Guild Wars 2

Later day patch I’m expect. Think they had a similar problem once before.

But HOW do you make it more rewarding? The meta is what the meta is so I wouldn’t expect new stats. A new look would mean new armor sets and we know the devs say it’s too much work. Ascended is the long game so I wouldn’t expect an uptick in drop rates on those. So I don’t expect a change there.

You aren’t going to get gold direct because forcing players to go through the TP to offload their unwanted loot drains gold from the overall economy rather than injecting new gold. So unwanted loot is inevitable and is indirectly a gold sink for the economy. That’s why direct gold rewards got nerfed. So that’s not going to change either.

So I don’t see it changing.

Danikat.8537:

Oh wow, that’s brilliant news.

Last I heard they weren’t going to be doing any more, so this is a big surprise.

They never said they weren’t going to do it, they said they were suspending development for the meantime, while (not spoken out loud) they were getting HoT fixed and the LS3 up and running. It was players who declared “suspended” was code word for discontinued.

slamfunction.7462:

It makes sense. WoW’s Legion expansion actually turned out REALLY good, so they are feeling some heat from that. Over the last 2 weeks, i’ve noticed my community of players suddenly go dormant, thus one does have to wonder what happened there.

A new zone, and a new legendary appears to be ANet’s answer to WoW’s latest xpac, and i believe FFXIV is ramping up to release some new content any day now, as well.

Gotta love what competition does to drive these companies to do their best!

And you think Legion’s “success” had anything to do with this? They’ve been working on the legenday, on and off, for a while. If they could throw it together in 3 weeks they wouldn’t have needed to suspend development.

The industry have accepted that when WoW puts out a release, they will likely see a down turn in population and trying to directly compete is a fool’s errand. Stick with your own release schedule and ride out the WoW wave as it passes.

New Legendary Mace: Eureka
A new legendary weapon is now available. Speak to Grandmaster Craftsman Hobbs in Lion’s Arch to learn how to craft the new mace precursor, Endeavor, and forge the new legendary mace, Eureka.

Discuss

The problem is partially psychological. When you are leveling your very first character, drops feel more rewarding, especially if you use what gets dropped rather than the TP to equip your character. However after your first character you know what’s desirable. You know the armor and weapon stats you want and therefore everything else becomes “junk”, stuff to sell or scrap ASAP so you can clear your bags. 2 blues and a green doesn’t cut it at level 40, you want yellow; at 80 yellow is worthless, you want orange.

Maybe you get excited if the unwanted item has a skin you don’t have but if SOP is salvaging all unwanted items, it’ll get unlocked in your wardrobe. As much of a pain the old skinning system was, a nice skin off of a weapon or armor was a reward in it’s own right even if the stats wasn’t anything special. The new wardrobe system removed that reward because again, the longer you play, the more skins you already have unlocked.

So we all become jaded. Drops that may have been exciting in the beginning are now meh. 95% become stuff you salvage or post on the TP. Preferred gear becomes less about adventuring and more scanning the TP for a good value.

Usually around 16:00 UTC (9 am PDT, Noon EDT)

http://www.thetimezoneconverter.com/

Never had the banker problem. My problem is mesmers who drop portals on chests in JPs. Imagine the frustration of finally completing a JP on you own after numerous attempts only to be thwarted by an ill timed mesmer portal being dropped on the chest just as you go to click it and not notice the F action is no longer the chest but the portal back to the bottom.

No, the package deal was always 20% off since they first started offering it in the gem shop as a package versus buying each separately. That was April 16th, 2015.

ANet simply reminded people that it’s there as it’s and upgrade that vanishes from the store if you didn’t need it so players who have LS2 fully unlocked wouldn’t even see it in the store and therefore forget it’s an option to players who don’t have it.

Histrionic – overly theatrical or melodramatic in character or style

Nobody suggested the OP is suffering a disorder.

I saw this months ago. If GHs are at the same upgrade level for mat nodes, you couldn’t farm from both, otherwise you could.

Can’t tell you if THAT has changed, all the guilds I belong too have maxed their GH’s mat nodes a month or two ago.

Vendors vend, they don’t give rewards, they sell stuff that’s entirely up to you to buy if you wish.

