E3: NCSoft Prepares to Go Massive
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Even when they're set in more traditional role-playing universes, NCSoft's titles aren't afraid to break many of the unwritten rules of MMOGs. Take the recently released Guild Wars; a game which was the first massively multiplayer title to be launched simultaneously worldwide, a major accomplishment in itself, but which also debuts a radical new business model whereby players pay no monthly subscription fee, with revenues instead coming from the sale of (optional) content updates.
"One of the reasons is that that way we'll allow people to have more flexibility to play our games," explains Kang. "If you can only play two MMOs or one MMO at a time, it might be a barrier in that kind of sense to have a subscription, and for Guild Wars we're trying a new approach with no subscription, and instead going with paid update content. There are servers and there are virtual online worlds that are happening 24 x 7, we're just not taking a subscription."
