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The beginning of the end of freemium/subscription/cash shop era ?
roo67
Member Posts: 402
With Guild Wars 2 to be released soon I would think many other developers are watching it with interest . It appears that it will be the best selling mmo since Warcraft and have a long lasting impact on the mmo genre .If it does as well as expected then I imagine we will see a lot more buy to games flood the market in the coming years . This will inevitably mark the decline of subscription based games . For instance if you play something like WoW for a year it will cost you roughly 5 times what it costs you to play GW2 . Buy to play games will allow you to play multiple mmos without the worry of hitting the wall in freemium games , paying a monthly fee or having to spend money in a cash shop . Its clear they will be popular because of this . I don't think freemium/subs/cash shop based games will disapear overnight but I do think ten years time they will be few and far between . Even though Guild Wars1 was released a few years ago I think its this coming week that marks the true begining of the buy to play era .
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"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience"
CS Lewis
Yep and the server in the s v s v s pvp with the richest people irl willing to invest in the game will win.
How about we wait 3 months after launch?
You also forget that it's not just now much you sell, but how much money you make. For that, we better wait for te NCsoft financial report.
Pretty sure right now companies like Blizzard (P2P) and Nexon (F2P) are making more.
good thing they aren't making the server with only the richest people irl on it.
Nexon owns a controlling interest in NCSoft (along the lines of 15%) so they will be worth even more following the launch.
Nothing wrong with that.
The whole Trading Card Game industry is built on P2W. May be finallly it is MMO industry's turn.
Yes. This thread is rather pointless, as GW2 does indeed have a cash shop.
If anything it will lead to developers going, 'hey we can get 60 dollars up front for the game and still get them to pay 15 dollers plus a month through the cash shop'. The 'plus' being the key part of that sentence. Don't think there won't be guys dropping 50-100 per month on this game once the CS really gets into full flow.
GW2 isn't a charity, despite what some seem to think, and it will use the cash shop to extract as much money as possible from its customers, just as it should do as a business model.
Yeap.. Totally agree with you.. No One can deny it
I still feel a large majority of people playing GW2 are doing so because it's a really well made MMO, and not because of it's payment model.
In the long run, I think people will pay for quality MMO's regardless of the payment model chosen, and in fact, ANET is just using the B2P as their "gimmick", they'd charge sub fees if they wanted to, but not part of their model.
I know in my case I'm happy to pay sub fees if someone would make a MMO designed along the lines of what I favor, I suspect there's quite a few folks like me.
In the future, we'll see all sorts of payment model hybrids, no one form will really dominate. (IMO)
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Not really, the best way to getthose buffs is by playing PvP, not changing gems to gold to influence.
But sure, a crap guild where people play can get the same buffs as a good guild.
On the other hand can a guild getthose buffs by just playing the market as well.
Dont get me wrong, I am not a fan of RMT at all, but if you think all the best guilds will be paying you are just wrong. In my case so far is the 2 things I could see myself buying some more bankslots and char slots. Since the marketplace aint open yet my bank is overfull with crafted stuff I want to sell.
This thread is why I admire Arenanet's marketing team.
NA/EU still has a number of gamers - very vocal gamers - that publicly dislike item malls (their actual actions in some cases tell a different story). So, how do you put out a Free to Play game in those regions and completely avoid the barrage of "pay to win" "cash grab" and the other chanted talking points?
Well, someone with a brass pair at Arenanet came up with a great idea:
Charge 60+ dollars for the client and then focus on positioning against the subscription model. By doing so, they received praise from that vocal crowd as a "B2P" MMO and was able to avoid the vast majority of F2P noise while they market their game. It's lunacy, but a beautiful and logical lunacy. Psychologically, a game is better to those players if they have to pay for it, so put a box charge at the front of your free to play game in order for them to accept it.
Complete brilliance.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Agreed. When you play you can see how much work they put into it and I would have played it with monthly fees as well.