As for needing gold as well as local zone/game mode currency; I assume that it’s meant as an additional sink for gold obtainable from said zone or game mode. Other choice to keep gold in check is reducing drops and nobody really wants that.

The gem shop package is already 20% off from buying the episodes separately (1280 vs 1600 gems). Plus IIRC the cost is prorated if you have some unlocked.

Of course if you are only looking at the most elite food, it’s entirely possible and likely that their ingredients are difficult to get (hostile locals, infrequent spawning, RNG) and it’s price will be also “too expensive” for your taste. I would suggest looking up your preferred food on the wiki and click on the “show base ingredients” which will bring up the price of the mats needed to craft it before you level Chef.

I guess saying “Returning” doesn’t generate as many clicks as “New”. More likely it’s “New” because it was added for this update.

In my opinion the revamp done to HoT in the April update fixed a lot of issues with the expansion in terms of survivability, soloing and navigation. They also fixed the rewards during the longer metas so you can earn rewards along the way.

As for the timers. What’s better? Knowing when it will start or tripping over one in progress and worse, having it active on some instances but not others?

Server population is based on active WvW population. Generally server ranking relates to active WvW population. Here is a link to WvW rankings and their history over time. However the most successful WvW servers tend to be difficult to join.

http://mos.millenium.org/na

Fenom.9457:

True or false??

They announced over two years ago that they weren’t releasing new sets to the gem shop. They had been releasing now a set consists of each three weights, some with unique racial variants. They had sold them for 800 gems for each weight. MO, Mike O’Brien, said it takes roughly 9 man months of time to develop a set.

But they do release new helm, glove, shoulders and recently boots, usable on any of the armor weights and no racial variants and each piece sells for upwards of 500 gems ( mostly 200-300 gems range). Now those type of pieces can also be rewards in game as well as the plethora of back pieces we got as rewards over the years.

Guilds are cross server, cross region (NA servers are in TX, US; EU servers are in Germany) but you can only play with people in your region. Outside of WvW, you can play with anyone in your region regardless of server.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Two things:

• It is recommended that you get Ley Line Gliding in addition to standard Gliding. Although I believe the latter would not be absolutely required to complete the episode, it’s a very useful (and fun!!) thing to have when playing Episode 1: Out of the Shadows content.

Hope you all realize that getting 31 mastery points is a bit of a grind, especially when you didn’t need it in HoT to complete most of the activities there, to start designing LW episodes around them. That’s a pretty high bar to climb to make map travel not a thing to dread.

Dulwitch.8976:

So I’ve had gold sellers contact me via personal mail ( the average way of doing it), and by map chatting. But I came across a new one today. Whispering. I know a lot of Gold sellers are possibly hacked accounts. But please be wary of them.

Each and every Gold seller that I come across has been reported via the in game system and thankfully it’s not as bad as it once was, they seem to have calmed down from what it was after it went f2p. Any one else notice this new little trick or it may not be that new just something that hasn’t happened until today.

That’s a really old tactic.

Conncept.7638:

Styrbjorn.9147:

Get them now!! 4 tickets per weapon!!

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fused_weapon_skins

One more scrap, and I will have my first ticket since they made this bullcrap system.

Well the whole purpose of BL weapon skins is to sell keys because someone is placing those skins on the TP and they only come from tickets which you, mainly, get from chests that you need keys for. With the key farm all but dead (once a week), someone is buying lots of keys.

simplesimon.2084:

Yep can’t get much worse than that

Since I use transmutation charges and tomes of knowledge … it’s … eh.

Useless would be another parrot mail delivery and duplicate account bound mini.

Because they used to be 7 tickets when they were last around.

A while back (August 10th) someone(s) placed large buy orders for gold and silver ore. I assume in hopes that ascended jewelry is coming with Lvl 500 and they will be needed and the price will skyrocket so even bids at the current value would still be very profitable and with a long enough lead time they could buy up 1/2 or 1 million of each without affecting the current sale price.

Of course it’s only a speculative bet it’s coming this time.

Of course this rumor may be a way to spike the price so those behind the 5 week ore buying spree can dump their inventory.

RoosterTooth.1024:

Jhoul.6923:

What ever you decide, you have till the 20th to get the LS3 ep 1 for free. I do believe that HoT is worth it since LS3 got here.

