Before investing 150 bucks on BLC keys, I ran a quick search on google (and read a few posts in this forum) and the general consensus is no, it’s not worth it (at all). I just thought that it’d be fair to give other GW2 players an idea of what they’re getting into when they buy BLC keys (Or any items that gives you random items), based on my personal experience.
As of yesterday and for the next 2 weeks, the BLC has an incredible slim chance of rewarding the player with the “permanent hair stylist contract”, which players were willing to pay up to 2800 gold (as of 07/29/2014 9pm NYT, I just connected to the game now, 07/31/2014 1:30 am NYT and they’re going for a little over 3600 gold…). I knew how slim the chances were and when I invested 12300 gems on it, I was aware of the risks (Let’s be real, if the item was easy to get, it wouldn’t be worth 3600 gold, possibly even more). The problem is not the fact that I didn’t get the item, the problem is that 12300 gems later I was stuck with a bunch of crap that wasn’t even worth 30 gold (and I’m being optimistic).
I was stuck with a bunch of useless dyes, useless repeated minis, useless boosters, and some useless services (e.g.: Revive Orbs, Trading Post Express,…)
Not to be totally unfair, I got some stuff I consider somewhat useful:
- 15 tomes and 24 scrolls of knowledge. It’s an OK reward, considering I could get an equivalent amount of skills and levels playing EOTM (which is a lot more rewarding because in the end I made some gold, gathered some mats, made tons of badges of honor that can be used to buy some good items, and most importantly, had lots of fun)
- 3 Total Makeover Kits , 2 Self-Style Hair Kits, 26 Transmutation Charges, 4 Black Lion Salvage Kits, and 2 Backpack skins I didn’t have. I consider these the best rewards… And still, I would only buy some, not all, of these items if they were sold at a discounted price (350 gems for Total Makeover Kit = 35 gold; currently you can buy approximately 10 gold per 100 gems if you do it when the time’s right)
Now, I spent those gems trying my luck to get an item that I could hopefully sell for 2800 gold… and what does that mean to me? I invest 40 bucks a month on gems, equivalent to 4 months worth of gems. If I had changed my gems to gold, I could have Dusk right now (which’s basically the only item I’m missing to finally get my legendary). That’s 153.75 dollars… I could buy 3 new games or have paid for 10 months (or more) worth of subscription to another MMO. Hell, if I played WoW I could get 2 toons to level 90 by paying 120 bucks to Blizzard.
GW2 is by far the best MMO I’ve ever played and I still believe it was worth paying 40 bucks/month. The way I saw it, I was investing on development for new content, for continued support. I usually stayed away from random dyes and BLCs because I always thought they were a rip off and I was not wrong. The best dye out there, is worth less than 200 gold, which currently translates to 2000 gems… Trust me, you’ll have to invest a lot more than 2000 gems to get a decent dye (and I never paid more than 80 gold for a dye). Gems to me were used only to buy useful items: Bank slot and tab expansions, permanent gathering tools, passes (royal terrace, home portal), skins, even gold if I needed more mats to get ascended stuff…
I’m not mad or sad but I feel cheated and disappointed. I’m just letting someone else out there know that it’s not worth spending your money on BLC keys. Maybe a-net will read this and realize that this is not the right way to make money. The moment clients feel cheated is when they go away and a-net should be concerned about it. It’s not the amount of money or the fact I didn’t get the one item I wanted. It’s the fact that should I not feel amazing because I didn’t get that one rare item, I should feel like whatever I got, was worth what I paid for.
To me it was just a wakeup call that it’s time to go spend my money on some other game.
