Guild Wars 2

arjeidi.2690:

They go F2P or Freemium because its more profitable, not because it increases the quality of the game.

Rather they go F2P or Freemium because they couldn’t retain enough players with the sub-model due to lack of quality of the game. If the main reason is that it is more profitable they would just go with that model from the start.

They should just add a gemstore item called game support or balancing. So they know we want the money to go there, not more harvesting stuff or dumb wardrobe, looking at you lawless.

saye.9304:

that being said. if it takes subscription fee to have quality content and support and also expansion every 2 years at least like some tradition mmos then by all means ANET please do it. i would gladly pay 15 euro a month to get bug fixes update asap (world boss mess for example) to get better living story content with more permanent effect and on top of all expansion.

ANet has been pretty good with fixing bugs that relate to the current living story or are downright gamebreaking.

And I think you’re misunderstanding something about Living Story. Living Story being mostly temporary is intentional. The whole point is to keep the world changing constantly. A lot of the Living Story content that we’ve had would make absolutely no sense as permanent, most notably all the changes to Lion’s Arch.

i think it is fair for both players and devs because devs get stable income and we get better polish game and more and better content.
if so called B2P means silence on state of the game after 20 moths.
if so called B2P means addressing bugs days or even weeks after rather than asap fix.
if so called B2P means no expansion in 2014
if so called B2P means i have no right to ask for those thing and if i do it is whining.
then by all means go P2P anet BUT make gw2 one of the best games out there.

1. The State of the Game was a thing organized by GW2 Guru, so your complaints should go to them. It’s not like ArenaNet stopped making previews of new content and balancing.
2. Which gamebreaking bugs are you talking about? Because if they’re not literally gamebreaking, bug fixing isn’t top priority.
3. We just come off the end of Living Story with implications of a Dragon waking in Maguuma and you’re still complaining? They have said over and over again that Living Story might give them a way of implementing expansion-like content without actually having to sell expansion boxes.
4. You can always ask, doesn’t mean you’ll receive. You might want an expansion, but there are entire communities (large guilds, sPvP, WvW) that want something other than an expansion pack.

The thing is, a significant portion of the playerbase on GW2 exists only because it’s B2P rather than F2P or subscription based. Similarly, moving from B2P to a subscription would be an unprecedented move and would probably cause a lot of people to quit the game.

Also, where is your guarantee that subscription money would go to bettering Guild Wars 2? In case you missed it, NCSoft is the publisher, so they get a fairly significant cut of all the money. And NCSoft has a lot of other projects that the money could go to. Heck, what makes you think that throwing money at the developers is going to make them work harder or more efficiently? Maybe ArenaNet would use the money to upgrade their infrastructure or better the working conditions of their current employees. That wouldn’t really fix your bugs or bring you more content.

Lastly, take a look at the selection of subscription based MMOs. Now tell me, how many of them are excellent, mostly bug free games that get awesome expansions released regularly and have awesome, friendly support staff along with developers that regularly post on their community forum?

On a personal level, I know that I would have never picked up GW2 if it had a subscription. I would also quit the game if they ever made it require a subscription. And in my case, it has nothing to do with how much or little it costs, I just don’t do subscription-based games. And I know I am not the only one.

Just because a game goes from P2P to F2P does not mean it has failed.
In fact, a lot of games that went F2P ended up doing much better than they would have if they would have kept their sub.

Quite a few times, games had not flopped from P2P to F2P because of quality, but because a lack of innovation or uniqueness. I can think of quite a few high quality games that did this.

Why would someone leave X MMORPG for a clone of that MMORPG that has the same sub cost, and much less content because it’s just starting out?

And GW2 does not need a sub. The gem store is doing fine, I would imagine.

Edit: I did notice someone mention ESO as being low quality… and I agree. That game needs an overhaul. It is definitely going to end up F2P. Without a drastic change to the majority of the game, I would imagine it won’t be running for too long.

krooton.8035:

because of the sub I felt I HAD to play, rather than play when I wanted too. Once it got to large guild raids, things started to feel more like a second job than a game, and I was paying to work that job.

I feel the same way about sub games. Although I haven’t played a sub game to date* (I’m cheap) I can’t justify the cost if/when I want to take a break. I’ve been able to take breaks on GW2 simply BECAUSE it wasn’t a P2P game. GW2 is a VERY casual game, and a large part of that is due to a lack of a sub. I’m a casual player, with a family, and a life OUTSIDE of the game, there are times when I can’t play for a period of time. If they did introduce a sub, it would go from a casual game to something more “hardcore”. And I just don’t have the time/engery for that. I’m sure I’m not the only one in that situation either. But having a sub or not doesn’t always equal better content. It largly depends on the game, the player base, and the devs. I feel that GW2 has come out with some awesome content, although not permenent like many people want, and having it be all for free is a HUGE selling point to many current players, as well as drawing in new players. It’s one of the reasons I got the game to begin with. Throwing in a sub now wouldn’t work, and more then likely be detrimental to the game overall.

