Was "15 bucks a month is needed for development and maintenance of MMOS" merely an excuse?
No more then 'we need a cash shop' is. Both are simply ways to monetise a service.
If a sub is not needed then neither is a cash shop.
If you are arguing for a B2P game with no further means of monetising or making a profit past the intial sale then your OP starts to make more sense.
What i know or have been told all these years is that MMO companies need continuous stream of money to keep servers on and develop furutre content. So i am just wondering if Anet is taking a risk here? or it has always been like this and we were just taken for a ride by other MMO companies.
Of course it is a risk. Every game is a risk, cash shop or sub.
Look at all the cash shop shut downs and failings we are seeing. The track record is growing worse almost daily.
I feel the only way to minimise the risk for yourself, whatever rev model, is to make a good game.
I feel ANet believe this as well with GW2
I agree every MMO is a risk. But it is like as if Anet is doubling that risk..or maybe it isn't a risk at all and Anet know something that other companies don't.?
The simple truth is that a good game that appeals will succeed.
The revenue model is actually irrelevant to this.
I agree making good game is first thing to do otherwise what payment model you use means a little... but what do you really think about all the money that you paid fin monthly fee for years? you really think it was really needed to keep servers up and developing future content? not to mention revenues of cash shops on top that + money from expansions? i don't know but for me there is new level of admiration for Anet now.
EXTREMELY simple..... Who ever has the money makes the rules. As a former business owner for many years I can tell you this. If one has a lemonade stand, and makes $10.00 a week, but it costs $15.00 to operate..... Well, the end result is obvious.
These people know what their doing. and I’m sure it’s not from the goodness of their heart. When you can buy things to make a game easier, or make your dude a Epic warrior, that’s just wrong. Who ever has the most money wins. I am a old dude and have been playing since Commodore 64 days. I beta tested the first online game. (Meridian 59) I basically quit playing online games when the people turned from helpful and friendly. That game was Dark age of Camelot. Of course this is just how I feel about it. and that effects no one. If you are drawing fun from any game what does it matter what I think? But, any way you slice it, they are going to get their money. I don’t fault them for that. If you own a business and don’t make a profit, you don’t last long.
Game till you bleed....
P.S. My son of course was one of the first in line to get this game. I have watched him over the years buy every new online game and basically stop play after a month or two. I have tryed to tell him, all these games are just like each other. There is nothing new under the sun, and if it is ever put out there, I will be so there.
Anet makes a MMO, AAA in quality. Jam packed with content. All the features that one would expect from a themepark MMOS and more. And yet it is not asking customers 15 bucks a month for it? what is it that Anet knows and rest don't?
Was "15 bucks a month is needed for development and maintenance of MMOS" merely an excuse?
I keep thinking about it and i just can not explain this. If Anet can do it (they are surely not going bankrupt now are they)...so why does other companies need monthly fee for? and for what i have been paying 15 bucks a month for last 10 years? and where did all that money of you and me go? was it really used in the development of those games?
So many questions. Please tel me i am not the only one who thinks about this and feels a little stupid for spending all that money for monthly access to MMOS. Were we just conditioned into thinking all these years that monthly fee is 'necessary' for long life of a MMO? were we being fooled?
p.s English isn't my first language so bear with me
Anet is making loot from there shop, not only that they will most likly add expacs every 6-8 months for $50 a pop to pretty much be on par with a monthly sub game.
That is what i am surprised about,. other MMOS charge monthly fee + cash shops.
So is Anet merely being nice? generous? honest? doesn't like more money? because after all its business and NCSOFT has a reputation of being 'profit oriented' maybe not to the extent of EA..but still what suits in these companies don't like more money?
So is Anet sitting on some 'board room statistical secret' which it is not sharing with other companies? or other companies already knew it and they just kept fooling us for all these years?
Every cash shop do not necessarely look the same and generate the same amount of income.
Was "15 bucks a month is needed for development and maintenance of MMOS" merely an excuse?
No more then 'we need a cash shop' is. Both are simply ways to monetise a service.
If a sub is not needed then neither is a cash shop.
If you are arguing for a B2P game with no further means of monetising or making a profit past the intial sale then your OP starts to make more sense.
What i know or have been told all these years is that MMO companies need continuous stream of money to keep servers on and develop furutre content. So i am just wondering if Anet is taking a risk here? or it has always been like this and we were just taken for a ride by other MMO companies.
Of course it is a risk. Every game is a risk, cash shop or sub.
Look at all the cash shop shut downs and failings we are seeing. The track record is growing worse almost daily.
I feel the only way to minimise the risk for yourself, whatever rev model, is to make a good game.
