Guild Wars 2

adormtil.1605:

Obtena.7952:

adormtil.1605:

Obtena.7952:

These comparisons are really quite irrelevant and obviously cherrypicked to make the cases of the people presenting them. If pennies per hour of entertainment is too rich for people, then I have to question how they can afford to eat or pay rent.

If you don’t want to pay for the expansion, then don’t. It’s not necessary to justify on the forum why you won’t. If you can’t pay for the expansion, then you have larger life issues than access to it.

Let me tell you something about Asian culture they are people who do not move out of their parents house until they get married and they get married late. And that is mainly only for the second or third child if there is one and for girls. The first born will stay with his parents and his own family. Imagine this you can not feed yourself and pay rent by yourself but when there are 3 or 4 or 5 or 6 members living in the same home that is gonna be possible.
And you do not have larger life issues how its a issue when most live like you? Its only a issue when not being able to afford GW2 is the exception not the rule.
Edit to add things:
Prices for food and other necesities and some luxuries are way lower there so people can afford them with the paycheck they get there. 500 dollars a month in USA means you are poor and have issues 500 dollars a month in China means you are a well of middle class.

I don’t think Asian culture or economic differences drives Anet’s decision to price their game … at a reasonable price point I might add. the fact is that the game is not made in Asia, so the business model that dictates it’s price is not relevant to what happens in Asia or what Asians think is expensive/cheap.

I am sure its made in Asia and around half of GW2 players are Asian.

I’m pretty sure it’s not: Anet’s corporate HQ address: 3180 139th Avenue SE, Suite 500, Bellevue WA 98005. If you check any of the job postings, it mentions all those positions are in the studio in Bellevue.

That’s not in Asia.

Furthermore, if as much as half of GW2’s population is Asian, living in Asia making Asia wages, then there really isn’t a problem with the price of the game for Asian gamers in the first place. Besides … saying $50 for GW2 is not reasonable for Asian market would imply that similar games in Asia, not made in Asia, are not priced in the same range? I say Bull on that.

Maybe if an MMO was developed in a sweat shop in Beijing, you could expect it to be $10, but this one isn’t. The price reflects the Standard of Living and business environment of where it’s made. If that’s to expensive for a country where SoL is much less or where cultural differences would make it not succeed, that’s too bad. Anet wouldn’t focus on those markets anyways. For instance, I don’t anticipate GW2 is making a big splash in Bangladesh and I doubt Anet puts Bangladesh on their radar either.

Obtena.7952:

adormtil.1605:

Obtena.7952:

adormtil.1605:

Obtena.7952:

These comparisons are really quite irrelevant and obviously cherrypicked to make the cases of the people presenting them. If pennies per hour of entertainment is too rich for people, then I have to question how they can afford to eat or pay rent.

If you don’t want to pay for the expansion, then don’t. It’s not necessary to justify on the forum why you won’t. If you can’t pay for the expansion, then you have larger life issues than access to it.

Let me tell you something about Asian culture they are people who do not move out of their parents house until they get married and they get married late. And that is mainly only for the second or third child if there is one and for girls. The first born will stay with his parents and his own family. Imagine this you can not feed yourself and pay rent by yourself but when there are 3 or 4 or 5 or 6 members living in the same home that is gonna be possible.
And you do not have larger life issues how its a issue when most live like you? Its only a issue when not being able to afford GW2 is the exception not the rule.
Edit to add things:
Prices for food and other necesities and some luxuries are way lower there so people can afford them with the paycheck they get there. 500 dollars a month in USA means you are poor and have issues 500 dollars a month in China means you are a well of middle class.

I don’t think Asian culture or economic differences drives Anet’s decision to price their game … at a reasonable price point I might add. the fact is that the game is not made in Asia, so the business model that dictates it’s price is not relevant to what happens in Asia or what Asians think is expensive/cheap.

I am sure its made in Asia and around half of GW2 players are Asian.

I’m pretty sure it’s not: Anet’s corporate HQ address: 3180 139th Avenue SE, Suite 500, Bellevue WA 98005. If you check any of the job postings, it mentions all those positions are in the studio in Bellevue.

