Guild Wars 2

“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” - Hanlon’s Razor

As most of you who read the forums know, ANet botched the pre-purchase information by providing veteran players with nothing for pre-purchasing (except a meaningless title), while new players got the core game as a bonus.

ArenaNet has now attempted to correct the problem by providing an additional character slot if you pre-purchase.

Is there really somebody at ANet’s executive level that is this incompetent at understanding how this works, or are they genuinely malicious?

Pre-purchasing is giving ArenaNet your money on a promise. Unlike pre-ordering, where one puts a small amount of money as a down payment (which can be refunded) for the full-game at release (in order to reserve a place in line), pre-purchasing is paying the full price without knowledge of the quality of the product.

As it stands, the amount of information on Heart of Thorns is disturbingly sparse for ArenaNet to ask $50 of us. We don’t even have a release date. Yet, with this recent attempt to placate the fanbase, ArenaNet execs have blurred the line from incompetence to maliciousness.

You see, the fine print of this announcement clearly states you only get the additional character slot if you pre-purchase. If you buy on the day of release or later, you lose that potential benefit, because ArenaNet wanted that money earlier.

As a gamer, I’ve been burned by pre-purchases in the past. I no longer trust pre-purchases, and reviews that are independent and thorough rarely come about before a game is released. This new “clarification” puts me in a bind. Do I risk being burned again in order to get something that should be seen as standard like it would be in any other MMO, or do I hold to my convictions and experiences and lose the benefit for peace of mind?

ArenaNet, the additional character slot should be available to anybody who is a veteran, regardless of pre-purchase or not. It is demeaning to gamers to strong-arm us like this. Please prove to me that you just didn’t think it through, or prove to me that this is malice.

I don’t know, most players seem okay with this. Sorry you’re not.

But I don’t believe this six unhappy guys left are going to affect sales one way or another. You see, no matter what Anet does, people are unhappy. It doesn’t matter what it is.

You can always wait till the last minute to buy the prepurchase and get a refund in the 30 days if you decide you don’t like it I suppose.

Offering special deals for pre-purchasing is common. More than likely, they’ll have completely different gift packages after HoT is release so that’s why they’re need to specify if you pre-purchase for these specific package/feature.

Remember, pre-purchasing is completely a CHOICE. If you don’t like what they have to offer now, you don’t have to buy. It would only be considered strong-arming if they forced you to buy it to play the game you currently own. You can wait to see what else the offer in HoT or wait for a different deal/special down the road.

And you can’t say they’ve never given Veteran players anything, if you’ve played the game since launch, you would know that they’ve given tons of free gemstore items; blacklion keys, revive orbs, skins, etc.

Risk and reward

Well put.

Vagrant.7206:

Is there really somebody at ANet’s executive level that is this incompetent at understanding how this works, or are they genuinely malicious?

It’s probably the same person who thought 300 gold per commander color is OK.

Yes, you will not get the extra slot. On the other hand, i expect the christmas sale to drop more than $10 off the price, so if you were going to wait anyway, you will likely be financially ahead.