If you bought the vanilla you can still log in to unlock the LS3 episodes, so if you don’t want to buy now, at least log in to unlock it and when you want to play it, buy it.

Stupid question, but I just have to log in and that “unlocks” LS3?

To be clear it will unlock Episode 1 of Living Story 3, not the entire Living Story 3. You still won’t be able to play it until you own HoT but you won’t have to pay extra later if you do.

Hyper Cutter.9376:

The #1 rule of gambling is “the house always wins in the end”. Never forget that.

How are you losing? It’s known you will always get a booster. It’s known that those lucrative permanent contracts are ultra rare (which doesn’t mean 1 in 100, try another order of magnitude or two). And it’s often discussed that you would be better off converting you cash bought gems to gold and buy the weapon skin off the TP than buying keys and hoping to earn tickets from the chests.

It’s a capsule toy, a blind box, a booster card pack. You might get something you like; you might get something you don’t; you are likely to get something you have way too many of already to care.

The cumulative Average is 1 scrap per 3 boxes and 1 ticket per 50. Binomial distribution applies so some will get more and some will get less opening the same number of chests.

ANet makes money from game key sales and gem sales. Not sure if they would really care if a player has to cut back on their gem buying to pay for a full price expansion.

You could spin that the price of the Ultimate version of HoT wasn’t $50 of gems for $25 over deluxe but the deluxe upgrade for free with a purchase of $50 worth of gems.

The issue is really ANet, trying to encourage play, turned AP from a gauge into a reward track 10 months after launch (Bazaar of the Four Winds update). That changes the motivation for some. Plus it gave latecomers rewards who could never catch up on the leaderboard.

Seabreeze.8437:

Wow, 4 tickets for fused weapons. I mean, it’s cool that they’re back and all, but 4 tickets… dang.

Before they left, fused was 7 tickets IIRC.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Black_Lion_Weapons_Specialist/historical#Fused_Weapons

Actual in game bandwidth in in kilobits/sec. The only thing 6Mb will affect is how long to download the patch. I’m on 3Mb myself, plays fine.

I always log off in DR, I have a Royal Terrace Pass so costs me nothing to return home and “cash out” so to speak.

Harper.4173:

Behellagh.1468:

Astralporing.1957:

Behellagh.1468:

But dailies now give 2 gold which is much more useful so there’s your reward, even if you don’t like the token daily chest items or spirit shards.

I’d gladly exchange that 2 gold from dailies for ability to get AP from them again.

But why? How are AP useful beyond the occasional chest?

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Radiant_Backguard_Skin
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Radiant_Backguard_Skin
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Radiant_Backguard_Skin
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Radiant_Backguard_Skin

Look and marvel at its complete glory. Take it all in. Behold the backpiece to end all backpieces.

Got it the first time Harper. And no I don’t rub people’s faces in my AP but have been on the receiving end of those that use AP as a requirement to play with them, join their guild, etc.

And at 39K, it’s virtually unattainable. Don’t you need like nearly every AP currently available in game to get it? Maybe that’s the point. Only those who get nearly all the other achievements, plus the 15K from dailies only deserve to get it.

Astralporing.1957:

Behellagh.1468:

But dailies now give 2 gold which is much more useful so there’s your reward, even if you don’t like the token daily chest items or spirit shards.

I’d gladly exchange that 2 gold from dailies for ability to get AP from them again.

But why? How are AP useful beyond the occasional chest?

ANet’s core game economy strategy is to randomly distribute items that is mostly not useful for you, therefore you need to sell it to someone you wants it while you need to buy what you want from others, so you have to use the TP which just happens to sink 15% of the gold exchanged.

Harper.4173:

No I haven’t.
I don’t log in because of dailies – I log in because of rewards. You stop givine me rewards and I will stop logging in.

If my daily log-in AP and rewards go away – so might my log-ins.
This is an MMO – i am kept here and still play because of a sense of progression. The less I progress the less I feel inclined to play.

But AP is such a worthless reward. It’s only use is to wave it in another player’s face. Sure you get the occasional AP chest, now. As an aside, at the start we didn’t even get chests. But dailies now give 2 gold which is much more useful so there’s your reward, even if you don’t like the token daily chest items or spirit shards.

Astralporing.1957:

Behellagh.1468:

And what is ANet doing other than using them as a means to connect with the player base better?

