Guild Wars 2

I feel the price point is far too high; I have the core game, which cost $60 at release, and I’m not going to be dropping another $50 for the expansion. I would be fine with $20, maybe even $30, but $40 or $50 is too much, in my opinion.

Conveniently, there will soon be wave upon wave of massive discounts announced by the worst ads I’ve ever seen, ads so bad that I actually feel worse about myself for knowing that somebody was paid to make them, making that person technically better at life than I am.
And, of course, the entirely possible ‘We meant to be nice, we ended up causing a problem, here’s a discount’ PR attempt. What, think that addressing hobosacks and Lion’s Arch would be enough goodwill to make that stick? I could get “It’s about time” tattooed on my bum and moon the screen instead of actually saying it, but I’d like to actually sit down once in a while and I’m pretty sure that’d keep me from being able to actually play anything.

Also, John Smith: Why did you do that? Don’t be a jerk, man. If you don’t have anything to actually say, don’t say anything at all. And don’t mock the players.

hqeq umop apisdn.7526:

So… Just to clarify… did an Anet dev comment on the first page of this thread to mock us and then not respond to any questions?

That is exactly what it looks like. I don’t see how it can be interpreted in any other way. It’s almost like they expected this to explode so they can get bad press and more eyes on their game before apologizing and lowering the price, making them look like the good guys.

So… Just to clarify… did an Anet dev comment on the first page of this thread to mock us and then not respond to any questions?

Zappix.7928:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/Anet-removes-FAQ-line-about-req-base-game/first#post5157026

Enjoy.

Dear ArenaNet THIS is highly bad business…
This is also false advertising for everyone who bought the game between the FAQ-Post and today. This is not the ArenaNet we knew.

You really have a good hand on screwing your player-base and causing a rage-wave haven’t you? – the forums and reddit are exploding like hell and the people complaining are right.

it is totally ok to price the XPac with 50 bucks
it is totally ok to give the base game for free to new players*
it is totally ok to deliver different packs with different inclusions

*BUT it is absolutely not OK to forget the loyal playerbase who financed the game over the past years. Where is the benefit for the Veterans?
I get more for my money if i create a new account than i get if i upgrade my existing one.

If you include the Basegame to the HOT Pack it is totally obvious that its unfair for the existing veterans if they get nothing if they upgrade for the same price the new players have to pay.

This is typical 0815 business – praise potential new customers like they are gods on earth and screw everyone who is already one. – point 1 is totally ok … point 2 is not.

If you’re really interested in the existing players just upgrade every HOT standard edition to the Deluxe edition if the key is used on an existing account or give us at least the free choice between two or three of the In-Game-Items of the Deluxe-pack (like you did with the GW2 Heroic Edition) or do whatever you want but giving NOTHING in return is just wrong.

or let’s do some simple math … if you buy HOT you get a fresh account … so give the upgraders all the corresponding character-slots and a new bank-tab in addition to their chosen HOT-Pack (sounds stupid? it is, but it’s fair) :-P

TL;DR in 3 words:

Don’t be Blizzard

If there’s nothing absolutely wrong with the FAQ they wont change it in first place. but look, they did change it, and then there is that reddit post about refund. this whole thing reeks shady business got caught in the act for me. and they just try to avoid getting sued because some people actually notice they did this kind of terribad behavior. If they are planning to do an honest business from the start they should just put an extra * explanation about the HoT expansion pack with free core game coming soon from the beginning and avoid all this stupid drama. I am sure new players will still buy it. Just use some common sense, will you buy something from a shady person? i know i wouldn’t. i will avoid them like the plague. will you trust someone who is screwing with your money? and laugh in your face about it just like what john did? yeah .. very classy move.

To be honest, I am quite appalled by this. I’m sure many have said that before me in here, but this purchase plan only benefits those who don’t have the base game already. This is telling us that we must buy it again, which sounds rather quirky to me.
For new players, it is a bargain. For existing users, this is complete nonsense, and this has effectively cut me off from getting the expansion right away, as I was planning on it.
I don’t mean to devalue the content of the expansion, but I hope they’ll make it available for us game-owners to actually get it without spending money on something we already have.

