Guild Wars 2

Beorn Raukar.4328:

How are they scamming you? You might consider the price too high, and that is OK you are entitled to your opinion. But this is how markets work, supply and demand. As suppliers they are free to set any price that they feel like and you as consumer are free to decide if it is too low or too high. But it is certainly not a scam, that involves deceit and here there is none.

Ah, another “cool guys, game maker and me, do not approve of your plebeian demands” ????????????????????????????.

We have already bought the game and helped them sustain it before HoT was made. Some people endured the game’s teething problems. Now anyone who’s starting a new account will get a considerably fuller experience and obvious advantage over long-term customers and supporters of the company.
Actually, if you’re a long term customer, the only realistic alternate option is to stop playing.

Mistress Elemental.3750:

Arioso.8519:

Also, to add on to your math, it’s a more economically sound decision to simply NOT upgrade my account, and get a second one for HoT, giving us FIVE more character slots and keeping our old account as alts for playing base content.

While I agree with everything, this part is sort of flawed. If you do this, you loose everything you worked for on the main account. (Achievement points, legendaries, skins, so on.)

I do agree this is a big middle finger to existing players. I expect to pay for the expansions, but not at the same cost as a new player since I already purchased the game. ($150 for the CE when it came out). The ultimate version is kind of a joke too. Basically a $25 increase for just gems and the ability to say you have the ultimate edition. Really? At least with the CE, I have special (and awesome) real world items that nobody else can have unless you got the CE. I am basically just giving you another $25 for an extra that you did not have to put any effort into. Its like saying, here buy this game and we will include this paper with the game code. It just makes no sense to get the ultimate version except to give you more money.

Yeah, but the fact that you lose what’s in your account is what makes this WORSE.

Most of us realize making a new account is a better value, but they’re basically holding our current character’s ransom for for the cost.

Personally, though, I’m NOT a longtime vet. I started playing less than a year ago. I only paid $20 for the base game, so kitten expansion isn’t that unreasonable.

(Edit: Fifty Dollars typed out numerically got censored to “kitten” What the hell?)
The thing is, my account doesn’t have very much of real value locked to it. I made mawdrey, and have two cash shop skins and half a set of ascended, but everything else of solid value in my account it liquidate-able.

Yeah, we’re not actually supposed to transfer accounts, but it makes way more sense for me to just cash out most of my stuff, make a new account, give my new account roughly 800 gold worth of the gold and mats that I have stocked and start fresh, (but rich) while letting one of my friends use my old account and we can play base game content together. (And THEY get to enjoy my skins instead of me. Oh well.)

In which case, would it not be simpler just to give me an activation code for base game only, let me give it to my friend, we can play together, and once they get into the game they can buy the expansion themselves to catch up to me, I’d get the same value a new player gets and introduce a new customer to a Anet. It’s almost win-win.

Except from a business standpoint, that sounds ridiculous to the bean-counters on staff because they’re throwing away half the money they could be getting, because they probably wrongly assume all existing players will upgrade AND they’ll get a mass of new ones plunking down the cash. If every player had a free “base game only” demo codeto give away there could potentially be a huge influx of players with no personal investment in the game (Allowing for gold sellers and trolls flooding in, potentially, and people trying to scalp their codes for money) and Anet “looses” potential revenue as all the new players keep themselves busy with the gifted base game for the next year and get HoT on the cheap later.

And if you don’t like the sound of that, keep in mind we basically already have the capability to hand out free accounts if we buy the expansion.

It’s just the ONLY thing keeping us from doing so is the fact that our current mains are being held hostage.

I’ll just throw my opinion into the mix here and say that I’m disappointed to see Anet continuing to pander to “potential new players” and giving their actual extant userbase the shaft.

Anet has never given away the game for free. The game is not “free with HoT” it’s included in the price. I do not want to have to pay for a game I already own.

Guess that was a bit of a fib was it?

I’d rather just pay for the expansion thank you very much. Please adjust the price accordingly, OR give us a character slot.

I don’t buy (pun intended) into this “free core game”. It’s a very underhanded marketing strategy as others have already pointed out.

