanguard forever, while they slowly get their investment back even if it never sold as they hoped it would, but for that they needed to cut down the dev crew to close to zero. If VG would have been B2P it would hqave been gone a long time ago.
But B2P games tends to sell more than P2P games, and are very popular gifts.
Intersting, looking through a lot of the posts people have either a) not read or listened to what Anet developrs have said b) Not watched any or read anything on gameplay, content and endgame c) all became anet developers and know everything on the development on MMO's and how the company ticks, d) Have become bussiness executives without any knowledge whatsoever or figures, charts, graphs, evidence of any sort to back up their claims to all the assumptions made.
Not bad considering most of the opiniated are either still at school or out of work layabouts who sit and play games all day or troll MMORPG.com. And yes that statement ironicly is an assumption.
The greater the subscription fee or box cost I pay, the most rational expectations I would have for the company are these (not neccesarily exclusive, may or may not be inclusive):
greater percentage of profits earned, provides an incentive to the company to stay longer in the industry
more financial resources to invest in new MMO investment projects
provides an incentive to encourage innovation and improvement for the MMO genre for the company
more attractive incentives to attract and retain intellectual talent within the company
more dividends paid out to shareholders of the company to encourage them to invest in the company further for future growth
Whenever you are really bored and don't wanna play an MMO game, go to: http://librivox.org/
Hey hey hey heeeeeeeeeeeyyyyy.......
all those lines like pay subs to play is the only option make me laugh out loud.
I have never payed subs and will never pay. Why? only m***ns can pay subs. Its like you buy one game every month again and again :-D see how it is ridiculous? :-D go to store and buy modern warfare 12times! :-D :-D :-D so you can play it every month :-D LOL :-D and guess what? that companys survivng pretty well even making profit! :-D
Its understandable if you are kid with plenty of time. You can easily fall for this brainwash "pay subs to play" especially when there arent enough good games (MMOs). If you are adult its unreasonable to pay for gaming time if you can play max 3-4hours a week. Yeah from 99% 2-3hours if wife is in good mood you have no friends, relatives, kids, pets, hobbies, job, etc.
Thats why i love guild wars adult concept. Im GW player for almost 5 years and will come back because i can play whenever i want. I bought the game and i can have year pause and then come back in 3 am after nightmare for 30min, do quest or two and go to bed again. And theyre adding new content for free. Yesterday the new winds of change part 2 pack was added :-D :-D :-D even the GW 2 is coming they add new stuff in their 5-6years old game :-D im just rolling on the floor laughing everytime ppl start talking about pay subs to play is the only option :-D arenanet is not scratching their asses while kids pay like mad company like blizzard.
this thread should be locked and erased.
I read something about how they are going to start charging more for the internet some providers are doing this and getting resisted in Canada and England. Don't recall where I read this wish I could go get the link but apparently the internet is not as large as we think and we are perhaps soon going to come to a point where bandwidth will start to cost a lot of money again like it did before.
If they introduce legislation like they intend to do in Canada in other places then we might not exactly be in a position to continue getting free servers. Just a thought is all. Ahh here it is....
"Canadians have been faced with deteriorating bandwidth caps for years now, but a recent decision by countries telecommunications regulator has put the final nail in the coffin for heavy users. Most of the countries large established Cable and DSL providers have been offering caps that range anywhere from 25-80GB for quite some time now, but those in search higher limits have always had the option to turn to the smaller ISP’s which offered higher or unlimited plans to differentiate themselves from the competition.
Last week however, the CRTC sided with Bell Canada who asked the regulator to implement the same caps on smaller wholesale customers, which essentially ends the era of unlimited bandwidth in Canada. To put this in perspective, a typical 5Mbps plan from a DSL reseller in the Toronto area cost about $40 for unlimited service as of last week, a plan which has been replaced today by a $32 package which grants a mere 25GB per month.
