Only concern I would have would be the younger average age of players compared to say, EVE Online, or soon; Swtor on a RP server. (At least that was my experience in GW1; the audience being fairly young).
Not having to pay a sub is a nice thing for adult players, but a deal sealer for many kids. Personally I think that Anet is very much aware of that and is aiming at a slightly younger audience considering some of their game design decisions.
This is a good point. I pretty much agree that this could be a valid concern since I can see the fact that there is no sub model and this will attract younger people.
But then I flash back to WoW and it's $15 a month ripoff and remember how many children played that game. Not sure yet if the subless model will mean more immaturity or less but WoW proved it's not going to be dicided by a payment model. Hopefully some of the content is challenging enough to shoo away some of the people more prone to nerd rages.
As for SWTOR, I don't have an opinion if it will attract the more mature or not. Time will tell.
Aye. I hope for all of you that communities won't be worse than in WOW. (Could they possibly be?). On RP servers it wasn't so bad though (back when I played it), but on the normal pvp server I played on it was disgusting at times. Perhaps the fact that EVERYONE played wow, made it kind of a "cool thing" to play for the younger audience as well, who are much more hype sensitive.
Anyway, despite wow's bad population cred even with a sub, it stands to reason that having no sub fee is taking away a big floodgate for the 9-15 crowd.
Not saying that all of those are rude ragers with the attention spans of ADHD hamsters though (I met some really decent younger folks in my mmorpg experience), but the amount of those amongst adults is quite a bit smaller, to say the least.
I wouldn't never concern about a sub i have to pay for a game..
Why? cus you already pay of lot of other things in live, everyone has got a hobbys and some of them costs even more money then playing video games and upgrading your PC after 2 years orso...
And Serieously what is 15 bucks a month? dude thats even not even a hour working for most of the people on the planet..
It's comments like this that make me question peoples logic. I haven't read anywhere that says people are upset over the sub model because they can't afford it so using this as a reason that a sub is ok is false. No $15 bucks a month is not going to break most of the people that play games as a hobby. For me I spend way more on console games when I am not involved in a MMO like I am now. But that is still no reason to say it is ok to just give away money just because a company says it is necessary.
I wouldn't never concern about a sub i have to pay for a game..
Why? cus you already pay of lot of other things in live, everyone has got a hobbys and some of them costs even more money then playing video games and upgrading your PC after 2 years orso...
And Serieously what is 15 bucks a month? dude thats even not even a hour working for most of the people on the planet..
Im confused. So, you are telling us that even though Arenanet doesnt require you to sub to this game, you are willing to pay them 15$ a month anyway? Well, I dont mind. Go ahead.
That just shows you how easy it is to brainwash and condition people into believing in a certain ideology
I'm a little concerned, but I don't think my concern is really rational.
Basically, I just want this game to be as good as it possibly can and money is not really of concern for me regarding this. My only fear is that not being a sub game can always be used as an "excuse" when something doesn't live up to what it should be. Like in GW1, I always hated that you couldn't jump, but figured "well it's free to play once you buy it, so beggars can't be choosers!" And I played it anyway.
I would have never played a 3d sub game where you can't jump.
While you could have a point that not having a sub could be used as an excuse if is quality is lacking, they DO need the box sales. The game will be AAA, no real doubt about it. Sub games will often make you do boring stuff to just stretch your playtime and drain you of more dollars. Having your own shop open, having to stay there until customers show up and buy what you're trying to sell *yawn*, gear grind raids, *yawn*, *yawn*, *yawn*. Having a sub is not an advantage to the player, no matter how you turn it. You don't pay for the month, no more play, sorry. Not just, no more extra content, but you're done! How fair is that?
Bandwidth and server costs as a poor excuse to deny you the right of playing the game you already paid for. I'm not a sub lover, you guessed it. Having to pay a sub for continued development and to keep the servers running? Oh, please! I'm either too old to fall for that one, or not old enough.
Waiting for Guild Wars 2, and maybe SWTOR until that time...
Only concern I would have would be the younger average age of players compared to say, EVE Online, or soon; Swtor on a RP server. (At least that was my experience in GW1; the audience being fairly young).
Not having to pay a sub is a nice thing for adult players, but a deal sealer for many kids. Personally I think that Anet is very much aware of that and is aiming at a slightly younger audience considering some of their game design decisions.