I feel ANet believe this as well with GW2
I agree every MMO is a risk. But it is like as if Anet is doubling that risk..or maybe it isn't a risk at all and Anet know something that other companies don't.?
The simple truth is that a good game that appeals will succeed.
The revenue model is actually irrelevant to this.
I agree making good game is first thing to do otherwise what payment model you use means a little... but what do you really think about all the money that you paid fin monthly fee for years? you really think it was really needed to keep servers up and developing future content? not to mention revenues of cash shops on top that + money from expansions? i don't know but for me there is new level of admiration for Anet now.
I think it was needed in order to generate a profit for the company, excatly the same way a cash shop is needed.
Like I keep saying, they are different approaches to exactly the same thing, to generate profit on an ongoing basis. If one is 'greedy' then so is the other.
You simply cannot defend a cash shop while attacking a sub in terms of profit generation. Both do the same job.
What do I really think about a monthly fee? I honestly think that over the years that £2.50 a week has delivered me hundreds of hours of entertainment for an incredibly cheap price. I consider it a transparent and honest model that places all honest players on an even field. I consider it the very best model in terms of influencing core game design.
I agree making good game is first thing to do otherwise what payment model you use means a little... but what do you really think about l althe money that you paid fin monthly fee for years? you really think it was really needed to keep servers up and developing future content? not to mention revenues of cash shops on top that + money from expansions? i don't know but for me there is new level of admiration for Anet now.
Well, yeah. Go talk to Trion and ask them where all those updates that people praise came from?
Yes, companies like Blizz leave their costumers with empty hands, but that's a dev thing, not business model thing.
I think it was needed in order to generate a profit for the company, excatly the same way a cash shop is needed.
Like I keep saying, they are different approaches to exactly the same thing, to generate profit on an ongoing basis. If one is 'greedy' then so is the other.
You simply cannot defend a cash shop while attacking a sub in terms of profit generation. Both do the same job.
What do I really think about a monthly fee? I honestly think that over the years that £2.50 a week has delivered me hundreds of hours of entertainment for an incredibly cheap price. I consider it a transparent and honest model that places all honest players on an even field. I consider it the very best model in terms of influencing core game design.
I am actually not defending one over the other, that would be hard to do when MMOS have been using cash shop + monthly fee for quite some time now
Originally posted by MMOwanderer
Well, yeah. Go talk to Trion and ask them where all those updates that people praise came from?
Yes, companies like Blizz leave their costumers with empty hands, but that's a dev thing, not business model thing.
And what if Anet does the same and even better in terms of updates with no monthly fee and minimlastic cash shop? which is not even 'necessary' for players to use in order to play the game? what then? GW2 already dwarfs Rift in content and world size at release.
I agree making good game is first thing to do otherwise what payment model you use means a little... but what do you really think about l althe money that you paid fin monthly fee for years? you really think it was really needed to keep servers up and developing future content? not to mention revenues of cash shops on top that + money from expansions? i don't know but for me there is new level of admiration for Anet now.
Well, yeah. Go talk to Trion and ask them where all those updates that people praise came from?
Yes, companies like Blizz leave their costumers with empty hands, but that's a dev thing, not business model thing.
What i know or have been told all these years is that MMO companies need continuous stream of money to keep servers on and develop furutre content. So i am just wondering if Anet is taking a risk here? or it has always been like this and we were just taken for a ride by other MMO companies.
if an mmo needs continuous streams of money to keep servers on and develop future content, why do they need a 300 people team? After the game is launched, keep a small team focused on servers and another small team focused on new content. Box + Expansion makes a lot of money and will be enough to pay for these people's jobs. Even with the full team they still can keep the game going up and kicking and ANET have shown that with GW1 and is doing it again with GW2.
The right people making the game the right way dont need a sub.
Even if it sounds a bit contradictory to my own comments, i can agree with Vesavius that the model is irrelevant if the game is well done. So far nothing after WoW's launch is worth a sub so..... yeah.... we gotta keep that in mind when buying an mmo.
I think it was needed in order to generate a profit for the company, excatly the same way a cash shop is needed.
Ok my Engish isn't that good so maybe i am having hard time to explain myself but what i am trying to say is that yes both cash shop and monthly fee is needed to generate profit but monthly fee is something you 'have' to pay and cash shop is not must or necessary in terms of GW2. So you can play a MMO by ignoring cash shop but you can't do the same when it comes to monthly fee. So there is a big difference in both ways to increase profit.
That is why i wonder if companies really need all that fixed amount of money they know customers 'will' pay to access the game compared to cash shop like GW2 which players may or may not use.
