Curse

Gambit Shinobi · Dec 21, 2007, 05:04 AM // 05:04

Quote:

Originally Posted by Buster

I agree that quality is better than quantity but content is what keeps gamers playing longer and keeps them more interested in playing. There is nothing wrong with having some timesinks in the game. Perfect example was Eye of the North, I thought it was a good expansion but it was seriously way too short. People wanted more of the goodness, more things to do. As it is now you can complete any campaign in less than 3 weeks time. Then it becomes repetitive and people start to get bored and not everyone owns all 3 campaigns. People want more new areas to explore and more things to do because not everyone gets involved in the pvp aspect of Guild Wars. Level 20is way to easy to achieve and you miss out on the enjoyment of developing your character.

I actually beat Factions, Nightfall, and Eye of the North all in 1 month... with some help from my cousin and guild. I started GW about 2 months ago and I've got 5 level 20s all well geared along with their Heroes. I got Obsidian armor for 1 of my characters as well. Yeah, I agree with you, there's not a whole lot of content in GW. However, it's just enough for casual gamers and somewhat hardcore ones too. For a hardcore gamer like myself though, all 4 games presents little to no challenge. Especially because I started off with playing one of the most hardcore MMOs: Final Fantasy XI for 2+ years.

Regarding GW's business model...
I think people don't realize that ANet doesn't HAVE to charge people to play each month to make good money and profit. GW's game world is INSTANCED and not PERSISTENT. There doesn't need to be constant server maintenance and tweaking like most p2p MMOs. Also, GW may be addicting, but it's not as addicting as many other MMOs, which is a good thing. I like the business model of ANet's. And I believe that all other MMOs should be done this way. You either charge people to purchase your game(s) OR you charge them monthly but don't make them pay for your game(s). MMO companies/developers charging consumers twice is unethical and needs to stop.

Bryant Again · Dec 21, 2007, 05:07 AM // 05:07

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gambit Shinobi

Also, GW may be addicting, but it's not as addicting as many other MMOs, which is a good thing.

While a few people do get addicted because of P2P fees, something that reporters etc. overdo and blame completely, it's mostly the quality of the game - and the player's tastes as well - that'll determine how addicted they'll become. To this day I have still not wasted as many hours with any game as I have with Morrowind.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gambit Shinobi

MMO companies/developers charging consumers twice is unethical and needs to stop.

It's not like paying monthly leaves you empty-handed.

Gambit Shinobi · Dec 21, 2007, 05:12 AM // 05:12

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bryant Again

It's not like paying monthly leaves you empty-handed.

Did I ever say it did? Nope, not at all. In fact, I said I played FFXI for over 2 years and didn't even mention I played Dungeons and Dragons Online for half a year. Both are p2p.

I said it's UNETHICAL to charge gamers TWICE, once to purchase the game and expansions and another monthly fee. This trend should stop being the norm in the MMO industry. The only reason why I started playing (and bought) Guild Wars was because you didn't have to pay a subscription. That doesn't mean I can't pay to play or that I would be broke if I did. It just means I refuse to be ripped off.

Bryant Again · Dec 21, 2007, 05:21 AM // 05:21

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gambit Shinobi

I said it's UNETHICAL to charge gamers TWICE, once to purchase the game and expansions and another monthly fee.

They're still having the same account, same fee. They're just upgrading their account to be compatible with the expansion.

In regards calling it "unethical", that really depends on the buyer themselves: Do they really want to devote so much to this game? Well for me, I love WoW, so yeah sure. They're a good company, it's a great game, I'm willing to support both - just like ANet and Guild Wars.

I wouldn't say unethical either, I'd just say kinda lame. But hey, ANet does the same. They do want to make a profit, after all.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gambit Shinobi

It just means I refuse to be ripped off.

It's hard to claim being "ripped off" if you've never tried the product.

And if you can no longer contribute to the thread, then don't post.

Gambit Shinobi · Dec 21, 2007, 05:29 AM // 05:29

Bryant, wtf are you babbling about? Seriously...

