Guild Wars 2

azizul.8469:

it’s a free trial . the free2play word is just a sugar-coating.

So when does the trial expire?

I am all for the restrictions, i tried them out my self and i think they are preventing a lot of problems that could show up. How ever since they do not get access to map chat in game, nor can they access this forums, or rather write anything in it, my sugestions is that you make one forum-section open for f2p account to join were they can ask their questions. This way we are not loosing players who are stuck but don’t find a way to comunicate. Not all people are easy with whispering other players and if we can answer a few quesions in one single forum part i belive we gain more then we loose. It should not be so hard to moderate only one sections to prevent spam and such.

The problem might be more in how the forum is set up.

They originally had a contractor who set up the coding for the forums. There was a parting of the ways and from what they said, he is not available to fix or change the forums and the people working for ANet don’t know the coding, or don’t know it well. (Which is why the search function at top has been broken for years). There must be a yes/no to post on the forum as a whole, but there might not be a way for them to set aside permission to post here, but not there.

ANet did post a list of fan sites they could post on.
List of fansites

briggah.7910:

azizul.8469:

it’s a free trial . the free2play word is just a sugar-coating.

So when does the trial expire?

When you buy the game.

Doggie.3184:

briggah.7910:

azizul.8469:

it’s a free trial . the free2play word is just a sugar-coating.

So when does the trial expire?

When you buy the game.

Oh so if I don’t buy it it never runs out? I might actually try this game out then.

Kormeg.2469:

Kajan.7410:

-If i had known that i didn’t need to pay for this game down the road i’d never have bothered paying 50 bucks for it and another 50 bucks for its expansion.

-Why the heck did i pay in the first place?

So are you sorry you bought the core game in the 1st place? Do you wish you had never played?

If i had known it went Free to Play, i wouldn’t have bought it and so.. yes i feel sorry for the fact that i bought the base game and its expansion and i wish i wouldn’t have done that. Nor would i have done it, if i would have known it went F2P.

Kajan.7410:

I would like to say this about the Free to play move:

You can be kitten lucky i already bought the expansion. Because you quite frankly wouldn’t see a single dime from me again. If i had known that i didn’t need to pay for this game down the road i’d never have bothered paying 50 bucks for it and another 50 bucks for its expansion.

And quite frankly i feel cheated. So thank you for the big middle finger, ArenaNet.

I was perfectly fine with the Base being free with HoT, but it going completely free 2 play. Why the heck did i pay in the first place?

yeah … lets flame around about a product that becomes “free” after a period of time …
do you also cry when a movie that you watched in the cinema is on free tv one year later?

you got freakin 3 years of GW2 without needing to pay a dime
you also had NO PROBLEMS buying HoT (btw HoT has nothing to do with the f2p base game though) and now you are blaming ANet ?

Just create a free account and see what this “free 2 play” is … have fun with your 2 char slots and the 3 Bag Slots and all the Restrictions for WvW PvP Whispering Mailing and BLTC

This is not Free 2 Play – it is an Trial nothing more nothing less

Yeah, considering how advance (cough) the forum software it. It’s probably all or nothing.

Behellagh.1468:

And if you see toxic map chat, report it. Show these new players that we are as good of a community that the devs and others believe we are.

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

That good community of yours went down the crapper when they went F2P. There is no loss for anyone over a banned F2P account. They’ll just make a new one.

Loex.5104:

yeah … lets flame around about a product that becomes “free” after a period of time …
do you also cry when a movie that you watched in the cinema is on free tv one year later?

Dunno where you are at, but where i am living we don’t have free cable.

Loex.5104:

you got freakin 3 years of GW2 without needing to pay a dime
you also had NO PROBLEMS buying HoT (btw HoT has nothing to do with the f2p base game though) and now you are blaming ANet ?

For ripping me off? Yeah, i do. And i honestly don’t care how you feel about it. That will not change the fact that i feel i paid 100 bucks for a free product. Why the hell should i pay any money if its going to go free down the road anyway?

You might enjoy being made a sucker, but i do not.

Loex.5104:

Just create a free account and see what this “free 2 play” is … have fun with your 2 char slots and the 3 Bag Slots and all the Restrictions for WvW PvP Whispering Mailing and BLTC

I don’t do PvP so i could care less. And I don’t need 2000 characters either. 3 Bagslot.. yeah okay, but honestly, i hardly need more than 3 bags.

