Since both hardware and bandwidth costs have come down exponentially over the years, logic would dictate that sub fees are less necessary than ever.
Of course that all depends on the continued development costs of a game.
My personal opinion is that if you have a sub fee, there is no way you should also be paying for expansions. Also expansions and new content should be developed at a reasonable rate.
Paying $15 a month on top of the original purchase price is ridiculous for the crap some companies are turning out, especially when 3 months into release they are still fixing bugs or adding missing features, rather than new content.
I love arguements that use real world examples.
Except they don't apply. Who ever aquired the fastest machines did so by saving, earning and working in the real world with real world money earned from others in the real world.
It did not come from God who bought the hardware in a Cash Shop somewhere and miraculously materialized it on someone's desk.
I'm not sure where you're coming from unless you misunderstood my post.
I'm referring to the costs incurred by game companies by hosting a game. Server and bandwidth costs are a fraction of what they once were. I doubt very much that the saving has been passed on to the customer by an appropriate amount.
DOH! Yes, I quoted the wrong dam post...my apologies to you.
I was reading one when someone was comparing people have the best in the real world as being no different than those who have the best in a game from the cash shop. Now I can't seem to find that one.
GW2 is supposed to call for a Paradigm Shift accoding to some threeads, But based on responses from different discussions, namely the carrot on a stick thread I don't see that happening.
In games of old, players built their virtual world. They logged in day after day and did the same activities time after time and built an environment for themselves.
WoW comes along and says...No, you aren't building your world...We already did that. you can build your character now. And we all said...."OK" and for a while. It was good. But I am not sure if that just got old and WoW started getting ridiculous to try to keep it going or if WoW got ridiculous 1st adn we all got tired of it. Maybe both who knows.
Anyway. GW2 comes along and offers nothingof the sort. You don't build anything. Not a world, not a character. You are supposed to play for the fun of it.
Yeah, ok, that's good, but that has no staying power. Once GW2 content becomes repetative, what reason will there be to do it yet again? How many times do WoW players run heroics? Why? Do you think the'd be doing it if there was no grind?
GW2 is like an SPRPG in one way. Once you finish the content you stop playing it.
Once the new car smell wears off, GW2 will continue to appeal to the same group GW1 does and I think ANet knows this.
GW2 is nothing more than a Niche Game that will have long term appeal to players satisfied with only Achievements and social wear.. and this "Get it while it's fresh" game design spells out one thing to me.
QUICK CASH GRAB
Apart from existing fans, GW2 will appeal to those without massive amounts of spare time. There are also those who will play it alongside their current mmo for a quick fix when they get bored.
On top of this are the eSport crowds currently playing LOL type games.
Then there's the long time MMO players who are just tired of levelling yet another character in another clone game.
I think GW2 will do well and I will certainly be buying into it.
OK, to be fair...I do agree.
I didn't mean to imply it will fail. I know it will be around for a while. But it will not revolutionize the industry.
I predict it will settle into it's niche but it's not going to rise up and carry 10M players on a daily basis for years.
But I still say that Anet is capitializing on a wave of hype trying to appeal to a demographic they know won't enjoy the game in the long run.
I've been saying this exact thing for over a year. People think GW2 will have 4 or 5 million players and I keep thinking do people really think 5 million people will find it fun and play just because its fun ? They say omg grinds suck and doing dungeons for gear sucks raiding sucks blah blah but they ignore the fact that a very large number of the MMO playerbase love improving their character through gear or other ways. How is that possible in GW2 ? Gear doesnt mean much and theres no raids the only reason to play is because you find it fun and eventually even that becomes boring you cannot keep people interested long enough just because its fun to play everything gets boring people need something to achieve and improve their characters with.
perhaps. i don't think we'll find out for a while though. as for anet and GW2, it occurs to me that maybe anet's forecasts are a bit on the low side in regards to what it took to make the game, thus they feel the need to recoup some of their losses through the cash shop. no matter what, the fact that GW2, for one reason or another, is implementing a cash shop only says that anet hasn't been able to pull off a fully featured, totally b2p mmo, not that it's impossible.
however, events have most certainly proved that some people can't think in shades of grey (which is, honestly, quite depressing). i con't beleive more people aren't recalling how many p2p games also have cash shops. oh well. i'll enjoy GW2, and so will many others, without paying a dime beyond the box price. (that's my little response to the p2w crowd).
EDIT: to the post above me: i always laugh and feel a little pang of pity for the people who think GW2 is going to change everything, and have millions of players. it will change a few things maybe, and be lucky if it has about a million regular players (after the weird, wibbly wobbly first few months).