Linnael.1069:

So my friends that bought the base game because I suggested they get into it before HoT are now giving me kitten about this. I wasn’t really on their side, but then one of them linked me this.

https://help.guildwars2.com/entries/105801626-Guild-Wars-2-Heart-of-Thorns-FAQ

“Q: Do I have to own Guild Wars 2 to play the expansion?
A: Yes. Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns is an expansion to Guild Wars 2 and not a stand-alone campaign, and therefore it requires the base game to play.”

I’ll admit that there is nothing in the hard, 100% strict interpretation of these words that explicitly refutes the idea that HoT and the base game could be bought together, but when stuff like this is posted and all your HoT announcements are timed with a sale of the base game?

I’m not even going to get into whether $50 is “worth it” or whatever, but any way you look at it this is pretty dirty marketing ANet.

I got fooled by the same thing when they said that the base game is needed for the HoT expansion. Which gave me impression that I didn’t need to pay any extra $ or at least anything this hefty to play the expansion.

Yes i just noticed that dirty move. They made GW2 sales while announcing HoT. Then this wording in FAQ. Then John makes jokes in complaint threads.

It’s just sad.

Major thanks to Errant.1509 for picking this up. I can’t really say it any more clearly than he did so I’ll just quote the post:

Errant.1509:

LOL they absolutely just edited the FAQ. This is what it said before:

“Q: Do I have to own Guild Wars 2 to play the expansion?
A: Yes. Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns is an expansion to Guild Wars 2 and not a stand-alone campaign, and therefore it requires the base game to play.”

How long until we start talking about a bait-and-switch?

Screenshots

Waybackmachine

Ok ANet, if you want to clear up misconceptions with a page edit thats fine. To do it as an obvious response to this thread but still hold silence here like nothing ever happened is absolutely a scum move, and only eroding our trust in you even further.

Linnael.1069:

https://help.guildwars2.com/entries/105801626-Guild-Wars-2-Heart-of-Thorns-FAQ

“Q: Do I have to own Guild Wars 2 to play the expansion?
A: Yes. Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns is an expansion to Guild Wars 2 and not a stand-alone campaign, and therefore it requires the base game to play.”

I’ll admit that there is nothing in the hard, 100% strict interpretation of these words that explicitly refutes the idea that HoT and the base game could be bought together, but when stuff like this is posted and all your HoT announcements are timed with a sale of the base game?

I’m not even going to get into whether $50 is “worth it” or whatever, but any way you look at it this is pretty dirty marketing ANet.

Honestly, this is my chief complaint. I bought this game back in February, having interpreted that exact statement from ANet to mean that the core game wouldn’t be included in HoT. I figured, great, I’ll have some time to learn the game, level a guy up, then pay a nominal fee (I was expecting like $30ish) for the expansion.

Had the FAQ read “Yes, but Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns includes the Guild Wars 2 core game”, as it does now, I simply would have waited for HoT’s release.

I don’t like presuming motive, but it does feel…cheap, at least…and it certainly doesn’t make me happy I bought it a few months ago.

Rashy.4165:

Linnael.1069:

I for one will be definitely be taking this into account when I make purchasing decisions in the future, and I would feel pretty negligent in not calling attention to it when I just happened to luck into finding out about it from a random forum post.

And whether or not this affects my purchasing decision in the future, logically, would depend on how ArenaNet handles upgrading people to HoT pre-purchase, which they will be: http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3a46s4/preorders_for_heart_of_thorns_are_now_live/cs96lfu

It’s likewise logical that one would want to know something about the values and intentions of a company. Its clear that you’re willing to bet ANet would have still been doing this if the forum uproar that you’re so against hadn’t happened. I am not so confident.

I was really excited with HoT until I saw this.

So you want us to pay the same money for HoT expansion than for a complete GW1 game at its release date??

So you pretend us to rebuy the core game? Why the hell should we pay twice for a single product?

Why should we, veterans players who have helped you on mantaining the game and have supported the game since months or even years ago, pay for a product we already have? Why the good price and the good news goes to players who have given you nothing at all?

I am really discontented with this decision.

I really like GW2, I play since game release and I played GW1 too. I enjoy playing this game but this sales policy makes me feel cheated

Rashy.4165:

Errant.1509:

Rashy.4165:

Information changes. Before they announced pre-purchase, the assumption was that you’d have to buy them separately. After the announcement, the base game is free and the expansion comes with it (for players who don’t have it already). For players who have the base game, the expansion is all they get for $50 (which is standard pricing for expansions these days).

