Guild Wars 2

Chrispy.5641:

So…There’s going to be a new Lion’s Arch on top of the ruins of 3 previous Lion’s Arch’s?

Did you know we get the term Armageddon from Har Megiddo, which is a “tell”, or a hill created by layers and layers of rebuilt town one on top of another.

I just thought it was interesting, with your comment, and this thread discussing the final battle with Scarlet in LA.

“Play how you want” died long ago.

Now it’s all about luring players into every area of the game to try and keep them all populated.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

A legendary is a legendary. They have stated that legendaries will always be BiS. Will always match whatever the highest tier is.

Still hoping someone will post a link to that statement. I’m going on:

Legendary gear will remain with the same tier of stats as ascended gear and will not be made more powerful than other gear, it will simply be slightly more convenient since it will no longer need transmutations to change stats.

Source: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/looking-ahead-guild-wars-2-in-2013/

All it says is that Legendary tier will have the same stats as Ascended tier, and on’t be made more powerful than the top tier. Which leaves plenty of room for having to upgrade your legendary when they raise the level cap.

I’d love to hear that they’ve actually said current legendaries will always be BiS. So far all I can find is them saying that Legendaries will always be equivalent to the highest tier of gear, which is different.

Players have a lot of reasons why there shouldn’t be race changes.

As far as I’ve seen, ArenaNet has never made a statement agreeing with any of them. All they’ve ever said on the subject is that there are currently no plans to provide race changes.

So there remains hope, though perhaps very dim, for people who want this.

“Nothing is off the table.”™

Belzebu.3912:

Repeating myself, Devs said Legendaries will always be the BiS, so I believe that if the level cap ever get higher then the weapon will also get higher.
BTW the devs didn’t said they will eventually rise the level cap, they just didn’t discarded the idea.

No. Chris said, " we’ve always expected that we will someday raise the level cap in GW2."

Source: http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/13tuac/im_the_studio_design_director_on_guild_wars_2_ama/

That doesn’t say maybe. That doesn’t say it’s on the table, but they aren’t considering it. It says they will someday. Of course they can change their minds, as they have on many, many things. But unless you have a newer statement, the last word we’ve had from ArenaNet is that a level cap increase will eventually happen.

As far as legendary always being BiS, can you link me a source for that? I’m interested in what the actual language is. The only thing I’ve been able to find is that they’ve said they will always keep legendary equivalent to the highest tier of gear. That doesn’t mean a level 80 legendary has to match the stats of level 95 ascended. That’s why I fear there’s a loophole.

If someone can point to them saying “your current legendaries will always be BiS” that would be great to see. I can’t find a statement that says that.

Kalendraf.9521:

However, it is the reality as seen from our characters point of view. Would they condone the Black Lion Company marketing such items?

I think you’re mistaking this game for one that values immersion and cohesive lore over income from novelty items.

Draygo.9473:

Also there was a pretty close to public level test for EoTM that anet did use to test the map.

Good to know. What were the numbers of players in the final test?

Not saying a PTS would make everything bug free, but it’s definitely a tool that has been stubbornly left lying on the workbench.

That, and tougher hamsters.

Public.
Test.
Server.

Sapphire bullets.
Bullets of pure love.

Suddenflame.2601:

So if you want to complain go ahead, but I suggest you play Forsaken World and Perfect World first and make the comparison. By saying GW2 is grindy or has terrible RNG makes most MMOs look like bloody nightmare.

Most of them are bloody nightmares. Forsaken World, at least when I played it in beta, was a horror of stupid grind. One of the best ways to get experience was running around doing a set of the same dumb dailies in the capitol city. You could “train” by targeting a dummy and starting auto-attack and leave it overnight to come back to a character who had leveled a couple times.

The thing is, you can say that getting your pinky finger amputated is a lot better than getting your whole arm removed, but that doesn’t suddenly turn it into something positive.

GW2 was billed as an MMORPG for people who dislike MMORPGs. Instead, it turned out to be the MMORPG that’s not as bad as other MMORPGs.