This is a good point. I pretty much agree that this could be a valid concern since I can see the fact that there is no sub model and this will attract younger people.
But then I flash back to WoW and it's $15 a month ripoff and remember how many children played that game. Not sure yet if the subless model will mean more immaturity or less but WoW proved it's not going to be dicided by a payment model. Hopefully some of the content is challenging enough to shoo away some of the people more prone to nerd rages.
As for SWTOR, I don't have an opinion if it will attract the more mature or not. Time will tell.
Aye. I hope for all of you that communities won't be worse than in WOW. (Could they possibly be?). On RP servers it wasn't so bad though (back when I played it), but on the normal pvp server I played on it was disgusting at times. Perhaps the fact that EVERYONE played wow, made it kind of a "cool thing" to play for the younger audience as well, who are much more hype sensitive.
Anyway, despite wow's bad population cred even with a sub, it stands to reason that having no sub fee is taking away a big floodgate for the 9-15 crowd.
Not saying that all of those are rude ragers with the attention spans of ADHD hamsters though (I met some really decent younger folks in my mmorpg experience), but the amount of those amongst adults is quite a bit smaller, to say the least.
Well if its true that WoW has a community that is as bad as you can get, it also shows that having a sub or no sub makes no difference in this. Apparently that bad community has no problem with paying 15$ a month.
Also, I dont think that income or age does matter. So many people play MMO's nowadays and Im convinced that no matter what age group, or what income group you are looking at, asshats have invaded them all Enough of them to make your playing experience a living hell if you are unlucky
Taking a look at the first Guild Wars, ANet has a good reputation already of pumping out minor content and fixes to keep their game going as well as creating seperate small low price solo content for players to buy and large content expasions to add to their game as well as maintaining a cash shop that never effected the mechanics of the game or PvP. Can't say I'm worried at all.
My only concern is game play and mechanics but I just won't really know how I feel about it till I play it for an extended period of time so until then I'm very optomistic.
Im confused. So, you are telling us that even though Arenanet doesnt require you to sub to this game, you are willing to pay them 15$ a month anyway? Well, I dont mind. Go ahead.
That just shows you how easy it is to brainwash and condition people into believing in a certain ideology
Well, if you really like a game, then some people will be ready to spend money on it, just to make sure that the game will be around next month. Between that and the no pay = no play rule, is however a big step. Loving a game doesn't require brainwashing though. If you find GW2 really great you'll be able to purchase fancy costumes and such to show your support for the company. There is just no obligation, and paying the money because you really want to feels so much better, trust me.
Waiting for Guild Wars 2, and maybe SWTOR until that time...
Instead of taking the time to write out something that would explain why a subscription is not mandatory I will just say watch this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ns-IIn-DG-c
It explains everything you need to know.
Great video slappy. No I am not concerned with a no sub model. What I am concerned with is those that are concerned with the no sub model or those that say "GW2 is B2P so it allows me to still sub to another MMO." This video shows that they are all lemmings paying $15 a month just because it is how it is. Sure keep contributing to the greed machine. While some games can maybe justify a sub to keep it running smoothly, there is no and I repeat NO reason to keep it at the $15 per month mark since costs have gone down. As costs go down so should the sub costs on the consumer.
Tell that to the many other Company's that are selling products that actually also drops in production price.
They wont either, It's just how it goes these days.
ArenaNet has existed for over 5 years without a subscription model and Guild Wars still has a healthy population after all this time. I see no reason to be concerned about a no subscription model for Guild Wars 2.
I'm a little concerned, but I don't think my concern is really rational. Basically, I just want this game to be as good as it possibly can and money is not really of concern for me regarding this. My only fear is that not being a sub game can always be used as an "excuse" when something doesn't live up to what it should be. Like in GW1, I always hated that you couldn't jump, but figured "well it's free to play once you buy it, so beggars can't be choosers!" And I played it anyway. I would have never played a 3d sub game where you can't jump.
