What am I paying for in a sub game? An active team of GMs (in theory) Stability and maintenence (in theory) Ongoing development (in theory). An even playing field (in theory). FULL access to ALL content (and, yes, Fluff IS content) that is EARNABLE by PLAYING the game (in theory).
This. And as I'm fond of saying, the average MMO monthly sub is $15.00 That's fifty cents per day. If you can't afford that, stop playing so many games and get a job.
This. $15.00 is NOTHING and if you cannot afford it, go get a damn job and stop gaming. Its simple as that. I cannot even buy myself a decent dinner for $15. My wife and I can play an MMO for 30 days for the cost of $1 per day. The last time we went to dinner and a movie (3-4 hours worth of entertainment), we spent over $80. The last nice dinner we had was over $90! But she and I can have unlimited access to ALL content in a game, realistically play for well over 100+ hours a month if we wanted and all that for $15.....its a no-brainer to me. In addition games that have fully or are partially funded by a cash shop tend to have other issues as well. From my experience, cash shop games have worse communities, more drama, etc... Example A: LOTRO before and after. Its just the classic argument of people not thinking beyond the tip of their own noce and understanding why someone likes something they do not.
You're either very well off financially, you live with Mommy and Daddy still, or you actually ARE married, but your wife is the one who writes out (or pays online) all the bills every month. Because no one with any amount of common sense or responsibilities in life, would say "$15.00 is NOTHING...." That's just ridiculous. Now, I'm not saying it's a fortune or anything, but to say it's NOTHING proves you don't know much in the way of costs and paying bills. Furthermore, for my family gaming will cost 30-45 dollars a month since there are 3 of us, so it's not a matter of 15 bucks, but a question of priorities and let's see....do we want Showtime or Netflix or gaming? It requires, at least for US.....making a choice.....because 15 dollars IS SOMETHING. Cocky privileged attitudes just reek, if you ask me. If you're so well to do that 15 dollars is nothing to you, that's fine, but don't make it a declaration for the world as if 15 bucks should be "nothing" to EVERYONE. That's just arrogant and ignorant.
Edit: You missed my point entirely. Compared to other forms of entertainment (dinner, movies, etc....), paying $15 a month for an MMO is dirt cheap. Sure $15 is still money but its a lot, LOT cheaper than most alternatives. Gamers who play games with cash shops statistically pay MORE per month for their games than gamers do who pay a sub fee. So accordingly, $15 is nothing and I guarantee the average gamer will spend more than $15 a month on Guild Wars 2due to the cash shop and frequency of expansions that they will have to release to make a profit.
yes but blizzard asks money for every expansion it delivers , so i really find those 15$ a highway robbery, and i think either rift and SW-old Rep online will go to B2P , or F2P after GW2 releases 2012 (i hope) cause all features from GW2 are already too strong for every existent AAA-MMO out there
I don't see what's so difficult for people to understand that it isn't about the amount of money, but the value obtained for that money. My husband and I go to a sushi restaurant that offers an all you can eat menu for X dollars. It's great, except that we did the math and found that when we purchase a la carte, our bill is lower because we simply don't eat enough for the all you can eat fee to be a discount. We have friends, however, who would easily spend twice our bill if they had to buy items a la carte. It's obviously a better deal for them than it is for us.
F2P is not for high consumers if you want to save money. Subscriptions are the best value for your money if you are a high consumer. But $15/month is no longer a mere $0.50 per day if you don't play every day, or for long every day. Everyone wants the highest value for their dollar, and if you are consuming 20 hours a week of content, you will likely eat up every single F2P content pack as soon as it's available, sales be damned, and wish you could just access it for a flat fee.
However, if you consume content slowly; play 1-2 hours per week (which means that $15/month is more like $5/week - still low, but simply not the same value per dollar of a high consumer) then paying for content when you want it is the highest value for your dollar. You never spend money on content you will not use. In subscription models, the low consumption customers subsidize the high consumption customers, and in F2P or B2P it is the other way around.
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.
He didn't mention it in the article because it's a moot point in the discussion. GW2 will have a live team which will fix bugs and be feeding content for free constantly after release, just like any subscription based game. They will provide that live team without a subscription fee. ArenaNet has been paying their live team to do bug fixes, content additions, and balancing on the first Guild Wars game for years now, and they've never charged a sub fee.
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.
Again, we're talking about value for the money. If you are paying for 1 1/2 starbucks coffees and NOT GETTING the coffees, is it still a good deal?
-Currently, the ingame quality and atmosphere of most non subscription fee games versus subscription games feels... different.
Nobody's talking about current F2P games. We're talking about GW2. Look at all the available videos and information, and all the reviews from people who have played and tell me that the quality or atmosphere is lacking.
-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.
Or maybe they just sell more boxes because of the lack of subscription fee and the high quality and fun of their game. If a typical subscription-based game sells 1 million boxes, and GW2 sells four million, the subscription game would have to keep players around for a LONG time before they even caught up with the money GW2 will make on box sales alone.
Of course that's not to say they aren't planning on making money in the cash shop...but I think volume is something that most aren't taking into account.
-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.
There aren't a whole lot of games left without some form of cash shop. Sadly, your immersion is going to be broken no matter what. Most of the subscription-based games have people parading around with items they bought as well. I think people probably think LESS of those who buy items than they do of people who earn them in-game...but the truth is that if you're only selling items that don't provide advantage over other players, who cares how someone else got their armor or minipet?
-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 big difference here is that the top subscription-based game (WoW) tends to have content that is limited to a particular level or play style...so the content for any individual tends to come much slower because they have to provide for multiple play styles (types of content) separately. This won't be the case nearly as much in GW2. Because of the scaling of dynamic events, and the fact that characters scale to the level of the content, any content that the GW2 live team adds will be usable by a much larger portion of the player base. This means that in regards to an individual player, the usable free content additions will likely be FASTER, no slower. You'll get stuff more often that you personally can use.
This topic is full of such ignorance that I can feel what little intelligence I have draining from my mind everytime I see it. Did I honestly see a post arguing that GW1 did everything a sub MMO did without the sub? GW1 didn't even come close to any sub MMO.
GW2 fanboys are getting worse than the WoW fanboys.
Quote, please. Otherwise I think you misread. I don't think any GW fanboy would claim that the first Guild Wars was an MMORPG at all. The company doesn't even say it was.
The discussion is about GW2, which is every bit an MMORPG.
This topic is full of such ignorance that I can feel what little intelligence I have draining from my mind everytime I see it. Did I honestly see a post arguing that GW1 did everything a sub MMO did without the sub? GW1 didn't even come close to any sub MMO.
GW2 fanboys are getting worse than the WoW fanboys.
I am guessing that's your little secret.
I mean if the first GW's model was looking like it barely allowed the team to scrape by I wonder why they are adopting it for the second? While I won't claim to have a deep understanding of how it all works. I do know what the first GW offered in way of the cash shop, content, support team, etc. I am aware it wasn't a MMO, but can people honestly say that with the amount of understanding and knowledge the team has combined that we know better than they do? I'll continue to go by what Anet tells me and not doubt it until they give me reason to do otherwise. I'll certainly take their word for it over some of the folks on this site who refuse to even give them the beneift of the doubt.
Who wants to be told they have been throwing money at companies for years for no real reason other than lining the pockets of the corperate machine? I don't like the idea that I have been paying a sub when it has been uneccessary since the turn of the century, but I also refuse to be a lemming. If someone can prove that the sub is an illusion then I'll stand behind them. Yes the team is trying to get your money as well. Maybe they see that profit coming by way of people being shown that the sub is a gimmic and they draw in customers through people realizing this. Just a thought.
Look. If ANet delivers what they are promising, GW2 will have more content at launch than most other AAA MMOs do at launch. The game also looks to be more fun, features a dynamic world filled with Dynamic, world changing events. It has a Personal Story Mode with full voice acting. The Story mode is not as long per character as the SWTOR storylines, but there are thousands of variations on how the storylines play out, rather than eight, very linear stories. SWTOR has a big advantage there for those who play few characters over time, GW2 has an advantage for those who enjoy alts.
Add in the way the game scales players down for content they have "outleveled", World vs. World vs. World, Comptetitive PVP and all the other elements the game offers to extend play time and enhance replayability; GW2 looks to offer more content and game play than most AAA MMOs released since WoW have even hoped to provide. This is NOT an MMO Lite experience that uses the B2P model because it lacks game. This is a B2P title that offers a lot more than most subscription MMOs offer.
Yes, there is a cash shop, but it is not an "evil" cash shop. It promises to be much more restrictive in what it offers vs. LotRO cash shop, which itself is a lot more restrictive than what most F2P Asian MMOs offer. This is NOT a pay to Win or Pay to Enjoy cash shop model.
To be fair, SWTOR looks to offer a lot more at launch than the typical AAA MMO. It may justify the monthly fee more than other games in the genre. However, it has to be a much better game than GW2 to justify the additional expense and at this point, we don't really know exactly how well the two games will stack up against each other over the mid to long term. If they are both great games with content that holds up over time, SWTOR has the advantage of being Star Wars, but GW2 will have the advantage of being Buy to Play.
Both games may shake up the genre. If SWTOR sets a new bar for what they deliver in exchange for $15/month, other games may have trouble justifying the same fee structure for lesser games. If GW2 offers more in game play and content than other MMOs in development, as a B2P game, they put pressure on those games to justify charging any monthly fee at all.
The MMO landscape is about to change significantly with the release of these two titles and other games will have to adapt or wither.
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.
Again, we're talking about value for the money. If you are paying for 1 1/2 starbucks coffees and NOT GETTING the coffees, is it still a good deal?
But my feeling is that I am getting something for 1 and a half starbucks coffees a week.
-Currently, the ingame quality and atmosphere of most non subscription fee games versus subscription games feels... different.
Nobody's talking about current F2P games. We're talking about GW2. Look at all the available videos and information, and all the reviews from people who have played and tell me that the quality or atmosphere is lacking.
fI'm not talkinga bout F2P games either. We can even use GW1 as an example. I logged in this year to a few of my characters in GW1 and it was a little bleak. People keep saying there was so much profit made on GW1 but the game feels very different ingame to some of the top subscription games. And not in a good way. We'll see how GW2 feels when it releases.
I have a feeling that it will be the same way it was with GW1. Great community and atmosphere on launch and then it slowly dies off. After a few months most players I ran into were only concerned loot and pvp, which is different from my experience with players in Lotro, Rift, CoV (before some of them went F2P). I met a lot players in those games who were more interested in the quest and dungeons, rather than loot or pvp wins.
I hope I'm wrong, and that this game is a few months after launch a great mmoRPG and not just another mmo.
-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.