By saying GW2 is grindy or has terrible RNG you are making a comparison of a form. If you want to say GW2 is grindy which MMORPG has less grind? Which MMORPG has better RNG?

So we’re only allowed to criticize if we can point out someone who does it better?

Is it possible they’ve given themselves a loophole, though?

They upgraded Legendaries to match Ascended. They said that Legendaries will always have the same stats as the highest tier of gear. But what about level cap increase?

Is it possible, within the language they’ve used, that when the level cap gets increased (which they’ve said they intend to do eventually) they can restart the legendary chase?

Something like, “We said Legendaries would always updated to the highest tier of gear, and that’s still true. A level 80 Legendary is equivalent to a level 80 Ascended item. We heard from the community, however, that they needed new goals, so we know have level 95 Legendaries for those who want something to work toward after getting their level 80 legendary. As always, Level 95 Legendaries will have the same stats as level 95 Ascended gear.”

Whether they do this or not, is pure speculation. I’m asking, within what they’ve told us so far, could they do this and still stick to the letter of what they’ve said?

People are buying. Working as intended. No response needed.

hellsmachine.4085:

Buy gems + convert to gold = buy exotic/legendary gear from TP.

Buy gems + convert to gold = shortcut almost the entire grindy process to crafting Ascended

xarallei.4279:

The only reason I don’t see Kodan as being a playable race is because well….they are polar bears. Not much room for customizing there.

Maybe not in color, but they could have a wide range of subtle fur patterns, and the same level of variation in face and ’hair" that any of the other races have.

Romek.4201:

Skritt
…. i would never play a Quaggan, they are fat emos

But, but… Quaggan loves youuuuuu!

I’d love to play Skritt like the Gibberlings from Allods.

For those not familiar, Gibberlings were a race of little furballs who ran around in groups of three. Player characters Gibberlings consisted of three toons and their animations consisted of the three interacting.

It would fit the Skritt lore perfectly, as you would need several Skritt together to make them smart enough to be a PC.

flipyap.5789:

Kodan probably won’t happen. They share the same ancestry with norn, which make them too similar.

Nautical Buddhist polar bears are too similar to animist Viking giants?

Sirendor.1394:

Gibson.4036:

Ronah.2869:

For 50 bucks they received so much content as in 10-15 single player games

I’m imagining GW2 on one side of the scale and 10 Elder Scrolls games on the other…

To compare a single-player game with a mmorpg though..?

I agree, I wouldn’t normally compare the two because they are pretty different animals. Someone said GW2 had the content of 10-15 single player games, though, which got me thinking about that.

Fastest way to make gold is buying and selling on the TP. Find a guide, it’s not that difficult as long as you have some gold to start with.

It won’t necessarily make you “rich”, but it’s faster than farming anywhere.

Vayne.8563:

You’re assuming it won’t be a PvE only map at first and then whatever Scarlet does won’t make it a PvP map. Shrugs.

Because creating something for WvW but restricting it to PvE for a while would be appreciated by WvWers. Got it.

Vayne.8563:

I think maybe we should see what actually occurs before we start hurling invectives.

I think the uproar from the WvW community over plopping LS stuff into it has been pretty clear, but ArenaNet continues ahead with their fingers in their ears. EotM is a big update to WvW… some significant developer love, but the strange need to cram Scarlet into it is a big black fly in the ointment.

There’s really no need to wait and see, whatever her involvement, it makes anyone who has been complaining about LS in WvW feel like they are being ignored.

Wanze.8410:

World War III.3869:

Gibson.4036:

Celestina.2894:

Are we gonna start a slippery slope fallacy already?

Nope. But I’ve seen so many things change in this game over the last three years, the only thing I really believe from ArenaNet is, as Colin put it, “Nothing is off the table.”

I don’t have any reason to believe achievement rewards will some day be in the gem store, but neither do I have much reason to believe they never will.

yea you never know. what we do know is people will pay X amount of gems for things of that nature. x amount of gems = $$$$

But if people can be sure to purchase rewards that are account and achievement bound at a later stage, they wouldnt have to bother to log in and spend time in game while those achievements and rewards are available.