*I did play the free 30-day trial on “the game which shall not be named” as well as one of the free servers available for a brief period of time. It still had this feeling that I HAD to play. I stopped because I didn’t much care for how the game played. WAY too much grinding for my taste. But thats an entirely different matter.

1. The State of the Game was a thing organized by GW2 Guru, so your complaints should go to them. It’s not like ArenaNet stopped making previews of new content and balancing.
2. Which gamebreaking bugs are you talking about? Because if they’re not literally gamebreaking, bug fixing isn’t top priority.
3. We just come off the end of Living Story with implications of a Dragon waking in Maguuma and you’re still complaining? They have said over and over again that Living Story might give them a way of implementing expansion-like content without actually having to sell expansion boxes.
4. You can always ask, doesn’t mean you’ll receive. You might want an expansion, but there are entire communities (large guilds, sPvP, WvW) that want something other than an expansion pack.

on #1: state of the game is official explanation on what is future plans for the game. for example: rift announce patch 3.0 is a expansion number 2, no detail but people know it is coming, same goes for wow,and other games if u want to know whats going on in mmo world check mmorpg.com to understand what state of the game means.
on #2: let give you example of bugs happening right now, jungle wurm bugged , megadestroyer bugged and no one knows when they will be fixed. and because you have low standard you would say its ok not big deal, i know your kind already.
on #3: over and over again? only colin johanson said once that they are not sure how to introduce an expansion, it might be through traditional box, it might be through living story or even through gem store. would you link the source of that over and over again so all of us can see it too.
on # 4: oh really you already know what entire community want and it is not expansion then what they want??
you sound like fanboy with incorrect info. tell your stuff to people who do not know the game.

arjeidi.2690:

I’d say GW2’s quality is on par with other MMOs, except ANet has a lot more stubbornness and incompetence than other developers.

LOL. That is said on nearly every mmo forum out there about just about every mmo creator out there……lol

No matter how much or how little money is being taken in, resources are best put towards things that make more money. They know about the bugs and the lack of polish in some places. They know some game systems are barely functional (underwater combat).

Fixing those doesn’t bring in more money.

A new armor set on the gem store does bring in money, and living story updates keep people logging in so they see the new armor set on the gem store.

Even if there were subscriptions and even if that brought in money than the current model, they would just turn the extra resources back towards making even more money, something that minor bug fixing and mechanics overhauls will never do.

People still cling on to the belief that throwing money at something will make it better…

No matter what revenue model and how much monetary gain it makes no difference when the people handling that money dont put it back into the product or worse: if the money put into the product is wasted on things that wont make it better.

Also for all those dinosaurs still holding on to “P2P is better” belief:
P2P as a long term revenue generator for new games in the west is DEAD.
P2P only exists in new titles in order to secure a quick cash grab at launch.
P2P doesnt make anything better.
P2P generates less revenue.
True P2P doesnt exist anymore. All P2P games have MTs in them as well.

saye.9304:

1. The State of the Game was a thing organized by GW2 Guru, so your complaints should go to them. It’s not like ArenaNet stopped making previews of new content and balancing.
2. Which gamebreaking bugs are you talking about? Because if they’re not literally gamebreaking, bug fixing isn’t top priority.
3. We just come off the end of Living Story with implications of a Dragon waking in Maguuma and you’re still complaining? They have said over and over again that Living Story might give them a way of implementing expansion-like content without actually having to sell expansion boxes.
4. You can always ask, doesn’t mean you’ll receive. You might want an expansion, but there are entire communities (large guilds, sPvP, WvW) that want something other than an expansion pack.

on 1: state of the game is official explanation on what is future plans for the game. for example: rift announce patch 3.0 is a expansion number 2, no detail but people know it is coming, same goes for wow,and other games if u want to know whats going on in mmo world check mmorpg.com to understand what state of the game means.
on 2: let give you example of bugs happening right now, jungle wurm bugged , megadestroyer bugged and no one knows when they will be fixed. and because you have low standard you would say its ok not big deal, i know your kind already.
on 3: over and over again? only colin johanson said once that they are not sure how to introduce an expansion, it might be through traditional box, it might be through living story or even through gem store. would you link the source of that over and over again so all of us can see it too.
on 4: oh really you already know what entire community want and it is not expansion then what they want??
you sound like fanboy with incorrect info. tell your stuff to people who do not know the game.

As as I can tell:
1 The state of the game has been released by gw2guru, and is seperate commentary on annoucnements made by ANET. No where does it state that anything that gw2guru puts out is the offical explanation on the future of the game. Mmorpg is the same way. Yes they both can be considered authoritive, as its written by people who have experience is such things, but it’s not “Official”. The only offical information we have is the announcments, comments, and interviews with the devs. The only thing I’ve seen from Anet concerning the state of the game is what they’ve released on guildwars2.com, the only offical web site.

2 Which bugs in those things are you refering to? I haven’t experienced any bugs with those bosses. Is it truly a bug? or just broken mechanics? Two very different things.

3 Can’t really comment on this, as I’ve never really watched, or read any dev interviews.

4 It’s a matter of persepective. Many people would want a permenent expansion, while many do not, and would rather they just continue on and improve the living story. It depends on who you are talking to at the time. There have been several threads about it, many for and many against, but it’s difficult to say either way.

