Subscription Fee

Where did you get your data from? As far as I knew they *chose* to halt development GW1. When GW was in full production they had two separate teams, each working on different campaigns. Then they chose to merge them and work solely on GW2.

I have seen no financial data regarding ANet/NCSoft confirming that they can't afford two development teams on GW anymore. And I don't think there is any.

Again the business model did not fail. ANet's business model is not an invention, it's nothing new actually; it is as old as game industry. The subscription business model is the *new* business model here. And so far it works for none but a very very few (if not just Blizzard). The vast majority of the games produced today are not subscription based and most are doing just fine.

1) How many other games sell content like sorrows furnace?

2) How many games with fees actually give out free expansions? From what I see with WoW and Lotro, you pay a fee and never get anything extra for free, you still pay for new expansions.

Also, I doubt it was ever within Anets intention to add new god realms to GW1. I think you would better enjoy a game with an editable creator / module pack like NWN2, I cant honestly think of a single game which follows the model that you propose.

As far as selling playable content goes, as I already mentioned there is only one game that currently does this, and that is DDO. Having played it, I agree that this method and what you propose does work very well, but what I do not accept is your inaccurate defense of wanting to pay fees just to get extra content which would never happen on the scale that you are wishing for (new fow like areas arent exactly going to be made just because people are paying fees.)

Daesu is right, Regina confirmed it in a few posts here on guru that they don't have the recources to get a team that can deliver playable content, because NCSoft doesn't want that. Maybe because the business model doesn't bring in enough cash to satisfy the shareholders in Korea?

Even if I found Regina's quote I wouldn't base my assumptions on that, I'd like to see real financial data to support such claims.

Greed of shareholders is a different issue than business model. Companies can commit suicide based on that. Subscription doesn't work (except for Blizzard), it's proven not to work by so many failed titles but "shareholders" like the idea because it provides a delusional constant income.

In reality subscription based services is a much tougher market. No one subscribes to two internet connections, two phone lines, two cable tv connections, etc. when one would suffice. Subscription based services are a totally different beast and attitude of consumers towards them are totally different too.

No Daesu is not right, and neither are you just because you shared your personal opinions with us.

GW has no more new content because a very long time before Regina said anything like what you appear to think she did, Anet themselves announced that they were no longer making anymore content for GW1 as they are now working on GW2. That was the decision by the developers of this game and had nothing to do with NCsoft or anyones share prices.

/Agree.

As he says, if you want to pay fees then what are you doing here? Why not go and play one of your so much better fee based games that give you free new content all the time equal to Sorrows Furnace / FoW / UW?

Oh wait ... Am I right to assume that no such game exists, which is why you are all here QQing about wanting fees in GW?

Well boo hoo to you, I can very gladly confirm that that is never going to happen. If you want to pay fees, then go off and shoo to WoW / Aion / Lotro / whatever else, and leave us people who want to play for free here with GW alone.

Also, I see no answers to the questions I asked you above:

Can you answer these please? I really want to know why you make such assumptions about GW that are so far not true about any single game at all.

The thing I never understood, even for WoW... So I like to play games with my friends and family, casually. So with subscription based games I would actually have to pay 5/6x subscriptions. It's like having to pay your internet provider a different subscription for every connected computer in your house, or your cable tv company a subscription for *every person watching*...

That'd never work for me... just can't possibly see how.

oops let me re say that.

GW will not go play to pay. if it did from the start i would keep paying. it is great game. love the community. love the support.

Yup.

How about we start paying our Internet providers $15 per month for every website we use? They have to pay for bandwith costs after all.

How about we start paying steam an additional $15 per month for every game ever downloaded from them that we play on our accounts? They have to pay to maintain their online services after all.

How about paying Microsoft and extra $15 per month to use Windows or Office? They have to pay for regular updates and designing new software after all.

How about paying the supermarket an additional $15 per month for providing us with food? Their staff are seriously underpaid and they have to pay rent and taxes on their store after all

How about paying your clothes store an extra $15 per month for providing you with clothes? Or Mcdonalds an extra $15 per month for allowing you to eat there? Same reasons as the supermarket above.

Oh wait, all of them are still cheaper then going to watch a movie at the cinema once every week, so that immediately justifies that all of these proposals will work and are good for everyone.


But would you have actually bought it in the first place if it had fees? I know I wouldnt have bought it, nor would I have carried on playing it, and I do assume that most of the GW community would feel the same way.

I wouldnt have even been in this game for any more than 4 months, as opposed to the 4 years I have been able to enjoy playing the game for free.

There are lots of times I feel like I want to really go back to playing WoW, Lotro, or AoC, but in each case I never will because I absolutely will not pay the fee.

Don't shoot the messenger, here you go:

source: http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/n...02#post3897602

That's only one of many quotes and it always comes down to the same thing: not enough recources. I'll see if I can find the quote where she states it's NCSoft that doesn't want them to expand the Live team.

