Guild Wars 2

Well I can understand. That kind of information can be used to gauge how well ANet is doing which in turn provides insight in NCSOFT. Third hand information used to read into the health of a company is okay, things like web site hits and pre orders but something like this coming directly from someone at a subsidiary that isn’t publicly released by NCSOFT’s PR department is strictly no-no since it wouldn’t be widely distributed among all investors.

I understand your point and it’s valid. This is the first time they’ve offered a free item with cash gem purchase that wasn’t available for gems in the gem store already. Of course to be really despicable it would have to be offered in the gem store after Jan 1st at a much more reasonable price. I want the pitchfork and torch concession if that happens.

To obtain the mini, the only avenue open to collectors is to spend $50 in the month of December on gems. Yes you get 4000 gems as well which is worth 236 gold as I’m writing this (the exchange rate has taken a sharp turn downward, lots of gem sales for gold? wonder where all those gems are coming from?).

And that’s the problem Smooth and the burning question, is this a new model to sell ultra exclusive items? Having them as a “bonus” for buying large amounts of gems with cash? That’s the concern here. Is it signaling a change in the way to encourage cash sales or is it just a one time thing?

Actually you have a bigger problem. If your DxDiag is to be believed, you don’t have a valid video card that will play the game.

NVIDIA® GeForce® 7800, ATI Radeon™ X1800, Intel HD 3000 or better
(256MB of video RAM and shader model 3.0 or better)

The Intel GMA 3100 is like 4 generations before an Intel HD 3000. That might be why the install fails. Just that the error message isn’t all that informative.

Heck you don’t even have the minimum CPU with is a 2GHz Core 2 Duo, rounding up doesn’t count.

I assume you did /ip to get that address when you were on EB. Otherwise that isn’t the right server. Pretty sure that isn’t the right address because ping is disabled at the game server level, I always get 100% loss. I’m seeing 64.25.38.141 as the IP for the EB right now.

Well the game is north of 16GB in size and it’ll need room to decompress the install which is, over 12GB. So I’ll say you will need around 30GB of free space to install the game.

sorudo.9054:

uhmmm, you’re forgetting the 7 years of reputation GW1 made in order to get the number you’re talking about, without that GW2 would end up with less then half the income they currently have.

I never played GWs, I was always under the impression it was a PvP centric game and I abhor those. What I thought I knew about GW was actually a vote against GW2 for me.

I bought GW2 solely on the reviews about it’s PvE game and the fact you didn’t have to have played GW to enjoy it. Also it’s B2P aspect was attractive. I had just finished 8 years on a subscription game, dropping well over $1000 in it’s lifetime and I was looking for a game that was considerably less expensive but not nickel and dime me like F2P/hybrid games like DDO or STO.

If they are so common then why are there still complainers?

tolunart.2095:

TooBz.3065:

How do you recommend we fix the problem. One possibility is to remove the tax make the exchange rates equal. 7g=100 gems and 100 gems = 7g. Would that be sufficient?

It is well known that gem values spike when new items are added to the cash shop, as a certain part of the player base rushes to get the new shinies nownownow by converting their spare gold into gems.

Buy X gems with, say 2000 gold on Monday before update. New items are added Tuesday, gem price spikes. Convert X gems back into 3000 gold. Repeat in two weeks.

Not a solution, but a brand new problem. The best way to make money in the game becomes “playing” the exchange.

Yea, you are going to need a greater spike that what you have currently if you want to do that. The rate difference is 38.5%. That would be Monday’s price of 8g per 100 becoming more than 11 on Tuesday. Over a month or 6 weeks it may be possible.

sorudo.9054:

lordkrall.7241:

Crovax.7854:

Oh I don’t know. How did they do it in GW1 for years?

They didn’t even have close to the same costs back then as they have now.
They have at least triple the number of employees, they have a completely different server-system that require way more and more advanced hardware.

They also had an in-game store in GW1, which people seem to forget for some reason.

GW1 is sold 7 mill times, that’s already 2.4X more then GW2.
also, all the GW1 items are fair and unlock, GW2 items are overpriced and way to much based on just one character.
and even if we simply ignore all of that, they have, like you said, 300+ employees.
that’s at least 3X more then when they were making factions, so making an expansion would logically be made 3X faster.