GW2 subscription will be its expansions. Point out first expansion will always be longest wait cause they have to establish expansion system for people who buy and don’t buy. Just because one hasn’t come out yet doesn’t me one wont also established trend of similar games expansions every 2 years. And yes I know gw1 did it faster.

Anyway justification for subscription has always been maintenance cost/profits and not for adding additional content to a game. But cost of subscription cost almost never equals the additional content in game added. You never get contents worth of 3 games a year that is you $15/month. If they did it would be legendary game that everyone would play. WoW only successes was because it had little competition and that only happened cause they sued Anet and prevented GW2 from coming out for 5 years.

I think most complaints/anger of GW can be directed towards WoW and the stupid law suit. Cant believe they cant counter sue for deformation of brand product or something.

Here’s a problem with subscriptions. Once the new content is no longer shinny, players quit until the next expansion. For the company that means income drops while development costs balloon trying to get the expansion out the door.

Then you have people who look at their monthly expenses and decide that life is getting in the way of gaming and choose to cancel, for now. The $15 a month isn’t worth the less than 10 hours a month they can play.

That leaves gamers who don’t care about waiting for new content for 12-18 months but can rationalize the expense. That’s becoming a smaller and smaller group. WoW’s off by another 200K this last quarter.

Fafnir.5124:

WoW only successes was because it had little competition and that only happened cause they sued Anet and prevented GW2 from coming out for 5 years.

I think most complaints/anger of GW can be directed towards WoW and the stupid law suit. Cant believe they cant counter sue for deformation of brand product or something.

Umm, when did this happen? I can’t find any information on it, and any responses about delays from the devs were to say that the game was NOT delayed: http://kotaku.com/5155092/arenanet-there-is-no-guild-wars-2-delay
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/guild_wars_2_2010_delay_not_accurate_says_arenanet

I’m not trying to bash you and say you’re wrong, just curious. Stuff like that I find interesting.

This rears its head periodically>>.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Subscription-based-Guild-Wars-2/first

Shadey Dancer.2907:

This rears its head periodically>>.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Subscription-based-Guild-Wars-2/first

This and the mounts and the PvE dueling threads. These types of threads eventually die out then get resurrected after they move back the the 7-8 page because no one bothers to look that far back :P

Dusty Moon.4382:

saye.9304:

JoeytheHutt.1742:

If Im gonna play a new game after Gw2, I will start lookin for subbing games. Im not sure I would sub gw2 if the choice comes up in the future, as Im not a big fan of some of the changes that has been done lately. But who knows.
I didnt buy gw2 because it was a “free” game, I bought it because I found it interesting and I wanted to try it. A sub back then wouldnt made any difference.

i really like gw2 but i think i am going for sub based games with quality content and support not sub based games which are sucking money out of players as much as they can and then they will go F2P like the latest addition to mmo world you can guess which game.
i am playing games to be entertained rather than wasting time and mess around in games and say it is free at least. for people who are actually from NA/EU they know 15 euro/dollar a month is nothing and ppl pay way more than that for things they like.
but unfortunately the lie of F2P goes well with lot of poor gamers. and well i think they are in majority hence you get low quality content and support instead free to play.

The thing is ‘A fool and his money are often parted’. You don’t have to buy anything from the CS to play – PERIOD. It is all ‘luxury’ items and none are really needed to play the game. You can play this game without anything from the CS and do just as well or even better than people who buy stuff in the CS.

Understand it – they are ‘frivolous items’ not really needed to play.

ESO is a classic examples of a sub game. They have gated so much of the content – One race you pay extra for. Want the fastest mount in game, it will cost you, etc. That is more of a cash grab than GW2 ever will be. The same can be said for the other sub games that went F2P recently.

What is it that Gobbels said – a lie repeated often enough becomes the truth. ESO’s single mount is NOT the fastest and can be bought with in game gold and the bonus race is nothing special – ie human. The racial bonuses are the weakest in the game unless u want a sword and board tank.

I mentioned this before: at launch GW2 gated Mistfire wolf which I recently got a few weeks ago thanks to gems discount and Anet’s eventual decision to put it on the gemshop. If you think its weak, I should post the DPS it does on Teq’s vulnerable phase on my guardian especially when its buffed with 25 stacks of might on its special attack.

ESO is not a megaflop or terrible or even boring as some pundits have mentioned. GW2 gets an edge over ESO is because of the art style and the graphics and dare I mention the TP.

Khal Drogo.9631:

Dusty Moon.4382:

saye.9304:

JoeytheHutt.1742:

If Im gonna play a new game after Gw2, I will start lookin for subbing games. Im not sure I would sub gw2 if the choice comes up in the future, as Im not a big fan of some of the changes that has been done lately. But who knows.
I didnt buy gw2 because it was a “free” game, I bought it because I found it interesting and I wanted to try it. A sub back then wouldnt made any difference.

i really like gw2 but i think i am going for sub based games with quality content and support not sub based games which are sucking money out of players as much as they can and then they will go F2P like the latest addition to mmo world you can guess which game.
i am playing games to be entertained rather than wasting time and mess around in games and say it is free at least. for people who are actually from NA/EU they know 15 euro/dollar a month is nothing and ppl pay way more than that for things they like.
but unfortunately the lie of F2P goes well with lot of poor gamers. and well i think they are in majority hence you get low quality content and support instead free to play.