I always find it funny how people expect MMO developers to be so self sacraficing for their customers. It's their business, they are going to try and find the best way to maximize profits while retaining customers. If 50% of the player base quit over cash shops, MMOs would stop adding them in. But the fact is, the majority either don't care or actually enjoy using it.
I don't get why people can't grasp this issue realistically.
This right here is a fact.. you can still play GW2 100% for free after you buy the box. It's a fact and it can't be argued. You can physically do it; log in every day and have access to all the content promised.
Can ANet keep GW2 going if everyone did that? Do your part and you might find out.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.
The announcement from ANet was not surprising in the least and I hope fans are happy about it because it means more content wont take a year to get to you. There is no other way to do this on a B2P model.
P2P isn't an instant win in the updates catagory though. The risk of P2P is gauging how much more your getting from the money your giving. Take WoW for instance. As polished as a game as I think WoW is I don't think the game is what it should be for what they have been getting every month. The payback is a better "Titan" hopefully....
I got a cousin who tells me he plays LOL (league of legends) because its free and he doesnt have to pay 15$ a month.
Last month he spent 50$ on the game and over the last few months hes probably spent 4-5 times that. I tell him time and time again its not f2p when you're spending more in 3 months then you would spend on a year of another game paying 15$ a month. This is why companys are going f2p you think they would be doing this if it wasnt more profitable ? Go f2p get 3 times the playerbase because its free and if figures hold true you only need a third of them players to actually spend money on the cash shop to be profitable.
Now someone said you shouldnt be charged for expansions if you pay 15$ a month. Do you realize most companys have a seperate dev team for expansions and for managing the actual game ? After an expansion is out they move onto another game. This increases the cost of development and they use the expansion fee to offset this cost.
You want games to release content in non expansion patches p2p IS the best model any f2p model will charge you for that ad an adventure pack or something and we will see just this when GW2 comes out the box price is there to cover development and you can bet they charge 5-10$ per content patch.
perhaps. i don't think we'll find out for a while though. as for anet and GW2, it occurs to me that maybe anet's forecasts are a bit on the low side in regards to what it took to make the game, thus they feel the need to recoup some of their losses through the cash shop. no matter what, the fact that GW2, for one reason or another, is implementing a cash shop only says that anet hasn't been able to pull off a fully featured, totally b2p mmo, not that it's impossible.
however, events have most certainly proved that some people can't think in shades of grey (which is, honestly, quite depressing). i con't beleive more people aren't recalling how many p2p games also have cash shops. oh well. i'll enjoy GW2, and so will many others, without paying a dime beyond the box price. (that's my little response to the p2w crowd).
EDIT: to the post above me: i always laugh and feel a little pang of pity for the people who think GW2 is going to change everything, and have millions of players. it will change a few things maybe, and be lucky if it has about a million regular players (after the weird, wibbly wobbly first few months).
I don't disagree with you, but as a business trying to make profit, if you had a group of people with more money than sense who were willing to buy a fancy hat and unusual looking mount just because few have it, wouldn't you be compelled to have a part of that?
GW2 is supposed to call for a Paradigm Shift accoding to some threeads, But based on responses from different discussions, namely the carrot on a stick thread I don't see that happening.
In games of old, players built their virtual world. They logged in day after day and did the same activities time after time and built an environment for themselves.
WoW comes along and says...No, you aren't building your world...We already did that. you can build your character now. And we all said...."OK" and for a while. It was good. But I am not sure if that just got old and WoW started getting ridiculous to try to keep it going or if WoW got ridiculous 1st adn we all got tired of it. Maybe both who knows.
Anyway. GW2 comes along and offers nothingof the sort. You don't build anything. Not a world, not a character. You are supposed to play for the fun of it.
Yeah, ok, that's good, but that has no staying power. Once GW2 content becomes repetative, what reason will there be to do it yet again? How many times do WoW players run heroics? Why? Do you think the'd be doing it if there was no grind?
GW2 is like an SPRPG in one way. Once you finish the content you stop playing it.
Once the new car smell wears off, GW2 will continue to appeal to the same group GW1 does and I think ANet knows this.
GW2 is nothing more than a Niche Game that will have long term appeal to players satisfied with only Achievements and social wear.. and this "Get it while it's fresh" game design spells out one thing to me.
QUICK CASH GRAB
Apart from existing fans, GW2 will appeal to those without massive amounts of spare time. There are also those who will play it alongside their current mmo for a quick fix when they get bored.
On top of this are the eSport crowds currently playing LOL type games.