Or maybe they just sell more boxes because of the lack of subscription fee and the high quality and fun of their game. If a typical subscription-based game sells 1 million boxes, and GW2 sells four million, the subscription game would have to keep players around for a LONG time before they even caught up with the money GW2 will make on box sales alone.
Of course that's not to say they aren't planning on making money in the cash shop...but I think volume is something that most aren't taking into account.
I do take volume into account. I don't see how volume can outpace subscriptions in the long run though, unless there is an expectation that the cash shop in a B2P game will bring in significant revenue.
-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.
There aren't a whole lot of games left without some form of cash shop. Sadly, your immersion is going to be broken no matter what. Most of the subscription-based games have people parading around with items they bought as well. I think people probably think LESS of those who buy items than they do of people who earn them in-game...but the truth is that if you're only selling items that don't provide advantage over other players, who cares how someone else got their armor or minipet?
This is untrue. Most AAA subscription MMOs that I've played do not have a significant cash shop. Even in WoW, there's 4 pets and a 2 mount skins lol. A tiered system like Lotro's F2P system is centered around the cash shop. I tried it, it made me vomit. Hopefully GW2 doesn't do the same thing.
-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 big difference here is that the top subscription-based game (WoW) tends to have content that is limited to a particular level or play style...so the content for any individual tends to come much slower because they have to provide for multiple play styles (types of content) separately. This won't be the case nearly as much in GW2. Because of the scaling of dynamic events, and the fact that characters scale to the level of the content, any content that the GW2 live team adds will be usable by a much larger portion of the player base. This means that in regards to an individual player, the usable free content additions will likely be FASTER, no slower. You'll get stuff more often that you personally can use.
I'm still on the fence about it. Back when I was playing GW1 I didn't see content being turned out as fast as Rift is for example. And I'm wondering if (and hoping) they actually can consistently turn out content at the rate Rift has. Or at the rate SWTOR is planning to with their rapid dlc support content plans.
I'm even skeptical whether The Secret World will have frequent updates at a fast enough rate. Really 3 to 4 months is wayyyyy to long to wait in between major content updates. The MMO genre has shifted into a different gear.
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.
Again, we're talking about value for the money. If you are paying for 1 1/2 starbucks coffees and NOT GETTING the coffees, is it still a good deal?
But my feeling is that I am getting something for 1 and a half starbucks coffees a week.
-Currently, the ingame quality and atmosphere of most non subscription fee games versus subscription games feels... different.
Nobody's talking about current F2P games. We're talking about GW2. Look at all the available videos and information, and all the reviews from people who have played and tell me that the quality or atmosphere is lacking.
fI'm not talkinga bout F2P games either. We can even use GW1 as an example. I logged in this year to a few of my characters in GW1 and it was a little bleak. People keep saying there was so much profit made on GW1 but the game feels very different ingame to some of the top subscription games. And not in a good way. We'll see how GW2 feels when it releases.
I have a feeling that it will be the same way it was with GW1. Great community and atmosphere on launch and then it slowly dies off. After a few months most players I ran into were only concerned loot and pvp, which is different from my experience with players in Lotro, Rift, CoV (before some of them went F2P). I met a lot players in those games who were more interested in the quest and dungeons, rather than loot or pvp wins.
I hope I'm wrong, and that this game is a few months after launch a great mmoRPG and not just another mmo.
-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.
Or maybe they just sell more boxes because of the lack of subscription fee and the high quality and fun of their game. If a typical subscription-based game sells 1 million boxes, and GW2 sells four million, the subscription game would have to keep players around for a LONG time before they even caught up with the money GW2 will make on box sales alone.
Of course that's not to say they aren't planning on making money in the cash shop...but I think volume is something that most aren't taking into account.
I do take volume into account. I don't see how volume can outpace subscriptions in the long run though, unless there is an expectation that the cash shop in a B2P game will bring in significant revenue.
-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.
There aren't a whole lot of games left without some form of cash shop. Sadly, your immersion is going to be broken no matter what. Most of the subscription-based games have people parading around with items they bought as well. I think people probably think LESS of those who buy items than they do of people who earn them in-game...but the truth is that if you're only selling items that don't provide advantage over other players, who cares how someone else got their armor or minipet?
This is untrue. Most AAA subscription MMOs that I've played do not have a significant cash shop. Even in WoW, there's 4 pets and a 2 mount skins lol. A tiered system like Lotro's F2P system is centered around the cash shop. I tried it, it made me vomit. Hopefully GW2 doesn't do the same thing.
-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 big difference here is that the top subscription-based game (WoW) tends to have content that is limited to a particular level or play style...so the content for any individual tends to come much slower because they have to provide for multiple play styles (types of content) separately. This won't be the case nearly as much in GW2. Because of the scaling of dynamic events, and the fact that characters scale to the level of the content, any content that the GW2 live team adds will be usable by a much larger portion of the player base. This means that in regards to an individual player, the usable free content additions will likely be FASTER, no slower. You'll get stuff more often that you personally can use.
I'm still on the fence about it. Back when I was playing GW1 I didn't see content being turned out as fast as Rift is for example. And I'm wondering if (and hoping) they actually can consistently turn out content at the rate Rift has. Or at the rate SWTOR is planning to with their rapid dlc support content plans.
I'm even skeptical whether The Secret World will have frequent updates at a fast enough rate. Really 3 to 4 months is wayyyyy to long to wait in between major content updates. The MMO genre has shifted into a different gear.
^^^^^^^
I was going to comment on this last time but I didn't want to get off topic. I just have to say I love the comparison of a subscription to buying $2.5 cups of coffee because in actuality, the beans that went into making a cup of coffee probably cost 18 cents at most.
Volume can be an enormous factor. As I pointed out earlier, GW1 vastly outearned City of Heroes. City of Heroes probably peaked at 200k subs. GW1 sold 7 million units, and that's probably between 2-3 million users. Expansion content priced at ~$100 per year stacks up extremely well to subscriptions of $180 per year when you have 10x the number of players.
For an even more extreme example, look at the F2P League of Legends which lets you pay to unlock things faster than by playing, or has real money only vanity skins. They just reported 15 million people having played it. Rift, with its 500k subs is probably bringing in 7.5 million per month. Even if on average each person who has played LoL only buys one $10 skin every 10 months, that's still double Rift's revenue. Obviously, not every one of those players liked the game or would ever buy anything, but when Riot Games (makers of LoL) talk about expanding to 300 employees in 4 offices, they're obviously doing something right.
I also disagree with the notion that GW1 didn't put out content at a fast rate. GW Factions slipped to a year, but Nightfall was right on schedule at 6 months after that. Both of these expansions have 30+ zones, 20+ missions, 200+ quests, 2 new classes, and even some new game mechanics. In Nightfall's case, that's 5+ zones and 3+ missions per month. ArenaNet wants to get away from this standalone model so we're not sure what they're going to see, but it seems pretty clear they're certainly capable of generating content. In any case, I'm not sure what the payment method has to do with it. With a team for GW2 probably 10x the size of GW1's, almost certain multi million dollar sales, and the backing of NCSoft in case they need a short term cash infusion, I'm certain they're going to be able to generate as much content as they think players are willing to pay for.
"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
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.
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.
Again, we're talking about value for the money. If you are paying for 1 1/2 starbucks coffees and NOT GETTING the coffees, is it still a good deal?
But my feeling is that I am getting something for 1 and a half starbucks coffees a week.
-Currently, the ingame quality and atmosphere of most non subscription fee games versus subscription games feels... different.
Nobody's talking about current F2P games. We're talking about GW2. Look at all the available videos and information, and all the reviews from people who have played and tell me that the quality or atmosphere is lacking.
fI'm not talkinga bout F2P games either. We can even use GW1 as an example. I logged in this year to a few of my characters in GW1 and it was a little bleak. People keep saying there was so much profit made on GW1 but the game feels very different ingame to some of the top subscription games. And not in a good way. We'll see how GW2 feels when it releases.
I have a feeling that it will be the same way it was with GW1. Great community and atmosphere on launch and then it slowly dies off. After a few months most players I ran into were only concerned loot and pvp, which is different from my experience with players in Lotro, Rift, CoV (before some of them went F2P). I met a lot players in those games who were more interested in the quest and dungeons, rather than loot or pvp wins.
I hope I'm wrong, and that this game is a few months after launch a great mmoRPG and not just another mmo.
-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.
Or maybe they just sell more boxes because of the lack of subscription fee and the high quality and fun of their game. If a typical subscription-based game sells 1 million boxes, and GW2 sells four million, the subscription game would have to keep players around for a LONG time before they even caught up with the money GW2 will make on box sales alone.
Of course that's not to say they aren't planning on making money in the cash shop...but I think volume is something that most aren't taking into account.
I do take volume into account. I don't see how volume can outpace subscriptions in the long run though, unless there is an expectation that the cash shop in a B2P game will bring in significant revenue.
-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.
There aren't a whole lot of games left without some form of cash shop. Sadly, your immersion is going to be broken no matter what. Most of the subscription-based games have people parading around with items they bought as well. I think people probably think LESS of those who buy items than they do of people who earn them in-game...but the truth is that if you're only selling items that don't provide advantage over other players, who cares how someone else got their armor or minipet?
This is untrue. Most AAA subscription MMOs that I've played do not have a significant cash shop. Even in WoW, there's 4 pets and a 2 mount skins lol. A tiered system like Lotro's F2P system is centered around the cash shop. I tried it, it made me vomit. Hopefully GW2 doesn't do the same thing.
-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 big difference here is that the top subscription-based game (WoW) tends to have content that is limited to a particular level or play style...so the content for any individual tends to come much slower because they have to provide for multiple play styles (types of content) separately. This won't be the case nearly as much in GW2. Because of the scaling of dynamic events, and the fact that characters scale to the level of the content, any content that the GW2 live team adds will be usable by a much larger portion of the player base. This means that in regards to an individual player, the usable free content additions will likely be FASTER, no slower. You'll get stuff more often that you personally can use.
I'm still on the fence about it. Back when I was playing GW1 I didn't see content being turned out as fast as Rift is for example. And I'm wondering if (and hoping) they actually can consistently turn out content at the rate Rift has. Or at the rate SWTOR is planning to with their rapid dlc support content plans.
I'm even skeptical whether The Secret World will have frequent updates at a fast enough rate. Really 3 to 4 months is wayyyyy to long to wait in between major content updates. The MMO genre has shifted into a different gear.
^^^^^^^
I was going to comment on this last time but I didn't want to get off topic. I just have to say I love the comparison of a subscription to buying $2.5 cups of coffee because in actuality, the beans that went into making a cup of coffee probably cost 18 cents at most.
