Curse

Ard Wen · Nov 10, 2005, 05:43 PM // 17:43

I really like the fact that this game doesn't have a monthly fee, and really turned me onto online gaming. I know this is not the case for others. What makes this game different so as not to charge monthly fees? Why do to others charge a fee? What do you think the future holds in store for online gaming and monthly fees. Thats the only reason I don't play WoW.

D.E.V.i.A.N.C.E · Nov 10, 2005, 05:49 PM // 17:49

If its all client based; like Guild Wars can be(if you dont have the install disks)

game makers may have a monthly free; for all that bandwith people use up.

alot of people dont like games with STEAM... personally i really dont know what it is exactly; but a google search could tell me.
what I like about guild wars the most is NO CD; whoo no more CD check lag's
like Diablo 2 (spin up... spin down; make a new game; exit; spin up.... waiting..... spin down make a new game)

RTSFirebat · Nov 10, 2005, 06:28 PM // 18:28

Steam is a good system, streaming updates are use in this game all the time, a lot of people don't take note... you know that little yellow lighting bolt you see on the top right corner... that's a incoming update.

Major changes are made via patches...

STEAM has a bad rep due to it being very buggy in the early days and having poor bandwidth management. Making patching really annoying for some people.

Me... I used it for Half Life 2 and it worked wonders... never had any problems with Steam so I feel it works great, if a little slow sometimes, but bandwidth is limited.

If it wasn't for the Guild information, character storage and the towns the game could be full client based... but that is not the case.

Now others like World of Warcraft cost money since they are massive worlds with loads of people running about contantly, so bandwidth costs more money.

Pevil Lihatuh · Nov 10, 2005, 06:44 PM // 18:44

generally the pay to play ones have a bigger community than GW. The thing is, pay to play makes you play more often so you don't feel like you're wasting money. This means more players online more often, meaning they need to run more servers and have higher bandwidth. This is all expensive. They also tend to release fewer expansions than GW is hoping to do, because they don't need the money from it to be honest.

GW can get away with it because as you're not constantly paying, you won't constantly play, so their server loads will be less, plus IF they can bring out 2 expansion packs a year like they originally planned, there will be a lot of revenue from those to pay for the servers.

And they have lots of other pay to play games which will supplement it of course

Really its just a slightly more involved version of battle.net, Sacreds multiplayer, Counterstrike online... all these you don't have to pay for, and all these aren't constantly used by billions of players. Difference with those ones are they're singleplayer games as well, so if the company gets fed up they can take the servers down. GW can't until GW dies.

EternalTempest · Nov 10, 2005, 06:52 PM // 18:52

About Steam...

If you cheat or somehow you are flagged for violation (true or not true) you lose access to ALL your games. You have to hit the internet at least once to register steam and each time for any new games if there meant for offline or online play.

If you have an open connection it will try to communicate all your hardware specs, driver files etc including hard disk space.

Issue I had, I bought HL2 Plat in stores. Spend a long time installing the game from the dvd. Then spent 2+ hours for it to "verify / unlock" all my install files and I was required to have the dvd drive to play the game where someone who bought it via online could play w/o a disc. (this was latter corrected, I can play last time I fired it up w/o having the disc).

I have no problem for games that are online play / online only but I collect games (all the way back from dos).

When it came out, not sure if it got fixed. The back up & restore (so I can back up the most current updated game versions) was busted and had to redownload it from scratch.. not doing the dvd install anymore, web is quicker.

Any offline game that I buy I want to be able to play 5, 10 years from now and if value kicks the bucket I have to hack / warez the game I own if the steam system is no longer functioning.

opps.. sorry rant off

- It does seem to work correctly know so the only valid point left is the long term keeping the game if steam goes away.

Hanuman li Tosh · Nov 10, 2005, 08:45 PM // 20:45

Quote:

Originally Posted by RTSFirebat

Steam is a good system, streaming updates are use in this game all the time, a lot of people don't take note... you know that little yellow lighting bolt you see on the top right corner... that's a incoming update.

Major changes are made via patches...

STEAM has a bad rep due to it being very buggy in the early days and having poor bandwidth management. Making patching really annoying for some people.

Me... I used it for Half Life 2 and it worked wonders... never had any problems with Steam so I feel it works great, if a little slow sometimes, but bandwidth is limited.

If it wasn't for the Guild information, character storage and the towns the game could be full client based... but that is not the case.

