Kotaku y Guild Wars

Kotaku goes all throbby over Guild Wars, making me seriously wish I had my PC working again. Well, no it doesn't as I just had some real success last night in my iTunes expirements and it's the last thing I need to derail me. The short version is that the game thoroughly impresses, but the lingering wonder of for how long hangs over like a cloud. As I hear about more and more people abandoning WoW, it makes you wonder how the MMO industry is going to work in the future.

The thing is, it's OK to love Guild Wars for only a few months. You aren't paying monthly. There's nobody to call when you decide you've had enough. And when NCSoft decides to release an expansion pack, you can pick up right where you left off. They've completely dismissed this myth that the MMO industry requires a monthly fee to run. Let's state that again - it's a myth that the MMO industry requires you to pay them monthly. They're doing it not from necessity, but profit.

Hopefully Guild Wars will have people re-examining how much it's worth to play large scale online games. Maybe Sony won't get away with releasing pay-per-betaware much longer.