Originally Posted by
Ddps
I'm going to take the approach that you, yourself, have never made a single game in your life. Im also going to assume you know nothing of Blizzard nor ArenaNet history.
Blizzard made millions off of the Warcraft/Diablo/Starcraft series well before World of Warcraft. When WoW was created, they did not need a subscription based system to stay in business. It was made, more than likely, to make more money and well frankly that was the only model truly working.
You can argue more money pushes product, and it is true, to an extent. Your argument is invalid for a different reason. You are saying without a subscription based model, no MMO can be successful. Look at both Rift and SWTOR. SWTOR was a subscription based MMO that is now a F2P, and Rift is declining fast. However Guild Wars holds over both of them, easily and is more F2P than either of them (with SWTORs market).
Another point Guild Wars is still pushing out constant content, just as good of quality as of Blizzards. Money helps, but a lot isnt needed to make a worthy game.
I am also going to point out, you probably have never played Guild Wars 2, it is a fine MMO, that will last for a long time. I would not be surprised to see a change in the payment plan industry over the next 10 years at all.
Lord of the Rings Online, Warhammer online, Aion online, Tera online, Rift, Star Wars the Old Republic= All these started out as subscription based MMO's.
Guild Wars 2= Free to Play, more active players than all of them
If you want to compare an MMO 8 year title to a 1 year old game, your statistics are flawed.