Guild Wars 2

Did they ever say MF affects Crate drops?

I’ll pay up to the price of an unidentified dye for a known one.

Wolfey.3407:

He pulls out a Chicago Cubs hat then dies in October.

+1 Internets

What?

“Lock box gambling is unethical”

Unethical – not conforming to a high moral standard; morally unacceptable

Moral – of or relating to principles of right and wrong in behavior

So really this is a discussion about morality and who decided this type of behavior is good or bad. So the question is now who gets to classify this behavior as bad?

As I’ve stated in the past items like capsule toys, CCG packs, heck even old time baseball cards, included a chance of getting a desirable “rare” card and society didn’t blink twice over giving our kids a couple of bucks or allow them to spend their allowance on these things. It’s a grab bag, you will always get something, sometimes it’s really good.

And that’s the thing, it’s society at large that deems whether an activity is good or bad, usually codified by law. Now you may think a politician accepting campaign contributions from a corporation unethical but the law of the land says it’s alright.

Looking at just MMOs, is ANet doing something that nobody else is doing? No, other games from other companies have included “rare” items in their cash shop grab bags.

So society at large doesn’t have a problem with “rare” items in grab bags and the MMO industry doesn’t either. With that I’m going answer your question with a resounding NO. It’s not unethical. Now that doesn’t mean as individuals we may not think that it’s ethical, but that’s left to the individual.

If you truly think it’s unethical, don’t participate. The crates do drop, very rarely, on the isle but they do drop.

@StarNightz Not an adjective the mods here like. Fair warning.

munkiman.3068:

There’s one giant elephant in the room no one ever seems to consider, the items being used that are in question are account bound/soul bound items, meaning they have no value beyond your personal worth for them. You cannot compare that to anything in RL. Not to mention the fact that this “worth” versus what it might actually cost to get one is very out of balance. You’re also talking about digital pixel that you can never actually own, so even in that sense it’s very much a sham. It’s basically selling a chance at a snake oil cure that does nothing but look pretty on your shelf. When looking at it that way it’s a very different scenario than simply gambling.

Well there are things with sentimental value over whatever actual value it has. That old concert T-shirt. That bad poem from your first love. Things like that. And it’s that sentimental value that makes it priceless to you. Even limited editions of things, their value may fade over time but it’s still has meaning to you.

Vizeroth.1295:

Gambling preys on the basic human nature to be highly motivated by random positive reinforcement. While this behavior might have served humanity well in surviving nature, it is now used to perpetuate poverty by criminal organizations that seek to leech profit from people instead of providing equitable value.

Such as “The State”, is that the criminal organization you are referring to? Lotteries, percentage of slots income even hotel taxes all directly or indirectly act as an income source for various governments in the US (local, state) and Canada through gambling. Someone somewhere in government has decided that gambling isn’t unethical.

ANet can make more money selling chances for something that is statistically rare through an RNG than simply offering it up directly at the TP. To keep it actually rare they would have to price it at such a ridiculous amount the negative press alone would dissuade them. It would be like EVE’s monocle-gate where their price for a cosmetic monocle for your character render was priced in real currency as $70.

Now $70 here is 5600 gems. That’s 62 BLC keys or 46 Southsun crates. Doesn’t sound as bad does it? Now if they put up a skin for 4800 gems would it sell as well as making it say a 1 in 40 chance to get it in a box costing only 120? It’s all perception. Charging 4800 Gems, $60, smacks up elitism while making it a chance at 120 gems puts everyone, moneyed and poor on the same footing.

It’s all about maximizing gem purchases in the end. And as long as their analysis says they will make more money this way than offering it straight up for sale, this will persist. However if they keep making less and less each time they do it this way, then maybe they will reconsider.

A) Read this thread.

B) Learn to love the wiki. Loads of answers there.

Okay onto your questions.

1) Can’t really help you here. I started with a Mesmer and have just started with a Thief which is a bit more complicated. But I can see that melee oriented Warriors or range + AoE oriented Elementalists should be easier to play but I have no first hand experience.

