Guild Wars 2

Hey guys and girls, had a question for you. Was considering starting to play again after looking up Heart of Thorns and seeing what it had to offer.

Now, I already own the core game and have for a long time. When I went to my account to see the price of an upgrade I noticed the only viable solution was to look at the 49.99$ option. Now this included the expansion and the core game (which i already own). I realize the game has gone F2p now which means the previous money i spent on the core game is now void.

Was there any compensation for this? To play the expansion will I have to fork over the 50$ and basically have to buy the game again?

I would appreciate some clarity on the situation, any help you can provide would be great.

Thank you

There was only if you pre-purchased the expansion before it went live in October and owned the core game before the expansion was announced in January. Then you got an extra character slot. If you bought the core game after the January announcement, you got a refund on the price.

But once the expansion dropped, that all went away.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/pre-purchase-community-address/

Behellagh.1468:

There was only if you pre-purchased the expansion before it went live in October and owned the core game before the expansion was announced in January. Then you got an extra character slot. If you bought the core game after the January announcement, you got a refund on the price.

But once the expansion dropped, that all went away.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/pre-purchase-community-address/

I had bought the game around when it had first come out, kind of sucks on the missed opportunity. Does this mean I have to purchase the 50$ option to own the expansion? I don’t really know if i want to own it that bad. I mean if it was in the 20-30$ range I would deem it more acceptable.

Your core game is still more functional than F2P accounts. But, it is a generous F2P relative to other MMOs.
http://help.guildwars2.com/entries/95982157-Account-types-Free-Core-HoT

The only concession made to existing players was the extra character slot if you had pre-ordered, no monetary discount. So yeah, $49.99 is the only option.

onevstheworld.2419:

Your core game is still more functional than F2P accounts. But, it is a generous F2P relative to other MMOs.
http://help.guildwars2.com/entries/95982157-Account-types-Free-Core-HoT

The only concession made to existing players was the extra character slot if you had pre-ordered, no monetary discount. So yeah, $49.99 is the only option.

Yeah that is unfortunate. Well i’m not going to make a new decision now, i’ll probably start up a new character to get a feel for the game again and see if it is worth it to me to purchase the expansion. Thank you for your help.

The expansion is $50. For those that did not have the core game they now get it free with buying the expansion. Quite a few MMO’s are doing this so that new players coming into the game won’t have to spend $100’s just to buy into a game, they are giving the core away free with the expansion purchase. Not sure why this is so hard to understand for people in this game.
I personally bought the original when it game out for $150, have had fun for 3 years. Then when the expansion game out I pre-purchased it for $100, and I am still having fun. No regrets for me at all. For 3 1/2 years of fun pretty much every day I payed a total of $250 which is an average of about 5 cents a day. Can’t go to a movie for that, can’t go to a theme park for that, there is not much you can do and only pay 5 cents a day to do in this world anymore. I find it very fair value for my money.

Two ways of looking at it which may (or may not) help:

1) The expansion costs $50. That’s the baseline price for just the expansion on it’s own. Even if they didn’t include the core game as a freebie for new accounts it would cost that. I agree it’s not made clear anywhere but Anet did explain in announcements that was the case. All they did was bundle the core game with it so new players don’t have to pay double to play with their friends. Kind of like getting a Game of the Year edition (or other special post-release edition) of a regular game.

2) If you buy gems with cash and you’re tempted by any of the bonus items then the Ultimate Edition may actually be better value, according to the following bit of mental gymnastics (which I’m going to do in UK currency because the website won’t show me US prices).

The Standard Edition costs £34.99.
The Ultimate Edition costs £79.99 and comes with 4,000 gems (which would normally cost £42.50).
A Character Slot costs 800 gems or £8.50

£79.99 – £42.50 = £37.49
£37.49 – £8.50 = £28.99

I buy gems periodically, so I was confident I’d buy 4000 of them sooner or later anyway, and I wanted 3 extra character slots. So if I assume I’d spend the £42.50 on gems either way and don’t count that in the price it brings the Ultimate Edition down to just slightly more than the Standard Edition, and when I factor in the cost of the Character Slot which I’d also buy eventually it actually becomes cheaper, and well within the £25-30 range I expected to pay for HoT before prices were announced.

(And for anyone astute enough to spot that since you buy character slots with gems I may be doubling up on one side of this equation I did estimate that I’d eventually buy at least 4,800 gems. I also did my own equation using the estimated price of a Character Slot on sale since I never buy them at full price, but I skipped that as unnecessary maths since the outcome is basically the same.)

Danikat.8537:

Two ways of looking at it which may (or may not) help:

1) The expansion costs $50. That’s the baseline price for just the expansion on it’s own. Even if they didn’t include the core game as a freebie for new accounts it would cost that. I agree it’s not made clear anywhere but Anet did explain in announcements that was the case. All they did was bundle the core game with it so new players don’t have to pay double to play with their friends. Kind of like getting a Game of the Year edition (or other special post-release edition) of a regular game.