You’re not taking into account the fact that people want the shinies as soon as they can get them. It’s an MMORPG tradition to make things easier to get down the road, when some of the sparkly newness has worn off.

Achievement chase now, or wait a year until it ends up in the cash shop?

Traditional MMORPGs have a lot of ways to stretch hours played beyond what the content really supports, so it muddies the waters a lot, unfortunately.

I definitely got my box-price worth of entertainment from GW2, though I had hoped it was the kind of game I would continue buying expansions for and play longer than I did. I still hope it will become that game.

As for Skyrim, I’ve only reached level 9 and barely explored it, and I already know it was worth the price I paid (got the Anthology for under $30).

I’m not sure, though, that I’d say GW2 has the content, or even entertainment value of 10 to 15 single player games.

Godmoney.2048:

I’m not trying to criticize Skyrim. Skyrim was well worth the money I paid for it.

I definitely didn’t think you were. Who would play 120 hours of a game they don’t like?

I’m just now realizing my last few posts probably didn’t come across as what they are, which was thinking out loud, as it were.

I’m really trying to imagine the content of GW2 up against the content of 10 Elder Scrolls games. Putting aside any attempt to rate whether some of the ‘content’ in GW2 is meaningful enough for me to count it, just for sheer volume, does GW2 really have 10 Skyrims of things to do? I’m not deep into the Elder Scrolls yet (I’m a late adopter) so I don’t have a complete grasp on the scope of the games yet.

And your post about hours played made me have to think about how it correlates with content.

Escadin.9482:

I think the frame of whatever problem people may have with GW2 is that is still a traditional MMORPG.

I think you’re absolutely correct. When people heard ArenaNet saying it would be a game worth checking out if you hate MMOs, many expected it to diverge farther from the MMORPG tradition than it ended up doing.

On the other hand, there are plenty of people out there who dislike it because it isn’t enough like traditional MMORPGs.

Which puts ArenaNet in a difficult place. It’ll be interesting to see what the future brings, and where they decide to take the game.

Celestina.2894:

Are we gonna start a slippery slope fallacy already?

Nope. But I’ve seen so many things change in this game over the last three years, the only thing I really believe from ArenaNet is, as Colin put it, “Nothing is off the table.”

I don’t have any reason to believe achievement rewards will some day be in the gem store, but neither do I have much reason to believe they never will.

Godmoney.2048:

I have 3.1k hours into GW2m

120 hours on Skyrim. I payed 60$ for that.

Cool.

So we just have to figure out how many times you’ve repeated the same content in GW2 versus how many times you repeated it in Skyrim to see how that plays out in actual content.

My guess is that your 3.1k hours are filled with repeated runs of dungeons, fractals and world bosses, and some of it is probably social time.

My guess is that you didn’t spend much time in Skyrim repeating much of anything (unless with a different character). You definitely didn’t spend time waiting for your guild to gather or your dungeon group to be ready to go, nor hang around while you chatted in /map or /guild.

None of which is to say that GW2 lacks in content. Just that your number of hours played isn’t analogous to amount of content.

Not to mention, there are plenty of people who have played far fewer than 3k hours on GW2, and plenty who have played far more than 120 in an ES game.

tolunart.2095:

Eventually Anet may have to decide which group they want to keep and who they can stand to let go.

That is my expectation and hope. As new games come out, GW2 will have to refocus its image and direction in order to be able to stand out. At that point I’ll be able to decide if I will come back to the game or move on completely.

gobflinger.8653:

I hope that you will get some sort of frame of reference to this and apply this scenario to your reality; Imagine how you would feel if you worked finger to the bone, trying to get this muscle car and found that they gave it away the next week to anyone that ‘just obtained a driving license’.

Wait, you said you got the dyes relatively cheaply and have held on to them. Where is your “working you fingers to the bone”.

And ANet has them back in the gem store. People still have to pay for them Where is the great muscle car give-a-way?

