Guild Wars 2

DISCLAIMER: If i had to do it all over again, i probably would have spent more.

I was curious to see how much money i’ve spent on GW2’s Gem Store today. So i went into my email account, and checked. I keep everything, and sort them into folders, because its a thing. I found something kinda shocking.

The game costs $50 at launch, and $50 for the xpac. So base investment was $100. Its now $50, because the core game is free.

My total amount spent in the gem store from my CC, was $1215. This was in addition to around $120 in Best Buy gem cards, because reasons. So the total is $1335, total.

I’ve been playing for 3 years, off and on, so i did the math on this, per month: $1335 / 36 months = $37.08 per month.

WoW’s monthly sub is $15 a month, while FFXIV’s sub is anywhere from $14 to $32 (depending on if you ‘rent’ the extra retainers per month and have the full account, allowing more than one toon per server).

What did i blow all this on? Gem store stuff, and mainly gem to gold transactions, because i wanted a BLTP skin, or i was crafting ascended stuff, and was impatient. Mainly silk.

My further thoughts on this is that it was money well spent, because i was thoroughly entertained during the times i was actively playing. Otherwise, i do feel that Gem Store pricing is abit high for its value. I really feel that $10 USD should net you 1000 gems, or that base price on most items should be set to 400-800 gems, with larger, more expensive items being multiple of 4 or 8, so that we don’t end up with weird/odd/off numbers of gems.

In some ways, i realize that its setup like this so that we spend more than we’ll actually use on an impulse buy, but I like round numbers.

Again, if i had to do it again, i probably would have spent more, but it took me quite a while, and alot of eRage to realize how great this game really is. Moving forward, i’m hoping to bump my monthly up to $40-$45 a month, to assure that GW2 stays around for a very long time to come.

To those of you who recently started GW2 and seeing this as an “OMG factor”, give it time. You don’t need to spend this sort of money to enjoy the game at all, but i’ve most likely cut out a year or two in sheer farming time, by doing this, and i have many, maaaany characters that i play, because i really enjoy the game.

/cheers

If you have ~21 minutes to spare every day, you’ll benefit more in the long run by buying extra accounts until you have 30. You’ll get over 2K gold every 28 days which comes to about 6.4K gems every 28 days. That’s roughly an $80 value.

Last time I worked it out I think I’d spent about £300 in total (including the price of the game and the expansion) over 3.5 years (now almost 4, I got the game at launch). And the vast majority of money I spent in the gem store went on mini pets.

So for me this game has worked out much cheaper than a subscription based one. Particularly a sub-based game where you also have to buy the game and expansion/s.

Although the more important factor for me is that I feel like I’m getting something for my money here. The way my life goes it’s impossible to tell how much time I’ll have to play over the next month (or even week sometimes) so I could easily pay for a months subscription and then barely play the game. Whereas if I buy something from the gem store it doesn’t matter if I don’t have time to use it right away, it will still be there when I do get around to it and I won’t have to pay any extra as a result of the delay.

Ayrilana.1396:

If you have ~21 minutes to spare every day, you’ll benefit more in the long run by buying extra accounts until you have 30. You’ll get over 2K gold every 28 days which comes to about 6.4K gems every 28 days. That’s roughly an $80 value.

21 minutes a day is more work than I’d like to spend on a game.

The problem isn’t the first week or month or even year. It’s that over time, each time I don’t login feels (to me) as if I’m wasting money. (Plus: what happens if ANet changes the price on Heavy Crafting Bags to 2 laurels?)

So, you’re absolutely correct: for those willing to invest that much time every single day, buying a lot of accounts is a great use of their RL coin. But for those who just want to play the game… not so much.

Ayrilana.1396:

If you have ~21 minutes to spare every day, you’ll benefit more in the long run by buying extra accounts until you have 30. You’ll get over 2K gold every 28 days which comes to about 6.4K gems every 28 days. That’s roughly an $80 value.

30 accounts at say $30 each would be $900. It would take a full 11 months to break even at that rate. For a lot of people $900 is a fair amount of money to spend on a video game where it doesn’t start paying off until you have logged on every day on 30 accounts for 11 months in a row without fail.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Ayrilana.1396:

If you have ~21 minutes to spare every day, you’ll benefit more in the long run by buying extra accounts until you have 30. You’ll get over 2K gold every 28 days which comes to about 6.4K gems every 28 days. That’s roughly an $80 value.

