Yes, and they don't do that many micro transactions either. Taking Guild Wars 1 for example, successful enough to warrant a sequel and numerous expansions all the while maintaining a good standard of re-balancing and upkeep, creating holiday events and tournaments etc. From what I can remember you could only really buy a few cosmetic items and they didn't produce a very large amount of profit for them over the basic purchase amount.
He kind of lost some credibility when he said that subscription fees being used for extra content was a fallacy, then said "how often do games like Aion, WoW and Rift actually add new features or content that dont come as part of an expansion?". The bolded bit is important as they've added a massive amount of content in the 8 months or so its been out. 4 raids that I can think of (1 a massive 11 boss raid), a wardrobe feature, a dungeon finder, 3 single/duo player dungeons, new types of rifts (pvp rifts and crafting rifts) as well as creating the framework to enable addons. And the next patch adds a new island thats bigger than any of the current zones, with new dungeons, mobs, raids, gear and more. To say "how often do they actually release new content?" in regards to Rift as an argument is kind of silly, regardless of how good you think the actual game is. The list of things added to WoW during patch cycles is actually pretty large too - stuff like the dungeon finder, the upcoming raid finder and transmogging, raids, new questing hubs, new gear - even if it doesnt come as often. But I had a quick read through the old patch notes to see what notable stuff there was, and theres loads of stuff that we take for granted that it was added in a patch. Can you imagine going through all of Vanilla without any battlegrounds, for example? Or even racials (which were added in the first content patch or something)?
The guy does make some good points, and it is perfectly possible to have a decent MMO without a subscription, but it needs to be created within the limitations of not having a subscription. Correct me if I'm wrong but Guild Wars seems based around the idea of "You buy the game and thats your lot till you pay for the next expansion we release" - am I right in thinking that? That you dont essentially get any "free" (quotation marks because lets face it, we pay for patches in other games) updates that include any content/features and you have to pay for those? Because I'm sure Blizzard/Trion could make a sustainable business model charging for patches with no sub. But for Trion particularly, I cant see them coping without the money coming in from subs.
uhm dont they have to pay taxes for this money? and some part of it also goes to the publisher and the salesmen who are selling the physical copies. so i think in the end they probably get a rough 30-40$ per copy, and this might still be exaggerated :B
---------- Post added 2011-11-07 at 04:40 PM ----------
its the same with the rmah in diablo 3, nobody is forcing you to use it at all. and the first few items youre putting in are even free with a weekly reset. people just like to call companies greedy without them being able to defend themselves.
Then reduce this number with the milions of dollars they spend on developping the game, Paying everyone etc. Than you'll see the profit they made, and then reduce the taxes also reduce the amount of money the store gets ..so on.
So the profit won't be that much , but they'll most likely start somekind of a gameshop for mounts or something. Or else they won't be able to keep the game profitable
Traditionally, hardcopies of games yield a few dollars in profit to the company itself. Remember that in addition to the "Publisher and the salesmen" you have to pay each member of the team that developed the content, any licensing fees associated with the other game assests, advertising costs, royalties to any voice actors guild members, shipping and manufacturing costs, etc.
Guild Wars (the original) maintained some profitability because it was extremely modular, only towns and outposts were actually hosted on a server, the rest could be generated and run by the home users pc (the instances). Thus the upkeep costs were fairly small and the money from box sales allowed them to at least break even.
---------- Post added 2011-11-07 at 03:44 PM ----------
The original Guild Wars was almost entirely expanded via expansion packs, not content patches.
ArenaNet has stated they will have a "live team" that will constantly be adding new free content.