That’s not in Asia.

Furthermore, if as much as half of GW2’s population is Asian, living in Asia making Asia wages, then there really isn’t a problem with the price of the game for Asian people.

That is because the price of GW2 in Asia is way cheaper like 14.12 USD and they still only had like only 3 million sales there. You know a place that has a bigger population then the rest of the world.
I also want to to add that around half of the countries where the price of GW2:Heart of Thorn is what it is do not have better wages then the ones in China. I assume that people from countries like Vietnam and India can buy the game for China prices if they can.

You’re points don’t seem relevant. The game is priced according to according to a business model. If the economic situation of any individual doesn’t allow them to play GW2, they don’t play it, regardless of the country they live in. If Anet’s model is correct, they have already priced the game according to the game’s current demographic, which would include the Asian markets as well as the NA ones. If they priced HoT at X dollars in Asia, it’s because they think it will sell for X dollars. Asian culture factors more into how the game is marketed, not to it’s price.

Until end of August I don’t have much money. If I had known that the pre-purchase would be so soon I wouldn’t have bought the 7 foot long wall graphic of Caithe and made it more resistent to wear and plastified it for the total cost of 450$…

I bought the base expansion and will get the deluxe upgrade in August. As for the ultimate edition and the gems rebate…I guess I’ll be gifting Anet by buying them full price as I usually do ^^

I had been quite inactive in the last few months, but the living world events, wanting to get 100% exploration (achieved!) and trying to get ascended gear (still working on it) keep me somewhat active. HOT will be a wonderful refresh!

Obtena.7952:

You’re points don’t seem relevant. The game is priced according to according to a business model. If the economic situation of any individual doesn’t allow them to play GW2, they don’t play it, regardless of the country they live in. If Anet’s model is correct, they have already priced the game according to the game’s current demographic, which would include the Asian markets as well as the NA ones.

Is the model correct? I do not think so.

If you owned a piece of Anet or were employed in their business development group, what you think might matter to them.

Let’s not be delusional here… you’re not here posting to enlighten Anet about their impending failure of the HoT release in Asia because of wrong pricing … you’re just a dude that simply wants it to be cheaper. So claiming their model is wrong is a little silly. According to you, half of their customers are in the Asian market so Asia has been good for Anet .. not by chance either.

Obtena.7952:

If you owned a piece of Anet or were employed in their business development group, what you think might matter.

More a piece of NCSoft but that would not matter. Either way because my posts where not deleted or got a warn or anything they do not seems to be opposed to what I think.
Also how do you know its does not matter all the time things change because of player feedback.
And yes they do have half of players in Asia from at most 3 million active player. Yes Anet did something right in Asia but they did not got a hit. After all they got 3 million sales in a country with over 100 million mmo players.

Pricing will NOT change because of player feedback on the forum because players do not understand the impacts of price changes on the company; it may change if they don’t sell enough copies. Shareholders do not respond well to that kind of whimsical corporate behaviour.

Just because your posts are not deleted does not mean Anet is not opposed to what you think. Our censorship in NA tends to be less strict as what may be experienced in Asia. Organizations are more tolerant of dissension.

You have no idea if a certain number of players in Asia is a hit for GW2 or not … maybe their target was much lower than they actually got. We don’t know and they aren’t going to tell us either. If the Asian release of GW2 couldn’t be sustained because of low population, it would have been shut down by now. Obviously that’s not the case yet. It’s quite irrelevant if GW2 only has a small fraction of the total Asian market. That’s not a measure of how that portion of it’s market contributes financially to the game. Maybe Asians spend more money in the gemstore than NA’s players… THAT’S what is relevant.

It’s way more complex than “Oh, we only got X million players in Asia … we fail”. That’s an overly simplistic view.

Infusion.7149:

It’s $40 if you count the character slot for pre-ordering (something that should have been part of the deal from the beginning).

I don’t understand the fuss, since now there is an incentive to pre-order the standard edition.

