Guild Wars 2

As a veteran player, I was at first dismayed when they announced F2P — just because I’ve seen how other games have restructured their cash shops, exclusions, locked accesses, etc. When I saw the restrictions GW2 planned, I was relieved. I felt they were very generous, actually. Chat limitations are essential in combating gold sellers. Yes, it sucks when you’re trying out the game and need help, but in the case of your friend, he can ask you! Also, if he feels bullied by GW2, he hasn’t seen many F2P games!

Lord Kuru.3685:

SpandexPudding.6372:

His own quote, “Feeling bullied into buying the expansion.” basically says it all. Its like in order to fully enjoy the game you have to ultimately buy it anyways.

Not just F2P players. But as someone who only has core GW2, I feel exactly the same way. I’m very close to quitting a well.

Game is not perfect by any means and I have had lots of gripes, but players had played the core game for 3 years…

This is a personal issue if you don’t want to buy the expansion… Game has no monthly fee and y’all still complain. Sad.

Beggars can’t demand. And “feeling bullied into buying the expansion” ? how? you always have the option to play something else. You are bullied by your addiction more like. It’s like walking into a restaurant and being offered a sample and say “feeling bullied into ordering food”. Don’t like it? walk out. Aint you a little spoiled having things both ways, not paying but having accessing to features that people who actually paid the game. Since when the basic law of commerce, i.e. “pay and thou shalt receive/keep” becomes a point of debate. . Be happy that you can actually taste the sample before complaining the sample not being enough. There are merchants that don’t even give samples you know. Remember the kind of customers who were offered some samples and keep asking for a couple more but refusing to buy the product nevetheless? yah, those kind of people. And you are acting just like them. If you like the game that much to the extend of demanding to have more access, why not buy the game, as the way it should be, or at least like the people before you paid to get the game? and remember this is no monthly fee, happy yet?

I much prefer this system to typical free to play MMOs. Yes there’s a lot of restrictions on free accounts, but most of them don’t actually restrict gameplay and I much prefer the idea of a single 1-time payment to remove all the restrictions than constantly being asked to pay out fir unlocks or pay a subscription.

When I’m playing my free account the only ones that really bother me are not being able to use map chat and not being able to sell things on the TP. And when I was new it took me a long time to get into the habit of selling on the TP anyway.

But maybe it also helps that (like a lot of people apparently) I think of the free version as a demo with no time limit, not something that’s intended to be played indefinitely.

So, what you’re saying is that a game that your friend is logging in to and playing for free is limiting him to encourage him to buy a one time purchase.

Man, it’s almost like it’s a trial designed specifically to sell more copies of the actual game or something. That’s awful.

You get what you pay for in f2p land dude. That’s why free to play generally isn’t unless you want to have a less convenient/rewarding/content rich experience than someone willing to pay developers to keep developing the game. This trial is actually an amazing amount of content with some very minor limitations that doesn’t really impact your ability to play the content on offer to you.

SpandexPudding.6372:

Well, I’ve been apart of the game for quiet some time now, I just got my “faithful” title and I’ve been talking about how amazing the game is and how its now free for people to join! I had gotten a good friend of mine to join the game, and so far so good.

The thing is, the F2P mode is lacking so much content..if you’re gonna make the game free for new players why take out basic things that pretty much all F2P games have?

I get it, it used to be that you had to pay for the game to play it, and its got a LOT of content. But come on, map chat, trading in the market, messaging players items/gold. Seriously?

His own quote, “Feeling bullied into buying the expansion.” basically says it all. Its like in order to fully enjoy the game you have to ultimately buy it anyways.

This needs to change, I was extremely upset to hear him say that he might just drop the game because of this. Perhaps he’ll want to buy the game if the game showed more…content? He’s limited in certain aspects, and its completely unfair to new players. You want people to buy the expansion, don’t go and limit them to what they can do!

I dunno if I’m the only one with this opinion, but I am very disapointed.

Well, they are doing exactly what they suppose to do. The idea of F2P model here is for players to try the game, if they like it, they will buy it. It is like a trial account and like all trial accounts, there are limitations. If the limitations do not hold enough impacts, then, players won’t buy the products.