While you could have a point that not having a sub could be used as an excuse if is quality is lacking, they DO need the box sales. The game will be AAA, no real doubt about it. Sub games will often make you do boring stuff to just stretch your playtime and drain you of more dollars. Having your own shop open, having to stay there until customers show up and buy what you're trying to sell *yawn*, gear grind raids, *yawn*, *yawn*, *yawn*. Having a sub is not an advantage to the player, no matter how you turn it. You don't pay for the month, no more play, sorry. Not just, no more extra content, but you're done! How fair is that? Bandwidth and server costs as a poor excuse to deny you the right of playing the game you already paid for. I'm not a sub lover, you guessed it. Having to pay a sub for continued development and to keep the servers running? Oh, please! I'm either too old to fall for that one, or not old enough.
You basically asking every MMO or other game that are asking SUB to play, to quit with that and do it the same way as GW2.
Im confused. So, you are telling us that even though Arenanet doesnt require you to sub to this game, you are willing to pay them 15$ a month anyway? Well, I dont mind. Go ahead.
That just shows you how easy it is to brainwash and condition people into believing in a certain ideology
Well, if you really like a game, then some people will be ready to spend money on it, just to make sure that the game will be around next month. Between that and the no pay = no play rule, is however a big step. Loving a game doesn't require brainwashing though. If you find GW2 really great you'll be able to purchase fancy costumes and such to show your support for the company. There is just no obligation, and paying the money because you really want to feels so much better, trust me.
what i was saying is people believe if the game doesn't have a subscription its a sub-par title, which is not true. guild wars 2 looks higher quality than any subscription game on the market today.
p.s. Here's some hypothetical (sketchy) maths to think about:
GW2 & Swtor : Both 4 million players, one year in:
Revenue:
GW2:
boxes 4m x $60 = 240 mil - 30% operating, maintainance, shipping and distribution = 168m
1st expansion or a couple of mini-expansions: 4 m x $50 = 200 m (not subtracting anything because they might be downloadable only).
vanity shop / payed services: ??? let's say 4 dollars average spending = 16 m
Total revenue after year one: 384 mil
Swtor:
boxes 4m x $60 = 240 m - 30% operating, maintainance, shipping and distribution, - 20% lucasarts = 120 m
subs: 11 (12 - free month) x $15 x 4 m = 600 mil - 20% lucasarts = 480 mil
payed services: maybe 0.40 ct average spending = 1.6 mil
Total revenue after year one: 606.6 mil
Now if you look at that difference and value in development costs perhaps it is meritted. It's clear that Swtor players will pay a lot of their sub dollars to finance voice overs and George Lucas' wallet. Stuff like that make it a more expensive game for sure (instead of owning your own IP) so I'm not so very certain if the sub model is such a rip-off in all cases.
I know lots of people love this, it makes me a little concerned. I like the idea of devs having to come out with a constant stream of content to keep people playing. I feel like with this system once they sell you the game they have no incentive to keep you playing. Just a thought.
Worst case scenario, if they didn't feel the need to release any new content, then it would be no different than us buying a single-player console game in the same price range. I'm not gonna sweat it. Assuming we're talking about GW2 here, I would also have to assume that multiple expansions are inevitable. That works for me.
with guild wars 2 you have nothing to lose, if they don't develope much content after release then at least you don't pay for it every month, there are mmorpg's out there that charge players every month and don't add content at all(vanguard).
Originally posted by vtravi I know lots of people love this, it makes me a little concerned. I like the idea of devs having to come out with a constant stream of content to keep people playing. I feel like with this system once they sell you the game they have no incentive to keep you playing. Just a thought.
If you think your sub was there to create a constant stream of content you are very wrong. Sub were made at first to pay for the servers. But since their games where pretty crappy and got huge success they used it to fix them too and have some customer service. For a very long time additional content have to be bought, i think the first free expansion game was Lineage 2 if i'm right, and i don't think that much offer free expansion even today.
with guild wars 2 you have nothing to lose, if they don't develope much content after release then at least you don't pay for it every month, there are mmorpg's out there that charge players every month and don't add content at all(vanguard).
This isn't right for games that disappoint and you never touch again after the free month / first few months. In both case the $60 - $65 dollar box price has been a waste. So not exactly "nothing to lose"
No worries... They take care of that in expansions instead... about one each year.... Until they can not be botherd any more and you will be expected to grind till you cry....
Now if you look at that difference and value in development costs perhaps it is meritted. It's clear that Swtor players will pay a lot of their sub dollars to finance voice overs and George Lucas' wallet. Stuff like that make it a more expensive game for sure (instead of owning your own IP) so I'm not so very certain if the sub model is such a rip-off in all cases.
