Curse

PuppyEater · Jun 27, 2010, 07:41 PM // 19:41

Quote:

Originally Posted by belshazaarswrath

if you are so immersed in the game that you forget that there is a real world with pepsi, coke, and munnies you might need a little dose of reality.

The whole idea of immersion is so you can forget (at least for a while) that there is "coke, pepsi and munnies"...

If I wanted to deal with that stuff Id just unplug and live reality. I hear it has infinite resolution and super realistic physics now...

Nerel · Jun 27, 2010, 08:32 PM // 20:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by PuppyEater

The whole idea of immersion is so you can forget (at least for a while) that there is "coke, pepsi and munnies"...

If I wanted to deal with that stuff Id just unplug and live reality. I hear it has infinite resolution and super realistic physics now...

Yeah, but the respawn times are terrible...

Shadowhaze · Jun 28, 2010, 03:09 AM // 03:09

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nerel

Quite sure that it's a bad idea, it would just seem so out of place in a FANTASY MMO-like game...

I don't know why, but this vanquish is making me awfully thirsty...

LOL!!!

But agree with others, I'm not fond of marketing adds in a game (unless it's like racing games with billboards - those they do fit in - oh and I'm not fond of most racing games lol).

Fog Accomplice · Jun 30, 2010, 05:23 PM // 17:23

Quote:

Originally Posted by HawkofStorms

Why is it that every person who plays an MMO is so obsessed with how much money the game makes? Why does everybody like to pretend they are an accountant when it comes to MMO games?

MMOs are the only games were people constantly complain and mutter about "well this game has 2 million subscribers but needs another 1 million to break even, therefore it is a financial failure." No other video game forum talks about sales figures like an MMO forum. I don't hear people on forums for Halo/CoD/Starcraft/Mass Effect going "well I love this game, but the company really seems to be in financial trouble."

Why stress about this? Let A.net, the people whose salaries depend on this, figure this sort of stuff out. After all, they are the only people here with actually numbers to back up any of the wild claims made about how profitable the game is. Anything we say is just speculation.

Halo/CoD/Starcraft do NOT have developer (in this case, ANET) sustained servers for the kiddies to play on. Good servers, with good connections, with constant maintenance and upkeep, for an international game with millions of players with varying hardware and connections of their own. Hardware and software updates, security, AS WELL AS SERVER HOUSING. These are HUGE costs, costs that remain constant despite a dip in income after the initial release of the video game.

WoW counters this overhead cost via monthly subscriptions. ANET does not use this business model. Thus, the simply interesting and quizzical question of the topic is, how will they?

ANET is for the most part well-liked by the community. We have close ties to the developers, and they in turn make an extraordinary effort to keep us happy. If we want to toss around ideas, opinions, or feedback that may help out the devs that have treated us so well, what is it to you?

dawnmist · Jul 02, 2010, 02:32 AM // 02:32

God no. Please. No.

Every where you turn these days you're continually bombarded with advertising trying to get you to spend your money on yet another piece of junk.

I can't even go to the petrol station anymore without some of them having TV advertising and police lectures displayed on pump-mounted TV screens that are activated by the car pulling up to the pump - and you can't turn them off. I've never received a speeding fine or driving fine of any sort in 15 years of driving...but I still get lectured for a couple of minutes about "speed kills" and that I "have to slow down" by a TV when I pull up to fill the car?

Every web page, every TV show, every movie, every bus stop, every bus/tram that passes, every shop window, every newspaper/magazine, every radio station, every blank bit of wall around town, half the cars around town...have advertising plastered all over them trying to con me into buying their product. Every new DVD now forces you to watch not only a lecture on how you shouldn't steal the movie (hello...I just BOUGHT this thing - why am I being lectured again?), but now adds 3-5 movie previews that you cannot skip past. Again...I bought the DVD for the movie on it...why should I have to wait 5-10 minutes watching advertising crap before I'm permitted to watch the movie I paid for? And then have to rewatch the SAME advertising crap every time I want to rewatch the movie?

I'm sick of it. Absolutely fed up with it. Why should we have this nonsense shoved down our throat all the time?

In a world like GuildWars, it's utterly out-of-place and unnecessary. "Hey, I've paid to spend time in a fantasy world, but it'll contain advertising for stuff that does not exist in this world and is completely irrelevant to this world".

No thanks.

