Guild Wars 2

Yeah, I vote no.

I like it the way it is. I know a few others that do as well ^__^

I certainly hope not.

no way, i would demand a refund is this were to happen

I Like the way it is at this moment in time, The Gem Store right now has it’s uses, good Service items, That Aren’t P2W Items, and alot of the stuff is pretty good (Not the best, but good).

Let me Refer you to a F2P Game I played before quitting that game and started with GW2.

This F2P Game was horrid, but at the same time it sucked you in as you had nothing better to do.

It had a terrible gear grind, which would take 1/2 a Year to “Unlock” Certain areas so you can get “Top Tier” Gear.

It had a Power Cash shop. this cash shop was also Horrid, Power, Power POWER ITEMS EVERYWHERE!!! even the mounts were P2W, even the smallest of things was P2W, and they even felt like doing “Lottery” Type stuff in order to get the items.

People with Disposable Income would just burn almost $500 per fortnight on boxes just to get the items in it, most never got anything from it, just useless junk….why just last week i was reading that someone Paid $12549 in one day in order to be more powerful, yes he burnt $12k in 30 minutes.

But all this came at a cost, The population, the game is slowly dying and the “Company” is milking the players for every last coin.

The only thing that was F2P was the leveling in the game until you hit around level24 and “Twinks” would 1 shot you with their “power” items, In order to be competitive you had to grind for 6+ months (Which i did, i didn’t spend a penny on the game, wasn’t worth it) and just have enough to buy 2 power items which wasn’t nearly enough to do end-game.

Now onto my point about GW2 going free2play:

Yes it will get them more money, but can cost ALOT of the population to quit, people not spending and possible death of the game.

In order to get more population/money onto the game Arenanet should do *Weekend Free Trials" Twice per month, limited as Free trial accounts can do anything they want but can’t buy from the TP or sell.

this is sure to see alot of new players and maybe, just maybe, bring the starting zones to their former glory as well as earn arenanet ££££.

What good is that to the players? huh…more people to go around with, less empty zones, must i go on?

I would rather jump out my window than see GW2 go F2P and see this game get turned into a “Buy your power items here, only$500/month” (yes, i may have a pure hatred on P2W Items, but who doesn’t?)

I never want to see GW2 go Free2Play, I enjoy it as it is.

Dogblaster.6713:

This never happes.

The arenanet is company, can you tell me why they should give their hard made product to someone for free?

Yes there are free to play mmorpgs, but they had low developing costs and anyone would even buy them money.

Guild Wars is on pair with the best pay to play mmorpgs there is no reason to go free to play ever. And no .. Arenanet would never benefit from this ..

Players that are not willing to buy game for money WONT ever spand money on gems. So what Arenanet have from this? Just more bots and more loaded servers.

You would see 100x more bots, gold sellers, trolls, etc.

Planetside 2.

GW1 was successful with the B2P model and GW2 has done well so far so why would they change what has worked for them?

Guild Wars 2 reached it’s peak sales and descended a couple months ago, but that does not mean they are not still selling plenty of copies. A speculative friend of mine just bought the game after playing the free-trial and I’m sure there were others who did as well.

Free to play for this game would be bad. Not only because Anet’s buy-to-play model is just fine but because when a game goes free-to-play many assume the game is dying (which is isn’t).

F2P’ing GW2 more then it already is would be an absolutely horrendous idea.

Korrigan.4837:

I also hope this will never happen. If they remove the money gains from the box purchases, they will have to compensate through the item shop. The last thing I want in GW2 is a greedy item shop like all those trash F2P games have.

This implys you don’t think the item shop in GW2 is greedy right now? Personally I know I’d spend money there if everything took a 50% price hit.

The people in charge of the GW2 cash shop are already doing a terrible job at it, since they seem to think that their consumers are simply problem gamblers.

Maybe if the cash shop wasn’t so run with such incompetence it could be feasible (although still a move that would be bad for the direction of game), but unless the cash shop gets an overhaul it isn’t going to even producing as much revenue as they’d want to have in addition to the box sales.

After Anet gets the treadmill fully implemented then they’ll go to a F2P model, like every single WoW imitator before them has. But until then (hopefully never), the F2P model is unneeded.

Are people REALLY defending black lion chests?

0_o I’m truly shocked and disappointed

As for the ops suggestion: No

Fix the reasoning behind the players leaving the game, start to listen to the direction that the playerbase wants the game to take. Ditching the B2P aspect, without sorting the problems and improving the way they market the cash shop, would be a unmitigated DISASTER imho.

nofo.8469:

Dogblaster.6713:

This never happes.