It's also worth noting the GW2 will not have tiered raids. If you take away raid tiers from Wow patches, you end up with very little new content, an amount that is actually quite easy for a game like GW2 to exceed in it's patches because they don't funnel all development resources into new raids.
the thing that baffles me the most as that EVERY SINGLE P2P AAA MMO has a Cash Shop, hahahaha. i don't know if it's willful ignorance or what.
his credibility is still sound to me even given that line albeit a general statement, it still holds true, especially for WoW.
with Rift you buy the game + pay a monthly fee + pay for cash shop items + will most likely pay for expansions. Rift though does give great value for money spent with their constant updates and this can be seen as a good thing/bad thing; good in that there is content continually streaming in, and bad in that the need for a constant stream of new content my be due to an underlying flaw in game design.
with Aion you buy the game + pay a monthly fee + pay for cash shop items - expansions as they are actually "free". this can also be considered great value for money as you don't have to pay for the box price of an expansion but that can be good/bad as well; good that you get a large expansion of content for "free", or bad because the content may not be equivalent to what a box expansion would give or that they take too long between expansions to make the "free" expansions a good value for money.
with WoW you buy the game + pay a monthly fee + pay for cash shop items + pay for expansions. now with WoW i feel relative to the other two gives you the least value for money. first, content updates are slower than Rift's. second, the updates are not as jam packed as Rift's. thirdly, time between expansions is longer than Aion's (Rift is only ~8 months old). and fourth WoW charges for expansions when Aion does not. a reason i think WoW can afford to do this is because of the loyal playerbase that it has and the lukewarm receptions of recently released games, they do not feel the heat of competition that is of course until recently with SWTOR coming out at the end of this year and GW2 coming out next year.
now if GW2 offers an equivalent amount of polish and content releases but does not charge a monthly fee it will be the best value for money on the market followed by Rift. i don't believe SWTOR will be able to keep up with Rift's pace of releasing content in the P2P category due to it's fully voice over-ed game design.
people need to realize that GW1 is not only a working template for ANet to design a business model around for GW2, but is also a body of evidence that not only can a buy to play game offer great and very well supported content, but it can also be very profitable.
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Sentinel PVE Basics for the two Specs that matterOriginally Posted by SW:TOR
Sentinel PVE Basics for the two Specs that matterOriginally Posted by SW:TOR
All the content released after you buy the game is not free. The 60 dollars you payed to buy the game also goes toward that content. This explains why cata was 40 bucks, but shorter. Guild Wars released a free Winds of Change content patch. It's quite big, too.
Subs are just extra money on the side for developers to play with. I believe one of the main reasons why GW2 is able to be F2P is because ANets projects are funded by NCSoft, not by ANet themselves. I'm not so sure if NCSoft pays their salaries though. Please correct me if I'm wrong about any of this.
Pretty sure those were part of factions release, but DOA was added in content patch after Nightfall, so were whole hard mode switch that effected every zone/mission in game adding a lot of replay value. You could also add War in Kryta, Hearts of the North and Winds of Change (part 1 and 2 so far) to your list, but I think you proved already that Anjerith was just spreading misinformation.
Last edited by mmoca7d06c4104; 2011-11-07 at 07:31 PM.
Guild Wars 1 is the answer for you.... it was success and gave enough money for them to do another... they just dont spend their money into crap like blizzard does :P blizzcon itself is awesome but still costs and those statues and whatever hecks they made.
Arenanet focuses on the game more :P
i dont get all the discussion about it... there are other games wich get along well with only the packageprice for the game. This must be good profit cause otherwise noone would develop games anymore. maybe a bad example but Diablo2 has still a great playerbase, the Server for Bnet run since day one and they got along well without subfees.
Subfees are kinda new in the business, most of you seem to forget that the Business got along quit good without fees.
If GW1 was so successfull why shouldnt GW2? It would be a fair trade if Blizzard lowers the fees but then they couldnt efford their golden faucets in their bathroom.
Last edited by Uriel; 2011-11-07 at 08:11 PM.
Yeah, I think my OP has been well answered in this thread. I've gained quite a bit of insight by making this thread and I'm glad everyone joined in the discussion. Good sports, the lot of you! With that said, let us go forth and conquer the Asura! Errr...I mean...save Tyria!