Try being in Australia.
$50USD = $65AUD
$75USD = $97AUD
$100USD = $130AUD

HeliaXDemoN.1208:

From reddit:

If you think the complaints are nonsense, please consider that:
- Arena Net does not need you defending them.
- You are the consumer, not the developer or publisher.
- This is a matter of economics, not entitlement. Look past the hype and rage.
Exercise your consumer discretion.

For this particularl kind of creature, the fact they are one of the customers is irrelevant.
Two things are important:
- it’s about cool guys, ArenaNet and me, not you plebs
- it gives them an excuse to taunt others
Reasoning with sociopaths is not exactly a good use of your time.

If they are like this now – i don’t want to be here. Will quit too until they change something to better.

Anet probably won’t read most of these, and they probably won’t change anything. But I felt that it’s necessary for me to put this out here.

I believe that most of us don’t mind paying the $50, as long as it comes with AT LEAST 1 more character slot. Some would think an additional bank tab expansion would be fair to ask as well.

For us veterans, buying the $50 copy of the game is just losing money. If we already own the game the additional character slot should be fair exchange for the $50 price we pay.

We want SAB and a character slot.

Talon Silverhawk.3574:

Huggywuggles.2814:

Player loyalty
Coming from a long time gw player, while trying to grab new player is a good move but neglecting loyal/veteran player by giving them the shorter end of the deal is not. Those player are the one making the expansion possible by purchasing the gam years ago and supporting the game via gem purchase. Without them there won’t even be a expansion as the game would be consider a failure. Move and marketing like this will sent out a vibe that loyal supporter and player are not appreciated and will not bore well in helping the gw and arenanet branding in the future. MMO like WoW strive due to it’s loyal playerbase while company like EA and activision get bad rep for milking it’s player base with map pack and DLC galore. Which type does arenanet want to strive to be?

Daily rewards. PvP rewards. All of these things should also be considered as “loyalty rewards”. Why? Think about Tomes of Knowledge for a second. Many long term players who’ve been saving them/hoarding them are going to be able to put newly created characters DIRECTLY into the (pardon the pun) heart of the action. Want to level those professions? You’ll have access to crafting materials galore..not necessarily from farming them but simply from logging in each and every day.

You, as a long term player, have already been rewarded for your loyalty. You just took it for granted.

Thats what you get for playing the game? It’s not loyalty rewards, companies must love you.

This is like car insurance renewal, new customers get the special offers and deals, existing customers get the shaft.. It’s ANET taking its veterans for granted not the other way round.

Really? I wonder. Think about it for a second. IF you’ve been wise you’ve probably got a gajillion or more ToK stockpiled. That means if you choose to do so, your new Revenant can jump right into HoT content whereas a new player will have to spend the time leveling (and I’ve seen nothing regarding reducing the amount of exp needed for 1-80) to get where you are.

In addition, if you have been wise, you’ve been stockpiling those crafting materials and maybe already crafting Legendary/Ascended armor and weapons for your newly boosted Revenant. Again, this puts you (as a ‘veteran player’) WELL ahead of the curve compared to new players.

All those skill point scrolls you’ve got sitting around? Pretty sure those will come in handy as well whereas a new player won’t have those.

So yeah. Your point is all YOU’VE gotten are glorified discounts. And that’s true. But what do you think happens when you’re a long term customer? YOU get all the best deals. YOU get all the extras. YOU get all the ‘go to the head of the line’ type deals that newer customers do not get.

Sounds pretty darned rewarding if you ask me.

I thought we were getting an expansion, not an expanded edition of a three year old game for the price of a completely new one.

But its pretty much everything else surrounding this expansion from the announcement yesterday to the very little and poor responses we got from Arenanet since then (+ decision from the past that make the current ones even worse).

Let me start off by this, I expected the price tagg and planned on pre purchasing the game as soon as I could, planned because this is not the case any longer and the price tagg itself has nothing to do with that.

It is however that they decided to go with a bundle that is pretty much a big middle finger to the people that already have the basic game, their long time supportors + the fact that ever since they announced HOT they have been scamming people to buy the original game because “it was needed for HoT” and now they just say “yeah it is in there and you did not have to buy it seperately”, simply ripping off all those people that bought the original these last few months and making the people who got their friends to buy it
look bad too.

