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For the QQ about subs and cash shop
dadante666
Member UncommonPosts: 402
ArenaNet president talks microtransactions and the risks of going subscription-free
Guild Wars 2’s payment model is one of the few things it has inherited wholesale from its predecessor. When ArenaNet announced their plans for a subscription-free MMO back in 2005, they were consciously moving in a different direction to the then-entrenched practice of recurring monthly payments. Seven years later, the MMO industry is a different place. Free-to-play is on the rise, and the amount of MMOs with compulsory subscriptions is dwindling – but no-one, as yet, has borrowed ArenaNet’s balance of boxed games and expansions with no monthly fee. During a recent visit to the studio, I had the opportunity to sit down with ArenaNet president Mike O’Brien for a chat about the industry. So why hasn’t the Guild Wars model been copied?
“I’m gonna be honest with you – I think it’s because MMOs are very expensive and very risky to make” O’Brien explains. “[Back in 2005] we said look, there’s a real problem with MMOs today, and that is you can only play one of them. You’re going to sign up for a recurring monthly credit card payment, and you’re not going to do that for a lot of different MMOs at once.”
It’s no longer reasonable to expect a player to commit to only one game, O’Brien suggests. “We’re gamers, right? You’re a gamer. Don’t you love to be able to experience all the new games that come out? And we said, seriously – MMOs are going to be this way? I have to pick one or pick the other, and if a new game comes out that I’m excited about I have to cancel my other subscription and subscribe to this other one instead? Why do they have to be this way?”
The decision to reject paid subscriptions wasn’t an easy one. “With Guild Wars 1 we took a big risk. We were a young company, and we said we’re going to try a completely different business model for MMOs. We’ve carved out that territory, and I think it’s been really nice for us that other people have stuck to the monthly subscription and let us own the entire territory of our business model for five years.”
“You know it’s not going to last”, O’Brien continues. “You see a lot of success in MMOs that don’t have monthly fees, however they monetise. Free-to-play or premium microtransactions, whatever. Now everybody’s catching onto it, and there’s going to be a lot more diversity in MMO business models. And as a gamer I’ve got to say – thank god.”
That diversity, however, is a double-edged sword. MMOs are a business, and the purpose of a payment model is to turn a profit. When O’Brien took the lid off Guild Wars 2’s microtransactions system last week, he was careful to emphasise that ArenaNet are always thinking of the community’s needs alongside their own. When I suggested that microtransactions effectively split a playerbase between haves and have-nots, he disagreed.
“Microtransactions should unite communities. It shouldn’t be the case that there is a group of players in the game that I would really like to hang out with, but they’ve decided that anybody who hangs out with them needs to spend 30 hours a week playing the game. We’ve taken a one-two punch as far as our philosophy goes. Punch number one is that Guild Wars is not that kind of game anyway – Guild Wars is not a grindy game, and Guild Wars is not a game where your success is dependant on whether you have the right gear.”
“Punch number two is that there’s now an equivalence between time and money. If I’m a player who can play the game a lot and there’s something I want, I don’t need to pay for it. If I’m a player who can’t play the game a lot, but I want things in the game also, I can spend money on microtransactions.”
O’Brien acknowledges, however, that players will need convincing. “The reaction we expect from the world is scepticism. It should be that way because there are a lot of games out there that are doing really dicey things with microtransactions. We hold ourselves to high standards, and as we’ve tested things, we’ve put this stuff in front of our core beta test group and said, ‘you guys should be holding us to [those] high standards.’”
It all comes down to risk. ArenaNet are taking a chance on the fact that convincing players to spend money in-game will be better, in the long run, than coercing them. We still don’t know exactly what will be for sale nor how it’ll factor in to the game as a whole, so the onus is on ArenaNet to follow up talk with action. The fact that O’Brien is willing to talk candidly about the risks, however, shows that they’re taking player concerns seriously.
“We’re betting our entire company on Guild Wars 2, and so we need to have the relationship with our fans where we’re giving content that people value. If people value the work that we’re doing, then they’re going to pay for the work that we’re doing.”
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Hope it get you an idea that why anet dont want the game to be subs wish can be and make money stealing from us but they DONT ,and get you an idea abouth cash shop cause about it is not yet confirmed.
Comments
Its a thin, razor sharp line with cash shops.. sounds like they know that. Nice to read something from Anet instead of the negativitiy latly.
