Rethink Your Strategy

[Sorann Peace.9056]

> @"Adry.7512" said:

> Arenanet needs to understand that they need a better strategy for making money. I say this game needs a membership option. Now stop your crying, I don’t mean something like runescape or WoW, I mean something a bit more fair. For example, members have access to all expansions without needing to pay them, they have unlimited transmutation charges, all LW content without needing to log in, XP boost, Karma boost, etc. So of course if you cancel the membership then these features go away. For example, you’re a member and you finished POF, and then you cancel membership, you get to keep progress (armor, professions) but get locked out of the maps and content not yet obtained. So I believe that membership should be there, not as a big advantage, but as the ultimate convenience option. This way, Arenanet can FAIRLY have another method of cashing in. It’s super doable and not unfair in any way.

>

> Of course other features could be added, like full access to certain gem store items, or a discount on some gem store items. It’s very easy to implement and it will add an entire new line of currency for Arenanet, which would produce consistent numbers every quarter.

>

> We can change our minds on a gem store item, but we probably won’t want to go through the trouble of cancelling a fair and rewarding membership.

 

Guild Wars as a franchise has always been buy-to-play. This has been true since Guild Wars: Prophecies released back in 2005. The very notion of adding a subscription represents a betrayal of one of the franchise's core tenets: You buy. You play. I think many players would quit over such a change, including myself. I've been with this franchise since 2008 when Guild Wars: Eye of the North was still relevant. The amount of revenue they could stand to lose from the outcry has the potential to easily outweigh any additional money they get from a subscription fee.

 

There's a reason why China's membership fee (which is optional, just like the idea you describe) doesn't exist on the NA/EU version of the game. I'd wager a guess that it's because ArenaNet knows how the community would respond. When that thing was implemented over on the Chinese client, people were already up in arms for a bit out of fear that it could spread to our version of the game. While that fear has long since been quelled, nothing would do more to reignite it than to announce that they're adding something similar over here. Your idea is bad, as it fails to accurately assess the consequences. You might be right, that mathematically, it should create more revenue. But this only works if the player base sticks around to pay that fee. Spoiler alert: They won't.

 

I type all this as someone who could actually afford a subscription fee, by the way. I already pay one for World of Warcraft. But that's WoW, and what I expect from WoW is different from what I expect out of Guild Wars 2. If a fee was added here, I'd leave for symbolic reasons if nothing else.

 

TL;DR - If implemented, a membership fee could kill the game even if it was optional.

[JDub.1530]

> @"Adry.7512" said:

> Now stop your crying

 

You lost me here

 

[Rod.6581]

No!

/15chars

[Balsa.3951]

ppl who cry for memberships are mostly regular gem buyer who now want an discount on furniture gem purchases. Anet can over think to give regular buyers a tiny gift like an dye or an bl key that’s fine.

 

To a membership hmmm so long they can’t get anything what I can not buy as well from the gemshop and membership is a gemshop only than fine with me

[zionophir.6845]

Lots of hyped Games throughout the years, which were based on subs and even changed their strategies to maximize their profits, have died.

 

And Guild Wars 1 servers are still up.

 

So is it all about the money?

 

Or is it all about the Illuminati?

[lokh.2695]

The day GW2 goes sub based is the day I uninstall.

 

Also free to play games with a gemshop can make more money than sub based games. That's just a fact proven by many games that went there. Think about it. If 100 players pay 10$ per month, the amount of income is cap'd at 1000$. Now if you give those 100 players the choice of spending how much they see fit, there is no cap. Sure, some won't spend anything close to that 10$ fee but others are likely to sink hundreds or even thousands of dollars into your game. A dev can chose how much they incentivise you using your wallet and Anet has done a good job at keeping it "fair" in GW2, meaning next to no P2W stuff(the glyphs, giving you more gold and the permanent extractor beeing the only ones that come to mind, but I don't count them as much as gold is not a big thing in GW2 unless you want the most expensive COSMETIC items like infusions, legendaries or other skins. You don't need those to play the game or to compete with other players in terms of stats) or buyable advantages. They always went with the P2Convenience option and did a great job at it so far.

[Neural.1824]

> @"Trise.2865" said:

> > @"Turkeyspit.3965" said:

> > > @"Adry.7512" said:

> > > Arenanet needs to understand that they need a better strategy for making money.

> >

> > According to whom? It's a 6+ year old (now) free to play game that still posts a profit every quarter. What are you trying to fix, exactly?

>

> If I might add to this: It's not merely posting profits, but posting *significant* profits. In fact, according to the recent financial reports, Guild Wars 2 has far surpassed well-entrenched subscription Lineage 2 as NCSoft's top-earning MMO property. Only the amalgamated clump of NCSoft Mobile games (of which there are a great many) earned more, and I'd be willing to wager no single Mobile game outperformed either of them. Guild Wars 2 is quite possibly the strongest business model NCSoft has.

 

Source?

 

 

[Ryou.2398]

> @"Pomdepin.7068" said:

> You have to understand that à subscription fee will not work on GW2 which is leaning towards more casual players.

>

> I got into GW2 because it was B2P and I would go away as soon as it gets a sub, probably like many others.

>

> Plus we already are starving for new things, so limiting the content to all non-sub players would sign the death of the game.

>

> Maybe if they were putting interesting items only purchasable through real money instead of gems, and at a fair price (2k gems for a mount skin, chairs, really?...), they would make more money.

 

This, if there is any hope for the game really it comes down to more variety in builds and etc that feel powerful enough.

[Emprer.7256]

If anything needs changes it'd be their marketing strategy.

[Adul.1520]

> @"Emprer.7256" said:

> If anything needs changes it'd be their marketing strategy.

 

That, and their capacity for retaining existing players. In other words, they need more and/or larger content releases. A new expansion. People leave when they have nothing to play.