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Guild wars 2. Why B2P?
Starwars001
Member Posts: 85
in Guild Wars 2
Why dont arenanet do subscription based for guild wars 2? Are they insecure?
If they want to complare themselves to the likes of world of warcraft or star wars old republic then they should go subscription based as well.
Maybe arenanet is not so confident of its products? Id like to see arenanet even put out $9.99 a month even.
If they are soo confident of guild wars 2, why dont they do it? Just out of curosity.
Id like to see them successful with subscription based guild wars 2.
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Comments
They do it because they want to. They feel that people should be able to play their game whenever they want to without having to try to justify another monthly payment.
Obvious troll is obvious.
Edit: OP that is.
Anet does it because they expect it to make more money this way. Makes sense for a company to think that way, doesn't it?
Because guild wars has never had a sub, even the wow team said wow will be going free to play eventually and it was also mentioned that star wars old republic would most likely be their last sub based model. So see Arenanet has been ahead of thye game for a while :P.
For me its not worth spending around 10 dollars a month on the game, when I can only play around 3-5 hours a week. Besides, I am a great fan of the Guild Wars series. I'm sure if it'll be B2P and the game will cost around 50 bucks in store, I can play it for years and I won't be spending as much money as I would when it was monthly fees included.
But for you, don't worry. GW2 will most probably have a free trial you and your friends can enjoy.
I see it more of a test thatn anything else. GW1 was more of an MMO Lite than anything else (regardless of the great pvp), this time they're dipping into the proper MMO arena. NCSoft stand to make a huge reputation for themselves on the back of this game by being pioneers to an extent, but if it doesn't do too well they can still get recognition for trying to give us the game subless.
You're right OP. I'm also not going to play SWTOR. Why are they charging only 15$ a month? Why not 30$? Are they not confident in their product? I won't play it until they charge 30$.
<childish, provocative and highly speculative banner about your favorite game goes here>
The GW B2P model has worked wonderful in the past for them, they know people will buy the game and play it, between expansions and their cash shop they'll have a solid alternative to keeping the monthly subs happy.
They'll also probably have a collectors boxset going for 80 bucks
Normal box prolly around 55.
So the model they represent will indeed make them money.
Remember they won't have to worry about any real competition for subs since, that person already bought the product, they won't have fight every month for players.
They don't want to alienate their existing fanbase.
They don't want to ruin one selling point.
They don't want to make people feel they are committed to a game(e.g. married).
They want to produce expansions fans buy, because they think it's worth it and not because it's necessary to keep playing with others.
They want to create a shift in the MMO genre. (Subscriptions are not worth it, haven't been and never will be.)
They want to create a b2p game that's not niche to sustain the above point. GW1 sold over 7 mio copies, but it's still widely unknown or not respected, though successful.
I can't think of more right now, but you get the idea.
They've publically stated sub fees are a rip-off and they are. You pay for 4 brand new games per year. You don't get 4 games of content, despite the fact the company gets more like 6-8 games of profit (no middlemen). Heck, you don't even get 1 new game of content each year (certainly not for an RPG game). The money isn't needed to run servers or customer service, because as tons of games that aren't MMOs show the box price can cover those quite easily.
As the Arenanet devs have said, a sub fee doesn't do anything good. It also encourages laziness in the Devs, since they don't have to work to churn out content as hard since there's that constant influx of money. If you charge a price for significant new content, then the quality of that content has to be high enough to get people to buy it. Sub fees have a foot-in-the-door approach that makes customers more tolerant of lax design since they pay for content good or bad (and they tend to stay subbed for quite some time even if they aren't happy with a content update, see WoW 4.1).
What arenanet is doing is a good move for the consumer.
Why B2P? Because it's fair. You bought the game. You own it, and you play it when you want to play it.
B2B - buy the game, play forever
P2P model - buy the game, pay forever
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