2) No. Your skills are based on the weapons you are currently using, one assignable heal skills based on your class, three assignable skills from a large number that you can unlock with skill points (1 per level plus other certain game challenges to unlock additional ones) and a race skill (your Norn animal forms). There are also trait points that you can use to tweak your build. These modify aspects of your attacks and defenses.

3) Don’t know, sorry the extent to my keybinding is to adding strafing to the keys around the arrow keys.

4) Primary is Gold/Silver/Bronze, 100 of the later to make one of the former (ie 1 gold = 100 silver). There are other currencies in the game. Karma for helping in quests, some items are available with Karma only. Each of the few dungeons in the game has it’s own currency to buy exclusive items only available to those who actually do the dungeons. A currency for doing daily and monthly quotas, one for PvP, one for WvW, ones for certain limited time events like Halloween. Guilds get a currency. Most of the time you can’t exchange one for the other. Lots of the specialty ones are nontradable. There are some exceptions, check the wiki.

Sorry I couldn’t be more informative.

Check out the item’s price history at GuildWarsTrade or GW2Spidy. Look at a month graph. Is your price high compared to the average? Is the average moving away from your price or toward it? If toward it, that item may sell at that price. If away from it then may be best to relist it.

Mystic.5934:

1) you should NOT have to read a game’s forum to get insight into what to expect in the game. I’d prefer it say on the tooltip for that item something like “high chance at passion fruit/flowers and karka shells, very low chance at minis or anything you are expecting”
2) you did not pay money to get a mini. you paid money to support Anet.
3) You would of been better off selling the gems for gold, then buying off the TP:
Kasmeer=17g = 758.3 gems = $9.52
In fact, you said you still have $20 uninvested in crates. just use that to buy your mini.

Fine. Maybe they read the release notes on the main site at least.

Southsun Supply Crates will drop rarely from creatures during the Secret of Southsun event. These crates contain Southsun crafting materials and a chance at a wide variety of items, such as shoulder skins, new boosts and convenience items, and a rare chance at new weapon skins and minis. Southsun Supply Crates can also be purchased from the Black Lion Trading Company (see below for more info)

and

You can now purchase the Southsun Supply Crate in the Consumable category of the Gem Store for 1 for 150 gems or 10 for 1200 gems. These special crates contain Southsun crafting materials and a chance at items such as shoulder skins, new boosts and convenience items, and a rare chance at new weapon skins and minis. The Southsun Supply Crates will only be available until June 10. The Southsun Supply Crates will also be a limited-time rare drop off the creatures on the island during this time.

Note the parts I bolded and underlined. This is where we have the disconnect. The devs clearly stated that there is 1) only a chance and 2) in certain cases a “rare” chance. It seems as if a lot of players mistake this as a “sure thing” if they open, what 5, 10, 25 chests? So what’s a “chance”, 1 in 10? “rare chance” 1 in 50? 1 in 100? We don’t know, the devs DON’T share that information but if past history is any indication with “rare” items in BLC or Orr Jewelry Boxes it really means rare. How many Unidentified Dyes do you have to open on average to get one that’s worth more than what you could have sold the Unidentified Dye for?

Why are we always shocked when this happens? It’s $1.50 USD in bulk or 3.7g per pull. Just learn to live without if it’s a problem and if you do just happen to get one with that one dropped crate, rejoice at your good fortune. Congrats you found a $20 on the sidewalk with no one else around.

Katai.6240:

No, I think what they’re asking for is a pop-dialog that says

“Warning: You cannot equip multiple unique items with the same name on a single character. Do you still want to purchase?”

Heck, we get pop-up dialogs for salvaging green items, and those are basically worthless. Having a pop-up for a laurel vendor isn’t too far fetched, is it?

If that’s the case that’s fine but then expect a bunch of threads about having to double click though the warning and how annoying that is.

So what you are all suggesting is that ANet should code up a special version of the vendor interface, just for Laurels, that will go into your character’s inventory, bank and equipment slots to check to make sure the you don’t do something stupid? Right now all the vendor code does is highlights the items that you don’t have enough currency, a fairly simple test.