Volume can be an enormous factor. As I pointed out earlier, GW1 vastly outearned City of Heroes. City of Heroes probably peaked at 200k subs. GW1 sold 7 million units, and that's probably between 2-3 million users. Expansion content priced at ~$100 per year stacks up extremely well to subscriptions of $180 per year when you have 10x the number of players.
For an even more extreme example, look at the F2P League of Legends which lets you pay to unlock things faster than by playing, or has real money only vanity skins. They just reported 15 million people having played it. Rift, with its 500k subs is probably bringing in 7.5 million per month. Even if on average each person who has played LoL only buys one $10 skin every 10 months, that's still double Rift's revenue. Obviously, not every one of those players liked the game or would ever buy anything, but when Riot Games (makers of LoL) talk about expanding to 300 employees in 4 offices, they're obviously doing something right.
I also disagree with the notion that GW1 didn't put out content at a fast rate. GW Factions slipped to a year, but Nightfall was right on schedule at 6 months after that. Both of these expansions have 30+ zones, 20+ missions, 200+ quests, 2 new classes, and even some new game mechanics. In Nightfall's case, that's 5+ zones and 3+ missions per month. ArenaNet wants to get away from this standalone model so we're not sure what they're going to see, but it seems pretty clear they're certainly capable of generating content. In any case, I'm not sure what the payment method has to do with it. With a team for GW2 probably 10x the size of GW1's, almost certain multi million dollar sales, and the backing of NCSoft in case they need a short term cash infusion, I'm certain they're going to be able to generate as much content as they think players are willing to pay for.
I assume this is about the economic factor of B2P and F2P versus P2P. It's very possible but I still don't think if all games whent F2P that they would all get similar figures. In other words, F2P is great if you're one of the top few F2P games, while P2P benefits if you're one of the top B2P/P2P games. They're both successful because both types of games can exist along side each other.
Also many games have gone F2P when they fail to be able to hold on to their P2P status due to lack of interest. And then later on they boast about how they're making "so much more money" as F2P. LOL That is some funny pile of u know what. If that was true then most MMOs would launch as B2P or F2P. They don't. GW2 might be successful as a AAA mmorpg in the long term using B2P because of their reputation.
But successful as a AAA mmorpg means not having people complain about a feature or service and then GW2 fans say: "Well it's not that big of a deal, because you're not paying a subscription." LOL How many times have a I heard that already? And the game isn't even launched. If you are a true AAA mmorpg then you shouldn't need to support something with "but you're not paying a subscription." Smells fishy.
Either way I'm still sort of a GW2 fan. I like the graphics, the dynamic quests, the combat. Not, not, not a fan of the personal "story" because I think it could have been done much better if they had put more resources into that fundamental rpg area. Games like The Secret World and SWTOR dominating when it comes to the story aspect. And I only play MMORPGs because of the PvP or ongoing multiplayer Story. Either or. Still looking forward to release, and hope they do make a true AAA mmorpg, which I will most likely play for the PvP.
I assume this is about the economic factor of B2P and F2P versus P2P. It's very possible but I still don't think if all games whent F2P that they would all get similar figures. In other words, F2P is great if you're one of the top few F2P games, while P2P benefits if you're one of the top B2P/P2P games. They're both successful because both types of games can exist along side each other.
Also many games have gone F2P when they fail to be able to hold on to their P2P status due to lack of interest. And then later on they boast about how they're making "so much more money" as F2P. LOL That is some funny pile of u know what. If that was true then most MMOs would launch as B2P or F2P. They don't. GW2 might be successful as a AAA mmorpg in the long term using B2P because of their reputation.
But successful as a AAA mmorpg means not having people complain about a feature or service and then GW2 fans say: "Well it's not that big of a deal, because you're not paying a subscription." LOL How many times have a I heard that already? And the game isn't even launched. If you are a true AAA mmorpg then you shouldn't need to support something with "but you're not paying a subscription." Smells fishy.
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I'm not so sure if all games went F2P they wouldn't get similar figures. One extremely relevant source of information is this article about Puzzle Pirates. http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=23970 The game generates $70k per month from subscriptions and $230k from its F2P players, with an average of $1 per active player per month, which is the dollar amount I estimated for LoL (a $10 thing once every 10 months), though I used total players and not active ones (lacking that info).
So far in MMO history, if you wanted AAA quality, you had to pay a subscription. So it does make total sense that a game would generate more revenue as a F2P game if it didn't do as well as expected as a P2P AAA MMO. As far as more games not launching as F2P or B2P, I think it does just come down to company inertia. They see the money WoW is making, and they think having a sub is the best way to go about it, not taking into account things like that people will only pay one sub and WoW got their first, or that their game isn't as polished as WoW, or have as much content as WoW. Also, nobody has ever released a AAA quality MMO as F2P or B2P before. I'm sure a lot of companies still see P2P as a safer bet due to a projected steady stream of subscriber revenue, whether or not it's actually true.
ArenaNet is creating a AAA MMO, and I don't know who makes apologies about the game not having certain features, but I don't think it's ArenaNet. The only thing I can think of that it won't have is endgame progression raiding and that's a conscious design choice. If GW2 succeeds as a B2P AAA MMO, it won't be because of ArenaNet's reputation, it'll be because they made a great game with their own vision instead of following WoW's footsteps, included a ton of content right from the start, and made sure it was extremely polished.
"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 love the people who bring up the argument of the "content updates". By that argument I was once convinced to pay for WoW. During my time in WoW I never really thought about the sub and the content I was given for it, but by the time I had quit WoW I went over it and was shocked how little extra content was actually added.
Basically the "content" updates included some patches with little refinements, and every once in a while a new dungeon was added with some new tier gear. But that kind of content doesn't really add any depth to the game; it just solves some problems and extends the mindless gear grind. I personally hoped for added content in all the areas, content that didn't just grant better stats, but actually some real gameplay that was intended for fun and made the world feel richer and more interactable. None of that was added, just more of the same, that used old templates. The time that went in the so-called content updates of WoW is so minimal it could hardly be called an effort. The only real content that was added in WoW was with the expansions, which cost about as the initial price of vanilla WoW. It is ridiculous when you think about it. You pay for access to your account and have to buy any substantial content on top of that.
Blizzard's WoW is a work of genius when you look at it from a business perspective.
I just love the people who bring up the argument of the "content updates". By that argument I was once convinced to pay for WoW. During my time in WoW I never really thought about the sub and the content I was given for it, but by the time I had quit WoW I went over it and was shocked how little extra content was actually added.
Basically the "content" updates included some patches with little refinements, and every once in a while a new dungeon was added with some new tier gear. But that kind of content doesn't really add any depth to the game; it just solves some problems and extends the mindless gear grind. I personally hoped for added content in all the areas, content that didn't just grant better stats, but actually some real gameplay that was intended for fun and made the world feel richer and more interactable. None of that was added, just more of the same, that used old templates. The time that went in the so-called content updates of WoW is so minimal it could hardly be called an effort. The only real content that was added in WoW was with the expansions, which cost about as the initial price of vanilla WoW. It is ridiculous when you think about it. You pay for access to your account and have to buy any substantial content on top of that.
Blizzard's WoW is a work of genius when you look at it from a business perspective.
Thats because Blizzard believes in its policy of "a fool and his money is easily parted" with a passion. They played on your need to want something now attitude and everyone who played got sucked into that mentality. How long do you think it takes to put a skin on a model of a mount thats already ingame, take one person about 5 minutes then charge you $20 for that little effort, so what you actually paying $15 a month for? Content? BS as you already said you didnt really get much for what you paid out, server maintenance? yes of course it costs 11mil x $15 (165 mil a month) to maintain, then Blizzard has the audacity to charge you as much for the core game for an expansion. Blizzard got so obsessed with all the money coming in they lost their way and destroyed a great game.
Even now we can't move away because of all the fanbois whining its not like wow then on the other side we got people whining a game has an element of wow in an mmo. We need a company with balls and original ideas that wont bow down to 12 yr olds to produce an mmo that we can all get out teeth into that presents fresh challenges and a unique system. I returned to LotRo recently its all soloable including the books. I dont play mmo's to solo I play mmo's for the unique experience of playing with other people and creating a bond with people i have never met. If people want to solo then they should go buy a single player game.
I assume this is about the economic factor of B2P and F2P versus P2P. It's very possible but I still don't think if all games whent F2P that they would all get similar figures. In other words, F2P is great if you're one of the top few F2P games, while P2P benefits if you're one of the top B2P/P2P games. They're both successful because both types of games can exist along side each other.
Also many games have gone F2P when they fail to be able to hold on to their P2P status due to lack of interest. And then later on they boast about how they're making "so much more money" as F2P. LOL That is some funny pile of u know what. If that was true then most MMOs would launch as B2P or F2P. They don't. GW2 might be successful as a AAA mmorpg in the long term using B2P because of their reputation.
But successful as a AAA mmorpg means not having people complain about a feature or service and then GW2 fans say: "Well it's not that big of a deal, because you're not paying a subscription." LOL How many times have a I heard that already? And the game isn't even launched. If you are a true AAA mmorpg then you shouldn't need to support something with "but you're not paying a subscription." Smells fishy.
The highlighted portion of your responce is what smells fishy. I have been reading these forums for a while and I can't remember anyone defending the game with that statement. If someone doesn't like the game thats their perogative. But i hate when people, and you can see it a few times on this thread alone, start to get holes blown in their theories they resort to pulling stuff outta their butts. I have only read that GW2 is offering EVERYTHING a AAA P2P is offering INCLUDING the CS so to try to hold that against Anet like it's a legitimate reason to tell everyone the game isn't going to be for them is a funny pile of you know what.
FTP honestly has no bearing in this conversation only because it has been stated exactly what the purpose is of the CS in a F2P design, to limit your experience enough to force you into spending money. Anet has stated so many times in so many different interviews that this isn't the case for their B2P CS. The B2P model worked for the first, which everyone knows wasn't a MMORPG so lets get that outta the way, so I am sure with their collective know-how they have a better idea if the B2P model is valid for GW2. Certainly more than forum folks like us.
(Edited for clarification. I wasn't claiming you were holding that against them, it was the thread in general.)
Either way I'm still sort of a GW2 fan. I like the graphics, the dynamic quests, the combat. Not, not, not a fan of the personal "story" because I think it could have been done much better if they had put more resources into that fundamental rpg area. Games like The Secret World and SWTOR dominating when it comes to the story aspect. And I only play MMORPGs because of the PvP or ongoing multiplayer Story. Either or. Still looking forward to release, and hope they do make a true AAA mmorpg, which I will most likely play for the PvP.
What do you mean?
