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Comment by skocznymroczny | Hacker News Reader

It's interesting how the developers and publishers managed to convince players that the only alternative to a subscription fee is f2p + microtransactions. Guild Wars was a success despite having neither. What happened to the expansion pack business model?

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Guild Wars has just about always had a microtransaction shop. It's less emphasized than the boxed products, but it's tough to consider Guild Wars' model that different from an F2P model. Especially as both Guild Wars have "free to start" options today, the line is blurry if non-existent.

It's also not a model that has disappeared or anything. Not just in the MMO space where there are plenty that may or may not be free-to-start but claim their primary financial driver is expansion packs. Overwatch is sort of based on that model, but always had loot boxes. Destiny was based on that model, but always had micro-transactions. Destiny 2 is now free-to-start, and again that line is really blurry between F2P micro-transactions and "expansion pack business model".

I'm pretty sure the poster you replied to meant the original Guild Wars, which, so far as I'm aware of, was a 'buy once, and play for life' model. No micro transactions there.

Guild Wars 1 had micro-transactions for additional (DRM-ed!) music to unlock if you got bored with the base game songs as some of us did. It was an odd experiment (that I recall I paid for) that got shut down, taking the DRMed music with it as the DRM servers also shutdown, to some frustration at least from me as I had assumed it to be a more traditional soundtrack purchase.

I recall there being other micro-transactions for cosmetics in Guild Wars 1 as well, across its early lifespan, but of course, it certainly was not quite to the degree of Guild Wars 2's "Gem Shop".

(ETA: You don't have to take my word for it. It was called "DirectSong": https://guildwars.fandom.com/wiki/DirectSong)

I think the "free" part of f2p is quite compelling to a lot of people. Indeed "free" software in general seems to rule the world.

The free software that "rules the word" is not free in the same sense that f2p is free. It's not the price that has allowed open source software to be in its current position. f2p is free as in beer.

Indeed I meant free as in beer. Open source runs everything under the hood, but I wasn't refering to open source in this case. I'm talking about how the most profitable companies provide things for "free" because people don't understand the value of their time.

Why do you think they were specifically talking about open source?

Windows for home users is also "free" and ruling the world.

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