No monthly fees.

No, it will not.

EDIT: Shit. Got beaten to the punch. Twice.

It's not going to top WoW. Nothing will top WoW until Blizzard's next MMO. That's not to say GW2 isn't as good or better than WoW, it's just not gonna attaract that kind of fan base. One of the main reasons WoW has 12 million subscribers is because every PC on the planet can run it. I bet there aren't 12 million PCs in the entire world that can run GW2 at high graphic settings. The other challenge new MMOs entering the market have to face is that players now expect the kind of polish and depth that WoW has. How can any game, no matter how good the developer is, be as polished upon release as WoW is after 6 years of development and tweaking? Not gonna happen. Then add in the fact that it's very hard to pry WoW players away from that game because of how addictive it is and because of the relationships that the players have established on their servers. People don't want to leave a guild with 20 of their friends in it to go play a new game alone.

Having said all that, I definitely want to grab GW2 and give it a shot because it looks amazing and fresh =)

It won't have monthly payments but it will definitely have DLC and yearly expansions (GW1 had several expansions). They probably are making next expansion even before they have released the actual game. Maintaining servers cost a lot every year so there has to be constant sales to keep servers up and running. Doesn't matter whether those sales are from original game, DLC, expansions or even advertising but they need money every year. I doubt official GW1 servers even exist in 2013 anymore (depending on when GW2 is released). 

You can't compare to other games because server costs for other game types are minimal compared to MMO's. And many of them can even use P2P (meaning that there are no official servers, your own PC works as server and client), MMO's can't use P2P for gaming. Remember, MMO's have thousands of players at the same time, other games only few.

meh, money is more important then features.

I just finished watching the Manifesto Trailer for the 100th time already and fuck it's so good!

It'll be the first MMO I'll play in my life and it'll be the best of it's kind.

If Guild Wars 2 was to ever come to the PS3 (Hey, A man can dream ;D), It'd be one of my greatest game announcements ever.

The main reason why WoW is that popoular is its name...there are tons of MMORPGs, and in the most cases you can play them on every PC. But WoW is made by blizzard, it's part of the Warcraft franchise and is advertised like hell. I played it a few months, not because of the specs of my PC but just because it's like a obliged stage for a MMO gamer. Then I found it tiring, and left the MMO world...until a few months ago; and actually I found GW a lot more enjoyable than WoW! It just needs to be tried,

EDIT: wrong quote -__-

It's not gonna be as successful as WoW in terms of cash in any way, but I think it will still be a very successful game overall. People will be looking for something new to play, and GW2 will be the first MMO in a long time to truly do something different. I think it's going to do better than the old Guild Wars games, and that should be quite enough.

Also, Guild Wars 2 is being developed to run on old hardware as well as new. The developers are using rigs that are a couple years old to make sure they know the game will run on hardware like that, and if you look at the videos, it's pretty clear that it's not the technology that makes the game look good, so much as the magnificient art style.

I think it's gonna be a pretty big success overall, and the article talks about features, not sales as the measure for being the "MMO for the new decade".

ArenaNet said some time ago that they didn't know if they were gonna do yearly expansion like with GW1, so just because it happened with GW1, I don't think you should assume the same will be true with GW2.

Whatever they end up doing, it probably won't be mandatory, like with GW1. You were never forced to pay for Factions or Nightfall if you wanted to keep up, because they worked as seperate games. And you didn't need the original game to play Guild Wars, as you could just buy Factions or Nightfall instead.

So yes, there will be ways for them to get more revenue (microtransactions will be used as it was in the old game), but just how it will happen remains to be seen.

Unfortunately, if any game is going to stake claim to an entire decade it has to be the number 1 game of it's genre and success is measured in units moved and dollar signs. GW2 can be the greatest game ever made, but if no one plays it, it's not going to be considered the defining MMO of the year, let alone the decade.

That's just the way the world works.

Speaking strictly in numbers, yes. But we're talking about an MMO being built for a new decade in terms of features, evolution and revolution in the gameplay, not what MMO will be the best selling. And with the original selling more than 6.5 mio. copies, Guild Wars 2 will not go unnoticed.