First of all, if anybody looking to claim GW2 as a WoW killer ever read ArenaNet interviews or researched -anything- about them they’d realize two things pretty quickly:
(1) The founders of ArenaNet worked at blizzard, some on WoW, most on starcraft or warcraft.
(2) They, and a good number of people at the company, still -play- WoW. And tabletops, but that they play WoW is key here.
So, why did they stop working on WoW and at blizzard in general? Well, you make more money owning a company than you do working at one, so long as you’re successful, and you’re in more control that way. This is also why some of the original founders of ArenaNet have branched off -again- to found their own companies (apparently miyamoto never got this memo or he did and he realizes he’d fail at the ‘so long as you’re successful’ part). Anyway, from the first GW and GW2 were not designed to ‘beat’ WoW or cannibalize its sales, but rather to co-exist alongside it as alternate experiences. That is why:
(1) Neither are subscription based.
(2) Both are based on different design structures than WoW
To explain that second point in more detail, GW was more of an RTS than even WoW (they tend to say trading card game rather than RTS, but the comparisons to an RTS are stronger especially as more expansions came out), as evidenced by, again, looking at where its founders/employees were before becoming ArenaNet as well as its skill/profession system, while GW2 seems to be more of an action RPG sort of thing. With GW2 I think they’ve realized that most of the RTS-like stuff in GW just doesn’t work due to the high learning curve and lack of subscriptions to fuel the dedication to balance that WoW has (also each expansion added -too much- new stuff to work into the balance and, even worse at least as far as balance goes, part of their design philosophy -is- ‘hey, here’s some stuff, we bet you guys are more creative than we are so just have fun/put stuff together with it…we’ll clean up the mess later if we have to!’ without the funds to fully support that last part). I mean, yeah, $15 per character name change and $10 here and there for frilly holiday costumes allows them to keep the game running and patched every month or two, but for the last few years, as they’ve shifted into GW2 development, the quality control just isn’t there. Which prompts a large portion of its playerbase, probably the base -not- spending money on the name changes and frilly costumes anyway, to just play WoW or whatever other MMOs or games they were likely playing alongside GW anyway.
Another important, really important actually, part of that second point is that the game is not a WoW-alike in part because everybody at ArenaNet already plays WoW. They don’t want to work on a game they are already playing when working on it won’t bring them the money that working on WoW itself would. And then they also don’t want to -play- another WoW themselves. They want something different to play around with alongside WoW. If anything, WoW subscriptions will go down right when GW2 releases, everybody who dropped WoW will eat up GW2 content to their heart’s content or until there is no more and then they’ll pick up their WoW or whatever else subscription again. Why? Because GW2 content is even -less- infinite than WoW -and- you can continue playing it in smaller bursts when WoW content starts to dry up again, you get tired of it for a while, etc. In some ways the existence of something like GW2 ‘helps’ WoW more than anything since when people go from WoW to GW2 they are not paying another company subscription fees + cost of game, but are rather just paying cost of game. Heck, they may not even be cancelling their WoW sub in the first place because of that.
As an aside, I think it’s hilarious that on ArenaNet stuff SWTOR is censored as [unnamed MMO].
This is a great email. You bring up information I was not aware.
About the mentioning of breaking away and forming a company to get money, there is actually nothing wrong with being the employee. There are times when it is a good thing. If your desire is to make the best video games out there, sometimes you have to make your own company. But sometimes it is better to stay in an established company. When a designer left Retro Studios to make his own company, he realized it was much harder than he thought.
What I’m saying is that building a business needs a BIG REASON why for it to exist. The reason cannot be ‘because I want to become rich’. How would you leverage people to work for you with that attitude? “Hey everyone! I want to become rich! All you people spend your time in making me rich!” That won’t work. However, if you say, “We are going to make the best can of beans on Earth!”, everyone works towards that goal. You end up uplifting the poor and the worldwide standard of living with your better can of beans. As a result of all these effects, money pours in. Most successful entrepreneurs I know have a ‘giving nature’ as if their mission is to improve the world.
Anyway, your statement of “They won’t make a game they are already playing. They are making a different game because they want to play a different game…” is so right on. Game developers are game developers because they are gaming addicts. They became game developers because no one else was making the game they wanted to play so they had to do it themselves.
I thought your description of Guild Wars and its emphasis on being ‘different’ is right on and informative. I applaud you.