ArenaNet: No retail expansions for Guild Wars 2

ArenaNet’s confirmed that there’ll be no retail expansions for Guild Wars 2 following the MMO’s release.

“At this time we don’t plan to continue with the standalone expansion model,” GW2′s lead designer Eric Flannum told Gamerzines.
“We felt that this model split our player base unnecessarily and also caused us to focus development effort on things that were redundant with the original release of the game such as tutorial areas and duplicates of already existing skills.”

http://www.vg247.com/2011/06/14/arenanet-no-retail-expansions-for-guild-wars-2/

Nice decision and i can see where it comes from, hopefully they'll just follow the LoL business model and start selling pretty skins and additional character slots and still have a huge income. I'll gladly purchase and support aNet if Guild Wars 2 manages to deliver even half of the things they promised us.

I kind of have mixed feelings about this... I understand that they might think that not having stand-alone expansions may be better, etc, but i think they are loosing something aswell... like for example, a friend of yours that started playing later, just got factions and IF he was enjoying the game he actually bought prophecies too later on... This way, the commit you have to do towards the game will be much greater, and it will be another barrier for late adopters...

Moreover, some of the reasons he presents don't seem to "stick".
- Duplicated skills : gw1 has some duplicates in factions, but its a design choice, since there are "core skills" that every campaign has access to.
- Re-making tutorial areas : why would they bother remaking tutorial areas over and over again ? why didn't they just made every character start in the same spot and then fork all the 3 storylines from there? I think it was quite doable...

Side kick system + soloable personal storyline + no grind requiring pvp = i dont see the problem.

I was already wondering about how they were going to make their money, now even more so. But knowing myself and other people around here they'll probably make enough money with micro-transactions. *cough* Kammie, Kamasutrah

the problem is that in gw1 its easier to spend 45€ on a new game and then, after you are "hooked" spend another 45€ on the old game than spend 90€ on an old game + expansion. Another problem is that we know that kind of stuff (side kick etc) but late adopters probably won't...

With this model instead you spend 45€ for the Guild Wars 2 game, after you get hooked you go to the in-game store and buy the DLC for extra missions.
Besides they said that they wont make anymore standalone campaigns, but nothing prohibits them to make new expansion packs WoW style adding new endgame content, selling the bundle boxes in physical stores and the DLC in their online store.
And also, if he was a friend of yours you would tell him about the sidekick system and you'll both use it, if the guy doesnt have any friend that is already playing GW2 then knowing or not about the system wont matter anyway, he'll just play alone or with people he meets in his level range.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2011/6/10/

Jokes aside, RIOT games is making so much money with this business model that even the company itself didnt expect to go so well.
If the game is fun people are willing to pay for cosmetic stuff, either for personal tastes or to just "reward" the developers for making such an enjoyable game.
Seems like this is going to be the future of online games.

They'd make more if they added adjustable boobsize. dollah for every inch!

Well, I think that they will have to make expansions and sell them in a way or another, since the game will become stall at the end if they don't add new content every once in a while. If they will do this without charging money, kudos to them, they will have to get the cash from the gimmicks in the online store.

What they wanna do with this model is not add content to all level ranges, since it's doesn't really make sense (having to go through the whole content of factions of you started in prophecies, just to access factions end game at lvl 20) and thus focus developing content for the end game.

Other than that, I am sure there will be a lot of things to buy in the online store that will provide them with a constant stream of revenue, aside from the big chunks they'll get when they will start selling the game and then later on expansions (if they do this).

I just can't wait to get my hands on the game .

Ive posted them before, but Some of you may have missed it..

Mind opening reality check here folks....







@Aspira Yip GDC 2006 was the first major conference where Software Companies woke up to Micro transactions as opposed to Subscriptions.

poor kids nowadays .

It wont be a f2p model as such, The model that will prove most popular in the near future will be an initial £30 to £40 box/dl price, followed by DLC's, MT's, and £20 expansions, etc. The next set of Interweb gaming arguments will centre around whether were getting value for money from various games were playing. I mean £20 for a fucking Sparkle Pony is bollox to me, but there are plenty who will pay it.

http://www.gamerzines.com/mmo/news/arenanet-gw-2-expansion-stance.html