And for the record I haven’t played WoW either.

Edit: Unique was defined in the Wiki in November last year. Granted the mention on the page for Ascended didn’t happen until the end of March this year. But to say that Unique wasn’t defined until rather late is a misnomer.

On one hand you all say “but Unique isn’t universal between MMOs” but on the other say “but it’s not the same from GW1”. You can’t have it both ways. In GW1 it was a color coded item rarity level, what GW2 calls quality. Is it being used as a quality in GW2? Is it its own quality color? Is Unique displayed in the same location on an item’s info box as Rare or Exotic are? No it’s not. It’s listed below that where limitations are listed. Limitations like level minimum, soulbound, account bound yet this didn’t make anyone wonder if it had some important meaning.

Because historically it’s more in line with the going price.

See I sell lots of runes in the last few weeks and I’ve noticed something, and you can look at GuildWarsTrade or GW2Spidy to see it. In the wee early hours on the East Coast, prices of some runes shoot up. This is because there are a lot of older sale items that simply are never sold. Once all the the reasonably priced ones are gone, poof, price soars through the roof until someone posts one back in the range it traded earlier in the day.

Now if you simply undercut by a copper or two when the price is say, 6s50c when the “average” for the day was 5s12c, it’ll never sell. People will start putting ones up for sale at 5s50c and it’ll be undercut throughout the day and maybe by midnight it’ll be under 5s. Eventually those are bought up including any others unsold in the low 5s range and suddenly the price returns to that 6s50c. Rince and recycle.

I’m liquidating these items, don’t want to wait.

Cooper.8049:

Hello,

So I am brand new at this game. Just got a pc. The only MMO I ever played was DCUO on my ps3 so I understand the MMO terms and get the whole concept.. I currently have a human, But where are the factions? Like good vs evil..

If I ever did team up with someone do we have to be the same race? And if I am correct every class can be a healer?

Do a lot of people play this game? I hope so I just spent 60 bucks lol..

I was a healer on dcuo just got bored of the game same thing over and over again and the devs just didn’t care!

Also, what are the classes?

Tank, DPS, healer and controller? Just curious

Thanks!

The only faction combat is Server Vs Server called World Vs World Vs World, where three servers fight over four maps in a siege war variant of capture the flag. Progress here unlocks bonuses on your server that all players benefit in. Of course you still have PvP but not in the open PvE world.

It’s not that every class is a healer, every class gets heals (3 actually but only one can be assigned at a time). Some “professions” (classes elsewhere) have AoE heals/regen and everyone can revive a downed player or NPC.

The help system in the game is the official wiki (see wiki link at top of screen). It will provide a lot of answers to your basic questions about professions, race, skills, traits, etc. It also has some very detailed maps of the world.

The traditional MMO triad doesn’t really exist in this game. Neither is the need to be a member of a formal party, most of the time. It’s more personal quests or random (well not really random) events that are “flash mobbed” to complete. Everyone is a jack of all trades although some professions may favor a little bit melee or range, burst or DoT and single or AoE.

You never outlevel an area. Your level will be adjusted to match the critters in your current area. So will your armor and weapons however better quality armor and weapons will still be helpful as well as traits.

The game is designed to eliminate the need to compete with other players in the open world. Everyone is eligible for loot assuming you at least helped during the event. Resource nodes are instanced so no mad rush to get there first. Just about everything you do will give you XP from gathering resources to rezing fallen Players/NPCs to simple wandering into a new area.

There are features that allow you to shunt all crafting materials to the bank without needing to be near one. Also you can sell items on the games TP without the need to haul butt back to a representative (but you do need to see one to collect you money or items you bought off the TP).

There is a sticky thread at the top of this board labeled “OMG If you only knew this” full of useful tips.

That should get you going. Remember, the wiki is your friend.

Mazel Tov.

Don’t know then, sorry.