People tend to say that TOR do badly because it is P2P and the time for that is over, but the truth is that it just isnt good enough.
If it would be Wow2 releasin tomorrow with P2P, do you guys think people would play it? Of course they would.
And while Im not a Blizzard fan I still have to admit thattheir games have a certain standard and so do GW2. MMOs in general on the other hand are usuall a bit rough on the edges.
That is just bull and you know better.
Anet makes games B2P because Jeff Strain founded the company and he have been the number one B2P promoter since he coded battle.net (which BTW was supposed to be P2P). He quit Blizzard when they refused to let his last project which was a MMO set in the Warcraft IP (you might have heard about) to be B2P.
GW1 didnt had an itemshop at all th first years and as soon as he moved on they suddenly put a whole lot of stuff in the shop which prior only had storage and a skill unlock.
Strains new company Undead labs is working on a B2P MMO called Class 4 (you will hear a lot more about it later).
ANET is however more and more putting stuff into that cashshop and things are not really going in the direction I like but this was not originally made as a scam or anything. Strain is the best lead dev that ever worked for Blizzard and ANET (and he is also a master programmer which means he knows what he can implement and not unlike people like McQuaid).
I neither said it was a scam nor said it wasn't a good game. How about arguing the points rather instead of getting defensive that someone might have slighted your idol?
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
GW2 is using the same business model as GW1 from 2005, its not rocket science
How to Create a Successful MMO by Jeff Strain (ArenaNet) 2007
http://www.guildwars.com/events/tradeshows/gc2007/gcspeech.php
Innovate with your game play, and innovate with your business model! The two go hand in hand, and are mutually dependent on each other. Decide on your business model first, and then build your game around it.
Guild Wars can be successful with its business model because we decided that we would not charge a subscription fee before we wrote the first line of code, and every design and technology decision we made served that purpose.
We could never turn Guild Wars into a subscription-based game, just as Turbine could not suddenly decide to eliminate the subscription model for Lord of the Rings Online. If you decide to require players to subscribe to your game, be prepared to build a game that thoroughly justifies it.
EQ2 fan sites
Again, I never questioned GW1 or its model, at all. My post is to point out that GW2's design and technology decisions are built around a free to play game with a front-loaded box charge. Are you saying that it isn't?
I'm finding it intersting how the two responses so far focused on defending Jeff Strain, someone who was neither mentioned nor has anything to do with the current business model of GW2.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
i disagree with your assertions that ANET did this to avoid the Ftp marketing stigma
B2p is a different business model
you can break it down into free to play components but that doesnt make it free to play
the same way i can break down LOTRO, EQ2 and countless others into their Subscription components
even tho they offer free to play options too
EQ2 fan sites
LOTRO and EQ2 are a combination of sustained revenue models.They are neither solely subscription nor solely free to play, so that comparison doesn't quite work.
I'm interested in your answer to the question, though.
Are you saying that Guild Wars 2's design and technology decisions are not built around a free to play game with a front loaded box charge?
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
This model which you call "free to play" in your mind was intended for WOW first... People who made ArenaNet were some of the core devs in Blizzard and they left because of that reason. Their initial B2P went out of the window becuase they saw how much they could make with a sub based model, with that decision they left, made ArenaNet and gave us an awesome game called GW1 which still stands live and healthy...
This has nothing to do with Jeff Strain only, but with Mike and all the other folks who left blizzard as well
"Happiness is not a destination. It is a method of life."
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if you wish to describe b2p as that -- its valid
but i dont consider b2p as *any* version of free to play
free to play implies no fees to play "some version" of the game
even World of Warcraft is more ftp than GW2
EQ2 fan sites
I've read that entire speach and think the large majority of it is pure genius
The above is my personal opinion. Anyone displaying a view contrary to my opinion is obviously WRONG and should STHU. (neener neener)
-The MMO Forum Community
Good point. I can understand the distinction there.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Yep but not a pay to win cash shop . I gather nothing in the cash shop will not be off limits to what people can achieve from earning in game currency .