Guild Wars 2

-hardly any new content

-too slow to solve issues

-buggy

etc

Its obvious they cant afford a quality game with the current direction.

I can’t see this going over well.

Quality may be in the eye of the beholder. I would not support paying a mandatory subscription, nor am I convinced a subscription removes all bugs.

I agree, they shoudl make it optional something like you get gems/items discount every month if you give us 15$ every month. Nothing more than that though because otherwise people will think that it will be something like the Chinese VIP system

The summary from past threads about this is:

ArenaNet is doing a lot of work the game. We tend to forget that LS is actually a lot of stuff. It’s not what everyone in the community wants so some people overlook it.

A sub fee would not change their decision to make LS content rather than static content.

I think that would be a grave mistake. Plenty of new content for people who like the type of content being offered. And no more buggy than most MMOs I’ve played.

I think you guys never played a subbed game with consistent updates and content

I think you’re forgetting what playing a sub game with consistent updates is really like.

Hardly any new content?!!!!!!!!! look at what other Sub based MMO’s (looking at you WoW) put out in their first 2 years and GW2 is either on par with them or blows them out of the water. All for free!!

And if you think GW2 is exceptionally buggy then you must be new to the MMO genre. It’s about the same with any other MMO I have played. Especially with new patches.

Bandit.8279:

Hardly any new content?!!!!!!!!! look at what other Sub based MMO’s (looking at you WoW) put out in their first 2 years and GW2 is either on par with them or blows them out of the water. All for free!!

And if you think GW2 is exceptionally buggy then you must be new to the MMO genre. It’s about the same with any other MMO I have played. Especially with new patches.

In 2 yrs wow had an expansion not some gimmick LS
Every game is buggy, but anet takes forever to fix them.

I’ve played many sub games that offered way less content and were more bug infested. The OP’s conclusion that a sub would solve his issues with GW2 is flawed.

Bandit.8279:

Hardly any new content?!!!!!!!!! look at what other Sub based MMO’s (looking at you WoW) put out in their first 2 years and GW2 is either on par with them or blows them out of the water. All for free!!

And if you think GW2 is exceptionally buggy then you must be new to the MMO genre. It’s about the same with any other MMO I have played. Especially with new patches.

I would disagree and call that cherrypicking. WoW has released a HUGE amount of content in its lifetime. Hell, between the time that guild wars 2 was released and now, WoW has released 2 full expansions complete with new continents, combat revamps, new skills, and new dungeons and raids. Whether those expansions are good or are a better method for delivering content is up for debate. However, one thing is certain: if you add up all of the content that guild wars 2 has released since the release of the game in 2012, it is pretty meager. Charging a sub probably isn’t a good way for Anet to make money at this point and would probably alienate the most of the playerbase, but one thing is certain: Even though the LS content is free, it just isn’t enough. It is by no means even close to what other large MMOs such as WoW and FF14 offer in terms of new content.
It really is sad to see honestly. I love playing this game and do believe that if the Arenanet can get their s*** together, they could blow every other MMO out of the water in terms of quality. Everything Arenanet needs is there. Beautiful and engaging game world? Check. Cool and Unique Classes? Check. Probably some of the best open world gameplay in the MMO industry? Check. They just need to pull everything together and push out some new substantial content. Not rehashed encounters and events. Not gemstore RNG grab bags. Real content to pump some life into the game that takes more than a few hours to complete and has some decent replay value. As a former employee of Arenanet said on glassdoor: “A studio on the cusp of greatness hindered by poor management decisions. ”

Josh.5839:

Bandit.8279:

Hardly any new content?!!!!!!!!! look at what other Sub based MMO’s (looking at you WoW) put out in their first 2 years and GW2 is either on par with them or blows them out of the water. All for free!!

And if you think GW2 is exceptionally buggy then you must be new to the MMO genre. It’s about the same with any other MMO I have played. Especially with new patches.

In 2 yrs wow had an expansion not some gimmick LS
Every game is buggy, but anet takes forever to fix them.

In two years, WoW had an expansion which anyone can complete in about 2 days. No new gameplay, predictable storyline. Buggy launch, and still buggy features (main features which is actually needed to proceed). Also with every expansion, old content is obsolete.

I like how GW2 is. I am not a fan of LS and love dungeons, but I still like it better than other MMOs out there. I can only wish there were more dungeons in this game. I would be happy to just hear that they have new dungeons in their plans.

