This, to me, is pretty concerning. In many FTP games, it’s fairly common to see various types of gamble packs for weapons, armor, mounts, and so on; they work basically the same way regardless of the game. On opening, you have a random chance on opening to get either the “real” prize—i.e., what you actually bought it for, such as the aforementioned weapons/armor/etc.—or one of a selection of “lesser” prizes such as experience boosters, repair kits, sellables, debt reducers, and so on. Sounds pretty much like the BLTC chests, right?
They may seem like a fun gamble, at first, but they have some fairly nasty aspects as well. First of all, your chance of getting the real prize is always very low—think along the lines of getting a precursor from the Mystic Forge, based on some of the statistical analysis I remember seeing for one game in particular. This is done for both obvious reasons—lower odds means more cash spent on attempts—and more subtle ones, like a rarer item being considered higher-prestige, more desirable (thus likely to prompt more people to try it), and so on. That may be frustrating, and arguably exploitative of people with low self-control, but it’s not necessarily bad all in all, especially since we don’t know that ANet will go with the standard sub-1% FTP odds.
That, actually, is the truly concerning part, and it’s a somewhat less obvious problem than the low odds issue. By not making the odds publically available, the company has leeway to adjust those odds in their favor—meaning, for example, that the odds of getting a weapon skin could be initially elevated, resulting in a number of people getting lucky, and then dropped to the “standard”, lower level after a while, and after people have already received a now-false impression of their chances to win. That, then, obviously encourages over-investment in the cash shop by those who weren’t lucky enough to get in on the first wave with the raised odds.
I think most people would agree that, regardless of opinions on how fun or fair the gambling aspect seems, the second issue is more than a bit unethical. It also sounds like a tinfoil conspiracy theory, but it was statistically demonstrated to occur in at least one game, Atlantica Online (unfortunately, it was on the now-dead official forums from before the game was sold to another publisher, so I can’t provide corroborating links), and suspected in others. Will ANet do that? I would like to think not, but the lack of transparency makes it possible—and, given that gambling boxes are inherently all about making huge profits (seriously…Atlantica Online sustains itself almost wholly off of various gambling boxes) off of impulsive behavior and low odds, manipulation of those odds isn’t out of the realm of possibility.
I should close by saying that I do thoroughly enjoy this game, bugs and all, and I don’t have any problem with the idea of a cash shop or of things being exclusively available on the cash shop. I do inherently dislike gambling boxes, though, primarily for their lack of transparency, and it would disappoint me greatly to see GW2 go the way of other FTP titles by coming to rely more and more on them over time.
