Guild Wars 2

I would like to suggest the following:

1) Anet honor sale prices on purchases made within 7 days of a sale.

Most major retailers already do this and have done this for decades. It’s a fairly common practice, in fact, I’ve been told other online games do as well. Unfortunately, GW2’s the only game where I’ve ever had this issue.

The end result would have been more satisfied customers who would have likely purchased additional gems and spent with confidence in the future. Now? Well, I know quite a few people who won’t be buying anymore gems at all because of this.

2) No more “surprise” sales.

I can’t even imagine how many people who bought/received gems for Christmas were upset about this sale. Especially people like myself who specifically waited until New Year’s day to spend said gems in case there was a sale. Had you at the very least announced the impending “New Year’s” sale on New Year’s day it would have made a difference, instead it was 3 days after the fact with maybe a 12 hour notice at best (less, I believe).

3) Should you choose to ignore #1 and #2 then at the very least clarify on the “gem refunds” support page to read that “all sales are final”.

During my correspondence with Anet support staff I was informed gem refunds are exceedingly rare and usually only in cases where someone accidentally purchases duplicates of something they can’t use more than once, such as the CE upgrade. The page as it stands now is very misleading.

4) Don’t limit items to 24-hour sales.

This didn’t personally affect me, but I saw enough people complain about it I figured I should add it. Many people missed out on buying something they wanted on sale due to the time limitations. This, again, can also go back to there being little to no warning about these types of sales.

I really don’t see what the problem is, they announced the sales on the 3rd of January, and most retailers have ‘January Sales’, if you were so impatient and only waited until New Year’s Day before you spent your gems, that’s your fault and not ANet’s.

Also, I hear a -lot- of people complain about MMOs having sales and that they just missed them. People are going to be buying things only a day or two before they go on sale/are announced, and not everyone is going to see an announcement, this is bad luck, yeah, but it doesn’t mean they’re entitled to the sale because they didn’t buy the item during the sale. You seem to be missing the entire point of a sale, things are cheaper during the sale, not a bit before it, not a bit after it. If retailers choose to reimburse people who missed a sale, that’s their choice (And is likely due to the fact the person will just return it and buy it again at sale price if they don’t). Gem purchases are final and non-returnable, so ANet don’t need to reimburse people who miss the sale, and they’re not bad people for doing so, it’s common sense.

I agree with you though that it would have been nice if the sales lasted longer.

Theres a few issues with Guildwars 2 Gems and trading

When you stop and view how Guildwars 2 provide support we would be crazy to buy

For example..

Lets say you spend £100 ($160) on gems.. You then trade it for gold.. (i dont know how much you would have in gold lets say 100). So you have 100 gold.

You then hit one of the common bugs, meaning you lose all your gold. You seek redemption and re-embursment for the items.

In the Terms and conditions it states that they wont credit your account back.. you would have had more fun burning your money…

Until Anet think of us as customers, who are paying hard earned cash and offer us protection against sales, i personally wont be buying again. What sort of shop would say to you “if you buy this box, and its empty, or its broken tough”??

none.

You pretty much just repeated what I said, gem store purchases are ‘final’ and non-refundable, so ANet don’t need to worry about you just returning an item and buying it back during a sale, which is the reason many retailers reimburse you during a sale.

Sorry i removed my post ridley as i was unsure how a anet admin might have seen it, and could have taken it the wrong way.

Its slightly immoral in my opinion, but business is ruthless i suppose.

No problem, and I agree that it isn’t ‘nice’, but as you’ve said, to survive and succeed in business, you can’t always choose to be the nice guy all the time. (That isn’t to say you can’t still be the nice guy a lot of the time)

Well, this is how I see it, which may or may not be true of others.

First, the fewer people who are prepared for the sale (via ‘sufficient’ advance notice), the fewer people who participate, the less overall revenue is made. People also tend to buy things on sale that they would never buy at retail price and spend more during sales than they usually would otherwise. So, I don’t see how these ‘surprise mystery’ sales are helping them as much as more publicized ones would.

Secondly, like I said, it’s a confidence thing. Why would I want to buy or spend gems now? Their refund policy is basically non-existent. No one ever knows when or what they’re going to have on sale or for how long. I guess if I just had money to burn I wouldn’t care, but how many people do in this economy? Suffice it to say, their practices and policies don’t instill buyer confidence, quite the opposite.

I agree with the second part of that 100% its all about confidence, Its a huge market for GW2, and the smallest of problems will get people running when it comes to real cash if there is no protection.

If people experience a problem, and get pointed to these terms and conditions constantly, rather than having a common sense approach to things. Then people will eventually get bored of spending there cash, and either give up on the game, or purchase from “non registered third part companies” that carry the same risk. Granted you have the added factor of getting banned. I dont condone this, and would not recommend going to a third party.. But if people constantly get scolded by anet, people will hunt for alternative methods of getting the items they want.

Fast, ‘Surprise’ sales do encourage people to spend when they wouldn’t normally though. If you’re told that you only have 24 hours to buy this item for 25% off, you’re much more likely to buy it than if it was on sale for 2 weeks, or if you were told 2 weeks earlier about the sale. It’s why most sale adverts on tv tell you to “Hurry, the sale ends in 2 days”. I believe the money they make from people doing this is more than if they gave people more notice.

worst idea ive ever seen. anet doesnt charge a monthly fee. if youd rather they charged a monthly fee and gem purchases were always what you wanted. fine. ask them to do that. i for one like the system the way it is and only buy gems when i like what anet is doing and less so for some new skin. if you like the game buy gems once in a while . if you want to pay for the same item that everyone else will buy and be a clone then tell them to charge a monthly fee and make items set. also tell them to make it pay to win while youre at it.

Poe, Can i just ask what idea your talking about? I can see people discussing the terms and conditions, and also people talking about how the sale advertising is done..

But i dont see anywhere what is the worse idea?

Nobody has complained about subscription charges, nobody has complained about the idea of buying items. Where on earth have you got the monthly fee stuff from?

Your comment makes no sense what so ever, and rather than being a discussion/debate about sales, advertising, refund policy and general etiqute.. you have just rambled on as if were talking about how we dont get cool stuff like wow players do.. which we clearly are not.. I see many of these comments made and its usually somone looking for a fight. Lets not hope this is the case here, as i would appriecate this thread being open for others to express there issues with the gem store, and general support of paid virtual items (which currently i believe is non existant).

To sum up so far we have talked and debated about;

How advertisement for sales is completed.

Terms and conditions on refunds for sales.

How Anet are able to sell virtual good for real cash, but not provide any support for loss of virtual goods if THEY cause a problem (i.e loss of valuable item/gold/gems due to bug)

Please read the full article were not bashing anet, i like the game (not as much as gw1).. its new and things will be bumpy, but without talking about it anet will NEVER know how the community are feeling.. I joined in as i read in so many posts about people having issues with customer support reffering everything to terms and conditions, and not supporting people for there virtual goods, (gems/weapons/gold) when people are paying cash for them which is slightly relevant (although was a little bit of a hijack – i appoligise).

However that being said, my issue at the moment seems to be getting resolved very well.