A certain MMO featuring a realm of conflict recently announced a new release: World of Warcraft Forever. Having never played WoW but having flirted with SWtoR and Guild Wars 2, the name “Forever” was oddly appealing to me. WoW and Runescape stayed off my radar in no small part because of the monetisation models, but the term “Forever” meant something to me.

See, when I heard “World of Warcraft Forever” and the Blizzcon host went on to explain characters will never have level resets, never have server closures, never have seasonal setbacks…well, it all sounded like this was going to be a World of Warcraft release that one could buy.

World of Warcraft “Forever” only lasts as long as your subscription

The name and the features all added together in my brain to be the announcement of a purchasable one-and-done version of WoW. Alas, shortly after the show it was revealed this is just another part of the subscription model. Your character might never reset and new expansions will never set you back…but you’re still paying monthly, every month, for the privilege.

It’s fine for WoW Classic and retail, clearly, but they really made the announcement of Forever seem like something new, something that would live up to that name: Forever.

In my hubris I took that to mean “You can buy this and then play forever”, but what they really meant was “You can stay subscribed to us forever” as if giving Blizzard money is something we actively enjoy.

Guild Wars 2 is ridiculously ahead of the industry and deserves all of our respect

In my let-down after the Forever reveal I went back to my old MMO accounts and wondered about reactivating SWtOR, or maybe even starting a Runescape subscription (having been playing Dragonwilds and liking it). I wracked my brains for a while, um-ing and ah-ing about which to splash on for a month or two to scratch the itch that the WoW Forever announcement gave me.

Then I remembered Guild Wars 2.

Guild Wars 2 is an MMO, make no mistake, but one that is sold like an off-the-shelf game. In fact, for a time it was on shelves. Once you buy Guild Wars 2, and any of its expansions, you can install and play the game whenever you like. No reactivating subscriptions (which if you didn’t play for a few years, those would’ve gone up…) or forgetting to disable them. No time pressure or FOMO on staying subbed during peak seasons or releases. Best of all, no pressure on the devs to deliver constant content or risk losing subs, because anyone who has bought the content has already paid their share.

For both players and developers Guild Wars 2 just…does it. They don’t faff, they don’t hoodwink, they just sell you content and you play it.

After not playing for 4 years I have reinstalled the game, finished my personal story chapters on my Deadeye and now I’m marching into the first expansion. All while trading on the marketplace, levelling Chef, running Fractals and clearing maps. All of this content is just there, waiting for me, because 4 years ago I bought it.

I can’t spend money on a game I don’t play

It shouldn’t sound alien. It shouldn’t be surprising. But in the genre, in a world with “vaulting” (and yes, I know Destiny are finally working on that massive mistake) this approach to monetisation is simply unheard of.

By not charging me to access content I’d already paid for, Guild Wars 2 makes sure that players never stop being players. Sure some of us might not have the latest releases, but everything we do have is there, and we can play it.

If they had “vaulted” that content, or made me pay for the most recent content in order to access the stuff I wanted from 4 years ago, I never would have gotten back into the game. If I didn’t get back into the game I wouldn’t finish the content I own, and if I don’t finish the content I own I won’t buy more…

Guild Wars 2 doesn’t need to trick me into spending money, it just needs to prove it respects me as a player…which it does.

I stopped giving Destiny 2 my money shortly after they vaulted content. I heard just after I threw in the towel that Escalation Protocol was gone, simply didn’t exist anymore. Destiny 2 didn’t just let me fall out of season to one day work my way back, eager to buy the more recent content. No, they actively removed me, carved me out and gave me no reason to consider ever spending money on content again.

Guild Wars 2 is the only MMO that deserves to be called “Forever”, because you can buy content and those maps, quests, collections, classes and more will be waiting for you…forever.