Well, yeah. Go talk to Trion and ask them where all those updates that people praise came from?
Yes, companies like Blizz leave their costumers with empty hands, but that's a dev thing, not business model thing.
And what if Anet does the same and even better in terms of updates with no monthly fee and minimlastic cash shop? which is not even 'necessary' for players to use in order to play the game? what then? GW2 already dwarfs Rift in content and world size at release.
GW2 is bigger than Rift when they released, yes, but we're talking about speed and size of content updates. We don't know how fast Arena Net will deliever. Until then, we can only assume.
Lots of F2P games use cash shops and don't see any of updates. And honestly, i don't think the pure sucess of a game means everything. WOW makes tons of money and Blizz is huge, but they don't update because they're lazy and don't care. If they wanted, they'd peobably roll out huge content every month.
The cash shop for GW1 was very minimal compared to GW2 and it has lasted 7 years now. They dont need the cash shop to survive, it is just icing on the cake for them. Making extra cash off things that dont impact on the game and wont piss players off.
GW2 is not F2P, people need to get over that, it is B2P like every single console game and non subscription game out there. Not having a subscription does not mean free. Instead the content updates will primarily come with paid expansions. Just like in GW1. Its a good model, and keeps the companies honest about what they are spending their time on.
I have paid subscriptions for games where the amount of content delivered in 6-12 months did not even come close to that of an expansion for GW1. ArenaNet knows they can deliver, so they dont need to get that monthly sub to leech of the loyal players.
Havent had any reason to fork out any cash on the cash-shop yet by the way. The amount of bag room and bank room has been sufficient even while crafting two professions (just upgrade your bags as soon as you can). Only thing I can see myself buying is extra character slots when I get my 5th character to 80.
I never played guild Wars 1, only Guild Wars 2 and I am stunned with the effort that Arena Net made with the world and the game.
How is the investment cost for GW2 compared to GW1?
Perhaps they have sold enough boxes now to cover the initial investment, they even had to close the webshop.
(I tried to google for an article I read a few days ago, perhaps more than a week, that described the risk I am trying to talk about concerning that ArenaNet needs an income to continue develop the game.)
I expect, that with subscription, plus revenue form expansions, plus the nowdays usual cosmetic cash-shop you make more profit, than without subscription. Even if there should be more box-sales if B2P, because this attracts more players, than a P2P game. I also expect, that a lot of players will buy gems worth a 1 month subscription in the cashshop for bags, bank and charslots and such stuff.
So, looking to the first 2-3 month, the revenue of GW2 compared to the revenue of a P2P game should be at least equal.
The subscription starts to shine after a few months. But this is also the timeframe, where all these game-hoppers quit the game. The question is, what is more revenue: the fewer sustained subscribers of a P2P game after 3 months, or the obviously more players staying in a B2P game and spending a bit money in the cash-shop?
A B2P game should also launch expansions with a higher frequency than a P2P game, in order to compensate partially for the missing subscription fee. So I expect expansions rather every 6-9 months than the usual 12-18 months. This is a challenging schedule and should just be profitable, if the overall software architecture is optimized about expansions and adding new content. One key-factor here could be dynamic events. Of course we expect new races, weapons, items and more zones in an expansion. But ArenaNet could also bring a lot of new content by just expanding existing DEs additionally. More branches and additional stages means a new experience and more complexitiy and more virtual world with every expansion in the existing world. This is not really doable in a quest-based world without downscaling. And it should be a bit cheaper, than brand new continents from scratch. I expect expansions wiill be a mix of new zones and enriched existing zones. And this should be overall cheaper and faster.
So i guess, the revenue of GW2 is not so bad compared to any P2P game (except WoW, which is special). However, it seems ArenaNet is very careful with ongoing datacenter costs. They stopped selling the game online. It would have been easy to have better SLAs with the datacenter-provider. This enables you to launch servers on an hourly basis if needed. Unfortunately such SLAs are expensive, so they dont have them. It would also be easy to separate the infrastructure for forums and stuff from the game-servers, in order to avoid overload from one to the other. But again they dont have that, because this cost more money. It seems, ArenaNet decided for a very cost-effective but rather unflexible datacenter-infrastructure. Thats one tribute to the limited and rather smaller and more unpredictable revenue-stream in future.
However, i am very convinced, that after years of GW1, they have a very solid financial plan, how to stay in profitable business with this game for at least 5 years and more.