Doesn’t matter how much GW1 outsold GW2 in box sales what matters is income. In the 29 quarters NCSOFT reported GW income, 2Q2005 to 2Q2012, it made in total 199,718 million KrW. GW2 brought in more than that in it’s first 7 months, 201,236 million KrW. In the next six months it brought in an additional 53,370 million KrW.

So in a little more than a year GW2 has earned 25% more income than the 7+ years of GW. I would say that the model is working. It doesn’t prevent them from doing an expansion either, but it will likely be after the China release.

Well cases like keyboard/mouse is a personal preference.

The drawback with the Fractal is the lack of a rear fan and the mount is only a 92mm. Who doesn’t design cases where 120mm case fans are standard nowadays (other than HP)? Top mount PSU is also a throwback to older days. Also the dimensions are narrow, only 175mm or 6.9 inches. The case doesn’t have a lot of space above the MB which may be a problem if you go with a 3rd party CPU cooler.

But there simply isn’t a lot of cases to choose from around your price point.

True, tickets (and scraps) are the foil/hologram cards in the pack. Fact you can trade them in for something cooler is simply a “bonus” because everybody is buying keys for chests for the item sampler, right?

Lets turn the argument onto it’s side for a moment. If the exchange rate was more reasonable, allowing most players to buy sale and limited time items at the shop with gold, then how does the game stay open when it’s primary source of income post launch is selling gems for cash?

It’s a “can’t have your cake and eat it to” argument. The masses can’t play for free because the game isn’t financed with rainbows and pixie dust. And while the exchange is a feature, it’s a feature for those who have the time to earn large quantities of in game coin, as in treating the game like a job and putting in 8 hours a day. You can’t expect to install the game, play an hour and then buy some awesome armor skin.

The mined drop stats on tickets and scraps is around 1 in 40 and 1 in 4 respectively. That means about 1 ticket per 20 chests or 100 chests for 5 tickets. 100 chests need 100 keys and keys are 2100 gems per 25 so 8200 gems on average if the drop stats are correct. That’s over $100 in gems.

Tickets are a way to obfuscate the actual out of pocket cost for a skin. People made fun of EVE and players nearly rioted when they introduced a $60 dollar monocle. Yes you could always buy the gems with a ton of in game gold or buy it when it was only 1 ticket instead of 5 (or 7) but in the end it turns out to be a ridiculously priced luxury item post LS.

Evilbeavers.3964:

NCSOFT has been known to shut down games that are cash flow positive, case in point would be City of Heroes. I wouldn’t depend on them to make rational decisions.

I’ve come to believe that CoH’s closure was the result of throwing out the baby with the bathwater. They wanted to close Paragon Studios. It was a one trick studio and their last two ideas for a new MMO failed their gated development process. Without Paragon to support it and because it’s income was only in the $10-12 million a year range (GW2 earned over $20 million last quarter) they decided it wasn’t worth finding someone else to maintain/develop it so it was shut down.

NCSOFT may have been a bit gun shy since the Tabla Rasa debacle and didn’t want to keep the studio afloat anymore without them having some AAA MMO idea that’ll play well in Busan as well as NA and EU. That means it’ll need PvP and some e-sport aspect, two things that CoH didn’t do well and Paragon didn’t know how to fix (actually broke it more).

And before you get up in my grill about it I played CoH for eight years. I miss that game dearly because I don’t feel heroic or connected to any of my characters here as I did in CoH. The level of character customization and the ability to create your own backstory simply made it a game where you could really feel part of the world you inhabited.

I hate to say it but if everyone had one they wouldn’t be legendary. Yes we are all, as individuals, are on our own hero’s journey but we also are playing in a shared world but an item that by label is “legendary” should be difficult to acquire. And to craft one, what you need above everything else is the precursor weapon so they made that difficult to find. Sure there’s an extremely rare chance they will drop from a major chest or from playing the mystic slots and some people are luckier than others which is why you can get one off the TP. Of course you and everyone else wants one and they are rare so expect to pay though the nose for it.

John already showed us a while back how many of a particular precursor sold in a single day. Problem is we don’t see them because they simply don’t last long enough to register on the TP. It’s posted and sold between the times that item was sampled by gw2spidy, gw2tp or gw2db.

Contact support. Submit a ticket.

