Guild Wars 2 will solve this problem in two ways. This means that, while the expansion is mouthwatering and appetizing to new gamers, these will be discouraged by the double amount they have to pay. While you have to of course pay for the expansion, you will also have to buy the base game if they haven't done so before. While the game did have options for in-app purchases, those are non-essential benefits and can even be purchased using in-game gold instead of real-world money.Įxpansions, especially a major one like the Heart of Thorns, present a slight logistics problem for games with this model. No monthly fees, no gated content behind paywalls. You only needed to buy the Guild Wars box once and that's it. When Guild Wars 2 launched 3 years ago, and the original Guild Wars almost a decade ago, the MMORPG brought a surprising new business model to a market that was filled with subscriptions as well as is now called, sometimes derisively, as "freemium" business models. But that sounds a bit too much like going "free-to-play" and that is exactly the perception that ArenaNet is trying to avoid by not using the term and emphasizing that most things are still in status quo. Anyone can now play the base game of Guild Wars 2 absolutely for free.
The base game is free-to-play effective now.With barely two months to go before its first and most massive expansion yet, ArenaNet has dropped a bombshell to entice more gamers to try out one of the longest (but definitely not the oldest) running MMORPG franchises in the market. Heart of Thorns releases October 23, 2015. Destiny is a great example of this, but it applies to solo games, too, which often release a year or two later with all additional content and other bonuses for a third the price. Even non-subscription games that remain pay-to-play get cheaper over time. It works for consumers because we can hold out and wait to play the game until it reaches a reasonable price point. Now they can lure in new purchasers of Heart of Thorns who like the core game enough to want access to the expansion content. In the case of Guild Wars 2 they simply skipped the subscription, possibly netting a larger player base from the outset but also possibly missing out on all that juicy subscription money in the first six months or year. So over time, a subscription-based model goes to a pay-once model and finally to a free-with-upgrades model. With an MMO this is even more crucial, since maintaining a large enough player base is essential to keeping the whales-consumers who keep spending money on additional content-happy and playing.
Guild wars 2 free to play limitations movie#
So the movie theater gives way to the Blu-ray, which gives way to the Netflix stream and so forth. Over time you reduce the cost to scoop up consumers who have resisted previously.
Guild wars 2 free to play limitations full#
The idea is simple: You charge the most at launch, whether that's purchasing a game at full retail or selling expensive tickets to a movie theater. The term is "intertemporal price discrimination"-a concept used in all types of products, from gadgets to games to movies. It makes sense from a business perspective to lower the cost of your product over time. The move to free-to-play is one we've seen over and over again with subscription-based MMOs.
The influx of new players to the game will certainly be good for the Guild Wars 2 community and ArenaNet alike. Hopefully the countermeasures against spammers and bots will be effective. You can see a comparison chart for features in the new three-tier system here. There are also limitations on where free accounts can play at first-for instance, free accounts must level up characters to level 10 before leaving starting zones. We have to ensure that free accounts can’t be used to abuse the game or its current players (through botting, cheating, spamming, or RMT) while still making sure that free accounts get the authentic Guild Wars 2 experience."įree accounts will also have limited chat options and economy restrictions to help curb bots and other problematic account use. It’s trickier than you’d think to accomplish both objectives. "Our goal is to protect our current community but also to make it as easy as possible for you to introduce the game to your friends, to recruit new players into your guilds, to challenge new players to Player vs. " A game like Guild Wars 2 lives and dies by its community," writes ArenaNet president Mike O'Brien on the game's blog.
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