Look at the cache…they changed the FAQ mere hours before announcing preorders. It’s a bait-and-switch.

That … is not a bait-and-switch.

A bait and switch would be saying that buying the expansion gives the core game (for players who don’t already have it) and not giving it to them when they actually buy it. A bait and switch would be saying they’re giving a free character slot for the $75 edition, but not actually giving it when bought.

A bait and switch would be promising something that’s set in stone, and not delivering. The FAQ change is something that wasn’t set in stone. It’s obvious that the core game is needed to play the expansion, so the previous FAQ reflected that. The new FAQ reflects the change (the fact that the FAQ changed hours before the announcement doesn’t matter – it just means people weren’t combing the FAQs to predict that buying HoT would include the core game) when they announced the pre-purchase: buying the expansion gives you the base game for free (for new players).

Plain and simple.

Semantics. It’s false advertising. You’re naive if you think anything related to marketing and PR goes through or stays live on the internet without serious considerations.

I’m also guessing you didn’t read through the whole thread, where if you had followed the links you would have seen that the change wasn’t made until after a forum thread had been up complaining about the discrepancy for a good hour before the changes occured. I linked it once but I’ll do it again. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/From-the-Heart-of-Thorns-Q-A-Page/first#post5157198

The fact that this thread and all responses on it are timestamped hours after the presentation ended and obviously referring to the live at that point in time version of the page should make it obvious that the change was not conducted until after the discrepancy was called out and flamed, and was only conducted as a cheap response to the situation.

Also I’m seeing this thread get kind of off topic. This isn’t even really about the price. It’s about how scummy the marketing here was. Let’s keep the attention there and not get bogged down with subjectives about worth.

Rashy.4165:

Information changes. Before they announced pre-purchase, the assumption was that you’d have to buy them separately. After the announcement, the base game is free and the expansion comes with it (for players who don’t have it already). For players who have the base game, the expansion is all they get for $50 (which is standard pricing for expansions these days).

Look at the cache…they changed the FAQ mere hours before announcing preorders. It’s a bait-and-switch.

selling games by saying they’re needed when they’re not is pretty scummy.

but changing the evidence like this is even worse.

ya done goofed Anet, but if you try and hide it, it’ll only end worse for you. admit the mistake, fix it if you can, but please, please, don’t try and cover it up. it’ll only look worse for you, and that’s not where you want to be right now.

This is only eroding our trust in you even further ANet. It might have been cool to clear up current discrepancies with an edit on the page, but doing it as such an obvious response to the forum threads while staying dead silent about it to the players concerned? Scum move all around.

Thank you for this.

The $50 price tag is actually reasonable.

Going ahead and giving new players the whole package is actually reasonable.

This, however is incredibly slimy, dishonest, and anyone who has purchased the game between the publication date of this FAQ and today may actually have legal grounds to persue legal action for false advertising.

Giving a loyalty bonus to long time players would be nice, but that one line is potentially a legitimate business and legal issue.

Anets PR team had better get right on this debacle, or the press is really going to slam them on this one if they don’t fix it before they run out of shiny new E3 coverage. If nothing else, they’ll probably cover this instead of the [really awesome looking] guild hall features they’d LIKE the gaming press to be covering.

LOL they absolutely just edited the FAQ. This is what it said before:

“Q: Do I have to own Guild Wars 2 to play the expansion?
A: Yes. Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns is an expansion to Guild Wars 2 and not a stand-alone campaign, and therefore it requires the base game to play.”

How long until we start talking about a bait-and-switch?

Screenshots

Waybackmachine

Is there any way this wasn’t a bait-and-switch? The HoT FAW made it clear that you needed to purchase the expansion separately from the base game.

The fundamental problem here is the feeling of getting no recognition for those who purchased the game originally. There’s not so much as a tip of the hat to veterans of the game; no discount, no perk, nothing. Just a ‘oh well, had you waited, you’d be getting the whole deal for less than you originally paid’ (remember the original price tag was 60$). Ultimately even if economically this is logical, users experience things emotionally. And the emotional impact of non-recognition is a very negative one. If this new expansion came with twice the content it has (2 new classes, 50% the original game area increase, additional living story, and a new race, among other things, for example) players might be more willing to pay the same price of the original over again. But 50$ is simply too much.

