Guild Wars 2

So lets discuss the ‘New Business model’ AKA ‘Expansion Release schedule + Cost summary’

We all know that they updated their Core business model with HoT and this Blog post here > https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/pre-purchase-community-address/

Business Model Clarification

We want to be clear about our business model for future expansions now that we are approaching our first paid expansion for Guild Wars 2. We believe that to keep the game dynamic and vibrant with a constantly growing community, it should be as easy as possible for new players to get into Guild Wars 2. For Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns, we didn’t want the core game’s price to be a factor in a new player’s decision to begin playing Guild Wars 2. In the future, if we release further Guild Wars 2 expansions, we plan to offer all of the prior expansions, the core game, and the latest expansion for one single purchase price.

Now there are 2 things that were not very clear in this address

1. Price scheme moving forward
2. Expansion release schedule

If they want to release each expansion at 49.99(Current pricing Model) every year, your monthly subscription to keep the game up to date becomes $4.16 – $8.11 depending on your purchase options. This moves GW2 from a Buy to Play to a Yearly Subscription to get updated content. Granted the cost here is minimal compared to other MMOs, but I think this fact is being seriously overlooked. And yes, you do not have to upgrade your game to continue to play it. Nor do you have to update on their release schedule either. But this is about getting new content as soon as its available.

Now if they want to release an expansion every 2 or 3 years that cost obviously drops quite a bit. But that also staggers content releases.

But they also didn’t go into any details on their planned pricing model moving forward. Are we going to continue to pay the current ‘market fair price’ on every expansion. Or is it going to be Core Game cost + each expansion after the fact. So in 3 Expansion releases, instead of paying 49.99, we are paying 79.99?

Now, I do not mind paying X(X = Fair market value here) for new content in GW2. I think the game (over all) is great, and by far the best MMO in existence right now. But lets just be clear here. They ARE moving the game from a buy to play to a “yearly” subscription to keep content updated for ANYONE who wants an ‘up to date’ game experience.

And really I want clarification on their pricing model and release schedule moving forward. As if the Games update cost is going to increase with each expansion I will probably not continue with this product. Also, it would be nice to have a good understanding of Anet’s plans for content releases moving forward.

They’ll still be doing living story as well so expansions are not the only content although it appears you’ll need the expansion to access them.

Ayrilana.1396:

They’ll still be doing living story as well so expansions are not the only content although it appears you’ll need the expansion to access them.

well that is why I am asking about the content release schedule moving forward. If we are to expect an expansion every year, and inside that expansion we are going to get the ‘living story’ that ads value to that new ‘yearly subscription’ costs.

Lots of users are talking about ‘uninformed purchase decisions’ and I think this topic can help to address them. Hell I am curious myself here.

They likely won’t provide a release schedule just like they won’t provide a release date for the current expansion.

Ayrilana.1396:

They likely won’t provide a release schedule just like they won’t provide a release date for the current expansion.

Release schedules and release dates are entirely different things.

Release schedule is more of a projected road map, much like the AMD/Nvidia/intel release plans. They are estimated quarter’s for that year.

And letting the player base/customer base know that their expansion release schedule is planned per year or every 2 years is something important enough to share IMHO. And maybe add in what their plan is for the roll-up updates in between expansions as well. Many other much bigger companies release road maps like this already and so can Anet/NCsoft.

sirsquishy.8531:

Ayrilana.1396:

They likely won’t provide a release schedule just like they won’t provide a release date for the current expansion.

Release schedules and release dates are entirely different things.

Release schedule is more of a projected road map, much like the AMD/Nvidia/intel release plans. They are estimated quarter’s for that year.

And letting the player base/customer base know that their expansion release schedule is planned per year or every 2 years is something important enough to share IMHO. And maybe add in what their plan is for the roll-up updates in between expansions as well. Many other much bigger companies release road maps like this already and so can Anet/NCsoft.

Not entirely different. The issue is that they did this in 2013 and got flak for “lying” when they couldn’t bring everything they projected for whatever reasons. Just look at precursor crafting. People will hold them to whatever projected release schedule they provide and then get upset if they deviate from it.