Then there's the long time MMO players who are just tired of levelling yet another character in another clone game.
I think GW2 will do well and I will certainly be buying into it.
OK, to be fair...I do agree.
I didn't mean to imply it will fail. I know it will be around for a while. But it will not revolutionize the industry.
I predict it will settle into it's niche but it's not going to rise up and carry 10M players on a daily basis for years.
But I still say that Anet is capitializing on a wave of hype trying to appeal to a demographic they know won't enjoy the game in the long run.
I've been saying this exact thing for over a year. People think GW2 will have 4 or 5 million players and I keep thinking do people really think 5 million people will find it fun and play just because its fun ? They say omg grinds suck and doing dungeons for gear sucks raiding sucks blah blah but they ignore the fact that a very large number of the MMO playerbase love improving their character through gear or other ways. How is that possible in GW2 ? Gear doesnt mean much and theres no raids the only reason to play is because you find it fun and eventually even that becomes boring you cannot keep people interested long enough just because its fun to play everything gets boring people need something to achieve and improve their characters with.
Only mmorpg games i have stayd long in are pvp games. But your right unless they offer an diverse gameplay they wont capture hugh ammount of people over time. I dont raid myself and those game that has raid as focus i leave after i max level or get bored during leveling.
I think only pvp people will stay with gw2 for a long time, raiders have tons of other good option out there and some will return to old content but this is either minority or will only last for a short time after max level.
But there are alot of people that enjoy pvp. Far more then most belive, but not in the 4-5mill range as that would be the entire wow NA/EU population(if we are to belive forum posters) and i know not every single one of em liked pvp.
Why are P2P game with cashshop items you can to sell ingame to other players
accepted as status quo and P2P alone considered feasible while cashshop sales are treated as bonus profits.
Why is GW2's B2B model with cashshop items you can sell ingame to other players,
out of nowhere treated as unfeasible by B2P revenues alone and cashshop sales assumed to be mandatory to remain feasibility.
Why has GW1 become "unfeasible as a B2P" product just because it the publisher is launching a new sequel just like almost any other publisher does and did whether it was P2P or B2P or F2P? Why claim they must lack the money to continue with GW1 alone and now compensate with GW2? How does that even make any sense? Where would they have the money from to even build GW2 to "compensate" for GW1's implied insufficient revenues?
Why is it not the other way around, exactly as told, even though it still perfectly possible and nothing contradicted it yet:
P2P+B2P games like WoW are ripping you off with both "p2w" cashshop AND subscriptions AND boxprice,
while GW2 just makes an extra buck from its optional cashshop, even though it would be feasible all along even with the B2P boxales and classic vanity sales all along? The common practise of maximizing profits beyond their own demand, except they offer you something of value for it instead?
And GW1 just got old after half a decade yet Arenanet has gained enough money from the successfull model to raise even another product up to make even more money?
I can tell you. Because thats what you want to believe. There is no proof, its just jumping to conclusions.
A classic non sequitur. (Look up the affirmation of the consquent fallacy for the attempt to "proof" infeasability of the B2P model and feel the dejavu)
haha, you're funny...WoW's cash shop is P2W but GW2's is just "Optional cash shop". Nice wording, ironically WoW's is far less p2w since theres only a couple mounts and fluff pets in there, while GW2 has experience boosts.
I don't get why people can't grasp this issue realistically.
This right here is a fact.. you can still play GW2 100% for free after you buy the box. It's a fact and it can't be argued. You can physically do it; log in every day and have access to all the content promised.
Can ANet keep GW2 going if everyone did that? Do your part and you might find out.
Many f2p mmorpg you can play for free too. You dont' even need to buy the box.
I don't get why people can't grasp this issue realistically.
This right here is a fact.. you can still play GW2 100% for free after you buy the box. It's a fact and it can't be argued. You can physically do it; log in every day and have access to all the content promised.
Can ANet keep GW2 going if everyone did that? Do your part and you might find out.
Many f2p mmorpg you can play for free too. You dont' even need to buy the box.
True! LOTRO is Buy to play in that sense, you can play for free once you buy individual content packs. Not a bad way to do it in my opinion. Pay for the content you use.
I don't get why people can't grasp this issue realistically.
This right here is a fact.. you can still play GW2 100% for free after you buy the box. It's a fact and it can't be argued. You can physically do it; log in every day and have access to all the content promised.
Can ANet keep GW2 going if everyone did that? Do your part and you might find out.
Many f2p mmorpg you can play for free too. You dont' even need to buy the box.