No one in their right mind is going to say that Buy to play is more profitable than subscription based games that can maintain a large number of subscribers. The debate comes from the fact that some people do not see the consumers getting more of a benefit like the developers are from subscriptions. With your hypothetical numbers no one would say 384M for ANet is more than 606.6M for Bioware, of course that is a better deal for the developer if they can maintain those subs. The question is are the consumers getting more out of the 606.6m they pay for their game compared to the consumers that pay 384M. For me the answer is no I do not see any inherit advantage of giving a company a revenue stream with no guarantee of anything that I would enjoy to come out of it. To some people the answer is Yes it is worth it, but in the end we all have to decide that answer for ourselves.
As for the OP no a subscription is not required in this day and age for a MMO developer to make profit, yes they can make more off a subscription but to just make profit they do not need a sub.
Originally posted by DiSpLiFF
Originally posted by tawess
No worries... They take care of that in expansions instead... about one each year.... Until they can not be botherd any more and you will be expected to grind till you cry....
Or at least that was how the original worked.
QFT
Or maybe they stopped working on expansion because they started to work on GW2, not because they couldn’t be bothered to make another expansion. What a novel concept!
Also maybe you two grinded for things in GW1, but I have never grinding for anything so please do not try and speak for the GW1 community!
p.s. Here's some hypothetical (sketchy) maths to think about:
GW2 & Swtor : Both 4 million players, one year in:
Revenue:
GW2:
boxes 4m x $60 = 240 mil - 30% operating, maintainance, shipping and distribution = 168m
1st expansion or a couple of mini-expansions: 4 m x $50 = 200 m (not subtracting anything because they might be downloadable only).
vanity shop / payed services: ??? let's say 4 dollars average spending = 16 m
Total revenue after year one: 384 mil
Swtor:
boxes 4m x $60 = 240 m - 30% operating, maintainance, shipping and distribution, - 20% lucasarts = 120 m
subs: 11 (12 - free month) x $15 x 4 m = 600 mil - 20% lucasarts = 480 mil
payed services: maybe 0.40 ct average spending = 1.6 mil
Total revenue after year one: 606.6 mil
Now if you look at that difference and value in development costs perhaps it is meritted. It's clear that Swtor players will pay a lot of their sub dollars to finance voice overs and George Lucas' wallet. Stuff like that make it a more expensive game for sure (instead of owning your own IP) so I'm not so very certain if the sub model is such a rip-off in all cases.
Except that math is complete nonsense, because the number of people who buy the box does not equal the number of players subscribing after a year. At best, you should probably expect 50% of the players who buy the SWTOR box to still be playing 1 year later, with the vast majority of those leaving doing so inside 3 months... so that would mean that in order for your above comparison to work, GW2 would have sold 4 million boxes and SWTOR would have sold 8 million (not bloody likely).
Do the math again, but this time, have the 4 million box sales of GW2 vs 4 million box sales of SWTOR, and account for the attrition in subscribers that will occur.
There's no question that charging $15 a month would lead to higher profits (not nearly as much as you implied, but still obviously more money). The point is that it is still possible to be profitable and successful (and make a highest-quality product) even without the subscription, so those companies which are charging a subscription should stop trying to say it's required and just admit it's strictly a way to gouge more profit without providing anything additional in return.
Except that math is complete nonsesense, because the number of people who buy the box does not equal the number of players subscribing after a year.
This seems like a common mistake in payment models. Even in recent western variations of the F2P model, I see pricing that looks like its meant to be on par with longterm subscriptions. They really don't want to let go of the idea of people playing for a year or more, even though that's highly unrealistic these days. A good payment model should be based on how long the average player sticks around, and by good, I also mean, most financially lucrative.
I think its also a mistake to assume that sub fees will always make more money, because first of all, a B2P game will sell more boxes than if it required a subscription. Hard to even guess numbers, might only sell a little better, but might sell a lot better. In MMOs, that greater initial popularity can snowball, as the more popular it is, the more people are likely to stick with it, and talk others into trying it. Hard to say how much of a difference all that adds up to exactly, but right off, we're skewing profit comparisons towards B2P, in a way that isn't quite so obvious on paper.
