Guild Wars Interview

FileFront has published a two-page interview with ArenaNet’s Jeff Strain, in which the producer talks about their upcoming subscription-free MMORPG, Guild Wars. Check it out:

Q: So how did you manage to pull of the no-subscription fee model? Or is that a company secret?

A: No, it’s not a company secret. It’s kind of surprising to us that it has taken this long for somebody to do it. I think the reason most MMOs charge subscription fees is because they can, you know? The way we do it is, first of all, when you’re running an on-line game like this, other than development expenses your biggest expense is obviously bandwidth to host people on your servers.

So the first thing we did was bring our experience in creating Battle.net to bear on the task of making a game that could host thousands of players but use a very small amount of bandwidth. One of the things that is going on behind the scenes that people don’t realize is this technology that we’ve developed to mask latency so that you’re using a very small amount of bandwidth as you play.

The people who are playing from modems report that once they are in the game and playing, they have every bit as good of an experience as everybody else. Not only is that good from the standpoint of reducing our costs and making this model feasible, but also because it means that more players with a wider range of hardware and connectivity qualities are going to be able to enjoy the game.