Rainzar.6905:

where is the prestige in having a “rare” skin when the only way to obtain it is gamble?

a crate costs 150 gem, whats wrong with selling a scelerite token for 600 gems? that way you have a choice, you can “gamble” (which seems to be poison of choice) or go with the “safe bet” and pay more. would of been happy to buy fused tokens with gems (with real money) if i was given that choice. instead i am given shirts, and more shirts… and reused skins from november.

Except if the chance right now is only 5% then 3000 gems would be the “right” price and few would pay $37.50 for a game skin. It’ll be monocle-gate. If it’s “rare” then it needs to be rare, not something only players with lots of disposable income could simply buy, cause that’ll be unfair to the ramen noodle/Kraft Mac & Cheese crowd. It goes back to that rare foil card or limited edition palette swapped figure in a blind-box. It’s suppose to be a joyous surprise. If you could simply afford buying a case of cards or a crate of blind-boxes to shuck through to get that “rare” then it loses it’s specialness.

The devs not surprisingly mean that rare is actually rare, as in few, as in not everyone will come close to getting one. It’s a non-tradable, limited edition thing whose actual number available is dictated by probability, binomial theory and number of chests dropped or purchased during the event. It’s the only thing to keep “rare” rare.

Otherwise it’s merely a souvenir, “I participated in X and all I got was this lousy skin”.

Checked out the wiki to get an idea on “classes”, races and crafting specialization. Also the basic UI and keybinding.

Astralporing.1957:

Behellagh.1468:

Sorry, you’re crazy. Unique is self explanatory and if you weren’t all that sure what it meant it was spelled out in the wiki.

1. It is not self-explanatory, which you would know if you read through this thread (or other similar ones) carefully. For example, GW1 also had Unique items. The term however meant something different than in GW2. There are many other MMO’s where this term is used for other things as well. And of course the basic meaning of Unique (the “self-explanatory” one) is in direct contradiction of the fact that you can in fact buy more than one.
2. I’d prefer if this game could be played without having to use off-game resources.

But I DIDN’T play GW1. The item is classified quality wise as Ascended, Unique is a qualifier like Soulbound or minimum level requirements and was displayed near the bottom of the list of item attributes. And in previous MMOs I’ve played Unique means unique, as in you can only EQUIP one of it.

Show me some other place in the game where the vendor interface does anything to prevent you from buying something you can’t use. Lets me buy armor and weapons I can’t use yet. Lets me buy cooking ingredients that are account bound when none of my characters have chef as a discipline. It lets me buy weaker items than I’ve currently have equipped. So why did you expect them to have coded the Laurel vendor any differently?

This is a case of buyers remorse, plain and simple. Yes, you “wasted” your precious time gated Laurels buying something you didn’t fully understand that 30 seconds with the wiki would have prevented you from doing. But since Laurels are so precious, an actual “rare” item that is limited about 40 a month, maybe, just maybe, you should be careful about on how and what you spent it on. You think?

No, no, you all just start clicking on items at the Laurel merchant. What does this “Offense” or “Defense” mean? What does “Unique” mean? Not important, it already took me weeks to earn enough Laurels to get something, can’t waste any time learning what those things mean. Clicky, clicky, ah crap!

Quick to the forums to express my outrage over my own actions. It’s all ANet’s fault for letting me do something dumb that was entirely avoidable on my part. They should have protected me from my own stupidity. I take no responsibility over my actions.

That’s what I’m reading here.

Edit: And the wiki is the game’s help system (/wiki <keyword>). Yes that annoys me. Yes I would rather have tool tip style help for terms and a proper optional in game tutorial.

Have you aborted the download and then copy the *.dat file over?

If you have a minimum acceptable price to sell the item at then why don’t you just list it at that price?

What you are asking for is an inverse eBay price cap for sellers. Sorry the TP is designed to favor buyers not sellers. You make sellers compete so those who are buying can get a better deal. I’m talking the buy now crowd, not the long term planners or the market flippers but the everyday Joe who is buying equipment and mats for themselves.

Sorry if favoring them is cutting into your income/profits.

HawkMeister.4758:

It´s completely irrelevant how-the-kitten-ever unique is defined in a game.

