Guild Wars 2

I demand that the developers defend their position in a giant cage, where they battle a guy in armor, while random weapons are handed to the contestants by the audience.

Two men enter, one man leaves!

Alphard.6529:

Veteran players asking to get a separate base game key because they think the product somehow entitles them to that are silly. Giving out millions of base GW2 accounts to people who upgrade their current account would also be pretty silly.

They claim the full game is free. So why shouldn’t they give existing players an extra copy of the game, if it is included for free with the expansion? Its free aint it? So what’s the problem?

See, and this is exactly what makes existing players feel that something is shady. Especially since the expansion happens to be the price of a full game. This has nothing to do with entitlement.

How does the lack of a subscription fee, excuse a scummy business decision?

That’s like saying: All the other companies exploit their players with pay-to-play, so surely you can forgive Anet, who doesn’t do that, when they screw you over in another way?

Lets not forget that GW1 was also free to play, and the expansions for that were separate from the core game, AND included an extra character slot AND were $35.

It’s extremely shady to make the core game supposedly free, and include it with the expansion (not optional), and yet the expansion happens to be the price of a full game. That comes across as a scam to a lot of players. It makes existing players feel like they are paying for the core game twice, along with free DLC and no bonus character slot.

It also feels shady to not include that extra character slot, which is required for a lot of players to play the new profession to begin with. They want us to fork over an extra $25 bucks for that, and some useless fluff item?

It also seems very overpriced for an expansion. Are we getting content the size of a full game? I doubt it, but it is still priced that way. It would help us if they showed us what we are getting, before we preorder.

If it was the price of EotN, I could probably even forgive the lack of an extra character slot.

Not trying to understand people’s outrage over this issue, and mocking them, does not aid the discussion in any constructive way, and makes you look a bit silly.

ProtoGunner.4953:

Thank you, that’s what I think. The price would be okay if we get at least one additional character slot in the normal edition.

You’d still be getting ripped of. The new players are getting 5 character slots and lots of bank space. And you get one character slot for the exact same price.

CureForLiving.5360:

Evidence? ANet has stated that they have valued the Expansion at $50.

Which is the price of the full game. So if the full game is included along with it for free, that makes the price tag really fishy.

Honest, you are not paying for the full game that we included with this expansion, it just so happens to cost the price of a full game…. right…

JohnnyS.1460:

Finally some official word from the devs…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZspKoupWAY

Genius! I have nothing to add to that. That is just pure internet gold.

Nah, I’m done. I hope you enjoy your purchase and don’t come to regret it. Thanks for such a polite and intelligent discussion.

NecroN.8306:

The price per content value is the issue tho. Anet is getting full price for little content, and most of that little content is not even confirmed. Anet is demanding payment upfront for something that does not even exist yet.

It’s kind of like buying a seat for that mission to Mars. At least finish it first, and tell us what we’re buying.

I think preorders and early access have really lowered the bar. Everyone is expected to just throw money at games that aren’t even finished yet, with no idea what they’ll be getting by the time that they ARE finished. This ship needs to be turned around.

My Pipboy says its going to be awesome! It also says Deathclaws are near… Thats weird, I don’t see any…

Money doesn’t have more value to you? :/

TheToxicFox.8710:

DONE! I’m gonna use the $50 towards Fallout 4.

Now why didn’t I think of that myself…? That is a really good idea.

serenke.4806:

You’re not buying the core game twice.

No honest, you are just paying the price of a full game, and the full game is included along with it for free.

Kind of like when you buy a new rearview mirror for your car, and it costs the price of a new car, but you get a free car along with it…. unless you already have a car, but its still the same price.

Sylent.3165:

Majority? A majority of the players are playing the game, have 0 issues spending 50 bucks on an expansion, and enjoy the game

The people on the forums pretty much just complain about everything because they feel each and everything anet decides to supposed to be just for them

None of us did a head count, so no one gets to claim majority for either side.

And yes the people on the forums do complain about nearly anything… but is that what is going on here? This is quite a heated discussion, that has also spread to Reddit. A lot of players are angry. You can’t just handwave that as every day forum-complaining.

