Guild Wars 2

Right now since I initially bought the game I have hardly paid into it. The reason is everything is so expensive to a person in my position. Now I’m a working man and I’m struggling financially but in the current UK economy, and a lot of the world economy, finances are not so good for many like me. Now since real life is so expensive there is no way I will invest large amounts of my hard earned cash into a virtual economy.

Lets put it this way I can have a few takeaway meals, go to the cinema, eat well for a month, or buy virtual goods that can help me enjoy my game. These virtual good aren’t necessary as I have proven as I play without them but some things like extra bag space, collectibles space, bank space would be nice as would some nice aesthetic things. Now if prices were more respectable I would buy and feel much more satisfied with my game. Right now your more privileged customers may be quite happy but how many players are so privileged and how many are in my position.

Who cares about me. I don’t expect any strangers to do so in a world of selfishness and greed but Anet how much greater would your sales be, your customer satisfaction and overall profit financially and in customer loyalty if if you were to make prices a bit more affordable for working class people on low pay. Its not as if you are gathering from nodes to make what you sell ;-) or have a factory of people producing them. Its virtual. Personally I think you are shooting yourselves in the foot with the costs of your items in the gem store.

Since the original Guild Wars, I have played DDO, LOTRO, SWTOR all with subscriptions and I came back here to Guild Wars 2 as I was looking forward to it from the early days it was announced to be going into production. I now find free to play with an expensive shop that caters just to the privileged as a financial model has lost its attraction to me. Even your sales are mostly pretty poor offers.

I wont be replying to any insulting replies or flaming and I will report any that I believe breach forum rules and regulations, terms and conditions.

You can accumulate gold through playing the game, trading post speculation, doing “key runs” with a throwaway character to accumulate tickets for sellable weapon skins, etc. The gold can be exchanged for gems in the manner that many thousands of players who are unwilling or unable to buy gems for real money already do.

You don’t need cash to buy upgrades from the gem shop, just patience. I’ve done it myself – I’m not rich by any standard, I’ve bought gems once in a while but most of my 17 character slots, extra bank slots and so on were bought with in-game currency.

“Respectable” is subjective. I think the prices for some items are incredibly fair, while others are clueless and should be scrapped (Swimming speed bost? Really?)

I very much doubt it would make any difference if the items were cheaper. Anet would not gain any sufficient goodwill that would outweigh the massive loss of potential profit.

I’m in support of Anet’s prices for account and permanent upgrades. When you look at the costs for extra character, bank and bag slots, it is pretty expensive. But the fact that they are permanent makes them worth it. Anet will never make another sale again for that opportunity so it’s best they charge the most at that time.

Think of it like this. Anet could come out with a special promotion for character slots for 200 gems. People would buy and hoard these forever to the point that after the sale is over, no one will ever consider buying at regular price. Those future sales will no longer happen. Price things too low and you will lose out on your margins.

I do think Anet needs to make the consumables considerably cheaper, especially considering how worthless the MF/karma boosts are when you consider the gem/gold ratio.

Unless we can see the important stats we cant surmise if there would be loss or gain on profits if prices were cheaper. In regards to real life versus virtual life. Time is as valuable to me as money and I am not able or willing to spend so much of it on any virtual game. I have put plenty hours in but I am not a farmer, grinder or such so I have not amassed even in my in my time enough gold to be converting it all to gems. Again this is a virtual world and its not healthy to be spending so much time in it when real life is so busy too. I expect many arguments against me but I also expect there are many people out there with much more money or time on their hands who are unable to sympathise with the less privileged.

joneb.5679:

These virtual good aren’t necessary as I have proven as I play without them

If you’re struggling financially, here are a few tips to help you out.

1) Please read the quote above that came directly from you. This game was made so that you can enjoy the game completely out of box. All items in the Gem Store are indeed optional.
2) Since there are no monthly subscription fees, you don’t have to worry about ever paying for anything.
3) Guild Wars 2 allows you to convert in game currency (Gold) for virtual currency (Gems) at no cost. There are many players who take advantage of this, and have never spent a single pence, shilling, or Pound (I hope I got the UK currency correct) on this game post client purchase.