According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, Canada joins Australia and New Zealand as one of three member countries where unlimited Internet service is practically impossible to find, and a lack of competition means this won’t be getting better anytime soon. Bandwidth caps in the US haven’t yet reached this level of oppression, but it’s the start of a disturbing trend that could very well make its way across the border eventually. Canadians who wish to fight the decision should check out the Open Media petition which, at last count, was over 137,000 strong. "
Does anyone think if the USA introduces measures like this would the developers who are relying on the unlimited bandwidth so far enjoyed be in any position to continue to operate sans charging.
GW2 will offer everything you mentioned and more without a subscription fee.
So you believe six months after GW2's release, nobody will be talking about it? I hope you like your words with ketchup.
The only thing $15 a month works for is giving the game company more of your money for no reason. The whole point of this discussion and the article in the OP was to show that you're getting LESS because of the sub fee, not more.
If the subscription fee works so well in WoW, and pays for everything you mentioned, why did they start offering the cash shop? Why do they make you pay for expansions at full box price? Why did they add all these additional sources of revenue, when the subscription fee alone provides them with more than $150 million a month?
A few things that don't make sense and cause skepticism:
-$15 per month is about the price of 1 and a half starbucks coffees a week for 4 weeks. It's not really a lot.
-Currently, the ingame quality and atmosphere of most non subscription fee games versus subscription games feels... different.
-Games that are B2P or F2P still strive to be as monetarily successful as P2P games. They just have a different approach. Instead of expecting their long term revenue coming from subscriptions they expect it to come from the cash shop or frequent paid expansions.
-While some players can and will in the long term play for free in B2P and F2P, that's possible because of the type of player that will buy anything and everything in the cash shop. It breaks game immersion to me when you have players parading around in game items that they bought with real cash. The game becomes about status and social class, instead of about gaming.
-I'm also skeptical whether the top B2P/F2P AAA MMO can churn out constant content at the rate and level of the top subscription AAA MMO. Guess we'll see.
One response could be that you are paying for support staff, which seems to be severly lacking in many games without a sub (at least in my experience.)
those no sub games that have very little support are normally asian p2w and have no interest in the users as long as you spend in cash shops. RoM a classic example. I give you a challenge. Go and look at the rune system for that game and tell me how much you would need to spend in real money to have the top tier runes in your gear. I'll let you of lightly and only ask for the cost of one top tier rune. You will kak ur pants when you see the cost. And the person who responds with you can grind for them for free, tell me how long on a casual basis (some of us work and have families to be blessed to sit at our pc's for 18 hrs a day) it would take to fully slot every item.
The same set up for them type of games is nearly always the same. sorry for going of track
I recently cancelled my wow sub(today) because I spent alot of time doing nothing. I hated doing the fireland dailies, although they did try and mix it up some, the bulk of it was meaningless repetative task. Raiding was equally frustraiting, due to the fact that most guilds foundi it cool to be only 10 man "core" groups and felt no need to rotate out of it, and even rarer was the 25m raid groups which were pointless and took much longer to accomplish both with pugs and guildmates. Most people constantly ask for people to join there raid, accompanied by the strick requirements, even worse, the whole "PST ACHIEVE"(how can I pst achieve if I can't ever get in a raid to get it?), and even funnier is you can still get the "achieve" if your a scrub who dies early frequently and/or bad and the mechanics. Some of you might say, "find better players to play with", That unfortunately isn't the solution. I've been tanking and healing and just found that people play with a "core" and rarely go outside that and the larger guilds have harsh requirements to join their guild. Trinity does that. Hell my guild leader told me "doesn't look like we're setting up that 2nd raid group, and might need someone if a core raider doesn't show up, but we are looking for a mage". <Best statement ever.
Point of this post? Thats why I stopped my subscription. Why waste my money on a business model designed for me to login and not feel accomplished after a play session, with the allusion that raiding and end game content is there; but to the majority it isn't. When I pay 15 bucks a month to blizz, I sit here and look at how much fun I've had vs how much I paid and fell like a sad panda. Thats what it's all about. How much fun you have when you play. Because to be honest, I would pay for GW2 if they had a sub feel so long as I felt accomplished when I was done playing. But games like wow that have the trinity system, it's easy for them to force players in a dependant state and thus can ensure their subscription. Same with F2P games. You limit player powers/progression, and leave them feeling the need for more, thus ensuring someone will buy their cash shop items. It's sad but thats all we have to look forward to in games. Anet has peeked my intrest with their business model, and I hope it's sucessful. Because they are getting my support 100%. I am glad they are moving away from the standard of statistics, linear gameplay, horrible allienation in games and forcing players to be extremely selective in an MMO.