It seems as if you have already played 1-80. Seriously, if you are talking about quality, it is just the same thing as with "Apple". As long as they put the apple onto the product it is already a win. I mean, of course there has been alot good BW games in the past that received very good reputation but they have to prove themselves everytime they launch a new game. If you are talking about the amount of story content... Well it might be your point ;-) If it is about the design philosophy I have to disagree, because I think, that you do not get a good game simply by putting story into the focus. Story is an important feature of GW2 (top 3 features) and if it is the cutscenes for you than it is a matter of taste. No rule says: 3D>2,5D (in a way)
Either way I'm still sort of a GW2 fan. I like the graphics, the dynamic quests, the combat. Not, not, not a fan of the personal "story" because I think it could have been done much better if they had put more resources into that fundamental rpg area. Games like The Secret World and SWTOR dominating when it comes to the story aspect. And I only play MMORPGs because of the PvP or ongoing multiplayer Story. Either or. Still looking forward to release, and hope they do make a true AAA mmorpg, which I will most likely play for the PvP.
What do you mean?
It seems as if you have already played 1-80. Seriously, if you are talking about quality, it is just the same thing as with "Apple". As long as they put the apple onto the product it is already a win. I mean, of course there has been alot good BW games in the past that received very good reputation but they have to prove themselves everytime they launch a new game. If you are talking about the amount of story content... Well it might be your point ;-) If it is about the design philosophy I have to disagree, because I think, that you do not get a good game simply by putting story into the focus. Story is an important feature of GW2 (top 3 features) and if it is the cutscenes for you than it is a matter of taste. No rule says: 3D>2,5D (in a way)
The 3D>2.5D is part of it. It's not always going to be true, but in this case it is. SWTORs camera work is very movie-like with the face close ups, zoom outs, pans, distance of field blur, cuts back and forth to different actors. The Secret World is doing something similar. Meanwhile in GW2 I get two stiff figures on a 2d background in an odd position, not even facing each other.
Then when you get to the personal story. I hear a lot of GW2 fans saying about other new MMOs that "If I wanted a story I'd read a book." Well that's great, because GW2's personal story is going to be more book-like than other MMOs. You stand there and watch a cutscene of two or three characters half-facing each other and talking, and talking, and talking. In a lot of videos you don't even get to choose any dialogue to say lol. The characters just keep on talking...
The whole reason I liked the story and conversation system in SWTOR is because you get to interact in the conversation and it's multiplayer, meaning anyone can interact. If I wanted to hear two characters talking to each other, without the ability to interact in the conversation, then I'd read a book.
Maybe the personal story is a feature to some. Personally I think GW2s top features are its combat, guild pvp, dynamic quests, and its graphics. The personal story looks like one of the more boring aspects of the game. It's almost 2d, and there's not enough interactivity with dialogue choices.
I assume this is about the economic factor of B2P and F2P versus P2P. It's very possible but I still don't think if all games whent F2P that they would all get similar figures. In other words, F2P is great if you're one of the top few F2P games, while P2P benefits if you're one of the top B2P/P2P games. They're both successful because both types of games can exist along side each other.
Also many games have gone F2P when they fail to be able to hold on to their P2P status due to lack of interest. And then later on they boast about how they're making "so much more money" as F2P. LOL That is some funny pile of u know what. If that was true then most MMOs would launch as B2P or F2P. They don't. GW2 might be successful as a AAA mmorpg in the long term using B2P because of their reputation.
But successful as a AAA mmorpg means not having people complain about a feature or service and then GW2 fans say: "Well it's not that big of a deal, because you're not paying a subscription." LOL How many times have a I heard that already? And the game isn't even launched. If you are a true AAA mmorpg then you shouldn't need to support something with "but you're not paying a subscription." Smells fishy.
I'm not so sure if all games went F2P they wouldn't get similar figures. One extremely relevant source of information is this article about Puzzle Pirates. http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=23970 The game generates $70k per month from subscriptions and $230k from its F2P players, with an average of $1 per active player per month, which is the dollar amount I estimated for LoL (a $10 thing once every 10 months), though I used total players and not active ones (lacking that info).
So far in MMO history, if you wanted AAA quality, you had to pay a subscription. So it does make total sense that a game would generate more revenue as a F2P game if it didn't do as well as expected as a P2P AAA MMO. As far as more games not launching as F2P or B2P, I think it does just come down to company inertia. They see the money WoW is making, and they think having a sub is the best way to go about it, not taking into account things like that people will only pay one sub and WoW got their first, or that their game isn't as polished as WoW, or have as much content as WoW. Also, nobody has ever released a AAA quality MMO as F2P or B2P before. I'm sure a lot of companies still see P2P as a safer bet due to a projected steady stream of subscriber revenue, whether or not it's actually true.
ArenaNet is creating a AAA MMO, and I don't know who makes apologies about the game not having certain features, but I don't think it's ArenaNet. The only thing I can think of that it won't have is endgame progression raiding and that's a conscious design choice. If GW2 succeeds as a B2P AAA MMO, it won't be because of ArenaNet's reputation, it'll be because they made a great game with their own vision instead of following WoW's footsteps, included a ton of content right from the start, and made sure it was extremely polished.
A subscription based model is a more stable funding for post launch development in MMOs. The developers know they have a certain amount of subscribers and can increase or decrease their development team and resources based on that.
In B2P models, you can't count on anything. It's riskier. If I was a developer working on an MMO post launch I'd prefer subscription based versus B2P for the benefit of being able to have much longer term plans.
I don't believe company intertia has much to do with MMOs starting out as P2P and going F2P when they start to fail to hold subscribers. They have business sections of their company that know more about making profit than most on these forums. So the claim that "Oh were making so much more money know that we went F2P" is complete BS. Which they have been saying ever since Dungeons and Dragons Online. If that was true it would have already caught on in the financial sector of these gaming companies. Rocket science it aint.
I do think Arena.net's reputation as ex-Blizzard core members helped the game get the attention it needed for sales to succeed as B2P. How can you deny that?
And I'm still doubtful that B2P will cover all operating and development costs for large MMOs, with millions of subscribers, with huge zones. One of the reasons I say that is that it looks like GW2 is specifically designed to have a minimum of server traffic. It's noticeable in the run/walk animations on characters, where it looks like there's some kind of quick responsive movement technique, that can communicate character location quickly with the server, but isn't quite in sync with the actual animation.
I don't think all MMOs have low enough server traffic to benefit from B2P. For server traffic in SWTOR there's there's the addition of melee weapons that are coordinated to impact each other and the rest of the choreographed combat. There's the traffic from every character having a companion, who can also be customized. There's the traffic from syncing 4 players up to multiplayer conversations which needs to be synced perfectly. There's the increased server traffic from classes that use the game environment to take cover from enemy fire.
It makes me think that some MMOs have higher server traffic, and some are designed for lower server traffic. Especially since even GW1 has responsive low latency pvp combat in mind from the beginning.
A subscription based model is a more stable funding for post launch development in MMOs. The developers know they have a certain amount of subscribers and can increase or decrease their development team and resources based on that.
In B2P models, you can't count on anything. It's riskier. If I was a developer working on an MMO post launch I'd prefer subscription based versus B2P for the benefit of being able to have much longer term plans.
I don't believe company intertia has much to do with MMOs starting out as P2P and going F2P when they start to fail to hold subscribers. They have business sections of their company that know more about making profit than most on these forums. So the claim that "Oh were making so much more money know that we went F2P" is complete BS. Which they have been saying ever since Dungeons and Dragons Online. If that was true it would have already caught on in the financial sector of these gaming companies. Rocket science it aint.
I do think Arena.net's reputation as ex-Blizzard core members helped the game get the attention it needed for sales to succeed as B2P. How can you deny that?
And I'm still doubtful that B2P will cover all operating and development costs for large MMOs, with millions of subscribers, with huge zones. One of the reasons I say that is that it looks like GW2 is specifically designed to have a minimum of server traffic. It's noticeable in the run/walk animations on characters, where it looks like there's some kind of quick responsive movement technique, that can communicate character location quickly with the server, but isn't quite in sync with the actual animation.
I don't think all MMOs have low enough server traffic to benefit from B2P. For server traffic in SWTOR there's there's the addition of melee weapons that are coordinated to impact each other and the rest of the choreographed combat. There's the traffic from every character having a companion, who can also be customized. There's the traffic from syncing 4 players up to multiplayer conversations which needs to be synced perfectly. There's the increased server traffic from classes that use the game environment to take cover from enemy fire.
It makes me think that some MMOs have higher server traffic, and some are designed for lower server traffic. Especially since even GW1 has responsive low latency pvp combat in mind from the beginning.
Ostensibly a subscription offers more certainty about revenue coming in but does it really? How does a company know whether people will continue past their free month? Or whether they're going to find the endgame content compelling enough to stick around for?
I really don't see a B2P model being that much riskier to be honest. We're talking about money coming from expansion content, not vanity cash shop stuff that only a fraction of people are going to buy. You could just estimate that half your players are going to buy an expansion and then adjust your projections and future development based on that. No matter what your payment model, you're going to be in the dark at first, and then everything you do adds more information.
I totally disagree with your assessment of F2P vs P2P. How many companies have completely fallen on their faces with bad launches and/or not listening to their beta testers? It took until 2011 and Rift as far as I know for a company to finally even simply finish their game before launching it. And even then the evidence seems clear that taking the best parts of WoW isn't enough and not having a lot of replayability isn't enough either.
The games that are going F2P are making more money than P2P because they didn't do as well as they would have liked as P2P games. That isn't going to stop other companies from saying that if they would just do it right, there's still a market for succeeding with P2P. That's the inertia I'm talking about. I guarantee Bioware is looking at Rift and thinking that they are going to make bank with P2P because not only are they also finishing their game, they're having a ton of replayability, fully VO story and a very well known IP. We'll see this time next year whether that is enough for a P2P to succeed in this changing landscape.
To put it another way, just because some companies are making more money as F2P than they did as P2P doesn't mean that they're making anywhere near the kind of money that WoW is making, and that's what the bean counters at these companies are still looking at.
I honestly never heard of the development team at ArenaNet before I decided to purchase GW. I highly doubt the average person did either. All I saw was that there were henchmen so that my friend and I could play together without dealing with PUG drama and that there was no subscription fee so why not. It's not a AAA game, but it's still pretty good. I think in GW2's case, people are going to look at the Manifesto and say "holy shit I need to play this game", not look at Wikipedia and buy it because they realize the founders used to work for Blizzard.
As far as B2P being able to support millions of players, it's simply handled by proportion. The more players you have, the more money you got from sales. If X number of players can support Y number of servers, then 2X supports 2Y. Actually, because of economies of scale, it gets cheaper the more players you have.