CanadianZombie.6095:

I mostly understand what you’re saying, but seems like once people resolve to buying gems with real money it will be to late for those who try to do it with gold in game.

Unless I miss understood you comment, this system is made by the Devs couldn’t they simply set the price for 100 gems at example: 8g. Instead of this system of buying gems from those who sold them, the Devs make the gems in the first place so I don’t see the problem, they can make any amount of gems/gold appear at will so stock on gems should never even be a problem.

But again on your comment about people might resort to buying gems making the pool go up, if it were to be true it doesn’t seem to be working so far. Probably do to the fact the TP is coming out with things people want due to their limited time offer. In conclusion I still believe the devs need to make something happen now, cause this is becoming quite painful for those who try to farm their way into awesome items.

Sorry I tend to ramble on this subject. I’ll try to be clearer.

The devs didn’t want to continuously produce either gold or gems from nothing and inject them into the game, beyond the amounts they used to set up the exchange in the first place. As I said the purpose of the exchange is to get players to provide the gold that is then sold for cash (via gems). Gems for gold is the carrot that makes that possible. It also helps those who are cash poor but time rich and can earn enough gold in game to cover their wants and desires from the store.

As Zaxares points out in the early days players simply didn’t have the gold to spend on gems either and as they accumulated their wealth and bought gems the price to do so naturally increased on it’s own. This way the devs don’t have to “twist the knob” to adjust the rate every few days/weeks, it happens on all it’s own.

You also have to remember that this game once bought runs on a pure free to play cash shop model. It’s not like the hybrid games that have F2P plus a alternative “subscription” which unlocks items you would have to purchase from the store as a F2P player.

Or you can cut back on the k-cups, Starbucks, pack of cigs, case of beer or whatever your daily vice may be and spend some of that toward the game you are, in theory, enjoy playing. Heck my grocer carries Gem cards, $25 for 2000. That would have cost you 168g in game now.

You have to understand, the exchange was set up to be autonomous. It was seeded with a little gold and an enormous amount of gems and it’s the ratio between those two that in turn sets the exchange rates. As we buy gems the gold (minus 15%) goes into the exchanges gold reserve and we get gems from it’s gem reserve. When someone sells gems the gems are added to the exchanges gem reserve and an amount of gold (again minus 15%) is paid out. Since players have been buying far more gems than selling the gem reserve at the exchange has gone down rapidly while the amount of gold in the exchange has gone up at a quicker and quicker pace. It’s entirely automatic. A couple of simple calculations, adding or subtracting from two reserves and presto, new rate is calculated after every transaction.

Also the primary purpose of the exchange is as a legal way to buy gold. The thing is that gold paid out is the gold we paid in to get gems. This way there is no “new” gold added to the economy from the exchange (or gems) and any gold going in and coming back out is hit by the 15% gold sink twice.

To answer you next question yes, in theory, the exchange can run out of gems. Also the rate of increase of the exchange rate will likely get faster and faster. We jumped roughly 1 gold per 100 gems due to the slot sale and winter minis. Three weeks ago it jumped another 1 gold jump due to the account bound tools and weapon skins. A week before that it was 1/2 gold jump due to whatever else they added to the store and the week before that … well you get the idea. That’s the only control ANet has, offering new items, returning popular items that were removed for a limited time and putting other popular items on sale.

Remember also in theory as rates go up, it should drive more players to buy gems with cash or even buy gems for gold, the later would help brake the climb some.

I’ve copied the entire game folder onto a new computer and all I needed to do was then run Gw2.exe (under admin probably). Then I made a shortcut to gw2.exe and that was it.

Probably falls under drug use reference. This isn’t a democracy. It’s their servers, their rules.

You could try to fight it if you haven’t by contacting support but I wouldn’t expect it to go your way. Remember the game is rated T for parents.

It’s like sending out thank you notes. Your Mom makes you do it because it’s expected. Now if most people don’t and you do, it looks to those receiving the note that you are a a person of high character. Doesn’t matter to them you were forced to do so, just that you did while others didn’t.

Romo.3709:

Behellagh.1468:

And don’t forget that the prices are set based on cash not exchanged gold. So the question should be is $6.25 too much for a helm?

If you can get a whole armor set for a $3.75, then hell yeah it is!

