Guild Wars 2

Yes please make it easier to to send cake (or whatever) to guildies and buddies.

Before next Wintersday would be good.

I have the minis; should I have mentioned that? I thought it was irrelevant to the discussion.

Retrospek.4583

It is a little, a tad, arrogant for one player to assume they know how another player chooses to play or accuse them of murder.

I have a vegan pacifist character named Merry Sunshine, who is a human guardian.

Can you tell I loved my monk in the original Guild Wars?

Merry hasn’t yet made up her mind about gambling but she is opposed to violence while living in a violent world in constant conflict. If she bemoans the vice gambling you can’t accuse her of murder, well you can, but you would be mistaken.

Merry is rather like a conscientious objector who has been drafted into a war she would rather end, or had never begun.

Merry is a level 400 vegan cook (yup it can be done) and she will never bake or eat an omnomberry bar because it contains eggs (I have another 400 cook that will make anything).

Merry has never killed anything or offensively attacked anything and I currently keep her unarmed as she levels to make sure I don’t accidentally forget her philosophy and accidentally force her to do something she morally opposes. I am not concentrating on Merry right now but ultimately I want to see if she can be a valuable dungeon and WvW team member with only healing and defensive skills. Maybe not but it is interesting to me to try it out.

There are things Merry will never accomplish (like 100% map or storyline completion) because of her personal philosophy but the goal was to discover if there were unconventional valid, fun and interesting ways to play this game that did not involve wholesale slaughter (which not all enjoy).

Merry doesn’t care about obtaining a legendary weapon like the others do and won’t feel left out not to get one. She loves to gather strawberries and other vegan delicacies but because she doesn’t want her allies to die at the hands of world invaders or monsters, she will abandon the strawberry fields to support and heal them if she can.

My other five characters, Merry’s adopted sisters, are traditionally violent and, like me, omnivorous.

The creative mind might think of many non-traditional fun things to do in this game; assuming all players have chosen a single play style in this game is a little, just a wee bit, unimaginative.

Let’s not assume we know how others play and try to be a bit more tolerant of player differences, including aversion to gambling. I don’t like it either.

Maybe you might try on the shoulders or gloves of empathy and see how they fit.

You know what might be fun? A bunch of us scheduling original GW play at the same time. If we miss it, why not play it, at least part time? Especially at festivals, which were way more fun than (to me) than the GW2 events/celebrations.

Who’s up for some fun that does not involve a wretched checklist indicating how we must “accomplish” what should be a fun party?

Zaxares.5419

The issue is not that ANet gave a “thank you gift,” it is that ANet concurrently effectively penalized all other players more than 15 gold (the cost to buy the gems for a set of minis). This may or may not have been intentional. I currently vote for a careless or thoughtless “not” intentional.

At issue is not only fairness but the pre-release marketing that loudly trumpeted that GW2 play would be free, gem buying players would not gain in-game advantage, and players who played for free would not be disadvantaged in-game for not buying gems. All players would be equal.

Mini collecting, and apparently now ANet disfavored, “free” players and those who buy few gems or buy them irregularly are effectively penalized more than 15 gold and favored players, whether they realize it or not, effectively gained more than a 15g windfall. This is not behavior that could reasonably be anticipated by those who believed and relied on ANet advertising for GW2.

Directly or indirectly giving in-game gold to, or taking In-game gold from, players in an uneven fashion grants in-game advantage or alternatively disadvantages in-game play. If a player spends 15 gold on minis it can’t be spent again on armor.

The effective gift of 500 gems to favored players allows them to purchase 500 more gems worth of gold, or whatever, than they actually paid for.

Absent ANet taking steps to right the inequity, the appearance is that ANet promised free play and equality to gain sales and now (mere months after the release of the game) intentionally disadvantages those players who believed the promises and relied on them in making the decision to purchase the game and, in reliance on the advertising, play without regularly purchasing gems or purchase none at all.

In this instance ANet is substantially disadvantaging the mini collecting “free” or less than regular gem buying players to the tune of more than 15 in-game gold that must be earned and spent in a limited time. This is the direct and logical result of favoring regular gem buying players with gifts of minis that cost that amount.

So much for the promised cake, um… equality.

I am a big picture person and what I see troubles me but I really like ANet and despite the very d*mning appearances, in the short term, I am taking the position that this was a hideous mistake caused by small picture thinking in a big picture game rather than egregious (false and deceptive / bait and switch) consumer fraud intentionally ground into the faces of those who relied on ANet pre-release advertising for GW2.

If ANet follows its past pattern of righting inequities and treating all players equally ANet will take steps to rectify the situation and make it clear that “rich” players are not “better” than others and will not be treated better than the die-hard GW fans who temporarily or permanently cannot afford to buy the benefits that come with regular purchase of gems and relied on the advertising of free play and equality.

I have seen ANet right injustices and go way out of its way to create fair game play. I won’t believe this is intentional fraud unless ANet makes a permanent favored class out of "regular"gem buyers and continues to give “regular” gem buyers even greater advantage than we can all already purchase with real life cash.

Those of us who purchased costumes in GW1, and were the most “profitable” were never treated as “better” than other players and we should not have been. Those of us who buy gems with cash are no better than those of us who don’t. All players invaluably contribute to the game.

In my opinion treating some players like second class citizens may drive them away to game environments where they are treated with more respect rather than inspire or coerce them into spending more money.

The economy relies on the product of the “free” players; continually treating them like dirt seems unwise as it may ultimately have unintended consequences to the function of the game.