And again, I can't emphasize this enough...GW1 earned more money than CoH. We'll have to wait and see how GW2 compares with big name MMOs, but I don't know what server traffic has to do with anything as long as the money is there to pay for it. And besides, I don't know how you can argue that it'll be demonstrably higher for other MMOs. GW2 has events running whether players are there or not and all kinds of rezzable friendly npcs taking part. GW2 has projectiles and attacks which can be dodged or that will hit the shield the guy in front of you is using. How is that different from a cover mechanic?
And honestly, if ArenaNet has found a way to lower server traffic in order to keep costs low, yet still provides a AAA MMO experience, then more power to them. They're passing those savings on to the consumer and offering an equivalent quality product at a lower price. Capitalism says other companies should also get on board with that, or risk failing.
"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
Then when you get to the personal story. I hear a lot of GW2 fans saying about other new MMOs that "If I wanted a story I'd read a book." Well that's great, because GW2's personal story is going to be more book-like than other MMOs. You stand there and watch a cutscene of two or three characters half-facing each other and talking, and talking, and talking. In a lot of videos you don't even get to choose any dialogue to say lol. The characters just keep on talking...
You make it sound like the cut scenes in GW2 are like 3 minutes like with your comment that they are talking, talking and talking. When in reality they are very short and then you go off and do stuff that leads you all over the world with the personal story. Please link a video where the dialog is as long as you make it sound! Because I have not seen one instance of a dialog scene that were not short and to the point and they did not just keep talking and talking and talking. You are over exaggerating because you do not like the personal story!
Originally posted by Normike
In B2P models, you can't count on anything. It's riskier. If I was a developer working on an MMO post launch I'd prefer subscription based versus B2P for the benefit of being able to have much longer term plans
I do think Arena.net's reputation as ex-Blizzard core members helped the game get the attention it needed for sales to succeed as B2P. How can you deny that?
And I'm still doubtful that B2P will cover all operating and development costs for large MMOs, with millions of subscribers, with huge zones. One of the reasons I say that is that it looks like GW2 is specifically designed to have a minimum of server traffic. It's noticeable in the run/walk animations on characters, where it looks like there's some kind of quick responsive movement technique, that can communicate character location quickly with the server, but isn't quite in sync with the actual animation.
I don't think all MMOs have low enough server traffic to benefit from B2P. For server traffic in SWTOR there's there's the addition of melee weapons that are coordinated to impact each other and the rest of the choreographed combat. There's the traffic from every character having a companion, who can also be customized. There's the traffic from syncing 4 players up to multiplayer conversations which needs to be synced perfectly. There's the increased server traffic from classes that use the game environment to take cover from enemy fire.
It makes me think that some MMOs have higher server traffic, and some are designed for lower server traffic.
Buy to play does not carry more risk than subscription, each game is gambling that it will appeal to a wide audience and they all share the same risk in that department. If what you said here is true then no game that is buy to play would have long term development strategies and if you look at the gaming industry as a whole you can easily see that is not true.
In fact I can think of three buy to play games that have long term development plans made for them, and anyone with half a brain cell can see those three games and could also find more buy to play games with long term development plans. Subscription based gaming does not have any more quarantines than buy to play for long term development. That is purely based on market appeal on launch, if the game does not sale no matter what its business plan is future will be bleak. The opposite holds true too if a game sales then no matter what the business plan long term development is a possibility. You are trying to make a correlation to support subscription here that does not exist!
As for the next part are you really saying that ANet reputation as ex-Blizzard employees have lead to GW1 success? Well then why didn’t Hell Gate London successed? If a game only needs ex-Blizzard employees to get people to buy it in the millions then surly Hell Gate London should have had 6 to 7 million copies sold too!
As for the comment about the run animation and not being quite in sync with the actual animations, that is just your opinion. I have watched ever GW2 video that I have been able to find and it looks just as good as TOR, AA, and TSW in quality of animations and movement.
As for your final theory I would have to say you have never actual looked at a MMO company’s finical reports before have you. If you care to look at NCsoft reports GW1 makes enough to cover the server and bandwidth costs for ever single MMO that NCsoft publishes. Just for the record that covers Aion, Linage 2, City of Heroes, and GW1. So if GW1 alone can cover the cost of all of those games for servers and bandwidth how does that fit in your theory?
Especially since even GW1 has responsive low latency pvp combat in mind from the beginning.
Buy to play does not carry more risk than subscription, each game is gambling that it will appeal to a wide audience and they all share the same risk in that department. If what you said here is true then no game that is buy to play would have long term development strategies and if you look at the gaming industry as a whole you can easily see that is not true.
In fact I can think of three buy to play games that have long term development plans made for them, and anyone with half a brain cell can see those three games and could also find more buy to play games with long term development plans. Subscription based gaming does not have any more quarantines than buy to play for long term development. That is purely based on market appeal on launch, if the game does not sale no matter what its business plan is future will be bleak. The opposite holds true too if a game sales then no matter what the business plan long term development is a possibility. You are trying to make a correlation to support subscription here that does not exist!
As for the next part are you really saying that ANet reputation as ex-Blizzard employees have lead to GW1 success? Well then why didn’t Hell Gate London successed? If a game only needs ex-Blizzard employees to get people to buy it in the millions then surly Hell Gate London should have had 6 to 7 million copies sold too!
As for the comment about the run animation and not being quite in sync with the actual animations, that is just your opinion. I have watched ever GW2 video that I have been able to find and it looks just as good as TOR, AA, and TSW in quality of animations and movement.
As for your final theory I would have to say you have never actual looked at a MMO company’s finical reports before have you. If you care to look at NCsoft reports GW1 makes enough to cover the server and bandwidth costs for ever single MMO that NCsoft publishes. Just for the record that covers Aion, Linage 2, City of Heroes, and GW1. So if GW1 alone can cover the cost of all of those games for servers and bandwidth how does that fit in your theory?
If you look at reason number 40, Mark Kern states that "only 3 to 7 percent ever need pay for a free-to-play game to be immensely profitable."
Firefall is a completely free game and will not generate any revenue from box sales or subscriptions. This statement by Mark Kern that only a tiny fraction of the community ever needs to pay completely debunks any argument that a subscription is necessary for a developer to make a profit from their game.
You make it sound like the cut scenes in GW2 are like 3 minutes like with your comment that they are talking, talking and talking. When in reality they are very short and then you go off and do stuff that leads you all over the world with the personal story. Please link a video where the dialog is as long as you make it sound! Because I have not seen one instance of a dialog scene that were not short and to the point and they did not just keep talking and talking and talking. You are over exaggerating because you do not like the personal story!
Agreed, even though I hope that there is one that long cut scene: The final one when you defeat the dragons.
Anyone who think GW2 is full of long and boring cut scenes should be sentenced to a month of Dragon age.
Then when you get to the personal story. I hear a lot of GW2 fans saying about other new MMOs that "If I wanted a story I'd read a book." Well that's great, because GW2's personal story is going to be more book-like than other MMOs. You stand there and watch a cutscene of two or three characters half-facing each other and talking, and talking, and talking. In a lot of videos you don't even get to choose any dialogue to say lol. The characters just keep on talking...
You make it sound like the cut scenes in GW2 are like 3 minutes like with your comment that they are talking, talking and talking. When in reality they are very short and then you go off and do stuff that leads you all over the world with the personal story. Please link a video where the dialog is as long as you make it sound! Because I have not seen one instance of a dialog scene that were not short and to the point and they did not just keep talking and talking and talking. You are over exaggerating because you do not like the personal story!
I was gonna make the same comment but you beat me to it Slappy. As someone who has used that line about story and books, i said so only because when discussing the positive aspects of SWTOR (not flaming just stating what I was discussing at the time) the one that came up was basically an excuse for less than creative gameplay across the board. Then saying basically TOR brings it's best aspect in the story side. Well in that case I'd rather a book if that's it's best selling point with lackluster gameplay.
I have played all of the Bioware games so lets not make it sound like having a few choices through a string of dialogue is something to toot a horn about. I played through DA and ME several times as well as KOTOR just to see the endings from the Good and Evil side. that being said the vast majority of the conversations didn't mean squat whether you intimidated, sweet talked, w/e the information out of the NPC. It changed very little.
Saying TOR is gonna have a better story game than GW2 is your opinion. But lets not make it sound like Anets is more like a book just because TOR delivers it differently. like Slappy said, they are short and not a huge part of the game. Lets not fool ourselves into thinking just because you can spend twice as long in NPC interaction that it is that much better because you have meaningless, for the most part, choices. But I conceded that that also is an opinion.
Then when you get to the personal story. I hear a lot of GW2 fans saying about other new MMOs that "If I wanted a story I'd read a book." Well that's great, because GW2's personal story is going to be more book-like than other MMOs. You stand there and watch a cutscene of two or three characters half-facing each other and talking, and talking, and talking. In a lot of videos you don't even get to choose any dialogue to say lol. The characters just keep on talking...
You make it sound like the cut scenes in GW2 are like 3 minutes like with your comment that they are talking, talking and talking. When in reality they are very short and then you go off and do stuff that leads you all over the world with the personal story. Please link a video where the dialog is as long as you make it sound! Because I have not seen one instance of a dialog scene that were not short and to the point and they did not just keep talking and talking and talking. You are over exaggerating because you do not like the personal story!
I was gonna make the same comment but you beat me to it Slappy. As someone who has used that line about story and books, i said so only because when discussing the positive aspects of SWTOR (not flaming just stating what I was discussing at the time) the one that came up was basically an excuse for less than creative gameplay across the board. Then saying basically TOR brings it's best aspect in the story side. Well in that case I'd rather a book if that's it's best selling point with lackluster gameplay.
I have played all of the Bioware games so lets not make it sound like having a few choices through a string of dialogue is something to toot a horn about. I played through DA and ME several times as well as KOTOR just to see the endings from the Good and Evil side. that being said the vast majority of the conversations didn't mean squat whether you intimidated, sweet talked, w/e the information out of the NPC. It changed very little.
Saying TOR is gonna have a better story game than GW2 is your opinion. But lets not make it sound like Anets is more like a book just because TOR delivers it differently. like Slappy said, they are short and not a huge part of the game. Lets not fool ourselves into thinking just because you can spend twice as long in NPC interaction that it is that much better because you have meaningless, for the most part, choices. But I conceded that that also is an opinion.
From what I've been reading lately, the SWTOR storyline may not be nearly as good as many had hoped. The stories are not only very linear, but a lot of the individual "chapters" that make up the story for one class get re-used by various other classes in a mix and match manner. The idea that each of the eight classes provides a completely unique storyline seems to be false.
The GW2 storyline does something similar as well, but these are branching storylines where your choices, starting with your biography question choices at character creation and then moving forward, actually effect the story line and which story elements you encounter along the way. GW2 offers thousands of "chapter" progression combinations, where as SWTOR offers eight.