This is exclusively the fault of a shoddy programmed UI, that leaves the user alone at key decisions during the game.

OP has every right to rage and if only more would, then the UI team would finally “feel the whip”, so that this type of superfluous error would stop diverting valuable GM resources.

Fanboism and RTFM posts excusing and actually blaming the user on this are so counterproductive, it´s past ridiculous.

Sorry, you’re crazy. Unique is self explanatory and if you weren’t all that sure what it meant it was spelled out in the wiki. The OP blindly purchased multiple items that only one of can be used on his character at a time. Oops, lesson learned, move along.

AmadeoKristoff.5493:

What bothers me is that in GW, we had the whole “pay for the item you want” when it came to costumes/skins. What I do not like about GW2 is that said skins is a “random chance”. Why not just release a skin and ask for upfront gem payment rather than putting it as a “chance” item? This gives everyone a fair chance, those who use credit cards, or convert currencies, to plan and buy what they want. I miss what ArenaNet used to do with the GW market. I wish they would do the same here.

That’s because it has gotten into a lot of MMO cash shop team’s heads that Gashapon/Capsule Toys/Blind-Box/CCG card packs are the way to to sell “rares”. While opening such an item can be exciting the first time, it quickly leads to disappointment. This isn’t a problem for children who might only be able to buy a few every month but of a employed adult, one who wouldn’t hesitate to buy cases to get a set of rares or all the toys in that line. The trick is to find the right rate where the moneyed adult can get what they want for $X but not so common that it redefines the concept of “rare”.

Sure they could offer those skins in the store but I cringe at the thought of how much they would be, to be equivalent to what they got by using an RNG.

Ryuujin.8236:

It’s not called greed, or impatience. It’s called business.

Profit is like kinetic energy; both it’s magnitude AND it’s velocity is important. An item that fetches a 10% better margin, but sits on the shelf for twice as long is overall less productive than selling fast and cheap.

It’s not ignorance or stupidity – for many traders whether to undercut or whether to set the price is a calculated decision based on their experience of the market, their spreadsheets and graphs.

You misunderstand me. I’m referring to players who try to sell an item and then come here to complain how either it’s not selling or are upset that others undercut them continuously. If they weren’t trying to maximize they profit by pricing an item, which if they bothered to do a bit of research first would show that price being at the high end of the trading range, they will likely not have to wait as long for it to sell. But because they wanted the few extra copper/silver/gold they need to understand patience.

However if you are willing to forgo that extra few copper each while still making a profit, you can turn over items at a relatively good clip, “as long as The Price is Right”.

@FourthVariety

“an audience 20 times smaller than WoW” is still 400 -500K. There’s not a lot of MMOs with current populations that large.

Also from what I can glean, box sales for GW2 are assigned as sales income to NC Interactive and NC Europe (since they are handling retail distribution) in those reports and only direct online purchases are assigned to ANet. Likely Gem card sales are assigned the same way.

@CoRtex

Lineage is still what passes for a subscriber game in Korea (rate is higher than Aion’s), plus a cash shop (which you can notice when that went into effect when it’s sales doubled). GW2 is a buy 2 play game plus a cash shop and right now we are transitioning into relying on the cash shop for the bulk of sales.

Still waiting for tin foil hats at the Gem Shop.

Taking a SWAG here but could it be GW1 loot players have access to?

You may have better luck with Powerball. It’s estimated to be worth $600 million for this Saturday’s drawing. Only $2 for a 175 million to 1 odds. Almost as good as chests and keys.

It’s called impatience and greed. People want to sell their item NOW but aren’t willing to sell it NOW to an existing buying who may only be willing to pay, say half.

Oh and when you posted your item for 4g, by how much did YOU undercut the existing low price?

Did you reinstall the drivers or update them to a current version? Are you running that add on everyone keeps talking about that improves the look of games (don’t remember the name).

Monty Python, Galaxy Quest and Blade Runner (in The Grove near the Lion’s Arch gate) are the three that obviously spring to mind.