Now others like World of Warcraft cost money since they are massive worlds with loads of people running about contantly, so bandwidth costs more money.

do you have any idea how much bandwidth costs? for 90 dollars a month an individual person with no bulk discounts can get a dedicated server on a 10mb/s with unlimited bandwidth. that would support at least 40 clients (for wow not GW and i am being way generous). 40 x 15 = 600 dollars for a 90 dollar connection. they are making way more money off the monthly fee than the game.

it costs anet 3 million per year to run its data centers, so 9 mil a year for everything. so right now its costing them about 9 bucks/client/year. there is no need to charge a monthly fee for that.

Omg Kthxbye · Nov 10, 2005, 09:06 PM // 21:06

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hanuman li Tosh

do you have any idea how much bandwidth costs? for 90 dollars a month an individual person with no bulk discounts can get a dedicated server on a 10mb/s with unlimited bandwidth. that would support at least 40 clients (for wow not GW and i am being way generous). 40 x 15 = 600 dollars for a 90 dollar connection. they are making way more money off the monthly fee than the game.

it costs anet 3 million per year to run its data centers, so 9 mil a year for everything. so right now its costing them about 9 bucks/client/year. there is no need to charge a monthly fee for that.

You are confused. I think you are talking about a WEBSERVER. Dedicated servers (especially ones with the necessary disk space to store game databases) are much more expensive.

http://servers.aplus.net/

Check that site out. $350 a month for a top of the line server (needed for a popular online game), which still has limited bandwith per month. It's $100 a month just for renting a cheapo Celeron server with capped monthly bandwidth. Webservers are cheap, but not powerful dedicated server which are needed to host a large online game.

You have also failed to consider MANY things when it comes to ANet's income. First of all, ANet doesn't get most of the money from game sales. They have to pay publishers, distributers, etc. It's like music artists, they only get a fraction of the money from album sales. Second, they have to pay employees to maintain the servers, keep them updated, and develop new material. ANet does not make much money from each unit sold.

What's the point? It's not cheap for them to host servers for this game, definitely not as cheap as you claim. So why can they continue to host it without a monthly fee? Because it is an instanced world. Persistant worlds take a LOT more server power and bandwidth than instanced worlds. So, while it still may be expensive, it's not as expensive as most other online games with persistant worlds, which is why ANet can continue to host it.

jules · Nov 10, 2005, 09:13 PM // 21:13

I'm pretty curious about how Anet profits from Guild Wars in spite of not charging monthly fees. They don't host adverts for other companies and only get paid a one off per customer. They have to pay developers, and quite a few members of staff not to mention maintaining servers and overheads etc etc..

Come on out you tech wizards and economics majors...

edit: oh wait I just read the post above mine.. still, if anyone can explain how they make money out of this I'm all ears.

Overnite · Nov 10, 2005, 10:22 PM // 22:22

The reason why GW doesn't have monthly fees is because it's instanced. Instances allow to greatly reduce the client-server traffic, therefore reducing the upkeep costs.

There have been quite a few posts where the posters wanted "more people outside of the towns". This is not going to happen for a simple reason: instanced areas keep the game free.

Ard Wen · Nov 10, 2005, 10:28 PM // 22:28

Not playing any other online RPG, what is instanced?

Omg Kthxbye · Nov 10, 2005, 10:48 PM // 22:48

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ard Wen

Not playing any other online RPG, what is instanced?

When you go into a portal and the only other players there are people in your party.

A persistant world is one like WoW, where the entire map is live with other players.

Mimi Miyagi · Nov 10, 2005, 10:51 PM // 22:51

Instanced is how GW (or Diablo, to name another one) deals with the players on their servers.

Normal MMORPGs have a virtual world, where when you're playing either alone, or in a group, can see every other player in your area that are on the same server. Thus, in WoW, for example, you could see thousands of different players running around fighting monsters. In GW, when you leave town, you and your party are given their own "instance" of the game. You can't see other players, or other groups. The world is the same every time you leave town, with the same monsters int he same place moving in the same direction.

Pevil Lihatuh · Nov 10, 2005, 10:58 PM // 22:58

well WoW is half n half. Most of it is persistant, dungeons are instanced. But yes, things like Ultima Online or Asherons Call are just a world, one world, with millions of people running round in it.

Hanuman li Tosh · Nov 10, 2005, 10:59 PM // 22:59

Quote:

Originally Posted by Omg Kthxbye

You are confused. I think you are talking about a WEBSERVER. Dedicated servers (especially ones with the necessary disk space to store game databases) are much more expensive.

http://servers.aplus.net/

Check that site out. $350 a month for a top of the line server (needed for a popular online game), which still has limited bandwith per month. It's $100 a month just for renting a cheapo Celeron server with capped monthly bandwidth. Webservers are cheap, but not powerful dedicated server which are needed to host a large online game.

