There were some free updates although the bulk of the content was boxed content. However those boxes added alot of content, factions and nightfall were not only stand alone but similar in size to the origonal game. EOTN was a bit smaller but not by alot. Free content included a couple dungeons like sarrows furnace, holiday events that were added post launch and update each year, and all the guild wars beyond content that has been released since EOTN.
Who is John Galt?
Yes we've all seen the video, the bottom line is this, if a company is bringing in 5x more money they will be more inclined to care a whole lot more than if they were just getting money from selling xpacs every year or so. Video is false.
Apply blizzards model to any other subscription service,you'd be outraged:
Netflix adds no new movies for a year, you click a new movie, there's a $5 fee.
You're in an accident, click your onstar button, but there's an addition $20 fee for them to help.
You turn on your tv only to find all you get are the infomercial channels. Every other show is pay per view.
See how dumb that model is?
I hope you haven't forgotten my role in this little story. I'm the leading man. You know what they say about the leading man? He never dies.
If you give in to your impulses in this world, the price is that it changes your personality in the real world. The player and character are one and the same.
Care a whole lot more about what though? I hope you're not insinuating that ActivisionBlizzard cares about the quality of their game. If that were the case they wouldn't have given you a reskin for your valentines day mount while using up their 'limited resources' to create a brand new model for their petshop mount and it's 25 dollar price tag.
I hope you haven't forgotten my role in this little story. I'm the leading man. You know what they say about the leading man? He never dies.
If you give in to your impulses in this world, the price is that it changes your personality in the real world. The player and character are one and the same.
He didn't say there weren't bots or that bots were good, he was asking you why you thought that the game being f2p would get rid of bots. The answer is that it doesn't. In fact, they save $15 per month this way. It remains to be seen if there's even a point in botting WvW. If you don't get anything from simply idling, botting is actually counterproductive to your team winning since you're wasting a slot. There's botting in WoW because you always get something if you can manage to stay until the end of the game, but with 2 week long battles and the overall score being the most important factor, there may not be botting in WvW.
Last edited by Dacomp89; 2012-02-25 at 08:25 PM.
This speech by Jeff Strain (one of the Arenanet founders) is one of my favourites and basically talks about why Anet does things the way they do. There is also a section about subscriptions:
http://www.guildwars.com/events/trad...7/gcspeech.php
"In the early years of the MMO industry, from roughly 1997 to 2001, there were a few big MMOs that had active player populations. By the time we started ArenaNet in the summer of 2000, we knew of at least eighty MMOs that were in development. Based on the success of UO and EQ, publishers were reviewing their portfolios and planning to migrate their existing game franchises to the online world, where they believed they could adopt a subscription model and "make bank". Clearly, it did not work out that way. As more MMOs came into the market, two things changed. First, players now had a choice about which game they would play, and as a result their expectations for polish, content quantity, and service increased substantially. Second, and perhaps more telling for the future of the industry, it became clear that the subscription model forced players to choose a single game, rather than playing many different games.
Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true – you know it, and they know it. Gamers may buy the argument that your MMO requires a subscription fee, if you can tell them what they are getting for their money. This is the legacy of games like Guild Wars, Maple Story, and Silkroad Online, all of which introduced new business models into the MMO genre and were quite successful. The subscription model is still perfectly viable, but the pain threshold is very low now. It's no secret that gamers don't want to pay a subscription fee. If you can convince them that your game offers enough value to justify it, more power to you! But be prepared to defend your decision, often and loudly, and back it up over the lifetime of your game.
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. "
Subscription fees are not needed.
Last edited by Niwoe; 2012-02-25 at 08:23 PM.
I thought GW2 dont have a month sub > so they dont have to worry if their 15$/person/per month get banned or leave the game
Ah sorry then
In WvWvW u get extra loot for killing enemys > making gold>reason for botting > they dont care if they die or repair gear
Last edited by mmocbeb563a6f8; 2012-02-25 at 08:30 PM.
Another of these...
No. It doesn't need sub fees. They're remnants of the past and totally unnecessary, they still exist because we allow them to.
Just my personal perceptions, but from what I've watched/seen/read the ANet people seem to care a lot more about their 'baby' than other companies who's games I've played.
One company, who I used to pay a monthly sub to, seems to try and figure out how they can release the least amount of content they can get away with while still getting people to sub.
The other MMO company I also payed a sub to comes off as completely arrogant and self-congradulatory so much so that I find myself /rolleyes more often than not.
I suppose that is a reasonable point about keeping a paying subscriber on, but even in WoW tons of botters are banned occasionally. It would depend on how many banned botters are willing to rebuy the game.
The bot would have to first contribute to the kill, and then loot the body. I haven't heard of any bot that complicated. The loot is the same loot you'd get for killing PvE mobs as well, so I don't know why you'd take the much higher risk of botting in PvP where you could more easily get killed. I'm fairly certain they stated that you have to repair gear in PvP as well.
I can see lack of subscription being even more enticing for bots, it will be much cheaper to set up a new account (unless they hack an existing one) I hope ANet cracks down on bot quick and hard or servers will be swamped
Let ur bot , stand in ur keep , and push need to all items/players killed by the others , dont seem complicated
Or auto follow some1 and push << need>> 24/7
It wont need monthly fee's and expect 99% of games released from 2012 onwards to move away from a subscription base.
You don't get loot from simply being in a group or standing around. You need to actually help kill the person. You would then have to actually go up to and loot the body yourself since all loot is instanced separately to those who contributed to the kill, from what I understand.