Redfeather1975 · Dec 21, 2007, 05:51 AM // 05:51

The reason why I said I found the popular pay to play mmorpg design unethical, is because they revolve around time sinks all designed to milk exactly how long they can draw things out.
The incentive only being rewards. Rewards whose sole function is to mildly alleviate the time sinks. Time sinks which will always scale upwards at a greater rate than that of the rewards.
And then they lead people to believe it costs 14.99 a month to both keep the servers running and pay for their expert design crew to create more shallow time sink based content.

I often thinks it's insulting to our intelligence.

Bryant Again · Dec 21, 2007, 06:52 AM // 06:52

Well, I do enjoy playing WoW because I likes the dungeons and raids and I love playing my classes. But I do know a rather large handful of people who've quit for your reasoning, Red. But I also know more who play because it's fun and they enjoy the game.

I'm just "meh" towards it, really. It depends on the person's motive to continue playing: Are they doing it for fun, or are they trying to "get their money's worth?"

CHannum · Dec 21, 2007, 08:07 AM // 08:07

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bryant Again

Just gonna say that bit there is wrong.

Hardly when playing with adults with lives. Party wipes, you ressurect, run back and find, oh crap, everything is respawned, half the guys say goodnight and the other half soon does the same. Wiping only doesn't affect things when people have unlimited time, no one I ever played with falls under that guise.

Quote:

Aside from that, most of what you say of WoW is a bit of an exaggeration.

It's hardly much of an exaggeration if it's any at all, it's why I finally quit. When the most fun you're having for $15/month is fishing in a game because you don't have the time for the elite dungeons and development with the purely soloable/small party (i.e. 2) PvE stuff is moving slower than glaciers, you move on no matter how much you've spent on the game.

Quote:

I've known thousands of games like that (then again, I guess we all have different fixes). Are you saying that you've finally found an MMO without all the hurdles, grinds, etc.?

More or less, although the MMO part is merely icing that lets me play with friends easily. It's more the character based fantasy rpg where you run around and kill stuff and find loot. You give up the ability to find really rare, really powerful stuff for the ability to experience all of this with multiple characters and classes with a reasonable time investment for a fair price.

Fril Estelin · Dec 21, 2007, 10:46 AM // 10:46

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bryant Again

I wouldn't say unethical either, I'd just say kinda lame. But hey, ANet does the same. They do want to make a profit, after all.

I agree Gambit Shinobi that it's unethical (I even think that the monthly fees are a rip off, given all the years and the millions customer, I'm sure Blizzard could have lowered the fees for everyone, not just offer 6 months reduced fees). But since it's a question of ethics, you're also entitled to disagree and have a different ethic.

I much prefer Anet's approach of taking what's necessary, plus a margin. Of course, given the numbers you gave about how much you spent in WoW and GW, I perfectly understand your opinion. I know that in my case, the numbers also speak for themselves.

Another point quickly mentioned before: WoW offers more content than GW, but to the "casual" player (as if there was only one kind of people like this

, it does not make a difference because he will only access a small part of this. It's only interesting for serious/hardcore gamers (no semantics behind this, it's a question of amount of time "invested"). So overall, at the level of the whole gaming population, it does not make much sense to advertise your game as "bigger".

Fril Estelin · Dec 21, 2007, 10:51 AM // 10:51

Quote:

Originally Posted by Redfeather1975

And then they lead people to believe it costs 14.99 a month to both keep the servers running and pay for their expert design crew to create more shallow time sink based content.

I often thinks it's insulting to our intelligence.

Yeah, the problem is in the last two words: there's nothing like "our intelligence", there's yours and mine (well sort of, I'm not stupid but not trying to make people believe I'm smart too). A lot of people don't think when it comes to games, they may even compare paying 15$ a month for WoW to paying 15$ a month for your mobile contract and it seems like a good deal. Or they're so rich that intelligence doesn't matter (look at this story of a very powerfull WoW character sold for several dozens of thousands of dollars).

Sasuke The Betrayer · Dec 21, 2007, 11:46 AM // 11:46

Quote:

Originally Posted by Abnaxus

When we buy a new campaign or expansion, we buy "special moves" that in GW case are skills.
PvP players could stick to the "special moves" of one campaign forever, but this is not very likely. To stay competitive, it's more reasonable they buy all new "special moves" as soon as they become available with a new campaign/expansion.