No secret at all. They had to suspend first party sales because they didn't spend the money to build an infrastructure robust enough to keep up. That's not to say it wasn't expected, or it wasn't in their business plan. I would imagine without a steady monthly cash flow it is extremely important to maximize server space and keep a tight rein on your capital expenditures. Allowing them to suspend sales for a bit gives the freedom necessary to ensure they have exactly the infrastructure needed for a given player base, no more, no less. In short, its a business model they're used to and comfortable with but more importantly its the one they think will earn them the most profit, which is really the whole point. "What's worth doing is worth doing for money." - Gordon Gekko, Wallstreet (1987)
And what if Anet does the same and even better in terms of updates with no monthly fee and minimlastic cash shop? which is not even 'necessary' for players to use in order to play the game? what then? GW2 already dwarfs Rift in content and world size at release.
Sub fee pays for a lot of content updates in most games. TSW is aiming for monthly content updates and Trion has bi-monthly. Afaik you need to purchase the individual content updates in GW2. In the end, the result is the same. They money to pay the programmers has to come from somewhere.
Real money auction house (buy gems with cash, buy gold with gems).
Non-cosmetic items for cash.
Extra inventory space and character slots for cash.
Support handed off to a third party company that can't even keep its website up and running.
No forum.
No GM's to petition.
Massive downtimes.
Patches wheneverr they feel like it with no planning, good luck with your groups later on when the game suddenly goes down with a 3 minute warning.
Email routinely failing.
Guild chat still not working.
Gold disappearing in the auction house.
Simplistic bosses who just have a large amount of hitpoints and some heavy damage output.
Moronic AI (me attacking a veteran boar, it attacks and kills a AFK player 50 meters away from either of us, while I am killing it. how is that for agro management?)
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Don't get me wrong, Areanet made a decent game but the launch is far from smooth and it is very clear how they are making up for not having a subscription by having ZERO support and selling stuff for cash that is not the norm for western MMO's.
The game has a lot of hidden things, like diving, hidden strawberry patchess and more but it is also a game that in some ways goes back to the days of everquest when bugs and non-communication where considered the norm.
It even had the "they are in the walls" bug that I thought was not-done a decade ago.
Stop pretending this game is perfect, it is becoming increasingly silly.
"15 bucks a month is needed for development and maintenance of MMOS"
I would say that is an excuse.
Servers are very cheap right now, perhaps less then 50 cent per player a month.
When a game get's released and sold for $60, perhaps $30 goes to the publisher and developer. The store takes at least half.
With a sub they get the whole $15 every month and they sure as hell don't develop half a game of content every month.
In my opinion a $15 sub is milking the money from the customers and they get away with it because it's always been like that.
Yeah because MMO's are so profitable right now that companies feel they can just charge whatever they want right? Look how many have failed in their business models. If you think they're not trying to play it as close to the margin as possible you'd be wrong. This is a highly competitive market, people will not only drop your game at the drop of a hat but they will take to the boards and tell the world about it when they do. Nobody is milking anyone, if anything they are just trying to make people feel like they are getting the most value out of their dollar. If they have to do that by charging $50-$60 every six months instead of $10-$15 a month then that's what they will do. They're not evil, they are businesses with overhead, employees, and a profit margin they need in order to stay in business.
reason is simple... They didn't write a single line of code before they decided to go with no-monthly sub model...
So with that in mind everything they did was planned for this kind of model, same as GW1... So this game has server infrastructures like no other mmorpg yet has (other than GW1 ofc).
With low costs of their infrastructure they can provide enough for the game on box sales alone... GW1 even tho it was instanced to the higher extent than GW2 didn't have a cash shop from the start and the game had it's 2nd expansion exactly 1 year after the original guild wars and after they implemented the cash shop they were making new content even faster then they did without the cash shop...
So I think it's all about what you have in mind from the beginning and you can adjust everything you do to match that criteria.
"Happiness is not a destination. It is a method of life." -------------------------------
I never played guild Wars 1, only Guild Wars 2 and I am stunned with the effort that Arena Net made with the world and the game.
How is the investment cost for GW2 compared to GW1?
Perhaps they have sold enough boxes now to cover the initial investment, they even had to close the webshop.
(I tried to google for an article I read a few days ago, perhaps more than a week, that described the risk I am trying to talk about concerning that ArenaNet needs an income to continue develop the game.)
When NCSoft acquired Arena Net, Guild Wars’ developer, Garriott and his team discerned an audience not being served by the traditional subscription-based MMO. (“There’s a large number of people who don’t want to pay 15 dollars a month”, as he puts it.) Guild Wars was designed from the ground up to capture that niche, with community and help tools that minimized the need for frequent customer service– a key money sink for MMOs. By Garriott’s estimate, Guild Wars incurs 80% less support costs than NCsoft’s more traditional MMOs, like their Lineage series. There are no Game Masters in Guild Wars, wandering around the world settling disputes and helping players—and charging NCsoft by the hour.