By ignoring the situation they’re sending out the message that there are different rules for different players – that if you’re chummy with Anet you can play using a different set of rules (and one that’s not even clearly defined).
That’s not “connecting with the playerbase”. That’s the exact opposite.

I read that question as “What is ANet doing by pre-releasing patch notes and allow test server access to their partners?” rather than what they are doing about the the obvious use of “inside information” by someone(s).

But way earlier I said this will be treated like any other situation where “punishment” is doled out, which is they won’t comment on it. Unless of course the “punished” make a public fuss about it on here or Reddit then they will bludgeon them with proof. But giving previews to partners isn’t going to change, it on paper at least, is a fine idea.

They don’t have to be transparent about any changes about what is given to partners. The problem is, as someone else already acknowledge, that you can’t prevent leaks. So we are still going to see blips on the TP and people will still blame leaks on partners even if ANet sanitize the TP info from partners. So if ANet announce changes a blip still happens, which it will, people will say ANet lied and didn’t do anything at all.

So which is worse? Have some loose faith in the company because they are being quiet or loose faith because the company said they did something and then be accused of lying?

Ashen.2907:

Behellagh.1468:

Ashen.2907:

I am not opposed to the idea of rewarding those content creators that do so much to support the game. The amount of work that I am sure goes into the Dulfy site is awe inspiring to me.

Give them gems. Name NPCs, locations, monsters, weapons, etc after them. Give them a free legendary of their choice. Give them each one of each legendary. Something seems appropriate to me. But…

The sort of, “reward,” mentioned in this thread rewards them at the cost of other paying customers. I consider that poor service and an unethical business practice.

Nobody is suggesting that ANet is pleased with or encouraged this. ANet simply didn’t expect they needed to hide away the details because a partner (or their friends) would take advantage of that information. Just like how ANet didn’t expect players would intentionally fail a sub event of a meta to take advantage of a quick respawn timer to farm.

I didn’t make it clear, and so apologize, but I do not assume that Anet is permitting this intentionally. I should have said that, “IF,” they are choosing to reward one group at the expense of other paying customers it would be poor service, etc.

And I hat to nitpick the point but who was hurt? This isn’t robbing Peter to pay Paul as the effect of the change would happen regardless to when the info is released or to whom. Peter was getting robbed regardless. It’s actually a case who got the chance to avoid getting hurt and if they had the means, profit off of it.

While the idea of publishing the patch notes for all to see sounds ideal, in reality there is still only a small subset of the player population would be in a position where they could avoid the negative repercuptions and thus profit from it. Everyone else will still be just as hurt

Harper.4173:

OriOri.8724:

Ardenwolfe.8590:

OriOri.8724:

Ardenwolfe.8590:

Agreed. I’m surprised at some of the responses here and elsewhere. The argument is basically, “Let others catch up while you get nothing.”

That seems rather one-sided. But let’s go with that. When will ‘everyone’ catch up? When can we then raise the bar as far as the cap?

Except that you still get 2 gold and 3 spirit shards for doing your dailies, among either karma, mats, PvP/WvW reward track potions. You aren’t getting nothing if you have maxed your daily AP. You are still getting quite a lot from them.

Don’t cherry pick. That has nothing to do with this discussion. We’re talking about AP. They can keep all the gold and spirit shards involved. That’s not the point of this thread. Nor the point of progressing your achievement tab.

Your example has nothing to do with what you quoted. Nothing to do with the cap. And nothing to do with this ‘waiting for everyone to catch up’ excuse.

You’re the one cherrypicking here. You claim that the argument is “Let others catch up while you get nothing.”, which is simply not true.

Just because you are not getting AP from the dailies anymore does not mean you are getting nothing from them. You can’t claim that you get nothing from them, as that is cherrypicking and borderline pedantic. Using your arguments, I should be compensated extra for doing more than 3 dailies each day because I’m “getting nothing” for the extra dailies I do.

Dailies reward everyone, you can’t justifiably deny that. And besides, its not like a newer player is going to catch up to the people who have maxed out their AP from dailies anyway, its just not going to happen, even if ANet just maxed out the daily AP for everyone, these players missed out on all of the extremely generous AP from season 1 releases. They are never going to come close to you.

