Guild Wars 2

IndigoSundown.5419:

Artmi.3745:

well i didn’t buy 3 years premium gameplay time… I bought a game under the promise that I own it.

and i’m not kittened you made it free… i’m angry because I feel that this decision on your part should entitle me to some sort of compensation… having my money’s worth…

You still do own core GW2. You can play it until the heat death of the servers.

Did you receive no value during the 3 years of gameplay time? Did you not get your money’s worth? To put this into perspective, I paid $60 for the core game. Heck, I’ll even throw in the $70 i spent on gems for bank slots during the first month. That’s a total of $130. I’ve played just a wee bit over 2800 hours in 3 years. $130/2800 = $.0464… so call it five cents per hour of play. If I never play core again, I’d call that the best value in entertainment I’ve ever seen. I’d not be surprised if my 2800 hours is below average for the player base as a whole.

So, how many hours entertainment did you get for your $50? Was it of no value to you? If so, why are you still here?

I never said it wasn’t…
i said that the content available to me by paying is now available for free… and that if i had known that in 3 years i would be able to get that content for free, i doubt i would have payed for it at the time.

And I hardly see it fair that a person can just get the game now play it for 3 years and get the same amount of content and enjoyment as me for free when i had to buy it in order to gain access to it. (aside from the holiday events and such)

Like i said i didn’t buy 3 years of premium game time… i didn’t pay to have 3 years of content over other people…
I payed to be able to just have the ability to access the game… that’s why i find it not fair that the game is free now…

Anet is basically saying that micro transactions is where the money is at…
Ok, fine…
However you don’t just forget about the people who you made pay money to get the option of paying for the micro transactions

MiniEquine.6014:

Go into any retro/used game store and demand to pay original retail price for the games on the shelves. There are very few exceptions to games decreasing in value over time, and those exceptions are limited to physical hardware of rare or popular games. The game data itself is nearly worthless at this day and age because of emulators and rom hacks of the older game, so anybody can play it (sometimes illegally, but I digress)

You might say that this is only addressing reduced price games, but it can apply to free as well. Especially considering that the free core game is $56 the inferior of the standard core game ($56 to buy everything that would make it equal to the core game) and that’s without taking into account the level restrictions.

I am not saying not to reduce price… but reducing prices is done gradually over time give me an example of a game that cost 50$ on sunday and went free on monday?
a game doesn’t cost 50$ one day and free the next…
also what you are talking about is true regarding single player games mostly…
you cannot hack in to guild wars to open an account for free, you might be able to make it run locally or make a private server out of it, but not fully play with the community under the support of Anet…

regarding the cost… no core game sales any more…
from now on you only buy extra content and get the original content for free with full privileges… no level restrictions or anything for the price of 50$ so i have no idea what you are talking about with core game costs 56$

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Show me where they said that the game wouldn’t get cheaper as it got older. Tell me which games are still sold at launch price 3 years later. Point out which games have free expansions and also 3 years later the vanilla game is the same price as at launch. Explain why it’s better to have a high paywall that discourages new people from buying by charging them launch price for a 3 year old game.

Tell me how likely it is that you yourself would pay the full launch price plus the full price for an expansion for any game that’s 3 years old. A game where you’ve missed all the free temporary content, the holidays and the Living Story. Where you have to pay extra to buy the season 2 Living Story. Again, tell me which several years old games cost full launch price plus expansion price.

You don’t understand my point…
As stated before if base game price would go down gradually over the years I would totally understand… the game gets older, newer, more sophisticated and graphically better games are being released all the time. however this is not the case here…

I payed for more than some items and a few holiday festivals… i payed for the characters… the maps… the whole game experience which is A WHOLE LOT MORE than 3 years worth of event content…

not saying that it is worthless… but saying that this content is worth the price of the game is not fair… if you take out the whole GW2 story and maps and all of the original content the WvW and all of that… and left with just the event content would you have bought the game for 50$? and if your answer is yes on this… understand that there are many people who wouldn’t and it’s not fair making them feel like they were duped into doing just that.

Now i’m not saying they shouldn’t make the game free, they absolutely should!
my point is that they should give those people who did pay something that is worth the money they spent on the game… to feel like they got more than just event content.

I don’t know… but here are a couple of things out the top of my head:
- a discount on the new DLC content ( 30 % or so… 10 % drop a year seems reasonable?)
- some veteran exclusive content to show their veteran status (exclusive title, weapon, armor, follower, maybe give them an exclusive skill like that wolf skill)
- Gems?

Hell… even a personalized thank you for your support while the game was P2P would have been nice…

This is totally wrong…

You can’t go like… hey I will sell this to you for 50$ it is totally yours and in 2-3 years i will make it free… because half of the people would not buy it.
Even if the decision to make it free came suddenly you still don’t just go like… well screw the suckers who paid we won’t make them any different from the people who got it for free…

free users will have restrictions to use Starter maps only until character reaches level 10 and Lion’s Arch unlocked for each character at level 35… really?
the difference is gradually getting the same content for free as the paying customers? with slight differences in chat abilities and guild storage withdrawal…?
because messaging one of the guild officers requesting an item is so beyond them?
or asking a paying client to buy an item for them and mailing it to them…
and those things were done as anti scamming not even as a limitation for the free clients…

not only that but as soon as they buy the new expansion pack which costs the same amount of money that we initially paid they get that “veteran” status that we have…
So basically for the same amount of money free clients get more content than us paying customers… making us pay double for the same amount of content…

and your claim is: “well you got to play for 3 years and they didn’t”… really?

well i didn’t buy 3 years premium gameplay time… I bought a game under the promise that I own it.

and i’m not angry you made it free… i’m angry because I feel that this decision on your part should entitle me to some sort of compensation… having my money’s worth…

I am glad that more people are going to be able to enjoy the game, and you will probably get even more money with micro transactions which is great… but just ignoring the people who were there supporting you when you needed it the most is totally wrong…

The whole point of your company was that it was different than those other companies that required a monthly fee and made a paid dlc for every tiny new map and set of armors… you have made every DLC independent in the first game that way no one felt cheated because he got the part of the content he paid for… but now you just screw over the early buyers teaching people not to trust you and to go look for a different game that doesn’t have that money above doing what is right mentality.

I really hope you will reconsider this course of action… or at least offer some sort of a worthwhile compensation for the people who stood by your game for all those years.