- Would you like if you started off at max level – since that would not diminish the experience in a game that use use level adjusted zones? Or is it possible that your brain, on an unconscious level reward this sort of progression?

Yes, please. I don’t find leveling all that meaningful in this game. I ignored it, it happened while I ran around exploring. The first 30 levels or so are sort of annoying because you can’t get traits that make some professions really start to click, but I didn’t feel a meaningful sense of accomplishment from the leveling process. Watching my world complete % rise was a lot more meaningful.

- Would you like to have the best items in the game? I am sure that that would be neat – I wouldn’t mind at all – but if every player got the same top -notch deal- would you wonder why everything have the standard attire and would you question the whole concept behind spending time and effort?

If by “best”, you mean most powerful. Yes. Many of us thought that’s the game we were buying at launch because GW1 worked that way and dev commentary made it look like we were going to get it in the sequel. If there were plenty of cosmetic options to choose from, everyone wouldn’t be wearing the same standard attire. I love diversity. I have no need, however, for exclusivity.

- Do you think kids build treehouses because they think the design and layout of the house they live in is flawed or do we have this constant burning urge to constantly challenge our abilities? Would you be sitting, way up there, on a rusty nail deathtrap, amazed that you did this on sheer will if your parents built it for you.

Um, yeah. Treehouses are just cool. I’m building one with my kids this summer. They’ll help me, but that’s because we like to do stuff together, and it’ll be a good learning experience, not because I think the only value in treehouses is that you built it yourself.

The WHOLE mmo experience, at its core, rest on this. Anet can and should make new hues and dyes and that would be that! If you at any time excel beyond the average player – which I’m sure you already do – be proud of that and let people who have spent hour, days and weeks of playing, planing and even real hard earned cash (and ingame currency, of course) to have enjoy the reward as they should!

MMORPG experience has been this way traditionally. There’s nothing inherent in Massive, Multiplayer, Online, or Role-Playing-Game that requires exclusive items for bragging rights.

- Make sure that new players have the same chance to stand out and form a unique path that they can be proud; but not at the expense of others. The objective always growing, but making sure that those who accomplished their set goal feel motivated to stay.

Speculation has two prongs. It’s not just about buying the right thing at the right time. It’s also about knowing when to sell. You did great with the first, but misjudged the second, and now you’re blaming ArenaNet.

In the end, intellectual property is an asset that any wise creator reuses to the best possible effect. Sequels, derivative work, and re-releases are all ways you get maximum value from the things you create. To expect ArenaNet to develop something and then never put it back on sale again is naive.

In fact, with Living Story the community has been arguing the exact opposite. Why spend so much time on development that lasts a short time and is gone?

All to chase some meaningless sense of exclusivity. “I was there when (and you weren’t)” for Living Story, or “Only a few people have this exact shade of blue” for dyes.

Or, in your case, I can invest in these and never have to worry about the market crashing.

I don’t really follow your metaphor.

You can become the best at your class, but there’s always risk that you’ll lose a fight. There’s no guarantee.

I’m not sure why ArenaNet should never re-release items so that people can be guaranteed they will continue to gain value. Playing the TP is already one of, if not the, most profitable activities in the game. The last thing the game needs is to remove more of the risk.

Ronah.2869:

For 50 bucks they received so much content as in 10-15 single player games

I’m imagining GW2 on one side of the scale and 10 Elder Scrolls games on the other…

lordkrall.7241:

It is quite unlikely that they will sell Achievement Based rewards in the gem-store.

You have so much faith.

morrolan.9608:

Anet has tokens but it is very inconsistent with the way it uses them, I’ve taken it as a sign of a lack of overall vision in relation to the reward systems and probably in terms of the way the game is project managed at the top level.

This seems to be the message of the last year.

It felt like the game had a strong vision leading up to launch. Now it feels like it’s lurching back and forth, with no clear idea of where it wants to go.

gobflinger.8653:

Go crazy Anet, but no tampering with things we take for granted – sounds like a good foundation; so I just wish I knew what we can take for granted.

