Guild Wars 2

soboard.6974:

1) GW2 releases as B2P game after years of deserved fanfare from their first incarnation.

2) ANet monetizes cosmetic items and quality of life boosts.

3) ANet devises “Living Story” concept, and uses key phrase (which by the way Colin says over and over and over, in interviews and here on the forums – like a tag line.): “will make you return every month to follow it like your favorite TV show”.*

3a) This is clearly clever marketing, game with decent well monetized cash shop releases monthly content with the catch that it is potentially temporary to cause old and new players to log back in, play the game but most importantly fork over cash to get the limited time minis, skins, and other doodads that cause sales to go up.

Clap, clap, clap. I really applaud you.

4) Furthermore, with a relatively small team, permanent meaningful content is reserved for Q3/Q4 to ensure that holiday sales are at their peak to cash in. Minis, skins, and doodads are also packed in to this huge release so as to capitalize on the influx of “christmas players.”

5) Lastly, and most importantly, Anet does not seem to realize that word of mouth cannot be used to sell friends on the game because you talk about events that they potentially will never get to see, but rather have to resort to saying "You may or may not see something cool this month if you buy the game, or else you have small chance of seeing something underwhelming until this “Living Story” phase reaches its climax."

All in all, Anet seems to have setup the perfect cycle of recycling players every month while potentially gaining new ones. Without a subscription, Anet still looks forward to the last day of the month because they know that week they are making a kitten ton of cash from their gem store selling temporary stuff.

NOTE: Love the game. Spend money on the cash shop. This is just my observation. I applaud your clever marketing. But I do with that we could see more zones instead of a portion of your team spending time on temporary content that you remove. When you remove it, you cause me to wonder why you spent the man hours developing it at all really.

So i see your opinion has all the answers for YOU but what about the people behind the “marketing strategy”?

Take away the “smart marketing” how do they make money to employ people to keep YOU entertained?

Personally i would rather DLC, take away a subscription… im happy to pay $20 every 3 months or so for a butload more content then say $40 every year or so for a expansion.

Hello, This post is directed at Colin

i’m a very new player to guild wars and guild wars 2. I play casually (maybe 2-3 hours a night during the week and some on weekends) i just recently purchased the game and are level 23.

I just wanted to say, THANKYOU ANET

I love playing mmorpgs. its a great way to spend time and relax.

Other mmos = a second job. How is spending 6 hours a night HOPING something will appear but the likelyhood is 1/50, fun?

I love everything about this game. The community is friendly, the events are amazing to keep you feel like youre apart of something. Thankyou! for the fact i dont have to worry TOO much about what gear i have just to play the game and experience the content.

I havent seen any of the living content (no idea how im ment to and not sure if i can until levle 80) but what i have heard is ideal.

The very fact you pay $40 OUTRIGHT for the game and not have to subscribe just says what kind of game you have made. In saying that i would pay another $40 for a expansion any day of the week for a game like this.

Keep up the good work Colin & Anet.

Awesome thanks for the help

Wow… friendly community! thank you so much!

Seems sea of sorrows is the unofficial way to go for me! and from a website i found plenty of aus guilds!

Sounds like charr warrior is the way to go….. hopefully they arent all guns ho just kill type of race? i prefer my warriors smart and skillfull not dumb and slow :P

Im not really a tanky type of player i prefer the more offense is better defense option? liike…… more swings = more life steal kind of approach

Hello everyone!

I just brought guild wars 2 (after alot of convincing myself from what others where saying) im not a hardcore player and spend maybe 20 hours max a week gaming now days.

Im looking for a good bunch of people/guild and an oceanic based server (im from melbourne)

can anyone point me in the right direction of which server to choose for australians? or better yet a aus server with a friendly populated guild?

is there anything i should know before picking profession/race? im more a warrior kind of guy…