Does Guild Wars expose MMO fees as a scam?

From the Gamespot interviews with Jeff Strain of ArenaNet:

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6175811.html?action=convert&om_clk=latestnews&tag=latestnews;title;4

GSUK: So do you think that games like World of Warcraft, which charge for the retail copy of the game, plus a monthly subscription fee, are too expensive?

JS: Well, let me put it like this. I think today, unlike four years ago, if you are going to charge a subscription fee, you'd better be ready to stand by it and say why. You'd better be able to explain what you get for your money, because players no longer believe that every online game must have a subscription fee. The notion that you have to charge a subscription fee to keep the servers running just isn't true. And Guild Wars proves that it's not true. It is very possible to make a successful and profitable online game without a subscription fee.

Your thoughts? I personally agree with him.

yah but free vs suscription based mmo's result in different experiences. A game like wow involves more maintenancedavez82

Undoubtedly, given what's provided (in theory) to gamers on a regular basis... but I've yet to hear an argument which justifies monthly fees which amount to roughly a third the shelf price of a stand-alone title.

Are MMOs a scam? No, of course not. The market has shown without hesistation that it's willing to bear the price. Does it make sense from a consumer perspective to pay 200% to 300% more, in total, for an MMO experience than you would a non-subscriber game? Not to me... but you've got to admire the business sense of the wizards sell the idea to the public. Those guys are hard-coregeniuses.

From the Gamespot interviews with Jeff Strain of ArenaNet:

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6175811.html?action=convert&om_clk=latestnews&tag=latestnews;title;4

GSUK: So do you think that games like World of Warcraft, which charge for the retail copy of the game, plus a monthly subscription fee, are too expensive?

JS: Well, let me put it like this. I think today, unlike four years ago, if you are going to charge a subscription fee, you'd better be ready to stand by it and say why. You'd better be able to explain what you get for your money, because players no longer believe that every online game must have a subscription fee. The notion that you have to charge a subscription fee to keep the servers running just isn't true. And Guild Wars proves that it's not true. It is very possible to make a successful and profitable online game without a subscription fee.

Your thoughts? I personally agree with him.

Netherscourge

Ditto

yah but free vs suscription based mmo's result in different experiences. A game like wow involves more maintenancedavez82

Still. When a game sells as many copies as WoW they are sure to have enough cash. At most I would find a yearly fee of $40acceptable. Right now it's over $100 a year and you could buy two or more games for that amount of money and they would have the potential to last more then a year. Anyway as long as so many people are paying I don't think it's going to change.

Well no it doesn't expose a scam, it's just business, if the players are willing to pay, you better be sure that the devs are also willing to charge that ridiculous $15 per month. I don't think anyone has ever truly believed that it costs 15 bucks per person to keep the servers running, that's just absurd.

Personally I've never payed a monthly fee for a game and I'm pretty sure I never will.

If it wasn't for the monthly fee I would buy WoW. Until then Guild Wars gets my money or should I say got my money because I only had to pay once for the game.JimmyT2

Exactly. Guild Wars does not prove anything since it is really a different type of MMO. Its more comparable to Diablo 2 than WOW.

[QUOTE="davez82"]yah but free vs suscription based mmo's result in different experiences. A game like wow involves more maintenanceJimmyT2

Still. When a game sells as many copies as WoW they are sure to have enough cash. At most I would find a yearly fee of $40acceptable. Right now it's over $100 a year and you could buy two or more games for that amount of money and they would have the potential to last more then a year. Anyway as long as so many people are paying I don't think it's going to change.

If Blizzard charged 40 dollars per player over the course of a year that would be fair, 6 million players and that could easily grow to more if gamers see the change in the subscription policy. 40 dollars a year x 6 million players = 240 million dollars in profits, which is plenty to keep servers running all the time. Right now with the fees at about 100 dollars a year they are raking in 600 million bucks, I guarantee that only 1/4 of those profits are going into maintaining the servers.

[QUOTE="JimmyT2"]If it wasn't for the monthly fee I would buy WoW. Until then Guild Wars gets my money or should I say got my money because I only had to pay once for the game.H3LLRaiseR

Exactly. Guild Wars does not prove anything since it is really as different type of MMO. Its more comparable to Diablo 2 than WOW.