The least they could do is make 2 bundels, one if you already have the original and one if you dont. Or discount sell the expansion alone, because lets face it no matter how many times they want to use the BS excuse we made the original free now, it isnt, its calculated in the price like with all marketing stunts and the players that supported their company from the start are being duped by that.

If they just put HoT as a single item, no original GW2 included and put it at 50 the IMO justified outrage would be a lot less, sure some people would still want a character slot, but a lot of people like myself would have gladly paid it, but not now that I see how they chose to deal with it which is giving the middle finger to long time supporters aswell as scamming people who recently bought the game. And unless they automatically refund each and every person automatically nothing will change the fact that Arenanet in my book have changed from a company that I would gladly support to mere frauds because in the end of the day you scammed lots of people (all buyers from of the orignal version starting from the HoT announcement till now ).

Yes you can say contact support, but you know aswell as I that only a minority will and you will still have scammed all those others out of money.

I think I’ve posted twice in these forums throughout my time in this game, but I had to post now if only to add my voice to the chorus.

Perception is reality and I’m having a hard time understanding how no one at ArenaNet foresaw that this pricing scheme was going to be received badly. New players are getting a great deal with Heart of Thorns by including the base game. Current players of GW2 can only see the pricing as a slap in the face. At best, they get nothing for their loyalty. At worst, they have to spend an extra $10 for a character slot on top of the $50 expansion price to even take advantage of some of the content in the expansion.

Bad form guys.

Randulf.7614:

They’ve sold multiple million copies, 1 person wont mean anything to them. They lose/gain customers daily for all sorts of reasons. I doubt they will even notice this thread tbh

It’s certainly not just one person, buddy. Take a look around. There are plenty of people that are quite dissatisfied.

OP, I am also on an indefinite hiatus from the game. I was hoping that HoT would serve as some inspiration to get back into a game that has gotten stale enough that I don’t do anything more than use it as a chatroom, but $50 is far too much of a gamble, and I simply don’t see that kind of value in what we’d be getting for it. Combine that with the brilliant idea to give new players the base game as a “free gift”, and I’m pretty much set on waiting for something better to come along instead.

So there are people who claim that this exp is worth its money. How is this legit? This price is totally for stand-alone game as GW2 came out. What would have you tought if the base game had come with no character slots? Well many claim it’s totally okey for HoT to come without one. And WE will be ALL be getting the base game once again(if buying exp), whoop whoop…and we get nothing from buying base game again. Calling is free when buing HoT is even worse, because this means that ONLY HoT itself cost it’s miinimum price, 45€. Lets see some numbers then:
Core game: 49,99€:
• 30 maps
• 8 proffesions
• 5 character slots
• Story for all the diferent races
HoT: 45€:
• A few new maps
• 1 profession ( +8 new weapon usages for older classes)
• 0 character slots
• One story for all
• Guildhalls
I have bought gems in the beginning(in the first year) as i wanted to support devs for making awesome game. Now everything is in gemstore and next comes such highly priced exp. This is just sad, nothing else.

Randulf.7614:

They’ve sold multiple million copies, 1 person wont mean anything to them. They lose/gain customers daily for all sorts of reasons. I doubt they will even notice this thread tbh

While I’m not exactly rage quitting, really? They lose and gain customers daily? Yeah that’s why we are playing on a megaserver, because those player populations just keep on skyrocketing.
1 person should mean a lot to them, when one person is speaking the thoughts of a reasonable portion of their current player base, as indicated by all the other forum posts from disenchanted players.

Maybe we need an analogy here.

Imagine walking into a hardware store to buy some nails. The shopkeeper asks you if you already own a hammer, because what are nails without one?
You answer that you already purchased a hammer from him a few years ago. The shopkeeper says: “Great! So you don’t need one.” He then tells you about the sale they have now, where if you didn’t already own a hammer you would get one for free with the nails. But since you already have one you just get the nails for the same price a new customer would get the nails plus a new hammer.

In this scenario, would you be completely kittened-off and demand either a discount on the nails or a new hammer for free with your nails as a returning customer as well?