Josh.5839:

-hardly any new content

-too slow to solve issues

-buggy

etc

Its obvious they cant afford a quality game with the current direction.

I do not agree with anything that you have said. From my POV not one thing you have said is true. I do not support a subscription idea.

Josh.5839:

Bandit.8279:

Hardly any new content?!!!!!!!!! look at what other Sub based MMO’s (looking at you WoW) put out in their first 2 years and GW2 is either on par with them or blows them out of the water. All for free!!

And if you think GW2 is exceptionally buggy then you must be new to the MMO genre. It’s about the same with any other MMO I have played. Especially with new patches.

In 2 yrs wow had an expansion not some gimmick LS
Every game is buggy, but anet takes forever to fix them.

“The game was released on November 23, 2004, on the 10th anniversary of the Warcraft franchise. The first expansion set of the game, The Burning Crusade, was released on January 16, 2007.” – Wikipedia

So about 2 years and 2 months and they were charging you about $180 a year for 2 years ($360) with no updates what-so-ever.

Yes, I think most of us want an expansion and if by this time next year we still have no news of one I might grab a pitchfork and join you. But for now they have been doing a good job pushing out content free of charge.

The great thing about no sub fee is if you want to take a break from the game you are not burning any money! Play something else and come back to unlock your LS. It’s a win-win. All my games are B2P and I love them that way.

Josh.5839:

-hardly any new content

-too slow to solve issues

-buggy

etc

Its obvious they cant afford a quality game with the current direction.

an optional sub would probably be the best thing for this game and the players in the long run.

You’re kidding, right? Only in my guild 80% of people bought gems for at least $30 a month. It’s a tad more than a WoW sub. Talking revenue here. Excuse doesn’t stand up you know.

Bandit.8279:

Josh.5839:

Bandit.8279:

Hardly any new content?!!!!!!!!! look at what other Sub based MMO’s (looking at you WoW) put out in their first 2 years and GW2 is either on par with them or blows them out of the water. All for free!!

And if you think GW2 is exceptionally buggy then you must be new to the MMO genre. It’s about the same with any other MMO I have played. Especially with new patches.

In 2 yrs wow had an expansion not some gimmick LS
Every game is buggy, but anet takes forever to fix them.

“The game was released on November 23, 2004, on the 10th anniversary of the Warcraft franchise. The first expansion set of the game, The Burning Crusade, was released on January 16, 2007.” – Wikipedia

So about 2 years and 2 months and they were charging you about $180 a year for 2 years ($360) with no updates what-so-ever.

Yes, I think most of us want an expansion and if by this time next year we still have no news of one I might grab a pitchfork and join you. But for now they have been doing a good job pushing out content free of charge.

The great thing about no sub fee is if you want to take a break from the game you are not burning any money! Play something else and come back to unlock your LS. It’s a win-win. All my games are B2P and I love them that way.

b2p and free of charge while not burning money players do not feed the development machine as can be clearly seen with this game. sorry, but the gem store alone won’t help move this game forward and has not in 2 years so something has to change.

If they charge any kind of sub, optional or not, I’m out of here.

Josh.5839:

In 2 yrs wow had an expansion not some gimmick LS

What does that have to do with a subscription? The price of the expansion pays for itself. WoW gets very few updates for its monthly cost. Even Blizzard has acknowledged in the past that they’re offering less content updates when compared to free games.

Just throwing out another game example: Runescape.

Runescape has both free and member servers, and I’d like to think the players willing to pay for membership are more than enough to keep the game flourishing with constant content updates. They haven’t released expansions and have been putting content out in a similar fashion to GW2’s Living Story, but with great success likely due to both their frequent improvements to old content, introductions of new content, and excellent player-developer interactions to determine what people want in the game.

Runescape looks horrible in comparison to Guild Wars 2 imo, but the point I want to emphasize is their successful use of free content alongside content for subscribed members.

In my opinion, I truly believe a subscription model would work well for Guild Wars 2 if they didn’t take away the free content and added loads of extra content with the extra resources and funding. I am not an expert in game development or business models, but these are my personal views on the matter.

Bandit.8279:

Hardly any new content?!!!!!!!!! look at what other Sub based MMO’s (looking at you WoW) put out in their first 2 years and GW2 is either on par with them or blows them out of the water. All for free!!

