GuildWars?

[Escape]

If there's too much lag, they'll only need to add some more servers to the cluster, afaik. From the beta event last year, there were something like 80 instances of the same zone. I'd guess each is on a different server, so if one is lagging/offline, you can jump to another.

The expansions will add new races, spells, items, quests etc. No doubt each one will have an overpowered race + spells making the purchase essential for hardcore players. This will give them a regular income and as new areas can be streamed to the client, you'll probably only need to purchase the CD-Key online, without downloading the whole expansion.

Revenue shouldn't be an issue so long as the management stays dedicated to supporting Guild Wars. How much of the income from DAoC do you think has been spent on Imperator?

 

[Shanaia]

d0000m d000000000ooo00000m

surely this will kill daoc :<

do0o0o0o0oooo0000m

oh and

d0000000000m

Tried GW in beta and had fun but it didn't give me the 'oh I have to try that and that and that and that' feeling that WoW did for a while and doac still gives me...

 

[cHodAX]

allthough the server stability in the beta weekends were pretty good there really werent THAT many playing it so the system load wasent very high.

Eh? Open beta in October had over 100k people online at one point, yes it was laggy but it was unoptimised code and I am sure they will have a better server setup for retail. I have concerns myself about how they will make enough funds to be viable but if the game is a hit then I see no problems, less than 150k people could be a real problem though as that would not be enough money to keep the game going more than a year with the current funding plan.

 

[Fana]

I have concerns myself about how they will make enough funds to be viable but if the game is a hit then I see no problems, less than 150k people could be a real problem though as that would not be enough money to keep the game going more than a year with the current funding plan.

Guess they could always scale down on the number of servers in the cluster if there arent enough people playing, since there will not be a great need for a large cluster then anyway. And i think i read that the expansions will be fairly frequent (something like one every quarter etc) almost equating to a periodic fee if your hooked on the game (since you will then want the expansion content).

They have likely had market analysts look over their buisness model and found that its at least worth a try, otherwise im sure they would have gone with a standard monthly fee

 

[Shanaia]

They have likely had market analysts look over their buisness model and found that its at least worth a try, otherwise im sure they would have gone with a standard monthly fee

you'd be surprised

 

[Thorwyn]

A good percentage of market analysts in the gaming industry are as good as the wise women in that tent that´s looking into a glass orb.
Look at the insane ammount of titles that should never had made their way to the stores. And look at the money and time that´s being dumped into all kind of MMORPG projects... games that are cancelled beore they even reach beta state, let alone release.

The problem with Guild Wars is, that it´s absolutely unclear how much money you´ll have to spend in order to play it. The marketing strategy is quite clever there, they´re charging money for the copies (and they WILL release a steady ammount of expansions and of course you need to buy all the expansions in oder to stay competitive), and - at the same time - they´re avoiding the service aspect of a MMORPG like DAOC, WoW or EQ.

 

[DocWolfe]

cHo stop trolling

 

[Ctuchik]

And i think i read that the expansions will be fairly frequent (something like one every quarter etc) almost equating to a periodic fee if your hooked on the game (since you will then want the expansion content).

ahaa ok.. and i bet that the cost of those "expansions" will be the same for about 3 months worth of sub on any of the regular mmorpg's...


very clever. they go out and brag that the game have no subs but wont mention that the cost of the expansions will most likly make up for that one.

so in the end u still pay a monthly fee (or in this case, a quarter fee wich devided by 3 will be a normal month sub) if ur that hooked in the game that u want the ex packs.

*shrug* and here i was hoping they would be honest, guess not.

 

[gervaise]

I can remember reading the press release from SoE in March last year and what staggered me was the churn. 420,000 palyers and the churn was staggering - from memory 40-50%. So if they sell enough copies to a) give them a start and then continue to attract new customers - presumably using the expansion packs as advertising? then it may work. Especially if they plan to allow people to download the new content.