But are those armor sets nicer aesthetically compared to those helms? I don’t find the 500 gems armors all that exciting but those helms are awesome and ANet knows it and priced them accordingly.

And don’t forget that the prices are set based on cash not exchanged gold. So the question should be is $6.25 too much for a helm?

Ask for gem cards for Christmas.

The mini Mr Sparkles and the backpack is so ANet sells a lot of gems for the 4th quarter to bolster sales so year over year numbers aren’t as disastrous at first look. Lets face it a year ago GW2 had mondo huge income numbers as 3 million players bought the game that quarter. Now that most of the income is cash shop, their income is down significantly and those who simply glance at the numbers when they come out in February may unduly panic.

That’s a long explanation Silmar but pretty much on the money. The one thing I did think of months after my version of that post was that ANet may actually add gold to gems to the exchange when a new account is open, at the same initial ratio when the game went live. So little gold, metric ton of gems at roughly the 30s per 100 gem ratio. This way the market is seeded for the total number of accounts whenever they were created.

Mahonriancur.9462:

Pandemoniac.4739:

Who says there is any inflation to curb? The exchange rate going up does not necessarily equate to inflation.

There is inflation with the price of gems. Monetary values have decreased and the gold is not worth as much as it used to be while the prices of items increases and the value of gems increase. It is this issue that I refer to in the game. It is becoming too expensive to buy anything on the market due to this inflation.

Inflation has ruined many games and I do not want to see it ruin this game.

There isn’t inflation, there’s a decreasing amount of gems for sale for gold. It can be alleviated by players selling gems for gold. But until selling gems > buying gems in numbers, the rate will continue to increase until the gold for gems price is simply too tempting to pass up.

Go ahead and download away (actually you can do it once and simply copy it over to your other machines, it’s quicker that way). But the thing is you can only be running it on one machine at a time. No dual boxing. You are buying an account, not a per machine product.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Just to clarify. All players do matter in an MMO, just some matter more. We all paid the initial cost of the game, so if we stop playing, there’s no real loss. That said, all players are potential microtransaction customers. Anet would like people to do microtransactions, so they’ll continue to bring out different products in hopes that players decide to spend real money. If Gold -> Gems become out of reach, and you really want an item, you need to make the decision of whether to buy Gems or not.

Yoroiookami’s comment was since they can’t afford go by Gems with Gold anymore due to the price then they’ll show ANet by not buying any items from the Gem Shop anymore if they don’t fix the Gold to Gem rate. That’s not a threat if you never bought Gems with cash. While your presence in game (note they didn’t say they would stop playing) is a benefit to ANet because more players in an MMO, more likely another player will stay because they have people to play with/against, it doesn’t pay the bills.

Now Nexon’s quarterly reports they do list what percentage of active players in their FTP games buy something from the cash shop every month and that number is around 10% and Nexon’s annual income is around $1 BILLION (/pinkie) dollars. I image our percentage of cash shop participation has to be higher since there’s a higher barrier to join thus a lower number of players to start with but as long as enough players are buying gems with cash, those that aren’t are simply window dressing for those who do.

If it is a bug and they fix it, players who bought it because they heard it was acting as a master kit will be SOL because the documentation still lists the basic rates. So buyer beware.

I’ve gotten the LS e-mail fine. I’ve gotten the “is this IP you” e-mail fine. I’ve never gotten any of these promotional e-mails. Ever.

But she was hired before Nexon bought their share in NCSOFT.

Allisa Wonderland.8192:

Gems are still the Sam price at launch… Gold is worth less.

What’s too expensive is the gem store products.

Cheaper store prices will result in downward pressure on the in game similar trading post items, which will in turn reduce the amount of gold a player must acquire to purchase these trading post items.. Less demand for gold means players will not be farming it as much, which will reduce the expansion of the total gold amount in the economy.

Yes, no?

If you buy gems with gold, I feel that you either 1) mid a fortune on the trading post or 2) have no value for your real life time. Hopefully it’s the former.

I buy a little bit of gems with gold everyday because I know that at some point they’ll have something I want but they rarely have multiple things I want over a short period of time. And if I don’t have enough gems for it, oh well. I would like a new car but can’t afford one right now, oh well.

MMOs have always had a problem with gold sellers. Here they provide a legal means to buy gold with cash but they chose to pay the gold buyers in gold provided by other players who bought gems with gold. Makes it a closed system where buying gold won’t lead to inflation. Sure there are other gold sources in the game just that buying gold isn’t going to be one of them.