After almost 2 years I am coming back to Gw2 now that I have time I’m glad to see the price I paid for the release just became free to new players. I am disappointed with ArenaNet completely, I would hope compensation to existing players will be given for spending 50$ – 99$USD on an expansion for an almost outdated MMORPG is ridiculous. I would only pay such a price only if new classes and greater perks to existing players were given.

Overall with this very ambitious offer upon the purchasing the Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns Expansion I at least better get a (Core game) CD-key to give to a friend in hopes of him/her being most likely heavily influenced to purchase the expansion too.

But hey more money in Arena Net’s pockets won’t hurt will it?

After almost 2 years I am coming back to Gw2 now that I have time I’m glad to see the price I paid for the release just became free to new players. I am disappointed with ArenaNet completely, I would hope compensation to existing players will be given for spending 50$ – 99$USD on an expansion for an almost outdated MMORPG is ridiculous. I would only pay such a price only if new classes and greater perks to existing players were given.

Overall with this very ambitious offer upon the purchasing the Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns Expansion I at least better get a (Core game) CD-key to give to a friend in hopes of him/her being most likely heavily influenced to purchase the expansion too.

But hey more money in Arena Net’s pockets won’t hurt will it?

One of the reasons that people are defending the $50 USD price tag is because other MMOs have released expansions at that price. But hasn’t GW2 attempted to make a name for itself by trying to go against the grain? More importantly, why aren’t we comparing HoT’s price tag to Eye of the North’s price tag? Both were expansions that required the base game and provided a bunch of content.

However, GW:EN was cheaper. I forget the exact price but I’m pretty sure it was less than $40 at pre-order. Why is HoT so expensive? I understand that it’s a lot of content, but tbh it’s an expansion. Not a full game. I find this $50 price tag to be attached to full stand-alone games like GW: Factions or GW: Nightfall. As far as I can tell, HoT does not provide as much as either Factions or Nightfall did and is itself not a standalone game.

So I’m just confused. Why $50? Even if it was $40 I’m willing to bet that there would be nowhere near the amount of complaining on the forums and in-game as there is now, even if $40 is still fairly expensive for an expansion.

Value is subjective. I pay to support the company that provided me with over 3500 hours of enyertainment. I put value on more than just the “objects” we get in the game.

To support this company i donated from time to time. Bought gems without real need. Just to support the game, because i understand “Game can’t run without money income”. I want some respect to an old comunity in exchange.

Not sure if this has been said already (because I’m not wasting my time reading 40+ pages of which probably upwards of 50% is QQ, not saying everything in here is unjustified but anyway, since I’ve already seen plenty to disinterest me in the 3-5 pages i did look at) but I think people complaining about the lack of char slot in standard should remember one thing if they haven’t already; perhaps this isn’t an ideal solution depending on how much you play and what you tend to do in the game…but realise that GW2 does allow you to exchange gold for gems so if you really want a char slot but don’t want to pay you can consider that option. So you’re by no means forced to buy deluxe to get a slot. Hell even if you’d rather spend cash than gold you can preemptively buy a slot now.

Randulf.7614:

They’ve sold multiple million copies, 1 person wont mean anything to them. They lose/gain customers daily for all sorts of reasons. I doubt they will even notice this thread tbh

Generally speaking, when big companies screw up hard people are quitting in quite high percentages, most just don’t announce themselves like that.

When Evolution of combat came to Runescape, veterans were quitting in thousands, which is why they created an “old style” server later on. Although, this is not as drastic of a change, I can see a few hundred (or thousands) quitting, because without the expansion the game will feel incomplete and as you see there are a lot of people unwilling to buy the current expansion packages as it is.

Hopefully, it doesn’t get to quitting part.

I took this off a related thread. I thought to post this to that thread but I felt that it would not be reviewed by the people that need to hear it. So I made a new thread. And the question is:

Anet, developers, marketing team, do you realize or understand WHY people are upset? Do you think they are not entitled to be upset? And how will you take care of this?

Here is the question on the other thread and the answer they received.

“AXEL.8362
Q:
I already have the game. Do I get a second one? Can I purchase the expansion without having to buy the game that I already own again?
about 12 hours ago
Quote Report Permalink
Previous
Regina Buenaobra
Content Marketing Team Lead
A:
To clarify: $50 is the price of the expansion. We included the core game as a free bonus to make it easier for new players to get into it.”