And if you think GW2 is exceptionally buggy then you must be new to the MMO genre. It’s about the same with any other MMO I have played. Especially with new patches.

In 2 years WoW had an expansion that brought actual content and game play improvements. Not to mention that for that entire 2 years you always had something to do in WoW that was rewarding as you fought for your set pieces and did 40 man coordinated raids to get epic gear. Not sit at a freakin crafting vendor for 3 hours.

Piratoz.8627:

Hell, between the time that guild wars 2 was released and now, WoW has released 2 full expansions complete with new continents, combat revamps, new skills, and new dungeons and raids.

New skills? Really? When I logged in after a loooong break from WoW, my UI was kinda stripped of a lot.
Then, my wife and I got to level 90 from 85 in like….half a day 2-manning the five man dungeons which took us between 20 mins to 30 mins to do each dungeon or something stupid. We were still in our shoddy gear from days of old. After wondering if people still died in pve, I popped onto the forum and found lots of people either complaining that the class changes to CC or whatever had made the game too hard, or that people were raving about the changes saying it brought back the old challenge. We sat thinking “that was challenging?” and left a little disappointed.

Now, I know GW2 is far from rocket science to play. I certainly enjoy making dungeons harder by doing them as a duo most of the time because of the challenge. When I look at all the living story stuff, I see a lot of content, and I’m getting it all for free. I don’t think I’ve seen any more bugs than what I’ve seen in WoW.

I wonder…if ArenaNet had taken all the LS content, put it in a box and wrapped it in a bow and called it an expansion, would people have been happy? If WoW had released their expansions in pieces for free, would people have been unsatisfied?

I like the LS system. But then….I am a casual who can’t log in for a good play session daily. So the LS rationing works with my schedule.

Please, stop trying to ruin the one good thing I can afford. Sure, I could afford one subscripttion, but not four.
Also, the company has stated numerous times that this is meant to be subscription free game. In fact, it is one of their biggest selling point. They are not going back on their word like that. It would cost them thousands of players.

@Josh – this all boils down to your as well as others’ belief that LS isn’t real content so you dismiss it as well as the annual events, since they mostly repeat, and declare the game has no new content.

What you overlook is a lot of players are playing it because it’s free month to month. I was seriously hooked on a subscription game for 8 years for well over $1000 and to date I’ve spent all of $75 in two years on this game and at that price I feel I’ve gotten my money’s worth. Easily up there with any Civ/4X game I’ve played in terms of total hours.

Now if I’ve been paying monthly, then yes GW2 wouldn’t be a good value due to it’s lightweight content additions via LS but we aren’t paying monthly and trying to compare the two, a buy once to a play game versus a buy game then pay monthly and also pay box expansions is like comparing a Piper Cub to a Gulfstream G5. Yes both are personal planes but you get what you pay off.

Can we stop bringing up wow as a competitive example. The game is at 10 years now and still runs a crappy unengaging combat system where you spend 80% of the time staring at a hotbar. Gw2 doesnt need big revamps because the gameplay is extremely well structured as is. Thank god they dont have major class balance changes every couple of months like wow.

On top of this the content gw brings is a building journey, it doesnt release all the way to the climax like expansions in other games. You have to wait for big fights like the scarlet raid which beat the hell out of wows lame tank and spank raids with some specific boss mechanics to be aware of, which the addon system ruins by trivialising anyway.

Close the thread as its just devolving to a match of who can whine the loudest.

hardly any content and you want them to charge subs ? lol

Aarean.5398:

Can we stop bringing up wow as a competitive example. The game is at 10 years now and still runs a crappy unengaging combat system where you spend 80% of the time staring at a hotbar. Gw2 doesnt need big revamps because the gameplay is extremely well structured as is. Thank god they dont have major class balance changes every couple of months like wow.

On top of this the content gw brings is a building journey, it doesnt release all the way to the climax like expansions in other games. You have to wait for big fights like the scarlet raid which beat the hell out of wows lame tank and spank raids with some specific boss mechanics to be aware of, which the addon system ruins by trivialising anyway.

Close the thread as its just devolving to a match of who can whine the loudest.

Stop bringing wow up as a competitive example? It has more regular players then GW2 has AND its 10 years old. If that doesn’t set the standard by which to be judged, I don’t know what does. The only thing WoW’s longevity proves is that blizzard knows how to build an MMO and keep it running, where as Anet does not.

