Guild Wars 2

Everyone knows the way they’re handling the HoT bundle is a little shady. But here’s the kicker – it’s also pretty stupid from a business perspective.

There are a lot (read: A LOT) of people who bought the original game when it launched but then petered out after a few months or a year for various reasons. Many of these people probably still own the game and a fair percentage of them would be interested in picking up the expansion to see the new content for a reasonable cost relative to the amount of content offered. Those people are very likely to be turned off at the idea that they’re having to re-buy the base game and spend at least $50 on it to get access to the expansion content.

Arenanet seems to be extremely good at ruining peoples’ good will toward them. They also seem to hilariously always think they can appeal to mass numbers of non-MMO gamers who don’t even understand how expansions work and that it’s worth marketing to those people at the expense of MMO-gamers and GW veterans.

I really hate to be such a negative nancy, but it’s incredibly clear at this point that there’s some serious incompetence somewhere in this game’s management.

Exactly, anyone who was really interested in the game would’ve bought it by now, it’s not like WoW where it’s been around long enough for a whole new generation of potential players to have grown up.New players that pick this up now a liable to be tourists who won’t stick around for the long term, and thus won’t end buying many outfits or pet rocks – which is wher they should really be making their money.

The obvious solution is to offer a digital upgrade for $30-$40 to people who already own the base game. If they really don’t want it on the shelves as a separate title, it doesn’t have to be. Just have the combined one in retail stores but offer an upgrade path digitally.