 

[Javai]

Even if the expansion packs DO work out the same as the monthly subs to other games it's likely to be an attractive way to do it. If you really love the game and want all the expansion packs then you'd also have been happy to pay monthly subs for it but if you want to play on a more causal basis then you don't have to buy expansion packs at the time of release or indeed at all. And its not as if the games with monthly subs make their expansion packs free

 

[old.Tohtori]

With buayble(optional) add-ons you also pay for content. In DAoC as an example, you don't get monthly new items, dungeons, whatnot with every payment you make.

But with Guildwars, you actually pay if you want more stuff ingame.

 

[Thorwyn]

interesting read about the future of MMORPG`s

http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=58652

 

[cHodAX]

ahaa ok.. and i bet that the cost of those "expansions" will be the same for about 3 months worth of sub on any of the regular mmorpg's...


very clever. they go out and brag that the game have no subs but wont mention that the cost of the expansions will most likly make up for that one.

so in the end u still pay a monthly fee (or in this case, a quarter fee wich devided by 3 will be a normal month sub) if ur that hooked in the game that u want the ex packs.

*shrug* and here i was hoping they would be honest, guess not.

They have said that there will be 2 expansions a year, possibly 3. They will probably cost around $25 which equates to about £15 which works out much cheaper than any MMORPG and they will make alot of money off those expansions because they will be sold online and streamed to the client which means no money lost on distribution and retail. Now ask GOA how much money they made per copy of Catacombs, it will be vitually nil and that is for two reasons. Firstly retail and distribution costs take a huge bite out of the £20 your average expansion costs, secondly GOA's main income is from subs so all they really need to make back from the box is advertising costs. GuildWars will get almost 100% of the expansion revenue, their only cost is the bandwidth to stream the data to the client which is pennies.

Now work this out, 3 x £15 expansions a year = £45 which is less than half the cost of any other major MMORPG. ArenaNet have a very interesting buisness model, it is a risk but if it pays off (200k+ players) then money to fund the servers and services will not be an issue.

 

[cHodAX]

cHo stop trolling

Hush child!

 

[cHodAX]

With buayble(optional) add-ons you also pay for content. In DAoC as an example, you don't get monthly new items, dungeons, whatnot with every payment you make.

But with Guildwars, you actually pay if you want more stuff ingame.

90% correct, there will be some free content but generally yes if you want the new zones and items you have to buy expansions, however if you just want a casual game to play now and then it works too because you don't really need to expansions to jump online for a half dozen hours a week and run around the arenas. People say that you can't compete if you don't have the best items, that is very misleading as GuildWars is much less reliant on items and much more based on skill. Ask anyone who played the beta and did PvP in the arenas, GuildWars is very much skill based, think DAoC RvR crossed with Plantside and you have something close. Matt Firor recently did a blog on GuildWars and he expressed concerns about how that will work but he did say that it will be interesting to see how it turns out.

 

[Mikah75]

..

so when u preorder Guild Wars do u just get a email with the beta keys in after a while? I preordered it but nothing yet

 

[Dwali]

u get a cd with the client and a key thn they send u the game when its released

 

[Mikah75]

..

oh:< so if i preordered thursday night, doubt im going to play:'(

 

[Mikah75]

..

anychance anyone has a spare friend Key i could have if theyr not using:<?

 

[Escape]

The game was released last week and it's worth trying out, imo!
I made a little movie to show what the PvP is like in the basic arena(2x groups of 4 players)

You can roll instant level-20 characters(highest level) and try out the PvP arena. The skills available to these characters are very limited(about 10% of the total available). To unlock the other skills, you need to level up a character from lv1 and go through the missions, etc...

You can take your instant-level20 characters to the Tournment arena too, where the PvP is a little more complex(5x groups of 8 players). The groups fighting here are from all three regions(EU, US and Korea) Though I haven't explored much of the tournment PvP, I think when a region's group has a string of victories, that region gains a status which opens high level PvE areas...

 

[Gamah]

GW is amazing, graphics are awesome and the PvP is great, still not as complex as daoc rvr but good fun and with no monthly subs theres no reason why you cant split your time between the two.