In 2011 WoW had over 12 million ACTIVE subscribers, GW2 barely broke 450k in august of 2013 and hasnt even sold half of what WoW has in active subscriptions in overall copies sold.

You can already pay a ‘sub’ if so inclined. Buy 800 gems on the 1st of every month. There you go. You’ve just paid about the equivalent of other MMO’s sub fees.

Much of this thread may be perceived as whining, and I admit a subscription fee would be ridiculous if there weren’t any additional benefits to what we already have.

I believe that most people who want a subscription fee (myself included) see it in terms of extra funding going towards legitimate content development so that we’d be able to see more quality content than what we’ve been seeing this past year.

GW2 is not meant to mirror other games, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t explore the possibility of utilizing previously established business models if they could benefit both the players and the company developing the game. We can all learn from the past, and I seriously hope GW2 is either looking at an expansion or subscription fee in addition to the free content to placate both people who are fine with the current system and those who desire more. This game has so much potential that is arguably being wasted on underwhelming content releases. These are my opinions anyway.

Thanatos.2691:

Much of this thread may be perceived as whining, and I admit a subscription fee would be ridiculous if there weren’t any additional benefits to what we already have.

I believe that most people who want a subscription fee (myself included) see it in terms of extra funding going towards legitimate content development so that we’d be able to see more quality content than what we’ve been seeing this past year.

GW2 is not meant to mirror other games, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t explore the possibility of utilizing previously established business models if they could benefit both the players and the company developing the game. We can all learn from the past, and I seriously hope GW2 is either looking at an expansion or subscription fee in addition to the free content to placate both people who are fine with the current system and those who desire more. This game has so much potential that is arguably being wasted on underwhelming content releases. These are my opinions anyway.

Absolutely, there needs to be content to suit a variety of masses, not just one specific play style. It’s an MMORPG, its a world, that takes on a life of its own, and it should play that way without effecting one side or another. WoW was the building blocks, the foundation by which other great MMO’s could be constructed, and GW2 has the potential to take that and run with it and be a fantastic game, what angers people is that its not being used that way. It’s being twisted and destroyed by these pitiful attempts and story telling and never really addresses the actual problems.

Spawne.3128:

In 2011 WoW had over 12 million ACTIVE subscribers, GW2 barely broke 450k in august of 2013 and hasnt even sold half of what WoW has in active subscriptions in overall copies sold.

You are comparing a peak concurrency number to total number of subs. Peak concurrency is total number of players logged in at a single moment, where a sub indicates how many logged in over an entire month.

For instance, WoW’s peak concurrency at MoP launch was only 1 million which falls within industry standards – peak concurrency is usually around 10% of total active players per month. So GW2 probably has ~4 million active players (if not more since the China launch).

Spawne.3128:

Aarean.5398:

Can we stop bringing up wow as a competitive example. The game is at 10 years now and still runs a crappy unengaging combat system where you spend 80% of the time staring at a hotbar. Gw2 doesnt need big revamps because the gameplay is extremely well structured as is. Thank god they dont have major class balance changes every couple of months like wow.

On top of this the content gw brings is a building journey, it doesnt release all the way to the climax like expansions in other games. You have to wait for big fights like the scarlet raid which beat the hell out of wows lame tank and spank raids with some specific boss mechanics to be aware of, which the addon system ruins by trivialising anyway.

Close the thread as its just devolving to a match of who can whine the loudest.

Stop bringing wow up as a competitive example? It has more regular players then GW2 has AND its 10 years old. If that doesn’t set the standard by which to be judged, I don’t know what does. The only thing WoW’s longevity proves is that blizzard knows how to build an MMO and keep it running, where as Anet does not.

In 2011 WoW had over 12 million ACTIVE subscribers, GW2 barely broke 450k in august of 2013 and hasnt even sold half of what WoW has in active subscriptions in overall copies sold.

Many MMOs have tried to copy WoW’s model but failed. GW2 is one of the few MMOs released in recent times that didn’t have to go through any major changes to payment model like LOTRO or DCUO did.

Even Blizzard’s next big MMO Project Titan got canned.

At this stage, WoW is more likely a fluke than a winning model.

MrIllusion.5304:

Spawne.3128:

Aarean.5398:

Can we stop bringing up wow as a competitive example. The game is at 10 years now and still runs a crappy unengaging combat system where you spend 80% of the time staring at a hotbar. Gw2 doesnt need big revamps because the gameplay is extremely well structured as is. Thank god they dont have major class balance changes every couple of months like wow.

