Guild Wars 2

adubb.2453:

If I buy a banana, I eat it. My reward for buying the banana was the gift of eating it. If I go to buy another banana, I don’t expect to get a piece of my new banana for free just because I bought a banana before.

If I go to see Avengers 1, I get to see Avengers 1. When Avengers 2 comes out, I don’t expect to see it for free because I saw Avengers 1.

Why do people think video games are somehow different in this regard? I literally do not understand.

What you’re not understanding is the costs that are associated with video games. Millions of dollars go into them, especially MMOs, and this is what has caused them to die. It costs so much money to build the game and release it, and then you need to guarantee x amount of subscribers a month at x amount of dollars per subscription just to survive in the game world. Otherwise, your company barely breaks even (or even goes under) as a result. This is what released the introduction of the F2P model of gaming.

Many games started developing “Lite” versions of games to get players to try them in hopes they would purchase the game, but that only goes so far. So then micro transactions were introduced as a way to generate extra income while also making a completely f2p version of the game after noticing that players were prone to spend more money when they weren’t forced to spend money. The big market for micro transactions are actually cosmetic items – things to make your characters look cooler. It doesn’t matter if it has any benefits to your character, people want them to look amazing. Henceforth why customizing your character and making them how you feel they should look has taken off in recent years.

Guild Wars essentially released an MMO that relied solely on sales of the games (back in GW1 days,) with little micro transactions until they got into Factions and Faction Wars, etc. How they survived, I honestly have no idea. But when GW2 was launched, it followed a similar path except that it now included a plethora of micro transactions. Not only could you spend money to make your character look more awesome, you could buy items that allowed you to gather materials permanently, buy gold essentially, and pretty much pay to win the game if you had enough money.

What started this entire thread was the foundation that Arena Net has completely disregarded its veteran players upon releasing/launching Heart of Thorns. They essentially do nothing to thank us for our patronage, and end up rubbing it in our face so to speak by making the base game free completely and forcing us to pay for an expansion if we want to continue to enjoy new content. If they would have given us a discount for owning the game for a length of time, or at least kept the original game at a certain cost and just released a “lite” version to sample it, that would’ve been different. But they didn’t…

adubb.2453:

Vintage.3468:

adubb.2453:

If you think the amount of work that went into this expansion is legitimately worth exactly 0 of your dollars, then you are both crazy and welcome to go elsewhere…

…The base game went F2P. So what? The time you spent there isn’t suddenly valueless because of it…

I’m sorry, but I just don’t agree and simply can’t understand the problem with F2P. Unless the actual problem is that $50 is outside of your budget. Which is understandable, as that really is quite a bit. But that’s a different issue altogether.

While the requesting amount for the game is more than I want to pay, that certainly isn’t the issue. If it is worth it, that would be one thing – but my issue is that they basically told the veteran players that enabled them to make it where they are now to “screw off” if we don’t purchase their new product.

You see, if they would actually compensate us for our time, that would be different. Instead, our hours of game play seemingly became valueless due to the fact that they don’t even bother to recognize the veteran players other than by merely giving them ONE character slot IF they pre-purchased the game during an allotted time slot. That is where my biggest issue comes into play! When you don’t acknowledge those who got you to where you are, then you have no business being where you are.

You were compensated with an incredible fun and engaging video game. What more do you want? Does there actually need to be more?

I don’t know if I could say incredible fun. It started out okay but became dull after some time of doing the same thing with different creatures. Of course, that is what MMOs are all about. Guild Wars 2 tried to personalize it with your story, but it still ended up collecting dust in my game library after a while, for a while.

What really bugged me, and this is just because of personal beliefs, was when I made my Sylvari and completed the tutorial story. At the end of it, two lovers (regardless of the fact that they were trees,) were making out with one another. It is not a game’s place to promote crap like that, and I didn’t pay for a game so that I could see that within the first 5 minutes of creating a character!

Just a flesh wound.3589:

If you had bought Prophesies and when Nightfall came out and you didn’t buy but your friends did so that you couldn’t join your friends over there, was that ANet telling you to buy or go elsewhere?

Here was the wonderful thing about Factions and Nightfall: They were basically completely new games! While being expansions of the original, they offered completely new lands and quests, loot and bosses, and they were even equipped with leveling zones starting at Lv. 1 so you could try the new classes accordingly in their respective zones. This isn’t what HoT is doing.

adubb.2453:

If you think the amount of work that went into this expansion is legitimately worth exactly 0 of your dollars, then you are both crazy and welcome to go elsewhere…

…The base game went F2P. So what? The time you spent there isn’t suddenly valueless because of it…

I’m sorry, but I just don’t agree and simply can’t understand the problem with F2P. Unless the actual problem is that $50 is outside of your budget. Which is understandable, as that really is quite a bit. But that’s a different issue altogether.

While the requesting amount for the game is more than I want to pay, that certainly isn’t the issue. If it is worth it, that would be one thing – but my issue is that they basically told the veteran players that enabled them to make it where they are now to “screw off” if we don’t purchase their new product.

You see, if they would actually compensate us for our time, that would be different. Instead, our hours of game play seemingly became valueless due to the fact that they don’t even bother to recognize the veteran players other than by merely giving them ONE character slot IF they pre-purchased the game during an allotted time slot. That is where my biggest issue comes into play! When you don’t acknowledge those who got you to where you are, then you have no business being where you are.

The one to Rule.2593:

I agree to an extent, I did purchase heart of thorns but it really feels like they don’t care about the base game at all anymore.

This is my point exactly! They’ve even stated, in many other words, that they basically aren’t going to be supporting the base module anymore.

Good day,

I feel the need to vent is in order – especially with the fact that most my guild is purchasing/upgrading to HoT – and I don’t have anyone to do it with. So my biggest issue that I have, being a veteran player with several weeks of play time in GW2 (and who knows how many hours in GW1,) is that we are basically thrown under the rug on this expansion.

For my loyalty since the beginning, Arena Net’s big “Thank You” was telling me to spend (or “invest” as they would call it) more of my money into their product, or I can go elsewhere [basically.] To make things worse: not only do they decide to keep a few things from those of us who didn’t upgrade to HoT, they also decided to make the game we helped pave and turn it completely free!

Now that wouldn’t bug me so much were it not for the fact that:
-We receive no special gifts, benefits to our accounts, no additional character slots or even a few gems
-We miss out on assisting and benefiting our guild to the fullest extreme
-We no longer are given the ability to participate in the new raids as they were delayed and pushed into HoT

…these are just a few of the things that are being held from us! We are walked over because we aren’t spending money on their new product, and they don’t care. Had we pre-purchased the game, then guess what their wonderful “gift” was for us: A Character Slot. Woohoo! Holy cow, I get ONE measly character slot for having the game since January 22 or earlier.

As I said, I am just frustrated; and again, I need to vent. I’m just irritated over the fact that I paid for a game a couple/few years back (I don’t remember if I purchased on release or in 2013) and they have made it Free without compensating those of us who had already purchased it and put the time and effort into it BEFORE HoT was even thought of/announced. I’m not saying give me a free copy of the expansion, but I’m also not going to waste any more money purchasing something when you’ll probably just make that free too in a couple years. It’s like throwing my money out the window as I drive down the highway, you just don’t do that!

Does anyone else agree? Does anyone else have anything to add to this, or any opinions that I could read and come to terms with? Maybe I am being too dramatic or demanding, or I am being too greedy. I don’t know, but these are just my feels on the subject…