Let’s make this simple. I am AP capped for my daily AP. You are not.

I log in.
You log in.
I get nothing.
You get something.
We both did the same thing – I did it for longer and am still doing it now yet I’m no longer rewarded for it.
Why?

Cause you’ve been successfully conditioned to login and do dailies. You don’t need that food pellet anymore, you just tap that little buzzer to your heart’s content.

I don’t do dailies for the AP, I do them simply to do something. I do them for the 3 shards that I then use to promote mats for profit. I do them for the token karma or reward track bonus. I certainly don’t do them just to have a big number or the fugly weapon and armor skin. I’m surprised when I get a chest cause I’m not playing for the AP total.

The 2 gold now is a nice bonus I wish they started years ago but I tend to give half of that away to friendly mesmers on days when I finally get frustrated by a JP and take the shortcut they offer.

Astralporing.1957:

Behellagh.1468:

As for why ANet doesn’t hire them straight up, cause they are still considered unbiased news sites.

That’s even more reason to consider insider trading a bad thing (at least from our point of view). Because as long as this advantage exists and some of the content creators do profit from it, those sources cannot be considered unbiased. How can we believe they are acting in good faith, when they have a tangible advantage attached to how pleased Anet is with them?

Remember I’m playing devil’s advocate here.

Ashen.2907:

I am not opposed to the idea of rewarding those content creators that do so much to support the game. The amount of work that I am sure goes into the Dulfy site is awe inspiring to me.

Give them gems. Name NPCs, locations, monsters, weapons, etc after them. Give them a free legendary of their choice. Give them each one of each legendary. Something seems appropriate to me. But…

The sort of, “reward,” mentioned in this thread rewards them at the cost of other paying customers. I consider that poor service and an unethical business practice.

Nobody is suggesting that ANet is pleased with or encouraged this. ANet simply didn’t expect they needed to hide away the details because a partner (or their friends) would take advantage of that information. Just like how ANet didn’t expect players would intentionally fail a sub event of a meta to take advantage of a quick respawn timer to farm.

Harper.4173:

The moment they profit from their passion they can’t really be considered “just fans doing it because of the lulz” and must be considered a business. Even if they aren’t or claim they’re not.

So they’re a business … even if they aren’t? Plus nice dose of salt there.

Yes but regardless of that – giving them an unfair advantage is still wrong. If they matter so much they should be on a pay roll.
Just because people have a hobby that happens to be promoting GW1/GW2 doesn’t mean they’re automatically these awesome people that are more deserving of things than others.

So how can it be unfair if later on you said it’s not about what’s “fair”? And you are assuming they are all taking advantage of any information gleaned. We all project onto others what we would do in a similar situation. So I would expect most to listen to their better angels and ignore it.

I don’t have a youtube channel or twitch – but I was there for the last 3 years of GW1 and for GW2 ever since the betas. Before the betas even – I went to the first playable demo and traveled around 1600 kms by car to do that. Is a youtuber more dedicated than me?

Yes, because it’s not just about devotion to the game but the willingness to use their knowledge and skills to inform, help and teach anyone who finds their channels or websites. Big difference between being the helpful sort who occasionally legitimately answers someone’s question in map chat and producing regularly updated guides and content that people can find online to reference.

The fact that they’re not earning a a LOT doesn’t mean they should gain this advantage – because they’re “poor”. If they’re doing so poorly Anet should maybe help them out – or offer some recompense – but not at the expense of others. Or before others. Or in grey areas.

How is it at the expense of others if the market was going to shift regardless when the information is released and which will still catch the vast majority off guard?

So just give them stuff that doesn’t have “insider trading” information.

But what if it’s related to a story or event reward? What are they going to show? “Oh look we just beat this big boss and we got … broken lockpicks. Yay!. Well it must be something good since they aren’t telling us.”

You mean it helps them make a profit – or grow closer to potentially making one in the future. I get that they’re mad.

Nice presumption of guilt there.

Behellagh.1468:

but I don’t think the “damage” those partners are doing is significant. And while ANet could sanitize the patch notes about recipe and drop changes, I think it’s dangerous to expect them to sanitize the test server beyond access to crafting stations.

Why?