The difference between B2P and P2P really is straightforward. Box sales (hopefully) pay for initial development. Future development is paid for by the things they develop. In a P2P model, you pay a subscription and get periodic updates. With a B2P model, they generate additional content which is a voluntary purchase.
We know that bandwidth and servers and rent aren't much, only requiring a footnote in NCSoft's quarterly report. We know that GW1 vastly outearned the P2P City of Heroes during its prime.
The one thing that people seem to not get past when they think about a B2P system is that they assume that B2P and P2P will have the same number of players. P2P players generally don't subscribe to more than one game, so it's a competition for that player's sub money. If you're WoW and you've gotten there first, yes, P2P is the best model clearly. But if you're not, and you need to fight WoW for subs, B2P is an extremely attractive business model because you no longer need to fight.
Instead of GW1 being the game that peaked at 100k or 200k subs, it's the game that 2-3 million people bought 7 million units of. GW2 is a fantastic looking AAA MMO and is also B2P. I'm sure it will have no trouble moving millions of units. After that, there's no question they'll be able to support all kinds of expansion content.
Not everybody is going to buy the expansions, but it doesn't matter. There will be more players than there would if it were P2P. Players are either going to stick around longer, or be more likely to come back and buy every expansion and play it for a month without having to worry about resubbing.
Even if a person buys everything, it'll undoubtedly be cheaper than a sub ($100 a year in GW1's case compared to $180) and the quality has to be super high in order to get people to make voluntary purchases instead of just taking what the subscription gives them.
Which clearly encourages complacency. Rift is trying very hard to hold on to its 500k subscribers, so they're putting out content seems like every month. WoW, despite having 20x the subscriber base historically has put out content every 3-4 months. They don't need to earn your money like a B2P does.
Whatever the payment system, with enough players, it's eventually going to go from supporting development to pure profit, it's the nature of business. What a B2P model does is offer more flexibility to the consumer, very likely a cheaper overall price, and forces the company to come up with high enough quality content people will voluntarily purchase it. It's simply better for the consumer than 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
I just can't wait to buy a shit load of costumes for my character.
Whenever you are really bored and don't wanna play an MMO game, go to: http://librivox.org/
Hey hey hey heeeeeeeeeeeyyyyy.......
Considering GW has playable content in it's store I don't think you can say it has no monetary walls.
GW also has skill unlocks in it's store.
It has already been said the CS in GW2 will be 'very similar'.
I do not think you demonstrate the part in red at all in the points you have made.
It's true, in GW1 they did add skill and item unlock packs. In GW2 structured PVP, you'll be level 80 and have access to everything as soon as you're done with the tutorial, so it's not the same situation at all as GW1.
Even in GW1, it's kind of a gray area. It's definitely not pay to win because everything is available in game. The unlock packs really just give you more breadth of ability. If you had your heart set on a particular armor build and skillset, it really wouldn't be hard at all to obtain that one particular set, through campaigning and probably a little trading. After all, max armor is easy to come by and you can only bring 8 skills to a fight. What the unlock packs would let you do would be to quickly switch your build and skills to try other combinations without having to do the additional work.
In any case, as I said, GW2 is getting rid of this and structured PVP is a totally level playing field.
"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
That was a terrible article. I kept hoping he would discuss that a MMO requires a live team whereas on a offline title, once the project finishes the team moves on to the next project. But like I said, on MMO there is a live team fixing bugs, feeding you more content, tweaking the game. The article never discussed this.
Guild Wars 2's 50 minutes game play video:
http://n4g.com/news/592585/guild-wars-2-50-minutes-of-pure-gameplay
Everything We Know about GW2:
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/287180/page/1