The thing is ‘A fool and his money are often parted’. You don’t have to buy anything from the CS to play – PERIOD. It is all ‘luxury’ items and none are really needed to play the game. You can play this game without anything from the CS and do just as well or even better than people who buy stuff in the CS.

Understand it – they are ‘frivolous items’ not really needed to play.

ESO is a classic examples of a sub game. They have gated so much of the content – One race you pay extra for. Want the fastest mount in game, it will cost you, etc. That is more of a cash grab than GW2 ever will be. The same can be said for the other sub games that went F2P recently.

What is it that Gobbels said – a lie repeated often enough becomes the truth. ESO’s single mount is NOT the fastest and can be bought with in game gold and the bonus race is nothing special – ie human. The racial bonuses are the weakest in the game unless u want a sword and board tank.

I mentioned this before: at launch GW2 gated Mistfire wolf which I recently got a few weeks ago thanks to gems discount and Anet’s eventual decision to put it on the gemshop. If you think its weak, I should post the DPS it does on Teq’s vulnerable phase on my guardian especially when its buffed with 25 stacks of might on its special attack.

ESO is not a megaflop or terrible or even boring as some pundits have mentioned. GW2 gets an edge over ESO is because of the art style and the graphics and dare I mention the TP.

I’ve noticed that a lot of people have a tendency to straight out lie when it comes to different games and unfortunately, it’s gotten to the point where it’s very difficult to have a rational conversation here.

Just check out all of the fallacious reasoning and unfounded speculation in the PvE Dueling thread. It’s absurd.

^
Very true, but I still find the Inane chatter amusing

Anyone who thinks that sub-based games since the big dog give value for money is fooling himself. I’d also be willing to debate the big dog, but recognize they did provide a lot for the money, and my decision that it wasn’t worth it is personal. The rest of them are giving you the minimum they think they can get away with while collecting your money as if they were the big dog — which they aren’t.

Imo GW2 the product was an excellent value, despite that the ongoing service is not something I care to contribute to. With their payment model, I can play that product when i want to, and even sample new stuff to see if it is worth doing. With a sub game, I lose access to the product I paid for if I no longer want to pay for ongoing development that is not worth the money. Rip-off.

I don’t think that going free to play is necessarily an indication of the quality of a game. In an environment where there are dozens or more options, many of which have no cost for entry, it seems likely that even a good game is going to struggle to grab and hold onto a sizable portion of an increasingly fragmented MMO player base while charging a sub fee.

I don’t think that even the 800 lb gorilla of the MMO market would survive being launched as a pure subscription based game today.

If you want subscription fee go and play in the Chinese server.

You even get a precursor if you spent enough money (For real).

Personally, I like the “b2p + DLC” model best, the one used by The Secret World.
Devs get some money, I don’t feel pressured with a monthly sub.
When they release a juicy content update, they can charge some money for it. For all other cosmetic and convenience thingies, players can go through the cash shop.

It’s cheaper than a sub, but more stable income than a pure f2p.

Khal Drogo.9631:

ESO is not a megaflop or terrible or even boring as some pundits have mentioned. GW2 gets an edge over ESO is because of the art style and the graphics and dare I mention the TP.

As someone who played a ton of the beta, and even tried out more than enough of the post-release via a friend’s account, I can say that you are wrong (IMO) about two things.

ESO may not be a megaflop (although I feel it will be, time will tell), but it is incredibly terrible and boring.
The words tedious, clunky, buggy, and bots come to mind.

Oh, the insane number of bots in the game is incredible. I have never seen so many bots in any game prior to ESO. Ever.
Of course, it’s all a matter of perception.

serow.6524:

Personally, I like the “b2p + DLC” model best, the one used by The Secret World.
Devs get some money, I don’t feel pressured with a monthly sub.
When they release a juicy content update, they can charge some money for it. For all other cosmetic and convenience thingies, players can go through the cash shop.

It’s cheaper than a sub, but more stable income than a pure f2p.

I do not like DLC. At all. I know that, unfortunately, a lot of people do.

I miss the days of yore, where I didn’t have to pay $5 to $15 for a few zones, a crappy weapons pack, or minimal content.

The days where you could snag an expansion for $20 to $60 and get an entire game’s worth of content, or even more content than was in the original.

I do not participate in this DLC craze, as the price is never worth the content. It is an obvious money grab from people who should know better, but don’t.

The last, and only, DLC I have ever paid for was for PAYDAY 2.
It was on sale, and cost less than $7 for all the weapon packs and mission content.

Sorry but i disagree with you.The only two successful P2P MMOs are EVE and WoW.Every other MMO that tried that model failed miserably.Tera is F2P in EU,Rift has F2P model,SWTOR is F2P and that is only the recent MMOs that came out.

