Guild Wars 2

Facts:
-We understand that gem could be accumulated by exchanging gold for it.
-We also know that these gems that’s being exchanged directly comes from another player and is not created out of thin air.
-The digital deluxe could be purchased with gem

So, should expansions be purchasable with gems and do you think that it will?

If I were ArenaNet I’d do it how I did the main game release, cash only, but with another “edition” which is more expensive, but can be upgraded to with gems.

In my mind, this is the only sane thing to do.

Making expansions purchasable with gems would be bad for players that buy gems with gold. It’d instantly create a huge demand for them. On the flip side it’d be hugely good for anets profit

Well if they did it would be about 4k gems mind you its not a small DLC it an expansion. The price of gems would go up so fast that only the super rich could buy it and most likely will use real life money vs gold. At a point it becomes no longer worth it with in game money.

I would just as soon pay cash. ANet has already given us a lot for the initial purchase price, and I had gone into this assuming that at some point I would need to put in more money.

Developers can’t develop games for free. They have to keep the revenue stream going to keep themselves employed, and I think the majority of players understand that.

That being the case, I don’t see any point both complicating the revenue stream and disrupting the in-game economy by requiring cash to be converted to gems for purchase. It seems like a hassle for everyone that would gain nothing. I’d rather just pay my money and have it done, without an extra step of currency conversion.

Programmers, designers, graphics artists, music composers, play testers, quality assurance personnel can’t be paid in Gems. So no. I’d rather give them money for them to be able to continue to work on the game.

Lord of the Rings Online does it with their cash shop, but I don’t think it works the same way as the Gem system, so… I dunno.

was gonna mention this too, lotro does something similar with their turbine shop.. however they have a TONNE more stuff in theirs, it just blows every other game outta the water when it comes to micro-transactions. the main difference being they dont have a gem <-> game currency thing as such, their points are either bought with real cash or earned incredibly slowly from doing “achievment” like things in game.

BlackestKnight.1278:

Programmers, designers, graphics artists, music composers, play testers, quality assurance personnel can’t be paid in Gems. So no. I’d rather give them money for them to be able to continue to work on the game.

Gems does not appear out of nowhere when u convert gold to gem. It comes from another player converting gem to gold.

With GW2 not being subscription base, players who could amass enough gold for the gems to be able to purchase the expansion would essentially be getting the game for free.
Time and resources go into creating games and their expansions and while Anet is probably doing well with their Gem business on top of the inital game purchases, I’m sure their employees would like to be appreciated with raises and/or bonuses which giving away free games would effectively curtail.

Sky.7610:

BlackestKnight.1278:

Programmers, designers, graphics artists, music composers, play testers, quality assurance personnel can’t be paid in Gems. So no. I’d rather give them money for them to be able to continue to work on the game.

Gems does not appear out of nowhere when u convert gold to gem. It comes from another player converting gem to gold.

The point still stands. You can’t make a profit off the exchange between in game currencies.

I would be shocked if they did this. Or at least initially. There would not be enough money made off such a deal.

Remember all the gems you get with gold were purchased by someone. Essentially what you’re doing is giving somebody else in game gold in order to buy your expansion for you. By taking gems out of the economy like mad it’s actually in anets best interest to make it purchased through gems. The only downside is that if they did they’d see a huge outcry of “Gems are too expensive!!!!” Threads. Not saying I agree with those people I think it’s actually impossible for end to be too expensive, if anything they are far too cheap right now.

Daemonne.5018:

With GW2 not being subscription base, players who could amass enough gold for the gems to be able to purchase the expansion would essentially be getting the game for free.
Time and resources go into creating games and their expansions and while Anet is probably doing well with their Gem business on top of the inital game purchases, I’m sure their employees would like to be appreciated with raises and/or bonuses which giving away free games would effectively curtail.

The idea here is that somebody spent enough money to buy those gems, then another player trades them gold for those gems and buys the expansion.

The upside could be that this gives gem seller a reason to buy more gems to sell, and the downside could be things such as the gem market already essentially being full and none of the gems being used are from new spending, or alternatively the gems are being fed into the economy via credit card fraud on some level and the money spent on them may not stay in ANet’s pockets. Also, in the case of gems bought via fraud, what do they do to the person who bought those gems (from the seller)?

I’m for the expansions not being available for gems, as I feel supporting the developers of an expansion should be a personal thing and not bought with the hours of time you’ve spent… already playing their game, on their servers, costing them money for the upkeep of your entertainment. But if they can deal with fraud, then there’s no real loss to making it a gem store item for them.

Maybe they could hit a compromise (with my ethics…) and release the update in the gem store 1-2 months after the retail release (to get the people that aren’t willing to spend their own money), but they’d have to announce this as something that would happen at least before preorders are available, or they’d have some very angry customers.

Ultimately it’s down to ANet. They’ll get more people coming back if they put it on the gem store (the epansion’s technically free if you can unlock it via playing the game, right?) but they might not want to deal with potential issues from that.

No, I think that expansions should be strictly cash/credit card purchases. Allowing full expansions to be purchased with gems will lead to very unbalanced gold to gem ratios and will make other common item in the gem store not worth the hassle of purchasing at such exorbitant gold to gem ratios. There will be quite a few people who QQ over that, and say Anet is too greedy and blah blah. Not worth the headache i think. That being said bonus quest packs or expansion specific upgrades can be bought with gems if need be since they are small enough and will only offer a few cosmetic bonus items.

I would say they will be buyable with gems. You are right coins come out of thin air so to speak. HOWEVER someone at some point in time had to pay real cash to buy those gems to trade to you so it makes little difference. Anet gets the real life cash one way or the other.

Can’t Gems be won trough paid PvP? If yes and if the amount is big enough that the price of the tickets don’t pay for the Gems won, my answer is no, the expansions should be paid with money only.

Yes, it should.

No. As it is I feel like they basically give away character slots and bank stuff (which is sweet) but they have to actually SELL something to keep making the game. Yes, I know people throw money at fluff but still… core things like expansions should cost money.

Yes they should, because then I could invest in gems and sell them afterwards to make a huge profit…

Letifer.4360:

Can’t Gems be won trough paid PvP? If yes and if the amount is big enough that the price of the tickets don’t pay for the Gems won, my answer is no, the expansions should be paid with money only.

I think total ticket gem cost is higher than rewarded amount.

no………………..

I think some people are forgetting that for gems to be released into the game, someone had to buy them with real life money at some point, so even if someone bought an EP with gems, the gems that that player bought with gold had been purchased by someone using actual money. Though I still wouldn’t expect them to sell them in the cash shop to be quite honest.

I personally don’t care if it’s purchasable in the gem store, I will certainly be buying expansions with a credit card. Do you know how many hours you would have to grind to make enough gold for a gold>gem expansion purchase? My time is worth more than that!

They wont.

Far too many people (including me) make easy money in this game.
They need cold cash, and gems won’t cut it.