Subscription, then dropped to F2P within six months.

Making a living as a programmer I do; we're expensive. They've been working on it for years. Programmers, designers, writers, music, all the expenses of buildings, etc. Yeah, I'm sure they spent pretty close to that. But again, I'm just guessing.

For little more than a 1 and a half hour - 2 hour movie usually.

I have tried the Sub thing, did not work for me. The buy the game and buy space then comes the buy to win kind of play is something that has always got me in the wrong area. MY Pocket book. It had better be a very interesting game for me to ever buy/pay/ again. That is why I love Testing. You find a game that is what you want and improve it if you can to make it great. I just don't like Cheats that exploit the game to where it is no longer fun to play.

I mean.... I'm sorry, but I have a question then.

If selling 3 MILLION copies, isn't enough to BREAK EVEN, why do you think they would invest in developing the game PERIOD? Why would they be celebrating selling 2 Million, that puts them 1 Million away from barely breaking even?

How much do you think they EXPECTED to sell if 3 Million isn't enough to break even?

Do people actually think F2P is even an option?

I thought B2P and P2P were the only plausible options on the table

Then once again: The question rises: Why did they develop the game at all?

We can assume, as a company, they wanted to make a profit. Three MILLION copies has them almost breaking even. So they haven't even broken even yet.

How much do you think they expected to sell? If they haven't even broke even at 3 MILLION units? A better question is this: How does ANY Non-P2P MMORPG Exist?

Naw, F2P is completely off the table. No way they will do that.

I just prefer B2P over P2P.

Wow dude, you're on fire.

I would love to see the game be hardcoe and charge $20/month with regular monthly updates. But I live in a world with 3 hour a week carebear mmo players that are the target audience for some reason now, so that will never happen with a AAA mmo again.

I hope it will be P2P with a nice update to content frequently, at least they can keep out free loaders, children and cry babies with the sub. A smaller loyal player base will keep money flowing in alot more steady than a player base of ify's and maybe's.

I can't stand cash shops, they are the worst thing to happen to mmo's. They make the game more about dealing crap through it than anything else. It just cheapens the whole lure of what mmo's used to be by selling out.

15/month is nothing, its about = 3 starbucks large coffee's, 2 - 1 topping large crappy pizza's from dominoes, 2 packs of cigs, a cheap bottle of wine, case of crappy beer, 1/4 tank of gas, 15 dollar menu items from your favorite grease pit, 3 beers in a bar, etc...

If people can't find $15 to spend a month on a hobby, you should really find another hobby and seriously think of a career change.

http://store.aiononline.com/store/index

See anything you like? No? Then the game is completely free-to-play. I don't see how F2P costs more than P2P in the end.

I'd fall over in a dead faint if they announced it was F2P.

Usually it's either browser based sandbox MMO's from Korea with cash shops that are F2P or dying MMO's that go F2P.

Sarthis Indarys, you are aware that you can multi quote right and respond to multiple posts in a single post? It would be really nice if you could do this as it wouldn't push the thread up so much and reduce the amount of spam.

Thanks.

But, like SWTOR, their drop to F2P will just look desperate and sad.

With many restrictions - more like a trial than F2P.

Do not underestimate the profits that flow in from the gem shop. I had a guildie who spent $10k on a F2P game, just so he could dominate. There are many people out there with disposable funds and thinking nothing of dumping them in cash shops.

Ok, but you could answer the question. Don't be evasive. I'm not that worked up, I'm just bolding to stress the point.

If 3 Million copies means they haven't even broke even, why do you think they developed the game period? How many copies must they have expected to sell if they knew they wouldn't have even covered development costs at 3 million copies?

Leading to the root question: Is Arenanet insane? That they would invest that much in a game when they could not possibly make a profit?

And yet, GW2 has barely (If they even have) broke even in terms of profit. Or so our friend would suggest.

Sigh ... One more thread.

Pay to play is the way to go for a game like this. Nothing else.

Considering ZOS had a budget of like $300 million to make ESO...

ArenaNet has definitely broke even with Guild Wars 2. Didn't they say that they already did with the pre-orders of the game?

I know, it kind of speaks for itself.

I wish the OP (Sarthis) would start multi quoting though rather than filling up the thread with spam.

You figure? Well, I can either hope the Devs disagree, or I won't be touching it. Shame, it looked decent.

I'll just have to pray that they keep making Single Players, so I can just discard it next to Redguard and Battlespire, rather than hate it until the end of time (if it killed the ES name)

Single Player Elder Scrolls will continue to be made. And I won't be touching it either if it's P2P.

I wouldn't mind either buy-to-play or pay-to-play.

I would absolutely LOVE if they had a monthly subscription option for a family account kind of similar to the family account model they have for xbox live. That way even if I myself wasn't finding time to play it, I'd still feel like I was getting my money's worth because a family member or two were playing the heck out of it.