I mean, Warlords of Draenor launched with all of five zones and one raid hub. And that’s with the resources Blizzard had available to them. Considering that Arena.net has probably a fraction of that, coming out with 4 maps and one raid zone is actually pretty kitten impressive.
See OP, this is again more of what ArenaNet wants.
Players who say, “Blizzard has a lot more resources than ArenaNet, you can’t possibly hold them to the same standards!”.
And then turn around to say, “Asking $50 for the expansion is fine, Blizzard does the same thing!”.
Some players need to learn they cannot have it both ways.
And some players need to understand that in one case it’s a company’s total income which impacts the amount of resources and the other it’s the unit price of the product the market expects and accepts.
WvW fear mongers are forgetting that server limits are still in place. F2P players simply can’t get on top tier servers. At least for now. Where’s the fun griefing some 3rd tier server with a flood of AFK F2P players? or spying (like that’s not done already today)?
Help is relative. I dropped a bobblehead lab in front of the Queensdale entrance point for new players and shot cake at them. This was in the wee hours of the morning US so I probably catching EU players on NA servers waking up and Oceania players before bed.
Wouldn’t surprise me if 98% of the free accounts are existing players trying to find ways of using those accounts to improve their mains.
I made one just to see what the TP limitations were as well as the tweaks to the game UI. Even named my character Free to Play, in French, to see if I attract anti-F2P trolls. Didn’t.
I agree, my brother made my account and uses my real name, now im stuck with it, I would like change it, i dont want to delete this account because of those achievements and gears i worked on.
I agree, they should be exotic. But they do have their own unique icon and if you sort by sell price, with the exception of a few rare, they will be the top priced dyes. They aren’t hard to find on the TP, just hard to find on your dye page to see what you are missing.
I don’t even think F2P players would be already at lvl 35 to get access to LA, to whisper someone. Your whispers come from old RTM Core Accounts for sure. Unless they grind the levels pretty fast, without WvW and only Starting Areas til lvl 15.
It’ll still get turned into a spam channel. City of Heroes had a help channel and when that game went F2P it was one of the only map wide channels that F2P had access to. It was anything but help after that.
While it would be nice for F2P players to be able to request assistance but with the reality of RMT spammers, they must prohibit map wide chat. They still have whisper once every 30 seconds and when HoT drops there is a mastery track for players willing to help others so there’s that.
let me see if i get this right.
1 i payed for the core game.
2 i payed for the expansion
3 now the core game is free
4 the only difference between me and a free player is some things like map chat i payed for in the core game and any new player that wants that only has to pay for the new expansion. am i correct?
if this is so then why should i ever pay for another expansion? i need only wait until its free! i have already paid for the map chat ect. with my paid account! had i known this i don’t know if i would have bought Heart of Thorns and only waited for it to be free in a few years!
Who says that when the next expansion comes out that accounts with only the core game will get HoT for free? All they said is from now on a new paid account will include everything. Nothing about old ones being upgraded for free.
OP, you made your post a question so you can’t get a +1. Too bad you are right on the money.
There is a lot of steaming that needed venting from players who, because of the focus on developing the expansion has left the current state of the game stagnate other than a couple of feature updates, which didn’t go over well either, and they needed to lash out at anyone.
I’m told that my posts come across angry at times but I’m frustrated by players who seem to not be having a fun time but force themselves to stay. Why? Take a break at least if you don’t want to leave but feeling like you have to force yourself to farm Silverwastes and hating it doesn’t seem like fun and this is a game, it’s purpose is to be enjoyable entertainment, not a masochistic daily ritual.
guild wars just lost a long time customer for making this game free to play and placing restrictions on accounts, i have played this for 3 years your vets are getting the shaft in this free to play game
Not really getting shafted since there are a lot of restrictions. Just hope the 2 communities don’t collide in a superiority complex.
There’s already an Elysium (movie) like attitude voiced by some over the last few days that B2P kept the “trash” out and now that anyone is allowed the QoL will plummet. There is no reasoning with that group.
Bright side is if they all quit it can only raise our standing as nicest MMO community.
Those are all the same times. The server reset is 00:01 UTC (it’s a 24 hr clock from 00-23). Due to DST east cost is 4 hours before or 20:01 or 8:01PM EDT and 5:01PM PDT.
You can use this to figure out local time relative to UTC.
It’s their payment processor who got stung too many times this week, so until they give ANet the okay it cleared, which may take up to 72 hours, you are SOL.
As soon as you first logged into their servers they have been watching you to judge what players like, dislike and to determine what to look for to spot bots, gold sellers and gold buyers. They know what’s going on on every map instance, CS may not know but the devs certainly do. It’s there game.
If you thought this was new you are horribly ignorant. And this is true with every multiplayer online game.
But new players who pre-purchase HoT today will have core access today with no restrictions. Otherwise why would a new player pre-purchase HoT at all until Oct 23rd?
Because they are making armor sets in game rewards.
For the past 7 months we have only got outfits.
7 Months 0.0
I know but they said a while back that only new outfits will appear in the store while new armor will be in game rewards. They announced 2 sets in HoT on top of the 5 Legendary armors.
Free accounts can also not send items or gold to other accounts…
My god it’s like people are literly braindead, READ THE RESTRICTIONS then comment.