That ship sailed long ago.

ANet has changed their minds about so many things starting shortly after launch that we still have people reeling and cycling endless threads with complaints about the pain from their whiplash (“but der manirfestoh!!!”).

As far as market speculation, if that’s something that’s really fun for you, shouldn’t the uncertainty caused by the chance something will be reintroduced make it more fun, not less? What skill is required to throw money at a one time, tradable item with a guarantee no more supply will ever be introduced? Isn’t there more game in trying to predict the peak sell price and get out before it crashes down again?

Duke Nukem.6783:

1: if u want a specific dye, good luck, the odds r insignificant and you will spend WAY MORE opening dye kits than you would just buying it off the TP, so this doesnt help u at all u cuda saved money and just bought it from the TP

If you want a specific dye, having them in the gem store will increase the supply in game, which makes them cheaper on the TP. Win!

2: if u were hoping to invest in the dyes urself and turn a quick buck in a year or so NOPE, that option is gone now too, we thought these dyes were never coming out again so we invested in them, now we know they will wip them out whenever they feel like it (lazy a net,…..lazy) so they will never again rise to monolithic prices making your investment chances….slim to none

The best way to make money is not with investments in items that you hope will rise to “monolithic prices”. Instead, invest in a broad spectrum of items with moderate return.

You engaged in the riskier end of investing, and lost.

3, for all the people who bought one of these dyes off the TP in the past year or so…..congratz u waisted an epic amount of cash and now your UNIQUE DYE your gw2 equivalent of the blue partyhat….is available to every1 for a fraction of what you payed for it…..are u mad? u should be….

If you are driven to buy things to make yourself feel special, you should probably seek counseling. Stuff doesn’t make you special. On the other hand, if you bought the dye for the going price because you liked the color and want to use it, you weighed the cost at the time and it was worth it to you. The fact that it is cheaper now doesn’t change that.

You bought each Elder Scroll game at full price when it came out, and I just bought the Anthology of all five games last fall for 1/10th of the price you paid. Are you mad? You should be…

4. anet isnt happy, oh sure they will be at first they re sold a popular item….but will we be so eager to invest in future dye packs? no they can expect diminshed profits in the future because they made this mistake

And yet, they keep doing it. Which means they are epically stupid, or… it still brings in the income.

You know, this kind of rage can lead to health problems. Perhaps you should put down the keyboard and read a book or get some exercise.

Naekuh.7925:

The problem with these chests are they are not worth the cost.

Working as intended. It’s a lottery. Might as well complain that a lotto ticket isn’t worth the money.

Again.. i thought the point in these chest was for anet to make money….
Yet im pretty sure no one will spend real money on getting keys after opening a few.

Clearly you’re wrong. Buying keys to open chests has been a losing proposition from the start of the game. Nevertheless, they remain in the game with only small tweaks to their loot tables every once in a while, and no apparent change to the rarity of items worth anything.

Ms. Cox isn’t dumb. If they weren’t making money, she’d have changed something by now.

mtpelion.4562:

If you enjoy killing dragons or defending villagers, then the reward disparity wouldn’t matter to you. The fact that it does bother you suggests that you enjoy making gold rather than adventuring.

That argument feels a little disingenuous. By your logic, we could go ahead and remove all rewards from killing dragons and defending villagers, and people should be happy because the act of it is reward enough.

More realistically, I enjoy the dragon slaying and village defense as well as getting significantly rewarded. I want to get the better gear and cool cosmetics, but it would take an unrealistically long time by doing heroic activities, compared to a realistic time if I engage in trading.

The game gets developed to make it take a significant time to achieve rewards. Which is fine. Nobody wants to achieve everything for logging in the first time. The problem comes when there are vastly different incomes from various activities in the game. If it takes twice as long to dungeon run the gold you can make trading, three times as long to champ farm it, and ten times as long to get it doing DEs or WvW, and ArenaNet wants players to spend a month getting some new item, how do they set its cost?

They make it take a month of doing DEs, and the traders and dungeon runners snatch it up in half a week.