You have also failed to consider MANY things when it comes to ANet's income. First of all, ANet doesn't get most of the money from game sales. They have to pay publishers, distributers, etc. It's like music artists, they only get a fraction of the money from album sales. Second, they have to pay employees to maintain the servers, keep them updated, and develop new material. ANet does not make much money from each unit sold.

What's the point? It's not cheap for them to host servers for this game, definitely not as cheap as you claim. So why can they continue to host it without a monthly fee? Because it is an instanced world. Persistant worlds take a LOT more server power and bandwidth than instanced worlds. So, while it still may be expensive, it's not as expensive as most other online games with persistant worlds, which is why ANet can continue to host it.

no, i know exactly what im talking about. nocster offers dedicated servers for 90 bucks a month on a 10mb/s connection. just because you cant find it doesent mean it dont exist.

Omg Kthxbye · Nov 10, 2005, 11:23 PM // 23:23

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hanuman li Tosh

no, i know exactly what im talking about. nocster offers dedicated servers for 90 bucks a month on a 10mb/s connection. just because you cant find it doesent mean it dont exist.

A company such as ANet hosting a major online game is not going to buy personal dedicated servers with a tiny 10Mbit pipe. The types of servers you are talking about are for CS clans that want to host their own servers. ANet needs a much more powerful and much more expensive hosting solution. It costs a lot more than 9 bucks a year per person to host their servers.

Hanuman li Tosh · Nov 10, 2005, 11:48 PM // 23:48

well, there are 1 million people with anet accounts, and ncsoft released the cost of the 3 datacenters as 3 mil each per year. so that comes out to 9 bucks a head according to the numbers they released. if you know more about running their datacenters than they do then you are right. but according to them its 9 dollars a year/person.

Omg Kthxbye · Nov 11, 2005, 12:29 AM // 00:29

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hanuman li Tosh

well, there are 1 million people with anet accounts, and ncsoft released the cost of the 3 datacenters as 3 mil each per year. so that comes out to 9 bucks a head according to the numbers they released. if you know more about running their datacenters than they do then you are right. but according to them its 9 dollars a year/person.

I would be interested to know the details of the report. First of all, the datacenters have not been in full prodcution for a year. Guild Wars was release April 28th, that's only about 7 months. The beta weekends ran before that, but that's not nearly the load that full release brings. So this number must be projected. Also, was that number for total cost, bandwidth, server power? Seems too cheap to me for full cost.

BurningPants · Nov 11, 2005, 12:38 AM // 00:38

In the end though it all comes down to the customer. Who knows, if the Guild Wars experiment turns out to be a success then we may not see as many monthly fees for the next generatin of MMORPGs (CORPG to make you people happy).

Of course with the success that WoW is right now, I doubt thats going to be the case. I would defintley be into WoW if it wasn't the monthly fee issue, I just dont have that kind of money to piss away on a video game. But if the companies can just slap a brand name onto any monthly fee MMORPG then people are probably gonna buy it.

Oh well, join the monthly fee boycott and only buy games that you only have to pay once for.

EternalTempest · Nov 11, 2005, 12:47 AM // 00:47

Not only that, NCSoft (there publisher - City Of Villains, City of Heroes and some others) may be paying for things as well from profit from there other paid online games or using from the same servers not buying all new but getting at cheaper price, expansion of there systems just for GW.

GW was highly optimized to use as little bandwidth as possible to play the game, one of the reasons why modem dial up users can play ok on this game. They also sold more then a million accounts below there expected target date to reach it. Once chapter 2 comes out you will have a flood of new sales from new players and existing players who still play.

germanturkey · Nov 11, 2005, 01:28 AM // 01:28

the only downside i can see to GW i the lack of the ability to raid.. thats one of the staples of MMORPGs, but you know, i don't really care about that.

i thought it would be really interesting if there was something like FFXI's land claim system. where you could fight certain things and make gains for your country. like, for guild wars, it would be, your guild could serve under the nation, and the map would be constantly changing because guilds would fight for their nations and make gains. but of course, the nation assignments would be random to make it fair... but thats a problem too. its hard to do. but if its done right, its excellent

btw, SOE (sony online entertainment) is taking a leaf out of GW's book and releasing MMORPGs next year that don't require a subscription fee