The difference is usually in the incentives to buy from the cash shop. Some of these games are so laborious without coughing up your hard earned... well that's the difference.
I don't get why people can't grasp this issue realistically.
This right here is a fact.. you can still play GW2 100% for free after you buy the box. It's a fact and it can't be argued. You can physically do it; log in every day and have access to all the content promised.
Can ANet keep GW2 going if everyone did that? Do your part and you might find out.
No one will argue that. But the thing that i hate isn't so much about spending money in a cash shop as much as it is about the fact that the majority of games with Cash Shops have mechanics in them that frustrate players and the developers have put the solution in the cash shop. Or even if the mechanic wasn't intended to be there, they take advantage of some unintended shortcomings in the game to put workarounds in the cash shop.
To me, it's all about the psychological game they are playing. like an albatross, constanly using mechanics in the game to remind you that hey, this would be just ever so much easier if you used the shop. Their intent is to wear you down.
I watched it happen in Anarchy. People go from staunch opposition to Cash Shops to open casual discussions about personal monthly bugets reserved for purchses. And it's funny how you watch the majority of players start latching on to it over time....it's just SOOOOOOOO easy.
I'd be willing to predict that within a year, of those who are still playing GW2 more than half will be regular CS users.
The "recent events" should have mainly proven that game devs, publishers and any one else in the industry is out to make money. Just like pretty much everyone else in the world. The methods used to make that money are the only differnces in us.
Anet was held on such a high pedestal before this that they had no where else to go but down. Everyone thought they were good Samaritains, out to make a "game for gamers by gamers" with no interest in feeding their own families (small exageration, I know, but you get my point).
If anyone out there thought that, as the title says, "the B2P model alone" would support this, or any other online game and that said game would be updated, I hope they've ditched that fantasy.
The B2P model is great, but it has to be supplememented somehow.
I want a mmorpg where people have gone through misery, have gone through school stuff and actually have had sex even. -sagil
GW2 is supposed to call for a Paradigm Shift accoding to some threeads, But based on responses from different discussions, namely the carrot on a stick thread I don't see that happening.
In games of old, players built their virtual world. They logged in day after day and did the same activities time after time and built an environment for themselves.
WoW comes along and says...No, you aren't building your world...We already did that. you can build your character now. And we all said...."OK" and for a while. It was good. But I am not sure if that just got old and WoW started getting ridiculous to try to keep it going or if WoW got ridiculous 1st adn we all got tired of it. Maybe both who knows.
Anyway. GW2 comes along and offers nothingof the sort. You don't build anything. Not a world, not a character. You are supposed to play for the fun of it.
Yeah, ok, that's good, but that has no staying power. Once GW2 content becomes repetative, what reason will there be to do it yet again? How many times do WoW players run heroics? Why? Do you think the'd be doing it if there was no grind?
GW2 is like an SPRPG in one way. Once you finish the content you stop playing it.
Once the new car smell wears off, GW2 will continue to appeal to the same group GW1 does and I think ANet knows this.
GW2 is nothing more than a Niche Game that will have long term appeal to players satisfied with only Achievements and social wear.. and this "Get it while it's fresh" game design spells out one thing to me.
QUICK CASH GRAB
Apart from existing fans, GW2 will appeal to those without massive amounts of spare time. There are also those who will play it alongside their current mmo for a quick fix when they get bored.
On top of this are the eSport crowds currently playing LOL type games.
Then there's the long time MMO players who are just tired of levelling yet another character in another clone game.
I think GW2 will do well and I will certainly be buying into it.
OK, to be fair...I do agree.
I didn't mean to imply it will fail. I know it will be around for a while. But it will not revolutionize the industry.
I predict it will settle into it's niche but it's not going to rise up and carry 10M players on a daily basis for years.
But I still say that Anet is capitializing on a wave of hype trying to appeal to a demographic they know won't enjoy the game in the long run.
I've been saying this exact thing for over a year. People think GW2 will have 4 or 5 million players and I keep thinking do people really think 5 million people will find it fun and play just because its fun ? They say omg grinds suck and doing dungeons for gear sucks raiding sucks blah blah but they ignore the fact that a very large number of the MMO playerbase love improving their character through gear or other ways. How is that possible in GW2 ? Gear doesnt mean much and theres no raids the only reason to play is because you find it fun and eventually even that becomes boring you cannot keep people interested long enough just because its fun to play everything gets boring people need something to achieve and improve their characters with.
Only mmorpg games i have stayd long in are pvp games. But your right unless they offer an diverse gameplay they wont capture hugh ammount of people over time. I dont raid myself and those game that has raid as focus i leave after i max level or get bored during leveling.