Ok so what is upsetting people the most is the breach of good faith and this statement just furthers that breach. As well as the mocking that was done on another thread. Taking offense or not it was not a professional response on that thread. But lets get into what is upsetting people. First you announce that the Xpack is coming out. You hold sells and tell everyone that the game is not playable with out owning the core game. So everybody that is interested in playing rushes out to buy the core game. You continue to offer sells and sell a large number of games. Friends coming in from the long and loyal players. You sell. More. Now release date comes. People paying during the sells or paying full price have a right to be upset now that the game is coming out with the Xpack. That was a breach of good faith in my opinion. You posted one thing with out mentioning you planed to release with it included with the xpack. As I said don’t know if that is illegal or not but it is a breach of trust.

Next with the answer to this question comes another bombshell. You included it to help new players start the xpack. So the existing players do not need any help in starting the xpack or you don’t care to help them. That is what this Answer sends the message of. Right or wrong the wording and message you sent out is “We want to help newplayers to get them into the game old players buy your slots and be happy you getting the expansion and we gave you all the free content before” Well the content is the same that we have now that the new players will have access to. Yes I agree the price for the Xpack may be close to a decent price depending on what you still have instore. I do not agree with the breach of trust and I do not agree with the way this answer came out.

Suggestions

It is possible to show an upgrade versus a new account. So it is possible that you could give all upgrades two character slots. To help them get started in the xpack. And would restore some of the faith that the players put into the game. I say some because there have been a few breaches lately. And because players had to announce their displeasure it will only serve as a small fix. But that is the suggestion I have to fix this. It wouldn’t hurt to find better or more compelling items to put in the deluxe and ultimate versions to make them more worth wild to get.

I think I speak for everyone when I say we await your answers to the questions And recognition of how the player base feels about this. I know there are some that feel that there was no wrong committed. To those please allow those that feel that they was wrong express that in a civil way. I don’t feel that biting back and forth will help the issue at all. So I’d like to ask players of both sides of this to wait and be patient and hopefully we will get a response and then you can decide to continue the game or go over to another game as those will be the final options you have after we hear from Anet.

A little OT, but this is probably a record for the fastest a thread has grown in GW2 history. It’s putting the Hobosacks and Dragonhunter threads to shame.

Back on topic:

I think a lot of people are lumping all players who currently own the game into this “veteran players” category. What does it mean to be a veteran? How many years? Months? People who have owned the game for 3 years, 2 years, heck maybe even 1 year I don’t think this is really something they should be complaining too much about. I still think it should come with a character slot…but still.

People who bought this game during those -75% sales too, like I did back in January, I feel like this price is of little consequence. I’ve easily clocked over 1000 hours since I got this account, which amounts to a measly $0.01/hour of gameplay. Okay, that’s all good. I’ll buy the expansion.

HOWEVER, over the past few months and weeks, when there has been no such sale, many people have been buying the $40 core game with the anticipation of the expansion, especially since the FAQ was stating that the core game would be required and the expansion would be a stand-alone expansion product. This is not the case. I know Anet has made some less-than-official statements regarding refunding or upgrading accounts for people who were recently misled, but they need to make official posts regarding this policy! The rollout of this expansion pre-purchase is very clunky, the wording confusing, and it needs to be amended, AT LEAST for the players who purchased the game recently without the discount.

The purchase link detects your location and directs you to the shop for that location.
I am in the UK so it lists the prices as £35/£60/£80 for me.
The legal requirement is for them to charge me VAT as I am in the UK.
VAT is 20% – however if you convert those prices from £ back to $ you find that the UK price is 25% higher than the US price when legally it should only be 20% higher.
The product is a digital download so there are no shipping costs involved.
Why are people in the UK being charged an extra 5%?

Out of curiocity, is this information from reddit correct?

“The Ultimate edition will not be available as an upgrade and must be purchased as a full game package.”

does that mean that veterans can’t even benefit from the 50 euros discount in the form of gems?

How can Anet or anyone justify the price of a triple A game for a mere expansion?

smitske.4912:

the fact that ever since they announced HOT they have been scamming people to buy the original game because “it was needed for HoT”

This is what is wrong for me. 2 days ago (June 15) it was written in the FAQ that HoT needed the base game. I advised some friends to buy GW2 after the announcement of HoT because the expansion was a perfect argument to buy the game when it went on sale and the game was needed anyway.

