Is GW business model really unique?

I would like to quote this from the GamersGlobal article:

Despite the fact that A.net representatives claim their busines model to be "unique", they actually use both the mentioned systems.

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.

Luckily, GW is not equipment based. Anyway, to some extent heroes can be considered "better equipment" compared to normal henchies.
And with inscriptions, we bought the possibility to get "better equipment" - althought only marginally better because equipment again counts very little (luckily) - in an easier way compared to Prophecies and Factions.

So basically they sell the same things, together with new "maps" to play (missions and dungeons).

And they charge it on a regular basis: provided that they're able to supply a new campaign/expansion every six months, we pay them twice per year in advance, instead of monthly, to get the "special moves", the "better equipment" and the new maps.


So I would say that their business model is a mix of the two, presented in a very intelligent way to hide the fact that is essentially the same.


After more than 2 years playing GW, I start to dislike this model.
The main reason is that once I've given them my money, I lose my "customer power" against them.
If they take some technical or marketing decision I disagree with, I have no way to "punish" them for that.

Let me explain the meaning of the word "punish": I use it in a commercial context, referred to a customer-supplier relationship.

In my job, I deal with suppliers of my company.
If a supplier fails in something, like for instance they don't respect the delivery time, or their product doesn't comply to what agreed, or they start to have marketing policies I don't consider correct, I can "punish" them stopping the payment of invoices, charging them economical penalities and so on, to force them to respect the contractual obligations, or to give a better service to my company.

I do this in the interest of the company I work for, and I don't enjoy if this happens, this means that there are anyway troubles to manage. It's much much better when I'm completely satisfied.

This is what I call customer's power. Suppliers need customer's money, and this is used in every correct commercial relationship to make them work better. It's the basics of business.


With the current GW business model, once I've given my money to the supplier, they can do whatever they want, I have no means to force them to do what I want.
If the game was subscription based, in case I disagree with some of their decisions I could send them an email explaining my disappointment and stop the payments.
Although minimal, this would be anyway a loss of income. If thousands of players did the same, they would be more willing to rethink something.
This would be a more balanced commercial relationship. The current one is unbalanced.


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.


For the reasons above, I'd prefer GW2 to be subscription based.

you can "punish" them by not buying products off them in the future.

like pretty much EVERYTHING in the real world....:s

Jeff said he hopes all business models are used not just GW's.

Yes GW uses both a cash shop (online store) and it's current selling pont.
One time payment Console game fee.

I'd say thats more unique.
Just because something else exists....

Also most online stores in games have their items only last for about a month!

But unlike canceling subscription, they wont notice that you are rebelling and "punishing" them for several months/years.

Subscription cancel has immediate effect: obvious lost customer. Company has immediate feedback.

What gets anet? few flames on forums, no reall "o crap were loosing people" feedback, and once qq is over they can hype next campaign and get most of those "i quit!" people back.

With subscription, you ask your customer every month to decide whether is worth it to continue p(l)aying same old game. With gw they ask you every year whether you would like this cool new thing. Its just much easier for gw to retain its customer base because they never have to ask their customers "YEA/NAY" question hard way.

The current business model + more frequent skill updates = Win

i disagree.

sure in the p2p model they get immediate feedback but is there an immediate analysis of said feedback? by the time they get round to "fixing" their "problem" its already too late and they will have lost their customers, whats more do you really want a company who's too affraid to innovate or change some feature (that they feel would improve the game) because of what a percentage of the playerbase MIGHT possibly react to, OR a company who has nothing but kneejerk reactions to whatever "feedback" they receive.

Looking at other MMORPG games the typical reaction is usually "lets not take any risks". The end result is always more of the same old same old.


in the GW model they are obliged to do a good job or people will not buy their next product. Whats more using gaming magazines and reading reviews are PART of what buying a game is about.

I think that other thread "we are beta testing GW2" summed it up pretty nicely, not only are we testing the game mechanics but also their business model and player evolution.