The other cost-saving feature comes from economy of bandwidth. MMO players know all about long download times, when a game has an update, with patches that often exceed 100 megabytes, and thousands of players simultaneously piling on, to get it. (“It can cost us a million dollars for an update patch,” Garriott says of other NCSoft MMOs. “You peak when you release a giant download.”) By contrast, Guild Wars streams its updates in small chunks, depending on what part of the world you’re in. “Instead of having peaks of bandwidth usage… [the update] streams it evenly over time, so the costs don’t peak.” Numerous areas and quests in the world are “instantiated”, meaning specially created only for a small group of players, and that also minimizes bandwidth, since it means tracking less player data across the wider world. Garriott estimates 100,000 people play Guild Wars across the US and EU at any given time, and 1.5-2 million total every month—and still, connection costs remain manageable.
"15 bucks a month is needed for development and maintenance of MMOS"
I would say that is an excuse.
Servers are very cheap right now, perhaps less then 50 cent per player a month.
When a game get's released and sold for $60, perhaps $30 goes to the publisher and developer. The store takes at least half.
With a sub they get the whole $15 every month and they sure as hell don't develop half a game of content every month.
In my opinion a $15 sub is milking the money from the customers and they get away with it because it's always been like that.
Yeah because MMO's are so profitable right now that companies feel they can just charge whatever they want right? Look how many have failed in their business models. If you think they're not trying to play it as close to the margin as possible you'd be wrong. This is a highly competitive market, people will not only drop your game at the drop of a hat but they will take to the boards and tell the world about it when they do. Nobody is milking anyone, if anything they are just trying to make people feel like they are getting the most value out of their dollar. If they have to do that by charging $50-$60 every six months instead of $10-$15 a month then that's what they will do. They're not evil, they are businesses with overhead, employees, and a profit margin they need in order to stay in business.
Oh man, how many times have I seen this crap "every six months"...
Try doing some research before you state your opinions as facts...
There's an interview where devs state they won't be releasing expansions as fast as they did with last 2 in GW1. (reminder: 1st expansion was released 1 year after the original GW1).
"Happiness is not a destination. It is a method of life." -------------------------------
Since we are talking about ArenaNet and them making cash for the game. I've finally found out why they chose not to do subscription models and decided to do microtransactions instead.
You do the math, they are making more from people purchasing these two increases to bank and inventory space alone without all the other fluff items in the cash shop.
Separately they cost 10 dollars, both 20 dollars total which is more than getting subscriptions per month.
Last bank access costs: 600 Gems.
Last inventory space costs: 400 Gems.
Increments for buying Gems:
800 Gems: 10 dollars.
1600 Gems: 20 dollars.
2800 Gems: 35 dollars.
4000 Gems: 50 dollars.
Now you know why they would choose to do microtransactions over subscriptions. It all makes sense now.
Anet makes a MMO, AAA in quality. Jam packed with content. All the features that one would expect from a themepark MMOS and more. And yet it is not asking customers 15 bucks a month for it? what is it that Anet knows and rest don't?
Was "15 bucks a month is needed for development and maintenance of MMOS" merely an excuse?
I keep thinking about it and i just can not explain this. If Anet can do it (they are surely not going bankrupt now are they)...so why does other companies need monthly fee for? and for what i have been paying 15 bucks a month for last 10 years? and where did all that money of you and me go? was it really used in the development of those games?
So many questions. Please tel me i am not the only one who thinks about this and feels a little stupid for spending all that money for monthly access to MMOS. Were we just conditioned into thinking all these years that monthly fee is 'necessary' for long life of a MMO? were we being fooled?
p.s English isn't my first language so bear with me
Anet is making loot from there shop, not only that they will most likly add expacs every 6-8 months for $50 a pop to pretty much be on par with a monthly sub game.
I hear this so often, but its wrong. First off you don't need to buy the expansion to play. I don't have Factions or Nightfall and yet I was/am able to continue to play GW 1. Also box prices go down. If I go out and buy GW 1 expansions right now they are cheaper than if I had bought them when they came out.
Since we are talking about ArenaNet and them making cash for the game. I've finally found out why they chose not to do subscription models and decided to do microtransactions instead.
You do the math, they are making more from people purchasing these two increases to bank and inventory space alone without all the other fluff items in the cash shop.
Separately they cost 10 dollars, both 20 dollars total which is more than getting subscriptions per month.
Last bank access costs: 600 Gems.