Indeed, it's different. But you dont need Guildwars to make the point about MMOs. The MMOs theselves, together with a little common sense and a half-second of number crunching, do the job themselves. They're not scams, no (because again, the market bears the price, plain and simple), but they're pretty damn scam-like. Fun or not, MMOs are a terrible value by any reasonable standard.

[QUOTE="JimmyT2"]

[QUOTE="davez82"]yah but free vs suscription based mmo's result in different experiences. A game like wow involves more maintenanceDSgamer64

Still. When a game sells as many copies as WoW they are sure to have enough cash. At most I would find a yearly fee of $40acceptable. Right now it's over $100 a year and you could buy two or more games for that amount of money and they would have the potential to last more then a year. Anyway as long as so many people are paying I don't think it's going to change.

If Blizzard charged 40 dollars per player over the course of a year that would be fair, 6 million players and that could easily grow to more if gamers see the change in the subscription policy. 40 dollars a year x 6 million players = 240 million dollars in profits, which is plenty to keep servers running all the time. Right now with the fees at about 100 dollars a year they are raking in 600 million bucks, I guarantee that only 1/4 of those profits are going into maintaining the servers.

[QUOTE="DSgamer64"][QUOTE="JimmyT2"]

[QUOTE="davez82"]yah but free vs suscription based mmo's result in different experiences. A game like wow involves more maintenanceMattUD1

Still. When a game sells as many copies as WoW they are sure to have enough cash. At most I would find a yearly fee of $40acceptable. Right now it's over $100 a year and you could buy two or more games for that amount of money and they would have the potential to last more then a year. Anyway as long as so many people are paying I don't think it's going to change.

If Blizzard charged 40 dollars per player over the course of a year that would be fair, 6 million players and that could easily grow to more if gamers see the change in the subscription policy. 40 dollars a year x 6 million players = 240 million dollars in profits, which is plenty to keep servers running all the time. Right now with the fees at about 100 dollars a year they are raking in 600 million bucks, I guarantee that only 1/4 of those profits are going into maintaining the servers.

I am sure it costs a lot of money, but they are obviously making a big profit off the players if they are able to make over 600 million a year off it.

[QUOTE="H3LLRaiseR"]

[QUOTE="JimmyT2"]If it wasn't for the monthly fee I would buy WoW. Until then Guild Wars gets my money or should I say got my money because I only had to pay once for the game.lokstah

Exactly. Guild Wars does not prove anything since it is really as different type of MMO. Its more comparable to Diablo 2 than WOW.

Indeed, it's different. But you dont need Guildwars to make the point about MMOs. The MMOs theselves, together with a little common sense and a half-second of number crunching, do the job themselves. They're not scams, no (because again, the market bears the price, plain and simple), but they're pretty damn scam-like. Fun or not, MMOs are a terrible value by any reasonable standard.

I believe I read that the average WOW player plays for 15hrs a week, which is 60hrs a month. 60hrs of entertainment for $15 is far from terrible. I'm pretty sure a lot of those same people are paying $50 for cable TV and arent wathing nearly as much. They're also probably paying $10 for a 90min movie. $50 for a 20hr single player game.

I was under the impression that the higher ups weren't crazy about the financials of GuildWars and that the sequal was going to have a monthly fee. If that's true, what does that say about the no subscription-fee model?

Also, it's ridiculous for people to compare the experience you get from a game like Guildwars to a full on, subscription based MMO. Technical/Server costs and support basically prohibit the no-monthly fee model for a true MMO game.

I was under the impression that the higher ups weren't crazy about the financials of GuildWars and that the sequal was going to have a monthly fee. If that's true, what does that say about the no subscription-fee model?Alaris83

You're right on the first part, but the 2nd part of your sentence is nothing more than speculation.

They've felt pretty adamant about supplying free multiplayer, but they are trying to explore other ways of getting revenue than just expansion packs. Theres a good chance hey may do something similar to Hellgate.

Is paying for MMOs like World of Warcraft a scam? NO!Guild Wars may have revolutionized MMORPG gaming, but you have to understand how they manage to not have any fees.

