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Guild Wars - Competitive MMO, No Subscription?

Posted by simoniker on from the new-genre-or-just-chunks-of-older-ones? dept.

Thanks to IGN RPGVault for a new interview with the ArenaNet team, developers of Guild Wars. These ex-Blizzard developers, whose company was recently acquired by Korean RPG behemoth NCSoft, talk in-depth about Guild Wars, which they call "..a competitive online role-playing game, which we believe to be a new genre." According to the article, "..gameplay options will include cooperative group combat, single-player adventures and large-scale guild battles.. [with] persistent characters but a non-persistent game world", and there will be no monthly subscription fee for this intriguing PC title, which is due out later in 2004.

18 comments

  1. Didn't Blizzard do something like this.... by CounterZer0 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Called Diablo / Diablo II? Competitive RPG with non-persistant world :)
    That just means it'll be cake to boost yourself :)

  2. Good thing it's free. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Because these online games are getting so damn expensive I was about to go start wandering around outside hunting for gold and whacking people's heads off just to get my game on.

    1. Re:Good thing it's free. by Ty · · Score: 1

      Grats on sounding like a 14 year old living out of Mommy's purse. I'm sorry, but $13/mo (about what most of the MMORPGs charge) for unlimited play is not "damn expensive".

    2. Re:Good thing it's free. by ajscsg · · Score: 1

      Well, it is if you're jobless. Now, I realize that also sounds like I'm relying on mother, but that is not the truth. When you're 14-17 and live in a small town getting a job without experience is nearly impossible. A potentially good game with no monthly (or any) fee is very refreshing

    3. Re:Good thing it's free. by Madcalf · · Score: 1

      I agree. With no job, no way to drive to get work, and school. I live in a small farming town where most of the people are rednecks or farmers. If you want a job you have to do farming. I'm a computer nerd come on. Anything free is good.

    4. Re:Good thing it's free. by I(rispee_I(reme · · Score: 1

      Manual labor builds character ;)

    5. Re:Good thing it's free. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Skip going out with your friends 1 night a month and you'll be able to play the game as much as you like during the month.

      A year or two back I was playing EverQuest a good 50 hours a week, sometimes more sometimes less. For $9.99 then (and now $12.99) a month, you can't tell me that isn't one hell of a deal.

      Think about it, people go out for a few hours and can easily spend $20 for dinner and movie, if not more. For $12.99 you can play as much as you want during a month. And this is comparable, because it costs the company for each person to be playing.

    6. Re:Good thing it's free. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I can't believe you're actually telling people to stop being social so they can afford to play MMORPGs. Oh wait, this is slashdot. Nevermind, I can believe it.

  3. no monthly fees? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    IANAMMORPGDE (I Am Not A MMORPG Design Expert) but I am an admin on a graphical MUD. It seems like there'd have to be some ongoing expenses to cover: bandwidth, server maintenance, game staff, designers, etc. I guess if they sell enough copies, that'll cover it...while they're selling copies.

    From some of the things described in the interview (e.g., "But once you form a party and go on a quest, you and your friends get your own unique copy of the quest...") I'm wondering if they've got a completely different client-server model, with more stuff pushed onto the client side, and maybe direct client-to-client communication for some stuff to reduce the bandwidth requirements for the servers. But those both have some security implications, i.e., never put anything important on the client or it'll get abused.

    1. Re:no monthly fees? by eht · · Score: 4, Informative

      Blizzard doesn't charge for access to Battle.net for Starcraft, Diablo, Diablo 2, Warcraft 3 or the B.net version of Warcraft 2, in one interview or press release they claim ad revenue from the advertisements shown on the connection screen pay for Battle.net in it's entirety and then some, so I'd expect ex Blizzard employees to use the same tactic.

    2. Re:no monthly fees? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Blizzards Battle.net is not even close to comparing a full blown MMORPG.

      Take EverQuest for example.

      There are over 30 -game- servers, each one of those game servers taking up many many computer servers themselves. I've heard developers referring to the "farm of everquest servers". Not to mention the bandwidth. Blizzard can run Battle.net with a small amount of bandwidth because their games, once started, run directly (for the most part) between the clients playing. Everquest has every single action sent to the server, then to each client connected (which can be hundreds at once).

      Then we have on going development/technical support, which requires an enormous amount more than Blizzard does. They can get by with a few people working part time to tune their old games. Everquest has large teams in constant full blown development.

      There is really a huge, huge, huge difference between the services a company like Blizzard has to provide and MMOPG's.

      I honestly don't see how a largescale MMOPG could not have a monthly fee. Each month EQ racks up about $4 million (give or take a bunch). Sounds like a lot, but a large majority of that goes to what is needed to run it. So considering they need that much to run it each month, I can't possibly imagine how a company plans to do it on the base fee. Would be interesting to see.

    3. Re:no monthly fees? by Hackie_Chan · · Score: 1

      Actually, Blizzard has in recent years stopped showing advertisements from other companies other than themselves!

      --

      What's so bad about being lazy? What if there was a war and nobody showed up?
    4. Re:no monthly fees? by eht · · Score: 1

      According to the article, it's a non persistent game world with persistent characters, just like Diablo 2.

      Though there will be persistent areas which look to be like chat rooms basically rather than an actual part of the game.

    5. Re:no monthly fees? by eht · · Score: 1

      And that shows you the last time I logged onto B.net.

  4. Reminds me a bit of Dungeon Siege by crisco · · Score: 1

    Where they tried to take some of the repetitive elements of other RPGs out and ended up with a beautiful game that wasn't terribly exciting to play.

    --

    Bleh!

    1. Re:Reminds me a bit of Dungeon Siege by d3kk · · Score: 1

      Is that what they were going for? It sure didn't seem like it. I was under the impression they tried to take out the non-repetitive elements. There was hardly any story in the single-player game, and the completely removed the story in the multiplayer verson. It was just running around watching your characters kill things for hours. Worst 50 bucks I've ever spent.

  5. Don't hold your breath... by negRo_slim · · Score: 2, Interesting

    ...with the current state of MMORPG's its going to take one hell of a revolution in that scene to make anything notably different.


    I mean take a look at the huge amount of launched, cancled and announced games of this type we've seen ever since Sony hit pay dirt with EQ. I mean even with competivness brought in at different levels, or different playstyles (UO, DAoC or PlanetSide). All these games become the same in the end and they all suck... I shudder everytime I see the letters MMO.


    And with this game going the free route, either they have figured out an excellent client server model or it's just going to suck like all the others if not worse...


    All this in IMHO of course



    Mithrilvar Valormir - Level 53, Half Elven, Warrior on Ayonae Ro

    --
    On the Oregon Cost born and raised, On the beach is where I spent most of my days
  6. reality check by Synic · · Score: 1

    I doubt they will be able to work their business model of two expansions per year instead of a subscription, but I'll be pleasantly surprised if they prove me wrong (in addition to actually meeting all their goals).

    Oh. Right, their graphics look pretty weak too. Here's to hoping they get a new artistic vision (World of Warcraft is easily the nicest in design of all MMORPG's I've seen to date).