On top of this the content gw brings is a building journey, it doesnt release all the way to the climax like expansions in other games. You have to wait for big fights like the scarlet raid which beat the hell out of wows lame tank and spank raids with some specific boss mechanics to be aware of, which the addon system ruins by trivialising anyway.

Close the thread as its just devolving to a match of who can whine the loudest.

Stop bringing wow up as a competitive example? It has more regular players then GW2 has AND its 10 years old. If that doesn’t set the standard by which to be judged, I don’t know what does. The only thing WoW’s longevity proves is that blizzard knows how to build an MMO and keep it running, where as Anet does not.

In 2011 WoW had over 12 million ACTIVE subscribers, GW2 barely broke 450k in august of 2013 and hasnt even sold half of what WoW has in active subscriptions in overall copies sold.

Many MMOs have tried to copy WoW’s model but failed. GW2 is one of the few MMOs released in recent times that didn’t have to go through any major changes to payment model like LOTRO or DCUO did.

Even Blizzard’s next big MMO Project Titan got canned.

At this stage, WoW is more likely a fluke than a winning model.

I don’t think WoW was a fluke at all, MMORPG’s need one thing to make them successful overall other things and that’s “depth” or as others call it “immersion”. WoW had an incredible level of immersion for what it was when it was released, actually pretty state of the art in most respects, in fact there are still lessons that GW2 could be taking from WoW at its beginning that would massively improve the immersion of GW2 and its supposed “living world”.

What anet fails to understand is that twice a month patch with a new instance to play is not “living world” nor is it “living” at all, and it does absolutely nothing for immersion, mostly because of just how flat out bad the writing is. You could get more out of the game by simply adding more to the actual world that works on the level of interaction with the players personal story. But for the most part, the world is completely static. As I said last year, simple things like weather, or other game dynamics that change game play aren’t even a part of the game. When you complete a personal story mission, it does absolutely nothing to the surrounding environment (ie kill zhaitan yet orr is still worse then ever, yet you will have scarlet destroy lions arch, and introduce a huge discontinuity to players new to the game playing the first half of the personal story).

After you have established a high level of immersion, you need to keep players coming back for something, it is such a simple concept that seemingly evades anet it is unreal. And countless breath has been wasted by many griping player on this forum about this topic. RNG is broke, its been broke since day 1. There is no reward for anything you do in this game. The whole concept of either A) skins only or crafting, to prevent this seemingly “unfair” balance between builds is noble in one respect, but flawed in another. When people spend 2-3 hours a night completing a mission, and get rewarded with nothing, not only is frustrating but its disappointing as well, and sends people looking for fun elsewhere, and it has only seemingly gotten worse since I started my new thief several months ago, which was rewarded with a level 18 green pact weapon at the end of the zhaitan mission when my character was level 80.

If this is the idea behind the “GW2 difference” in game play, I want no part of it. Rather pay $15 dollars a month to a game that deserves it and gives me some sense of enjoyment at the end of the day, than run around in circles for nothing chasing a story that makes no sense.

So pay an optional sub then. I won’t stop you. The devs won’t stop you.

Josh.5839:

I think you guys never played a subbed game with consistent updates and content

Well…gw2 gets more updates than most games. Its just little and often here.

Bugs? This is an MMo. Ive seen sub mmos have bugs since launch that have been ignored. One of those is 13 years old!! There is no correlation between sub and bug foxes. Bugs happen, its a fact of life with these games. At least Anet hotfixes on a regular basis, rather than waiting on a set patch schedule to fix bugs, which at least two other Mmos do.

You can pay a sub. Buy gems from the store each month. Job done.

A sub would kill this game, since the free aspect is what attracted so many players.

Think that covers everything!

I would quite day one of that change without hesitation or cares. and why would they?
Get $100’ish out of me a year rather than the near $500 in gems I buy. I am heavily steeped in old-school Nintendo games and am perfectly content playing metroid mega-man and square soft/enix whichever it was back then. Lufia here I come.

Oh yes please…let me pay a sub so I can play
in GW2 megaservers where 30 man events are done
by 200 players so that we can save on server expenses.
Or maybe not.

If we/they ever want to ‘desertify’ the game and throw away their inignia payment model they stand so firmly on and how they have been designing the game based on just that… sure, why not?

