worries of F2p
Ehhhhhh… wat?
My thoughts. You should make a list of these alleged problems. You should then check before posting to see if these are a problem in this game. If no, then your question about this being a problem is answered. If yes, then we have something to talk about.
ANet may give it to you.
In this day and age ignorance is a choice and they’re still choosing ignorance." – Filthy Frank.
The difference is that GW2 isn’t really F2P, it is more like Free 2 Test.
F2P accounts have A LOT of hard restrictions so I wouldn’t worry about GW2 becoming a F2P focused game with P2W store and so on.
(and the other 8 elite specs maxed too)
Here is a link to the restrictions on the free to play account. If they don’t answer your concerns or you see problems that are not addressed by these restrictions, then ask about those.
ANet may give it to you.
It’s completely ok to name other games on this forum, even to talk about things they get right that GW2 could mimic or improve on (or to talk about things they did wrong which GW2 should avoid). As long as you don’t post a great long list/rant of all the reasons you think your favourite game is better and everyone should play that instead and/or GW2 should become an exact clone of it you won’t get in trouble with either the moderators or other players.
Given that I think it would be helpful if you could tell us a bit more about what this game is, what went wrong when it went free-to-play and why you’re concerned the same will happen to GW2. Because it’s very hard to discuss the issue without knowing what it is.
(Although if you do choose to name this other game please do also explain the issue/s with it – a common mistake in this kind of topic is people assuming everyone has played all the same games they have and knows all about them, when there’s a good chance some of us will have never heard of it.)
In general terms though it’s worth remembering that ‘free-to-play’ is simply a description of the upfront costs of a game, not a complete package of features that are guaranteed to be found in all free-to-play games.
Yes there are common themes to their design, just like there are with subscription based and buy-to-play games (although b2p is still something of a rarity) but that doesn’t mean all games with the same initial cost will have the same problems.
Finally (yes I will shut up and go away after this) as other people have said GW2 isn’t really a free-to-play game. Sure you can create an account for free and play the game without paying anything – but their business model (the way they aim to make money from their players) is still based on buy-to-play, which means it’s still primarily about selling copies of the game. Free accounts have a whole range of restrictions (some to stop them being used by gold sellers, some just to encourage free players to buy) which all go away in one go if they buy the game. Which means they don’t have to keep pushing microtransactions and can keep the gem store to cosmetics and convenience items.
“Life’s a journey, not a destination.”