1. Farm 100k Gold on a Free Account.
2. Upgrade on a Weekend and sell it for way more than the code did cost.
3. Repeat.
Oh who could possibly have tought of this.
Not to mention that there’s absolutely no limit to scam of any sort left.
Also, I can make a free account, run a bot for a week and play a fully equipped lvl 80 char as I want… what’s the sales point of GW2 again…?
Face it, there is no way to prepare a Game for what comes with being F2P. You can NOT hold Buy2Play standards in terms of community etc. if you suddenly get rid of the “behave or lose your 50€+ account” – argument.
500 gold at a time because the transfer restrictions are still in place. Plus all that gold going out will flag the account as suspicious assuming they hadn’t caught it while it was farming.
You pretend that they aren’t prepared for this or thought of this themselves.
Hello,
With the recent announcements of core game going free-to-play, two keys that I bought during 10€ sale might be pointless. I have initially bought those keys for my friends, but due to real-life activities they were yet unable to play the game (they haven’t even registered accounts).
I would like to ask if there is really no way to refund those 2 purchases as they were never used and core game being free-to-play? Or I should use these as alt accounts or give them to my friends to make their game full?
Thanks in advance!
You bought fully unlocked games. Now your friends could start F2P accounts but when they start to chaff at the F2P restrictions, you can give them a full account.
With the new F2P system, new players cannot enter LA until level 35, cannot enter World vs World or Edge of the Mists until level 60. So what options are left if someone wants to level fast? Crafting only?
Buy the game?
All LA portals are locked off until 35 for F2P players and all exits from the starter zones are locked off until 10 for F2P players.
Why couldnt anet make this f2p model for a few months only, and not ‘forever’?
They only purpose is to get people buy the x-pack, so why not just use this system a few months before+after hot release?… Would be much smarter, and there wouldnt be many upset people, like myself. (And older, veteran players would feel less betrayed aswell.)
Because they need players in central Tyria once HoT goes live. Plus F2P is a way to get new players interested enough to buy HoT. And that, getting new players interested as they rotate out of their other MMOs looking for something new will always be there. Not just a few months before and after.
Back when the price was first announced in June there was a bit of noise about a boycott. But they threw in a free character slot for vets and a rebate if anyone bought the core game from ANet online between the HoT announcement and price announcement and most of that died down.
Of course now the same closed mind … people are upset at F2P invading the core game and are making similar noises.
This is the full core game with logical limits in place. It is not a trial. You can join a guild at level 80 with full ascended and do a set of fractals on a f2p account. It wouldn’t be easy, but it can be done.
You can also buy gem store items on f2p accounts, including Season 2 of the Living World. Someone on a F2P account has certain social and economic restrictions, but they can do pretty much everything a full account can.
EDIT: I mean clearly ascended items would be more difficult as some of the easiest ways to get them is through laurels (which free accounts cannot get apart from AP rewards maybe?) but they are still obtainable
Other games that have gone to F2P have content and professions behind pay walls. We simply don’t have that here.
Sure level locks on some but the F2P game allows you to level to 80. They can’t withdraw from guild banks, they can’t mail items or coin, they are limited on the TP and they can’t convert gold to gems. Toss in the chat limits and this is just restrictive enough to safeguard chat and the economy and be just annoying enough for the F2P player that buying an account/expansion is worthwhile.
Technically the Revenant and HoT maps and skins are behind a paywall.
I’m not sure whether you’re agreeing or disagreeing with me? It’s clearly not a trial since people technically have the ability to do what people could do 3 years ago with the game and more, while also having social and economic restrictions to prevent abuse of the F2P system.
It’s behind the paywall for everyone, F2P and regular accounts. I’m talking F2P vs regular accounts.
And I’m agreeing with you, this isn’t some kind of trial.
This is the full core game with logical limits in place. It is not a trial. You can join a guild at level 80 with full ascended and do a set of fractals on a f2p account. It wouldn’t be easy, but it can be done.
You can also buy gem store items on f2p accounts, including Season 2 of the Living World. Someone on a F2P account has certain social and economic restrictions, but they can do pretty much everything a full account can.
EDIT: I mean clearly ascended items would be more difficult as some of the easiest ways to get them is through laurels (which free accounts cannot get apart from AP rewards maybe?) but they are still obtainable
Other games that have gone to F2P have content and professions behind pay walls. We simply don’t have that here.
Sure level locks on some but the F2P game allows you to level to 80. They can’t withdraw from guild banks, they can’t mail items or coin, they are limited on the TP and they can’t convert gold to gems. Toss in the chat limits and this is just restrictive enough to safeguard chat and the economy and be just annoying enough for the F2P player that buying an account/expansion is worthwhile.
I have mixed feelings about GW2 going Free-to-Play. From a business perspective, it would have been smarter for A-Net to do a level cap at 60 because it would have forced a purchase decision and questioned “Did you enjoy GW2 enough to purchase the full game?” As it stands now, many players will level a character of two to 80 and move onto greener free MMORPG pastures. Less chat options and inventory space are really not that restrictive to the casual, bypassing player
Since the only choice a F2P has is buy HoT it doesn’t matter. Unless they are totally satisfied running under the various restrictions when they are 80, they are likely to buy HoT.
