okay, I know this is never going to be settled... but anyway.

The fact that guild wars has no subscription fee is great. But the gameplay and user-friendlyness of it isn't as good as WoW.

Anyone ever notice how alike these 2 games are anyway?
I got both of them... After getting to lvl 70 on WoW, and having a 4 day cooldown on making Shadowcloth I have come to the conclusion that all blizzard wants is your money.

So, the winner IMO is....

World of Starcraft....?

Actually it would be Universe of Starcraft. They should really make it

I wouldn't care what they called it...

I do know that I would be more addicted to that game than any other game i've ever played. Blizz choose the wrong game... :'(

Try EVE, Voy and I have a blast.

Isnt EVE P2P?

Okay, so If you go out and buy the game... That means, you should be able to play the game.

But then you get the game, go home, delete 3 programs off ur computer just so u can fit the new game on ur computer. Spend an hour installing a game from 5 different disc only to see that you need to pay every month to keep playing the game. (refering to WoW, I know nothing of EvE)

They should give u the game for free if they are gonna make you pay each month to play it...

What I find funny tho, is people actually pay 5$ a month to play a game like Runescape, LoL!

As also having a 70 and getting multiple epics from raids I feel the money investment from WoW. But there are reasons for WoW to have a subscription fee. The sheer time and man power it takes to maintain about 50-75 servers everyday is quite a bit. I have looked into the wages the server techs at Blizzard get paid and its anywhere from 30-55 dollars an hour. And considering they probably have a fair amount of people doing this that adds up. Plus cost of running the servers and all that good stuff yeah expensive. Thats normally why most MMO's require 15 dollars and runescape is obviously less then you know... popular, requires alittle less a month but still something to keep it going.

Now onto the discussion on hand. While yes WoW is very user friendly, it also loses replay ability very quickly. Now Guild Wars with a higher learning curve, it also has more content to it with the numerous expansions and what not kinda makes the game last alittle longer.

The game cost 40$ as I remember, as 8 million accounts have been made... that means, 8 million copies have been sold.

Therefore 8,000,000 x 40 = 320,000,000. And not to mention the people that also buy the expansion that started out around the same price. Let's assume at least half the players bought the expansion. Thats at least another 160,000,000$. That's 480 Million dollars already. Almost half a billion dollars. That's alot of money were talking about. So, IMO the subscription fee turns a bit of a profit, along with paying for the servers/labor. If you play for a year with a Pay-by-month subscription at 15$, your spending almost 5x the amount of money you payed for the actual game. Sure, I understand the need for a subscription fee to keep the servers running. But does it really cost 120,000,000 dollars a month to run and maintain a 50-75 servers? I think it would be wrong to make a profit off a subscription fee. The profit should be made by selling the game, the subscription fee should be used to maintain the servers, not used to gain a profit. I think that 15$/month is overpriced for such a popular game.

Guild wars has free online play, you don't see them going bankrupt. One of the things that made me buy guild wars, is the quote on the back of the case:

"We axed the subscription fees! Why pay to play a game you already bought?"

haha.

ShinRa, People whom created Guild Wars is a pretty big gaming company. Guild Wars may not be P2P but other games by same company is P2P. Example: City of Heroes & City of Villians is created by them as well but both them games are P2P, so really getting money else where off mmos to support Guild Wars servers and stuff.

Then again I payed for WoW 2 years + straight -_- So I've spent a little on it. Not 15$ for me, its 20$ a month for australians =/

Subscription fees is for use of server I guess..

ShinRa: It's way more than 50-75 WoW servers. Guess you're just counting the American, but there's even more European (I believe) and you also got some in Asia.

I've played WoW from day five (WoW was released 11th February 2005 here in Europe). I've played the game for a little less than two years overall. The good thing with the game was that I had some friends also playing it, making it more fun to play. This have never been the case with Guild Wars, that's why I've never gotten into that. But I think Guild Wars can be just as fun as WoW (at least now after TBC, which sucked) if you just have some friends to play together with! And GW got no fee...

As WoW currently suck and I don't know anyone playing GW, I play EVE-Online (not that I have any friends playing that either, but at least the game got a quite different gameplay). Cost just as much as WoW, but you don't have all those noobish kids and Italians hanging around

Yes, but it's one of the best games out there.

Hellgate: London FTW! FPS and third person view + MMORPG (single player and multiplayer)

Blizzard has hundreds of servers for WoW, there's more than just the North American/Oceanic Servers... don't forget to include Europe, UK/Germany/France etc etc, then there's the Asian servers... tons and tons of them. All of them are maintained daily with GM support, questions etc etc, and then they have weekly inspections. And that's not all of it... they have people working on patches a lot, finding ways to improve the game, remove bugs, and all that mumble jumble. There are reasons why they make you pay for WoW. As for Guild Wars, the company that makes it has money coming in from other games so they can support it.

Oh, and as for the thing you said about Blizzard making a bunch of money off of selling 8 million copies of WoW, they're not actually make as much as you say. See they have to sell the game to the retailers, say 20$ a copy or what not, make less if they buy in bulk, but you see the retailers have to make some money too, so they jack up the prices which allow them to earn money, which is why it costs us 40$. Furthermore, that money may only cover the costs to make the game, and then some, so maybe... 2$ for a blank CD, then 2$ for all the paper, 5$ for the ink, etc etc, really they might only make a small profit. Money my friend... everyone wants it.

I don't see a MMO toping WoW anytime soon unless it's made by Blizzard.