The arenanet is company, can you tell me why they should give their hard made product to someone for free?

Yes there are free to play mmorpgs, but they had low developing costs and anyone would even buy them money.

Guild Wars is on pair with the best pay to play mmorpgs there is no reason to go free to play ever. And no .. Arenanet would never benefit from this ..

Players that are not willing to buy game for money WONT ever spand money on gems. So what Arenanet have from this? Just more bots and more loaded servers.

You would see 100x more bots, gold sellers, trolls, etc.

Planetside 2.

What is Planetside 2 besides one big persistant FPS WvWvW? GW2 has that PLUS dungeons, sPvP and more. Different gameplay modes to suit a diverse community.

OP: You do realize that if they did this waypoint costs would double or triple and drop rates would be reduced even more. We’d get more game breaking items in the cash shop and the price of gems would go up. There’s no way they’d ‘refund’ everyone who bought the game prior to a f2p launch. They need that money to sustain their company and make up for 5 + years of development costs as well as additional content updates.

Having to buy the game is a good deterrent to bots. The if its F2P they need to sell more stuff from the shop to make up for the lost sales. Its just not a good idea overall unless you absolutely had too which maybe someday they will, but not now.

Let’s see, GW1 lasted 7 years as B2P. with that being the precedent, I think GW2 is safe for at least a year as B2P. I don’t understand how people can think this game is dead already.

Wrei Mors Les.8406:

nofo.8469:

Dogblaster.6713:

This never happes.

The arenanet is company, can you tell me why they should give their hard made product to someone for free?

Yes there are free to play mmorpgs, but they had low developing costs and anyone would even buy them money.

Guild Wars is on pair with the best pay to play mmorpgs there is no reason to go free to play ever. And no .. Arenanet would never benefit from this ..

Players that are not willing to buy game for money WONT ever spand money on gems. So what Arenanet have from this? Just more bots and more loaded servers.

You would see 100x more bots, gold sellers, trolls, etc.

Planetside 2.

What is Planetside 2 besides one big persistant FPS WvWvW? GW2 has that PLUS dungeons, sPvP and more. Different gameplay modes to suit a diverse community.

So because you say guildwars 2 specialises in nothing its better than any other MMO that focuses on something?

Guild wars 2 > EVE because EVE doesn’t have dungeons and suit everyone?

No, whether you like it or not there are good F2P MMO’s out there that had a development budget comparable to guildwars, which was the point of my post.

What guildwars has is a diverse and very fragmented community at the moment.

If guildwars perfected dungeons, SPvP and WvW then I would agree with you, but as it stands at the moment its pretty much sub-par in every regard, only reason WvW is successful is because they literally have 0 competition for that kind of gameplay atm.

nofo.8469:

Wrei Mors Les.8406:

nofo.8469:

Dogblaster.6713:

This never happes.

The arenanet is company, can you tell me why they should give their hard made product to someone for free?

Yes there are free to play mmorpgs, but they had low developing costs and anyone would even buy them money.

Guild Wars is on pair with the best pay to play mmorpgs there is no reason to go free to play ever. And no .. Arenanet would never benefit from this ..

Players that are not willing to buy game for money WONT ever spand money on gems. So what Arenanet have from this? Just more bots and more loaded servers.

You would see 100x more bots, gold sellers, trolls, etc.

Planetside 2.

What is Planetside 2 besides one big persistant FPS WvWvW? GW2 has that PLUS dungeons, sPvP and more. Different gameplay modes to suit a diverse community.

So because you say guildwars 2 specialises in nothing its better than any other MMO that focuses on something?

Guild wars 2 > EVE because EVE doesn’t have dungeons and suit everyone?

No, whether you like it or not there are good F2P MMO’s out there that had a development budget comparable to guildwars, which was the point of my post.

What guildwars has is a diverse and very fragmented community at the moment.

If guildwars perfected dungeons, SPvP and WvW then I would agree with you, but as it stands at the moment its pretty much sub-par in every regard, only reason WvW is successful is because they literally have 0 competition for that kind of gameplay atm.

Please re-examine the little illogical interpretation spin going thru your head when you wrote that. The fact that the focus of one game is but only one of many other focuses in another game does not imply one is better than another. The main point is that Planetside does not need to split as much resources over various different gameplay modes than GW2 thus GW2 would probably require more revenues to maintain and improve beyond initial developement. You can’t seriously support a F2P model using ‘Planetside 2’ as an example when the circumstances between PSide2 and GW2 are so different.

