Guild Wars 2

It has almost been a year since the launch of GW2. The game has sold over 3millions units since January of 2013. However, it is without doubt that sales of this title has now ceased to insignificant numbers. Without a expansion planned, it is safe to assume that that the company generate most of their revenue from the gem store and could be supported by it alone. Also due to lack of expansion, new hype for this title will unlikely occur again, meaning direct sales of the game is unlikely to rise at any significant level, especially with upcoming mainstream mmorpg competition.

So, the logical question becomes: “should GW2 go F2P from B2P?”

F2P will undoubtedly attract loads of new players at almost no cost(the game have no sub and ppl who would buy the game had already done so, for the most part). This surge of playerbase would make the game pacted once again and increase the profitability of GW2 gem store by (most likely) at least a few fold.

So, do you support GW2 going F2P? If not, why?

If so, should there be rewards/compensation for existing players? If so, what should they be?

I think it’s a little early for this. Reports are that gem store sales are strong. They are planning to release the game to China and they have released some interesting figures.

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/1325267-Interesting-figures-about-GW2-from-the-Chinese-website
Interesting figures about GW2 from the Chinese website
http://gw2.kongzhong.com/act/brand/index.html

• Copies Sold: 3 Million Copies Sold.
• Weekly Active Users: 2.5 Million Active Users per week.
• Rating by Game Authority IGN: 9/10
• Average total hours played per day: 508,428 total hours per day.
• Daily Page Views of Official US GW2 Website: 3 Million Page Views/Day.

While they said they won’t have expansions, they also said they will release new areas through the Living Story. Free, for everyone who has purchased the game.

And the 3 million sales is from January. It’s likely to be higher now.

It will never go F2P.

3 million people bought it and thus for them its free to play. There will be another milestone pretty soon, probably released on the first anniversary (stated by Colin). The game still needs to be released in other major parts of the world. Every 2 weeks there are new updates, new announcements and thus recreating (a little bit) of hype. As you said, the game is being supported atm through the gem shop and apparently it’s going good.

And one last thing: the game isn’t as expensive anymore as at launch and will continue to drop in price.

Why do I feel like the only part of this post that you actually care about is the last part?

Anyway, I doubt GW2 is going free to play for the foreseeable future (say, this year). If they were struggling to hit satisfactory sales numbers they’d have been more aggressive on the summer sales than going to 30 bucks on amazon, especially when other games of comparable age were already down to ~10 dollars (Assassin’s Creed 3).

That said, I also doubt that expansions are well and truly out of the question for GW2. I look at a DLC system like Paradox has for Crusader Kings II and think to myself how easily that could be implemented here. Now that’s not the same as GW2’s standalone campaigns or the EotN expansion, but paid content releases will occur at some point. Expect to pay for access to new races, classes, continents, campaigns, and dungeons at some point.

That’s not some kind of doom and gloom thing. We’d have been paying for expansions anyway, I’m just saying that’ll happen in GW2 as well, even if not in the traditional manner.

Sales of Gw2 have reached well over 2million at preorder. 1 million units have been sold in over 6months after that. As a game ages, so does the rate at which copies will sell. Do you guys think there’s still a lot of juice left in direct sales?

Even if it can sell 1million units in 6months(which i highly doubt at this point in time).

thats only $50million in revenue(tops and not taking retailers into account/other expenses), do you guys honestly think the gem store can’t pull more than that from the playerbase increase of F2P in the same timeframe?

The moment they go into DLC is the moment i drop this game. Expansions are ofcourse welcome as long as they are proper expansions like the GW1 ones, not like what SWTOR calls expansion. But am not gonna get nickel and dimed by worthless DLC.
Also for me F2P always translates into P2W so i hope this game never goes F2P just as GW1 never did.

Astral Projections.7320:

• Copies Sold: 3 Million Copies Sold.
• Weekly Active Users: 2.5 Million Active Users per week.

It pains me that people are buying into these sketchy metrics. These are numbers from more than half a year ago. It’s more like 2.5 million hits per week, not even unique ones. And hits to what we don’t even know. Could be the login screen or even the main web page. Also playtime averages to 12 minutes per “active user.” That’s barely enough to fit in a daily.

As for the OP, who knows, but I have an inkling that they’ll have to do something later this year to bolster the playerbase with Wildstar and ESO being released.

