Guild Wars 2

Danikat.8537:

They change what’s in the gem store periodically. Some things like the ghostly outfit are tied to specific festivals – in that case Halloween. Others just come and go periodically throughout the year.

Strange as it sounds it actually increases sales, for 3 reasons:
1) Less stuff to sort through so less risk of players getting bored or overwhelmed trying to find something to buy.
2) Gets people like me who might spend forever thinking we’ll maybe buy it one day to get on and make a decision because it’s going to be gone soon.
3) Gives the and excuse to advertise stuff again – when items are brought back they’re on the promotions page, and often mentioned in the news posts on the main site and on Facebook and Twitter. Which draws attention to them.

Of course they could do 3 anyway, but it has less impact when it’s simply “Hey don’t forget we’re selling this thing”.

Yes it sucks if you want to buy something which isn’t currently available and yes that does mean they might lose sales (e.g. I wanted to buy the Strider’s armour, once it was back I couldn’t remember why I wanted it and didn’t get it), but in spite of that it’s a very common marketing strategy precisely because it works.

Ahh ok thanks for the answer!

So I was thinking about getting some cool outfits on the gem store but then I realized that most cannot be brought anymore? I was interested in the Ghostly Outfit and others but they aren’t on the gem store. The gem store doesn’t have many outfits for sale at all either. Anyone know why this is?