Loex.5104:

This is not Free 2 Play – it is an Trial nothing more nothing less

A trail is temporary.. THIS is not temporary and it gives everything i ever did or care for for free.

I can play through the entire game, only Pvp is restricted. All cities unlock with level caps, yeah, its a bit more grindy as F2P.. so what..

Nothing stops them from flooding the market economy with farming bots either. There is no restriction anymore. Doesn’t matter if the nodes are random.. you can just make 20 accounts and have them search all possible areas. You don’t need to shell out 50 bucks for each of them. They are free now.

briggah.7910:

Doggie.3184:

briggah.7910:

azizul.8469:

it’s a free trial . the free2play word is just a sugar-coating.

So when does the trial expire?

When you buy the game.

Oh so if I don’t buy it it never runs out? I might actually try this game out then.

have fun with the trial account….

azizul.8469:

briggah.7910:

Doggie.3184:

briggah.7910:

azizul.8469:

it’s a free trial . the free2play word is just a sugar-coating.

So when does the trial expire?

When you buy the game.

Oh so if I don’t buy it it never runs out? I might actually try this game out then.

have fun with the trial account….

Too many restrictions for me..

ArenaNet… it’s like… you WANT to kill this game. First HoT, now this? I’m actually excited to see how much more you’re gonna shove this game down the metaphorical toilet. I thought Bungie with Destiny was the biggest train wreck but GW2 is coming up to a close second and may just overtake them. I’ll be keeping tabs just to see how terrible this game ends up. I wonder how many more wonderful game studios are gonna be gutted into short-term profit factories.

PS. How does it feel to tear apart your own piece of art that you worked so hard to create?

Can we all agree that allowing botters unrestricted access to /say and /map would be bad for ANet and bad for the community? Can we also agree that it’s also better for new players if they can ask for help easily?

And can we agree that whatever system ANet develops is going to favor one of those principles at the expense of the other?

There really isn’t an easy way to prevent spamming in real time, especially if accounts are free. That means there’s an added burden on new players who have questions. Maybe that’s a worthwhile tradeoff, maybe it’s a short-sighted one.

However, unless anyone can think of a system that ANet will agree is better and cost effective, I don’t see the status quo changing.

Behellagh.1468:

Yeah, considering how advance (cough) the forum software it. It’s probably all or nothing.

Some days, I’m impressed that the forums still function at all.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

The problem might be more in how the forum is set up.

They originally had a contractor who set up the coding for the forums. There was a parting of the ways and from what they said, he is not available to fix or change the forums and the people working for ANet don’t know the coding, or don’t know it well.

hahaha
For real?

Archive this one and launch one that can be updated with working features.

synk.6907:

hahaha
For real?

Archive this one and launch one that can be updated with working features.

Yeah, it’s also why the ‘search’ function doesn’t work. So, if anyone is going to get a new sub-forum, it’ll require a new forum altogether it seems.

Strange days.

Its more like freeware now; between f2t and f2p.

Kajan.7410:

Behellagh.1468:

And if you see toxic map chat, report it. Show these new players that we are as good of a community that the devs and others believe we are.

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

That good community of yours went down the crapper when they went F2P. There is no loss for anyone over a banned F2P account. They’ll just make a new one.

F2P Chars can’t talk in Mapchat …

Kajan.7410:

Loex.5104:

yeah … lets flame around about a product that becomes “free” after a period of time …
do you also cry when a movie that you watched in the cinema is on free tv one year later?

Dunno where you are at, but where i am living we don’t have free cable.

there’s also stuff like satellites & kitten also most channels have a free web stream but staying @ cable – you pay for your provider for the infra structure … not for the movie you’re seeing.

Kajan.7410:

Loex.5104:

you got freakin 3 years of GW2 without needing to pay a dime
you also had NO PROBLEMS buying HoT (btw HoT has nothing to do with the f2p base game though) and now you are blaming ANet ?

For ripping me off? Yeah, i do. And i honestly don’t care how you feel about it. That will not change the fact that i feel i paid 100 bucks for a free product. Why the hell should i pay any money if its going to go free down the road anyway?

