Guild Wars 2

Its been almost a year of Guild Wars 2, I have played total maybe 2 months worth on and off.

I am consistently trying to get my friends (a group of 5) to come play. They seem interested but all of them agree that they require to try the game out before spending the $50 and buy it.

This is entirely justifiable as the group of us have played pretty much every MMORPG released since our WoW: BC this includes, WAR, RIFT, Aion, Age of Conan, Tabula Rasa, Secret World, SWTOR. All of which we bought day of release only to play for a month or two.

I bought GW2 the day of release and have been promoting it to everyone ever since, even during the months I did not play because I know it is the best MMO out there right now in my opinion.

I understand you had one free trial weekend in November of 2012, but one weekend is not nearly enough for someone to try out a game, I mean this in the sense of free time, People have to work, people have other obligations, My friends were all busy working overtime in preparation for the holidays at that time.

Arena Net, I think its time to allow account holders to refer friends into the game for a trial run. This will bring new players in very easily and in all honestly with no offense, it seems kind of stupid that you haven’t done this yet.

GW2 was game of the year and yet you are not allowing your gamers an opportunity to bring their friends in and try it? The weekend in November is a terrible answer to that problem for reasons ive earlier stated.

PLEASE Arena Net, Allow me to bring my friends into this game for a trial period, I find that this game is quite boring when im running around by myself with no friends to play with.

They also had a weekend in April (19-21) where people could play for free, so they seems to have them now and then.

I did not know they had a weekend in April.
Even with that I still think they should allow people with accounts to invite some friends to play the game, I mean honestly this has got to be one of the only MMO’s out there that does not have a feature like this. (I may be incorrect)

A good example which lead me to create this post was recieving a text from my friends today asking what game we should play and they were considering some free to play crap with 2/5 stars review.

3/5 of my friends have the next few days and weekend off and aside from our outdoor adventures we all have been wanting a good gaming session, This would have been the PERFECT opportunity to introduce them into GW2 had there been a system implemented to allow friend invites.

Understandable, but having this rather unlimited trial would also present issues, unless they added heavy restrictions on the players using the trial, which might be the reason as to why they don’t have a constant trials available.

Another thing to keep in mind is that the game did lower its price permanently a month or so ago.

Whos to say it would be Unlimited? It could be a 3 day trial just as long as the weekend events. The upside being that the person starting the trial could do so at their own leisure and when they know they have 3 days of free time to try it out.

My one friend didn’t finish the game download until late Saturday night in Nov and had to work Sunday, leaving him about 2 hours of game time to try out the game. This turned him off from the company Arena Net.

I bought the game for 54.99 the day of release, it is now 49.99. That is still $50 the most that price reduction did was remove the tax.

Allowing Trials to anyone (As in Open Trials) is something else entirely than what im suggesting, I say a refer a friend code, simply allowing a account holder to email an invite to a friend for a few days, letting said friend start his game time when HE/SHE is available to do so.

Honestly its not that complicated is it?

I agree, I don’t see why they don’t just create a separate account set up process for trials, make them timed (3 days and the account expires)

I have lots of friends that have thought about GW2 but don’t want to get it until they try it, having free trial available once or twice a year seems a poor marketing strategy.

Tirus.7902:

Whos to say it would be Unlimited? It could be a 3 day trial just as long as the weekend events. The upside being that the person starting the trial could do so at their own leisure and when they know they have 3 days of free time to try it out.

My one friend didn’t finish the game download until late Saturday night in Nov and had to work Sunday, leaving him about 2 hours of game time to try out the game. This turned him off from the company Arena Net.

I bought the game for 54.99 the day of release, it is now 49.99. That is still $50 the most that price reduction did was remove the tax.

Allowing Trials to anyone (As in Open Trials) is something else entirely than what im suggesting, I say a refer a friend code, simply allowing a account holder to email an invite to a friend for a few days, letting said friend start his game time when HE/SHE is available to do so.