2) If you buy gems with cash and you’re tempted by any of the bonus items then the Ultimate Edition may actually be better value, according to the following bit of mental gymnastics (which I’m going to do in UK currency because the website won’t show me US prices).

The Standard Edition costs £34.99.
The Ultimate Edition costs £79.99 and comes with 4,000 gems (which would normally cost £42.50).
A Character Slot costs 800 gems or £8.50

£79.99 – £42.50 = £37.49
£37.49 – £8.50 = £28.99

I buy gems periodically, so I was confident I’d buy 4000 of them sooner or later anyway, and I wanted 3 extra character slots. So if I assume I’d spend the £42.50 on gems either way and don’t count that in the price it brings the Ultimate Edition down to just slightly more than the Standard Edition, and when I factor in the cost of the Character Slot which I’d also buy eventually it actually becomes cheaper, and well within the £25-30 range I expected to pay for HoT before prices were announced.

(And for anyone astute enough to spot that since you buy character slots with gems I may be doubling up on one side of this equation I did estimate that I’d eventually buy at least 4,800 gems. I also did my own equation using the estimated price of a Character Slot on sale since I never buy them at full price, but I skipped that as unnecessary maths since the outcome is basically the same.)

Its more or less personal value to me, I do own a ps4 which i play on a frequent basis. More or less waiting on the division to come out. Currently my computer is quite frankly out dated and it can run Gw2 smoothly at about medium specs so i have to take that into consideration. I wouldn’t be surprised if my pc finally blew up.

Now granted i have been playing again over the past week on a new character (Have a lvl 80 warrior but jumping back into the game after so long on a high level character was a bit overwhelming) and having quite a bit of fun, was very nostalgic lol. It more or less comes down to what i want to play more. Now if the expansion was only 20-30$ i would probably get it considering i wouldn’t feel as bad if i wasn’t on Gw2 as much. 50$, though the price isn’t bad, may be pushing it a little considering my full attention isn’t in this game. Know what I mean?

This is not how it works. You buy a game, you decide how much time you want or don’t want to put in it. If you can not or do not want to play more, then it is not the game companies fault that you feel you don’t get the worth out of the game.
No one refunds for that, and especially not on a game you owned for a long time.
I simply don’t understand how you feel this would even be something that anyone should consider?

Leaa.2943:

This is not how it works. You buy a game, you decide how much time you want or don’t want to put in it. If you can not or do not want to play more, then it is not the game companies fault that you feel you don’t get the worth out of the game.
No one refunds for that, and especially not on a game you owned for a long time.
I simply don’t understand how you feel this would even be something that anyone should consider?

If say you put 100$ in on a game, you want to get your moneys worth. If i put 100$ in a game, i need to make sure that it wasn’t a waste of money and i’m not just throwing 100$ away. Leaa, you are not understanding my post. I am not blaming the company, I am simply stating that throwing 50$ away into something that i do not have my full attention on is a waste of money to me.

Which is fine, it’s your choice. If you don’t think any feature or subset of features that the expansion offers, including the fact that new content will mainly be connected to the expansion is worth the money currently, don’t buy it.

But the expansion is now the “game”. With the exception of dusty copies floating about on Amazon, which still sells boxes for MMOs that are no longer active, the only version of GW2 is the HoT version. It costs $50. No discount for previously owning the original game. Sorry.

Tombstone.1536:

Leaa.2943:

This is not how it works. You buy a game, you decide how much time you want or don’t want to put in it. If you can not or do not want to play more, then it is not the game companies fault that you feel you don’t get the worth out of the game.
No one refunds for that, and especially not on a game you owned for a long time.
I simply don’t understand how you feel this would even be something that anyone should consider?

If say you put 100$ in on a game, you want to get your moneys worth. If i put 100$ in a game, i need to make sure that it wasn’t a waste of money and i’m not just throwing 100$ away. Leaa, you are not understanding my post. I am not blaming the company, I am simply stating that throwing 50$ away into something that i do not have my full attention on is a waste of money to me.

That is ok, you do not have to throw any money at the game at all if you feel it is not worth it. Games and what each person like or feel is worth to them is personal. So if you feel GW2 is not worth it, then you will have to look for another game that fill the worth for you.

You should have gotten an outfit. At least I did for an older account.

In ANET’s progressive viewpoint, no one should complain about other people getting things for free even if you don’t get that same thing for free because you already had it.

I personally understand how it doesn’t feel right or fair, but I do think it is nice that ANET can have such a viewpoint. I bought only the base expansion pack. I didn’t preorder so I didn’t get any preorder bonuses. I took a long break from the game, but eventually I got over the injustice of the deal and decided to just play some video games.