You might enjoy being made a sucker, but i do not.

because there was no problem as it was not free? and im sure you have more than 2 chars with more than 3 bag-slots? and you also used the BLTC for everything?

you payed 50 Bucks for GW2 … the 50 for HoT you can’t count bro…

Kajan.7410:

Loex.5104:

Just create a free account and see what this “free 2 play” is … have fun with your 2 char slots and the 3 Bag Slots and all the Restrictions for WvW PvP Whispering Mailing and BLTC

I don’t do PvP so i could care less. And I don’t need 2000 characters either. 3 Bagslot.. yeah okay, but honestly, i hardly need more than 3 bags.

screenshot of char-select … proove you just have 2 :P

Kajan.7410:

Loex.5104:

This is not Free 2 Play – it is an Trial nothing more nothing less

A trail is temporary.. THIS is not temporary and it gives everything i ever did or care for for free.

just because its a common thing to limit trials by time its not the only way though…
do you even know the limitations of F2P accs?

Kajan.7410:

I can play through the entire game, only Pvp is restricted. All cities unlock with level caps, yeah, its a bit more grindy as F2P.. so what..

Yep – with 2 chars with 3 bag slots and no meaningful access to BLTC / Map Chat / Whispers / Guild Bank and no access to Laurels.

Kajan.7410:

Nothing stops them from flooding the market economy with farming bots either. There is no restriction anymore. Doesn’t matter if the nodes are random.. you can just make 20 accounts and have them search all possible areas. You don’t need to shell out 50 bucks for each of them. They are free now.

you know that F2P accs just can buy/sell a defined list of items?
and whats the benefit of 20 trial accs to sell items as they cant send items / money to other accounts?? who the hell would waste his time without profit? ( as if a copper farm bot would either be profitable in a way … also they cant leave the starting Area till lvl 10 so a bot youldnt farm anything valuable (and again – he cant send its profit back to a normal account)

DistantStatic.6098:

ArenaNet… it’s like… you WANT to kill this game. First HoT, now this? I’m actually excited to see how much more you’re gonna shove this game down the metaphorical toilet. I thought Bungie with Destiny was the biggest train wreck but GW2 is coming up to a close second and may just overtake them. I’ll be keeping tabs just to see how terrible this game ends up. I wonder how many more wonderful game studios are gonna be gutted into short-term profit factories.

its funny … ppl hear “Free to play” and obviously two wires in the brains are touching to activate “omg we’re all gonna die”-Mode.

DistantStatic.6098:

PS. How does it feel to tear apart your own piece of art that you worked so hard to create?

Dunno – maybe ask Microsoft why they release their Win10 for free ?… (and this is not 3yrs old) its MARKETING to gain more customers … and all the restrictions lead new players to buy HoT .. and they will.

sugar coating is needed you know……

They do have unrestricted access to /say. But /say has a radius and that means a RMT spammer is less effective. The level 10 restriction until entering a race city and 35 for LA means time has to be spent before their message can spammed to a large enough group to be worth the time it takes before they are shut down.

The restrictions aren’t meant to eliminate it entirely, it’s to place an additional burden on RMTers while not preventing an F2P player from interacting with other players nearby. It’s a tight line to walk but I think it can work.

And yes, ANet’s F2P does resemble other games trial accounts and that’s because ANet yet again is redefining what F2P means. In other games it’s usually paywalls for anything but basic content and classes with your choice to either pay a monthly VIP (but lets be real, subscription) fee or rent/buy permanently particular features that’s been blocked. So GW2’s F2P resembles more of a trial but with no maximum level cap or bank limitations. Just a few additions level cap unlocks to when you can do something

Now hopefully players will be able to play the game enough to determine if they enjoy it, and if they do, chafe at the limitations placed on them that so they would either by HoT or move along.

Yes, we have the chicken littles who spin every worse case scenario they can think of on how hoards of F2P accounts will run roughshod on vets and drive them from the game. That might happen but I’ll doubt it. Any F2P trolls will get put down and in the end we will see a lot of new players to reinvigorate the game.

And the negative nellies will simply move onto the next big thing to be negative about along with the doomsayers and those wanting GW2 to be just like GW in every possible way.

Centurion.7296:

Gw2 is f2t (free 2 try), start getting it right or even more poor souls will start thinking it is f2p and with that, the complaining will continue.