Now i don’t say that F2P and B2P is bad for the games.Just look at Rift.They are creating content and features like crazy.Which says something good about the game.Also SWTOR after going F2P is doing quite well.

P2P model doesn’t give you for granted game support.Just look how greedy are ESO.You buy game for 60$ if you want to play the full game you have to buy 2nd disc for 40$ and on top of that you pay monthly.only for the 2nd month you already have payed 115$.Will people be happy if the game and support for it is actually not worth their money?

I don’t want a subscription model nor do I want a free-to-play model. I find both of them to be pretty intrusive to gameplay. GW2 is certainly better than most in both regards, but it feels more like a ‘free-to-play’ game with an initial pricetag (granted, that’s $50 more than I ever spent on any other F2P game.)

I want expansions back.

this reminds me of something…. say players want dueling…. so you can buy gems and spend them on dueling development… or whatever

The problem with Guild Wars 2 trying to add expansions, I think, is that the base game is ‘too strong’. And, they can’t just backload the game and hide new content and higher levelcap behind a paygate.

The classes are too diverse and well-balanced to add new classes to the game. I doubt they’ll add new races or weapon types either, for similar reasons. Then again, a new set of weapons balanced against the current set might actually be cool (though it might require renaming the current weapons in case there’s a risk of redundancy).

The original GW managed to launch several expansions without having paygate problems by having each expansion be able to stand alone or play with each other fairly, by introducing a complete suite of classes capable of mixing and hybriding with the normal ones, a completely new storyline independent of any previous ones, and a new set of maps.

I don’t see Guild Wars 2 being able to do any of this.

Cloudwalkernz.1328:

If you want subscription fee go and play in the Chinese server.

You even get a precursor if you spent enough money (For real).

isnt that alarming to you that there is VIP access in china for same game with same quality content and support and basically no improvement, i dont know about pay to win stuff you mentioned like getting precursor.
but i said this to people who can read and understand, i said: for much better content and support i am willing to pay sub fee while the VIP thing already happening in china for same thing .
do not forget gw2 is a ncsoft property so if china VIP is successful be sure you will get similar stuff here.

saye.9304:

to all guys saying P2P suck. first all those games like rift, swtor. eso… it is not the sub fee which brought them down, it was low quality of content and support that made people to say the game does not worth a sub. AND none of them is actually free i played them all.
there are successful sub based games like FINAL FANTASY XIV with over 2 million subscribers, why i am not there because i do not like the graphics and on top of all unholy trinity. but the game is pretty good over all for many people.
IT IS ALL ABOUT YOU. ask for better game and have will to pay for good game.

So you admit that quality content has no correlation to subscription fee?

runeblade.7514:

saye.9304:

to all guys saying P2P suck. first all those games like rift, swtor. eso… it is not the sub fee which brought them down, it was low quality of content and support that made people to say the game does not worth a sub. AND none of them is actually free i played them all.
there are successful sub based games like FINAL FANTASY XIV with over 2 million subscribers, why i am not there because i do not like the graphics and on top of all unholy trinity. but the game is pretty good over all for many people.
IT IS ALL ABOUT YOU. ask for better game and have will to pay for good game.

So you admit that quality content has no correlation to subscription fee?

why some of you reply to a post you did not read or did not understand. I SAID IT in my very first post that quality of content and support need a lot of improvement and if it takes sub fee for much better quality content i am willing to pay for better not for same game.

If they ever made a subscription model for GW2, they’d either have to give subscribers loads of extras, to warrant paying for something that’s been free since release, or severely kitten the existing game making the subscription model seem worth it.
Scenario 1 only creates a 2 tiered system with subscribers having an unfair advantage over non-subscribers (something A-net appear vehemently against given the game’s horizontal progression and omission of addons) whilst the 2nd scenario alienates current f2p players by taking away (or limiting access to) everything that they’ve grown accustomed to since release – ultimately only serving to reduce the player-base not increase it.

Khal Drogo.9631:

Dusty Moon.4382:

saye.9304:

JoeytheHutt.1742:

If Im gonna play a new game after Gw2, I will start lookin for subbing games. Im not sure I would sub gw2 if the choice comes up in the future, as Im not a big fan of some of the changes that has been done lately. But who knows.
I didnt buy gw2 because it was a “free” game, I bought it because I found it interesting and I wanted to try it. A sub back then wouldnt made any difference.

i really like gw2 but i think i am going for sub based games with quality content and support not sub based games which are sucking money out of players as much as they can and then they will go F2P like the latest addition to mmo world you can guess which game.
i am playing games to be entertained rather than wasting time and mess around in games and say it is free at least. for people who are actually from NA/EU they know 15 euro/dollar a month is nothing and ppl pay way more than that for things they like.
but unfortunately the lie of F2P goes well with lot of poor gamers. and well i think they are in majority hence you get low quality content and support instead free to play.

The thing is ‘A fool and his money are often parted’. You don’t have to buy anything from the CS to play – PERIOD. It is all ‘luxury’ items and none are really needed to play the game. You can play this game without anything from the CS and do just as well or even better than people who buy stuff in the CS.

