Blog post on MMORPG: NCsoft "sold out" Guild Wars

[FatherXmas]

The thing is, it isn't a "pay to win" any more than our Incarnate slots were P2W.  The items aren't available in the cash shop, their components for crafting aren't available in the cash shop.  It reads like sour grapes players felt the first time WoW had an expansion and the new item drops were better than the set you spent hours upon hours grinding to get at the previous level cap.  And in a unhealthy dose of Nexon and NCSoft are EBIL!!11!, stir and you get that rant.

Guild Wars 2's currency proxy are Gems.  They sell gems in stores like Target/BestBuy/Walmart at the rate of 2000 gems for $25 or 80 for $1 (ratio sounds familiar).  Or you can buy them in game with in game currency at roughly 100 gems for 1 1/4 gold, which would be 80 for about 1 gold.  Nexon cash shops are all about cash, they would have nixed the use of in game currency outright.

If NCSoft is disengaging from the western markets to focus on Asia exclusively, I can see ArenaNet buying themselves back because GW2 isn't a grindy, PvP driven, grind fest and it will do very well in the west.

[houtex]

After you reach the level cap, you improve with gear.  Since you can buy gear in the store and there's a stronger PvP aspect to Korean style games, you can pay to win in those if the store sells better gear.  Winning in this case is beating all the other players.

Even in WoW, you need to run lower level dungeons to get the gear to challenge higher level raids and eventually beat the expansion's "boss" (winning).

Oh, so you're saying I was losing because I only used Brawl with Brawling Humiliator, or required to be on a team to level up Total Dependent.  Got it.

:|

/Shades of what 'winning' in an MMO are different for different peoples, hence, didn't know that there was any 'winning' to be had.
//Not knocking ya, dude, just sayin'... What you're saying still doesn't work, IMO, for an MMO.  There's no way to 'win', just enjoy. 
///But that's me, I guess.

[CG]

Oh, so you're saying I was losing because I only used Brawl with Brawling Humiliator, or required to be on a team to level up Total Dependent.  Got it.

<blink, blink>  How did we get from a question about what paying to win means to disparaging your character?

/Shades of what 'winning' in an MMO are different for different peoples, hence, didn't know that there was any 'winning' to be had.
//Not knocking ya, dude, just sayin'... What you're saying still doesn't work, IMO, for an MMO.  There's no way to 'win', just enjoy. 
///But that's me, I guess.

Don't shoot the messenger.  When people use the phrase "paying to win" in reference to an MMO, they usually mean buying in-game non-cosmetic improvements.  I'm not trying to defend it, just to answer your question.  You may play to enjoy, but lots of people define their own win condition, then go out to achieve it.

[Vasarto]

so wait...can someone dumb it down just a tiny bit for my special ed high school education mind to wrap my mind around. What does monetization mean exactly and what exactly did they do to Guild Wars 2?

Does Nexon own GW2 now? Does that mean GW2 servers are shutting down or no more new development will ever be done on it?


I am really confused by all the big educated learning words being used here lol.

[Triplash]

What does monetization mean exactly

I have no idea about the rest of your questions, but this one I can take a shot at. In a nutshell, monetization means taking something you already have and finding a way to make money off it. For example, let's say your house has a garage but you don't use it. You could fix it up, turn it into an apartment, and rent it out... bam, you just monetized your garage. You took something that was just sitting there, and turned it into a source of income.

[CG]

NCSoft owns GW2.  Nexon has a 15% share in NCSoft which gives them a little latitude to make 'suggestions'.  NCSoft hired Nexon's former Monetization Manager to get more money out of GW2.  A Monetzation Manager is someone who helps a company make money by providing a good enough F2P experience that the customer is happy, but leaves lots of options for the customer to pay for.  It tends to turn up more in the F2P games because there's no monthly fee required, so they have to get money from somewhere.  The theory is that Nexon suggested this course of action to NCSoft, but I don't know if there's any proof.  What can be shown is that GW2 takes a different approach to max stats than GW 1 did.

Disclaimer: This is all from my understanding of the article; I never played GW 1 or 2.

Apparently GW1 used to have a hard max cap on stats.  When you hit it, that was it for your character - you couldn't get more powerful.  You might get more skills or different skins for things, but no more power.

GW2 has a scheme where the max stats keep going up, so you have to keep grinding better gear to keep up with the ever increasing cap.  They also allow you to buy in-game currency to avoid the grind and just get the gear directly from the in-game vendors.    This is where the pay-to-win label comes from.  You can buy in-game effectiveness with real-world cash without having to grind for it.