When GW2 comes out i will carefully look for the things that i wanted changed in GW1 as well as the things i felt that should have stayed the same.
Ill read reviews and make my own decision based on what GW1 provided me and Anets treatment of the game was like.

I bet i will not be the only one either. THEN Anet will get their just reward.

The downside to Anets current business model, is that in order to get constant income, they need to sell games. This means that until they bring out a new chapter, they are basically just spending the money from the last one. Which means that they aren't able to hire as many staff as they would if they had subscriptions, because the money is simply not there. Yes, they profit from their games, but it's all at once.

On the whole, this business model is bad, because it relies on Anet releasing new content every 6 months, which doesn't always make the players happy. I only hope they see the light and make GW2 subscription, but make it better than GW1 by spending money on constant skill updates/etc.

So instead of simply not buying any more games if you don't like something in them, you'd cancel your subscription everytime there is something you don't like and then resubscribe if they change it?

Addiction is one roller coaster ride of emotion.

GW has (apparently) around 1 million players currently active. If those players were paying even $10 a month on a subscription (which is the same as a chapter every 6 months), it would give Anet constant income, which would allow them to concentrate on bigger and better expansions, rather than one every 6 months. It would also mean that they would get money every month, as well as selling the expansions, which would be even more.

It's silly NOT to have subscriptions, tbh.

Thing is, is breaking working game (even with best intentions bad things happen) worth innovation or trying out new stuff?

IMO its better to innovate per product rather than per patch. Mostly because several different products allow you to go in radically different directions and/or approach problem differently.

If you stick with one innovative game, you cant really try different things since you are tied up by its design. And whats worse, if you try different concepts despite that, you loose possible feedback on longevity and durability of previous design.

What i am basically trying to get across is that its better to create game on fresh new idea and stay true to it and try out new ideas and experiments in separate new and innovative games.

(MMOs are mostly same of the old thing because they were designed that way from day 1 rather than because devs are unwilling to take risks later on when game is live.)

I have yet to play a p2p online rpg where people did not start complaining that there wasn't anything left to do before another expansion came out. Despite the game being designed with grind elements to artificially inflate the content's longevitiy.

Even in WoW I'd see 'I'm bored', and 'What is there left to do besides grind <blank>' threads only months after a new expansion was released.
The problem isn't with not having enough income to produce more content, it's that there are very sick people out there who buy a online rpg and expect that game will exclusively occupy a chunk of their life constantly and consistently to no end.
That behavioural disorder often leads to people threatening to quit and never come back when the game deviates from consistently rewarding their playtime in any way.
Yet, they simply don't walk away. Nor can they quietly leave and play something else in the meantime, if it was simply a matter of having nothing left to do. It's one of the most distinctive signs of addiction.

p2p means quitting is not being able to play ever again without paying a lump sum fee. Non-p2p means you are free to come and go as you wish, for as long or short as you wish.
The p2p model fuels addictive behaviour and is often criticized for such.

I have a problem with paying for a game, and then paying to play it. Period. One or the other, not both.

Even then, it depends on the subscription. I think WoW is too expensive. I can't see anybody who earns their own money paying that fee monthly.

Most people who play mmorpgs with a subscription are paying through their own income. The average age of EQ2 players in the 30s.
I knew players who played every day for hours, despite having a family and full time job.
They'd joke about their spouses giving them allowance time to play, but I thought it was horrible and no joking matter.

If people haven't guessed from my posts so far, I feel that the popular mmorpg model is quite unethical.

Beggars can't be choosers.

Majority of GW population can hardly afford the game as it is. If they could, they'd be playing subscription games.

This is the secret of GW's success (not balance, skill, graphics, etc...).

Why is Runescape so popular, and has playerbase larger than WoW? Not because it's so bitchin' good - it's free.

You live in a strange, fictional world. You never have power against a company - subscriptions are velvet rope, that have been studied extensively when EQ came out. They make players believe they matter. Well, they don't. It's just a little thing they give you to make you feel in charge - but they operate just like any other company.

