Guild Wars 2

Dear Anet,

I’m not sure if you’re aware of this, but your gem prices seem extremely expensive when it comes to your pound sterling conversion.

800 gems costs £8.50 – this is the same price as a monthly subscription in other MMOs
1600 gems costs £17.00 – this is the cost of your official limited edition hard bound strategy guide

For £35 I could buy a new copy of the game, with 5 character slots (for which you charge £8.50 per slot on the BLTC or £42.50 for the 5).

Your costumes cost 700 gems – or presumably £7. This is the cost of a DVD or CD.
Your BL Chest keys costs 450 gems or the price of a McDonalds meal.

If I want to get a couple of halloween items, I am paying out almost as much as the game cost me originally.

I don’t mind laying down £10 a month, or even £15 at a push (twice that of other subscription MMOs) if the investment is worth it, but for a costume I can use once on one character, or some keys that get me nothing in return, this is just not worth it.

I think you need to either reduce the cost of your gems, or reduce the gem cost of your items. There is a recession on, and people cant afford to throw this much money at virtual items that have such a tiny shelf life, when compared to other media.

Thanks for listening

p.s Just airing my views to Anet, not looking for a discussion.

Oh it’s worse if you just for a laugh change your country and see how little the American’s pay in comparison.

FYI US display prices before tax, UK displays prices with VAT included.

I agree, im a student and I cant exactly afford more than 800 gems a month which is what I would pay for a normal sub MMO, since GW2 isnt subbed I have more flexibility, but come on your prices are rediculous and bang out of order.

Its so obvious that were being screwed out of money aswell, key drops have died in the last few weeks with the announcement of chest skins and the few that I had saved up yeilded absolutely nothing useful from the chests, less loot than I used to get.

It might be fun making a bucket load of money from the gem house but show a little consideration to your playerbase.

Palleon.1657:

p.s Just airing my views to Anet, not looking for a discussion.

Interesting.

Better get used to this. It’s been happening for decades. Companies come up with a reasonable price in dollars ($), and then when offering the same product elsewhere in the world, they suddenly “forget” to convert currencies at the proper rate if the coinage of the target country is stronger than the dollar.

US Dollars: 80gems per $, or $1.25/100
EU Euros: 80gems per €, or €1.25/100
British Pounds: 94gems per £, or £1.0625/100

People who pay with € pay roughly 24% more, at current rates.
People who pay with £ pay roughly 33% more, at current rates.

Could’ve been worse though. CE’s were 30% and 40% more expensive at launch, respectively.

Don’t expect them to do anything about it.

Well, part of that 33% is accounted for by the 20% VAT, but not all of it.

I thought about buying some gems but when I saw the price, I was shocked. And you can’t buy that much with them. A single Black Lion key is 125 gems, that works out over £1 each and the stuff in the chests just isn’t that great. A few silly tonics, some gathering tools that you already have a lot of, some sort of boost? Just not worth it. Even at 450 for 5, that’s still nearly £1 each. Ridiculous. And the other stuff is overpriced as well. I think that more people would spend cash buying gems if they weren’t so overpriced. As it is, I won’t be buying the costumes and the Black Lion chests can stay unopened in my bank for now. I hope Arenanet will reconsider and either bring the price down or at least give us more for our gems.

They really need change the cost of buying gems from the UK because they are just too high for so little. Did some reaserch, £8.50 for 800 gems from the black lion store, £4.63 for 15 gold from a gold selling site, that 15 gold could get over 1200 gems, there is not much chance of me buying gems for such a high price when I get more for less.

Well I won’t be tempted to buy from a gold selling site, but I’m certainly not going to be spending real cash on gems from the gem store any time soon, unless ANet rethink their prices.

Palleon.1657:

Dear Anet,

I’m not sure if you’re aware of this, but your gem prices seem extremely expensive when it comes to your pound sterling conversion.

Your costumes cost 700 gems – or presumably £7. This is the cost of a DVD or CD.
Your BL Chest keys costs 450 gems or the price of a McDonalds meal.

Actually I’m not sure that this is a valid comparison as I believe that things like eating out, DVDs and CDs are so much cheaper in the USA than they are here.

The point is certainly valid though, the diamonds are overpriced and what you can get for them isn’t worth the cost.

Before the game launched I bought myself 4000 gems for £42.50. I’m still happy with my purchase and I do want to buy more gems but given now that we know about the difference in price between countries I’m no longer inclined to.

Just feels like too much of a drastic difference.

http://www.miketodd.net/encyc/salestax.htm

Almost all US stores display their prices before the addition of sales tax. For the British, who are used to having VAT included in the price (and having stores that don’t include the VAT must display a prominent notice to that effect) it can be the source of some confusion.

Don’t assume the price displayed in USD is the actual price paid. As I said earlier, but people seemed to skim over, US prices tend to be before tax whereas Brits are used to seeing VAT included in the price.

I’ll not claim it’s exactly the same, the only way to do that would be to constantly change the prices in line with the exchange rate. But it’s not as big a difference as you imagine.