By contrast (at least the last time I played) WoW will only let you buy in game cosmetic items like mounts and pets.  They have no mechanical difference with the in-game items; they're just different/fancier.  If you want the top end gear, you have to earn it in-game by raiding or PvP.

All this said, Monetization doesn't always mean Pay to Win.  CoH had powers that you had to buy in the store if you weren't a Premium member, but were available to Premium members for no additional charge.  Character slots were another; Premium players had lots, but F2P only had 4(?) unless they bought more.  Costume slots/items are another thing that can be monetized.  These are ways to extract money from the customer.  That's not a bad thing because the F2P model only works if enough free players buy stuff to keep the lights on.

As for GW2, as far as I know it's still running, but I wouldn't get attached to it.  There's no monthy fees and other than the initial box purchase, the only sourse of income for NCSoft is monetization.  If the money doesn't roll in, I don't think they'll keep operating the servers at a loss.

[Victoria Victrix]

Good definition.

Like, the costume packs that came free with new issues of CoH you now had to pay for (some of them, anyway).

Now it can be done well, or it can be done the greedy scum-sucking Nexon way.

Doing it well means that you don't sell anything fundamentally game-changing.  Cosmetic stuff, sure.  And you can sell things that are a help (think purple recipes) but you should also make those drop in the game as well.  Basically anything that gives you a distinct advantage in the game should also be available as a drop or for some form of "money" you can earn as a drop in the game.

Doing it the greedy, scum-sucking Nexon way means that after a certain point in the game, you simply cannot play the game without paying extra money to the store for gear.  I have heard of some Nexon games where you can't fight even-con minions one on one without faceplanting unless you have bought store gear.  There are hints that if Nexon has its way, this is the direction GW2 will be going.  Larry has heard the same disturbing rumors from sources other than this one.  It does seem to be the way they work in their 2D games.

[houtex]

<blink, blink>  How did we get from a question about what paying to win means to disparaging your character?
Don't shoot the messenger.  When people use the phrase "paying to win" in reference to an MMO, they usually mean buying in-game non-cosmetic improvements.  I'm not trying to defend it, just to answer your question.  You may play to enjoy, but lots of people define their own win condition, then go out to achieve it.

<voice of Jack's Philly Cousin> I'm just bustin' yer chops. </voice of Jack's Philly Cousin>

I grok what you're sayin'.  While I don't fully understand that mindset of 'winning an MMO', I get it.  I'll conceed the point of 'there are thems out there what do that' and go along my merry way.

/I sometimes forget my 'sarcastic-not-meant-to-attack-anyone' tones don't work here because it's text.  My bad.  I'll be better in the future.

[Kistulot]

I will say in defense of GW2 so far that there hasn't been a lot of pay-for-power that I've personally witnessed...

But honestly, the reason we as gamer should be upset? The game still isn't everything it promised to be on release, and their handling of bugs feels like a mess.

There's still no guesting across servers which was a feature they harped on pretty heavily. Play with your friends! Except that it doesn't work. And if you swap servers, you have to get lucky to be able to swap back - and you lose out on guild benefits while on a server other than the server the guild originated on.

They've taken steps to make it harder to grief (as for awhile you could do the equivilent of a tf/trial, kick out people, and replace them with guildies for the rewards) but a lot of content is broken and remains broken. They show more concern over the ingame economy than anything else. So far their monetization hasn't felt bad, but plenty else drove me from being able to play much at all. It has fun gameplay aspects, but if heavy monetization kicks in too I think it'll be pretty well ruined.

Lucky for me, I got well over the price of the box in enjoyment already.

[Victoria Victrix]

I will say in defense of GW2 so far that there hasn't been a lot of pay-for-power that I've personally witnessed...

But honestly, the reason we as gamer should be upset? The game still isn't everything it promised to be on release, and their handling of bugs feels like a mess.

There's still no guesting across servers which was a feature they harped on pretty heavily. Play with your friends! Except that it doesn't work. And if you swap servers, you have to get lucky to be able to swap back - and you lose out on guild benefits while on a server other than the server the guild originated on.

They've taken steps to make it harder to grief (as for awhile you could do the equivilent of a tf/trial, kick out people, and replace them with guildies for the rewards) but a lot of content is broken and remains broken. They show more concern over the ingame economy than anything else. So far their monetization hasn't felt bad, but plenty else drove me from being able to play much at all. It has fun gameplay aspects, but if heavy monetization kicks in too I think it'll be pretty well ruined.