Then they say, “Oops, players got that last item too quickly,” and bring the next set out at a much higher cost to keep the traders and dungeon runners going for a full month. Now the world explorers and WvW players are looking at a little under a year before they can afford it.

Look at the mat requirements for ascended crafting. These numbers clearly aren’t targeted at people hitting nodes one by one as they go through the world. They’re targeted at a game where the TP is the center around which the reward system spins.

It’s so not about whether I enjoy saving villages. It’s about whether the game values that by the way its rewards are structured. And at the moment, it doesn’t. If you want to save villages, you have to ignore the reward system, because if you follow the rewards they lead you to trading, first and foremost, as well as farming dungeons, champs, and world bosses on timers.

Vol.7601:

Gibson.4036:

Most of the things in the gemstore aren’t really worth their price.

For example, it would take you a long, long time gathering with an infinite harvesting tool to gather the amount of mats you could get by simply converting the same amount of gems to gold and buying the mats off the trading post.

The same effect is true for pretty much everything in the trading post that isn’t an exclusive armor skin.

But apparently people would rather have the items for the novelty of it, so they keep buying them, so ANet has no reason to lower prices.

People keep throwing this out here. The Gemstore is not for P2W. It’s for convenience. People buy those picks because it’s convenient to never have to worry about buying picks or having 5 stacks take up space.

Yeah, I get that, but a lot of people don’t. It’s confusing to people. Just like the OP, who is looking at BLT chests and thinking there should be more value in what they contain for the cost of the keys. But that’s not how Black Lion items work. In the end, if you’re going for value, it’s almost always better to just exchange gems for gold and skip the middle man of the boost/harvesting tool/whatever.

You pay a hefty premium on Black Lion items for novelty/convenience. Black Lion keys are really just lottery tickets. There’s a very rare chance you’ll get something good out of it, but most often you won’t get nearly as much out of it as you put in.

Isn’t this pretty normal for a lot of games? Seems like every MMORPG I’ve ever played, you could barely tell it was night unless you looked up at the sky.

Even single player games… in spite of Skyrim’s trying for realism with its dirt, you had to mod it if you wanted night to feel like night.

I think it’s a standard choice devs make when they confront playability versus mood/realism. Playability wins, and they make “night” bright enough for you to see everything clearly.

Scarlet, of course.

Behellagh.1468:

I have a feeling that a lot of TP “haters” tried to “EARN BIG MONEY AT HOME ON THE TP” and when they couldn’t they assume that those that do are cheating in some way instead of A) don’t be greedy; research and C) have a little patience. And since those making money must be cheating then the system is either broken and/or those profiting need to be punished.

I have a feeling it’s quite the opposite. Some of us search around for the best ways to make money, trying various things in game. Eventually our search leads us to the TP, and we find that the fastest way to make money in game is by flipping items.

Since we came to the game with visions of slaying dragons, we get disappointed that the easiest way to make gold is relisting items for people too impatient to appropriately price things.

We go defend villages against marauding beasties and get a few copper, and think, wow, spending that time standing in LA with GW2spidy on my other monitor would have rewarded me a lot better.

Most of the things in the gemstore aren’t really worth their price.

For example, it would take you a long, long time gathering with an infinite harvesting tool to gather the amount of mats you could get by simply converting the same amount of gems to gold and buying the mats off the trading post.

The same effect is true for pretty much everything in the trading post that isn’t an exclusive armor skin.

But apparently people would rather have the items for the novelty of it, so they keep buying them, so ANet has no reason to lower prices.

mtpelion.4562:

Fact is, the amount of money I have does not in any way affect your ability to play the game. So the questions remains… so what?

So without the TP you can get what you need, but not necessarily what you want.

So, will it hold players? Or will they be inclined to seek out fantasy fulfillment elsewhere where they can get “luxury” items from fighting monsters, rather than playing markets.

So, “Is it fun?”

azizul.8469:

most MMO turns into trading sim in the end…

Which, apparently, is working as intended.