I agree highly with Dogblaster from page1. The massive swarm of irritating community and bots would be horrible. Yeah, they happen anyways, but it would be 100x worse.

Plus, with Anet’s amazing job so far on events and answering, I don’t want to see them give that away for free. They wouldn’t make more from gems, because I know a great deal of people that HATE gem stores. It wouldn’t make enough, compared to people who really like the game and buy it, play it for free after that, and buy gems if they want to.

They’d probably have to add in some pay2win things into the store if they did go gem only. It’s really common.

Free to play would ruin this game. You think people complaint about issues now, it will be 100x worse! ANet should keep to game trials as this game is really worth paying for. I personally wouldn’t mind paying them $60 a year for continued game play.

Between opening the game to bots and ANet making the game “pay to win” it would just ruin the game totally. I’ve tried free to play, in the end I’ve concluded that unless the game pulls of what RuneScape does (limit free 2 play to specific servers and about <20% of the world) it isn’t worth wasting my time to even try. And even they are going down the road to shove their micro-transactions down the players throats which is why I jumped ship there.

Other then this game being infested with bugs which I’m sure will be mostly squished in a year, I like what they’ve done and would petition an annual $60 “server fee” for unlimited gameplay for a year. I’ll probably eventually buy a few things from the item shop such as bank space and maybe a costume.

This is most likely the most stupid idea I ever read on this forum. If you want to see what happens when a P2P game goes F2P check out the Aion-Gameforge fiasco. Do you really want a game filled with bots and item prices drop to almost nothing?

I dislike people like you so much, how can you wish for a game to go F2P is beyond me. Cheap people are the worst.

I think it would be a good restart.
They have botched things from the start and with WvW free transfers to Spvp balance
and now the massive grind for ascend this game is perfect for the pay 2 win design.

I think that once we are out of the beta stage they will relaunch as a free 2 play after they everything worked out right and WvW paid transfers,Spvp Balance and PVE pay to not grind limits.

Guild Wars 2 is a F2P MMO, once you buy it that is.

I’ve had the game since launch, paid for the game, haven’t had to pay anything since. As for the P2W thoughts, this game is totally P2W. Pay cash for gems-trade gems for gold-buy awesome gear/buffs/whatever on the TP. Arena Net is just cutting out the need for goldsellers by doing that and, personally, it’s a brilliant idea.

How about…NO…

i didnt BUY this game to go F2P and i dnt want 60$ worth of cosmetics from game shop so this game can go F2P.

Korrigan.4837:

I also hope this will never happen. If they remove the money gains from the box purchases, they will have to compensate through the item shop. The last thing I want in GW2 is a greedy item shop like all those trash F2P games have.

And what exactly should they do to encourage more gem to gold exchange? Remove loot from kills entirely? (see that other thread for what I mean)

Just so i understand the OP. make the game Free 2 play (no purchase costs) ummmm ok.

Back on planet earth, how is this going to improve the game?. In my opinion, the introduction of F2P in guild wars will as others have posted, attract bots, Gold sellers and eventually destroy a game that is as good as the best MMORPGs out there. ANet are not stupid, this will never happen.

Bad idea is bad. Sorry. The reason have already been stated by others, so I know this is unconstructive. But honestly, what sane reason is there to make GW2 f2p? What would happen when they make an expansion?
What do you have to gain from making it f2p? Other than seemingly getting some gems?

Over 3 months after launch and it’s still the top selling MMORPG on Amazon.

The problem is the bots and multiple accounts. Also, A-net probably like making ‘free’ money from bot accounts

Terrible idea. As many have said – need the initial purchase price :
a. To cover Arenanet operating and dev costs
b. To act as a barrier to prevent massive influx of bots/kiddies
c. F2P model drives so many inbuilt in-game mechanisms to suck money out of you that it destroys the fun

I like current balance of options to purchase via in game currency or to be able to buy upgrades or even translate real money into gems then to in game gold

4 copies of game, multiple bank slot upgrades and character slot upgrades so far in my family and all very happy with this game so Anet is winning based on game quality and quality of the community. I left LOTRO and SWTOR when they went F2P since I felt it really messed up the game

No thank you, for all of the reasons already listed.

You have never thought of the consequences OP, this is a bad idea.

SWTOR went f2p and it’s not even f2p. You have to spend equivalent to $60 to play the endgame.