Lucky for me, I got well over the price of the box in enjoyment already.

I'm not going to piss on anyone else's game that they are actually enjoying.

I am going to point to the rotting corpses that NCSoft has left in its wake as a cautionary note not to get too attached.  I sincerely and deeply hope that you never find yourself in the position that I am in.  I am now living a life almost completely isolated from people who were at least casual friends.  I am deeply grieving in the real sense for something like 60 "babies," several of whom I have spent seven years building, living through their joys and sorrows, creating them in a more visceral sense than any of my book characters.  They are gone.  Gone before I had a chance to finish their stories, cut off as senselessly and cruelly as if they had been stood up against a wall and shot in the prime of their lives.  They were my friends as well as my creations.

I would not wish my current emotional state on my worst enemy.

Edit: I wish for every single NCSoft executive responsible for this to feel exactly what I am feeling right now. 

[Celtic Lass]

I'm not going to piss on anyone else's game that they are actually enjoying.

I am going to point to the rotting corpses that NCSoft has left in its wake as a cautionary note not to get too attached.  I sincerely and deeply hope that you never find yourself in the position that I am in.  I am now living a life almost completely isolated from people who were at least casual friends.  I am deeply grieving in the real sense for something like 60 "babies," several of whom I have spent seven years building, living through their joys and sorrows, creating them in a more visceral sense than any of my book characters.  They are gone.  Gone before I had a chance to finish their stories, cut off as senselessly and cruelly as if they had been stood up against a wall and shot in the prime of their lives.  They were my friends as well as my creations.

I would not wish my current emotional state on my worst enemy.

Edit: I wish for every single NCSoft executive responsible for this to feel exactly what I am feeling right now. 

You don't know me, but I hope that at one point over the last 7 years that our "babies" played in the same play-pin at some point.

I know exactly how you are feeling, Victoria.  I was one of the players who came before F2P, so I had literally double digit characters.  My first and main character: Celtic Lass, was probably my favorite (and my first 50)  and due to the way that NCSoft had restructured the game, I couldn't access her.  She was locked away the night the lights went dark on our city of Paragon.  I wound up having to spend that last night on one of my alts that I did manage to unlock.

Although all of our reasons for bereavement may be different, we are all still angry and hurt... the suspicious nature of the announcement and closure of of CoX within mere months of each other not withstanding.  You are not alone.  All of us here feel your pain.  The need to reconnect with people who played this game and loved it as much as I did is the whole reason I sought Titan out in the first place.  I hope you can find some comfort here.

[Feycat]

NCSoft owns GW2.  Nexon has a 15% share in NCSoft which gives them a little latitude to make 'suggestions'.  NCSoft hired Nexon's former Monetization Manager to get more money out of GW2.  A Monetzation Manager is someone who helps a company make money by providing a good enough F2P experience that the customer is happy, but leaves lots of options for the customer to pay for.  It tends to turn up more in the F2P games because there's no monthly fee required, so they have to get money from somewhere.  The theory is that Nexon suggested this course of action to NCSoft, but I don't know if there's any proof.  What can be shown is that GW2 takes a different approach to max stats than GW 1 did.

Disclaimer: This is all from my understanding of the article; I never played GW 1 or 2.

Apparently GW1 used to have a hard max cap on stats.  When you hit it, that was it for your character - you couldn't get more powerful.  You might get more skills or different skins for things, but no more power.

GW2 has a scheme where the max stats keep going up, so you have to keep grinding better gear to keep up with the ever increasing cap.  They also allow you to buy in-game currency to avoid the grind and just get the gear directly from the in-game vendors.    This is where the pay-to-win label comes from.  You can buy in-game effectiveness with real-world cash without having to grind for it.

By contrast (at least the last time I played) WoW will only let you buy in game cosmetic items like mounts and pets.  They have no mechanical difference with the in-game items; they're just different/fancier.  If you want the top end gear, you have to earn it in-game by raiding or PvP.

All this said, Monetization doesn't always mean Pay to Win.  CoH had powers that you had to buy in the store if you weren't a Premium member, but were available to Premium members for no additional charge.  Character slots were another; Premium players had lots, but F2P only had 4(?) unless they bought more.  Costume slots/items are another thing that can be monetized.  These are ways to extract money from the customer.  That's not a bad thing because the F2P model only works if enough free players buy stuff to keep the lights on.