LeMiranda.9026:

Wow, you just gotta love how they drop some bullkitten answer on you and that’s that. Simply put, my apparently dimwit hero keeps helping people around Tyria for rates which vary from insulting copper to a couple silver coins. Now, even as he sees the gem rates rise like +300% he keeps on receiving 99copper for his deeds; that’s just awesome!! Long live the kitten heroes of Tyria. Why would a hero want gems anyway you might say; well, apparently when he’s not being a grinding machine he likes to enjoy the pleasures of life and the leisures that the gems provide. So, tired of being kittened by society he abandons his heroic path to exploit the market until further notice. (This is another different topic but I’m really insulted by the fact that I made more gold on 10H of flipping than on +600H of gameplay). JMTC.

I’m getting the sense you’re bitter.

So everything would be alright with the world if the Gold to Gem option didn’t exist and Gems were only purchasable with cash? If so then your problem is not with the exchange but with players who can take advantage of it more they you can. Do you get this upset over being beaten in PvP or ganked in WvW? Do you get upset when someone posts they got some nifty elite weapon, even a precursor, from a chest while you got some 19s set of gloves? How about those who can level a new character to 80 in days and not weeks? Upset at them as well?

You do realize it’s in the game solely as a consideration for those who do make large amounts of gold, siphoning it out of the immediate economy. It’s rewarding people who, IMO, make the game their second (maybe first) job.

Yea! We’re third. Those last two POIs and one vista are finally mine!

They all suffer with poor graphics.

Laptop two is using netbook class hardware so that’s right out.

Laptop three uses a bit more modern hardware than Laptop one and the CPU is a bit faster and the integrated graphics is also faster (but that’s like saying roller skating is faster than skateboarding but either form of transport can’t beat the speed of an actual car).

If price is your limiting factor, than Laptop Three is better than nothing. However if you can afford it, there are laptops that are in the $650-850 range online with either a GT 730M, GT 640M, HD 7730M or HD 8730M. Any of these will perform loads better than a humble integrated Intel HD Graphics 4000.

The flash mob style teaming in most of the world plus no conventional MMO Triad means you don’t really have to communicate. Even in WvW it’s just a few calling out on /team or /squad where to go next or a scouting report. Everyone knows what they should be doing. See a gap, fill it. See an ally down, try to get them back up on their feet. Enemy down, finish them. Siege engine being built, help if you are carrying supply. Take a camp, reload supplies.

Would I like more strategy than steamroll the enemy or kite, surround and attack. Eh. It gets the job done.

Nice Phong shading and what lovely bump maps.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/1999/04/21

IndigoSundown.5419:

You left out: Players who want hard content — after figuring the new content out (in a day): This is too easy! We want hard content!

Fixed.

CoRtex.2157:

Lévis.5489:

Here’s the sales from the NCsoft May 10th earning call . As you can see, GW 2 is almost making the same amount of money than Aion, Lineage 2 and Blade & Soul reunited .

But way less than Lineage, a game that’s been release in 1998… You are trying to show this picture and tell us that gw2 is doing well… i have no words…

And Lineage is South Korea’s WoW. 96% of that games income is from South Korea. It is THEIR WoW, THEIR UO, it was THE signature MMO that launched MMOs there just as StarCraft launched e-sports.

Well $10+ million a month is doing well. How many $15 subscriptions in WoW is that? Over 600K. EVE recently past 500,000 subscribers. WoW has clouded a lot of people’s definition of what counts as success in a MMO. WoW is a freak occurrence. It is way out, many SDs beyond what the average population size and income is for successful MMOs. I know someone will or has trotted out the “but GW2 isn’t a WoW killer”. It’s not meant to be. Sure they would love to have a massive player base, more money but there’s always a minimum threshhold to what ANet and NCSOFT would consider successful. If the game exceeds that, great. If the game exceeds it by large margins, even better.

But nobody in their right mind would or should ever expect any MMO now or in the next few years to exceed the success of WoW. WoW is like the introduction of the iPod. Sure, there were MP3 players before that but the iPod and iTunes made sure that the iPad quickly became 90% of that market. Sony couldn’t make an iPod killer. Microsoft couldn’t make an iPod killer. And the only thing that is killing off the iPod nowadays is folding that functionality into the iPhone.

