ArenaNet Charging New Fees For Guild Wars!
UPDATE: As mentioned in the previous articles, ArenaNet has been planning to introduce additional fees for their online game Guild Wars for some time now. Although not willing to risk charging a monthly fee for Guild Wars just yet , ArenaNet has deviously decided to charge a staggering $9.99 US for each additional character slot on current Guild Wars accounts! Additional character slots have been a subject of great interest for Guild Wars fans since the game's release, and have therefore been the target of ArenaNet's latest plan to capitalize on their profits at the expense of the Guild Wars community. You may visit the Official Guild Wars Website for more details.
Despite ArenaNet's previous claims of Guild Wars being "free to play" and of encouraging "balanced PvP competition" this new change promises to reward those gamers who pay more to play Guild Wars. Guilds and individual players who pay extra for additional character slots will end up having a competitive advantage in both PvP and PvE by being able to choose from a larger repertoire of developed characters. Not only that, but depending on the amount of profit made from this new change, ArenaNet will likely find ways for players to shell out even more money through other underhanded plans in the future. This may include having to purchase new character classes or new areas to explore outside of regularly marketed expansion packs. It appears that selling 1.5 million copies of Guild Wars through deceitful marketing hasn't been enough to satisfy the greedy developers of ArenaNet.
And, in case you really were fooled into thinking Guild Wars was going to be free to play, consider this. According to a recent interview with Jeff Strain, ArenaNet is planning to introduce a new expansion pack every 6 months starting with Guild Wars: Factions. Each expansion will cost $50 US and will likely require you to purchase additional character slots unless you want to delete your current characters. If on average you'll need 2 character slots per expansion, you're looking at an additional $20 per expansion. Do the math, and you're paying $140/year, which is the equivalent of $11.67/month. Even if you just buy the expansions and don't buy any additional character slots, you're fee is $100/year or $8.33/month. This does not include the cost you may have paid for the original Guild Wars nor any additional costs ArenaNet will decide to include in the future. Quite a substantial fee when you consider that ArenaNet's costs to maintain their servers is significantly less than true non-instanced MMORPGs.
ArenaNet Planning To Introduce Additional Fees For Guild Wars
UPDATE: ArenaNet has revealed plans to charge additional fees to play Guild Wars. As mentioned in the previous article, ArenaNet's End User Licence Agreement (as written in the Guild Wars user's manual) allows them to charge additional fees (including monthly fees) for Guild Wars if they ever so desire." They have already started polls on many fansite forums to assess the numbers of players willing to pay a monthly fee or other additional fees to play this game. Even if a minority of players are willing to pay these fees, ArenaNet will likely make a future expansion pay-to-play or with additional hidden fees as long as they turn in a profit. This is despite the fact numerous gamers who bought their game under the assumption it would be free to play for life.
To my knowledge the latest of these polls was held on the Guild Wars Vault Forum, an Official Guild Wars Fan Forum. It was headed by ArenaNet and posted by a forum moderator on the week of March 6, 2006. However, after the information contained in the previous article was posted on that board, the poll was promptly removed the following week. An example of a previous poll posted on the Guild Wars Vault by ArenaNet can be found here:
ArenaNet Poll On Paying Monthly Fees
What You Didn't Know About ArenaNet!
Do you think ArenaNet is a great company that cares about their gaming community? Do you think they have developed a great PC game in Guild Wars? If you do, what you read below may surprise you. As a former member of the team involved in the development of Guild Wars, I have some information you may find surprising. Through the development of Guild Wars, several employees left ArenaNet due to the lack of ethics practiced within the company. Needless to say, I have purposefully remained anonymous in the creation of this site to avoid any backlash from ArenaNet for providing you information that they have done well to keep hidden from the public.
ArenaNet introduced a meaningless leveling treadmill to character level 20 to deliberately misrepresent Guild Wars and capture players from the Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG) community.
The level 20 cap in Guild Wars has always been a source of mystery and frustration for many Guild Wars players. Even with the announcement of Guild Wars: Factions, many players have asked if the level 20 limit will be increased. ArenaNet’s reply is simple:
"No, the maximum character level will remain at 20. The level cap of 20 is a fundamental balance mechanism for Guild Wars, a game that revolves around player skill. The leveling system allows you to track your progress as you start a character. But by Level 20, your character is fully trained and is ready to experience the most exciting content in the game.”
It is quite typical of ArenaNet to silence opposition by implying that games involving significant character leveling lack skill and therefore if you enjoy leveling your character you must be an unskilled gamer. Still, a great number of players continue to wonder why a game claiming to be an online RPG would include such a short and meaningless leveling treadmill only to never be changed with future expansion.
The truth is that during the development of Guild Wars ArenaNet had a very small development team and could not possibly hope to develop a game to compete with the size and scope of other MMORPGs like Everquest 2 and World Of Warcraft. However, they knew there was great profit to be made if they could somehow tap into the huge and essentially untapped market of “free MMORPGs.” So they proceeded to make a new fantasy style of PvP style game with significantly less content than typical MMORPGs. They then stuck on a meaningless character leveling treadmill to give the initial part of Guild Wars an MMORPG feel. To continue with the charade, they also added fairly uninspired PvE content with the promise of updating such content with future expansions.
ArenaNet introduced instant level 20 characters only after most preorders were placed last year.
Many current players may not be aware of this, but during late 2003, and early 2004, ArenaNet hosted “preview weekend events” once a month to show off their game. This helped to further the image of Guild Wars as an MMORPG by only allowing people to play for a short time, (i.e. which mostly involved the early leveling treadmill part of the game). Much excitement over the game was raised over its Player vs Player (PvP) content and how it was the first free MMORPG on the market. However, since the core of Guild Wars lied in its PvP content, and since ArenaNet realized that many MMORPG players would lose interest in the game before long, they gave PvP players the option of “bypassing the role-playing” of the game to keep this genre of players. Of course, many MMORPG players wouldn’t be happy with such a change to the game, so ArenaNet waited until their pre-orders were in, then implemented the change just prior to release. This was done to capitalize on sales at the expense of the MMORPG community. Imagine pre-ordering any other MMORPG only to learn at release that players have the option to instantly use characters at their maximum level!