Secondly, how much an item shop brings in varies wildly, based on what it offers, how well its priced, and even the pricing structure, including things like discounts for buying more at once. This sort of stuff is still in its infancy, and has A LOT of room for improvement, and by improvement, I mean, how financially lucrative it could be - but also, how it could be implemented without seeming greedy and pissing players off.
This is why I personally consider B2P to be the future of online gaming. I think it stands to be more popular AND more financially successful, once they get the hang of it. In GW2's case, its more incidental, though, since it sounds like the item shop will be minimal(?). They primarily seem to be counting on the first factor, of selling more boxes to make up the difference of a sub, and I think it stands a decent chance of doing exactly that.
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
I think its also a mistake to assume that sub fees will always make more money, because first of all, a B2P game will sell more boxes than if it required a subscription.
You speak much truth, sir.
There's also the fact that players may very well end their relationship with a subscription game sooner than they would with a B2P game, simply because of the fee. So...B2P might also increase the number of players who continue playing long enough to buy an expansion. In the modern genre, it seems that once players have tried a new subscription game that doesn't keep them playing, they very rarely go back to it. Players only tend to buy expansions and return to games that they really liked and that provided a good perceived value. If after a couple months of subscribing to a game, you start to feel like you got screwed out of your money...you probably aren't going to go back at expansion time.
Maintaining the sense of a great value in the back of consumers' minds HAS to be a good thing for long-term profits. Players will be thinking, "holy crap, I get all this for no subscription fee!" As opposed to "Am I getting enough value for my $15 this month?"
My youngest grandson saw his first rotary dial phone not to long ago and asked "What's that thing?" and was told it was a phone. He shook his head no and said "That's not a phone". ))
No need to be alarmed, you don't need subscriptions to make money with a game. That's in part why Guild Wars is so popular.
My youngest grandson saw his first rotary dial phone not to long ago and asked "What's that thing?" and was told it was a phone. He shook his head no and said "That's not a phone". ))
No need to be alarmed, you don't need subscriptions to make money with a game. That's in part why Guild Wars is so popular.
You don't need to make money with subs but you do not need to make money in some form whether it is item shop or expansions or dlc. And usually games with no sub fee turn out to be more expensive than say montly sub.
The model seemed to work for GW1 so I don't see an issue with it in GW2. The biggest problem I can see is if the development costs are significantly higher for GW2, then that will naturally mean that they will need to generate more profits on box sales than GW1. I'm sure they have factored in all the variables and must be pretty confident, otherwise they would have picked a different model.
Comments
Aye. I hope for all of you that communities won't be worse than in WOW. (Could they possibly be?). On RP servers it wasn't so bad though (back when I played it), but on the normal pvp server I played on it was disgusting at times. Perhaps the fact that EVERYONE played wow, made it kind of a "cool thing" to play for the younger audience as well, who are much more hype sensitive.
Anyway, despite wow's bad population cred even with a sub, it stands to reason that having no sub fee is taking away a big floodgate for the 9-15 crowd.
Not saying that all of those are rude ragers with the attention spans of ADHD hamsters though (I met some really decent younger folks in my mmorpg experience), but the amount of those amongst adults is quite a bit smaller, to say the least.
My brand new bloggity blog.
It's comments like this that make me question peoples logic. I haven't read anywhere that says people are upset over the sub model because they can't afford it so using this as a reason that a sub is ok is false. No $15 bucks a month is not going to break most of the people that play games as a hobby. For me I spend way more on console games when I am not involved in a MMO like I am now. But that is still no reason to say it is ok to just give away money just because a company says it is necessary.
RIP Jimmy "The Rev" Sullivan and Paul Gray.
That just shows you how easy it is to brainwash and condition people into believing in a certain ideology
While you could have a point that not having a sub could be used as an excuse if is quality is lacking, they DO need the box sales. The game will be AAA, no real doubt about it. Sub games will often make you do boring stuff to just stretch your playtime and drain you of more dollars. Having your own shop open, having to stay there until customers show up and buy what you're trying to sell *yawn*, gear grind raids, *yawn*, *yawn*, *yawn*. Having a sub is not an advantage to the player, no matter how you turn it. You don't pay for the month, no more play, sorry. Not just, no more extra content, but you're done! How fair is that?
Bandwidth and server costs as a poor excuse to deny you the right of playing the game you already paid for. I'm not a sub lover, you guessed it. Having to pay a sub for continued development and to keep the servers running? Oh, please! I'm either too old to fall for that one, or not old enough.