So, I agree. We can not assume that the SWTOR storyline is going to be better than the GW2 storyline. One would hope it would be, given the duration and focus, but now I'm not so sure that GW2's only story line advantage will be quantity of choices.
I've seen in two interviews now that GW2 has 60 feature film's worth of recorded dialogue. Most of that is for the personal story, with the rest for general NPC voice overs. I don't know if a similar number has ever been put forth for SWTOR for comparison, but it's still a heck of a lot of story related dialogue.
A subscription based model is a more stable funding for post launch development in MMOs. The developers know they have a certain amount of subscribers and can increase or decrease their development team and resources based on that.
In B2P models, you can't count on anything. It's riskier. If I was a developer working on an MMO post launch I'd prefer subscription based versus B2P for the benefit of being able to have much longer term plans.
I don't believe company intertia has much to do with MMOs starting out as P2P and going F2P when they start to fail to hold subscribers. They have business sections of their company that know more about making profit than most on these forums. So the claim that "Oh were making so much more money know that we went F2P" is complete BS. Which they have been saying ever since Dungeons and Dragons Online. If that was true it would have already caught on in the financial sector of these gaming companies. Rocket science it aint.
I do think Arena.net's reputation as ex-Blizzard core members helped the game get the attention it needed for sales to succeed as B2P. How can you deny that?
And I'm still doubtful that B2P will cover all operating and development costs for large MMOs, with millions of subscribers, with huge zones. One of the reasons I say that is that it looks like GW2 is specifically designed to have a minimum of server traffic. It's noticeable in the run/walk animations on characters, where it looks like there's some kind of quick responsive movement technique, that can communicate character location quickly with the server, but isn't quite in sync with the actual animation.
I don't think all MMOs have low enough server traffic to benefit from B2P. For server traffic in SWTOR there's there's the addition of melee weapons that are coordinated to impact each other and the rest of the choreographed combat. There's the traffic from every character having a companion, who can also be customized. There's the traffic from syncing 4 players up to multiplayer conversations which needs to be synced perfectly. There's the increased server traffic from classes that use the game environment to take cover from enemy fire.
It makes me think that some MMOs have higher server traffic, and some are designed for lower server traffic. Especially since even GW1 has responsive low latency pvp combat in mind from the beginning.
Ostensibly a subscription offers more certainty about revenue coming in but does it really? How does a company know whether people will continue past their free month? Or whether they're going to find the endgame content compelling enough to stick around for?
I really don't see a B2P model being that much riskier to be honest. We're talking about money coming from expansion content, not vanity cash shop stuff that only a fraction of people are going to buy. You could just estimate that half your players are going to buy an expansion and then adjust your projections and future development based on that. No matter what your payment model, you're going to be in the dark at first, and then everything you do adds more information.
I totally disagree with your assessment of F2P vs P2P. How many companies have completely fallen on their faces with bad launches and/or not listening to their beta testers? It took until 2011 and Rift as far as I know for a company to finally even simply finish their game before launching it. And even then the evidence seems clear that taking the best parts of WoW isn't enough and not having a lot of replayability isn't enough either.
The games that are going F2P are making more money than P2P because they didn't do as well as they would have liked as P2P games. That isn't going to stop other companies from saying that if they would just do it right, there's still a market for succeeding with P2P. That's the inertia I'm talking about. I guarantee Bioware is looking at Rift and thinking that they are going to make bank with P2P because not only are they also finishing their game, they're having a ton of replayability, fully VO story and a very well known IP. We'll see this time next year whether that is enough for a P2P to succeed in this changing landscape.
To put it another way, just because some companies are making more money as F2P than they did as P2P doesn't mean that they're making anywhere near the kind of money that WoW is making, and that's what the bean counters at these companies are still looking at.
I honestly never heard of the development team at ArenaNet before I decided to purchase GW. I highly doubt the average person did either. All I saw was that there were henchmen so that my friend and I could play together without dealing with PUG drama and that there was no subscription fee so why not. It's not a AAA game, but it's still pretty good. I think in GW2's case, people are going to look at the Manifesto and say "holy shit I need to play this game", not look at Wikipedia and buy it because they realize the founders used to work for Blizzard.
As far as B2P being able to support millions of players, it's simply handled by proportion. The more players you have, the more money you got from sales. If X number of players can support Y number of servers, then 2X supports 2Y. Actually, because of economies of scale, it gets cheaper the more players you have.
And again, I can't emphasize this enough...GW1 earned more money than CoH. We'll have to wait and see how GW2 compares with big name MMOs, but I don't know what server traffic has to do with anything as long as the money is there to pay for it. And besides, I don't know how you can argue that it'll be demonstrably higher for other MMOs. GW2 has events running whether players are there or not and all kinds of rezzable friendly npcs taking part. GW2 has projectiles and attacks which can be dodged or that will hit the shield the guy in front of you is using. How is that different from a cover mechanic?
And honestly, if ArenaNet has found a way to lower server traffic in order to keep costs low, yet still provides a AAA MMO experience, then more power to them. They're passing those savings on to the consumer and offering an equivalent quality product at a lower price. Capitalism says other companies should also get on board with that, or risk failing.
When I say subscription offers more stability I'm talking about month to month stability for a developer. It allows much easier planning.
The subscription model has been around for centuries for all kinds of things partly because it's more stable. It actually takes effort for the consumer to cancel the subscription because of the automatic nature of a subscription.
A game will not be good or bad dependent on whether it goes F2P, B2P, or P2P. It will succeed based on it's content, media coverage, community support, and long term developer support. The top percent of games may be able to succeed as B2P when it comes to the last factor, long term developer support. The rest will not.
GW1 probably did make more money than CoH. But as a game I prefered CoH and CoV because it felt more like an MMO. GW1 was fun but it felt more like a multiplayer rpg. It didn't feel like an MMO community, almost like people saw it as a FPS shooter lobby. And there were sacrifices made to reduce server traffic, for example no jumping. I'm skeptical that GW2 will have other similar sacrifices made to reduce server traffic and that the community will not feel like a stable MMO community, but we'll see. I want to be proven wrong. Nothing would make me happier than to see a fully fledged top quality MMO, with a great cohesive MMO community, and no monthly fee.
It's not that Arena.net's history made people want to try the game. I mean that being ex-Blizzard core members got them the credibility, media coverage, and initial fan base needed to grow so that they generated a lot of word of mouth and attract players like you. Arena.net is now sufficiently established in their own accomplishments now that being related to Blizzard is insignificant.
I hear you on the no monthly fee and capitalism part. But the hardcore gamer in me wants those increased server traffic systems if they provide interesting gameplay. And I'm willing to pay 1.5 starbucks coffees a week for them. But in the end I think some MMO games do need a subscription to cover those costs, some don't.
Comments
I don't see what's so difficult for people to understand that it isn't about the amount of money, but the value obtained for that money. My husband and I go to a sushi restaurant that offers an all you can eat menu for X dollars. It's great, except that we did the math and found that when we purchase a la carte, our bill is lower because we simply don't eat enough for the all you can eat fee to be a discount. We have friends, however, who would easily spend twice our bill if they had to buy items a la carte. It's obviously a better deal for them than it is for us.
F2P is not for high consumers if you want to save money. Subscriptions are the best value for your money if you are a high consumer. But $15/month is no longer a mere $0.50 per day if you don't play every day, or for long every day. Everyone wants the highest value for their dollar, and if you are consuming 20 hours a week of content, you will likely eat up every single F2P content pack as soon as it's available, sales be damned, and wish you could just access it for a flat fee.
However, if you consume content slowly; play 1-2 hours per week (which means that $15/month is more like $5/week - still low, but simply not the same value per dollar of a high consumer) then paying for content when you want it is the highest value for your dollar. You never spend money on content you will not use. In subscription models, the low consumption customers subsidize the high consumption customers, and in F2P or B2P it is the other way around.
He didn't mention it in the article because it's a moot point in the discussion. GW2 will have a live team which will fix bugs and be feeding content for free constantly after release, just like any subscription based game. They will provide that live team without a subscription fee. ArenaNet has been paying their live team to do bug fixes, content additions, and balancing on the first Guild Wars game for years now, and they've never charged a sub fee.
Quote, please. Otherwise I think you misread. I don't think any GW fanboy would claim that the first Guild Wars was an MMORPG at all. The company doesn't even say it was.
The discussion is about GW2, which is every bit an MMORPG.
I am guessing that's your little secret.
I mean if the first GW's model was looking like it barely allowed the team to scrape by I wonder why they are adopting it for the second? While I won't claim to have a deep understanding of how it all works. I do know what the first GW offered in way of the cash shop, content, support team, etc. I am aware it wasn't a MMO, but can people honestly say that with the amount of understanding and knowledge the team has combined that we know better than they do? I'll continue to go by what Anet tells me and not doubt it until they give me reason to do otherwise. I'll certainly take their word for it over some of the folks on this site who refuse to even give them the beneift of the doubt.
Who wants to be told they have been throwing money at companies for years for no real reason other than lining the pockets of the corperate machine? I don't like the idea that I have been paying a sub when it has been uneccessary since the turn of the century, but I also refuse to be a lemming. If someone can prove that the sub is an illusion then I'll stand behind them. Yes the team is trying to get your money as well. Maybe they see that profit coming by way of people being shown that the sub is a gimmic and they draw in customers through people realizing this. Just a thought.
RIP Jimmy "The Rev" Sullivan and Paul Gray.
Look. If ANet delivers what they are promising, GW2 will have more content at launch than most other AAA MMOs do at launch. The game also looks to be more fun, features a dynamic world filled with Dynamic, world changing events. It has a Personal Story Mode with full voice acting. The Story mode is not as long per character as the SWTOR storylines, but there are thousands of variations on how the storylines play out, rather than eight, very linear stories. SWTOR has a big advantage there for those who play few characters over time, GW2 has an advantage for those who enjoy alts.
Add in the way the game scales players down for content they have "outleveled", World vs. World vs. World, Comptetitive PVP and all the other elements the game offers to extend play time and enhance replayability; GW2 looks to offer more content and game play than most AAA MMOs released since WoW have even hoped to provide. This is NOT an MMO Lite experience that uses the B2P model because it lacks game. This is a B2P title that offers a lot more than most subscription MMOs offer.
Yes, there is a cash shop, but it is not an "evil" cash shop. It promises to be much more restrictive in what it offers vs. LotRO cash shop, which itself is a lot more restrictive than what most F2P Asian MMOs offer. This is NOT a pay to Win or Pay to Enjoy cash shop model.