Last inventory space costs: 400 Gems.
Increments for buying Gems:
800 Gems: 10 dollars.
1600 Gems: 20 dollars.
2800 Gems: 35 dollars.
4000 Gems: 50 dollars.
Now you know why they would choose to do microtransactions over subscriptions. It all makes sense now.
Except that you don't really need that extra space. All crafting stuff goes in its own spot in the collections tab. Even PvP stuff can be put away in collections. So do all the miniature pets. Meaning you dont need heaps and heaps of bag space for anything really, aside from one or two sets of adventuring gear.
The secret is that you will not see much content added outside of paid expansions. Whereas a lot of sub-based games charge you $15 a month and then add free content every couple of months, Anet only charges you for the box and then charges you again 6 months down the road for new content.
Comments
I agree making good game is first thing to do otherwise what payment model you use means a little... but what do you really think about all the money that you paid fin monthly fee for years? you really think it was really needed to keep servers up and developing future content? not to mention revenues of cash shops on top that + money from expansions? i don't know but for me there is new level of admiration for Anet now.
EXTREMELY simple..... Who ever has the money makes the rules. As a former business owner for many years I can tell you this. If one has a lemonade stand, and makes $10.00 a week, but it costs $15.00 to operate..... Well, the end result is obvious.
Game till you bleed....
P.S. My son of course was one of the first in line to get this game. I have watched him over the years buy every new online game and basically stop play after a month or two. I have tryed to tell him, all these games are just like each other. There is nothing new under the sun, and if it is ever put out there, I will be so there.
King of the world
Every cash shop do not necessarely look the same and generate the same amount of income.
I think it was needed in order to generate a profit for the company, excatly the same way a cash shop is needed.
Like I keep saying, they are different approaches to exactly the same thing, to generate profit on an ongoing basis. If one is 'greedy' then so is the other.
You simply cannot defend a cash shop while attacking a sub in terms of profit generation. Both do the same job.
What do I really think about a monthly fee? I honestly think that over the years that £2.50 a week has delivered me hundreds of hours of entertainment for an incredibly cheap price. I consider it a transparent and honest model that places all honest players on an even field. I consider it the very best model in terms of influencing core game design.
Well, yeah. Go talk to Trion and ask them where all those updates that people praise came from?
Yes, companies like Blizz leave their costumers with empty hands, but that's a dev thing, not business model thing.
I am actually not defending one over the other, that would be hard to do when MMOS have been using cash shop + monthly fee for quite some time now
And what if Anet does the same and even better in terms of updates with no monthly fee and minimlastic cash shop? which is not even 'necessary' for players to use in order to play the game? what then? GW2 already dwarfs Rift in content and world size at release.Trion is subs done right IMO.
if an mmo needs continuous streams of money to keep servers on and develop future content, why do they need a 300 people team? After the game is launched, keep a small team focused on servers and another small team focused on new content. Box + Expansion makes a lot of money and will be enough to pay for these people's jobs. Even with the full team they still can keep the game going up and kicking and ANET have shown that with GW1 and is doing it again with GW2.
The right people making the game the right way dont need a sub.
Even if it sounds a bit contradictory to my own comments, i can agree with Vesavius that the model is irrelevant if the game is well done. So far nothing after WoW's launch is worth a sub so..... yeah.... we gotta keep that in mind when buying an mmo.
@Visavius
I think it was needed in order to generate a profit for the company, excatly the same way a cash shop is needed.
Ok my Engish isn't that good so maybe i am having hard time to explain myself but what i am trying to say is that yes both cash shop and monthly fee is needed to generate profit but monthly fee is something you 'have' to pay and cash shop is not must or necessary in terms of GW2. So you can play a MMO by ignoring cash shop but you can't do the same when it comes to monthly fee. So there is a big difference in both ways to increase profit.
That is why i wonder if companies really need all that fixed amount of money they know customers 'will' pay to access the game compared to cash shop like GW2 which players may or may not use.
GW2 is bigger than Rift when they released, yes, but we're talking about speed and size of content updates. We don't know how fast Arena Net will deliever. Until then, we can only assume.
Lots of F2P games use cash shops and don't see any of updates. And honestly, i don't think the pure sucess of a game means everything. WOW makes tons of money and Blizz is huge, but they don't update because they're lazy and don't care. If they wanted, they'd peobably roll out huge content every month.
Like i said, it's a company thing aswell.
I never played guild Wars 1, only Guild Wars 2 and I am stunned with the effort that Arena Net made with the world and the game.
How is the investment cost for GW2 compared to GW1?
Perhaps they have sold enough boxes now to cover the initial investment, they even had to close the webshop.