It all comes down to living within your means. If you have disposable income, and are willing to spend it on a video game, feel free to do so. If you can’t afford to do so, don’t force yourself to feel as if you need to. But even then, there are multiple ways to get Gems without having to spend real money. Heck, you get 400 Gems for free for each 5k Achievement Points you earn.

I would happily pay £10 a month to be on equal terms with people with more money than me. £10 a month in the gem store is worth nothing much at all. Turbine used to have some great sales in their store in DDO, they used to give store credit with their subscription which paid for a lot more in their game and ofcourse there was all the other benefits of a sub.

I have observed, experienced and learned much in my time about people and they more than anything want to feel free to do whatever they want and will happily accept the illusion of such benefits as well as the illusion that there is real freedom. In this case free to play has become the choice of payment model for many, because some people believe they are better off and sure enough anyone who doesn’t care about the benefits of buying anything from the store will be better off but there are so many I’m sure spending much cash in the game for benefits that I have seen offered for less with a subscription model.

$10 a month doesn’t put you on equal terms with people. It just buys you Gems that you can use in the Gem Store. I think you might be mistaking GW2 for a pay 2 win game.

First, you can’t be too bad off since you had the $$ to spend on the game itself. Second, if you are able to afford $10 a month, why don’t you buy $10 of gems every month and save them up to get something you want from the gem store. If there’s nothing you want in the gem store, then I’m not sure what the problem is. Anyone who spends money on gems/gemstore items is in no way better off than you in the game.

If you need more money in general, you could consider getting a part time job instead of playing a game in your spare time. Alternatively, you could take classes to increase your education, and in turn, increase your value as an employee in a certain field. I am 44, highly educated, with 10 yrs post-highschool education, and a good job. I can tell you that when I was going through school I played no games. I worked and I studied. Now I have time and I have cash. So, I keep the game going for you by buying gems on useless items so you can play for free. Win win win ya?

I hope my post does NOT seem to be offensive in any way. I’m merely offering MHO on the situation. However, the irony of a person that has the money to buy a game to begin with commenting on how lack of money does not impede their gameplay is not lost on me. Actually, I’m not even sure what you’re trying to accomplish with your post. We all must make decisions on what to spend money on. You can choose to buy food or gems. I can choose to make an extra payment on my mortgage or buy gems. We could both give money to charity (people who are really, REALLY poor) or buy gems. You’re talking about a game… of virtual stuff…. that could be shut down any day because ANet goes broke and can’t keep the servers going because they spent money on nice office furniture instead of fixing stuff in the game….. :P

Sorry, this post got out of control.

Ozmanian obviously you cant get the gist of my post and you are pretty rude because you don’t know me, my circumstances or anything so don’t assume you can offer me advice. I’m not looking for advice and I’m not looking to moan but just to let Anet know if costs in their store were lower I would buy and possibly quite frequently but since they are not I wont buy much at all. I think there may be many like me

I’m also asking them the question of how their financial figures work out and if regarding this is better to sell virtual items with no production cost for a higher price or lower price based on their overall demographic. Sometimes more can be less.

joneb.5679:

I’m also asking them the question of how their financial figures work out and if regarding this is better to sell virtual items with no production cost for a higher price or lower price based on their overall demographic. Sometimes more can be less.

NCSoft is a publicly traded company. You can go to their corporate site and see the reports yourself: http://www.ncsoft.net/global/

Their Earnings Releases are here: http://global.ncsoft.com/global/ir/quarterly.aspx

But as for your question in a nutshell, the cheaper something is, the more of it they have to sell to make the same profit. So in your case, if your personal decision was that you would buy more if you could pay less, that might not be the case for all spending players. Some players with disposable income may buy regardless of if the item was on sale or not.