Also, fun fact: if a software company actually cared that much about profit or delivering a good product for the money they get, they wouldn’t be based in a major city like Seattle, LA, OC, SF, or NY, all of which have a crazy high cost of living, which drives up wages and costs. So I chuckle a little whenever someone says ‘they just want to make as much money as they possibly can!’ or ‘we are dedicated to making the best game we can!’

Neither is the case really unless they put their main office someplace low cost like Boise or North Austin. You cannot say you are doing all you can if there is yet more you can do. No one’s motives are as simple as a single sentence, good or bad.

lithiumwing.5493:

But it’s not $50 for the bundle, you’re buying the expansion for $50 and they’re throwing in the core game as a bonus. :/

We already know that. What use is the core game for Veteran players? We have no use for it, so instead of throwing in the core game free, why don’t they chuck in a free character slot instead? Or something that us Vets could actually benefit from?

But no, loyal customers have stayed with Anet since the beginning and have spent money on the game.

You harm your core and dedicated player base and you will see a massive drop in income.

Short term gains like this ploy have long term consequences in the form of loyal players that spend more in the long term than a few new players that give up after a couple of weeks will see Anet’s revenues in the form of microtransactions drop like bricks.

That is the concern, that is the upset. No one has a problem with the price, people have a problem with Vets being shafted yet again.

So I think a lot of people are misunderstanding the reason why a lot of people are frustrated with HoT pricing. Many of us were ready and willing to pay $50 for the expansion, as it’s pretty standard for MMOs nowadays. However, the slap in the face was that the loyal players that have been the only reason that GW2 has been able to even make it far enough to release an expansion are being offered a package that gives them nothing over new players. In fact, it gives the new players more (as existing players won’t be able to redeem their base games included in the $50 standard version). Not even a character slot for existing players only to show gratitude for their loyalty. I understand the arguments against “whining,” like GW2 having no monthly fee, but being slapped in the face so bluntly by these expansion options feels so directly insulting. Keep in mind that we had absolutely no warning that this expansion pack would be offered including the base game, which I don’t think any MMO has done before. We were all expecting the traditional “buy the game buy the xpac” approach. And what about the players who bought the base game in preparation for buying HoT? I don’t know. I love this game, but can’t bring myself to pre-order due to this nagging feeling of disappointment. Just my two cents.

JakeG.9620:

I really believe in all my heart that it’s a bug I think they want to target new people right now, not the core gamers. Maybe we’ll get our pre-purchase in the course of this week or something?

If it were really a bug, I think we’d have already seen the famous yellow “There will be a new build available in 10 minutes.” Because this is all people seem to be talking about in game.

Regina Buenaobra.6193:

To clarify: $50 is the price of the expansion. We included the core game as a free bonus to make it easier for new players to get into it.

IMO this is the biggest slap in the face to your loyal players that have played this game for many years and supported you.

John Smith.4610:

InfinitytheSoulWarden.5963:

if you look at the world through the cold cynical eyes of economics

You rang?

Thanks for a second slap in the face. Your loyal players are clearly already upset so the support is resorting to giving sarcastic comments instead of dealing with the issue at hand? That’s what my money is going towards?

I think there should be another option of payment added to people who already have a core game. It’s unfair to the loyal customers who have been here since the first preorder. I have 2 seperate accounts and I refuse to buy 2 more core games on top of the ones I own already.

Kelnis.1829:

Hey, John Smith, bought the $99.99 version. The value isn’t what I’d call “ideal,” but I am one of the players that was looking to buy a physical collector’s edition ($150-200.) Overall, disappointed with the versions offered, but I was going to buy gems tonight anyway – ended up working out I guess. Also, HOW DARE YOU EXPECT PEOPLE TO PAY FOR YOUR EXPANSION.

Sorry your official forums are full of vitriol instead of more constructive feedback.

It’s okay to expect people to pay for the expansion. It’s not okay to expect them to pay for the core game again.

John Smith.4610:

InfinitytheSoulWarden.5963:

if you look at the world through the cold cynical eyes of economics

You rang?

This reply from a representative of Anet is APPALLING.

John Smith.4610:

InfinitytheSoulWarden.5963:

if you look at the world through the cold cynical eyes of economics

You rang?

You serious?

Everyone is flipping out over your product, and you make jokes?

Apolo.5942:

John i dont think it is in your best interest to jest peoples at this particular point in time.

John may want his posts go through PR before they are posted.