(I tried to google for an article I read a few days ago, perhaps more than a week, that described the risk I am trying to talk about concerning that ArenaNet needs an income to continue develop the game.)
I'm so broke. I can't even pay attention.
"You have the right not to be killed"
I expect, that with subscription, plus revenue form expansions, plus the nowdays usual cosmetic cash-shop you make more profit, than without subscription. Even if there should be more box-sales if B2P, because this attracts more players, than a P2P game. I also expect, that a lot of players will buy gems worth a 1 month subscription in the cashshop for bags, bank and charslots and such stuff.
So, looking to the first 2-3 month, the revenue of GW2 compared to the revenue of a P2P game should be at least equal.
The subscription starts to shine after a few months. But this is also the timeframe, where all these game-hoppers quit the game. The question is, what is more revenue: the fewer sustained subscribers of a P2P game after 3 months, or the obviously more players staying in a B2P game and spending a bit money in the cash-shop?
A B2P game should also launch expansions with a higher frequency than a P2P game, in order to compensate partially for the missing subscription fee. So I expect expansions rather every 6-9 months than the usual 12-18 months. This is a challenging schedule and should just be profitable, if the overall software architecture is optimized about expansions and adding new content. One key-factor here could be dynamic events. Of course we expect new races, weapons, items and more zones in an expansion. But ArenaNet could also bring a lot of new content by just expanding existing DEs additionally. More branches and additional stages means a new experience and more complexitiy and more virtual world with every expansion in the existing world. This is not really doable in a quest-based world without downscaling. And it should be a bit cheaper, than brand new continents from scratch. I expect expansions wiill be a mix of new zones and enriched existing zones. And this should be overall cheaper and faster.
So i guess, the revenue of GW2 is not so bad compared to any P2P game (except WoW, which is special). However, it seems ArenaNet is very careful with ongoing datacenter costs. They stopped selling the game online. It would have been easy to have better SLAs with the datacenter-provider. This enables you to launch servers on an hourly basis if needed. Unfortunately such SLAs are expensive, so they dont have them. It would also be easy to separate the infrastructure for forums and stuff from the game-servers, in order to avoid overload from one to the other. But again they dont have that, because this cost more money. It seems, ArenaNet decided for a very cost-effective but rather unflexible datacenter-infrastructure. Thats one tribute to the limited and rather smaller and more unpredictable revenue-stream in future.
However, i am very convinced, that after years of GW1, they have a very solid financial plan, how to stay in profitable business with this game for at least 5 years and more.
played: Everquest I (6 years), EVE (3 years)
months: EQII, Vanguard, Siedler Online, SWTOR, Guild Wars 2
weeks: WoW, Shaiya, Darkfall, Florensia, Entropia, Aion, Lotro, Fallen Earth, Uncharted Waters
days: DDO, RoM, FFXIV, STO, Atlantica, PotBS, Maestia, WAR, AoC, Gods&Heroes, Cultures, RIFT, Forsaken World, Allodds
Sub fee pays for a lot of content updates in most games. TSW is aiming for monthly content updates and Trion has bi-monthly. Afaik you need to purchase the individual content updates in GW2. In the end, the result is the same. They money to pay the programmers has to come from somewhere.
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.
What is the secret?
Real money auction house (buy gems with cash, buy gold with gems).
Non-cosmetic items for cash.
Extra inventory space and character slots for cash.
Support handed off to a third party company that can't even keep its website up and running.
No forum.
No GM's to petition.
Massive downtimes.
Patches wheneverr they feel like it with no planning, good luck with your groups later on when the game suddenly goes down with a 3 minute warning.
Email routinely failing.
Guild chat still not working.
Gold disappearing in the auction house.
Simplistic bosses who just have a large amount of hitpoints and some heavy damage output.
Moronic AI (me attacking a veteran boar, it attacks and kills a AFK player 50 meters away from either of us, while I am killing it. how is that for agro management?)
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Don't get me wrong, Areanet made a decent game but the launch is far from smooth and it is very clear how they are making up for not having a subscription by having ZERO support and selling stuff for cash that is not the norm for western MMO's.
The game has a lot of hidden things, like diving, hidden strawberry patchess and more but it is also a game that in some ways goes back to the days of everquest when bugs and non-communication where considered the norm.
It even had the "they are in the walls" bug that I thought was not-done a decade ago.
Stop pretending this game is perfect, it is becoming increasingly silly.
"15 bucks a month is needed for development and maintenance of MMOS"
I would say that is an excuse.
Servers are very cheap right now, perhaps less then 50 cent per player a month.