Understand it – they are ‘frivolous items’ not really needed to play.

ESO is a classic examples of a sub game. They have gated so much of the content – One race you pay extra for. Want the fastest mount in game, it will cost you, etc. That is more of a cash grab than GW2 ever will be. The same can be said for the other sub games that went F2P recently.

What is it that Gobbels said – a lie repeated often enough becomes the truth. ESO’s single mount is NOT the fastest and can be bought with in game gold and the bonus race is nothing special – ie human. The racial bonuses are the weakest in the game unless u want a sword and board tank.

I mentioned this before: at launch GW2 gated Mistfire wolf which I recently got a few weeks ago thanks to gems discount and Anet’s eventual decision to put it on the gemshop. If you think its weak, I should post the DPS it does on Teq’s vulnerable phase on my guardian especially when its buffed with 25 stacks of might on its special attack.

ESO is not a megaflop or terrible or even boring as some pundits have mentioned. GW2 gets an edge over ESO is because of the art style and the graphics and dare I mention the TP.

I played ESO in the beta and got to level 20. I even played PvP a little. The problem being there is so much space in the game that has nothing – a mount is needed for just to get from one content area to another (which are small). The best mount in game is 46000 gold – the least is 14000 gold and when you only get 1 gold drop from mobs, well you can see where that is going. Bots and gold spammers were rampant even in Beta. ESO is a poor ES game and a mediocre MMO.

Back OT, GW1 did not need a sub and it did fine. In fact, many people still play it. The only problem with games like GW1 and GW2 is the box price doesn’t drop much since that is one of the major sources of revenue. Sub based games can drop the box price significantly because the major source of revenue is the SUB not the box price.

As other have pointed out, most sub games now have MT. WoW, ESO does, etc. The issue being, are they any better than a game, like GW2, which is Box cost only? If the quality is not there, how can the company justify being sub-based?

saye.9304:

Cloudwalkernz.1328:

If you want subscription fee go and play in the Chinese server.

You even get a precursor if you spent enough money (For real).

isnt that alarming to you that there is VIP access in china for same game with same quality content and support and basically no improvement, i dont know about pay to win stuff you mentioned like getting precursor.
but i said this to people who can read and understand, i said: for much better content and support i am willing to pay sub fee while the VIP thing already happening in china for same thing .
do not forget gw2 is a ncsoft property so if china VIP is successful be sure you will get similar stuff here.

China has a different business model than NA or EU and that is they way it has always been. WoW in China is charged by the hour, not a monthly sub. The Chinese market is more about the Carrot-stick approach. As the old saying goes, ‘When in Rome……’

The reason business models are different is because the players support a different model – also the Chinese GW2 will be on separate servers although we will be able to send mail back and forth – the TP will be separate also. That is mandated by the Chinese government.

viralthefrog.6130:

As someone who played a ton of the beta, and even tried out more than enough of the post-release via a friend’s account, I can say that you are wrong (IMO) about two things.

ESO may not be a megaflop (although I feel it will be, time will tell), but it is incredibly terrible and boring.
The words tedious, clunky, buggy, and bots come to mind.

Oh, the insane number of bots in the game is incredible. I have never seen so many bots in any game prior to ESO. Ever.
Of course, it’s all a matter of perception.

You cannot be complaining about botting and bugs if you are playing GW2 and played it during launch. As if thousands of COF P1 runs isnt boring and tedious, farming for ascended crafting etc. And “Living story” is a farce for the most part. Lore in this game is an afterthought; GW1 fans and RPGers feel like they are shafted.

From what I hear, the beta was not too good, but things substantially improved after release – I didnt play the beta so it would not affected my experience.

This feature patch intrigues me because of the much appreciated wardrobe system and trait reset on the fly feature. But basically when I am done with altering and tinkering with my builds of all my professions and getting my gear for those builds, I am going to just do the barest of minimums + dailies just to slowly grind for Incinerator.

However if they are going to do another feature patch and do so regularly in order to get people to constantly get new gear for new builds, I would just quit altogether.

No

Dusty Moon.4382:

I played ESO in the beta and got to level 20. I even played PvP a little. The problem being there is so much space in the game that has nothing – a mount is needed for just to get from one content area to another (which are small). The best mount in game is 46000 gold – the least is 14000 gold and when you only get 1 gold drop from mobs, well you can see where that is going. Bots and gold spammers were rampant even in Beta. ESO is a poor ES game and a mediocre MMO.

Back OT, GW1 did not need a sub and it did fine. In fact, many people still play it. The only problem with games like GW1 and GW2 is the box price doesn’t drop much since that is one of the major sources of revenue. Sub based games can drop the box price significantly because the major source of revenue is the SUB not the box price.

As other have pointed out, most sub games now have MT. WoW, ESO does, etc. The issue being, are they any better than a game, like GW2, which is Box cost only? If the quality is not there, how can the company justify being sub-based?