So how long do I get to try it for?

Are we arguing semantics?

Yes, apparently we are! :P

“Try” means an attempt- contextually it means something that isn’t permanent. “Trying out” is like “testing the waters”- seeing if you like something before committing.

Conclusion: Can you play the F2P version permanently? Yep, as far as we know. Do you have to commit to GW2 (buy it) in order to continue playing? Narp. Is it easier/more favourable to play on a paid account than an F2P one? Absolutely!

I have friends who camped on the WoW trial and have never purchased the game. They like playing the game but don’t want to invest money into it. They’re fine with the restrictions because they are used to it and appreciate just the little bit they’ve got to play.

briggah.7910:

Centurion.7296:

Gw2 is f2t (free 2 try), start getting it right or even more poor souls will start thinking it is f2p and with that, the complaining will continue.

So how long do I get to try it for?

You get to try it forever!

Really op. You Play the game. And you can play it for as long as you want. You can buy things from the gem store. That is the “normal” core to what a fp2 game is. They have a few limitation’s in place, that’s it.

The game is.f2p. Accept it and move on.

Free to play is normally defined as no cost for the game or monthly fees. This is true here, however unlike subscription MMOs that later went to F2P, instead of numerous paywall lockouts for content and classes, or a literal subscription fee called VIP membership, ANet simply implemented additional level unlocks and limitations on chat. Those limitations are more trial like but this isn’t a trial.

A determined F2P player could level an 80 and play all game modes.

I think the term Anet coined is “Play for free”. Which is totally different from Free to Play or Free to Try!

Kajan.7410:

A trail is temporary.. THIS is not temporary and it gives everything i ever did or care for for free.

I can play through the entire game, only Pvp is restricted. All cities unlock with level caps, yeah, its a bit more grindy as F2P.. so what..

Did you play this game for one week to say something like this? So can these free account do all the past living seasons including all the open living world events that are over and done with such as trying to save LA from getting destroyed? Can they really do every thing you have done?

If you played the game for a week then yes maybe they can play everything you have done but there is stuff that they will never get to play or see because it changed the world of Tyria.

DaikonSamurai.6714:

I think the term Anet coined is “Play for free”. Which is totally different from Free to Play or Free to Try!

Ahh haha good catch.. Guess this ends the whole f2p discussion.

People don’t get it but they will after HoT and next expansions release when difference between F2P and B2P player will be significant and kittening about restrictions start over again :>

So what will get veteran players ? I bought this game at it’s launch and i have supported it since then and now when it is free to play for new players why can’t veteran players get the expansion for free ?

Dadov.2736:

So what will get veteran players ? I bought this game at it’s launch and i have supported it since then and now when it is free to play for new players why can’t veteran players get the expansion for free ?

You got 40 content updates for free. Guess that wasn’t enough.

briggah.7910:

DaikonSamurai.6714:

I think the term Anet coined is “Play for free”. Which is totally different from Free to Play or Free to Try!

Ahh haha good catch.. Guess this ends the whole f2p discussion.

IKR? When GW2 first released all the major news outlets called it F2P then too. Took a while to clarify it as B2P and now Anet is popularizing yet another term. Anet’s such a bunch of hipsters lol.

Dadov.2736:

So what will get veteran players ? I bought this game at it’s launch and i have supported it since then and now when it is free to play for new players why can’t veteran players get the expansion for free ?

Because its… I dont know… an expansion?

Anyway, the only real mistake here is why Anet didnt announce this in combination with HoT pre-order. Because it make perfect sense to have shuffled around the design of the game packages back then. You get a new somewhat crippled GW2 f2p version or you can buy HoT which include the expansion and full GW2 (which would have had better “value” instead of being included “for free”).

Introducing this long after HoT preorders is kind of a curveball.

Dadov.2736:

So what will get veteran players ? I bought this game at it’s launch and i have supported it since then and now when it is free to play for new players why can’t veteran players get the expansion for free ?

because you got 3 years of GW2 for that money?

Centurion, you couldn’t even explain why it wasn’t f2p.

Free accounts are Free to play with restrictions of GW2 core game, HoT is buy to play. Problem is solved!

bobo.5702:

Free accounts are Free to play with restrictions of GW2 core game

P4F! Git it rite! lol

There are certain items that you can craft, buy, convert only once a day per account. Will F2P accounts also be able to do that?

as there is nothing in the restriction list that restricts crafting in any way i doubt that.
why should free accounts be locked out of these reciepes?