Well, what if Anet decided to just add new content with no new heroes or skills. Everything from prophecies, merely new content. Players wouldn't be happy. Its something that simply can't be avoided, unless they give new skills as as an update. But then they wouldn't get their moneys worth from PvPers.

Mordakai · Dec 21, 2007, 03:21 PM // 15:21

Since GW2 will have Persistant areas, will that change their Business Model?

Paddywhack · Dec 21, 2007, 03:33 PM // 15:33

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mordakai

Since GW2 will have Persistant areas, will that change their Business Model?

They've said no, but I wouldn't be surprised to see some more incremental charges. It's a lot more expensive to maintain persistent world servers.

Regulus X · Dec 21, 2007, 03:48 PM // 15:48

The GW business model is in fact a rarity. However, it is indeed flawed in the sense that, after they've acquired our money, they can do virtually whatever they want without penalty of a subscription cancellation. They can lose profit off of players that forfeit playing the game in only one aspect: not purchasing their bonus products or future games (but what're the chances of that due to the game's highly-addictive nature by default?).

On that note, they can implement just about any update and get away with it. GWars1 is such a beautiful, well-constructed game that even those opposing anet's "communisitc" changes will go out and buy GWars2 immediately when it comes out just because of the player's addiction developed over the course of 2.5 years of playing.

Clarissa F · Dec 21, 2007, 04:03 PM // 16:03

Quote:

Originally Posted by Antheus

But people subscribe to services every day: water, electricity, internet, phone, television, car insurance - if you miss a payment on those, it's goodbye and good luck. And you don't even have a choice there.

Hmmm, the fact that you are comparing things which are real life necessities(electricity, water, transportation) to a game....

Thing is, that's what MMOs were designed to be. For them to be a success, they offer what a regular console game doesn't: immersion. You can join that world, and talk and play with others like you in this world. You become that character, and the games good at their job cause you to invest time in them.

For some people this is ok. You log on, play for an hour or two, then log off. For those OCD personalities out there, however, an hour or two isn't enough. They form a personal attachment to the game, like any other addiction, and get upset when "their game betrays them." Hell, you want to see addiction, just check out WoW or the Korean MMOs. Most of your game play is grind-grind-grind, yet people spend hours a day doing just that.

On topic, it was unique when it came out, but other games are starting to use this model. Looking at the model before and after GW came out, it showed that people were willing to pay out 50 dollars a year or so for sagas/expansions, and it allowed people to put down the game for as long as they wanted, knowing they didn't have to go through the hassle of starting up their subscription again when they started playing again(just wait for the hundreds of updates to DL, lol). That gives GW players a freedom others don't have. The fact that storyline is so much a part of the game allows an attraction for casual play, not just the grindfest that OCD-addled players crave.

If you do get tired of the game and move on, they still have the money they gained from the sale of the game, as opposed to losing a subscriber's 10-15 bucks a month.

Mordakai · Dec 21, 2007, 04:18 PM // 16:18

A better comparison would be WoW vs Cable TV.

If you spend $60 a month on cable, $15 a month for WoW won't kill you.

For me, I tried a demo of WoW and just couldn't get into it. I prefer Guild Wars. But there's nothing wrong with MMORPGS charging monthly, if people are willing to pay for it.

Now...

This argument that Anet somehow is free to ship out shoddy product is just flat wrong. If Anet did something to piss off a majority of players to the extent they quit, do you think they'd sell as many copies of GW2? No.

Instead of deciding to spend $15 a month, a GW consumer decides if they will spend $50 a year. It's different monetary amounts, and a different time frame, but the basic goal is still there: Customer satisfaction.

(and, to be sure, no company can please everyone.)

Bryant Again · Dec 21, 2007, 05:05 PM // 17:05

Quote:

Originally Posted by CHannum

Hardly when playing with adults with lives. Party wipes, you ressurect, run back and find, oh crap, everything is respawned, half the guys say goodnight and the other half soon does the same. Wiping only doesn't affect things when people have unlimited time, no one I ever played with falls under that guise.