As for GW2, as far as I know it's still running, but I wouldn't get attached to it.  There's no monthy fees and other than the initial box purchase, the only sourse of income for NCSoft is monetization.  If the money doesn't roll in, I don't think they'll keep operating the servers at a loss.

The problem is that, like Father Xmas says, the article is untrue.

The monetization manager who worked at Nexon? Was hired last MAY. She's been there the whole time. She's probably the reason the GW2 cash store is mostly boosters and gamble boxes and is very skimpy in the things that successful American-MMO cash shops (COH, LOTRO among others) are full of - cosmetics.

There IS no pay to win. You CANNOT buy the Ascendant gear. You can't buy it with Gems (Paragon Points equivalent) and you can't buy it with in-game gold. You can't buy it. You have to play the game for it.

Is the Acendant gear a departure from their earlier philosophy and is it too grindy? That point is very debatable, and in their latest AMA, the dev in charge of it has said they rolled it out poorly, and it's being re-evaluated and balanced.

But it is NOT pay to win.

This article is a pile of debunked garbage from someone with an axe to grind.

As for "don't get attached to GW2?" It has EXACTLY the same payment system as GW1, which rolled out shortly after COH and is still running. Server cost is almost nothing to maintain an MMO in skeleton mode (which is part of why I was so pissed they didn't do that with COH - it doesn't cost anything to leave a server running)

GW2 continues to make gobs of money, and GW2 is rolling out brand new content every single month so far. They plan to have expansion-level stuff every 6-8 months. And they've added content to the gem store with every content - most of it limited-time gamble boxes, true, but containing a chance at some very cool skins. I know a lot of people who've sunk a lot of real $$ into gems for those things.

GW2 is healthy and doing fine.

[Illusionss]

I am going to point to the rotting corpses that NCSoft has left in its wake as a cautionary note not to get too attached.  I sincerely and deeply hope that you never find yourself in the position that I am in.  I am now living a life almost completely isolated from people who were at least casual friends.  I am deeply grieving in the real sense for something like 60 "babies," several of whom I have spent seven years building, living through their joys and sorrows, creating them in a more visceral sense than any of my book characters.  They are gone.  Gone before I had a chance to finish their stories, cut off as senselessly and cruelly as if they had been stood up against a wall and shot in the prime of their lives.  They were my friends as well as my creations.

I would not wish my current emotional state on my worst enemy.

Edit: I wish for every single NCSoft executive responsible for this to feel exactly what I am feeling right now.

And..................... THIS.

I feel actual hate for the people who took my virtual children away from me. [I only had about 39 alts I played ona regular basis.] I can create Broadsword Scrappers in other games, many of my CoX children i cant. Especially SoAs. There are others.

May the Great Wheel of Karma roll right back around - and over those fools.

[FatherXmas]

I will openly admit to playing Guild Wars 2.  However there is no way for me to get overly attached to my characters simply because like most MMOs, the universe is very tightly focused. 

The thing about City of Heroes is your character could be of whatever origin you could imagine.  You weren't limited to either a fantasy/armor/swords world or a tech/body armor/guns world or a post apocalyptic/mutation/power armor world.  All three could be represented equally well.  Then of course we had bios, short as they may have been and the ability to make our character look the way we wanted out of the box (barring vet/paid costume sets).

What made CoH special for me and I assume many others is your character is ... well yours, assuming you have any imagination at all, and not just some creative choice for name and one of a hand full of body types.  The fact that all these characters, "from all walks of life" (starts 50 seconds in) could coexist fighting forces of crime, alien invasion, supernatural threats and giant monsters allowed stories that couldn't be told in the usual pigeon hole design of most MMOs.  It made everyone feel unique and unique allows you to become attached.

I have a Norn Mesmer (race/class) in GW2.  All of her attacks (10 + 2) are the same as all other Norn Mesmers.  I'm not sure if other races have the same attacks with their Mesmer class.  Other than tweaking my face, tattoo and hairstyle and primary choice of color scheme for armor/clothes, we Norns all look alike.

Time is also an element when it comes to attachment.  Father Xmas was created late August 2004, soon after I started playing.  There really hasn't been a game that I've played this long, not regularly and if an RPG, not with the same characters.  It was the combination of time with the genre neutral and unique appearance that allowed me to become attached to them.  I don't believe any other game will stir that feeling in me anytime soon.