I’ve already outlined why. But to reiterate, the shift to the new stable price would happen regardless of when the info is announced. If it’s about ANet doing a custom partner version on the test server, the fewer custom versions of software needed to be build, the less overall headaches and chances of “whoops”.

This is not about “fair” – it’s about “equal opportunity”. And the openness of competing – with a system like that EVERYONE can try to pull it off provided they are willing to try hard enough. That’s not 100% fair – but it’s more fair.

Sorry in my book “equal opportunity” is just another way to say “fair”. And again with the "it’s not about “fair” … but it’s more fair". You can’t have it both ways.

Pretty much. I’m not against them – the problem is not them – it’s what Anet is doing.
And it will create a community backlash against them that most of them might not even deserve. Just because there’s no way for them to disprove the charges brought against them by the community.

And what is ANet doing other than using them as a means to connect with the player base better? More so than an article on their blog or MMO news site. These are people in the “trenches” answering questions, providing a zerg to play with, doing map completion tours or leveling up a squad of new characters the slow way. And again with the presumption of guilt.

What bothers me is on one hand people like yourself are saying it’s about the principle, not the gold, doesn’t matter who profits … as long as it isn’t THEM. But you aren’t singling THEM out, except when you are. You aren’t implying THEY all are guilty, except when you do.

This is the same line of thought in Batman v Superman, “if we believe there’s even a one percent chance that he is our enemy we have to take it as an absolute certainty”.

And again, I’m simply being a devil’s advocate here, a position I took because of the presumption of guilt of ALL partners.

Jumpers in the US are a type of dress that is worn over a shirt. I believe the UK call them “pinafores”.

OriOri.8724:

Problem is that these sinks came after/around the same time that ANet removed the daily acquisition of mystic coins, which meant new sinks were created while at the same time fewer were entering the game. Well its not necessarily a problem per say, but it did lead to inflation in the thousands of %s

It’s not inflation which is an economy wide effect. It’s a correction.

As long as the volume of sales on the TP hasn’t significantly changed from before to now, Mystic Coins are simply reaching their proper value, previously suppressed by the excess of supply.

The TP is still selling 15-20K mystic coins daily.

Harper.4173:

It was insulting because John Smith is supposed to be the in-house economist. He should know what it is. The community relies on his expertise to watch over the game’s economy so even if he did not know what it is he’s expected to at least “save face” and not make a complete mockery by asking US what it is.

The fact that he didn’t even do that shows a complete disregard of the community and what they think.

It literally takes 3-5 seconds to google “salami slicing” and find articles describing it in detail.

Let’s put things differently – how would you feel if your doctor – upon telling him that your medication is giving you palpitations asked “whoa – what are those?”. You would lose faith in him wouldn’t you?.

Same with the JS situation – the attitude that’s insulting is that he does not even care if we lose faith or not – and by extension he doesn’t even care HOW he presents himself to the community.

Why ask us what it is? Why not just find out yourself? It’s basically HIS job.

First managing the game’s economy is only ONE of his jobs. I seem to remember recently his name being mentioned relating to development of current events or living story.

Second he only really has two jobs when dealing with the game’s economy. First keep the amount of gold in the active economy from spiraling out of control. And that is controlling the sources and sinks. The second is to control the price of commonly dropped items and mats so their price neither drops to the NPC Vendor floor or increases so only a very tiny portion of player base can afford them. That’s too is balancing sources with sinks.

He sees the economy from the 30,000 foot view, very macro. No he probably, like I do, doesn’t see an issue as the price shift was going to occur anyway, matters not if it was on patch day or a few days before or who profited off of it. Someone was going to.

There is always someone “outraged” about something on the TP (currently Mystic Coins) and demand JS do something about it. His default response over the years has always been snark or feign ignorance because it doesn’t matter what he says, he will still be “wrong”. The outraged don’t care about reasons, they only care about their own wants, not the game’s economy as a whole and already has dug their foxholes and bunkered in. These people are no different than that one parent who is “outraged” over the Captain Underpants series being in the elementary school library at the school board meeting that’s discussion building maintenance.

Harper.4173:

… snip …

You’re very sure they do it because they like the game but honestly I believe most youtubers and twitchers would switch to those top 10 games if they could. But they can’t – why? because somebody already beat them to the punch or was better at it and now the market for those games is generally saturated. You can’t break through. So you find another niche. Like GW2.