Now, I feel like I lied to those friends and I REALLY don’t like it.

I expect some explanations about this bad marketing/communication because right now, I feel like I cannot trust ArenaNet anymore.
What if in two days the expansion gives you access to only one map and you need another purchase for the others. After all, it is so easy to change what is written in the FAQ…

i got the full game 4 days ago and paid 40$ and now they put it with DLC and i feel like they kittened me over like i need to pay 90$ and not just 50$ :\ its not like they say DLC is for less because you got it before the dlc….

i starting collage soon(3-4 months ) and i couldn’t wait for sale so i got it for 40$ and now i need to pay more 50$ for DLC…. i dont plan to put give them 50$ after kittening 4day!

the more fun it get when i get into the game it ask me if i want to pay 50$ for the DLC -_-

hope they will do something about it…
someone have idea what i can do?(if it was sale i would say ok my worng but it DLC more things same money….)

Alphard.6529:

skowcia.8257:

Axelwarrior.9084:

dbgfeller.8120:

Shifu.4321:

dbgfeller.8120:

I don’t care if it’s cheap or expensive, the point is that I don’t want to pay for something I already own.

Which is?

Which is the core game.

You’re not paying for the core game, it’s included for free. As a bonus for those who don’t have it.

And where is my bonus for being a vet player?

You got both living story seasons for free, in addition to many skins and items that are no longer accessible to new players.

I preordered original game, and played since headstart and i DON’T get living story seasons for free because i was not online when they are up. Now I need to pay for them 1000+ gems (not sure exact price).

Huggywuggles.2814:

Really? I wonder. Think about it for a second. IF you’ve been wise you’ve probably got a gajillion or more ToK stockpiled. That means if you choose to do so, your new Revenant can jump right into HoT content whereas a new player will have to spend the time leveling (and I’ve seen nothing regarding reducing the amount of exp needed for 1-80) to get where you are.

In addition, if you have been wise, you’ve been stockpiling those crafting materials and maybe already crafting Legendary/Ascended armor and weapons for your newly boosted Revenant. Again, this puts you (as a ‘veteran player’) WELL ahead of the curve compared to new players.

All those skill point scrolls you’ve got sitting around? Pretty sure those will come in handy as well whereas a new player won’t have those.

So yeah. Your point is all YOU’VE gotten are glorified discounts. And that’s true. But what do you think happens when you’re a long term customer? YOU get all the best deals. YOU get all the extras. YOU get all the ‘go to the head of the line’ type deals that newer customers do not get.

Sounds pretty darned rewarding if you ask me.

I’ve been playing since gw2 launch and i have 0 tome of knowledge in my bank currently and i have like just around 80 laurel collected and less than 2.5k achievement point.
Not everyone is getting the same “loyalty program” as you put it. Thats why i’d say it’s the game “progression” as i don’t have time to be logging in everyday and even go for those ascended and legendary items. And if the “loyalty program” is for player to have 6 full legendary/ascended geared character going into HoT then i’m not sure what progression is in this game anymore.

Not every player is a hardcore grinder and i would think that’s the strong point of gw2 compare to other mmo. I could still enjoy my game even when i’ve been playing it so casually over the years.

Psnacky.7936:

An extra 2 character slots for those who already own the base game would be a completely fair and reasonable thing for ArenaNet to offer. If I’m not mistaken, this is what you got for adding additional campaigns to your account in GW1.

Just to clarify this a little – it’s kind of yes and no. Yes, adding campaigns to existing account would add two more character slots to the account. The difference is all the campaigns were stand-alone, so when third campaign Nightfall was release for example – if you were new player, you could just buy Nightfall if you wanted, and start playing it. You’d get four character slots, and anything that was in Nightfall, but had no access to Prophecies (first campaign) and Factions (second).

You could buy those separately if you liked, and keep them separate if you prefer – each with their own four character slots.. but each character you created was locked to only play in the campaign it was created in. Basically, the accounts would be entirely separate. Alternately, you could add any of the campaigns you buy into existing account. It would then give you just two extra character slots, but any and all characters from all campaigns you own, could travel into other campaigns and play through them.