Roadmaps haven’t exactly panned out for Anet. The most we can hope for is more content on the future that is not as lengthy in release as HoT nor as problematic when they announce the purchase options. The bar has been set pretty low with this release, any improvement will be a plus.

Yearly expansions are wishful thinking. Even world of warcraft, with its massive budgets has expansions only every 2 years. And WoW is slowly but surely losing more and more players, because of lack of good content etc…

It is not easy to produce high quality, and high amount of content in such short period of time. Not to mention, they still have to keep people entertained by some minor updates on the side as well.

I don’t think they want expansions to become regular thing, because expansion equals huge gaps in their usual release cadence. If we think about it we have had two types of rolling content updates LS for story and feature packs for random improvements and changes in mechanics. Thing is this is now what some people have grown accustomed to, I know I had… so it might not be desirable for them to continuously disrupt this.

I believe they even said in a few places that HoT is a foundation, because the things coming in HoT are things that would have been impossible with either of their past release models for content. Outside of that HoT serves as a means for them to regain retail presence outside of first party purchases. So I can see them doing expansions as their needs require (ie. either in terms of things they want to develop or change being outside the scope of live development or their concurrent player counts, which are tied to gem store revenue, needing a potential boost bad enough).

I say this because they obviously really don’t like to fragment the playerbase and with each expansion this will happen, even with their business model changes and with each expansion for whatever influx of new and returning players they bring it also means drop in concurrent players as their cadence changes to accommodate the expansion development.

Only ANet has the data about these things, and they won’t have all of it until after HoT ships and live development returns to more active role… they probably don’t even know for sure themselves which mix of the two content models gets them the best return on investment yet.

Duncanmix.5238:

Yearly expansions are wishful thinking. Even world of warcraft, with its massive budgets has expansions only every 2 years. And WoW is slowly but surely losing more and more players, because of lack of good content etc…

It is not easy to produce high quality, and high amount of content in such short period of time. Not to mention, they still have to keep people entertained by some minor updates on the side as well.

yea totally, I dont think anyone is asking for a yearly expansion or anything the like. But more of an more in depth explanation of their current new business model. There are questions that should be answered. Per my OP.

ArenaNet likely doesn’t even know what exactly they’re planning on doing. It all depends on how things turn out. Their model has been an experiment since the beginning.

An expansion is needed to attract outside attention. People simply don’t care about free content. Just look at how people mention an MMO’s new expansion versus the content it adds in between them. What an expansion can’t do however is keep those players active. That’s where the living story comes in. Unlike the original launch, this time players will be directly pushed towards it. The hope is that they remain active this time, which leads to more gem sales.

Moving forward, I would expect to see an expansion every ~2.5 years with the living story acting as the introduction (like season 2) and ending.

Their plan to only offer the bundle isn’t going to turn out so well however. Complaints and refunds every time.

Crise.9401:

I don’t think they want expansions to become regular thing, because expansion equals huge gaps in their usual release cadence. If we think about it we have had two types of rolling content updates LS for story and feature packs for random improvements and changes in mechanics. Thing is this is now what some people have grown accustomed to, I know I had… so it might not be desirable for them to continuously disrupt this.

I believe they even said in a few places that HoT is a foundation, because the things coming in HoT are things that would have been impossible with either of their past release models for content. Outside of that HoT serves as a means for them to regain retail presence outside of first party purchases. So I can see them doing expansions as their needs require (ie. either in terms of things they want to develop or change being outside the scope of live development or their concurrent player counts, which are tied to gem store revenue, needing a potential boost bad enough).

I say this because they obviously really don’t like to fragment the playerbase and with each expansion this will happen, even with their business model changes and with each expansion for whatever influx of new and returning players they bring it also means drop in concurrent players as their cadence changes to accommodate the expansion development.

Only ANet has the data about these things, and they won’t have all of it until after HoT ships and live development returns to more active role… they probably don’t even know for sure themselves which mix of the two content models gets them the best return on investment yet.

