I was looking to buy GW1 gold and came across this [b][url=http://www.arena.net/blog/mike-obrien-on-microtransactions-in-guild-wars-2]interesting but completely overlooked blog post[/url][/b]...
It says in big letters
[quote]… it’s never OK for players who spend money to have an unfair advantage over players who spend time.[/quote]
But then in the text of the article it says completely the opposite:
[quote]...microtransactions were an afterthought in Guild Wars, whereas with Guild Wars 2, we had an opportunity to integrate the microtransaction system from the ground up...
...If you want something, whether it’s an in-game item or a microtransaction, you ultimately have two ways to get it: you can play to earn gold or you can use money to buy gems...
.... Because gems can be traded for gold and vice versa, we don’t need two different trading systems, one for gold and one for gems. In Guild Wars 2, everything on the Trading Post is traded for gold, but of course, somebody who wants to earn gems can just sell items for gold, and then convert the gold to gems...
...If a player buys gold from another player, he gets the gold he wants, the selling player gets gems she can use for microtransactions, and ArenaNet generates revenue from the sale of gems that we can use to keep supporting and updating the game...[/quote]
Supporting and updating the game? WAIT WAIT WAIT WAIT
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ns-IIn-DG-c[/youtube]
Anyone remember that video? Anyone?
[quote]...the argument runs, "a MMO needs a subscription to support the game"...if this were the late 90s I'd agree...but today this simply isn't true...[/quote]
Yet the GW2 dev team that some people fete trots out that [i][b]exact same argument[/b][/i] (cost of support) when it serves their purposes.
The "content" argument is also malarkey, and here is why:
The GW2 blog draws a comparison with one game, EvE, which is faulty given that EvE is a small and very niche game that appeals to the ground up to relatively well-to-do overgrown nerds in the finance and programming fields. EvE is also an older game and as such does not reflect the driving forces of modern MMO administration. GW2 diverges from this comparison in that:
1. GW2 will not be a super-hardcore elitist niche game like EvE; it is aimed at the broadest belly of the market. This is not a bad thing, but it does mean that the design and administration of the game, which are the defining characteristics of a MMO, will reflect this.
2. GW2 is a brand new game, conceived, designed - and funded - in today's MMO business environment.
This one very flawed example deliberately disregards much more relevant examples such as WoW and Star Trek Online. Both are much more modern games designed for a much broader audience. In both cases, switching from a subscription model to microtransactions disincentivized the running of the game as a going concern and coincided with sharp drops in content production and quality of customer service.
My point here is this: the would-be groupies of the GW2 dev team, who think they're the white knights, the "good guys" of the MMO industry, are willfully delusional. They're in it for the money, just like everyone else.
The top comment on the Youtube video that was previously linked to me and I linked here again is:
[quote]Complaining about subscription fees not being present is like saying your taxes aren't high enough. [/quote]
However, that complaint is, under certain conditions, a perfectly valid one.
Higher taxes and what they buy is preferable to the absence of the stability and equalization of opportunity provided by a strong public sector. Everyone must pay for healthcare, transit, food and water, housing, education, security, etc, in one manner or another, but paying for all those things via taxes is all-around a better deal than paying for all those things piecemeal according to an arbitrary system predicated on the willful self-delusion of the participants.
And by that I mean those people who think they're keeping more of their paycheck when they get a tax cut, then turn around and spend vast sums on personal security, gasoline, auto maintenance, student loans, insurance, emergency rooms, rent, and bottled water.
Paying a subscription fee is exactly the same as paying taxes. It is an economic contract with a society, predicated on the realities of human nature: that individual human beings need the patronage of a higher power to defend themselves from the vicissitudes of fortune and the intentions of other men, and that nothing is free.
A MT system is exactly the same as a so-called "free market". It is predicated on the abject fallacy that those who control the board will honor their word when they have no reason to and be restrained from human evil by the transcendent, Buddha-esque enlightenment to understand the futile and self-defeating destiny of all human greed.
The subscription fee, like the voting booth, is the lever of control.
Remove that lever - through faithlessness by way of folly - and the system will run amok.
The analogy between contemporary politics and gaming is not coincidental nor contrived. Apples and oranges are mutually comparable as kinds of fruit, and both politics and gaming are products of contemporary folly. Contemporary folly is a foible that West Coast liberals and Midwestern rednecks share in common.
Both groups of little people think that they can win in a game with no rules.
[quote][b][i]"So what about you, Aestu? You're still here..."[/i][/b][/quote]
My answer is: like everyone else I play the game of life...and e-life. Merely because I understand the faults of the system does not mean I am willing or able to fully divorce myself from it; I merely approach it from a position of knowledge rather than willful ignorance. The choices I make reflect that.
P.S. I am tripping on bean curd, bean sprouts, rice vermicelli, aspartame and MSG right now. Bear with me.
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