Guild Wars 2

Please don’t move this to the Living World forum, because this doesn’t have to do directly with it. This has to do with Arena Net´s/NCsoft’s overall business decisions and why in cases such as this you are only hurting your own brand names.

Taking something that you are using apparently all your resources on and make it cost a LOT of gems for players who would like to play GW2 1 year or 2 years from now to unlock is a terrible idea, because it will only prevent us from bringing new players to the game.

These players would like to experience the living world to understand the story, and nobody will do that when it costs ridiculous amounts of real money just to get started for more story (which is not THAT exciting to most players), and in the other hand not being able to experience it would be a reason not to play this game.

And worse of it all, you are charging money like it was an expansion to something that ISN’T an expansion. You only add story and some challenges, but not new character progression, no new races, no new nothing. This is overcharging for a product that isn’t that great, yet people are expected to play it to enjoy the future Living World stories.

You are shooting yourselves in the foot with this decision, in the long term it is making players lose hope on anet business decisions.

What happened to gems being for cosmetic things only?

When did they start charging gems for living world?

“H-hey friend, want to play GW2? It´s Great!! Come play with me. B-but you’ll have to spend 120 dollars just to go through some history so you understand the new story made by the devs”

Who would join this game knowing this beforehand? They’ll just go to another MMO to avoid this obstacle. This is terrible marketing.

Xenon.4537:

When did they start charging gems for living world?

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/introducing-the-story-journal/?utm_source=client

“Past episodes will be available for purchase for 200 gems. (Don’t forget you can earn gold and purchase gems to unlock the episode for your account)”

So basically, if you want to invite a friend to GW2 a year from now, he’ll have to spend a lot of money to get updated on the living world

Or you could tell the friend to look up the story on the wiki if they really want to know. If they want the reward from old living stories, they’d have to pay with gems.

I quote the new update.

“To unlock an episode and have it added to your story Journal, you simply need to log in to the game during the two-week period that the release is live to be given permanent, free access to the storyline of that episode. Once you’ve unlocked it by simply logging in, you can replay that episode’s storyline on any character on your account as many times as you like from your story Journal forever. Past episodes will be available for purchase for 200 gems. (Don’t forget you can earn gold and purchase gems to unlock the episode for your account).”

Aye, it is terrible marketing. Which would suggest that it won’t happen.
ArenaNet aren’t a bunch of idiots, they know how stuff like this works.

It is very likely that each season will at its end be bunched together to a pack and be sold for a lower price. Exactly the same way as expansions. And no, an expansion doesn’t HAVE to include new races or professions.
You also have a grand total of zero idea about what will be added in S2.

And yet people still claim ANet is focused on making a great game rather than just selling gems. Mmhm.

So.. for $10, you get 4 episodes, theoretically 2 months of content (or 2 days, depending on your pace). 200 gems is about.. 13 gold? Not that hard to scrounge up.
It might be a task for newer players to catch up, but the content is there. For players to stay current, it takes all of two minutes to log in, get credit, then come back when you want. That’s fantastic.

Well I guess ANet figured out how they will charge us for “an expansions worth of content”.

RoseofGilead.8907:

Or you could tell the friend to look up the story on the wiki if they really want to know. If they want the reward from old living stories, they’d have to pay with gems.

Like I said, horrible marketing.

“Hey friend come play gw2 with me. But you’ll either have to spend a lot of money to be updated on the story or read all this stuff”.

He will go play something else. Nobody who isn’t already invested in GW2 will care to buy or read about the past chapters. It will prevent new players from joining

arjeidi.2690:

And yet people still claim ANet is focused on making a great game rather than just selling gems. Mmhm.

I guess it’ll be important to see how substantial each of these quests are, but how is this any different from most other games on the market that charge for DLC? Or releasing paid expansions?

At least it’s free for those that actively play.

Phineas Poe.3018:

but how is this any different from most other games on the market that charge for DLC?

Many people consider DLC to be cancer. Instead of devs making exciting expansions that really expand on the original game, they make tiny things that are overpriced.

And this is now an MMO who is charging DLC for what will be almost single player content for players who are doing Living World for the first time a year from now.

Revler.2359:

“H-hey friend, want to play GW2? It´s Great!! Come play with me. B-but you’ll have to spend 120 dollars just to go through some history so you understand the new story made by the devs”

Who would join this game knowing this beforehand? They’ll just go to another MMO to avoid this obstacle. This is terrible marketing.