Lucyfer.9517:

The moment they go into DLC is the moment i drop this game. Expansions are ofcourse welcome as long as they are proper expansions like the GW1 ones, not like what SWTOR calls expansion. But am not gonna get nickel and dimed by worthless DLC.
Also for me F2P always translates into P2W so i hope this game never goes F2P just as GW1 never did.

F2p does not necessarily translate into that. You can look at Tera for example, its not P2W. You need to realize that will not be force to go P2W because they are going to make more money than they will right now, and they do not need to go P2W at the present moment so i do not see the risk.

This game better not go F2P… Why do you care about their revenue? As players all we should care about is the content

Imagine all the crazies that would flood this game if it was F2P… Sweet Jesus

mrauls.6519:

This game better not go F2P… Why do you care about their revenue? As players all we should care about is the content

Imagine all the crazies that would flood this game if it was F2P… Sweet Jesus

well, what kind of craziness would bother you from an increase in playerbase?

Astral Projections.7320:

• Copies Sold: 3 Million Copies Sold.
• Weekly Active Users: 2.5 Million Active Users per week.
• Rating by Game Authority IGN: 9/10
• Average total hours played per day: 508,428 total hours per day.
• Daily Page Views of Official US GW2 Website: 3 Million Page Views/Day.

3 million copies sold…not bad, could be better, could be worse, but not bad.

weekly active users…2.5 million per week. Wait a second. How is that calculated? Is that 2.5 million unique users or does it count repeat log ins like McD’s X million customers served…? I’ll come back two this with the average hours played.

Rating by IGN…well, that’s still for all to decide themselves.

Average hours played per day. Over half a million. That’s 3.5 million per week…if there are 2.5 million unique players that would mean the average hours played per week per person is 1.4 hours per week. That’s not very encouraging….

Daily page views of the website…3 million views per day. Wait, are they actually using us coming to complain here as a selling point? LMAO

Well done Anet…king of stat twisting. Gotta hand it to you. I wonder if that’s the reason they decided not to post those stats here but only for China.

TwoBit.5903:

Astral Projections.7320:

• Copies Sold: 3 Million Copies Sold.
• Weekly Active Users: 2.5 Million Active Users per week.

It pains me that people are buying into these sketchy metrics. These are numbers from more than half a year ago. It’s more like 2.5 million hits per week, not even unique ones. And hits to what we don’t even know. Could be the login screen or even the main web page. Also playtime averages to 12 minutes per “active user.” That’s barely enough to fit in a daily.

Yes, they are sketchy. But they are all we have at this time. They did say there was an initial expected drop in concurrency but it had stabilized and that the numbers were going up steadily. They have also been hinting they will be announcing a new sales milestone.

The real information will be with the next quarterly information release by NCsoft. This sort of thread could most reasonably be posted then if the figures warranted it. Not so much now when numbers are unknown.

Gehenna.3625:

Daily page views of the website…3 million views per day. Wait, are they actually using us coming to complain here as a selling point? LMAO

I’m curious as to how this is calculated. I mean, I see the same people post all the time, so it can’t be 3 million views from unique individuals. I think I click at least 10 links per visit. Does it count me clicking the link and leaving the thread as separate hits? Then there’s the fact that I refresh a lot.

Guild Wars 1 still isn’t free to play. No reason to think why this game would either.

TwoBit.5903:

Gehenna.3625:

Daily page views of the website…3 million views per day. Wait, are they actually using us coming to complain here as a selling point? LMAO

I’m curious as to how this is calculated. I mean, I see the same people post all the time, so it can’t be 3 million views from unique individuals. I think I click at least 10 links per visit. Does it count me clicking the link and leaving the thread as separate hits? Then there’s the fact that I refresh a lot.

Well that’s the thing….we have no idea what these numbers exactly mean. As I like to say: numbers without context mean nothing. This is purely marketing for the Chinese market…no way, should we take these numbers seriously unless we get to see the exact calculations….don’t think that’s gonna happen though

Can you imagine what would happen if they made it F2P? The servers would be flooded with immature flamers and spammers. And people wouldnt care about getting banned since its F2P anyway. Basicly ruining one of the key features of GW2; a laid back somewhat mature community.

So IF they do it they need to hire a seperate team that babysits the new people the entire day.

I remember in an interview a guy from Anet answered the Question “Is the Money you got from the initial Sales and the Gem Store enough to support the Living Story content efficiently?” with “Yes, It’s more than enough”.