I like to think of GW2 as being a living breathing machine. A machine that does not know what is going to happen month to month. But even then so that machine knows it needs to wake up every morning, brush its teeth, and meet all of its friendly users. We know that much, and im sure Anet knows a bit more then that. I really see no reason they cant be all ‘this is our plan for GW2 over the next year’, even if they drop anything that would lead to expectations.

What i would LOVE to see is a core game update with the API and fundamental coding of the game. And have that promised and roadmapped to the customer base. Nothing is more sad then paying 3k on a gaming system to pull 32FPS at an event like Modnir or Savnir Shaman While you pull 210FPS+ elsewhere in the game.

This moves GW2 from a Buy to Play to a Yearly Subscription to get updated content. Granted the cost here is minimal compared to other MMOs, but I think this fact is being seriously overlooked. And yes, you do not have to upgrade your game to continue to play it. Nor do you have to update on their release schedule either. But this is about getting new content as soon as its available.

This game still doesn’t become a subscription-based game if they add expansions. Subscription-based games only allow you to play so long as you are continually paying the monthly fee. Buy2Play model games allow you to play regardless of whether you put more money into the game or not.

Now, you could argue that it is like a subscription-based game in that the entire game cost per hour of play time scales upward with respect to time, but it still lacks a subscription. Somebody could buy them game, not touch it, and never be charged for it, while at the same time being able to pick it up 2 years from then and play it without paying anything.

In this regard, this is nothing different than what happened in GW1, which only shows the specific type of B2P model that Anet uses for its games rather than an industry definition. Updating the content is the player’s choice in both subscription and B2P game models; the only difference is that in a subscription style you still need to keep paying the subscription despite no new content coming out for your current version if you choose not to upgrade, where B2P does not make the player pay this.

Also, a year is very, very liberal in this regard. I would assume no less than 2 years between expansions (maybe even 3 if you consider the length of time between launch of GW2 and now), which would shift your numbers down by no less than a factor of 2.

• B2P: TSW is B2P. Every content release they publish needs to be purchased. Buy to Play applied to an MMO means you buy the base game, not that you buy everything the company publishes related to that game forever after. ANet was using a free Living Story content model. Players begged for an expansion. B2P now means buy the HoT expansion and play it for the life of the game.
• Content after HoT: Will there be free content updates in the Living story fashion once HoT has been out for a bit? I haven’t seen an announcement. However, doing so would be consistent with their desire to tell an ongoing story. A story that stays static between expansions is not very ongoing. There will still be a gem store, and that means ANet will still be motivated to keep people around to buy from the store.
• Will expansions continue increasing in price to account for the free core plus prior expansions? So unlikely as to be a virtual “certainly not.” Why? Competitive market pressures will mean that the market would not bear such escalation. People in general are not going to want to spend more than other companies charge for similar products. If the top price for other MMO expansions remains @ $50 until the next GW2 XPac rolls, it will be $50. You seem to be assuming that HoT is priced as is because GW2 is bundled in with it and that this will continue as more older packages are also bundled. HoT is $50 because the top price for MMO expansions right now is $50 (W of D was $50 at release and still was 2 days ago on BNet). ANet thinks their game is good enough to warrant a top-tier Xpac price, and they know they won’t get away with charging more than that going rate. Those market factors will continue going forward. Further, there is no real cost associated with bundling old stuff in with new. The code has already been developed, and milked. In the case of GW2 it has been milked for three years.
• Why not just make the old stuff F2P if it costs nothing? Endless free accounts for illicit RMT sellers and laurel farmers, impact QoL, gem sales and the price of T6 mats on the TP.

It’s pretty sure it’ll be $50 …or $60 …or $70 (yes, jabbing you for those lacking character slots a-net) each time. They don’t wanna scare new players away, so i think each xpac will start at 50$ price point (+- hidden costs), and unlock all the stuff before it.

Also they said HoT was the foundation for their game expansion and character growth model. So now that they know “how” they’ll go about their expansion business we can expect those x-pacs much faster then HoT.

The gem store is already going into overdrive recent weeks, you can tell they’re starved for money, so work will be going full steam from now on, to rake in some serious cash.