Waiting for Guild Wars 2, and maybe SWTOR until that time...
Well if its true that WoW has a community that is as bad as you can get, it also shows that having a sub or no sub makes no difference in this. Apparently that bad community has no problem with paying 15$ a month.
Also, I dont think that income or age does matter. So many people play MMO's nowadays and Im convinced that no matter what age group, or what income group you are looking at, asshats have invaded them all
Enough of them to make your playing experience a living hell if you are unlucky 
Taking a look at the first Guild Wars, ANet has a good reputation already of pumping out minor content and fixes to keep their game going as well as creating seperate small low price solo content for players to buy and large content expasions to add to their game as well as maintaining a cash shop that never effected the mechanics of the game or PvP. Can't say I'm worried at all.
My only concern is game play and mechanics but I just won't really know how I feel about it till I play it for an extended period of time so until then I'm very optomistic.
Well, if you really like a game, then some people will be ready to spend money on it, just to make sure that the game will be around next month. Between that and the no pay = no play rule, is however a big step. Loving a game doesn't require brainwashing though. If you find GW2 really great you'll be able to purchase fancy costumes and such to show your support for the company. There is just no obligation, and paying the money because you really want to feels so much better, trust me.
Waiting for Guild Wars 2, and maybe SWTOR until that time...
Tell that to the many other Company's that are selling products that actually also drops in production price.
They wont either, It's just how it goes these days.
Nop.. Next topic!
ArenaNet has existed for over 5 years without a subscription model and Guild Wars still has a healthy population after all this time. I see no reason to be concerned about a no subscription model for Guild Wars 2.
You basically asking every MMO or other game that are asking SUB to play, to quit with that and do it the same way as GW2.
Well you already know the answer
what i was saying is people believe if the game doesn't have a subscription its a sub-par title, which is not true. guild wars 2 looks higher quality than any subscription game on the market today.
p.s. Here's some hypothetical (sketchy) maths to think about:
GW2 & Swtor : Both 4 million players, one year in:
Revenue:
GW2:
boxes 4m x $60 = 240 mil - 30% operating, maintainance, shipping and distribution = 168m
1st expansion or a couple of mini-expansions: 4 m x $50 = 200 m (not subtracting anything because they might be downloadable only).
vanity shop / payed services: ??? let's say 4 dollars average spending = 16 m
Total revenue after year one: 384 mil
Swtor:
boxes 4m x $60 = 240 m - 30% operating, maintainance, shipping and distribution, - 20% lucasarts = 120 m
subs: 11 (12 - free month) x $15 x 4 m = 600 mil - 20% lucasarts = 480 mil
payed services: maybe 0.40 ct average spending = 1.6 mil
Total revenue after year one: 606.6 mil
Now if you look at that difference and value in development costs perhaps it is meritted. It's clear that Swtor players will pay a lot of their sub dollars to finance voice overs and George Lucas' wallet. Stuff like that make it a more expensive game for sure (instead of owning your own IP) so I'm not so very certain if the sub model is such a rip-off in all cases.
My brand new bloggity blog.
Worst case scenario, if they didn't feel the need to release any new content, then it would be no different than us buying a single-player console game in the same price range. I'm not gonna sweat it. Assuming we're talking about GW2 here, I would also have to assume that multiple expansions are inevitable. That works for me.
with guild wars 2 you have nothing to lose, if they don't develope much content after release then at least you don't pay for it every month, there are mmorpg's out there that charge players every month and don't add content at all(vanguard).
This isn't right for games that disappoint and you never touch again after the free month / first few months. In both case the $60 - $65 dollar box price has been a waste. So not exactly "nothing to lose"
My brand new bloggity blog.
QFT
No one in their right mind is going to say that Buy to play is more profitable than subscription based games that can maintain a large number of subscribers. The debate comes from the fact that some people do not see the consumers getting more of a benefit like the developers are from subscriptions. With your hypothetical numbers no one would say 384M for ANet is more than 606.6M for Bioware, of course that is a better deal for the developer if they can maintain those subs. The question is are the consumers getting more out of the 606.6m they pay for their game compared to the consumers that pay 384M. For me the answer is no I do not see any inherit advantage of giving a company a revenue stream with no guarantee of anything that I would enjoy to come out of it. To some people the answer is Yes it is worth it, but in the end we all have to decide that answer for ourselves.