First of all, what NCsoft did to kill the subscription fees was to only have about 10 to 20 servers. In order to play on missions or go out exploring, NCsoft treats the game as a LAN network. On each GW CD you buy, there are map packs. What happens when you leave towns and outposts is that they download the maps to your PC. They then create a Large LAN network over the Internet and connect it to you and the other members in your party's PCs. Towns and Outposts are pretty small compared to WOW's world. They don't need lots of servers to generate the WHOLEgame's maps.

Hey, I'm pretty sure from experience that it's even possible for you to NOT be connected to the Internet while you're playing the game, well as long as you aren't in a town or outpost (You're out exploring) and your party is with you. Only, once you complete the mission, you can't go back to the Outposts or Towns unless you are connected.

Try It! Connect to a party, then when you're in the map try turning off your modem. I really don't know if it will totally work, I just want to make sure my theory is correct. Tell me if it isn't.

While you are correct that the instanced based nature of Guild Wars makes it a lot less strain on their hardware, the rest of your theory isnt true and its impractical. If the game switches to a "LAN", or what you're probably thinking is peer to peer, that would make it super easy to hack the game by allowing players to create infinite amounts of gold and items.

EDIT: i also have a dual monitor setup and play Guild Wars in a windowed mode and surf the internet on my other monitor. I usually have maps of the areas from Guild Wars Wiki. I have no problems playing Guild Wars in any area and using the internet.

Yep, that was a pretty dumb theory. I just came back from trying it, and I had no idea why I thought that it would work.I feel ashamed. I just lost myGeek Cred...

However, it is true that they do treat exploration maps likeLAN games. They do that so that they don't have to run thousands of people on one server.

{Edit} HAHA! I almost want to laugh at myself. (Notice the Almost)

Well.... They do host thousands of players per server.

Heres an article from database managment geek (and avid Guild Wars player) that got a chat with Arenanet and was able to ask them a bunch of questions about their network and hardware. Very, very interesting stuff if you're a computer hardware geek. It gave me good insight on what kind of hardware it takes to run an MMO.

Well.... They do host thousands of players per server.

Heres an article from database managment geek (and avid Guild Wars player) that got a chat with Arenanet and was able to ask them a bunch of questions about their network and hardware. Very, very interesting stuff if you're a computer hardware geek. It gave me good insight on what kind of hardware it takes to run an MMO.

XaosII

Interesting read, as well as the the follow up located in that article. I wonder how the ArenaNet set up compares to other existing MMOs on the market.

The only one that hacked me off was Final Fantasy XI. They are the only MMO I played where they flat-out deleted your character if you didn't pay for 3 consecutive months. I had to completely quit because I knew there was no way I was going to be able to play that much (still in school, and I didn't want to do badly). I even wrote them telling them this was an unfair policy. Eventually, I think, they extended it to where it was a year before they deleted your character. I didn't play WoW for close to two years, and both my characters were still there. I really appreciate that. Blizzard may overcharge, but at least they are not holding me hostage!Srinivassa

You're not the only one. I seriously don't know how Square Enix managed to get away with their draconian game policies for FFXI. Between the character deletion, the world passes, and some of the other ludicrous things in that game, it amazes me that FFXI got off the ground. Just goes to show you the power of brand name.

One mistake this poor chap is making is the fact that Guild Wars isn't an MMO.

Talk about content VS content, WoW makes GW look like Tetris.

If Burning Crusade was free, than I could have seen a good excuse for the WOW fees, but they charged for it... now where does the rest of the monthly money go than? the graphics should and could be updated 10x over with the money they have flowing in.

BC was not really optional, you couldn't continue playing the game with anyone if you were stuck at level 60. Easy money made by Blizzard, a pretty great scam.

rofl the amount of you are so delusional its pathetic.

Ive played wow and gw and I must say I had way more fun in wow than gw. Gw is NOTHING compared to wow in terms of scale and gameplay in general. WOW is such an elaborate game compared to gw. Its nothing even fair compare the two either. GW has nothing on wow PERIOD.

Im happy that I broke my addiction with wow, but I will admit that 15 a month is a ripoff, but BUSINESS IS BUSINESS remember that. I willingly paid and had fun. Got bored and quit and have been happy ever since.

I also played gw and its so different from wow. They are just both different with wow being much more fun of course for the time that I played.