No Source though, just something I remember I read on the forums few month ago.

The paywall is probably less about profit than it is about controlling bot population. Free to play games have huge problems managing bots because banning an account/IP/Region doesn’t actually work. It’s easy to get a new IP, fake an IP, get a new email account, etc etc etc.

By having a paywall, bots are less profitable, and therefore less prevalent. Most bots are from hacked accounts on gw2 rather than created from scratch.

Sky.7610:

mrauls.6519:

This game better not go F2P… Why do you care about their revenue? As players all we should care about is the content

Imagine all the crazies that would flood this game if it was F2P… Sweet Jesus

well, what kind of craziness would bother you from an increase in playerbase?

For starters, trolls who deliberately start controversial threads because they get their jollies from conflict and argument.

This exact thread exists on every single non f2p MMO forum in existence, and generally pops up within the first week.

Nice try.

Its already F2P when you buy the game, nuff said. it doesnt need to become free to download f2p, cuz its succesful the way it is now.

Gehenna.3625:

3 million copies sold…not bad, could be better, could be worse, but not bad.

weekly active users…2.5 million per week. Wait a second. How is that calculated? Is that 2.5 million unique users or does it count repeat log ins like McD’s X million customers served…? I’ll come back two this with the average hours played.

It’s fairly obvious that over 80% of the people that ever purchased the game do not log in every week. That would be a phenomenal retention rate for any game to have after even just a few weeks.

If someone can’t afford $60 to play a game then they have no business playing. If you are a grownup, you should know that $60 is petty cash. If you are a teen , $60 is still petty cash if you have a minimum wage job.

Buy once, play everything in it forever. That is the best deal for any game. Those who cannot agree with that are surprisingly stupid IMO.

If it went F2P you’d get a bunch of people making random accounts and then using bots, so no, hopefully it never goes F2P.

if it goes f2p I will quit. almost every game in the past that has come out that i’ve played that was f2p literally went into the kittenter every time.

I think that the sPvP Portion should go Free to Play. On the PvE side I don’t think it should go F2P until after the major release in China and they need to wait until WoW goes F2P later this year. As far as sales and money is concerned I doubt that GW2 will ever reach the success of its predecessor GW1 which sold over 6 Million Copies. Not that GW2 is a bad game because it isn’t, but they did deviate from the GW1 Winning Formula quite a bit. GW2 is more of a niche game. Plus, there is too much good stuff coming out soon.

PC Sales are on the serious decline. X-Box One and PS4 will be released in months. GTAV, BF4, and CoD:Ghosts will be out soon too. LoL and Smite are blowing up right now. Throw in new big time MMO’s such as The Elder Scrolls Online, Wildstar, and the buzz around EQ Next and Titan are starting a fire. Sadly the future does not look bright for GW2

Hell no! We don’t need their kind here. We have it bad enough with the guys that only paid 60$ and whine around about things. We don’t need anymore freeloaders bringing the game down.

Theplayboy.6417:

I think that the sPvP Portion should go Free to Play. On the PvE side I don’t think it should go F2P until after the major release in China and they need to wait until WoW goes F2P later this year. As far as sales and money is concerned I doubt that GW2 will ever reach the success of its predecessor GW1 which sold over 6 Million Copies. Not that GW2 is a bad game because it isn’t, but they did deviate from the GW1 Winning Formula quite a bit. There is too much good stuff coming out soon. GW2 is truly a niche game.

PC Sales are on the serious decline. X-Box One and PS4 will be released in months. GTAV, BF4, and CoD:Ghosts will be out soon too. LoL and Smite are blowing up right now. Throw in new big time MMO’s such as The Elder Scrolls Online, Wildstar, and the buzz around EQ Next and Titan are starting a fire. Sadly the future does not look bright for GW2

Don’t forget ArcheAge will be releasing within the next year as well. GW2 will be fine, but they are going to have to come with some serious heat if they want to stay up on top. Otherwise they will quickly fall to being just another run of the mill MMO.

It will never happen, nice try.
Not

Chewablesleeptablet.3185:

If someone can’t afford $60 to play a game then they have no business playing. If you are a grownup, you should know that $60 is petty cash. If you are a teen , $60 is still petty cash if you have a minimum wage job.

Buy once, play everything in it forever. That is the best deal for any game. Those who cannot agree with that are surprisingly stupid IMO.