This will probably happen one day (also see: Star Wars), but in the meantime the box price is actually a very small but specific barrier to entry. It keeps the game slightly more free of bots, spammers, and extremely negative community members. It slightly discourages people from doing something horrible just for fun, because they at least have to pay to do it. It also ensures that very young people don’t have easy access to the game. It’s a limiter, and it homogenizes the player base slightly. I’m not saying any of this is good or bad, but it is what it is.

For those posting that the revenue lost from making the game truly FtP would impact Anet, I sincerely doubt this. I guarantee the box price gives them nearly nothing compared to what the gem shop brings in. People are spending thousands in the gem shop. That -is- their entire revenue model. Box sales are just icing.

I used to play many years a game that went from p2p to f2p, a few months later the lure of selling power became too big and eventually it was the only thing they where selling. Weapons that used to be extremely rare and powerful where sold to people paying 1000 euro or more to obtain them. f2p quickly becomes p2w because the hats and fashion items don’t sell enough to cover the development and operational cost. I prefer the system of some fashion items and paid expansions where I pay for content and not for power.

i partly agree. i think they should make like a “free trial” not like the last one, but everyone can download and play forever, BUT! highly restricted gameplay. Like a level cap of 20 or something, only 2 weapons per class. Something like that

It would keep the low lvl zones populare, would make people try the game and then they can buy it in the gem store for around 50-60$ worth of gems.

No. The initial purchase works as a barrier for many BAD things. Buy to play is ok. Also the f2p games are popular with their cash shops and the unbreakable bond that it has with the gameplay. So going f2p is a nonsense.

Bluestone.7106:

Regarding the vertical progression comment I have been reading everything I could find from Dev posts and interviews and it is my understanding that Ascended was intended fro launch and is the highest tier of gear. If it had been in at launch this would be a non issue but they made the regrettable decision to not include it at launch because their content that needed it (such as fractals) wasn’t ready.
It is my understanding that there will never be a higher tier than Ascended (Infused). But that the various slots of ascended gear will be added gradually.

""Ascended Gear is designed to fill the ‘Time’ gap in regard to the distance between exotic and Legendary in terms of progression and in retrospect would have been better to have been rolled out pre launch."" – Chris Whiteside AMA on Reddit

Ultimately there will be Legendary… never say never. The gear grind was something GW2 was billed as NOT having. So ppl are understandably skeptic about anything said now.

FTP would be a disaster imo what I’d rather see focus on on is paid expansions and the GW1 model of paid expansions where they open new continents and maybe profs but are not needed you can still play quite happily in the original continent if you so chose. But everytime an expansion comes out sales of the original unit increase.

As a big supporter of F2P.

I say not really. There is no real benefit other than maybe players that felt “gated” by the initial fee. Xmas is soon to come and the would alleviate that problem. Don’t jump on it yet, let the new year come and to see what happens.

Terrible idea. I have played many f2p MMOs and as mentioned on the first page, it will not bring in much revenue because people will play the free content and never spend money. Not to mention bots.

I’m for Free-To-Play ONLY for sPvP. F2P users can only access the Heart of the Mists. If they want to play WvW and PvE, they would have to upgrade their account.

This would be good if ANet is building their eSports viability in the future. As of now, they can’t compete with the level of LoL’s eSports scene because LoL is F2P. They might get in the level of SC2, but the current offering of GW2 PvP is lacking (no ranking system, no spectator mode, no replay videos).

nastyjman.8207:

As of now, they can’t compete with the level of LoL’s eSports scene because LoL is F2P.

That’s just because LoL has better pvp; Gw2 doesn’t have as clear of a flow to it. Really they should have just started with a straight up death match game-type, then moved onto others and let the pvp evolve on its own; let the players decide what in the PvP is “esport” material and build on it.

The current game-type just doesn’t work well with Gw2’s style and thus just doesn’t attract nearly as much attention.

OT: The B2P model suits Gw2 much better than any free to play model and is more welcoming and friendly to players (especially new ones); although, while a bit of vertical progression to compliment the horizontal isn’t bad by any means, the way they implemented it wasn’t the best decision as it hinders that welcoming and friendly atmosphere new players could have experienced.

Korrigan.4837:

I also hope this will never happen. If they remove the money gains from the box purchases, they will have to compensate through the item shop. The last thing I want in GW2 is a greedy item shop like all those trash F2P games have.

Because it can get worse than right now LOL ?

The list for things you can’t buy is short ; Dungeon Tokens, Karma, Achievement Points?