This quote from Regina is very clearly worded. It definately states that Anet are not creating new content for GW1 as they are working on GW2:

This is the reason why they do not have the resources to allocate to the game, absolutely not one single thing whatsoever to do with fees or money as you and Daesu are completely lying about.

Thanks for proving me right, and you wrong. Even if we were paying fees, there would be no more new content for GW1 because:

Do you understand that a little clearer now? Maybe I should quote it one more time for you to read?

If we were paying Anet fees and they had the money to hire new developers, guess what those developers would be doing?

Lol what a stupid argument.

DDO is decent, but they are getting more people with the F2P with micro. Battleforge isn't actually an MMO, right...? Aion is a terrible example - the grind is the same as in other countries, but you PAY PER HOUR. Sure it's good when you don't play much, or don't want to be tied up for a month, but it also means that you must ALWAYS log out of the game, can't leave the shop up, and if you play too long and not notice it.... Bye bye, gotta pay. And you might be kicked out in the middle of an instance.

If anything, that means they don't trust they can sell a new campaign/expansion. Did they have enough resources to work on GW:Prophecies when nothing prior was sold? No.

They make money post-development/launch, not prior. Like any product, one might say. They have more than enough resources still from previous sells to start work on content for GW1. But they don't want to, either because they don't believe they can sell it anymore or because their dev teams are too slow or simply because they are betting everything on GW2 and see GW1 irrelevant and they abandoned it.

I find it funny as Regina tries to argue in that post that they didn't abandon GW1 Maybe they're in denial over there at ANet quarters.

They are still waaaaaay better than paying fees, that is for sure.

The genre of the game (MMO vs RTS) hardly matters in this discussion, the topic is subscription fees, not MMO vs RPG. Both are online with servers and developers to pay for and have some form of payment model to support the servers.

It prooves NCSoft doesn't give them the recources to work on both titles genius. Because it's not cost effective and efficient and why would that be? If the business model was such a success one would think it's good business to expand the live team to 20-30 peeps and cash in with some mini expansions while the other 190 employees work on GW2.

No it doesnt at all. It proves that Anet are choosing to devote all of their staff to get GW2 completed ASAP, which is their top priority right now over GW1.

Their choice in this matter is theirs alone. Your arguments are not valid.

They do not want to spend anymore resources on new content GW1 because they are placing everything they can into GW2. And why on earth would they even if they could? GW1 is a dead game now, new content is not going to improve or make it any better. The only thing it would do is spread the player base out even more.

It says 'There are issues of resource allocation within the team' Not 'We do not have enough resources'.

They could have all the resources in the world at Anet, but they would still choose to devote them all to GW2, not to GW1.

That's what I believe as well. It's a matter of choice not poverty.

PS: As a matter of fact I remember being stated that the live team was formed when they realized GW2 was not coming out as fast as they thought (go figure?)...

Once again proving the main ANet issue: unable to deliver on their schedules (new campaign every 6 months, GW2 in 2008/9 etc). Not that I blame them. And yet another fact to prove they dumped GW1 and ran hoping to be back in time with the new cake: GW2... but that never happened. So the only blame here is that they didn't foresee how long GW2 dev will take, which they should've. Their expectations were not realistic.

Except that big brother NCSoft is a multi million MMO giant that mainly publishes pay to play games. They didn't believe in a Live team that can deliver playable content and I think because it would not bring enough money in to even get out of the costs. And that's a shame for us players and GW fans as we're already waiting like 3 years for new content.

As I said already ANet false expectations is what made us the community wait. And now we feel like an abandoned child. Had they said: "no more content until GW2, GW1 is dead, GW2 will be out in 5 years" we would have found something else to do. But no, they said: no next campaign but GW2 beta in 2008.

So we stayed tuned and waited for something that never happened.

Bad bad marketing. Terrible way to treat your community ANet.

PS: And GW1 was never designed with replayability in mind, it was a success on a scale they never really expected and didn't really know how to handle it.

You can Impossibly expect a company to make a game In 2 years.
But I agree that we got treat terribly.

As long as GW2 is good, I would prefer that they do it this way, devote their staff to developing a great GW2 experience, rather than splitting them between GW1 and GW2.

I still dont get your argument with bringing NCSoft into this sorry:

No game has ever done this. You are just hypothesizing and presenting your own opinions and misinterpretations as facts which is never right to do.

Anet decided to stop making any new content for GW1 so that they could allocate all of their resources to GW2, it has never been stated by them or by NCSoft that this decision was due to not having enough resources to allocate to both, this is only your personal opinion and not a fact as you are presenting it to be.

This isnt bad marketing at all, just about every big title gets delayed like this. Every game studio presents unrealistic expectations and time frames within which to create a new game, and this is usually inaccurate by many many years.

It also doesnt classify as marketing as it isnt a tactic being to used to sell a product, since GW2 isnt even out yet