If it's in an instance, it takes a long time for things to respawn. And if you're getting respawns, that means that you're probably not in a good group. In raids, if you whipe you can usually do the boss 3-4 times before you hit respawns. Bear in mind that the instances usually reset within a week, so you can kill a boss on Tuesday and come back and see the boss still dead along with all the monsters leading up to him.

That aside, I've never known of raids that quit so easily after one whipe. It's probably because they didn't last long. And everyone in my raids is over 18 (half of them are over 30.)

Quote:

Originally Posted by CHannum

It's hardly much of an exaggeration if it's any at all, it's why I finally quit

This:

Quote:

Originally Posted by CHannum

*snippet*...before you could move on past the initial allies quest and they'd have a series of two or three dungeons in each of the three quest branches that required 20 man teams and four dozen runs each to move to the next one.

I've never heard of in WoW.

Quote:

Originally Posted by CHannum

When the most fun you're having for $15/month is fishing in a game because you don't have the time for the elite dungeons and development with the purely soloable/small party (i.e. 2) PvE stuff is moving slower than glaciers, you move on no matter how much you've spent on the game.

WoW was built from the ground up to be a group and community oriented game, so the endgame isn't going to be terribly solo-friendly. Sure, you could farm materials for craftable armor/weapons or farm up to buy a big ridable dragon, but those are just a few things you can do.

It also does take a lot of time. I know of quite a few casual raiding guilds (I guess I would fit into those) that only do raids with two different groups 3-4 nights a week. But there are a lot more hardcore ones I know of that do it almost every night that they can.

Nonetheless, that's just how the game is. It doesn't fit with everyone, but there are other games out there, too.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Clarissa F

On topic, it was unique when it came out, but other games are starting to use this model. Looking at the model before and after GW came out, it showed that people were willing to pay out 50 dollars a year or so for sagas/expansions, and it allowed people to put down the game for as long as they wanted, knowing they didn't have to go through the hassle of starting up their subscription again when they started playing again(just wait for the hundreds of updates to DL, lol)

The only thing that's somewhat "unique" about it is that the expansion packs are standalone. Aside from that, we've been having expansion packs like this since...damn, Beyond the Dark Portal? What was the first expansion pack?

But still, it's no different than a successful RPG just getting more expansion packs. The only difference is that everyone's labeling GW an MMO.

Redfeather1975 · Dec 22, 2007, 04:32 AM // 04:32

Yeah, I don't remember having problems with respawns that much in WoW either.
But in Everquest 2....holy smokeronies.
It was full of them.
I found one raid instance that was really annoying.
http://www.raidwiki.org/wiki/index.p...aw_the_Ancient

gameguy · Dec 22, 2007, 05:09 AM // 05:09

GW business model really is unique let it go to hell qucikly on Taiwan,HK Server.

Only one way to buy GW is on NCtawian server.
First must buy "Gash" game coin.
Secend must change "Gash" game coin to "Ncoin" game coin
Then buy it (1,2,3 or GWEN) use 1300 "NCoin"

And NCTaiwan ban IP except IP in Taiwan,HK.

All Taiwan,hk GW player hope NCtaiwan go to hell^N quickly because New player listen to buy Gw hardly and no more want to play it.

What time Anet can leave NC??? No Taiwan,HK Gw player buy Taiwan,HK ver. GW2.

We all hate NCtaiwan

maraxusofk · Dec 22, 2007, 06:53 AM // 06:53

Quote:

Originally Posted by Abnaxus

Luckily, I don't have to complain much about the quality of their products, they created so far very good games, I give them A+ for this aspect. I like the basic concepts, level cap, game mechanics, 8 skill bar, no item-based, graphics, actually nearly everything.
But their marketing has always been horrible, and for me a product is a package of technical features (A+) and marketing (horrible), and I have no means to "punish" them for their horrible marketing approach.

well one of the best ways to market soemthing is through word of mouth. if anet marketing sux (watch their ad LOL) do it for them. thats hwo i try to help gw along.