My comment to Yoro was to say threatening to stop doing something which doesn’t affect their income isn’t a threat. That’s like saying you’re going to stop leaching the wifi at the coffee shop while sitting in your car. Doesn’t really matter to the coffee shop since you aren’t buying anything anyways.

Jon.1376:

Behellagh.1468:

It’s not racial armor it’s cultural armor.

racial is a synonym for cultural

No because culture is a local phenomenon. If you live in Japan and in the summer wear a yukata it doesn’t matter what “race” you are because it’s a traditional attire and not out of the ordinary (well during summer festivals). The clothes themselves aren’t going to draw the attention. However if you decide to were one in the Germany you will probably get stares because they aren’t worn there. The clothes are cultural.

That’s why gamers go with the DIY desktop route. Most laptops are for suckers when gaming is involved. CPU and GPUs are lower performing, often the drives are 5400RPM which is noticeable, you get less performance for the same amount of money, it’s not upgradable beyond more ram and maybe swapping the drive and if you spill your drink on one it’s very bad news where on a desktop you run down to the store for a new keyboard.

It should run well but you but two caveats.

First, better to get two 4GB sticks than one 8GB. There is some benefit from using a dual channel memory setup. But then again you may be looking to expand to 16GB in the future by buying another 8GB so to each there own.

Second, that isn’t the K version of the i5-4670 (well doesn’t look like it) which is needed if you are planning any overclocking. And if you decide to get K model and attempt overclocking then it’s advisable to get a 3rd party CPU cooler and possibly up the PSU by 100 watts, 200 watts if you are planning a higher end video card in the future.

Edit: As SolarNova points out if you get a K version then you will need a Z87 based motherboard and not an H87 based one. Blue wizard needs caffeine badly.

It’s not racial armor it’s cultural armor.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Primitive Lion.9513:

@SandraSolace.7682: Thanks. I thought this was the Support area. I see what you mean and I may try that.

@Inculpatus cedo.9234: Good questions. It was a stand-alone purchase, not an upgrade, and yes – before 1st Anniversary. I didn’t realize that by being an early adopter I would lose out on some bonuses. =\ I hope that’s not how this story ends. Thanks for your helpfulness.

The items in question are only provided to those that purchased or upgraded to the Heroic Edition, be that Standard or Digital Deluxe. No need to contact CS. =)

Unless you bought the Digital Deluxe upgrade after the anniversary in which case you get the Heroic Edition Items. Check the description at the Gem Store. Yes I know this doesn’t apply to the OP.

@Primative Lion – Well as a PC game ages two things happen, the price goes down and/or bonus items are added. As I was standing in the mile long checkout line on Blacker Thursday at Target I noticed that Sims 3 now includes a few items that weren’t in the original and it was also cheaper. Blame marketing and retail life cycle.

They went up by the same percentage. The Gem to Gold rate is roughly 72% of the Gold to Gem rate.

Fine, let me grab some data off of GW2Spidy. Can’t quite get 2 months so lets try six.

May 31st: Gd->Gm = 3g17s70c Gm->Gd = 2g29s52c
Nov 30th: Gd->Gm = 8g28s Gm->Gd = 5g98s

So 2.60x with Gd->Gm and 2.60x with Gm->Gd.

Looks right to me.

Oh, and the ratio between the two rates is 0.7225 or 0.85 × 0.85.

bOgz.7263:

Psycho Robot.7835:

bOgz.7263:

Its probably a marketing strategy, I believe its behaving like mystic kit now or even better to attract buyers.

And they will revert the kit to normal after the sale ends.

I understand Anet does some unpopular things sometimes, but christ dude, they’re not Snidely Whiplash

Sorry Im not familiar with Snidely (googled it, the cartoon he’s in was in ’60s and no character description in wiki, thought I could see a history of his dirty marketing)

Anyway, the description in-game doesnt match its performance. A post above showed that copper kit is salvaging at a rate on par with mystic kit. This is misleading.

Or way back to 1999 when he was played by Alfred Molina in the live action movie, made during the 60’s morning cartoon nolstalgia live action remake phase in Hollywood.