Again more propaganda, you get G primarily from questing (of which there are many) and not loot and you cant expect good loot at lvl 20. Its like expecting good loot at lvl 30 in GW2. You dont need mounts to get from one place to another – you have a sprint button and WPs. What constitutes a good ES experience? “Foorushdah” or the console command for God mode or the modding? Don’t think you can incorporate the above mentioned into a MMO.

You are crying about gold spammers in ESO – you don’t really play a lot of GW2 do you? And earning gold was even more terrible at launch for GW2 – true story.

When it comes to GW2, the word ‘subscription’ should be synonymous with the word ‘never’.

No, no and no. There is no correlation between subscription fee and better quality content. Just look at World of Warcraft. It is a piece of crap (examples: level grind, several tier gear grind (not only 2 tiers like in this game), horrible story line e.g., no story at all, copy of kungfu panda, horrendous graphic – really? it’s been over 7 years and they still haven’t updated the graphic and dozens of other problem and bugs that this margin is too narrow to contain) yet it has subscription fee. On the contrary, look at this game, it has no subscription fee and it’s a beautiful work of art and actually enjoyable and feel rewarding to play.

Vitus Dance.4509:

Yargesh.4965:

Yes, but the OP is under the impression that they actually know something about business or games making or programming or, well the list is fairly long.

I’ve just a minor inkling that they probably do…hence the existing ‘no subscription’ model.
From reading, the OP’s under the impression that subscription equals quantity or, at least, the expectation of quantity given that the player is paying for the product and so deserves (or feel they have the right) to demand it – which obviously they don’t.

I think Yargesh is referring to the OP thinking they know about business and game design.

saye.9304:

omg cant you people see that such so called scenario is already happening in china with vip thing for same stuff which is basically free here.
is it wrong to send message to anet that vip works here only you start working hard and give us much better game overall.

If the game started out with a subscription model, fair enough.

But going from a B2P model to a mandatory sub model? Unless it was an optional sub that give some gems and freebies every month (trans charges, for example), it’s like you’re asking Anet to take GW2 out the back and put it down.

Khal Drogo.9631:

Dusty Moon.4382:

I played ESO in the beta and got to level 20. I even played PvP a little. The problem being there is so much space in the game that has nothing – a mount is needed for just to get from one content area to another (which are small). The best mount in game is 46000 gold – the least is 14000 gold and when you only get 1 gold drop from mobs, well you can see where that is going. Bots and gold spammers were rampant even in Beta. ESO is a poor ES game and a mediocre MMO.

Back OT, GW1 did not need a sub and it did fine. In fact, many people still play it. The only problem with games like GW1 and GW2 is the box price doesn’t drop much since that is one of the major sources of revenue. Sub based games can drop the box price significantly because the major source of revenue is the SUB not the box price.

As other have pointed out, most sub games now have MT. WoW, ESO does, etc. The issue being, are they any better than a game, like GW2, which is Box cost only? If the quality is not there, how can the company justify being sub-based?

Again more propaganda, you get G primarily from questing (of which there are many) and not loot and you cant expect good loot at lvl 20. Its like expecting good loot at lvl 30 in GW2. You dont need mounts to get from one place to another – you have a sprint button and WPs. What constitutes a good ES experience? “Foorushdah” or the console command for God mode or the modding? Don’t think you can incorporate the above mentioned into a MMO.

You are crying about gold spammers in ESO – you don’t really play a lot of GW2 do you? And earning gold was even more terrible at launch for GW2 – true story.

I did a lot of questing in ESO beta, many of them were broken and could not be completed. No propaganda here – my opinion. You want propaganda, go read the reviews ZeniMax paid for.

I have stated before, I have not seen any gold spammers in game and yes I play the game a lot. So, go bark up another tree. I don’t see them, maybe it is the server I am on, don’t know.

If people want to cheat, there is no game security system in the world that will prevent that. Same with Gold Sellers.

My point was, GW1 is as old as WoW and did fine as a Box only game. That business model works and the reason I say that is we have GW2. We shall see if there is a GW3 or not.

I played GW2 in Beta and at beginning also and didn’t have the problems you seemed to have – hmm – player problem?

Sartharina.3542:

The problem with Guild Wars 2 trying to add expansions, I think, is that the base game is ‘too strong’. And, they can’t just backload the game and hide new content and higher levelcap behind a paygate.

The classes are too diverse and well-balanced to add new classes to the game. I doubt they’ll add new races or weapon types either, for similar reasons. Then again, a new set of weapons balanced against the current set might actually be cool (though it might require renaming the current weapons in case there’s a risk of redundancy).

The original GW managed to launch several expansions without having paygate problems by having each expansion be able to stand alone or play with each other fairly, by introducing a complete suite of classes capable of mixing and hybriding with the normal ones, a completely new storyline independent of any previous ones, and a new set of maps.

I don’t see Guild Wars 2 being able to do any of this.

I don’t see why it’s unreasonable to put a pricetag on new content, but I do see the concern in putting one on a level cap increase. The answer there would be to not include one, unless they really want you to buy the expansion. Ideally, the new features and content should be driving that.

New classes I can imagine putting a hold on, but new game mechanics are sorely needed. I don’t consider GW2’s combat “bad”, but it’s definitely not perfect, and it’s core gameplay has lots of potential.