For me, the dissatisfaction has nothing to do with a belief that people are controlling markets or “false demand”.

It’s simply a matter of symmetry in game design. In most of the game the rewards feel tightly controlled. Chances with RNG are set remarkably low, and payout in coin from most activities feels like a trickle. On the TP side, however, we have a very liberal market free from obvious regulation. It feels like it is from a completely different game.

I’m not schooled in economics at all. Shortly before I took a break from playing GW2, when I was still making a stab at leveling crafting from 400 to 500, I read a few guides on TP flipping and tried my hand at it. I was amazed at how easily I could make gold with GW2Spidy open on one screen and GW2 on the other. I wasn’t going to easily get rich that way, but from just picking a few items to buy and relist, I found I could make more money in an hour of trading than an hour of champ farming, let alone actually adventuring through the world doing DEs in an immersive, non-farming way.

IMO, if people had a reasonable expectation of getting cool, “luxury” items from doing things other than trading, they wouldn’t begrudge the traders their incomes so much. It’s not so much that trading is so lucrative, but that the other parts of the game feel so stingy.

mtpelion.4562:

Gibson.4036:

Adventuring and a free market don’t go together. In a free market, using wealth to create more wealth on the trading post is always going to be more rewarding than generating wealth through other means.

If you don’t want to play TradingPostWars 2, you will always have a lower income than if you did.

And the question then becomes: So what?

It’s something people need to realize so they can make a choice. Participate in trading, or accept that you will never make as much gold for time spent doing other parts of the game.

There’s an assumption that an MMORPG needs a functional economy to be a good MMORPG. MMORPGs in general would benefit from more conversation between players and designers about whether this assumption is true.

It boils down to what a fantasy MMORPG is ultimately about, and whether an open economy benefits that more than detracts. There are legitimate arguments to be made for both sides.

For example, one of the things that a free market economy brings to the game is a discussion about what are “luxury” items and which are “necessities”, and whether dividing items in a game about saving the world with swords and fireballs can sustain that kind of division and remain fun for the majority of the player base. Do people play fantasy MMORPGs to enter a world where they need to learn to be satisfied with being middle-class unless they are willing to spend time trading?

Clearly, some don’t, which is what generates threads like these.

No one from either side of the argumentshould be portraying this as a simple question and dismissing those from the other side.

To what extent should a fantasy game simulate real life and require “hard work” and “sound investment” for the best rewards?

No one thinks it should be a perfect simulator, because no one here would be willing to put in the kind of work and dedication to perform at the peak of human capability, or we wouldn’t be playing video games. We’d be training to be olympic athletes, concert pianists, and investing in real stock markets.

Conversely, no one wants to log on and have a legendary handed to them for doing so, or they would be playing a different game.

So how real should it be? Does the quest for a healthy, functioning economy make it too real, and burst the fantasy bubble for which we play games like this, or does it support the fantasy we want to roleplay?

Adventuring and a free market don’t go together. In a free market, using wealth to create more wealth on the trading post is always going to be more rewarding than generating wealth through other means.

If you don’t want to play TradingPostWars 2, you will always have a lower income than if you did.

It’s exactly like the real world. Capitalism is irresistable. Look at the last hold-outs against it, and how they are slowly (or not so slowly) caving.

Please don’t read this as an advocacy for communism in the real world. I’m not making a judgement on whether capitalism is good or bad. It’s obvious, though, that it is unstoppable.

This thread has made me wonder, what exactly is the cut-off for P2W?

Ascended is only 5-7% stat boost, it was stated earlier, so it’s not significant enough to be counted. What is the threshold? 15% stat boost? 30%? 50%?

At what point, if you can put down cash for a stat boost, does a game become P2W?

A manifesto isn’t a promise, but it is supposed to be a meaningful statement about someone’s core intentions. Abruptly departing from a public manifesto rightfully causes people to question the integrity of a person doing so.

People unhappy with the way things turned out want to make a manifesto some sort of contract, and people who are happy want to water it down to something meaningless. The truth is somewhere between them.