Yeah, it’s much better to say to your friend:
“Come and play this game with me. You kwow, all the story and content. You missed it. All of it. You gonna be lost but you can read the story in the wiki.
And you never gonna have all the nice and shiny things that I have. And you don’t get to play all those encounters, or meeting those characters.
But come and play with me because!!”

Phineas Poe.3018:

At least it’s free for those that actively play.

In other words, it is an obstacle for getting new players.

Tell your friend “if you played gw2 from the start you’d have all that for free”. He is being punished for joining the game late, so might as well not join it at all.

If I wanted to try wildstar 1 year from now, and people told me I’d have to pay real money to unlock STORY and some challenges, personally I would not even bother playing the game. This would be my reaction: http://youtu.be/kmMhzaF7puM

Rauderi.8706:

So.. for $10, you get 4 episodes, theoretically 2 months of content (or 2 days, depending on your pace). 200 gems is about.. 13 gold? Not that hard to scrounge up.
It might be a task for newer players to catch up, but the content is there. For players to stay current, it takes all of two minutes to log in, get credit, then come back when you want. That’s fantastic.

Idk in what year you live but atm 200 gems is 22 golds and sometimes is more than 22 golds and trading golds to gems is slowly going down with all nerfs over and over ..

But i like the idea of Story Journal

Revler…. you forget how many MMO’s let you replay past events as they happen years ago.. GW2 will now offer you that chance to see how things unfolded for a small fee. 200 gems is not that bad at all. Just log in during the two weeks and its free. If a friend or future player sees a video of that event and likes it plus the reward they are now given that chance. This is a win win for everyone. Have real life issues happen for a small fee it’s just like you never missed it.

All in all cant wait for this to start. But I do got to say you seem to dislike a lot about this game form you past posts.

Revler.2359:

RoseofGilead.8907:

Or you could tell the friend to look up the story on the wiki if they really want to know. If they want the reward from old living stories, they’d have to pay with gems.

Like I said, horrible marketing.

“Hey friend come play gw2 with me. But you’ll either have to spend a lot of money to be updated on the story or read all this stuff”.

He will go play something else. Nobody who isn’t already invested in GW2 will care to buy or read about the past chapters. It will prevent new players from joining

^ what he said. This is really a bad move for Anet. $10 for every contents that new players missed. I know the journal start at season 2 but eventually they will add season1. That is like more than $100+ waste to catchup all of the season1 stuff!

I wouldn’t pay 50s for Living World anything.

All you have to do is log in while any piece of content is on stage and you’ll have permanent access to it, forever. One login is not asking very much. The 200 gem price after that is completely reasonable. The dev comparison to TV is an apt one: when a show first comes on, you can record it for free, but after the initial airing you can pay (Netflix, DvD, whatever,) to see it again. And if you don’t want to pay, all the permanent stuff (new maps etc) will still be free to play out of the box.

200 gems per chapter means four chapters (two months of content) for $10. It’s cheap enough to be reasonable, and pricey enough to encourage people to buy the game now if they want the content. Sounds like a great business decision to me.

Revler.2359:

“Hey friend come play gw2 with me. But you’ll either have to spend a lot of money to be updated on the story or read all this stuff”.

With how terrible the story was, I don’t even know if he’d like to read it all. You could just told him “Sylvari turned mad rallied a bunch of bad guys factions, put them in teams and used them to destroy Lion’s Arch and wake up a dragon.”

That’s it. Your friend might be “but I want to learn the details and twists !” to which you can answer “there aren’t any. She just turned mad and it’s never really explained. And the bad guys just followed her because…well it’s not really explained…”

Revler.2359:

Xenon.4537:

When did they start charging gems for living world?

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/introducing-the-story-journal/?utm_source=client

“Past episodes will be available for purchase for 200 gems. (Don’t forget you can earn gold and purchase gems to unlock the episode for your account)”

So basically, if you want to invite a friend to GW2 a year from now, he’ll have to spend a lot of money to get updated on the living world

I just saw that. The OP should probably have a link to it to avoid further confusion.

To be clear, 200 gems costs $2.50 USD. Assuming a biweekly release schedule, and ignoring festivals (which are temporary and free and take up a LS time slot) 1 year of missed patches would cost about $65 USD. This is all assuming each and every single one of those patches is 100% absolutely required in order to understand the story (keep in mind we have a wiki, youtube, and the internet through which the story could be found for free). So really the question is does your friend feel obligated to pay $65 for access to the rewards for playing all those episodes?