Primarily, I’m just really not a fan of ‘free to play’ models and the way they’ve developed the game does not encourage me to spend money on it. They’ve done it before – and fabulously, I may add, even with all the broken stuff they introduced with each expansion pack. I’m not a fan of a sub, either. Both routes do their part in interfering with gameplay and progression in very unappealing ways.

ESO p2p model is already failing itself.
Swtor p2p model failed.

The only reason gw2 is existing is because of its current b2p model.

Charak.9761:

ESO p2p model is already failing itself.

Everyone that started playing ESO in my Guild now either is back to GW2 or Diablo3 .. if i could only understand why ?

You know what model I loved, gw1, not subscription. A game where you bought large expansions not because you needed to for progression or gear ladders, but because the content was so compelling on its own merits that people would gladly pay for it without strings attached. Anet should consider a paid large expansion rather than these small free bursts of a story that have little substance and exist temporarily.

ArenaNet’s core philosophy is “no subscription”-based games. This will never happen I’m afraid.

Besides, I disagree with all of your points:

1.) Silence on state of the game: care to explain this further?
2.) Bugs/fixes: every bug I’ve reported has been fixed. Care to explain this further?
3.) No expansion: the game has barely been around long enough to require one. Living Story is progressing really well at the moment and I’m psyched for Season 2. Care to explain why Guild Wars 2 actually needs an expansion?
4.) Subscription = right to whine: B2P/F2P/Subscription-based games all have one thing in common: – none of them give you anymore right to complain/whine than the other.

Finally, Guild Wars 2 is a wonderfully amazing game, even moreso with the introduction of Megaserver technology. I have been having amazing fun in the Harathi Hinterlands of late, smashing hordes of Centaurs to pieces with my fellow players. ’Tis been a real blast.

My passion for the world of Tyria has been re-ignited recently and I fail to see why people seem so angry at ArenaNet at the moment.

Donutdude.9582:

Finally, Guild Wars 2 is a wonderfully amazing game, even moreso with the introduction of Megaserver technology. I have been having amazing fun in the Harathi Hinterlands of late, smashing hordes of Centaurs to pieces with my fellow players. ’Tis been a real blast.

Even if there are also things i really dislike with the Megaserver, i see it at least also as a great step in the direction of getting new content in form of new zones.

In the past for me one of the reason against new zones was always that most of the zones were already empty, and more zones would only make that even worse. Also since we (or at least a lot of players) don’t really want a new level cap, and also thanks to the level scaling, we never need to go to those zones to level up if we don’t like them, since we can still level in Queensdale or whereever all day.

Megaserver for me is in that case really a step in the direction to create actually more new zones without creating more deserted zones.

If they add a subscription fee, I demand a refund. I bought this game under the pretence I could leave and come back whenever I wanted, no strings attached except that the Anet servers had to still be going.

I do understand however, that while a game for an offline handheld costs the company nothing to allow me to continue playing, GW2 has to at least pay to keep an online server going. A buy once and forget about it system isn’t going to cut it. Buy once and have some cool things to get if you throw more money their way? That’s perfectly reasonable and allows me to throw MORE money than the subscription fee at them.

But like I just said. If the gates of hell get frozen open and Guildwars 2 becomes subscribe or die, I’ll choose die and long for something to fill the void. Which will probably be League of Legends.

HotHit.6783:

If they add a subscription fee, I demand a refund. I bought this game under the pretence I could leave and come back whenever I wanted, no strings attached except that the Anet servers had to still be going.

I do understand however, that while a game for an offline handheld costs the company nothing to allow me to continue playing, GW2 has to at least pay to keep an online server going. A buy once and forget about it system isn’t going to cut it. Buy once and have some cool things to get if you throw more money their way? That’s perfectly reasonable and allows me to throw MORE money than the subscription fee at them.

But like I just said. If the gates of hell get frozen open and Guildwars 2 becomes subscribe or die, I’ll choose die and long for something to fill the void. Which will probably be League of Legends.

I wouldn’t worry.

Guild Wars, a 9 years old MMORPG, is still going and that game is still B2P only with NSA. Expect Guild Wars 2 to have the exact same story.

Stars.2179:

No, no and no. There is no correlation between subscription fee and better quality content. Just look at World of Warcraft. It is a piece of crap (examples: level grind, several tier gear grind (not only 2 tiers like in this game), horrible story line e.g., no story at all, copy of kungfu panda, horrendous graphic – really? it’s been over 7 years and they still haven’t updated the graphic and dozens of other problem and bugs that this margin is too narrow to contain) yet it has subscription fee. On the contrary, look at this game, it has no subscription fee and it’s a beautiful work of art and actually enjoyable and feel rewarding to play.

Well, WoW still has 7.6 Million subscriptions, so they must be doing something right

It is rather amusing how people in here are at each others´ throats over the way game studios and publishers should/have to earn their money – which is clearly more of their concern than that of players. I will remind myself of this thread when I read that fairy tale again about the great GW2 community that is so much nicer than the ones in those evil standard mmorpg :P