Sky.7610:

This game should go free 2 play. Just give everyone who purchased the game $60-70 worth of gem. Everyone wins.

Anyone who plans on buying the game had already done so, Anet will get more sales from gem store. Us players will experience a increase in player activity and will solve the problem with low-mid level zones being empty. And of course, new players will get to experience this game without purchasing it.

Everyone benefits from this. Thoughts?

couldnt disagree more games FUN to play with good graphics and tons of effort in pvp and pve. best mmo i ever played. now if i could just find some info on new build…xD

I understand the concept of freee to play, but I believe Anet’s business model is fine. They need to get paid for the fruits of their labor and I don’t mind letting go of $60 enjoy their product.
The whole gem store focus would bankrupt the company. I’ve only bought 800 gems since August and I’m pretty sure they are not alot of people out there that spend $20-100 a month on gems.
60 bucks is not a bad entrance fee to hours of entertainment.

Thanks for the topic! F2P is pretty a pretty hot topic right now.

Wrei Mors Les.8406:

nofo.8469:

Wrei Mors Les.8406:

nofo.8469:

Dogblaster.6713:

This never happes.

The arenanet is company, can you tell me why they should give their hard made product to someone for free?

Yes there are free to play mmorpgs, but they had low developing costs and anyone would even buy them money.

Guild Wars is on pair with the best pay to play mmorpgs there is no reason to go free to play ever. And no .. Arenanet would never benefit from this ..

Players that are not willing to buy game for money WONT ever spand money on gems. So what Arenanet have from this? Just more bots and more loaded servers.

You would see 100x more bots, gold sellers, trolls, etc.

Planetside 2.

What is Planetside 2 besides one big persistant FPS WvWvW? GW2 has that PLUS dungeons, sPvP and more. Different gameplay modes to suit a diverse community.

So because you say guildwars 2 specialises in nothing its better than any other MMO that focuses on something?

Guild wars 2 > EVE because EVE doesn’t have dungeons and suit everyone?

No, whether you like it or not there are good F2P MMO’s out there that had a development budget comparable to guildwars, which was the point of my post.

What guildwars has is a diverse and very fragmented community at the moment.

If guildwars perfected dungeons, SPvP and WvW then I would agree with you, but as it stands at the moment its pretty much sub-par in every regard, only reason WvW is successful is because they literally have 0 competition for that kind of gameplay atm.

Please re-examine the little illogical interpretation spin going thru your head when you wrote that. The fact that the focus of one game is but only one of many other focuses in another game does not imply one is better than another. The main point is that Planetside does not need to split as much resources over various different gameplay modes than GW2 thus GW2 would probably require more revenues to maintain and improve beyond initial developement. You can’t seriously support a F2P model using ‘Planetside 2’ as an example when the circumstances between PSide2 and GW2 are so different.

Do you have any idea the point you are arguing anymore?

Planetside 2 was not an MMO with cheap developing costs, which was the point of my initial post.

You are right though, guildwars 2 requires more revenue to maintain and improve now because they went the PvE progression grind route.

They are different yes, no kitten.

However I will iterate this again for you, the poster I was responding to said there are no succesful F2P MMO’s with a decent sized development budget, which planetside 2 contradicts this.

What point are you trying to argue exactly? I don’t think gw2 should be a f2p game I don’t have the faintest idea why you are even trying to argue with me.

For being sub free, the game already have a huge number of idiots and spoiled kids. Gouing f2p means multiplying that number, multiplying the number of the annoying gold sellers, bringing multiplying the number of kitten who cant even hit the marked target and multiplying the stupid queues that we have due to the lack of investment on GW2 servers. So no, please. If you want 60 bucks in gems, ask mom and dad for it as xmas gift.

Sky.7610:

This game should go free 2 play. Just give everyone who purchased the game $60-70 worth of gem. Everyone wins.

Anyone who plans on buying the game had already done so, Anet will get more sales from gem store. Us players will experience a increase in player activity and will solve the problem with low-mid level zones being empty. And of course, new players will get to experience this game without purchasing it.

Everyone benefits from this. Thoughts?

Anets model for making money is two fold.

1) sell the game and its major expansions.

2) Gem store.

The first is their main source of income, which per your request you would take away from them.

The mere fact that it took 5 years for them to develop this game due to them using this model with GW1 is a testament that this is a smart way to do business.

Your suggestion is poorly thought out. Mainly due to the fact that most F2Ps are truly not F2Ps.

The are pay to win or offer subs to get full access to content.

I love Anets model and wish it never to be bothered with.