Since LS rewards have always been mini pets, backpiece skins, and the like… I’ll remain skeptical for now whether this is truly the tragedy everyone is making it out to be.

the journal is a great idea, you only have to log in once during the event to have it unlock forever! and for attracting new players whats the difference from now and when this come out ? before you had no way of replaying old event and now we will have a way. win win situation.

Flash.6912:

^ what he said. This is really a bad move for Anet. $10 for every contents that new players missed. I know the journal start at season 2 but eventually they will add season1. That is like more than $100+ waste to catchup all of the season1 stuff!

$10 for every content?
No.
More like $2,5 for every content.
Not to mention the fact that S1 won’t even be available, at least not at first.

Flash.6912:

Revler.2359:

RoseofGilead.8907:

Or you could tell the friend to look up the story on the wiki if they really want to know. If they want the reward from old living stories, they’d have to pay with gems.

Like I said, horrible marketing.

“Hey friend come play gw2 with me. But you’ll either have to spend a lot of money to be updated on the story or read all this stuff”.

He will go play something else. Nobody who isn’t already invested in GW2 will care to buy or read about the past chapters. It will prevent new players from joining

^ what he said. This is really a bad move for Anet. $10 for every contents that new players missed. I know the journal start at season 2 but eventually they will add season1. That is like more than $100+ waste to catchup all of the season1 stuff!

It’s not $10. It’s 200 gems which is $2.50.

Just when I didn’t think Anet could come up with worse ideas. I guess they found achievement rewards for players may actually net them 20 silver or so. So down with achievement metas! I think Simpson’s Tapped Out is cheaper to play at this point.

LS does not cost gems. If you log in when it’s going, it costs you nothing. New players do not have to experience the whole LS1 to play the game. However, they at least will have the option to pay a bit to open that up. I don’t understand the crying over this.

^ I go by gold to gems exchange rate

Flash.6912:

^ I go by gold to gems exchange rate

…What?
You quite clearly stated that it would cost $10. That is very much a real life currency, rather than in-game gold and as such, you rather clearly didn’t talk about the gold to gem exchange rate.

The fact remains that for $10 you get FOUR releases, not one. And that is a rather massive difference. Four releases is basically two months releases.

I don’t see a problem with it as the new content coming out can be unlocked FOR FREE during the live event. Granted new players joining the game in the middle of season 2 would have to pay a little bit to unlock the previous season 2 episodes, but they couldn’t play them until they were level 80 anyway. Plus it would only be $25 (2000 gems) to unlock 10 full permenent episodes (200 gems per), which would be pretty much all of season 1, if/when season 1 will be added to the journal, and they decided to charge gems to unlock it. But still $25 will be more then enough to unlock all of season 2 for those who miss it completely. It’s not that bad of a deal really, and those who ARE interested in the history and story line wouldn’t have much of an issue paying the $25 or less to be able to go back in time and replay those events.

Also BUYING gems isn’t the only way to get them. You can convert gold to gems, and farming gold is pretty easy, and you get gems from achievment chests. so those who don’t have the cash to spend can still access ALL of the content. It’s a huge over reaction.

ozmaniandevil.6805:

I don’t understand the crying over this.

New players should experience past Living World for free. You should not pay to unlock single player story on an MMO.

Flash.6912:

I know the journal start at season 2 but eventually they will add season1. That is like more than $100+ waste to catchup all of the season1 stuff!

If they do add S1, we have absolutely no idea what they’ll be charging for it. I expect that they’ll include the whole thing as a bundle deal. Heck, they might even give it for free to players that were present for those chapters the first time.

lordkrall.7241:

You also have a grand total of zero idea about what will be added in S2.

Also this.

ozmaniandevil.6805:

LS does not cost gems. If you log in when it’s going, it costs you nothing. New players do not have to experience the whole LS1 to play the game. However, they at least will have the option to pay a bit to open that up. I don’t understand the crying over this.

You missed the other half of the problem. If someone buys the game after the end of living story 2, they’d have to pay to unlock living story 2.

If someone told me I’d have to pay to unlock content that was free previously and every one else has permanent access simply because they owned the game at the time and logged in, and because I didn’t own the game at the time and couldn’t log in i have to pay (and there’s no real reason it can’t be equally free for me), I’d simply walk away.

It’s simply not a healthy business decision.

Edit: Alternatively, they’d have to grind gold to play the story-line, which is also a bad idea when you already have to gear up characters cause you’re a noob.

That is why they made temp contents to milk more $, I c….