ArenaNet silenced players in private Alpha testing who protested the change.
Of course, many players involved in private testing of the game protested the change. ArenaNet was hesitant to make a big statement about it for obvious reasons. They delayed news of the change and eventually kept the information to a few short snippets on their website to cover their tracks. Players involved in private testing who desired to relay more information to the public via public forums and websites were immediately silenced by ArenaNet’s threats to prosecute them for violation of the Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA). This process was headed by ArenaNet’s Community Relations Manager, Gaile Gray, who has long operated under the false pretense that she and ArenaNet really care about the gaming community. In truth, her real job is (and has always been) to make false and exaggerated claims about ArenaNet and Guild Wars, reward those who help to portray the myths, and tactfully silence those who feel otherwise. Its true that the NDA is in place to protect the developers during the development of the game, however, it is an abuse of the NDA to use it to deliberately mislead the public.
The Competitive Online Role-Playing Game (CRPG) that isn’t a MMORPG, or is it?
What is perhaps the most fraudulent aspect of the development of Guild Wars was its advertising campaign. ArenaNet was very careful to never call their game a MMORPG or an MMO, and clearly made the distinction that their game was really a new type of game that they would like to call a CRPG. However, they were quick to advertise their games in direct competition to MMORPGs to imply that Guild Wars was just a better version of previous MMORPGs. In addition, they selectively choose RPG and MMORPG sites to advertise their product. Even the new Guild Wars: Factions is being advertised on many such websites right now. Comments in their advertisements include:
"Online roleplaying with no monthly fees.”
Only MMORPGs have monthly fees. If Guild Wars isn’t a MMORPG, why is this an issue or even worth mentioning, unless you want to falsely attract MMORPG players?
"The revolution is coming.” AND “The revolution continues.”
Again, this statement was made with the intent that ArenaNet would revolutionize the MMORPG market with Guild Wars.
“For everyone who hates MMORPGs... and loves them too.”
This was a statement made by PCGamer that ArenaNet decided to use on many of their advertisements, again to sell their game to MMORPG players.
The (player vs environment) PvE content in Guild Wars was really developed as an adventure game with tacked on (Role-Playing Game) RPG elements.
The fact is that Guild Wars was designed to be a PvP game akin to a fantasy version of something like Counter-Strike, minus the “twitch” skills. You pick your character, pick your weapons, pick your spells, and go do battle in teams. It was never designed to be a game to satisfy role-players. In fact, the PvP in Guild Wars, is not even role-played at all, only the PvE aspect is. How is it that ArenaNet can claim that Guild Wars is an online RPG when its core is completely devoid of role-playing?
The RPG elements were actually tacked on as afterthoughts so the game would appeal to a larger market. Sure ArenaNet did a lot of work on the PvE element of the game, but certain elements essential to RPGs like character developments and uniqueness, legendary weapons and armor, trading and crafting systems, are all basically non-existent in Guild Wars. The so-called "role-playing" in Guild Wars is really just a shell to a game designed to attract RPG players that is not useful in the core aspects of the game. In fact, the true addition of any of these elements would imbalance PvP play and will therefore likely never be included.
ArenaNet’s End User License Agreement (EULA) gives them the freedom to implement fees for their product if the ever desire to in the future (including monthly fees).
ArenaNet likes to make many promises to their consumers, but always plans ahead to cover their tracks if those promises cannot be fulfilled. Just open up your Guild Wars manual and read the End User License Agreement (EULA). Guild Wars does not currently have any additional fees, but the fact that the game’s EULA allows ArenaNet to legally charge more fees peeks at ArenaNet’s true intentions. Why would they include such a clause in the EULA if they already promised Guild Wars would always be free to play? Perhaps this could allow them to maximize profits by charging a fee with a future expansion if the game became very popular? Or maybe it could help offset costs if Guild Wars didn’t sell as well as they had hoped? Whatever the reason, you can be assured it was not one in favor of providing a service for their valued Guild Wars community.
Conclusion
The Guild Wars community and the PC gaming community at large should realize what type of underhanded company ArenaNet really is. They are masters of advertising and propaganda and can really twist things to appear as they are not. In fact, much of their advertising campaign could be challenged legally and it is a shame that this sort of advertising is allowed to occur in the video gaming market. Despite the game’s popularity, there are a large number of players, particularly from the MMORPG and RPG community, who feel falsely misled into buying a game they do not enjoy. These players bought the game under false pretenses deliberately masqueraded by ArenaNet. Its clear that these “ex-Blizzard” employees were let go by Blizzard for their clear lack of ethical behavior. That being said, I hope that ArenaNet is relishing in the fact that their former employer has sold over 7 million copies of World Of Warcraft at +$15 US/month without having to resort to underhanded marketing.
In the development and sales of Guild Wars, ArenaNet took a risk in making a game unlike any other that was on the market. But through their false advertising, they made sure that it was the MMORPG community, and not their own company that would bear the financial risk involved. They knew that if they could give Guild Wars the appearance of a free MMORPG, at least in its initial stages, sales would be good enough that they would not bare the financial burden if Guild Wars was not a successful product. Now, 1.5 millions sales later, ArenaNet remains unsatisfied and is trying to introduce additional fees into the game outside of their expansion packs. That is how much ArenaNet values their community. It would be wise for anyone to consider this before further investing into this company or buying any more of their products.