To be fair, SWTOR looks to offer a lot more at launch than the typical AAA MMO. It may justify the monthly fee more than other games in the genre. However, it has to be a much better game than GW2 to justify the additional expense and at this point, we don't really know exactly how well the two games will stack up against each other over the mid to long term. If they are both great games with content that holds up over time, SWTOR has the advantage of being Star Wars, but GW2 will have the advantage of being Buy to Play.
Both games may shake up the genre. If SWTOR sets a new bar for what they deliver in exchange for $15/month, other games may have trouble justifying the same fee structure for lesser games. If GW2 offers more in game play and content than other MMOs in development, as a B2P game, they put pressure on those games to justify charging any monthly fee at all.
The MMO landscape is about to change significantly with the release of these two titles and other games will have to adapt or wither.
Want to know more about GW2 and why there is so much buzz? Start here: Guild Wars 2 Mass Info for the Uninitiated
^^^^^^^
I was going to comment on this last time but I didn't want to get off topic. I just have to say I love the comparison of a subscription to buying $2.5 cups of coffee because in actuality, the beans that went into making a cup of coffee probably cost 18 cents at most.
Volume can be an enormous factor. As I pointed out earlier, GW1 vastly outearned City of Heroes. City of Heroes probably peaked at 200k subs. GW1 sold 7 million units, and that's probably between 2-3 million users. Expansion content priced at ~$100 per year stacks up extremely well to subscriptions of $180 per year when you have 10x the number of players.
For an even more extreme example, look at the F2P League of Legends which lets you pay to unlock things faster than by playing, or has real money only vanity skins. They just reported 15 million people having played it. Rift, with its 500k subs is probably bringing in 7.5 million per month. Even if on average each person who has played LoL only buys one $10 skin every 10 months, that's still double Rift's revenue. Obviously, not every one of those players liked the game or would ever buy anything, but when Riot Games (makers of LoL) talk about expanding to 300 employees in 4 offices, they're obviously doing something right.
I also disagree with the notion that GW1 didn't put out content at a fast rate. GW Factions slipped to a year, but Nightfall was right on schedule at 6 months after that. Both of these expansions have 30+ zones, 20+ missions, 200+ quests, 2 new classes, and even some new game mechanics. In Nightfall's case, that's 5+ zones and 3+ missions per month. ArenaNet wants to get away from this standalone model so we're not sure what they're going to see, but it seems pretty clear they're certainly capable of generating content. In any case, I'm not sure what the payment method has to do with it. With a team for GW2 probably 10x the size of GW1's, almost certain multi million dollar sales, and the backing of NCSoft in case they need a short term cash infusion, I'm certain they're going to be able to generate as much content as they think players are willing to pay for.
"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 figured I'd put a source in for you.
I assume this is about the economic factor of B2P and F2P versus P2P. It's very possible but I still don't think if all games whent F2P that they would all get similar figures. In other words, F2P is great if you're one of the top few F2P games, while P2P benefits if you're one of the top B2P/P2P games. They're both successful because both types of games can exist along side each other.
Also many games have gone F2P when they fail to be able to hold on to their P2P status due to lack of interest. And then later on they boast about how they're making "so much more money" as F2P. LOL That is some funny pile of u know what. If that was true then most MMOs would launch as B2P or F2P. They don't. GW2 might be successful as a AAA mmorpg in the long term using B2P because of their reputation.
But successful as a AAA mmorpg means not having people complain about a feature or service and then GW2 fans say: "Well it's not that big of a deal, because you're not paying a subscription." LOL How many times have a I heard that already? And the game isn't even launched. If you are a true AAA mmorpg then you shouldn't need to support something with "but you're not paying a subscription." Smells fishy.
Either way I'm still sort of a GW2 fan. I like the graphics, the dynamic quests, the combat. Not, not, not a fan of the personal "story" because I think it could have been done much better if they had put more resources into that fundamental rpg area. Games like The Secret World and SWTOR dominating when it comes to the story aspect. And I only play MMORPGs because of the PvP or ongoing multiplayer Story. Either or. Still looking forward to release, and hope they do make a true AAA mmorpg, which I will most likely play for the PvP.
I'm not so sure if all games went F2P they wouldn't get similar figures. One extremely relevant source of information is this article about Puzzle Pirates. http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=23970 The game generates $70k per month from subscriptions and $230k from its F2P players, with an average of $1 per active player per month, which is the dollar amount I estimated for LoL (a $10 thing once every 10 months), though I used total players and not active ones (lacking that info).
So far in MMO history, if you wanted AAA quality, you had to pay a subscription. So it does make total sense that a game would generate more revenue as a F2P game if it didn't do as well as expected as a P2P AAA MMO. As far as more games not launching as F2P or B2P, I think it does just come down to company inertia. They see the money WoW is making, and they think having a sub is the best way to go about it, not taking into account things like that people will only pay one sub and WoW got their first, or that their game isn't as polished as WoW, or have as much content as WoW. Also, nobody has ever released a AAA quality MMO as F2P or B2P before. I'm sure a lot of companies still see P2P as a safer bet due to a projected steady stream of subscriber revenue, whether or not it's actually true.
ArenaNet is creating a AAA MMO, and I don't know who makes apologies about the game not having certain features, but I don't think it's ArenaNet. The only thing I can think of that it won't have is endgame progression raiding and that's a conscious design choice. If GW2 succeeds as a B2P AAA MMO, it won't be because of ArenaNet's reputation, it'll be because they made a great game with their own vision instead of following WoW's footsteps, included a ton of content right from the start, and made sure it was extremely polished.
"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 love the people who bring up the argument of the "content updates". By that argument I was once convinced to pay for WoW. During my time in WoW I never really thought about the sub and the content I was given for it, but by the time I had quit WoW I went over it and was shocked how little extra content was actually added.
Basically the "content" updates included some patches with little refinements, and every once in a while a new dungeon was added with some new tier gear. But that kind of content doesn't really add any depth to the game; it just solves some problems and extends the mindless gear grind. I personally hoped for added content in all the areas, content that didn't just grant better stats, but actually some real gameplay that was intended for fun and made the world feel richer and more interactable. None of that was added, just more of the same, that used old templates. The time that went in the so-called content updates of WoW is so minimal it could hardly be called an effort. The only real content that was added in WoW was with the expansions, which cost about as the initial price of vanilla WoW. It is ridiculous when you think about it. You pay for access to your account and have to buy any substantial content on top of that.
Blizzard's WoW is a work of genius when you look at it from a business perspective.
Thats because Blizzard believes in its policy of "a fool and his money is easily parted" with a passion. They played on your need to want something now attitude and everyone who played got sucked into that mentality. How long do you think it takes to put a skin on a model of a mount thats already ingame, take one person about 5 minutes then charge you $20 for that little effort, so what you actually paying $15 a month for? Content? BS as you already said you didnt really get much for what you paid out, server maintenance? yes of course it costs 11mil x $15 (165 mil a month) to maintain, then Blizzard has the audacity to charge you as much for the core game for an expansion. Blizzard got so obsessed with all the money coming in they lost their way and destroyed a great game.
Even now we can't move away because of all the fanbois whining its not like wow then on the other side we got people whining a game has an element of wow in an mmo. We need a company with balls and original ideas that wont bow down to 12 yr olds to produce an mmo that we can all get out teeth into that presents fresh challenges and a unique system. I returned to LotRo recently its all soloable including the books. I dont play mmo's to solo I play mmo's for the unique experience of playing with other people and creating a bond with people i have never met. If people want to solo then they should go buy a single player game.
The highlighted portion of your responce is what smells fishy. I have been reading these forums for a while and I can't remember anyone defending the game with that statement. If someone doesn't like the game thats their perogative. But i hate when people, and you can see it a few times on this thread alone, start to get holes blown in their theories they resort to pulling stuff outta their butts. I have only read that GW2 is offering EVERYTHING a AAA P2P is offering INCLUDING the CS so to try to hold that against Anet like it's a legitimate reason to tell everyone the game isn't going to be for them is a funny pile of you know what.
FTP honestly has no bearing in this conversation only because it has been stated exactly what the purpose is of the CS in a F2P design, to limit your experience enough to force you into spending money. Anet has stated so many times in so many different interviews that this isn't the case for their B2P CS. The B2P model worked for the first, which everyone knows wasn't a MMORPG so lets get that outta the way, so I am sure with their collective know-how they have a better idea if the B2P model is valid for GW2. Certainly more than forum folks like us.
(Edited for clarification. I wasn't claiming you were holding that against them, it was the thread in general.)
RIP Jimmy "The Rev" Sullivan and Paul Gray.
What do you mean?
It seems as if you have already played 1-80. Seriously, if you are talking about quality, it is just the same thing as with "Apple". As long as they put the apple onto the product it is already a win. I mean, of course there has been alot good BW games in the past that received very good reputation but they have to prove themselves everytime they launch a new game. If you are talking about the amount of story content... Well it might be your point ;-) If it is about the design philosophy I have to disagree, because I think, that you do not get a good game simply by putting story into the focus. Story is an important feature of GW2 (top 3 features) and if it is the cutscenes for you than it is a matter of taste. No rule says: 3D>2,5D (in a way)
The 3D>2.5D is part of it. It's not always going to be true, but in this case it is. SWTORs camera work is very movie-like with the face close ups, zoom outs, pans, distance of field blur, cuts back and forth to different actors. The Secret World is doing something similar. Meanwhile in GW2 I get two stiff figures on a 2d background in an odd position, not even facing each other.
Then when you get to the personal story. I hear a lot of GW2 fans saying about other new MMOs that "If I wanted a story I'd read a book." Well that's great, because GW2's personal story is going to be more book-like than other MMOs. You stand there and watch a cutscene of two or three characters half-facing each other and talking, and talking, and talking. In a lot of videos you don't even get to choose any dialogue to say lol. The characters just keep on talking...
The whole reason I liked the story and conversation system in SWTOR is because you get to interact in the conversation and it's multiplayer, meaning anyone can interact. If I wanted to hear two characters talking to each other, without the ability to interact in the conversation, then I'd read a book.
Maybe the personal story is a feature to some. Personally I think GW2s top features are its combat, guild pvp, dynamic quests, and its graphics. The personal story looks like one of the more boring aspects of the game. It's almost 2d, and there's not enough interactivity with dialogue choices.
A subscription based model is a more stable funding for post launch development in MMOs. The developers know they have a certain amount of subscribers and can increase or decrease their development team and resources based on that.
In B2P models, you can't count on anything. It's riskier. If I was a developer working on an MMO post launch I'd prefer subscription based versus B2P for the benefit of being able to have much longer term plans.