I think only pvp people will stay with gw2 for a long time, raiders have tons of other good option out there and some will return to old content but this is either minority or will only last for a short time after max level.
But there are alot of people that enjoy pvp. Far more then most belive, but not in the 4-5mill range as that would be the entire wow NA/EU population(if we are to belive forum posters) and i know not every single one of em liked pvp.
While there will be those who perfer the pvp of GW2 there will be others like me, who perfer to pvp in a game where I can progress my gear. Not saying thats a total gamebreaker for me, but in the long term I just can't see myself staying in GW2 for pvp for more then a month or two.
Back on the topic at hand, so many people are saying they don't blame arenanet and this is just good business are completly missing the point of the OP. When this game was announced they went on quite a tangent on how companies who charge more then a box fee for the game are just ripping us off and they were going to proof all of them wrong. Then they go ahead and put in a cash shop thats integrated from the ground up into the game itself, there words. With features that seem more to fit into a Perfect World game then a AAA 60 dollar box game.
The point being if Arenanet was so dead set and right about not needing any more then the box fee to fund and run an MMO, remember the reason arenanet was even made was because they left blizzard because they felt they didn't need more then box fees. Why do they need to have this cash shop and all the revunue its going to generate?
My first thoughts about this started at the original announcement in 2007 that GW2 was going to be made barely 2 years after GW1 was released. This annoucement set alarm bells ringing in my head that the original GW model wasn't making as much money as planned and they could not keep up with content releases at the rate they had been, so announcing GW2 early would free Arenanet up from making more chapters for GW.
I wonder why your first thougts where not 'hmm not only has GW1 paid the shareholders, it has funded the development of a pretty ambitous AAA title (GW2)? If you want to debate what 'current events' 'prove' you really need to go beyond 'your fist thoughts' and lay out something a bit more rigurously thought out.
Incidentally GW1 did not actually make as much as they had 'planned' (hoped) mainly because they did not bang out new content quite as quick as they had planned. The model was sucessful and could easily be more so.
My first thoughts about this started at the original announcement in 2007 that GW2 was going to be made barely 2 years after GW1 was released. This annoucement set alarm bells ringing in my head that the original GW model wasn't making as much money as planned and they could not keep up with content releases at the rate they had been, so announcing GW2 early would free Arenanet up from making more chapters for GW.
I wonder why your first thougts where not 'hmm not only has GW1 paid the shareholders, it has funded the development of a pretty ambitous AAA title (GW2)? If you want to debate what 'current events' 'prove' you really need to go beyond 'your fist thoughts' and lay out something a bit more rigurously thought out.
Incidentally GW1 did not actually make as much as they had 'planned' (hoped) mainly because they did not bang out new content quite as quick as they had planned. The model was sucessful and could easily be more so.
My first thoughts about this started at the original announcement in 2007 that GW2 was going to be made barely 2 years after GW1 was released. This annoucement set alarm bells ringing in my head that the original GW model wasn't making as much money as planned and they could not keep up with content releases at the rate they had been, so announcing GW2 early would free Arenanet up from making more chapters for GW.
I wonder why your first thougts where not 'hmm not only has GW1 paid the shareholders, it has funded the development of a pretty ambitous AAA title (GW2)? If you want to debate what 'current events' 'prove' you really need to go beyond 'your fist thoughts' and lay out something a bit more rigurously thought out.
Incidentally GW1 did not actually make as much as they had 'planned' (hoped) mainly because they did not bang out new content quite as quick as they had planned. The model was sucessful and could easily be more so.
Either way RIP B2P model. It's never about if B2P makes enough money. It's about F2P makes more money, at least the publisher think they do.
I would say no it hasn't proved it either way for or against. The only way to prove it would be mutliple MMO type games all with just the B2P model. To my knowledge there has not even been one game like that.
GW1 was B2P plus cash shop. We can debate how signifinat the cs was, and how much money it made but we cannot state that GW1 is strictly B2P, it did have a cs, and did at least make some money on it.
Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it is bad.
I don't think that "recent events" as you put it have proven anything else than that it's the purpose of a company to try to maximize profits.
I would change that to, the purpose of any sufficiently large company is to try and maximize profits. It is when larger investors gets involved that everything switches to a maximize profits motive. Smaller companies can have motives that don't revolve solely around profits. It just happens to be so that MMOs are expensive enough to do that you can't do it without investment support. Same with most AAA games.