WoW did that with MMOs. Soon everyone started making WoW knockoffs “with a twist”, in hopes to be struck by the same lightning and it never happened. However some companies have been able to cut out niches that they could thrive in and those games aren’t WoW clones by any stretch of the imagination. They will use innovative game play, unique settings or existing IP or sandbox environment/player created content.

Here’s something that may give away who I was in another MMO since it’s posted there as well. The sales numbers of every MMO NCSoft reported on over the last 6+ years in chart form. If you want to gauge success or failure, just compare our sales numbers to the rest of the games NCSoft is willing to report on. Note that once GW2 came out, the GW sales got shoved into “Others”. Now compare GW2’s income to the original that you all are heaping praise on as better.

Sorry players vote with money and even this quarter shows that GW2 beat GW handily in their best quarter of sales.

Control Core.1079:

The Guild Wars 2 doesn’t have a monthly fee argument is a bit moot. Guild Wars 1 was also free to play, and over there we didn’t have a gem store. It’s just a source of extra income which I highly doubt is needed to keep the game free to play.

I would be up for a fixed price, at least that way you’d know what’s up. That way discounts on certain items would actually mean something, I mean 25% discount on something, and the price going up by 25% because of the increased sales isn’t really worth it.

Not saying to get rid of it altogether, though a bit fairer wouldn’t hurt.

First, sorry they need income from somewhere. It’s not free to keep an MMO running.

Second, Guild Wars did have a straight up cash shop where you could buy things.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Guild_Wars_In-Game_Store

However this is a problem for someone who doesn’t have a credit or debt card. This is why just about every MMO and game system now uses a proxy currency to run their cash shop. You can still buy the proxy currency online but now you can sell those little FastCard cards in stores for those who prefer or have no other choice than using cash. Sure ANet (Gems), Nintendo (NPoints), Perfect World (Zen), XBox (XBL Points), NCSOFT (NCoin), etc will never get the full cash value from that card but it’s income they wouldn’t otherwise get. Plus you can give them as gifts in a birthday card. Also they get the money when you buy the proxy currency , not when you spend it.

You have to understand that the TP database of items is getting constantly hit with items added, matched, removed, searched for and tabulated. If they didn’t throttle the rate that each of us can interact the database then the whole thing will either grind to a halt or those faster with the mouse will lock out those who aren’t. The transaction cap may be low for some us but I tend to sell in bunches in places of safety and not immediately post combat.

I spend way more time simply traveling between encounters than I ever spend waiting for the TP to accept a transaction request. I don’t begrudge it the few moments every once in a while. Then again I rarely sell now but set a price for each and that may make it less of an issue for me.

Rouven.7409:

I think I’m starting to understand. You buy gems with real money. Convert x amount of those gems to gold – then later when trying to buy the same amount of gems back with gold realizing it costs more …

Ok, I get that.

I don’t think I can remember any kind of “hint” popping up explaining how it works and when I learnt this I most likely just went “yeah ok, makes sense”.

Exactly. Now if they show the two rates on that opening screen it’s self explanatory and doesn’t require you to try both options to notice the rate changes. But it doesn’t it only shows the Gems to Gold rate (I admit this is the preferred use of the exchange from ANet’s POV, they want you to buy Gems with cash and let you convert some to gold).

It’s almost as if the Gold to Gems process came later in the development process and someone wedged it in there.

Nuka Cola.8520:

Behellagh.1468:

Nuka Cola.8520:

FXAA doesn’t even use 1 frame and if you don’t have sweetfx (dunno how can ppl play gw2 without it lol) installed you should be using FXAA.

It takes a bit more than one frame off the frame rate. And honestly at this resolution I don’t really notice the jaggies.

Also the few areas where I’m only getting 20, I would rather not get 18-19.