21 minutes a day is more work than I’d like to spend on a game.

The problem isn’t the first week or month or even year. It’s that over time, each time I don’t login feels (to me) as if I’m wasting money. (Plus: what happens if ANet changes the price on Heavy Crafting Bags to 2 laurels?)

So, you’re absolutely correct: for those willing to invest that much time every single day, buying a lot of accounts is a great use of their RL coin. But for those who just want to play the game… not so much.

People typically spend more than 21 minutes when they’re farming. They haven’t hanged the laurel prices yet so I see now reason to assume that they may in the future. It could happen but unlikely.

Bruno.3812:

Ayrilana.1396:

If you have ~21 minutes to spare every day, you’ll benefit more in the long run by buying extra accounts until you have 30. You’ll get over 2K gold every 28 days which comes to about 6.4K gems every 28 days. That’s roughly an $80 value.

30 accounts at say $30 each would be $900. It would take a full 11 months to break even at that rate. For a lot of people $900 is a fair amount of money to spend on a video game where it doesn’t start paying off until you have logged on every day on 30 accounts for 11 months in a row without fail.

You can still get some for about ~$20. Please notice that I said that it was better in the long term. I didn’t include that by mistake. There are also other ways to speed up the ROI considerably.

Bruno.3812:

Ayrilana.1396:

If you have ~21 minutes to spare every day, you’ll benefit more in the long run by buying extra accounts until you have 30. You’ll get over 2K gold every 28 days which comes to about 6.4K gems every 28 days. That’s roughly an $80 value.

30 accounts at say $30 each would be $900. It would take a full 11 months to break even at that rate. For a lot of people $900 is a fair amount of money to spend on a video game where it doesn’t start paying off until you have logged on every day on 30 accounts for 11 months in a row without fail.

Not if you bought them all when they were $10.

MashMash.1645:

Bruno.3812:

Ayrilana.1396:

If you have ~21 minutes to spare every day, you’ll benefit more in the long run by buying extra accounts until you have 30. You’ll get over 2K gold every 28 days which comes to about 6.4K gems every 28 days. That’s roughly an $80 value.

30 accounts at say $30 each would be $900. It would take a full 11 months to break even at that rate. For a lot of people $900 is a fair amount of money to spend on a video game where it doesn’t start paying off until you have logged on every day on 30 accounts for 11 months in a row without fail.

Not if you bought them all when they were $10.

Yes. But I was responding to the post saying that you could buy them now at the non $10 price till you have 30 accounts in order to log on for gold.

Keep in mind that that I only recommended this because they spend close to $37 a month (based on their average given). If you don’t spend that much then I wouldn’t recommend it unless you could justify it in some way.

Also don’t forget that if you plan on buying that many gems in the future, you’re technically not losing anything. Yes the ROI can be upwards to 8 months but the gold that you get every 28 days can then be converted to gems (or kept as gold) as if you had bought the gems with real life currency.

Doesn’t WoW and other subscription based game have a cash shop as well?

Khisanth.2948:

Doesn’t WoW and other subscription based game have a cash shop as well?

They do. But just like with GW2, its not a necessity to enjoy the game. Therefore, GW2 would be the best investment. However, farming for highest tier gear goes ALOT faster in WoW than it does in GW2, as there is no crafting barrier where rarely dropped items actually matter. You just jump in the raid finder once or twice a week, and you’re facerolling raid content to get epics. FFXIV is a bit harder, but you can still get ilvl gear only 5pts away from top raid gear from doing daily dungeons and etc.

Spending money on a hobby or game that you like is not a bad thing. Spending money on a hobby or game that you do not like, is insanity.

MashMash.1645:

Not if you bought them all when they were $10.

Still kicking myself for not grabbing a few farm accounts. >.>

How much I spend varies. I need to total it up (I never delete emails except for junk either) but at a guess it averages to less than a subscription game. More so as time goes on because most of my gem purchases were categories I will be spending less on as time goes by (unlimited tools, character slots, that sort of thing) and usually only bought skins when they were on sale. I like it because I can just play a couple months without spending anything at all, I am not renting my stuff, my virtual goods feel more like I own them.

It’s no secret that many players of Buy/Free to Play games can end up spending more in the cash shop than they would on a monthly subscription. It offsets the loss of revenue from those who rarely or never spend more than they have to (such as the initial purchase of the game) and if done right, it can be more profitable than requiring a monthly/quarterly/annual subscription fee.