Guild Wars Ramps Up To E3, Previewed Effusively 20
Thanks to GameSpot for its hands-on impressions of ArenaNet/NCSoft's online PC RPG, Guild Wars, a subscription-free title that's previously received positive press. The preview explains that "the game relies on a skill-based system that's reminiscent of the card game Magic: The Gathering. You can collect and earn a wide variety of powerful skills and abilities, but... you'll be allowed to select only eight of them to take into battle", meaning that "a relatively new player will have a chance against seasoned veterans." It's also noted: "One of the most surprising aspects of Guild Wars is that the entire game will download to your computer while you play it", with only a "small executable program, about 90 kilobytes in size" needed - this is shown by the official download page for the E3 For Everyone alpha demo event, explained thus: "From May 12 through 14, while Guild Wars is being demonstrated on the E3 show floor, players from around the world will be able to play the same experience over the Internet."
E3 vs the world? (Score:3, Interesting)
"Just as our brave media correspondants were overwhelmed by the rabid gamers, the servers crashed saving our heroes from certain humiliation!'
Re:Effusively? (Score:2)
adj.
1. Unrestrained or excessive in emotional expression; gushy: an effusive manner.
2. Profuse; overflowing: effusive praise.
effusively adv.
effusiveness n.
Re:Effusively? (Score:1)
Re:Effusively? (Score:2)
That's unpossible!
An Excellent Idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:An Excellent Idea (Score:5, Insightful)
You can play without paying for anything, but the game is heavily mission-based. Ostensibly, the missions are what you're paying for. So, if you don't pay, you quickly run out of things to do. Paying for content in this way is effectively episodic peristent gaming.
This also leads to the interesting situation where early adopters for an 'expansion' might deem it 'broken', or 'crappy'. This could quite likely stunt the market for that particular expansion/episode. They certainly won't enjoy the automatic-upgrade that every Everquest player does for each new expansion from SOE. They'll have to earn their upgrades.
The PVP element seems to draw strength from the fact that non-payers will be able to compete against paying-customers, keeping population at critical mass for PvP encounters.
This requires that, expansions can't introduce 'phat lewt' in the traditional sense. If one gets appreciably stronger by acquiring an item/ability from paid-content, it'll imbalance any conflict with a non-paying customer (it's a pvp game). Imbalancing conflict with non-paying customers, in turn disincentivizes free players from sticking around, which will heavily diminish the viability of the 'free-play' option. Casual gamers won't likely hang out to be pummeled by paying customers with egregious PvP advantages.
If they include phat lewt, their episodes become required to compete - essentially staggering the monthly into the episode fees. Paying $10/mo isn't economically different from paying $30 every 3 months.
And any reward that doesn't make the player appreciably stronger, isn't 'phat lewt' after all. So they're hanging their entire game on the idea that players will pay exclusively for the fun they get from playing the game, and not necessarily for the carrot at the end of the stick.
Fortuitously, their streaming content technology also doubles as convenient electronic distribution. This will help them keep costs (and thereby prices) down, and gives them more time and opportunity to hit fiscal viability.
Guild Wars is set up to simultaneously challenge the notions of electronic distribution, episodic content, and the traditional level-grind of the RPG genre all at the same time. It will certainly be interesting.
Re:An Excellent Idea (Score:3, Insightful)
Paying $10/month for 3 months is VERY different then paying $30/3 months. Proof:
Let i = prevailing market interest rate (per month); let v = 1/(1+i), the amount you must invest now to get "1" back at the end of the month. Then the present value of each option:
($10/month for 3 months) = 10 + 10v + 10v^2
($30/3 months) = 30
The only times these are equal is when
10 + 10v + 10v^2 = 30
v = -2, or v = 1. The only root that makes sense is "v=1", and solving for i, we get i = 0. Therefore the two opt
Re:An Excellent Idea (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd thought that was implied by context, and I apologize if it wasn't so.
Clearly the publisher (NCSoft), doesn't have a problem with GuildWars' business structure - so whether or not they're concerned about their theoretical loss of $50k in interest is moot.
Re:An Excellent Idea (Score:3, Interesting)
One point that I have read about the expansions is that, while you must pay to get consistant access to them, even if you are playing for free you can be invited into an expansion area without paying. This helps insure that even free players can participate in expanded content.
Unfortunately I cannot find where I read this info =/
Re:An Excellent Idea (Score:4, Informative)
Something else to keep in mind, it is PVP, but it's all consentual. If you don't want to PVP, don't enter a PVP map. PVP is different from traditional MMO's, in that normal missions only have the people you are grouped with in it. You can't be attacked by other players while crawling a dungeon, cuase it's instanced. Noone else is in the dungeon but your party. There are competitive PVP "missions" that pit willing contestants against each other in a variety of settings. (ladder, Free for all, King of the Hill, etc) It's an iteresting mix of persistant and instanced play styles.
Re:An Excellent Idea (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:An Excellent Idea (Score:2)
Healthy competition is seeded with a steady stream of new players and fresh ideas. If the 'skill' component of competition is trivialized through 'required' upgrades, the skill-based aspect will stagnate (because it's trivialized).
Such phat lewt, like any power-amplification-based 'advancement' system, disincentivize new players from joining. This is not healthy
Download while you play? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Download while you play? (Score:3, Interesting)
It's quite incredible, the installer is under 100kb. When launching for the first time, you download about 30 mb to get to the login screen. Over half of which is downloading in the background while you set up your account. Dunno how much more needs to be downloaded until we can login, but it is very quick and painless on a DSL connection.
I recommend downloading the client just to ch
Business Model (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a gamble, but they've got a good reputation.