When a game get's released and sold for $60, perhaps $30 goes to the publisher and developer. The store takes at least half.
With a sub they get the whole $15 every month and they sure as hell don't develop half a game of content every month.
In my opinion a $15 sub is milking the money from the customers and they get away with it because it's always been like that.
Yeah because MMO's are so profitable right now that companies feel they can just charge whatever they want right? Look how many have failed in their business models. If you think they're not trying to play it as close to the margin as possible you'd be wrong. This is a highly competitive market, people will not only drop your game at the drop of a hat but they will take to the boards and tell the world about it when they do. Nobody is milking anyone, if anything they are just trying to make people feel like they are getting the most value out of their dollar. If they have to do that by charging $50-$60 every six months instead of $10-$15 a month then that's what they will do. They're not evil, they are businesses with overhead, employees, and a profit margin they need in order to stay in business.
reason is simple... They didn't write a single line of code before they decided to go with no-monthly sub model...
So with that in mind everything they did was planned for this kind of model, same as GW1... So this game has server infrastructures like no other mmorpg yet has (other than GW1 ofc).
With low costs of their infrastructure they can provide enough for the game on box sales alone... GW1 even tho it was instanced to the higher extent than GW2 didn't have a cash shop from the start and the game had it's 2nd expansion exactly 1 year after the original guild wars and after they implemented the cash shop they were making new content even faster then they did without the cash shop...
So I think it's all about what you have in mind from the beginning and you can adjust everything you do to match that criteria.
"Happiness is not a destination. It is a method of life."
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this article from 2006?
Inside the World of Guild Wars
http://gigaom.com/2006/10/26/guild-wars/
Guild Wars from the Server Side
When NCSoft acquired Arena Net, Guild Wars’ developer, Garriott and his team discerned an audience not being served by the traditional subscription-based MMO. (“There’s a large number of people who don’t want to pay 15 dollars a month”, as he puts it.) Guild Wars was designed from the ground up to capture that niche, with community and help tools that minimized the need for frequent customer service– a key money sink for MMOs. By Garriott’s estimate, Guild Wars incurs 80% less support costs than NCsoft’s more traditional MMOs, like their Lineage series. There are no Game Masters in Guild Wars, wandering around the world settling disputes and helping players—and charging NCsoft by the hour.
The other cost-saving feature comes from economy of bandwidth. MMO players know all about long download times, when a game has an update, with patches that often exceed 100 megabytes, and thousands of players simultaneously piling on, to get it. (“It can cost us a million dollars for an update patch,” Garriott says of other NCSoft MMOs. “You peak when you release a giant download.”) By contrast, Guild Wars streams its updates in small chunks, depending on what part of the world you’re in. “Instead of having peaks of bandwidth usage… [the update] streams it evenly over time, so the costs don’t peak.” Numerous areas and quests in the world are “instantiated”, meaning specially created only for a small group of players, and that also minimizes bandwidth, since it means tracking less player data across the wider world. Garriott estimates 100,000 people play Guild Wars across the US and EU at any given time, and 1.5-2 million total every month—and still, connection costs remain manageable.
EQ2 fan sites
Oh man, how many times have I seen this crap "every six months"...
Try doing some research before you state your opinions as facts...
There's an interview where devs state they won't be releasing expansions as fast as they did with last 2 in GW1. (reminder: 1st expansion was released 1 year after the original GW1).
"Happiness is not a destination. It is a method of life."
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Since we are talking about ArenaNet and them making cash for the game. I've finally found out why they chose not to do subscription models and decided to do microtransactions instead.
You do the math, they are making more from people purchasing these two increases to bank and inventory space alone without all the other fluff items in the cash shop.
Separately they cost 10 dollars, both 20 dollars total which is more than getting subscriptions per month.
Last bank access costs: 600 Gems.
Last inventory space costs: 400 Gems.
Increments for buying Gems:
800 Gems: 10 dollars.
1600 Gems: 20 dollars.
2800 Gems: 35 dollars.
4000 Gems: 50 dollars.
Now you know why they would choose to do microtransactions over subscriptions. It all makes sense now.
I hear this so often, but its wrong. First off you don't need to buy the expansion to play. I don't have Factions or Nightfall and yet I was/am able to continue to play GW 1. Also box prices go down. If I go out and buy GW 1 expansions right now they are cheaper than if I had bought them when they came out.
Except that you don't really need that extra space. All crafting stuff goes in its own spot in the collections tab. Even PvP stuff can be put away in collections. So do all the miniature pets. Meaning you dont need heaps and heaps of bag space for anything really, aside from one or two sets of adventuring gear.