What really annoys me though is how lots of people are actually celebrating that they get to pay more money for games. Seriously, are they just stupid or brainwashed. Don't they get that the free market depends on bargaining to establish a price that is fair for both parts. It is no wonder that there are coming more and more P2W/PoG/RMT/DLC/etc onto the market when people humbly kneel and lick the feet of the companies who have it. (and yes, considering some of the things I have read in the last couple of days, that is pretty much a perfect metaphor)
In conclusion, B2P in itself is a viable idea and should definitely be profitable. It is just that it is even more profitable to go with other more greed business models in the current climate, because most people don't question the producers and meekly accept to get squeezed for more money.
P.S. I did leave out another factor that doesn't have to do with money per se. There is a fairly large market for multiplayer games that allow for cheating, and t the very foundation of things, most F2P style models are nothing more or less than simple legatimized cheating. Something which people are willing to pay for. However, I am wondering if there won't be a backlash fairly soon as there are also lots of people who don't like cheating, even if it is "legit". And it is becoming increasingly difficult to find games that don't go out of their way to legitimize cheating.
Over the years many posters on this and other MMO forums have espoused that the sub fee was a scam used by greedy companies to increase profits and was not needed. Also that a Free2Play cash shop was also a scam to all intents and purposes do the same thing as a sub and that Buy2Play was the only honourable way an MMO should be funded. Recently we've had Arenanet's spokesmen teling us exactly that, the sub fee was not needed and was just a means for companies to maximise profits but with the recent unveiling of the fully featured cash shop in GW2 that dismissal of sub fees seems now to be a lot of hyperbole used to pull punters into buying the Buy2Play dream of no sub fees forever.
My first thoughts about this started at the original announcement in 2007 that GW2 was going to be made barely 2 years after GW1 was released. This annoucement set alarm bells ringing in my head that the original GW model wasn't making as much money as planned and they could not keep up with content releases at the rate they had been, so announcing GW2 early would free Arenanet up from making more chapters for GW. That set me to thinking that if box sales were not enough how would they fund an ongoing developement project like an MMORPG? I had no answers until I dipped my toe in the Free2Play world and from then I knew GW2 would have a very similar cash shop as many Free2Play games. Of course I wasn't 100% certain as I'm not that confident but its always nice to be right, well for once anyway, and that the MMORPG Buy2Play only dream is just that a dream and companies need to support the game in other ways and that at the moment is either a monthly sub fee or a cash shop. Its a shame that Arenanet had to resort to the mudslinging at sub based games to make their model seem superior but that's the nature of business I suppose, especially if you make a large chunk of your income from the sale of the the game, don't ya love the PR machine.
I would say no it hasn't proved it either way for or against. The only way to prove it would be mutliple MMO type games all with just the B2P model. To my knowledge there has not even been one game like that.
GW1 was B2P plus cash shop. We can debate how signifinat the cs was, and how much money it made but we cannot state that GW1 is strictly B2P, it did have a cs, and did at least make some money on it.
Actually Guild Wars launched without a cash shop, they didn't add it until later, going by that I can say gw1 launched without a cash shop, and they felt they needed to add a cash shop because they weren't generating enough revunue from box sales to support the servers.
I would say no it hasn't proved it either way for or against. The only way to prove it would be mutliple MMO type games all with just the B2P model. To my knowledge there has not even been one game like that.
GW1 was B2P plus cash shop. We can debate how signifinat the cs was, and how much money it made but we cannot state that GW1 is strictly B2P, it did have a cs, and did at least make some money on it.
Actually Guild Wars launched without a cash shop, they didn't add it until later, going by that I can say gw1 launched without a cash shop, and they felt they needed to add a cash shop because they weren't generating enough revunue from box sales to support the servers.
And then they added Sklll packs to entice more sales..
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Comments
Easily done
I've been saying this exact thing for over a year. People think GW2 will have 4 or 5 million players and I keep thinking do people really think 5 million people will find it fun and play just because its fun ? They say omg grinds suck and doing dungeons for gear sucks raiding sucks blah blah but they ignore the fact that a very large number of the MMO playerbase love improving their character through gear or other ways. How is that possible in GW2 ? Gear doesnt mean much and theres no raids the only reason to play is because you find it fun and eventually even that becomes boring you cannot keep people interested long enough just because its fun to play everything gets boring people need something to achieve and improve their characters with.
perhaps. i don't think we'll find out for a while though. as for anet and GW2, it occurs to me that maybe anet's forecasts are a bit on the low side in regards to what it took to make the game, thus they feel the need to recoup some of their losses through the cash shop. no matter what, the fact that GW2, for one reason or another, is implementing a cash shop only says that anet hasn't been able to pull off a fully featured, totally b2p mmo, not that it's impossible.
however, events have most certainly proved that some people can't think in shades of grey (which is, honestly, quite depressing). i con't beleive more people aren't recalling how many p2p games also have cash shops. oh well. i'll enjoy GW2, and so will many others, without paying a dime beyond the box price. (that's my little response to the p2w crowd).