Something like the Aion wings...it's an emote that the character can do similar to rank/zrank, it's not shouting out names and interfering with immersion...ok. It doesn't FORCE Aion down your throat...just shows a black pair of wings. It's not out of place in the fantasy world (particularly if you're in Moa form or something already).

Something like the Coke shield, or "take a break and drink a Red Bull"...no. Take your advertising, and shove it. It's inappropriate, it breaks immersion in the GW fantasy world, and has no place in that form there.

If some of the alcohols were named with a nod to products...I could cope. But not billboards, not explicit pull-you-out-of-immersion crap. We get more than enough of it everywhere else.

belshazaarswrath · Jul 02, 2010, 03:05 AM // 03:05

Quote:

Originally Posted by dawnmist

God no. Please. No.

Every where you turn these days you're continually bombarded with advertising trying to get you to spend your money on yet another piece of junk.

I can't even go to the petrol station anymore without some of them having TV advertising and police lectures displayed on pump-mounted TV screens that are activated by the car pulling up to the pump - and you can't turn them off. I've never received a speeding fine or driving fine of any sort in 15 years of driving...but I still get lectured for a couple of minutes about "speed kills" and that I "have to slow down" by a TV when I pull up to fill the car?

Every web page, every TV show, every movie, every bus stop, every bus/tram that passes, every shop window, every newspaper/magazine, every radio station, every blank bit of wall around town, half the cars around town...have advertising plastered all over them trying to con me into buying their product. Every new DVD now forces you to watch not only a lecture on how you shouldn't steal the movie (hello...I just BOUGHT this thing - why am I being lectured again?), but now adds 3-5 movie previews that you cannot skip past. Again...I bought the DVD for the movie on it...why should I have to wait 5-10 minutes watching advertising crap before I'm permitted to watch the movie I paid for? And then have to rewatch the SAME advertising crap every time I want to rewatch the movie?

I'm sick of it. Absolutely fed up with it. Why should we have this nonsense shoved down our throat all the time?

In a world like GuildWars, it's utterly out-of-place and unnecessary. "Hey, I've paid to spend time in a fantasy world, but it'll contain advertising for stuff that does not exist in this world and is completely irrelevant to this world".

No thanks.

Something like the Aion wings...it's an emote that the character can do similar to rank/zrank, it's not shouting out names and interfering with immersion...ok. It doesn't FORCE Aion down your throat...just shows a black pair of wings. It's not out of place in the fantasy world (particularly if you're in Moa form or something already).

Something like the Coke shield, or "take a break and drink a Red Bull"...no. Take your advertising, and shove it. It's inappropriate, it breaks immersion in the GW fantasy world, and has no place in that form there.

If some of the alcohols were named with a nod to products...I could cope. But not billboards, not explicit pull-you-out-of-immersion crap. We get more than enough of it everywhere else.

I would agree that most of the examples that you used would be unacceptable but if they could could tactfully and sneakily sneak references to things in their game and made a decent profit (which they used to fund more constant updates) because of it I think that would be a good thing.

C4RB1N3 · Jul 02, 2010, 05:16 AM // 05:16

I'll make my answer short and simple.

NO!

belshazaarswrath · Jul 02, 2010, 07:45 AM // 07:45

Quote:

Originally Posted by sirmordicia

I'll make my answer short and simple.

NO!

So I guess you put no thought in the idea then? Seeing as you have no explanation as to why you think what you think and all.

Coraline Jones · Jul 02, 2010, 09:48 PM // 21:48

First of all, I want to know what company is dumb enough to pay serious money to advertise in a game that is five years old, the developers have formally announced it will have no new expansion packs (i.e., major content), and the sequel is scheduled for release in a year or two.

Let me put it this way. The average gamer/consumer cares nothing about Guild Wars. World of Warcraft's beta for their next expansion pack is front page gaming news. The War in Kryta barely even makes a mention.

Second, I'm sure ArenaNet will look at this topic and decide that random strangers on the Internet are obviously financial and marketing experts. So unless you have the patent for some groundbreaking game design, and you're going to give it away to ANet for free, then they aren't going to come to you for business advice.

Finally, if ArenaNet wanted to make money, they can do it without resorting to crap like in-game ads and other ways to annoy their clientele. As if the best way to save a dying game would be to annoy all of the fans with crap advertisement. There's already criticism by both industry professionals and regular gamers that companies are selling out too much and putting in too much crap product placement in games. And now you're asking for more of it.