Yoroiookami.3485:

And here we are, few months later – 100 gems for 8 gold. This is getting a bit ridiculous…it’s not really encouraging me to buy gems for real money, but rather not buy anything at all.

If you only bought gems with gold then in ANet’s eyes your no different than someone who never bought gems either with gold or cash. They don’t make money when you buy something with gems, only when you buy those gems with cash.

You are told why but you don’t seem to believe it. That CPU is similar to the A8-5600K with no GPU, a lower base clock but a higher turbo clock (not that it’ll matter when running the game).

You are looking at similar CPU performance to an Intel i3-3240. The game is a lot more CPU dependent rather than GPU which is why it seems it’s performance is subpar even with a 270x when compared to other games especially FPSers.

XFlyingBeeX.2836:

Dont you understand me? It is not CPU/GPU who is bottlenecking … it is server.
I did test and as you can see this game use 4 cores.

Intel has better Single CPU performance but it is not that much faster…

EDIT
At first i thought that overclocking my FX from 3,5Ghz to 4,5GHz will boost FPS in GW2… but i dont get boost in LA even CPU usage goes from 60-65% to 50%…

Duh! It’s well know that the game only uses 3 to 4 cores worth of CPU performance but you are still limited by the performance of a single core in that environment (running 3 to 4 cores worth of work). Most of the other threads still need to synchronize back to the main (or secondary from the POV of CPU usage) thread at some point during each frame.

The fundamental design criteria that the AMD CPU engineers were shooting for was similar performance between one FX module (that’s two cores) to an Intel core with HT when both are running two threads. Anything other than that scenario the Intel core wins big. That is why and Intel desktop i5 or i7 beats the snots out of an AMD FX in this game when there are large crowds of other players about. I’m talking stock clocks here, no overclocking voodoo, no single core turbo benchmarks.

And how do you measure their server’s performance? Ping? That’s a combination of their server and the performance of all the hops from there to your system.

To compare.

That CPU is dual core running at 2GHz (not FX but older Athlon II design to clarify) and the GPU is the HD 6480G (240 SP@444MHz). I think the screen rez of that HP is 1366×768.

Now to compare I have a desktop running the A8-3820 which is a quad core, Athlon II base, running at 2.5GHz and the integrated GPU is the HD 6550D which is 400 SP@600MHz. At 1366×768 at Best Performance I’m getting 28fps in LA by the MF, 26fps if I switch to native sampling. At that setting (with native sampling) my GPU was running at 66% and my quad core was running at 60% (these are actual game % not the overall system).

Now when I pop over to Gendarran Fields, looking out from the top of the ramp looking out at the windmill, I’m getting 45fps with the GPU at 76% and the CPU at 66%.

That means I’m using roughly 50-65% more CPU than that laptop CPU can deliver and 50-70% what that GPU can deliver.

So don’t think you will hit 30fps in the great outdoors and yes it’ll be in the 10fps range in player dense areas.

Nexon owns roughly 15% of NCSOFT. They bought it from the CEO’s personal share in June of 2012 which IIRC left him with roughly 10% of NCSOFT.

According to the current drop data on the wiki, they’ve only seen 1 in 376 chests.

I see they restarted the drop collection page. They only have 375 odd chests as a sample.

Buster.4018:

Checked. It wouldn’t have ran OK all this time if wasn’t.

Yea but it was running OK and then not. PCIe bus width is just not a matter of electrical connection but the number of lanes are negotiated at every boot and occasionally gets assigned fewer than the max. Plus repeated thermal expansion and contraction can work a card out of being firmly placed in the slot and that may also affect the number of PCIe lanes assigned.

Run GPU-Z and see what the system thinks are the number of lanes assigned to the card. If it reads lower than 16 press the little ? next to the bus interface box and it will launch a little render program to see if the driver had reduced the number of lanes for desktop graphics Vs higher performance graphics.

Only think I can think of for such a huge shift in performance.

Gods! It’s not poor server optimization!

Not all software is (actually very few are) written to take advantage of all the CPU power present in a multi-core CPU. Also any single thread (the game has over 40 but only 1/4 use more than 10% of a single core’s performance) can’t use more than 100% of a single core. And that’s why single core performance matters and why more lower performance cores like those found in the AMD FX architecture doesn’t make the game perform as well as Intel’s fewer but much higher performance cores.