It’s sad to see how many people think a subscription fee would be applied to the content we already get for free. This has been the largest argument against a subscription fee that I’ve seen, which seems to completely miss the point of a subscription fee. The content we already have can easily remain free while a subscription fee could add a steady source of player investment into the game, meaning developers would likely have more money and resources to put into content development.

Living story is passable for free content, but is it enough to keep players interested and invested in the game? Everyone has differing opinions about whether or not the game is suffering from lack of substantial content development, leading many hoping for an expansion. A subscription fee could serve as an alternative to an expansion, giving paying subscribers more content which they desire while leaving the current free content (including Living Story) for the players who aren’t interested in a subscription.

This seems like a good compromise in my opinion, and I think most people against a subscription fee are paranoid that their free content will suddenly become subscription content.

a good compromise to have two classes of players? So that some can´t play everything with the others?

Thanatos.2691:

Living story is passable for free content, but is it enough to keep players interested and invested in the game? Everyone has differing opinions about whether or not the game is suffering from lack of substantial content development, leading many hoping for an expansion. A subscription fee could serve as an alternative to an expansion, giving paying subscribers more content which they desire while leaving the current free content (including Living Story) for the players who aren’t interested in a subscription.

This seems like a good compromise in my opinion, and I think most people against a subscription fee are paranoid that their free content will suddenly become subscription content.

Depends on what “extra stuff” exactly one would get for paying a subscription. Gating any meaningful content behind a subscription fee would only segregate the player base.

Besides, there already is a way to support Anet via a voluntary “subscription”, buying Gems. As far as business models go, GW2’s is one of the most consumer friendly ones out there.

Also it is worth mentioning that World of Warcraft, the genre giant with a subscription fee AND a cash shop, developed by Blizzard – one of the wealthiest game developer studios, just went through a 14 month period during which the game received no content updates whatsoever.

Thanatos.2691:

Living story is passable for free content, but is it enough to keep players interested and invested in the game? Everyone has differing opinions about whether or not the game is suffering from lack of substantial content development, leading many hoping for an expansion. A subscription fee could serve as an alternative to an expansion, giving paying subscribers more content which they desire while leaving the current free content (including Living Story) for the players who aren’t interested in a subscription.

.

No. No no no. Please, just no.

This is a terrible idea IMO. It would require stupid amounts of resources (not saying a lot, just some that aren’t necessary) to gate of content from the non-payers, and would alienate a ton of the playerbase. A pay wall is just a horrible way to manage a game, and that’s what this would be. I can barely describe how horrible something like this would be to the game.

I think any sort of subscription is extremely unnecessary, and have a strong feeling that the ‘expansion’ everyone wants is going to come either between seasons 2 and 3 or 3 and 4. After that, most of this subscription talk should finally die down.

But, if anything like a superscription or a member service or something were to ever go down, I think it would have to be focused on cosmetics and convenience. For example, for $15 a month, you get a 7 dye pack, 12-18 transmutation stones, one of the newly released skins, and maybe access to the airship thing or some BL keys. Maybe throw in a finisher or mail carrier or mini or title every once in a while. As useless as that sounds… I would probably buy it. Heck, if you threw in a 10%-20% gemstore discount into it, I would actually end up spending more money than if I didn’t have it.

@CptTrips

Yes. Subscribed members could have the option of free or subscription servers so the paying players don’t have an advantage over free players when going into free servers. In an earlier post, I mentioned it’s a system that’s worked well for games like Runescape. The paying members get more content at a faster pace while the free members keep the original content with slower introduction of new content like through Living Story. Unless ANet is terrified that they won’t have enough players to fill servers with this system, it’s a system that could easily work out for everyone if properly implemented.

@Piecekeeper

I don’t like the idea of a subscription model more than a proper expansion tbh. I’m one of those people who’s been hoping for an expansion for a while now since the developers have been keeping us in the dark about their major projects for most of this year. Still, there is the possibility that they truly aren’t interested in the expansion model, and a subscription model would be an alternative. I’m not 100% in favor of an optional subscription, because there are definitely problems with it. However, most people shoot the idea down as soon as it’s brought up out of fear that it’ll destroy the game or something drastic.

No system is perfect. The expansion model would be optimal imo, and the subscription model is simply another alternative. My opinions.

They already make the equivalent of 7$ per user per month with gemstore transactions. A subscription wouldn’t change a thing.