$60 is petty cash for people with little responsibility and no budget. Don’t make blind assumptions. Quite a few F2P MMOs have similar deals for similar amounts of money that is kept forever also. They’re usually called “packs” or something other “edition”. When a MMO goes F2P, players who bought the box are called “preferred” and get to keep everything they bought that was a part of the box plus privileges that they previously enjoyed.

GW2 in essence is a F2P MMO since most privileges are low from the beginning and requires monetary investment to build up, like storage for example. Not to mention, no monthly fee.

I think in the future GW2 is going to be the mmo to compete with if it isn’t already and other mmo’s are going to be forced to follow its lead. The survival of mmo’s in the future will be their quality and not their monthly subscriptions.

Omega.4950:

Chewablesleeptablet.3185:

If someone can’t afford $60 to play a game then they have no business playing. If you are a grownup, you should know that $60 is petty cash. If you are a teen , $60 is still petty cash if you have a minimum wage job.

Buy once, play everything in it forever. That is the best deal for any game. Those who cannot agree with that are surprisingly stupid IMO.

$60 is petty cash for people with little responsibility and no budget. Don’t make blind assumptions. Quite a few F2P MMOs have similar deals for similar amounts of money that is kept forever also. They’re usually called “packs” or something other “edition”. When a MMO goes F2P, players who bought the box are called “preferred” and get to keep everything they bought that was a part of the box plus privileges that they previously enjoyed.

GW2 in essence is a F2P MMO since most privileges are low from the beginning and requires monetary investment to build up, like storage for example. Not to mention, no monthly fee.

Except extra storage is bought with Gems , and gems can be bought with in-game gold…………………… So GW2 is B2P , has no essence of a F2P model.

Tell me another game where you can exchange in-game gold for cash shop currency.

Ykfox.3825:

If it went F2P you’d get a bunch of people making random accounts and then using bots, so no, hopefully it never goes F2P.

Preach!!!

Sky.7610:

mrauls.6519:

This game better not go F2P… Why do you care about their revenue? As players all we should care about is the content

Imagine all the crazies that would flood this game if it was F2P… Sweet Jesus

well, what kind of craziness would bother you from an increase in playerbase?

An invasion of botters, more gold flooding the market, more smack talkers, more people flooding servers

IMO it’s useless to debate, or even quote statistics on how many people bought or play the game or how much time they spend on it or pretty much anything else.

The only people capable of recording and releasing those stats are Anet and as long as it’s them announcing it someone will declare that they’ve misrepresented it, twisted it or out-right lied and there is no way to adequately dispute that. Even if they showed us the raw data and all the working someone would say they just made the numbers up.

Tell me another game where you can exchange in-game gold for cash shop currency.

Allods Online, which is also the second most P2W game that I’ve ever played.

Iiiiiiiiii don’t really like the kinds of people f2p games attract, if a kid can’t buy the game and his mum won’t buy it for him for whatever reason, then +1 to b2p model.

Also i don’t want LA chat filled with GUILD WARS 2 BEST $$$$$$$ COIN… you get the picture. I only see these botters like once a week, and they don’t last long. Praise b2p \o/.

But more importantly is my first point, i don’t want the community ruined, the people i meet around Tyria, my Guild and in dungeons have mostly been very nice, mature, and funny, even some servers bow after a fight in WvW. F2p would take that away.

I know it was a reasonable question, but NO. NO NO NO NO. The “entry fee” for the game means your gamer population is not frivolous clutter. That “fee” provides Anet with what is essentially working capital and they can provide all sorts of content on a regular basis. Free-to-play is for games that don’t believe in themselves. It will cheapen Tyria. NO NO NO.

Creeper.9360:

Guild Wars 1 still isn’t free to play. No reason to think why this game would either.

This sums up almost everything I wanted to say.

If they do this, this game has no future. Casual mini games (you know, the things that take 3 hours to build) is all you’ll be seeing as ‘content’ while getting 20 new useless items in gem store every 3 days.

It’s unclear if the 2.5 million logins a week are unique or just a total.

I’m sure when the anniversary hits there will be a press release about current copies sold. May include those numbers found on the China site. I also wouldn’t be surprised if we get a new trailer in the vein of the Chinese one. The grumpy CW demographic trailer really doesn’t cut it.