Of course they will. And since they can’t sell on trading post (i think), they can’t take advantage of bolt of damask etc. But they can make their own ascended armor without problem, that’s for sure.

My mistake. I thought F2P accounts will be able to send items to other accounts.

We had several new players from the free accounts join our guild over the weekend.

This was nice for our members to see a lot of new players but the best thing is they can chat in guild and our members were able to help them with all their questions.

Several are already commenting on wanting to upgrade to the game so i and my guild see this as a nice success.

I suggest any new players out there join a guild, get chatting to the members as they are a lot of wonderful and friendly guilds out there.

DarcShriek.5829:

Jiggawattz.2697:

maddoctor.2738:

Dager.2390:

The thingh is that we didn’t buy only the game but also we contract a service (every mmo is a service) and here is the problem in the moment we bought the game the say to us that the game was b2p but now is a f2p.

I’m not agaist new players but I’m agaist what Anet is doing the things

And your service is still valid, you bought the service to play the game forever without paying again and that’s what you got, that never changed.

But the value of the offer has changed drastically. You pay 60 dollars to go to a show, and as you get there and get seated they announce that because 50% of the seats are empty they are letting everyone else in for free. Outrage will insue for anyone that values money and carefully chooses the things they enjoy enough to invest in. As somone who is physically disabled and has to manage my money carefully I made a very active decision to save the money to pre-purchase gw2 because I love the title and the company despite many of my posts on this forum.

And contrary to popular belief I am in no way shape or form unhappy with that investment, even knowing this would happen (I would be less happy about it) but I would do it again, and pay the 80 bucks up front. Now that being said this does not discount or change the feelings of animosity or distrust built by both the secrecy of this deal, because you know they knew this was going to happen and could have told the community earlier than yknow… the day they did it… nor does it change that I am upset that our consolation prize yielded to me no real value of any sort.

They did provide us with some garbage royal guard skin that looks like something that got downvoted too many times so they couldn’t greenlight the release on the trading post… however to many of us, especially most of us that will never ever use such a horrendously disfigured skin, this feels like a cop out, or at the very least gives veteran players (and this has happened many times before) the idea that we are worth next to nothing. That our continued support and promotion of their game is to them, worth whatever they found in the bottom of the barrell… They couldn’t dare to part with 15% off the expansion? Or even to generate a few in game gems to let us purchase something of actual use? Gems are an unlimited currency, they could have provided consolation compensation and chose not to. This is why most of us hardcore veteran players with 1101 days played are a little bit sour over this whole deal.

Also to many of the people on this forum this anger and unrest is being redirected at the new guys coming into the game because they are easily accessable and it will only cause problems in the future, fracturing those who play for free and those who don’t. You will see free to players getting kicked from parties, us vs them mentality. All because Anet couldn’t part with something other than a skin that looks like a beatleborgs halloween costume to placate a disenfranchised mass of veteran players who have been at the lesser valued end of pretty much every deal since the initial purchase. Veterans are not respected. Anet is a company that as a company is much like a shark, they know about time investment, and they know that as a company they don’t have any need to placate players that already exist because we stand to lose more than they do if we stop. They already have our money. This is the overall idea behind this whole fiasco.

A post or two from the red names and perhaps something of actual value would settle down the veteran players and really help to smooth the transition of these new guys into the game. Personally I am happy to see new players, I am unhappy that I was not given consideration in the method that they chose to aquire them.

I live in Las Vegas so your movie analogy falls completely flat. Many times live shows offer reduced price seats, or even free seats to people just to fill the theater. These tickets are not comps, they give them out in order to fill the theater so that the performers and the people in the audience will have a better show. I’ve often sat next to people that have paid full price.

I suppose it is a difference in principle, or perhaps regional expectation of value vs. service. Where I live services and products are based off of a set value, and are expected to hold that value by maintaining their exclusivity to the value. The economic view on this may be different from where you were raised, but the idea is that if companies just “give away” things any time they aren’t selling well, people will eventually catch on and stop buying them, waiting for them to be free because they know the companies make rash decisions.