EDIT: to the post above me: i always laugh and feel a little pang of pity for the people who think GW2 is going to change everything, and have millions of players. it will change a few things maybe, and be lucky if it has about a million regular players (after the weird, wibbly wobbly first few months).
I always find it funny how people expect MMO developers to be so self sacraficing for their customers. It's their business, they are going to try and find the best way to maximize profits while retaining customers. If 50% of the player base quit over cash shops, MMOs would stop adding them in. But the fact is, the majority either don't care or actually enjoy using it.
I don't get why people can't grasp this issue realistically.
This right here is a fact.. you can still play GW2 100% for free after you buy the box. It's a fact and it can't be argued. You can physically do it; log in every day and have access to all the content promised.
Can ANet keep GW2 going if everyone did that? Do your part and you might find out.
@OP
Yes. You get what you pay for.
The announcement from ANet was not surprising in the least and I hope fans are happy about it because it means more content wont take a year to get to you. There is no other way to do this on a B2P model.
P2P isn't an instant win in the updates catagory though. The risk of P2P is gauging how much more your getting from the money your giving. Take WoW for instance. As polished as a game as I think WoW is I don't think the game is what it should be for what they have been getting every month. The payback is a better "Titan" hopefully....
Just not worth my time anymore.
On the topic of f2p/b2p/p2p etc.
I got a cousin who tells me he plays LOL (league of legends) because its free and he doesnt have to pay 15$ a month.
Last month he spent 50$ on the game and over the last few months hes probably spent 4-5 times that. I tell him time and time again its not f2p when you're spending more in 3 months then you would spend on a year of another game paying 15$ a month. This is why companys are going f2p you think they would be doing this if it wasnt more profitable ? Go f2p get 3 times the playerbase because its free and if figures hold true you only need a third of them players to actually spend money on the cash shop to be profitable.
Now someone said you shouldnt be charged for expansions if you pay 15$ a month. Do you realize most companys have a seperate dev team for expansions and for managing the actual game ? After an expansion is out they move onto another game. This increases the cost of development and they use the expansion fee to offset this cost.
You want games to release content in non expansion patches p2p IS the best model any f2p model will charge you for that ad an adventure pack or something and we will see just this when GW2 comes out the box price is there to cover development and you can bet they charge 5-10$ per content patch.
I don't disagree with you, but as a business trying to make profit, if you had a group of people with more money than sense who were willing to buy a fancy hat and unusual looking mount just because few have it, wouldn't you be compelled to have a part of that?
People like that exist, why not profit from them?
Only mmorpg games i have stayd long in are pvp games. But your right unless they offer an diverse gameplay they wont capture hugh ammount of people over time. I dont raid myself and those game that has raid as focus i leave after i max level or get bored during leveling.
I think only pvp people will stay with gw2 for a long time, raiders have tons of other good option out there and some will return to old content but this is either minority or will only last for a short time after max level.
But there are alot of people that enjoy pvp. Far more then most belive, but not in the 4-5mill range as that would be the entire wow NA/EU population(if we are to belive forum posters) and i know not every single one of em liked pvp.
haha, you're funny...WoW's cash shop is P2W but GW2's is just "Optional cash shop". Nice wording, ironically WoW's is far less p2w since theres only a couple mounts and fluff pets in there, while GW2 has experience boosts.
Many f2p mmorpg you can play for free too. You dont' even need to buy the box.
True! LOTRO is Buy to play in that sense, you can play for free once you buy individual content packs. Not a bad way to do it in my opinion. Pay for the content you use.
The difference is usually in the incentives to buy from the cash shop. Some of these games are so laborious without coughing up your hard earned... well that's the difference.
No one will argue that. But the thing that i hate isn't so much about spending money in a cash shop as much as it is about the fact that the majority of games with Cash Shops have mechanics in them that frustrate players and the developers have put the solution in the cash shop. Or even if the mechanic wasn't intended to be there, they take advantage of some unintended shortcomings in the game to put workarounds in the cash shop.
To me, it's all about the psychological game they are playing. like an albatross, constanly using mechanics in the game to remind you that hey, this would be just ever so much easier if you used the shop. Their intent is to wear you down.