Ever heard the phrase: "I'm going to take my business to competition!"? Well, the company people will laugh at you, and wait until you come back, once you realize grass isn't greener on the other side.

There's a reason people play one game or another. Either they like it so much, they don't want to play anything else (even if they threaten to quit), or they can't afford another one.

So people can threaten to rage quit all day long... It's merely added fun factor.

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.

No kidding. MMOs are engineered to be addictive, its basis of their business model. There is no way anyone giving it thought can consider that ethical.

Only difference between gw model and their is that traditional mmo can be likened to "hard drugs" where GW can be compared to soft drugs - not really much better for user, but less stigmatized and more accessible. But becoming drunkard can ruin your like just as easily as being coke head, and its kinda more common too.

I'm talking about the popular mmorpg design, where being rewarded is the incentive to invest time in the game. Where the game is designed so that every subsequent reward requires a greater investment of time and canceling is designed to appear as a loss of all time invested.

Imagine if your electricity company kept giving you free goodies, but if you canceled your plan and switched electric companies, you have to return every goodie you got...until you changed back to that company.

One thing I can agree on is poor marketing. I suppose you have to blame NC Soft for that.

You've done little but make a case by defining things in the most vague, worthless sense. Comparing a hero that you, at most, finish a usually trivial quest to unlock with a game design like WoW's that makes a group of 40 people play the same dozen dungeons several dozen times (i.e. hundreds of runs collectively) so that some of them will be lucky enough to walk away with something to show for it is specious on the face of it (and this is just so they can move onto the next tier of doing the same stuff). Even more specious is comparing providing an entire new storyline's worth of content to play through to a direct sale of skills, which, although they do, is strictly for the PvP side of things and VERY discounted (not to mention, a very recent addition to the sales model).

The difference between a subscription based and the pay-once, play all you want is the difference between a developer that has to "addict" you to his product and a developer that has to provided enough compelling new content to convince you to pay again. In other words, no thanks. With a sub based model, all they have to do is put you in the position of liking the game enough that you don't want to lose everything - it's an all or nothing proposal that makes the game devs into hostage takers of your characters who only need keep you satisfied enough to keep the ransome payments coming. In the GW model, they have to contend with the fact that you'll never have to pay them after the initial purchase - the very model is based on the idea of a purely voluntary parting of the money. Your characters and your goods are yours for so long as they keep the servers running. They must design with the expectation that the only people who will pay for the content are those that actually want it, so they need to make you want it. Contrast this with the example of the vast majority of development of new content in WoW going to endgame raids. Content that is not coincidentally a massive time sink, but also only appealing to a relatively small subsegment of the player population who, also not coincidentally, are the segment so married to their toons that as long as they have some notion of improving will keep on forking over the cash.

One only need look at what GW added in the time since its launch compared to something like WoW to see where the difference in sales model drives developers. In two years time, the only significant PvE content added for the casual player was the burning crusade expansion, of which the majority still requires you to be a high level, end game style grinder to access. Yes, the casual players finally got tossed a bone in the form of new starting areas and quests, but, once all is said and done, it still breaks down to the same game Blizzard shipped in the end of 2004. Compare this to GW that in less time added two complete storyline's of content for players to experience AND managed to get out an endgame style expansion for those that enjoy that side of things. You can argue the quality and value of each of the expansions, but you can't argue that it's more new content served up for less money.

There are trade offs in the two game design and sales models, and they're both great games with great developers behind them, but one sales model keeps the developers committed to the casual audience and one doesn't.

My main problem with their business model is it forces them to work on the next project right away when some of their current ones still need a lot of fixing.

Can you people stop the QQ please, and if you're bored with GW try out another game, or maybe real life?

These threads end up being like you're discussing world economics. Let them do their thing, it's original and works well, the only issue people have right now is having nothing more to do in the game (which is quite expected after so many years the game was out - it lasted longer than most mmos, and yet charged you less for it), and that's what's fueling the pointless drama threads.

Seriously...