There’s also the corporate side you have to consider. If a company is able to sell $3 million worth of virtual items (made up number), you run the risk of earning less if you make everything discounted across the board. The goal is to increase revenue, and if there’s a steady trend of sales from quarter to quarter, some managers may not want to take the risk of losing sales by dropping prices. In tough times though, managers will take more calculated risks to boost sales, but that’s usually when the risk is higher in not doing so.

I think you are rude for assuming i am rude. You should not assume things about me because you don’t know me.

ozmaniandevil.6805:

I think you are rude for assuming i am rude. You should not assume things about me because you don’t know me.

I can’t stand aside and I will support ozmaniandevil.6805! No way he/she was rude, I saw no offensive words in his/her post. The real fact is that there are no “priviledged” players, where did you know about them? They have a special look on their toons or something? There’s nothing in the gem store that can disbalance the game, you can fully play without donating at all, some gem store goods are sometimes given for in-game accompishments, along with the gems. The only thing that differentiates players from each other are TITLES. But NO WAY you can earn them via buying gems, these titles are given for in-game achievements, lots of which are not so hard to accumulate without grinding.

I can’t understand what you’re expecting from the game- they give you free access, new events and living stories every two weeks, different new festivities…. Buying gems will not differentiate you at all from the rest of the players, in contradicts the game’s policy.

This topic is over a week old, but I am resurrecting it so as to not have to create a new thread on the exact same topic.

I think I understand where the OP is coming from, and I agree with him. I’ll try to keep this brief.

I played FFXI before Guild Wars, and in that game, which is subscription-based, I paid the 12.95/month standard fee, plus for additional 15 characters to serve as storage space (the max being 16) which were a dollar each, coming to a little under 30 bucks a month. I did this for many years, and don’t regret any of it. Entertainment on which money was well spent.

With Guild Wars 2, I was happy to spend money in the Gem Store in the beginning. There were items such as the account upgrade and the bank expansions which, although expensive, are quite useful and offer longtime value for money spent. When I bought the game, I knew of the Gem Store, and I had no problem with its concept; I never bought the game specifically because it was “free to play”, but because I bought into the hype. I don’t smoke, I don’t drink, I don’t have a family. I don’t buy movies or go out to eat. I spend most of my time either working, reading, or getting some exercise. My needs are simple, and thus so are my expenses. To spend 20-30 bucks a month on the Gem Store would be of no consequence to me.

Unfortunately, even people who have the means to do so don’t necessarily spend money on frivolity; what is or is not frivolity being subjective of course. There are things I don’t care one iota about, and things I would buy if they were cheaper. Since more or less the amount of money I am willing to spend each month stays static, my buying decision depends on what I get for that money. Right now, not a whole lot.

For ten dollars, I can get six hours worth of a single type of booster. If I spend 10 bucks a week, that’s not bad. I’d pay 10 bucks a month…not so grand. I can also get one 2-week bank golem for easy bank access. I love those golems… But not enough to blow that ten-dollar allotment on it. SPVP arena, if one wants to do guild tournies or something, is 20 bucks to start, then 5 bucks for 20 days, or 10 for 40. But even then, you can only buy 800 gems, or 1600, and so on.

This brings me to issue #2: gem purchase amounts. Funny how the prices on many items are adjusted so that they don’t match the gem purchase amounts. You can buy 800 gems for 10 bucks if you want a 500-gem item. But you can’t buy just 1000 gems if you want two; no, you have to spend 20 bucks and have the 600 gems left over, whether you wanted them or not. You can’t just let people buy the amount of gems they want, because then they’d only spend only the amount that they want.

I look at the Gem Store, and I can’t buy anything even when I have money to spend. As much as I want to support the game, I don’t want to feel like I am bending over every time I do it. I don’t want to pay what everyone knows are airport prices for Wal-Mart sandwiches.

On the flip side, telling the OP to just convert gold to gems isn’t exactly doing him any favours. Right now, it takes 55 gold to get 800 gems. Look at the thread which asks people how much gold they have; many of them have never seen 55 gold. The other issue with that one is the fact that many items are time-gated and only available temporarily.

Give me items that I care about and can buy without feeling like a complete idiot for doing so, and I will buy them.