Before there was no incentive to pre-order assuming the beta events’ progress doesn’t get saved.

When I refer to the cash-shop I always get the argument ‘but you can get those items in-game for free’, so now I will do the same… The additional character slot is nice but you can not say it’s $10,- because you can get it in-game for free.

But seriously it’s just based on what people expect or get used to. I have no problem with the$50,- expansion but have a problem with the cash-shop focus so have been complaining about that.

Other people have got used to that but now complain about the price of the expansion.

For a B2P game $50,- is really reasonable, even if it would have less in hard content then other MMO’s, you get that back for not being bothered with a cash-shop and having the fun items in-game.

For a cash-shop game $50,- is a lot for an expansion, you expect it to be max $40,- maybe even free but are then willing to be bothered with the cash-shop and having much of the fun items in there instead of in the game-world.

Anet released GW2 as B2P, then moved to cash-shop but meanwhile did act as if they where using some special model (in any commercial they pointed out that GW2 did not have a subscription, as if that is special these days) now they release an expansion that based on the price is again more in line with the B2P model. Is this fair? Only if they move back more to that B2P model but then they should announce that. If they don’t then I agree $50,- is a little to high. Only the future will tell us (or Anet, at some point).

It’s like how a lot pf printers are really cheap but the inc is very expansive, basically you pay the printer when buying the inc. There however are also expensive printers (mainly both by smaller and bigger companies) that have cheaper inc because you paid the printer when you did buy it, not with the inc. Both payment models work, but when you start selling the printers for the high price and keep selling the inc for the high price people will complain or move to another brand.

The last seems to be the case with GW2… or the manufacturer did use the ‘cheap printer, expensive inc’ model, but decided to go to the new model ‘expensive printer, cheap inc’ but forgot to mention this switch to the buyers.

Obtena.7952:

Pricing will NOT change because of player feedback on the forum because players do not understand the impacts of price changes on the company; it may change if they don’t sell enough copies. Shareholders do not respond well to that kind of whimsical corporate behaviour.

Just because your posts are not deleted does not mean Anet is not opposed to what you think. Our censorship in NA tends to be less strict as what may be experienced in Asia. Organizations are more tolerant of dissension.

You have no idea if a certain number of players in Asia is a hit for GW2 or not … maybe their target was much lower than they actually got. We don’t know and they aren’t going to tell us either. If the Asian release of GW2 couldn’t be sustained because of low population, it would have been shut down by now. Obviously that’s not the case yet. It’s quite irrelevant if GW2 only has a small fraction of the total Asian market. That’s not a measure of how that portion of it’s market contributes financially to the game. Maybe Asians spend more money in the gemstore than NA’s players… THAT’S what is relevant.

It’s way more complex than “Oh, we only got X million players in Asia … we fail”. That’s an overly simplistic view.

Sales have already begone, so changing the price at this moment is out of the question anyway.

Question then becomes what do they offer for it, and not only in the form of content but also as a service / the total package.

Again, it might be that they simply change their model and then the price is perfectly reasenable but then they should let everybody know that.

Devata.6589:

adormtil.1605:

Asia without the middle east is where the majority of profit for all the MMO industry is gained. The rest of the world does not even equal Asia without the middle east.
But any of you wondered why? I mean sure there are more people there then in the rest of world but the overwhelming majority are poor compared to the one considered poor in the western world and former comunist countries and even more then half of the Muslim countries.
We in the west if you consider Eastern Europe also part of the west has more disposable income way more disposable income and yet we do not bring even half the profit Asia without middles east does.
The reason in my personal opinion is because we do not make MMO’s available to almost all in the western world. For the poor in the western world they are to expensive even if the poor here are better then the middle class in most of Asia without the middle east.

The really poor can’t buy a PC.
So it’s a realy strange idea.. omg, the poor can’t spend $50,- so now they can’t buy HoT to play on their >$600,- PC.

More like 200$ and I do not mean the really poor but the ones that are considered poor that get at least 500$ a month money that in other countries is middle class.
http://www.cinemablend.com/games/Steam-Survey-Most-PC-Gamers-Have-Weaker-PCs-Than-PS4-Xbox-One-58833.html

What they offer for a price and the price are different of course.