As for the OP no a subscription is not required in this day and age for a MMO developer to make profit, yes they can make more off a subscription but to just make profit they do not need a sub.
Or maybe they stopped working on expansion because they started to work on GW2, not because they couldn’t be bothered to make another expansion. What a novel concept!
Also maybe you two grinded for things in GW1, but I have never grinding for anything so please do not try and speak for the GW1 community!
Except that math is complete nonsense, because the number of people who buy the box does not equal the number of players subscribing after a year. At best, you should probably expect 50% of the players who buy the SWTOR box to still be playing 1 year later, with the vast majority of those leaving doing so inside 3 months... so that would mean that in order for your above comparison to work, GW2 would have sold 4 million boxes and SWTOR would have sold 8 million (not bloody likely).
Do the math again, but this time, have the 4 million box sales of GW2 vs 4 million box sales of SWTOR, and account for the attrition in subscribers that will occur.
There's no question that charging $15 a month would lead to higher profits (not nearly as much as you implied, but still obviously more money). The point is that it is still possible to be profitable and successful (and make a highest-quality product) even without the subscription, so those companies which are charging a subscription should stop trying to say it's required and just admit it's strictly a way to gouge more profit without providing anything additional in return.
This seems like a common mistake in payment models. Even in recent western variations of the F2P model, I see pricing that looks like its meant to be on par with longterm subscriptions. They really don't want to let go of the idea of people playing for a year or more, even though that's highly unrealistic these days. A good payment model should be based on how long the average player sticks around, and by good, I also mean, most financially lucrative.
I think its also a mistake to assume that sub fees will always make more money, because first of all, a B2P game will sell more boxes than if it required a subscription. Hard to even guess numbers, might only sell a little better, but might sell a lot better. In MMOs, that greater initial popularity can snowball, as the more popular it is, the more people are likely to stick with it, and talk others into trying it. Hard to say how much of a difference all that adds up to exactly, but right off, we're skewing profit comparisons towards B2P, in a way that isn't quite so obvious on paper.
Secondly, how much an item shop brings in varies wildly, based on what it offers, how well its priced, and even the pricing structure, including things like discounts for buying more at once. This sort of stuff is still in its infancy, and has A LOT of room for improvement, and by improvement, I mean, how financially lucrative it could be - but also, how it could be implemented without seeming greedy and pissing players off.
This is why I personally consider B2P to be the future of online gaming. I think it stands to be more popular AND more financially successful, once they get the hang of it. In GW2's case, its more incidental, though, since it sounds like the item shop will be minimal(?). They primarily seem to be counting on the first factor, of selling more boxes to make up the difference of a sub, and I think it stands a decent chance of doing exactly that.
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
You speak much truth, sir.
There's also the fact that players may very well end their relationship with a subscription game sooner than they would with a B2P game, simply because of the fee. So...B2P might also increase the number of players who continue playing long enough to buy an expansion. In the modern genre, it seems that once players have tried a new subscription game that doesn't keep them playing, they very rarely go back to it. Players only tend to buy expansions and return to games that they really liked and that provided a good perceived value. If after a couple months of subscribing to a game, you start to feel like you got screwed out of your money...you probably aren't going to go back at expansion time.
Maintaining the sense of a great value in the back of consumers' minds HAS to be a good thing for long-term profits. Players will be thinking, "holy crap, I get all this for no subscription fee!" As opposed to "Am I getting enough value for my $15 this month?"
My youngest grandson saw his first rotary dial phone not to long ago and asked "What's that thing?" and was told it was a phone. He shook his head no and said "That's not a phone".
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No need to be alarmed, you don't need subscriptions to make money with a game. That's in part why Guild Wars is so popular.
Godspeed my fellow gamer
You don't need to make money with subs but you do not need to make money in some form whether it is item shop or expansions or dlc. And usually games with no sub fee turn out to be more expensive than say montly sub.
The model seemed to work for GW1 so I don't see an issue with it in GW2. The biggest problem I can see is if the development costs are significantly higher for GW2, then that will naturally mean that they will need to generate more profits on box sales than GW1. I'm sure they have factored in all the variables and must be pretty confident, otherwise they would have picked a different model.
I self identify as a monkey.