The candy-coated words doesn't change the reality of the items on the shop. Boosts will have huge impacts on competitiveness between servers in WvWvW and will likely segregate the PvE community if dungeons are has hard as they claim they will be. You'll have to take my word for it for now, but I'm definitely not making stuff up.
I would take your word for it except no one can explain to me what the difference between someone who rushes one character as fast as he can and someone who plays a few alts, spends time with the family, doesnt care how fast he levels. Cash shop or not, that first person will be higher level. What about the person who pre-pays for the game and gets 3 days head start over the person that doesnt! Unfair! As for getting into a dungeon.. finding 4 people isnt like doing molten core.
How would the boosts have a huge impact on WvW?
At most somebody who buys XP boosts every single hour they play will get to level cap about 20% faster then someone who does not, and they would have to pay about 2 dollars an hour to do so. Then you have to have a server that has considerably more people doing this for it to have an impact.
Even then because of the way WvW works if there is a server that does this it will just get pushed into a harder bracket with other servers that can handle it. Also this will only matter in the first month or so, after that enough people will be at level cap that there will be no discernable difference.
There is nothing in the CS, well according to the leak at any rate, that would help people in dungeons. The only thing that might is Res Orbs and they are not usable in Dungeons.
The candy-coated words doesn't change the reality of the items on the shop. Boosts will have huge impacts on competitiveness between servers in WvWvW and will likely segregate the PvE community if dungeons are has hard as they claim they will be. You'll have to take my word for it for now, but I'm definitely not making stuff up.
Why should we take your word when several other people who have been in the beta have said that they think it'll be fine? And by my own experience with playing GW1 and reading some of the posts on the GW2 beta forum I personally think I have enough reason to believe that Anet won't screw it up.Do people think that everyone who will ever play this game starts at the same time? I don't get why leveling faster is a problem.
exp orbs last an hour and only grant exp on mob kills.. it'll save you 15min per hour of play if you're playing the game properly (doing DE's and personal story) if you're straight up trying to grind mobs because you have an exp boost on them.. you're gimping yourself, at no point does it give you any real kind of advantage
Working on your skill will MORE than compensate for any timed buff. I don't plan to use them...but I plan to win in WvWvW.
Save your in-game gold and buy your buffs if you feel like you're gimped without them...
Let's play by the dev's ruleset...let them pull the metrics...let us give INFORMED and unemotional feedback and see what happens.
We'll all be enjoying the game in the mean time.
It's not what is or isn't being sold in the shop that is where everyone should worry. It's what game mechanics are in the game that FORCE a player to HAVE to purchase things from the shop. If the game has no mechanics that are 'repaired' only by purchasing items from the shop then there is no need to fear the shop. Sorry if Cash Shops are evil to you, I would check the possibility that you might have never seen a well run shop, honestly, I haven't either with one exception, the one in Guild Wars 1.
Expensive 10% boosts will have huge impacts.
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*desk flips, walks away.*
Badgered... which press site are you affiliated w/? You keep posting with the implication that you are in the beta. However, I've also seen you arguing with people we KNOW are in beta, over fairly basic things about the game. I'm sorry but it's kind of hard to take your word for it, given what we currently know and don't know.
Furthermore, would you care to elaborate on which buffs in particular are so game breaking in WvW? and just how do these segregate the PvE community at all?
Also, how do you know all this to be true, yet don't know for certain how difficult the dungeons are? (they are currently accessible in beta, and have been for quite some time)
I have played a lot of games with cash shop, but so far I´ve only seen two who pulled of a good cash shop... that`s Anet with GW1 and Riot games with LOL. So I think Anet can pull off another good one with gw2, we will see how it turns out. I doubt that the leaked shop from the beta is final.
Forgive me if I am ill-informed, but I thought thta anyone who plays PvP automatically gets boosted to level 80 for the duration of their involvement with PvP. If so, how will exp boosts negatively impact PvP?
When you play a game with a cash shop they want you to use the shop as often as possible. If the game was designed for the cash shop, like GW2, it will be obvious. As far as I know GW had no CS at first and it was added later. Huge difference...