I don't believe company intertia has much to do with MMOs starting out as P2P and going F2P when they start to fail to hold subscribers. They have business sections of their company that know more about making profit than most on these forums. So the claim that "Oh were making so much more money know that we went F2P" is complete BS. Which they have been saying ever since Dungeons and Dragons Online. If that was true it would have already caught on in the financial sector of these gaming companies. Rocket science it aint.
I do think Arena.net's reputation as ex-Blizzard core members helped the game get the attention it needed for sales to succeed as B2P. How can you deny that?
And I'm still doubtful that B2P will cover all operating and development costs for large MMOs, with millions of subscribers, with huge zones. One of the reasons I say that is that it looks like GW2 is specifically designed to have a minimum of server traffic. It's noticeable in the run/walk animations on characters, where it looks like there's some kind of quick responsive movement technique, that can communicate character location quickly with the server, but isn't quite in sync with the actual animation.
I don't think all MMOs have low enough server traffic to benefit from B2P. For server traffic in SWTOR there's there's the addition of melee weapons that are coordinated to impact each other and the rest of the choreographed combat. There's the traffic from every character having a companion, who can also be customized. There's the traffic from syncing 4 players up to multiplayer conversations which needs to be synced perfectly. There's the increased server traffic from classes that use the game environment to take cover from enemy fire.
It makes me think that some MMOs have higher server traffic, and some are designed for lower server traffic. Especially since even GW1 has responsive low latency pvp combat in mind from the beginning.
Ostensibly a subscription offers more certainty about revenue coming in but does it really? How does a company know whether people will continue past their free month? Or whether they're going to find the endgame content compelling enough to stick around for?
I really don't see a B2P model being that much riskier to be honest. We're talking about money coming from expansion content, not vanity cash shop stuff that only a fraction of people are going to buy. You could just estimate that half your players are going to buy an expansion and then adjust your projections and future development based on that. No matter what your payment model, you're going to be in the dark at first, and then everything you do adds more information.
I totally disagree with your assessment of F2P vs P2P. How many companies have completely fallen on their faces with bad launches and/or not listening to their beta testers? It took until 2011 and Rift as far as I know for a company to finally even simply finish their game before launching it. And even then the evidence seems clear that taking the best parts of WoW isn't enough and not having a lot of replayability isn't enough either.
The games that are going F2P are making more money than P2P because they didn't do as well as they would have liked as P2P games. That isn't going to stop other companies from saying that if they would just do it right, there's still a market for succeeding with P2P. That's the inertia I'm talking about. I guarantee Bioware is looking at Rift and thinking that they are going to make bank with P2P because not only are they also finishing their game, they're having a ton of replayability, fully VO story and a very well known IP. We'll see this time next year whether that is enough for a P2P to succeed in this changing landscape.
To put it another way, just because some companies are making more money as F2P than they did as P2P doesn't mean that they're making anywhere near the kind of money that WoW is making, and that's what the bean counters at these companies are still looking at.
I honestly never heard of the development team at ArenaNet before I decided to purchase GW. I highly doubt the average person did either. All I saw was that there were henchmen so that my friend and I could play together without dealing with PUG drama and that there was no subscription fee so why not. It's not a AAA game, but it's still pretty good. I think in GW2's case, people are going to look at the Manifesto and say "holy shit I need to play this game", not look at Wikipedia and buy it because they realize the founders used to work for Blizzard.
As far as B2P being able to support millions of players, it's simply handled by proportion. The more players you have, the more money you got from sales. If X number of players can support Y number of servers, then 2X supports 2Y. Actually, because of economies of scale, it gets cheaper the more players you have.
And again, I can't emphasize this enough...GW1 earned more money than CoH. We'll have to wait and see how GW2 compares with big name MMOs, but I don't know what server traffic has to do with anything as long as the money is there to pay for it. And besides, I don't know how you can argue that it'll be demonstrably higher for other MMOs. GW2 has events running whether players are there or not and all kinds of rezzable friendly npcs taking part. GW2 has projectiles and attacks which can be dodged or that will hit the shield the guy in front of you is using. How is that different from a cover mechanic?
And honestly, if ArenaNet has found a way to lower server traffic in order to keep costs low, yet still provides a AAA MMO experience, then more power to them. They're passing those savings on to the consumer and offering an equivalent quality product at a lower price. Capitalism says other companies should also get on board with that, or risk failing.
"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
You make it sound like the cut scenes in GW2 are like 3 minutes like with your comment that they are talking, talking and talking. When in reality they are very short and then you go off and do stuff that leads you all over the world with the personal story. Please link a video where the dialog is as long as you make it sound! Because I have not seen one instance of a dialog scene that were not short and to the point and they did not just keep talking and talking and talking. You are over exaggerating because you do not like the personal story!
Buy to play does not carry more risk than subscription, each game is gambling that it will appeal to a wide audience and they all share the same risk in that department. If what you said here is true then no game that is buy to play would have long term development strategies and if you look at the gaming industry as a whole you can easily see that is not true.
In fact I can think of three buy to play games that have long term development plans made for them, and anyone with half a brain cell can see those three games and could also find more buy to play games with long term development plans. Subscription based gaming does not have any more quarantines than buy to play for long term development. That is purely based on market appeal on launch, if the game does not sale no matter what its business plan is future will be bleak. The opposite holds true too if a game sales then no matter what the business plan long term development is a possibility. You are trying to make a correlation to support subscription here that does not exist!
As for the next part are you really saying that ANet reputation as ex-Blizzard employees have lead to GW1 success? Well then why didn’t Hell Gate London successed? If a game only needs ex-Blizzard employees to get people to buy it in the millions then surly Hell Gate London should have had 6 to 7 million copies sold too!
As for the comment about the run animation and not being quite in sync with the actual animations, that is just your opinion. I have watched ever GW2 video that I have been able to find and it looks just as good as TOR, AA, and TSW in quality of animations and movement.
As for your final theory I would have to say you have never actual looked at a MMO company’s finical reports before have you. If you care to look at NCsoft reports GW1 makes enough to cover the server and bandwidth costs for ever single MMO that NCsoft publishes. Just for the record that covers Aion, Linage 2, City of Heroes, and GW1. So if GW1 alone can cover the cost of all of those games for servers and bandwidth how does that fit in your theory?
I think this is very relevant to this thread.
PCgamer did an article titled "50 reasons Firefall will rule 2012" and a comment by Mark Kern stood out to me.
http://www.firefallthegame.com/community/threads/50-reasons-firefall-will-rule-2012-pc-gamer.11198/
If you look at reason number 40, Mark Kern states that "only 3 to 7 percent ever need pay for a free-to-play game to be immensely profitable."
Firefall is a completely free game and will not generate any revenue from box sales or subscriptions. This statement by Mark Kern that only a tiny fraction of the community ever needs to pay completely debunks any argument that a subscription is necessary for a developer to make a profit from their game.
Agreed, even though I hope that there is one that long cut scene: The final one when you defeat the dragons.
Anyone who think GW2 is full of long and boring cut scenes should be sentenced to a month of Dragon age.
I was gonna make the same comment but you beat me to it Slappy. As someone who has used that line about story and books, i said so only because when discussing the positive aspects of SWTOR (not flaming just stating what I was discussing at the time) the one that came up was basically an excuse for less than creative gameplay across the board. Then saying basically TOR brings it's best aspect in the story side. Well in that case I'd rather a book if that's it's best selling point with lackluster gameplay.
I have played all of the Bioware games so lets not make it sound like having a few choices through a string of dialogue is something to toot a horn about. I played through DA and ME several times as well as KOTOR just to see the endings from the Good and Evil side. that being said the vast majority of the conversations didn't mean squat whether you intimidated, sweet talked, w/e the information out of the NPC. It changed very little.
Saying TOR is gonna have a better story game than GW2 is your opinion. But lets not make it sound like Anets is more like a book just because TOR delivers it differently. like Slappy said, they are short and not a huge part of the game. Lets not fool ourselves into thinking just because you can spend twice as long in NPC interaction that it is that much better because you have meaningless, for the most part, choices. But I conceded that that also is an opinion.
RIP Jimmy "The Rev" Sullivan and Paul Gray.
From what I've been reading lately, the SWTOR storyline may not be nearly as good as many had hoped. The stories are not only very linear, but a lot of the individual "chapters" that make up the story for one class get re-used by various other classes in a mix and match manner. The idea that each of the eight classes provides a completely unique storyline seems to be false.
The GW2 storyline does something similar as well, but these are branching storylines where your choices, starting with your biography question choices at character creation and then moving forward, actually effect the story line and which story elements you encounter along the way. GW2 offers thousands of "chapter" progression combinations, where as SWTOR offers eight.
So, I agree. We can not assume that the SWTOR storyline is going to be better than the GW2 storyline. One would hope it would be, given the duration and focus, but now I'm not so sure that GW2's only story line advantage will be quantity of choices.
I've seen in two interviews now that GW2 has 60 feature film's worth of recorded dialogue. Most of that is for the personal story, with the rest for general NPC voice overs. I don't know if a similar number has ever been put forth for SWTOR for comparison, but it's still a heck of a lot of story related dialogue.
Want to know more about GW2 and why there is so much buzz? Start here: Guild Wars 2 Mass Info for the Uninitiated
When I say subscription offers more stability I'm talking about month to month stability for a developer. It allows much easier planning.
The subscription model has been around for centuries for all kinds of things partly because it's more stable. It actually takes effort for the consumer to cancel the subscription because of the automatic nature of a subscription.
A game will not be good or bad dependent on whether it goes F2P, B2P, or P2P. It will succeed based on it's content, media coverage, community support, and long term developer support. The top percent of games may be able to succeed as B2P when it comes to the last factor, long term developer support. The rest will not.
GW1 probably did make more money than CoH. But as a game I prefered CoH and CoV because it felt more like an MMO. GW1 was fun but it felt more like a multiplayer rpg. It didn't feel like an MMO community, almost like people saw it as a FPS shooter lobby. And there were sacrifices made to reduce server traffic, for example no jumping. I'm skeptical that GW2 will have other similar sacrifices made to reduce server traffic and that the community will not feel like a stable MMO community, but we'll see. I want to be proven wrong. Nothing would make me happier than to see a fully fledged top quality MMO, with a great cohesive MMO community, and no monthly fee.
It's not that Arena.net's history made people want to try the game. I mean that being ex-Blizzard core members got them the credibility, media coverage, and initial fan base needed to grow so that they generated a lot of word of mouth and attract players like you. Arena.net is now sufficiently established in their own accomplishments now that being related to Blizzard is insignificant.
I hear you on the no monthly fee and capitalism part. But the hardcore gamer in me wants those increased server traffic systems if they provide interesting gameplay. And I'm willing to pay 1.5 starbucks coffees a week for them. But in the end I think some MMO games do need a subscription to cover those costs, some don't.