Honestly its not that complicated is it?

I talked about unlimited as in available at all times.

The main issue is still that it can (and will) be abused.
What if someone gets there account hacked and then invites a high amount of spammers/botters/whatevers with their friend-invites?
Sure they will be banned, but is it really worth it?

When they have specific weekends it is on the other hand much easier to handle stuff like that, since at those times they know that potential “fake”-accounts and such would be created.

lordkrall.7241:

Tirus.7902:

Whos to say it would be Unlimited? It could be a 3 day trial just as long as the weekend events. The upside being that the person starting the trial could do so at their own leisure and when they know they have 3 days of free time to try it out.

My one friend didn’t finish the game download until late Saturday night in Nov and had to work Sunday, leaving him about 2 hours of game time to try out the game. This turned him off from the company Arena Net.

I bought the game for 54.99 the day of release, it is now 49.99. That is still $50 the most that price reduction did was remove the tax.

Allowing Trials to anyone (As in Open Trials) is something else entirely than what im suggesting, I say a refer a friend code, simply allowing a account holder to email an invite to a friend for a few days, letting said friend start his game time when HE/SHE is available to do so.

Honestly its not that complicated is it?

I talked about unlimited as in available at all times.

The main issue is still that it can (and will) be abused.
What if someone gets there account hacked and then invites a high amount of spammers/botters/whatevers with their friend-invites?
Sure they will be banned, but is it really worth it?

When they have specific weekends it is on the other hand much easier to handle stuff like that, since at those times they know that potential “fake”-accounts and such would be created.

That is a laughable reason to not implement something like this, They could limit the amount of invites to friends to 1 or 2 at a time or 1 or 2 a month.

The spammers may be an issue yes but they would restrict chat just like any other trial accounts on any MMO.

The fact is simple and a fact, they are hurting themselves and their game by not allowing people to promote the game to their friends in such a way.
I have not played in months because I have no friends to play with, my friends don’t want to buy a game they haven’t tried out. Its a vicious cycle.

Tirus.7902:

That is a laughable reason to not implement something like this, They could limit the amount of invites to friends to 1 or 2 at a time or 1 or 2 a month.

The spammers may be an issue yes but they would restrict chat just like any other trial accounts on any MMO.

The fact is simple and a fact, they are hurting themselves and their game by not allowing people to promote the game to their friends in such a way.
I have not played in months because I have no friends to play with, my friends don’t want to buy a game they haven’t tried out. Its a vicious cycle.

Alright, lets say I “hack” 10 accounts, that means I can invite 10-20 spammers/bots even with those restrictions.

Restricting chat enough to stop them would most likely make the game-play for the trial quite boring and turn people from the game rather than help.

And those spammers and gold-sellers might hurt the game even more.

They have trials, they just don’t want people to be able to invite people at any time, which is quite logical.

This is something any game has to deal with and should not be a reason why they do not allow trial invites, If it is the reason then im sorry but this company is doomed to fail because that is HANDS DOWN the worst possible excuse someone could come up with to argue against friend invites.

Its in no way logical to not allow people to promote the game and invite their friends.

A company should NEVER have to use the excuse “Well if an account gets hacked….” right there, if they said that would be the end of my and any other logical persons support of that company.

And yet they still seems to get new people more or less daily, and the influx of people during the organized trial weekends seems to be quite high. So clearly it works.

The thing is: If they allowed people to give people trials at all time it could hurt the game much more than not allowing it.

I did not buy the box of Guild Wars 2, I bought the digital version for the first time. But I’m sure of one thing, every single box of NCSoft games always come with keys to give away for their games (or yourself to use to try one of their games). After buying GW1 with all campaigns, pre-orders and GWEN I had quite a few keys for most of NCSoft games, including GW1. So I have no idea if indeed GW2 came with keys for the game, but if it’s not the case then it’s rather sad. I think personally it’s be great to give keys to friends to try out the game for a limited period of time.