The situation now is more like if, when Factions was released, you could only buy it bundled with Prophecies campaign, and you could either add it to your already existing Prophecies campaign as if the bundled Prophecies never existed (and with no added character slots).. or create an entirely new account that now has both campaigns and the standard four character slots, but of course starts from the scratch.

Dean Calaway.9718:

I just had an idea, if the included copy is a stand alone disk that can be made into a new account, why not give it to a friend?

Because it’s not. It was stated earlier that the ‘bonus’ base game only applies if you are a new player.

Old veterans did get something new players didn’t: Living World Season 2, which was free to you but not new players.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Try being in Australia.
$50USD = $65AUD
$75USD = $97AUD
$100USD = $130AUD

at least u can buy the us version if you had to buy the uk version at £80 for ultimate it would cost u $163 AUD

Nah I don’t care about the character slot, I just noticed that the two expansions that Anet has created — Eye of the North and Heart of Thorns — were and are very differently priced. Why price GW:EN at a lower price and HoT at a higher price? It confuses me.

Regina Buenaobra.6193:

To clarify: $50 is the price of the expansion. We included the core game as a free bonus to make it easier for new players to get into it.

So, to clarify, the current value of the core game, something most of us paid full price for(not counting with money spent on gems in the past 2 years), is of 0USD/EUR?

Wesley.4590:

Maybe we need an analogy here.

Imagine walking into a hardware store to buy some nails. The shopkeeper asks you if you already own a hammer, because what are nails without one?
You answer that you already purchased a hammer from him a few years ago. The shopkeeper says: “Great! So you don’t need one.” He then tells you about the sale they have now, where if you didn’t already own a hammer you would get one for free with the nails. But since you already have one you just get the nails for the same price a new customer would get the nails plus a new hammer.

In this scenario, would you be completely kittened-off and demand either a discount on the nails or a new hammer for free with your nails as a returning customer as well?

Flawed logic. It would be a valid point if they offered the extra hammer to me aswell. But they don’t. A new customer will get nails AND hammer, but when the clerk see my face he says “hey, I sold you a hammer 3 years ago, so no free hammer for you”

Arioso.8519:

It’s just the ONLY thing keeping us from doing so is the fact that our current mains are being held hostage.

And this is actually the core of the problem.
It’s not even scam, it’s blackmail/robbery.

This complaining was predicted months ago when people were asking for the expansion to include season 2 for free. Surely ArenaNet knew it would happen?

They should have simply sold GW2 for an additional $10 – the price they were encouraging people to buy it at just a few weeks ago. Alternatively, an extra character slot should be given to existing accounts to set the difference. I expect that when they come out after the complaints have died down, they will do something.

Although a standard, the $50 price tag is however also a problem. People simply do not believe that the expansion is an actual expansion and by bundling it, they’re almost confirming that. How much content is actually included? With what has been shown off, I wouldn’t be surprised if I finish the main content of HoT (as in everything except grinding) within a day or two.

So, you’d be happier if they gave you the same deal you’re getting now, but new players got a worse deal than they are getting now? That’s terrible business sense. You want to give new customers deals so that they have an easier buy-in — that’s much better business sense.

I bought the game for $40, only to have it go on sale for $10 four weeks later, yet I thought it was fair to pay $40 when I did. Such is life.

smitske.4912:

But its pretty much everything else surrounding this expansion from the announcement yesterday to the very little and poor responses we got from Arenanet since then (+ decision from the past that make the current ones even worse).

Let me start off by this, I expected the price tagg and planned on pre purchasing the game as soon as I could, planned because this is not the case any longer and the price tagg itself has nothing to do with that.

It is however that they decided to go with a bundle that is pretty much a big middle finger to the people that already have the basic game, their long time supportors + the fact that ever since they announced HOT they have been scamming people to buy the original game because “it was needed for HoT” and now they just say “yeah it is in there and you did not have to buy it seperately”, simply ripping off all those people that bought the original these last few months and making the people who got their friends to buy it
look bad too.