… snip …

This is where we disagree. You see them as business people first, fans second. I see fans who are trying to turn their passion into a source of income.

To elaborate, the people I’m talking about have played GW or GW2 since early beta. Their YouTube channels overwhelmingly featured videos centered on these games from those times. Before Mindcraft or LoL or Hearthstone or most of those other top streaming games. Most were holding down “real” jobs while covering the game until very recently (ANet started noticing them around the time HoT got announced) and have recently tried to turn it into a business.

And you still think monetization on YouTube amounts to anything for Tubers their size. It doesn’t even pay the monthly food budget. We’re talking under 50K subscribers and videos only drawing a few thousand views during the video’s first month. And since YouTube pays on a sliding scale based on TTM average views, it simply doesn’t pay well unless you are pulling in significant views per month.

As for why ANet doesn’t hire them straight up, cause they are still considered unbiased news sites. You pay sites like MMORPG, MMOHut, etc with exclusives AND advance copies of the patch notes or access to the test server in the days before a major patch. So just like the big MMO news sites, the partners are granted an early copy of the patch notes and the test server so they can film their story walk through videos without an endless stream of photobombing giant Norns and Charr with wings obscuring the scene.

Now from the partners I’ve talked too, which I admit is only like six or seven, they too are POed that some partners have broken this trust and thus painted them as inside traders as well. Now they don’t want to lose that early access because it helps them interact with their followers/subscribes.

As I originally said, I’m being a devil’s advocate here. I agree that those that take advantage of early market info gleaned from their access aren’t playing according to Hoyle. But I don’t think the “damage” those partners are doing is significant. And while ANet could sanitize the patch notes about recipe and drop changes, I think it’s dangerous to expect them to sanitize the test server beyond access to crafting stations.

The “fair” argument can’t hold water if the solution simply gives the advantage to another limited group. Is it “fair” if only EU players can take advantage of the info because NA players are at work or in classes while Oceania players are sleeping? Or RMT sites target their army of accounts at buying up all of X while the price is less than Y?

Yes it’s the devil you know argument.

And I’m NOT a “content creator”. I do know several and broke bread with a few IRL which is why I take the position I do.

SakuraJD.4720:

Back in my day, we got a Mystic Coin in the daily! and you know what? people complained that they were worthless! cant please everyone.

They were “worthless” until ANet introduced new and widely desirable sinks for them.

Mostly, although a buggy driver could still cause one, but you need at least 8GB of memory for the 64-bit version to run, otherwise it defaults back to the 32-bit version of the client. Unless you are on a Mac and then all you have is the 32-bit.

And thus this is a problem. If the price is high and you think one day you won’t use them, you don’t sell them which in turn keeps the price high, which encourages more hoarding by players who aren’t using them currently.

Don’t know how many notice the day the Ley Line Anomalies appeared and the price dropped into the 50s for a few hours until it looked as if very little of the new supply is trickling onto the TP.

Most of the TP sites I visit have at best, a tip cup. Hardly a regular job, more of a passionate hobby. Same with some of the YouTubers and Twitchers at the beginning (going back to GW). Their long devotion to this game is recognized by ANet which grants them perks that we don’t get. Like access to the test server, free region transfers, codes for giveaways to help viewership, and early info so they can sound knowledgeable on patch day. ANet decided these sites are important as an advertising vector which is why some got referral links which pays them a commission on new accounts, HoT and P4F ones, created with those links.

Sure many now cover gaming or just THIS game as a job today but their primary source of income isn’t from ANet. They do it because they like the game, otherwise they would only be focusing on the games in the top 10 Twitch list. Devoting their time toward Guild Wars 2 isn’t doing them any favors since viewership is tiny on Twitch and YouTube. Ask any small YouTuber, they pay very little unless you are routinely getting 50K+ views on every video. Twitch takes half of the subscription money (again unless you have 1000s of subscribers) and no cut on advertising. And those 4+ digit tips you see on clipped on YouTube, doesn’t happen to too many streamers. Many can earn more working retail, McJobs or waiting tables.

So no, I don’t begrudge them a little extra in game gold, IF they are actually taking advantage of early TP info. But the vitriol against these few is terrifying and that’s why I say again that there are people calling out for blood.