Lord Kuru.3685:

SpandexPudding.6372:

His own quote, “Feeling bullied into buying the expansion.” basically says it all. Its like in order to fully enjoy the game you have to ultimately buy it anyways.

Not just F2P players. But as someone who only has core GW2, I feel exactly the same way. I’m very close to quitting a well.

Okay. Quit then. ANet won’t make an exception and give you the expansion for free. Obligatory “Can I have your stuff?:” question.

BaconCatTheGreasy.9542:

Due to how ANet screwed over early adopters like myself by giving the expansion essentially for free to new players, I refuse on principle to pay actual money for it. Has ANet said anything about when/if HoT will be available to buy with gems?

As others have said, I doubt it will ever appear in the Gem Store (except, possibly, whenever a new expansion comes out).

I’d say to just wait for a sale. Amazon in France had it for like 20 Euro, which is just over $21.

It’s certainly worth $21, in my opinion. I wouldn’t have paid $50 on it, though, had I known fully the meager amount of content that it added. (I naively thought that since it’d been 3 years since the game released, and 1 year since they announced working on an expansion, that there might actually be a decent amount of content included.)

Lord Kuru.3685:

People bought the game because it was B2P. Now you have to pay for the expansion, no option for gem purchase. Bait-and-switch.

Guild Wars 1 was buy to play too. They still released an expansion for pay.

To add on to my previous post, if you think £35/$50 is expensive, go look at any other newly released games by a large studio. The Witcher 3, Cod: Black Ops 3, GTA V, Assassins Creed: Syndicate, to name a few. These are all extortionately more expensive than what HoT is selling for on day 1. And then you’ve got their Season Passes and DLC added onto that already high price tag!

Anet isn’t an Indie studio, like some players might be used to when purchasing their Steam games.

Do we honestly still have people who fail to understand why Anet did this.

What Baamoink basically said really.
Pure and simple.

They didn’t price the expansion W. the base game included. The price was the expansion it self.
They basically did a – buy expansion, get base game free for new players.
Sure, we don’t get the base game for free as we have it…. but we’ve had 3 years with this game to enjoy where as those who get the base game with the expansion.. got nothing.. they didn’t get any of those 3 years.

People are under this misconception that if the base game wasn’t included, it’d be cheaper. The reality is, if it was the expansion on its own, the price would be exactly the same!

Them including the base game in this expansion and future expansions is a big plus to encourage new players to continually join the game and bolster the community. Rather than new players having to fork out for the base game + all expansions to have a chance of keeping up.

For the veteran’s, we pay £35/$50 every 3 years? Play most subscription based MMO’s for 3-4 months (not including base price to start your subscription), and you’ve paid for GW2 + HoT.

/rant

I guess you guys better start giving up MMOs then, because all the big MMOs are doing this for good reason.

The more expansions the comes out, the harder it is for new players to start playing and without new players, there is no MMO.

All MMOs suffer from natural attrition. People stop playing for all sorts of reasons. They have to be replaced.

So you remove barriers to entry for people by letting them get in for just the price of the expansion.

What to veteran players get? Three years of game time, that’s what?

You spent $60 three years ago, probably played for more than 100 hours and you’re saying what do I get for playing the game? You go the game. Content that’s no longer in the game that new people can’t play. Items no longer in the game.

Hell if you logged in when LS 2 was live you got that content free, new players have to pay

Veterans have a huge head start in accumulating wealth and achievement points. What makes someone want to buy a game, particularly if they have to buy several to catch up?

Nothing at all. It’s okay if people don’t want to pay. But it doesn’t make them reasonable.

It will kind of be available for gems. You’ll just need to wait until the next expansion, then you’ll get HoT for free and be able to buy whatever seasons you missed during HoT.

Their new single box model will make more sense next expansion. You basically pay $50 now and get HoT’s living story for free, or get HoT for free in ~2 years and pay ~$40 for HoT’s living story.

Take an immediate waypoint or ride a beast? OP, you sure these aren’t Freudian desires?