[DrakeGrimm]

And..................... THIS.

I feel actual hate for the people who took my virtual children away from me. [I only had about 39 alts I played ona regular basis.] I can create Broadsword Scrappers in other games, many of my CoX children i cant. Especially SoAs. There are others.

May the Great Wheel of Karma roll right back around - and over those fools.

And if we give the Great Wheel a little nudge...well... "oops." >.>

[Feycat]

I have a Norn Mesmer (race/class) in GW2.  All of her attacks (10 + 2) are the same as all other Norn Mesmers.  I'm not sure if other races have the same attacks with their Mesmer class.  Other than tweaking my face, tattoo and hairstyle and primary choice of color scheme for armor/clothes, we Norns all look alike.

I think it's unfair to compare ANY MMO's character creation system, or ability for uniqueness to COH. No one else is ever going to touch it - not even another super-hero MMO like CO or DCO, because COH wasn't just a superhero game. It let you be anything, almost. That sort of freedom is, I honestly believe, a huge part of what made the game great, and made repeating the same basic content over and over so much fun - because a different character was like a whole new game, especially if you're an RPer.

That being said, I can't agree with your assesment that "all Norns look alike," or that character customization is lacking in GW2. For the genre it belongs to, GW2 is really above and beyond in terms of what we're allowed to do with our looks. In WoW or SWTOR or LOTRO, yes, all "Elf/Troll/Twi'leks" look alike, because there's only a small, set number of templates to choose from, and gear is attached to looks.

I could make you some screenshots (maybe I will when my new HD gets here and I can play again!) of a lineup of Norns, all of the same class, and none of them looking much like each other. My first COH character, Trillium, is actually an old Amber Diceless Tabletop character that I've ported into every MMO I've played at one point or another. Nowhere except GW2 was I able to mold her facial features to really make her look like herself. I sure do miss her horse legs (and I never got my horsey tail! *cries*) but facially, there is not another Norn that looks like her, and she's excessively short. Add the transmutation stone factor (I can choose exactly what armor, of any level, that I want to wear, obtain that armor from a vendor or the Trading Post, and put it on my character at any level, then use dye to change the colors) and there are very few characters wearing my armor, either.

Gameplay is also very different depending on the weapons you choose. I've got two rangers - one uses cats and a longbow/greatsword, and has gone full beastmastery with lots of "buff my pet" skills - the other uses axe and warhorn and uses lots of traps, getting right in combat alongside her dogs. They play COMPLETELY differently. They're honestly like 2 different classes. My best friend and I each play every class, and we don't play anything alike when playing the same class. It's pretty nifty.

[CG]

I realize that you like GW2, but this isn't a forum where GW2 is going to be popular.  Feel free to challenge things that are factually incorrect, but trying to get people to agree with your opinion that GW2 is a great game is going to be like tilting at windmills.

Our favourite got dumped and the new favourite isn't going to get anything but catty remarks.  That's just how it is.

[Kistulot]

Our favourite got dumped and the new favourite isn't going to get anything but catty remarks.  That's just how it is.

No, that doesn't need to be how it is. The CoH community was known for being bigger than that.

Yeah, it sucks that we lost CoH. But we can't lose part of what makes us awesome (being the best MMO community -ever-) because we're sore over it.

[Feycat]

I realize that you like GW2, but this isn't a forum where GW2 is going to be popular.  Feel free to challenge things that are factually incorrect, but trying to get people to agree with your opinion that GW2 is a great game is going to be like tilting at windmills.

Our favourite got dumped and the new favourite isn't going to get anything but catty remarks.  That's just how it is.

That's what I'm trying to do - correct misinformation and expand on misimpressions. I honestly do not give a crap if anyone else thinks GW2 is a great game or not. I have a lifetime sub to LOTRO and I hate it - I played SWTOR for the free month and couldn't bear another moment of that game. That doesn't make them bad games - it means they didn't do it for me, or they changed development mid-game and "ruined" what I liked about them. I can discuss WHAT I didn't like about them in a factual way without being a snot or hoping they fail, even if I think they deserve to fail, you know?

It doesn't HAVE to be that way. We don't HAVE to throw catty remarks at GW2, it's not necessary and it's not productive.

[CG]

I made no comment on whether it was right or wrong.  It's human nature.  Eventually, we (as a community) will be able to talk about this rationally, but it's a little soon to expect that, IMO.  If you want to fight against that, go for it.