Thanatos.2691:

Unless ANet is terrified that they won’t have enough players to fill servers with this system, it’s a system that could easily work out for everyone if properly implemented.

Considering the (likely) possibility that introducing a subscription fee and forced segregation of the player base would lose them more players than bring in new ones, I personally hope they’d be scared "#%@les even if just thinking about it.

kokiman.2364:

They already make the equivalent of 7$ per user per month with gemstore transactions. A subscription wouldn’t change a thing.

I personally don’t see gemstore transactions as the equivalent of a optional subscription.

Customer A buys optional gems from the company and is invested in the game. However, this person is only buying a product that doesn’t explicitly show monetary investment in the game as the same product can be acquired through ingame gold. Company doesn’t have to develop additional content for customer who buys optional gems.

Customer B uses a subscription fee and is monetarily invested in the game. This person has officially invested his or her money into the game itself rather than specific items or services offered through the gemstore. The company has more pressure to develop more content with the customer directly invested in their company.

Of course I’m no expert on any business models whatsoever, so feel free to tear this assumption apart lol. I still feel direct investment in the game has more of an impact on development than individual product purchases.

I’m personally in favor of an expansion over an optional subscription fee, but I definitely would prefer optional subscription content over the “Living World” approach.

I bring up valid points regarding actual content as to why wow needs to stop being brought up and you just sit on sub numbers for the game, thats the problem with this argument. Anyone would agree wows combat is nothing to cheer at, infact its pretty weak compared to most of the more recent mmos. Anet going sub wouldnt change these facts and their design direction so drop wow. Gw is the evolution and wow will keep its fanbase until they move on. I was more of a wow fan then most and when gw came out wow has been as good as dead for me.
This is a gw forum. Talk about gw and what you want to see specifically. Not what a game that will fail in any other attempt would do. Cause the fact that wow couldnt be recreated shows its weak gameplay. People just love the atmosphere of that particular world.

Thanatos.2691:

Customer B uses a subscription fee and is monetarily invested in the game. This person has officially invested his or her money into the game itself rather than specific items or services offered through the gemstore. The company has more pressure to develop more content with the customer directly invested in their company.

That is just completely wrong (and somewhat naive).

If you pay a subscription to say, World of Warcraft, you aren’t buying shares of Activition-Blizzard. You pay to simply access the servers.

Think a sub would mean a better game? Clearly you haven’t played ESO.

I wouldn’t be against paying a sub for GW2. Of course, as mentioned, it should be optional. I would suggest being given $20 worth of gems each month on a $15/month sub.

$5 off for subbing is a fair deal.

Piratoz.8627:

Bandit.8279:

Hardly any new content?!!!!!!!!! look at what other Sub based MMO’s (looking at you WoW) put out in their first 2 years and GW2 is either on par with them or blows them out of the water. All for free!!

And if you think GW2 is exceptionally buggy then you must be new to the MMO genre. It’s about the same with any other MMO I have played. Especially with new patches.

I would disagree and call that cherrypicking. WoW has released a HUGE amount of content in its lifetime. Hell, between the time that guild wars 2 was released and now, WoW has released 2 full expansions complete with new continents, combat revamps, new skills, and new dungeons and raids. Whether those expansions are good or are a better method for delivering content is up for debate. However, one thing is certain: if you add up all of the content that guild wars 2 has released since the release of the game in 2012, it is pretty meager. Charging a sub probably isn’t a good way for Anet to make money at this point and would probably alienate the most of the playerbase, but one thing is certain: Even though the LS content is free, it just isn’t enough. It is by no means even close to what other large MMOs such as WoW and FF14 offer in terms of new content.
It really is sad to see honestly. I love playing this game and do believe that if the Arenanet can get their s*** together, they could blow every other MMO out of the water in terms of quality. Everything Arenanet needs is there. Beautiful and engaging game world? Check. Cool and Unique Classes? Check. Probably some of the best open world gameplay in the MMO industry? Check. They just need to pull everything together and push out some new substantial content. Not rehashed encounters and events. Not gemstore RNG grab bags. Real content to pump some life into the game that takes more than a few hours to complete and has some decent replay value. As a former employee of Arenanet said on glassdoor: “A studio on the cusp of greatness hindered by poor management decisions. ”

dude,how huge wow expansion was in last 10 years if there wasnt gear progression?