Guild Wars 2

Not sure if anyone cares about my opinion on stuff like this, but I’m gonna post it just in case.

IMHO, the store prices are just far too high for what you’re getting.

For instance: You may go spend $2 on a fully featured smartphone app that you really like and feel is worth it. This is a good value.

In this game you spend $2 and get a key to open a virtual chest that probably doesn’t have anything worth talking about in it.

Or you might get a 1 hour boost in XP gains.

Or a one-time-use party box that you can drop in the game for people to play with….???

I would not mind spending money in the game, but the pricing model as it stands is seriously out of whack.

The only thing that seems like a non-exorbitant price are the (very limited) selection of vanity items. Those are the only permanent things that you can actually continue to enjoy for more than an hour after shelling out your money on them. They’re still too expensive, but at least you have something to show for them…

TLDR, Bottom Line:
If you had been selling everything in the store for half what you are, I would have spent a decent amount of money already. As it stands I haven’t spent ANY money because there’s hardly anything in the store worth anywhere near what you’re charging for it.

Lower the prices significantly and I bet you’ll see a more overall profit from the store by a noticeable margin.

I have some about 6K gems by just playing the game and using in-game currency to get them (This does not account all those thousands of spent gems). If you are enough dedicated to play the game that you want to use their in-game store. Getting gems is not that hard for now. It might be one of the reasons why their pricing is so high for some stuff.

The exchange rate is getting worse for the people on the playing side (vs the buying side). It’s already down to the mid 200’s gems for a gold, and it’s probably only going to get worse.

I won’t want to go farm for 3 hours so i can turn around and buy 3 black lion keys. That’s insanity.

@Clord, in the end though, Anet doesn’t make money off of people that buy gems with in game gold (well obviously somebody else bought those gems with actual cash, but still) …

I also want to mention that i fully agree with the OP, if i hadn’t ran into this thread i would have likely posted about this myself… As i too find some of the costs for ingame consumables absurd, so much so that there seems to be no value for the money you spend, and thus these items may as well not be sold, as it’s fairly likely they are not getting sold. It’s not that the items suck, but the value for them expressed in reallife cash is just totally out of whack!

And like the OP, this has been one of the reasons why i have shunned away from buying gems. I am currently thinking about using ingame cash, if i can spare it (due to the infrequent times i play) …

Another reason why i have to agree with the OP is due to the fact that digital goods hardly have any reproduction costs. You make the item once, and there after it’s just copy/paste… which makes the costs of some items in regards to both value and production costs so rediculous that it somewhat agrivates me …

And the last reason i have to agree with the OP is due to the fact that the economy of scale plays a large part in Ingame Shops. The potential market is so large that even for a low price, profit can be huge due to the large available market and in regards to cool consumables rebuy potential…

One example realy stood out for me, and that is the ‘box of fun’, this item should likely not cost more than $0.25-0.40 per shot, if not less… At those prices i am convinced more people would use them, and thus more would get bought… with the apparent low costs of producing the item, and already having made it … I know i will likely never buy one of these if the price isn’t reduced to reflect the above situation in regards to this item. I am a big fan of GW2, i am crazy about the game, but that doesn’t mean i am actually crazy !