The company want as much profit as possible. They have no ideals or principles they believe in that are more important than higher profit. They will add and sell anything that improves the bottom line and makes the owners happy. A company must think and behave like that. Because the owners/investors demands that. And I´m sure that the CS will be used to maximize profit. Typically they will add new things to the shop every patch. And it will be more focus on advantage items later. At first when the game is new they want you to buy it and start playing. The shop will not be very offensive at first. And they will try to convinence you they are idealistic and so on...Typical marketing spin. People that know how the market and the world works will understand that.
So do you have any black and white that Anet will do this or have done this to their players?
Maybe they did this in GW1, please let us know so we can be weary and vigilant of Anet behaviour in the future?
Pardon my English as it is not my 1st language
That's just it you are making stuff up. It's all speculation.
I forsee zero impact being done by the boosts in WvW. Why? It's really simple. When the game goes live servers will be matched up not by any rankings but by randomness. That means the likelyhood that the servers are evenly matched is next to none. All the first round server wins will basically be meaningless, because of this. Fast forward 2 weeks to the first matched ranking server groupings and any so called advantage will be gone.
The other less likely thing that could happen is Anet will wait 2 weeks with activating WvW to match up servers by hand based on pvp population. Less likely and again any so called advantage would not be there.
Then again I have a feeling overall server intelligance will be more important then pure skill/level due to the nature of WvW.
As for PvE part of your claim that's just ridiculous. The most important thing for dungeons will be a teamplayer mentality. Sure there will always be asses saying you can't come because you don't have this or that, but which game doesn't. Overcoming dungeons will need nothing more then teamplay and skill.
Why would they "betray" their playerbase? Since their only income is the game itself and the CS. If they would betray us later they will lose players/CS buyers/income...and the whole company will suffer from it.
If they add stuff we don't want to be in the CS we won't buy it. They know what the community wants, they are not stupid.
Im not a fanboy or something but I think Anet knows exactly what they are doing.
Of course they will have to find the right balance. If they add to much to soon it will hurt them. I dont think they are betraying anyone, really. Its simply the way this business model works. We can like it or hate it. It makes no difference.
The investors want a good ROI. They dont want them to run the game like some idealistic project or a borderline charity. The CS will be the only way for them to earn money later. And they will add things to the shop that makes sense from a business point of view. Later when players are hooked and have already invested time and money they can add more advantage items. It will probably be a few new items every patch. It must never appear to be a big change.
FFS if you wanna accuse someone or company of misdeed atleast show us the black and white proof.
You accusations are just base on your assumptions that Anet will do this and that, just like all the others CS doomsayers.
Play the game first, then QQ about it so atleast you have a black and white to support your QQ.
Pardon my English as it is not my 1st language
Suffixing stuff with "I am not making stuff up" does not alter the fact that is exactly what you are doing, you are making stuff up. Leaving the cash shop aside all your post tells us about is you.
They are pulling the cash shop completely and going p2p, as it's a ground breaking game it will be 50 bucks a month. You'll have to take my word but I am definately not making stuff up. See what I did there?
You are correct. The boosts that people are QQing about are actually the WvW bonus' that you get. Some of these are for exp, but there are boosts for other things as well. Such as +2-10% max health, crafting, gathering, etc. They won't have a huge impact on PvP (from what we've seen), but they will be beneficial.
Ah, thanks.
Remember that the trade of Gold for Gems and Vice Versa can only take place on the in-game marketplace. Gems don't create new Gold, nor will they sell for an amount of Gold that represents some unreasonable amount of time spent farming Gold in game for the equivalent of $1 towards a cash shop purchase. Supply/Demand and the average perceived value of an hour's worth of one's time will dictate and limit the amount of Gold anyone will ever be able to aquire for a $1 cash shop "gift certificate" that can never be converted back into $cash.
Would you trade more than $10 in cash for $10's worth of Cash Shop products? Of course not. So, why would anyone trade more than $10's worth of labor for $10's worth of Cash Shop products?
The disparity in how much value different people of varying means put on their time create the opportunity for Gold to Gem trades that feel like a good deal for both buyer and seller. However, there are definite limits in the system based on this dynamic, which will be further limited by simple supply/demand.
Want to know more about GW2 and why there is so much buzz? Start here: Guild Wars 2 Mass Info for the Uninitiated
Already posted: http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/345266/Interview-with-Mike-OBrien-on-Microtransactions.html
Good to check this on a busy forum.
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