#Guild wars 2 free 2 play full#
#Guild wars 2 free 2 play Pc#

This isnвЂ™t some doom and gloom article itвЂ™s not an attempt to undermine the huge success Guild Wars 2 is going to have and certainly deserves. The people for whom Guild Wars was a fantastic option six years ago are now spoilt for choice and the lack of a regular subscription fee is looking far less interesting than it was when every other game demanded both your time and your credit card. Casual gamers are more likely to play the beginning of World of Warcraft or The Old Republic than to shell out $50 on a game they might not even enjoy. With free-to-play rapidly becoming the norm and literally thousands of games available at a mere click of a button, MMO gamers already have more than a small choice of quality titles to fall back on if their new game becomes stale (and that game might even be the original Guild Wars).

Neither of those points are applicable to Guild Wars 2. Alternatively, it attracted long time MMO gamers who wanted something they could go back to without needing to pay all over again. It was a no brainer and it worked, it pulled in a crowd that wouldnвЂ™t have played MMOs otherwise. People could either pay a one off fee and get an unlimited amount of playtime for a game or they could pay a one off fee (usually not super expensive, but still an initial cost) and then pay monthly going onwards. At the time of Guild WarsвЂ™ release, this was an important system. At the time, it was the perfect antithesis to the status quo, designed for people who didnвЂ™t want to subscribe to something for months on end but wanted to play their MMOs intermittently.ДЄnd this is where the problem with the system lies now. It wasnвЂ™t just the upfront costs (and lack of backend costs) that worked for Guild Wars though, but the free updates and interesting way of delivering new content.

#Guild wars 2 free 2 play full#

This says more about their fiscal responsibilities (they can afford a full priced game in one shot but not four months subscription?) but it was for that sort of person that Guild Wars was aimed. I personally remember people in school and college not being able to afford World of Warcraft but buying Guild Wars because it meant they didnвЂ™t need to set up a direct debit or whatever to pay monthly. It was an alternate, and thatвЂ™s what made it a success.

#Guild wars 2 free 2 play Pc#

Gone were the days of $20+ for an hour of playtime - the going rate in the early nineties - but it still wasnвЂ™t a cheap hobby and for a console or casual PC gamers having access to a massively multiplayer world without the massively multiplayer costs was a great idea. Free-to-Play - outside of Neopets and its ilk вЂ“ wasnвЂ™t an option, so you can imagine how revolutionary the opportunity to buy into an MMO without any long terms costs could be. There were some great games (several which had been out longer than WoW) but for many the initial cost and on-going subscription was an instant reason not to try out a new game unless it had a large backing and definitely wasnвЂ™t going to end up being a complete flop. World of Warcraft, unsurprisingly, was king, and for anybody looking for alternatives, the cupboard was bare. Guild Wars came out at an interesting point for MMOs. Has Guild Wars 2 been given a free pass based on appreciation of an outdated method of sale or is this the sort of MMO price scheme people would like to see in the future?

Today I sat down to write a piece about Guild Wars 2 and about its means of access and I couldnвЂ™t for the life of me work out exactly why a вЂњsubscriptionвЂќ as available in Guild Wars 2 is still relevant in todayвЂ™s world of Free-to-Play and constant micro-transactions. ThatвЂ™s what I thought, until today that is. TheyвЂ™re not going to make you pay monthly вЂ“ which is a plus, of course вЂ“ and that gives it a staunch advantage over the competition. ItвЂ™s something that IвЂ™ve rather taken as a given over the last few months: the Guild Wars 2 folks know what theyвЂ™re doing when it comes to subscriptions.