 

[Teslacoil]

tried it today...and boy it sucked big time.....what pvp system ? there wasn't any ! only boring shite...

 

[Raven]

looks realy bad from that vid, no wonder they slipped it out before review.

 

[lolblows00]

From the people that gave it a bad review, I'm assuming your the gamer who loves to put 600000 hours into farming for an artifact then killing a player because you have better gear. Guild wars is great and the expansions are comming out every 6-9 months so thats only 1 a year basically so its not even like its going to cost that much. Many of you should read up on it before flaming the game. The pvp is a lot more skill orientated then Daoc or WoW. I don't have to have the godliest items that take 3 years to get to be good at pvp and for those daoc users, I don't need an extra program to make a template around fricking armor. yea go Loki! Anyway, great game, extremely well done and for those who don't know, guildwars is made by the original blizzard team that made B.net, diablo starcraftm warcraft 2 -3 etc, they left blizzard due to disagrements and came together and made areanet, now those of you who thought WoW would be much better and it wasn't, now you know why, the original team left =). Guildwars is an amazing game, and I'm not saying you should all love it, but if you come here to just say how much it sucks, maybe have some notes or something to back your opinion up with =). Guild Wars is a great game and is redefining how games are played

P.S. Guild wars is not an MMORPG so to try and really compare it to DAOC and WoW is completely impossible and those who keep trying to make this distinction are complete idiots. Its more of a CORPG (competitive online role playing game) Thanks.

 

[Gamah]

I'm the kind of gamer who likes paragraphs!

 

[lolblows00]

this isn't an essay. and since i stayed on the same topic in the whole paragraph, there was no need to break for a new one.



:wub:



hows that, always have to comment on things that have nothing to do with the intial topic =(.

 

[Gamah]

this isn't an essay. and since i stayed on the same topic in the whole paragraph, there was no need to break for a new one.



:wub:



hows that, always have to comment on things that have nothing to do with the intial topic =(.

Thats fantastic, I enjoy a challenge trying to read things.

 

[Chronictank]

tried it today...and boy it sucked big time.....what pvp system ? there wasn't any ! only boring shite...

erm..
play it first then comment ty

the quickest way to pvp is to click the big ass icon which says pvp instead of roleplay mode..


Loved it personally so far, graphics are awesome and the game generally looks like things have actually been thought over more than 5 mins. Every training path is recieved through quests (like in WoW), the AI was unbelievable they actually assist, rez, heal and all the usual tricks you would expect from a player. Most quests are instanced so you dont have to wait for spawn timers and people grabbing mobs before you get them. There is no downtime as they have made regen very fast when your party are out of combat.
I loved my first quest when the NPC i talked to all of a sudden starts screaming the town is under attack and mobs start storming the small outpost and you gota help to save it. The NPC are of a level where they can actually die if they are put up against too many mobs so you have to help or lose the quest.

There is collision detection so you cant run through people to fumble spells you actually have to walk around. There is no /assist so people actually have to aim.

Things i didnt like, the quickbar cant be changed when you are in an arena or outside a city so what you set is what you got.

 

[Escape]

Things i didnt like, the quickbar cant be changed when you are in an arena or outside a city so what you set is what you got.

That's one of the best things about the PvP, it adds alot more strategy this way. Else you'd end up with certain classes having too much utility, like in DAoC(i.e. Cleric Vs Druid Vs Healer).

A Ranger/Mesmer with all of his skills would be a serious interrupt machine!
But limited to 8 skills, he's no more overpowered than any other build

 

[Gamah]

That's one of the best things about the PvP, it adds alot more strategy this way. Else you'd end up with certain classes having too much utility, like in DAoC(i.e. Cleric Vs Druid Vs Healer).

A Ranger/Mesmer with all of his skills would be a serious interrupt machine!
But limited to 8 skills, he's no more overpowered than any other build

I got a ranger/mesmer I think it sucks :<..gonna respec to ranger/ele <3