As for F2P, no not yet if ever. As time goes on the price of the game/account will drift down. If F2P the game will be flooded with bot farmers that will wreck havoc with the markets as they convert their drops to gold to later sell. Forcing bot farmers to pay for an account keeps them from out numbering us.

Anet should make Guild Wars 2 free to play and save themselves the trouble. They’re heading that direction anyway.

Chewablesleeptablet.3185:

Omega.4950:

Chewablesleeptablet.3185:

If someone can’t afford $60 to play a game then they have no business playing. If you are a grownup, you should know that $60 is petty cash. If you are a teen , $60 is still petty cash if you have a minimum wage job.

Buy once, play everything in it forever. That is the best deal for any game. Those who cannot agree with that are surprisingly stupid IMO.

$60 is petty cash for people with little responsibility and no budget. Don’t make blind assumptions. Quite a few F2P MMOs have similar deals for similar amounts of money that is kept forever also. They’re usually called “packs” or something other “edition”. When a MMO goes F2P, players who bought the box are called “preferred” and get to keep everything they bought that was a part of the box plus privileges that they previously enjoyed.

GW2 in essence is a F2P MMO since most privileges are low from the beginning and requires monetary investment to build up, like storage for example. Not to mention, no monthly fee.

Except extra storage is bought with Gems , and gems can be bought with in-game gold…………………… So GW2 is B2P , has no essence of a F2P model.

Tell me another game where you can exchange in-game gold for cash shop currency.

Eve online – can use in game currency to by cash shop currency, in game currency to items used to pay for the subscriptions fee.

In EVE you can by PLEX (a monthly subscription voucher) for real money and sell it on the player market (price floats, currently around 540 million ISK, 3000 available). You can use to either pay for your subscription or convert it to a proxy currency (fixed conversion, 1 Plex for 3500 Aurum) for use in their “cash shop”. However items from the “cash shop” can then be sold on the player’s market for ISK.

QuadJunky.2736:

Chewablesleeptablet.3185:

Omega.4950:

Chewablesleeptablet.3185:

If someone can’t afford $60 to play a game then they have no business playing. If you are a grownup, you should know that $60 is petty cash. If you are a teen , $60 is still petty cash if you have a minimum wage job.

Buy once, play everything in it forever. That is the best deal for any game. Those who cannot agree with that are surprisingly stupid IMO.

$60 is petty cash for people with little responsibility and no budget. Don’t make blind assumptions. Quite a few F2P MMOs have similar deals for similar amounts of money that is kept forever also. They’re usually called “packs” or something other “edition”. When a MMO goes F2P, players who bought the box are called “preferred” and get to keep everything they bought that was a part of the box plus privileges that they previously enjoyed.

GW2 in essence is a F2P MMO since most privileges are low from the beginning and requires monetary investment to build up, like storage for example. Not to mention, no monthly fee.

Except extra storage is bought with Gems , and gems can be bought with in-game gold…………………… So GW2 is B2P , has no essence of a F2P model.

Tell me another game where you can exchange in-game gold for cash shop currency.

Eve online – can use in game currency to by cash shop currency, in game currency to items used to pay for the subscriptions fee.

Yet you still have to buy the game first. You cannot start from trial and not spend a dime and keep playing forever if I remember correctly. You do have to spend at least $15 so it is also a B2P game.

So thats only 2 games in the whole MMO genre that has this option.

They should just reduce the price of it on the website. £35 atm but i can go into the city centre and pick up a boxed copy for less. It makes no sense. £5 more for a digital version? What you been smoking?

Btw, going F2P will be a PR nightmare. It will give the impression the game’s not doing as well as they expected.

You can get EVE for like $5 during Steam sales. That’s barely B2P.

Sky.7610:

However, it is without doubt that sales of this title has now ceased to insignificant numbers.

Source?

Fermi.2409:

You can get EVE for like $5 during Steam sales. That’s barely B2P.

Eve is P2P.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Fermi.2409

You can get EVE for like $5 during Steam sales. That’s barely B2P.

Eve is P2P.

That was in reference to the fact that you can buy play time in EVE using in game currency, making B2P/F2P a definite possibility. You do need to buy the game, though. You can’t get the play time on a trial account (our at least that appeared to be the census above).

I don’t think the PvE side should go F2P, but I do think that the PvP side should be. It is already set up very nicely for it too, with the lobby and all. They would just need to fluff up the cash shop a bit more.