It take one fps. FXAA is not demanding at all, that’s why its the worst AA option as well (unless you like blurry fest). And i always find it funny when someone says jaggies aren’t noticeable on 1080p lol they’re as noticeable as they’re in 720p (which they’re VERY). Unless you’re playing in 1440p+ AA is needed but if you don’t care and like chainsaw looking edges that’s fine by me lol.

FXAA is a post process effect that quickly identifies edges and blurs them. DoF is a post process effect. Ambient Occlusion is a post process effect. And if I had a decent amount of bandwidth I would turn them all on but this is an integrated GPU using system memory. Maybe when I upgrade to faster memory one day or get a discrete video card running GDDR5 memory I’ll look into it.

But I have a hard enough time noticing when someone is trying to chat with me because I’m fending off the things that are attacking me or watching where I’m going. Trust me when I say I really don’t notice the jaggies.

Yes, but CC didn’t know that, he assumed you could convert with no loss. After all the initial screen at the exchange shows only one rate, the Gems to Gold one, but unless you click on Gold to Gems “button” you wouldn’t know there’s a different exchange rate. Sure, it’s a lesson quickly learned and won’t be repeated but you have to admit it is a misleading screen when you first use it without investigating first. As I said if you are converting Gold to Gems, you notice the two rates right away.

And unless you’ve traveled internationally you won’t know about exchange rates in real life.

Namu.5712:

exaggerate much 4g per 100…. try 2g 57s as the 5 day high loll…

He’s talking Gold to Gems rate not the Gems to Gold rate. It’ll hit 4g per 100 just as soon as they release the unlimited use axe and sickle in the gem store. Currently it’s 3g24s with a 24hr high of 3g53s.

2 is ok, 3 is a lot better, 4 not as much boost as going from 2 to 3.

There are over 40 threads, less than 10 drawing any significant CPU cycles. The FX should provide an overall boost.

Nuka Cola.8520:

FXAA doesn’t even use 1 frame and if you don’t have sweetfx (dunno how can ppl play gw2 without it lol) installed you should be using FXAA.

It takes a bit more than one frame off the frame rate. And honestly at this resolution I don’t really notice the jaggies.

Also the few areas where I’m only getting 20, I would rather not get 18-19.

laokoko.7403:

This is the report I get from the internet. Don’t know how accurate it is.

http://news.mmosite.com/content/sharing/2013-05-13/ncsoft_released_q1_earning_report.kittenml

The report says 32.8 million USD in Q1 2013. I dont’ even know how GW2 make that much. Either the report is wrong or GW2 is still making good money from boxsale or gemstore.

Hey I was close with my $33 million guesstimate. The game is reported to have sale of roughly 36.4 billion South Korean Won last quarter. This is just from the US and EU as the game isn’t officially available in Korea, Japan or China yet.

Now don’t forget the game made something over 3x that last quarter of 2012. Obviously the bulk of that was game sales. So either naysayers here are totally wrong about the number of people leaving or are wrong about how many gems the remaining players are buying. Yes they had a couple of sales for the game recently but additional people playing may translate into additional people buying gems. More so as the exchange rate is going up and desirable items are popping up more frequently or on sale at the Gem store.

If you find a change machine that gives you twice as much in change than you put it, what do you do? Stop using it and tell someone in a position of authority about it or do you feed every bit of scrip you have into it and collect the output in a bucket?

Yes this is just a game but the same question is valid, do you take advantage of what you found or do you report it to ANet, back away from it and keep it to yourself? It could be a get rich scheme or way to single-handedly take out some critter with no risk to yourself. If it means you have found a loophole in how the game is normally played and you keep using it, you are exploiting it.

People who exploit loopholes repeatedly and have not report it are shown the door.

2.5GHz A8-3820 running with it’s integrated graphics, HD 6550D.

Running 1600×900 with most gaming settings set close to quality. No FXAA, DoF or high end filtering. Roaming alone I can get 25-30 (I’m capping at 30). More complex areas like the cities I get lower. Yes it can get very low in WvW but I hear that’s common even on rigs that are much better equipped than mine. I just don’t get involved with HUGE zerg on zerg combats. Smaller zerg on zerg still gives me a playable frame rate.