I feel for what I THINK is being offered, $50 is not unreasonable. Of course, until I play it, I won’t know definitely if the expansion was worth $50 to me but based on what I have experienced with the last 3 years, I think it will.

honestly, i’m thinking that their marketing was way off – after catching up on some videos, anet did in fact add a lot …….but their hype is over kill……how many months have they been, nagging us with announcements and interviews ?

I don’t know about anyone else, but 6 months of hearing about what we don’t have yet, no release, no beta date, is getting ‘exhausting’ – it’s easy to say “look at all the ads and hype you hit me with ….for what …This ?!” – it’s an expansion pack, not guildwars 3.

it was fun for gw1 to gw2 …..but somehow this expansion pack marketing was simply exhausting and the expansion pack contents doesn’t match up to the over-hype. This is not saying that the expansion pack isn’t worth all they added, it’s saying, guys, chill..you didn’t build a new rome.

they’d probably have better results just putting it out and announcing it as a work in progress. At least then I can justify the price with everything they will add, and this can be verified with all they added after the gw2 launch. That can be trusted more than super hyped marketing.

and i’m no marketing expert, i’m the customer saying……i’m tired of you telling me all the things I don’t have and wont have till an unknown release date.

You could be my mate of 40 years, and if you started nagging me every day from july 4th about what I’m having for dinner next thanksgiving ……..the only thing I’d be happy with is for you to finally change the subject already on thanksgiving. I already knew you were a good cook….but months of blah blah blah blah blah was more than i could handle!

our word of mouth marketing is stronger than anything your marketing team can put together. we are part of your team whether you hired us or not, and i’m not much for lack of communication with the management department. We are the reason you have investors. we the players have spoken :p

Guys wow… I would love to live in USA if it is so cheap to build a PC there. We in Europe certainly can’t build gaming PC so cheaply… A decent graphic card alone costs like 250€… that is like 280 dollars I think. And if you are not from the Germany, Britain, or a few other western countries, 250€ is a lot for 1 component :P

Mortifer.2946:

Guys wow… I would love to live in USA if it is so cheap to build a PC there. We in Europe certainly can’t build gaming PC so cheaply… A decent graphic card alone costs like 250€… that is like 280 dollars I think. And if you are not from the Germany, Britain, or a few other western countries, 250€ is a lot for 1 component :P

Who said USA and what is decent I wonder as long as that graphic card supports direct x 11 its enough for all games. If it does not work for 1080p there is always 720p, or 800×600. Like a lot of the GT series you know without the X are quite cheap at 70 dollars the 700 series and even cheaper the 600 series under 50 dollars. There even cheaper then a video game.

the gt without the x is a joke ….don’t touch that, waste of money – the minimum you want for today’s video cards is a performance rating of 2,600 or higher on this chart –

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html

That is not true I can play this game at around 40-60 fps with a gt 720m you know for laptop and the desktop ones are way better. Hell I can even play Dragon age:Inqusition at 30 fps by lowering the resolution at 720p.

that’s a laptop chip ….as a desktop card …forgetabout it. i’m sure of this.

Ricky.4706:

that’s a laptop chip ….as a desktop card …forgetabout it. i’m sure of this.

laptop chip’s are worse then their desktop counterparts because of the size and cooldown problems. If a gt 720m can do that a not m can do more. Granted do not expect more than barley decent performance at 1080p.
http://www.geforce.com/hardware/desktop-gpus/geforce-gt-720/specifications
This what a not m can do.
http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GT-720M.90247.0.html
and this what m can do.

Ricky.4706:

the gt without the x is a joke ….don’t touch that, waste of money – the minimum you want for today’s video cards is a performance rating of 2,600 or higher on this chart –

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html

295×2 under 7k score? Yeeeeeah right man….

nvidia still has the dx11 and cuda advantage over amd. maybe dx12 the story might change….but as of right now, nvidia is king – literally by design.