Guild Wars
Guild Wars 2 Announced
MSNBC’s Kristin Kalning calls it “an experiment that worked.” Guild Wars can run profitably without server fees because most of its game world is instantiated, cutting down data center costs. ArenaNet’s business model for the game consists of selling expansions of all sizes — from whole campaigns to PvP skill sets to character slots to soundtracks. While quite portable between multiple machines, all expansions are tied to user accounts, making piracy nearly impossible.
Looks like their episodic content business model worked even better than expected. Guild Wars 2 will host a persistent world on its servers — still without server fees. That will make Guild Wars 2 a true MMORPG, minus monthly subscription costs.
Having spent nearly two hundred hours in Guild Wars, I’m glad to hear the next Guild Wars expansion, Eye of the North, will include a Hall of Monuments allowing your Guild Wars 2 characters to inherit accomplishments from your Guild Wars characters. How’s that for a New Game Plus?
Read more on Guild Wars 2 and Eye of the North from Kotaku, Wired, About, and G4.
Happy Wintersday!
I’m celebrating the sanitized Saturnalia you call Christmas in the game world of Guild Wars, where we call it something more straightforward: Wintersday.
This Christmas, forget the fairy tales about Santa Claus and Baby Jesus. Saint Nicholas of Myra is long dead, and the philosopher Jesus of Nazareth was born in September. Celebrate this Holiday Season for what it has always been since the days when winter gave people an excuse to break free from the daily grind of working in the fields, long before the Christian church and big business bastardized and exploited it: a time to cast off the yoke of social norms, a time to go wild.
In other words, it’s time to play.