I want to re-iterate the fact that I am not upset about f2p players. I actually enjoy the idea of people being baited into buying the game, what I don’t like is that out of this veteran players were not treated as the valued and loyal customer’s we are. We essentially got the worst deal of anyone purchasing HOT right now, which is the opposite of what is logical in a give and get situation. If that clears anything up.

I am not saying everyone has to agree with me, I just know that a large portion of the community is like myself livid over the show of bad faith from ArenaNet to its actual customers, and worse.. to its long term LOYAL customers, showing everyone that to Anet see’s loyalty as a resource they can USE not as a gift given by the players, and that leaves a sour taste in your mouth.

ToT.7018:

We had several new players from the free accounts join our guild over the weekend.

This was nice for our members to see a lot of new players but the best thing is they can chat in guild and our members were able to help them with all their questions.

Several are already commenting on wanting to upgrade to the game so i and my guild see this as a nice success.

I suggest any new players out there join a guild, get chatting to the members as they are a lot of wonderful and friendly guilds out there.

I’ve seen quite a few pairs of new players with higher-level players showing them around, often with matching guild tags. I don’t know if it’s people who were already friends or people who met after joining the game but either way the system seems to be working for them.

I also finally got around to making my long-planned mesmer yesterday, tried to make it obvious I wasn’t new (Faithful title, HoM skins, abyss and celestial dyes, liadri mini…) and announced periodically in /say and /map that if anyone needed help I’d be happy to answer questions or join in and I got quite a few questions from people who were obviously new, so again they seem to be able to figure out how to chat.

Overall from what I’ve seen in my brief time in the starter maps most people are managing to use the game and/or ask for help in spite of the limitations.

it sucks, but its a necessary evil, i’ve not read the limitations but i’d hope its level-gated.
all chat (except whispers) should get enabled at level/rank 5 or 10 or something.
maybe whispers could be enabled at a higher level/rank.

note i’m not counting guild chat/party chat etc, they should be enabled from the start.

Liewec.2896:

it sucks, but its a necessary evil, i’ve not read the limitations but i’d hope its level-gated.
all chat (except whispers) should get enabled at lv 5 or 10 or something.

note i’m not counting guild chat/party chat etc, they should be enabled from the start.

F2P accounts have no access to /map ever. If you want to type in /map, then you need to buy the game.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Can we all agree that allowing botters unrestricted access to /say and /map would be bad for ANet and bad for the community? Can we also agree that it’s also better for new players if they can ask for help easily?

And can we agree that whatever system ANet develops is going to favor one of those principles at the expense of the other?

The method I would suggest is to let them see (if they can not already) all chat methods: /map, /party, /squad. To do otherwise hurts PAID players as we can not organize things unless we friend everyone in sight and send them individual whispers. Which ones FTPs can speak to is another debate: map there is no question of not letting them talk to, squad is debatable, party is a definite.

They do need some way of communicating with each other and paid players. Whether that takes the form of a channel or another forum is the only question.

So, sorry, but I do not agree with the premise. There is no reason at all why a system could not exist that would solve both sides of the issue.

Free players can see map chat, they just can’t type in it. I assume the same goes for squad chat but I’ve not tested that yet.

They can also receive whispers from anyone at any time, and can reply to them. They just can’t start a conversation via whisper unless the target person is on the same map (and then only once every 30 seconds) or is a mutual friend.

Free accounts can receive items, but they can’t send them and are very restricted on what they can sell on the TP.

Play for free players will not be able to craft ascended because they will not have access to laurels for purchasing the recipes.

They can however if lucky get a Ascended box drop and obtain it that way.

It’s basically a freeware version, but unfortunately the term freeware seems to have fallen out of use.

It’s the MMO equivalent of AVG Free, downloadable Winzip or numerous other programs (about 1/3 of the software on my computer actually): You’ve got the free version which you can keep using indefinitely but it’s very heavily restricted – enough to give you an idea of what the program can do but not enough for more than basic use – then you have the paid version which has all the functions available.

How is this different to free-to-play games?

In most free to play games removing restrictions is a matter of paying an on-going subscription or a series of microtransactions to remove each one individually (sometimes both – you pay to unlock one feature for a short time, then have to pay again after that expires) whereas in GW2 it’s a one-time payment for the entire game.