You know, your “friend” could always just buy the core game if he feels pressured in to buying HoT, it’s like £5 on Amazon. He gets to do everything he’s doing now with no restrictions. Or he could stop being a cheap skate and pay up. If he’s enjoying it, I really don’t see why parting with some cash for what is an amazing deal for new players.

Remind your “friend” that they are paying half, if not less than half the price and getting more for there money than a vet. Seeing as we had to pay twice as it where(this is not me complaining about it, just saying) the how ever much they would pay they are getting something for “free”. If they want for the price of HoT they are getting HoT for free, as they are buying the core game, or getting the core game for free and paying for HoT.

Holy heck, the OP is complaining that the expansion is a paywall. All expansions are a paywall. And it’s no different between a P4F account and a original core account who didn’t buy the expansion. They have the same content and activities they can participate in. The same professions, crafting disciplines, etc. P4F simply starts with fewer character slots, bags and chat/tp restrictions plus a few level restrictions before access is granted to certain parts of the game. Boo hoo they can’t get gliders or “peak” in on HoT or the Raids. Want a peak, watch Twitch or Youtube. Go play PvP/WvW and see the Rev and specializations in action.

So no, they aren’t screwing P4F over anymore than vets who didn’t buy HoT.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Did you ever play Archeage? I didn’t, but I was reading the forum for a while. They had free to play accounts there and the forums complained about walls of gold seller map chat. Real players couldn’t even use map chat the gold seller messages scrolled so fast. There were videos of bot accounts appearing and disappearing around the merchants. They would drop out of the air and land on top of each other and be several bots deep around the merchant. The company couldn’t ban them fast enough. As soon as one was banned another was made.

That’s the result of no restrictions on chat, trade and where you can go.

Yeah, ArcheAge has been the worst I have ever seen for bots/gold sellers/etc. Ever. And I played nothing but F2P games for years when I was younger.
And, in ArcheAge, you can’t sell things on the TP without a subscription either (at least, you couldn’t when I played it). And that’s subscription. Not one-time payment.

I was actually surprised when GW2 started offering a F2P option. In my opinion, they were already generous enough. But it’s their game.
I think the trial version would be enough for me to buy the game, here. I ended up buying a month in ArcheAge, and that game wasn’t anywhere as nice. Plus, knowing it was just a one-time* payment would seal the deal.

Did you ever play Archeage? I didn’t, but I was reading the forum for a while. They had free to play accounts there and the forums complained about walls of gold seller map chat. Real players couldn’t even use map chat the gold seller messages scrolled so fast. There were videos of bot accounts appearing and disappearing around the merchants. They would drop out of the air and land on top of each other and be several bots deep around the merchant. The company couldn’t ban them fast enough. As soon as one was banned another was made.

That’s the result of no restrictions on chat, trade and where you can go.

The game isn’t actually free to play, it’s try for free. It just allows you to try the entire game instead of stopping you at some point or level.

The restrictions on F2P accounts are in place to protect the economy from being overrun by RMT gold sellers and bots, and the general consensus seems to be that they are necessary and useful.

And yes, ANet expects F2P players to buy the game if they want to have the restrictions removed. It’s one of the reasons they haven’t added a bunch of microtransactions to the gem store targeting F2P accounts like other MMOs have.

If only there was an official Anet communications person who could make sure that Anet communications, wherever they are made, were cross-posted on the Official GW2 Forums or Website! Its great that a player thought of doing this (thank you OP) but I can’t imagine that no one at Anet was able to think of it… Or maybe they just didn’t want to promote the official GW2 Site / Forums for some strange reason?

They announced a couple of weeks ago that they were going on break for the Holidays. I would expect them back in force some time in January. /shrug

No different than any other year, really.

Apparently they haven’t been silent on Reddit…

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Dev-quotes-from-Reddit

Hoghwash, everyone knows that developers aren’t human, you just plug in the feeding tube and they’ll spew out code all day and all night. Maybe a little downtime for maintenance and cleaning like once a month.

I don’t know about where you live, but where I am is the Christmas/New Years time of the year. People tend to take time off for the Hollidays and less work gets done.

insert conspiracy theories here

Holiday break~~~