If ANet really wants to roll in money, then they should sell fancy, animated weapon skins that are only available in the stores and they automatically customize on purchase so they can't be traded. Make fancy NPC armor, like the White Mantle Justicar armor, and sell it directly in the stores for player characters. Sell unique miniatures that also customize on purchase and can't be traded.

HawkofStorms · Jul 02, 2010, 10:15 PM // 22:15

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fog Accomplice

Halo/CoD/Starcraft do NOT have developer (in this case, ANET) sustained servers for the kiddies to play on. Good servers, with good connections, with constant maintenance and upkeep, for an international game with millions of players with varying hardware and connections of their own. Hardware and software updates, security, AS WELL AS SERVER HOUSING. These are HUGE costs, costs that remain constant despite a dip in income after the initial release of the video game.

WoW counters this overhead cost via monthly subscriptions. ANET does not use this business model. Thus, the simply interesting and quizzical question of the topic is, how will they?

ANET is for the most part well-liked by the community. We have close ties to the developers, and they in turn make an extraordinary effort to keep us happy. If we want to toss around ideas, opinions, or feedback that may help out the devs that have treated us so well, what is it to you?

Yeah they do. All three of them do. SCII is completely running on private servers, even the progress in the single player campaign is being stored in the games' servers, and not locally. You have to connect to Blizzard's servers to play.

Traditional Multiplayer games are adding more and more features all the time. The distinction between them and an MMO are getting less all the time.

Furthermore, the ACTUAL costs of running a server are very small compared to the costs of developing a game. MMO fans grossly exaggerate the costs of maintaining servers. I think people who crunch the numbers have shown that something like only 5% of the money made from any given MMO goes towards covering server costs. GW specifically has shown that you don't need to nickel and dime people to death in order to have money to maintain an online world.

So I ask again, why the hell are MMO fans wannabe accounts all the time, but not other gamers? Is it just misinformation? Fear that their game will get the plug pulled from them? Halo 2 fans were not going around saying "the Halo series is in financial trouble" when their game lost support on X-Box Live a couple of months ago. They just had to admit "yeah the game's getting old and will no longer be supported." It's not like Halo 2 fans were saying "the reason halo 2 stopped was because Halo 2 didn't make enough money." They admitted reality. Stuff can't last forever. Why can't MMO fans?

Rhamia Darigaz · Jul 03, 2010, 12:12 AM // 00:12

As the world's strongest millionaire scientist, I have studied ArenaNet's past 13 quarterly fiscal tax dividend profit-deficit margin reports and have come to the conclusion that it is in ArenaNet's best interest to replace the models of all weapons in Guild Wars with virtual Coca-Cola, Marlboro, and Halliburton products.

Lanier · Jul 03, 2010, 01:26 AM // 01:26

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rhamia Darigaz

As the world's strongest millionaire scientist, I have studied ArenaNet's past 13 quarterly fiscal tax dividend profit-deficit margin reports and have come to the conclusion that it is in ArenaNet's best interest to replace the models of all weapons in Guild Wars with virtual Coca-Cola, Marlboro, and Halliburton products.

/signed for sure. I trust the word of the world's strongest millionaire scientist.

belshazaarswrath · Jul 03, 2010, 01:45 AM // 01:45

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rhamia Darigaz

As the world's strongest millionaire scientist, I have studied ArenaNet's past 13 quarterly fiscal tax dividend profit-deficit margin reports and have come to the conclusion that it is in ArenaNet's best interest to replace the models of all weapons in Guild Wars with virtual Coca-Cola, Marlboro, and Halliburton products.

Cigarette guns!

Nodakim · Jul 03, 2010, 05:25 PM // 17:25

If you would stop playing a game because it has adds then you are obviously playing it for the wrong reasons.

wilebill · Jul 03, 2010, 08:05 PM // 20:05

My staff? I wouldn't have anything but a genuine Microsoft staff!

Welcome to Outpost StarCraft 2! Mind the zerglings!

And you find "delightsome foods" that drop like Hot Pockets! Or coupons for your favorite pizza!

Well, it has a certain "zing" to it. I think Blizzard threatened to do something like open their own chain of pizza delivery, but it was an April Fool's joke.

dancing gnome · Jul 03, 2010, 08:19 PM // 20:19

Why are people asking for something annoying when there is no need for it? You already have a no monthly fees game without ads.

Don't ask for them.