The least they could do is make 2 bundels, one if you already have the original and one if you dont. Or discount sell the expansion alone, because lets face it no matter how many times they want to use the BS excuse we made the original free now, it isnt, its calculated in the price like with all marketing stunts and the players that supported their company from the start are being duped by that.

If they just put HoT as a single item, no original GW2 included and put it at 50 the IMO justified outrage would be a lot less, sure some people would still want a character slot, but a lot of people like myself would have gladly paid it, but not now that I see how they chose to deal with it which is giving the middle finger to long time supporters aswell as scamming people who recently bought the game. And unless they automatically refund each and every person automatically nothing will change the fact that Arenanet in my book have changed from a company that I would gladly support to mere frauds because in the end of the day you scammed lots of people (all buyers from of the orignal version starting from the HoT announcement till now ).

Yes you can say contact support, but you know aswell as I that only a minority will and you will still have scammed all those others out of money.

Huggywuggles.2814:

Really? I wonder. Think about it for a second. IF you’ve been wise you’ve probably got a gajillion or more ToK stockpiled. That means if you choose to do so, your new Revenant can jump right into HoT content whereas a new player will have to spend the time leveling (and I’ve seen nothing regarding reducing the amount of exp needed for 1-80) to get where you are.

In addition, if you have been wise, you’ve been stockpiling those crafting materials and maybe already crafting Legendary/Ascended armor and weapons for your newly boosted Revenant. Again, this puts you (as a ‘veteran player’) WELL ahead of the curve compared to new players.

All those skill point scrolls you’ve got sitting around? Pretty sure those will come in handy as well whereas a new player won’t have those.

So yeah. Your point is all YOU’VE gotten are glorified discounts. And that’s true. But what do you think happens when you’re a long term customer? YOU get all the best deals. YOU get all the extras. YOU get all the ‘go to the head of the line’ type deals that newer customers do not get.

Sounds pretty darned rewarding if you ask me.

The result of my playing hours is not my reward for being loyal, but what I paid for when I bought the game.

briggah.7910:

Old players got years of free updates and open world content that new players will never get to play.

You see it as old players got nothing. I see it as old players got way more content out of this game then anyone new coming into this game.

That’s nice and all, but there’s a lot of people, who bought into the game recently in anticipation of the upcoming expansion.
What do those people get?

Contact support to get your account refunded/upgraded to HoT.

I’m not old veteran. I play GW2 since Halloween. Payed for parts of the LWS2, missed LWS1 and everything it provided, from gear upgrades to skins and such. I didn’t even get to experience the whole GW2 story because one chapter went AWOL, I did get to experience the plethora of bugs and the constant mini spamming on store while players ask for bug fixes and game balances.

Value you say?! There was only one time in my life I payed to support a game still in its beta stages – Mount and Blade. But it wasn’t the price NC asks of its clients. Twice.

Pretty much how I feel, no value whatsoever when comparing my money to that of someone new.

They’re selling us a bundle that includes something we already have. So we quite rationally want to unbundle it.

ekarat.1085:

I bought the game for $40, only to have it go on sale for $10 four weeks later, yet I thought it was fair to pay $40 when I did. Such is life

yes, but you could have gotten another copy for $10 at that point too. used it as an alt, given it to a friend. the current deal would be if they put it on sale for $10 only if you didn’t have a main account already.

Yes, a ticket to support will prob solve your issue. They are generally pretty amenable.

Just remove the anger and kittens first though

Very right, OP.
If nothing else, a free character slot would simply be good will to everyone. It’s a better marketing strategy than stiffing veterans. It’s fairly common sense to add a character slot when adding a new character option like a class (or race).

I suspect there’s a coding reason behind it somewhere, as to why the expansion and core game are bundled the way they are, instead of 50$ for the expansion with a “great deal” of getting core for only $10 more. Perhaps a $60 price point was too high? Can’t be too sure, but the math reeks of cash-grab, and that’s sad.

I can’t say I mind too much, since I have the luxury of saving up for the Ultimate package. 4000 gems is $50 I was going to end up investing over time anyway, the character slot is $10, and there’s other expansion goodies in there too. So I estimate the expansion to value around $30 in that package.

But the point stands, the base $50 price point isn’t kind to long-time supporters without at least giving a character slot.