I watched it happen in Anarchy. People go from staunch opposition to Cash Shops to open casual discussions about personal monthly bugets reserved for purchses. And it's funny how you watch the majority of players start latching on to it over time....it's just SOOOOOOOO easy.
I'd be willing to predict that within a year, of those who are still playing GW2 more than half will be regular CS users.
The "recent events" should have mainly proven that game devs, publishers and any one else in the industry is out to make money. Just like pretty much everyone else in the world. The methods used to make that money are the only differnces in us.
Anet was held on such a high pedestal before this that they had no where else to go but down. Everyone thought they were good Samaritains, out to make a "game for gamers by gamers" with no interest in feeding their own families (small exageration, I know, but you get my point).
If anyone out there thought that, as the title says, "the B2P model alone" would support this, or any other online game and that said game would be updated, I hope they've ditched that fantasy.
The B2P model is great, but it has to be supplememented somehow.
I want a mmorpg where people have gone through misery, have gone through school stuff and actually have had sex even. -sagil
While there will be those who perfer the pvp of GW2 there will be others like me, who perfer to pvp in a game where I can progress my gear. Not saying thats a total gamebreaker for me, but in the long term I just can't see myself staying in GW2 for pvp for more then a month or two.
Back on the topic at hand, so many people are saying they don't blame arenanet and this is just good business are completly missing the point of the OP. When this game was announced they went on quite a tangent on how companies who charge more then a box fee for the game are just ripping us off and they were going to proof all of them wrong. Then they go ahead and put in a cash shop thats integrated from the ground up into the game itself, there words. With features that seem more to fit into a Perfect World game then a AAA 60 dollar box game.
The point being if Arenanet was so dead set and right about not needing any more then the box fee to fund and run an MMO, remember the reason arenanet was even made was because they left blizzard because they felt they didn't need more then box fees. Why do they need to have this cash shop and all the revunue its going to generate?
I wonder why your first thougts where not 'hmm not only has GW1 paid the shareholders, it has funded the development of a pretty ambitous AAA title (GW2)? If you want to debate what 'current events' 'prove' you really need to go beyond 'your fist thoughts' and lay out something a bit more rigurously thought out.
Incidentally GW1 did not actually make as much as they had 'planned' (hoped) mainly because they did not bang out new content quite as quick as they had planned. The model was sucessful and could easily be more so.
Unfortunately, that particular model is dead.
Either way RIP B2P model. It's never about if B2P makes enough money. It's about F2P makes more money, at least the publisher think they do.
I would say no it hasn't proved it either way for or against. The only way to prove it would be mutliple MMO type games all with just the B2P model. To my knowledge there has not even been one game like that.
GW1 was B2P plus cash shop. We can debate how signifinat the cs was, and how much money it made but we cannot state that GW1 is strictly B2P, it did have a cs, and did at least make some money on it.
Yeah, I think that sums it up well.
I would change that to, the purpose of any sufficiently large company is to try and maximize profits. It is when larger investors gets involved that everything switches to a maximize profits motive. Smaller companies can have motives that don't revolve solely around profits. It just happens to be so that MMOs are expensive enough to do that you can't do it without investment support. Same with most AAA games.
What really annoys me though is how lots of people are actually celebrating that they get to pay more money for games. Seriously, are they just stupid or brainwashed. Don't they get that the free market depends on bargaining to establish a price that is fair for both parts. It is no wonder that there are coming more and more P2W/PoG/RMT/DLC/etc onto the market when people humbly kneel and lick the feet of the companies who have it. (and yes, considering some of the things I have read in the last couple of days, that is pretty much a perfect metaphor)
In conclusion, B2P in itself is a viable idea and should definitely be profitable. It is just that it is even more profitable to go with other more greed business models in the current climate, because most people don't question the producers and meekly accept to get squeezed for more money.
P.S. I did leave out another factor that doesn't have to do with money per se. There is a fairly large market for multiplayer games that allow for cheating, and t the very foundation of things, most F2P style models are nothing more or less than simple legatimized cheating. Something which people are willing to pay for. However, I am wondering if there won't be a backlash fairly soon as there are also lots of people who don't like cheating, even if it is "legit". And it is becoming increasingly difficult to find games that don't go out of their way to legitimize cheating.
Please don't feed the trolls.
Actually Guild Wars launched without a cash shop, they didn't add it until later, going by that I can say gw1 launched without a cash shop, and they felt they needed to add a cash shop because they weren't generating enough revunue from box sales to support the servers.
And then they added Sklll packs to entice more sales..
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson