Guild Wars 2

What does F2P mean for existing paid players who don’t own the new expansion? is this rendering the money spent on the game many months or years ago a waste?

There are plenty of differences between a basic game paid account and a FTP account.

Not to any of my friends, they cam buy what they want from the TP, can walk in to any city they want at any level, get log in rewards, use map chat. Those are just the things I can remember off the top of my head.

You may find the differences interesting listed in the Knowledge Base accessed via the ‘Support’ link above/below and ‘Search – Account Types’.

Good luck.

Free players have limitations. Wait until they reveal the next expansion and include HoT for free, assuming they keep their 1 box plan. Wonder what they’re going to try this time to counter the backlash. They should have charged for season 3 and included a season’s pass with HoT.

The fact that it’s possible to create a free account won’t have any direct impact on you if you have a paid account – nothing has been changed for you and in most cases you won’t be able to identify free players in-game. (I think the main clue is they use say chat more because they can’t use map chat.)

But if you’re playing on a free account it’s quite different because there’s a lot of restrictions on what they can do.

That link goes to the full list on the Wiki but here’s some of the key points:

• Only 2 character slots
• Can’t choose or change server
• Won’t get login rewards
• Can’t use map chat at all or team/squad chat before level 30
• Can only whisper mutual friends or people on the same map once every 30 seconds
• Can’t sell or buy most items on the TP (even most weapons and armour)
• Can’t use guild banks
• Can’t leave starter maps until level 10, can’t enter LA until level 35 or WvW until level 60
• Can’t use gold to gems exchange
• Can’t post on the forum

I think of the free version as basically a demo. You have access to most of the content in the game – you can play the story, explore PvE maps, play PvP, level up and get new equipment etc. so you’ve got plenty of opportunity to get a feel for the game and decide if you want to stick with it, but the restrictions make it impractical to play on a free account long-term so if you do want to keep going sooner or later you’re going to want to buy a full account.

https://help.guildwars2.com/hc/en-us/articles/230165307-Account-types-Free-Core-HoT

It’s a demo without a level cap or class/story restrictions of the original game.

The starter map/race city level 10 restriction is trivial as you can waypoint to any of the starter maps for more content at the start. The WvW restriction unlocks account wide when you get one character to 60.