Neither am I. I just think that eagerness to spend lots of money on a product that is under hot debate at the moment, is not a virtue. You may end up being completely happy with your purchase, and I hope that you are.

Some people avoid the official forums, until they read somewhere that there’s a huge outcry over an expansion that makes them want to chip in.

Leo G.4501:

Well, you don’t need new seats. Having worn seats doesn’t stop you from sitting on them and driving the car, nor are they required to be replaced unless they are not functional and thus is required to be replaced. The analogy doesn’t follow since there is no requirement to purchase HoT to continue to play the game. The core game will continue to get updates (such as feature additions, stability fixes, balance changes and even possibly world-event additions), HoT is an upgrade. If your analogy indicated you wanted a turbo upgraded transmission to make your car run faster and being unable to install it into your current car thus requiring the purchase of a vehicle that can, it makes more sense…but then transmission is extremely expensive on its own anyway so you might end up saving money in the long run, getting a new car with it already installed vs trying to integrate it into an old model. But again, it’s going on your own desire to upgrade, not on a necessity to upgrade.

I think a better comparison would be:

You buy new locks for your car doors, and they charge the price of the entire car for it, but you get the car along with it, unless you already had a car, but either way you pay full price. Also, you need to buy a deluxe edition of the car locks if you also want the keys to the car.

It doesn’t really matter if I paid for it. Even if I didn’t, plenty of other players did.

Isn’t it also possible that these are people from Reddit who are hearing about the huge firestorm going on on these forums, and decided to join the discussion?

If you take a gamble and pay the price of a full game, for an expansion of which the size is still very unclear…. then yeah, I’m guilty of judging you. I don’t think that is a very wise purchase.

Biobasher.2619:

And you’re missing my point, everything in the gem store could be earned with gold. If you chose to purchase it with money then that was a decision you made.

That still doesn’t change the fact that players have been buying lots of things from the Gem Store, and paying for the supposedly free content by doing so. So saying that the content was free… it wasn’t really. We all paid for it.

They’d better show their hand of cards here, and reveal just how big this expansion really is. Is it the size of a full game? Then the price is justified. But I suspect it is smaller…. much, much smaller.

And some of us can afford it just fine, but choose to spend their money wisely. We don’t all pay for overpriced things, but of course some people do. Good for you.

Biobasher.2619:

Like I said, if you couldn’t be bothered to earn it in game, it’s called tough s***. That was a choice you made :P

No, you’re missing the point of what I’m saying. I’m saying it wasn’t free. You are calling players greedy and ungrateful for enjoying a game for 3 years, along with free content, and still complaining. But it wasn’t free. We paid for it through the Gem Store.

Frankly I don’t think the argument “other MMO’s are doing it” is a good reason to defend poor customer treatment, and an overpriced product.

Biobasher.2619:

Most people who’ve played the game since release have seen 3 years of free content, some of which new players won’t see. And before you say about gem store, those are optional, you can grind or pay for that, if you couldn’t be bothered to grind for it, tough s***.

I’ll say something else about the Gem Store. Didn’t the Gem Store basically pay for their expenses when making that “free” content?

briggah.7910:

Keyword there is preview. Also from what I understand the maps are 3 levels of maps. So that is like 3 maps on top of each other.

With a lot of air in between.

briggah.7910:

You also seem to be forgetting new character specializations,

One of which will possibly finally make the necromancer viable…. or replace it, because why fix the old necro.

briggah.7910:

new legendary weapons

More grind!

briggah.7910:

new profession

But no character slot to play the profession.

briggah.7910:

new pvp game mode

Which I don’t play.

briggah.7910:

new wvw map

Which I also don’t play, and is basically merged with the core game, so this should not be used to justify the high price tag on the expansion.

briggah.7910:

new mastery system

Even more grind!

briggah.7910:

guild halls

Which were supposed to be in the original game.

Try and see this from my perspective. I was a bit disappointed with the original game, given the broken combat balance and the missing elite end game areas, and the horribly broken necromancer.

Given the fact that Anet has been oddly silent about challenging group content in HOT, I have good reason to doubt whether this will finally be added with the expansion. And I think many of us would agree that it should have been in the original game. Yet now I am expected to pay the price of the full game again, and I’ll probably not even get that yet again. And if I want to enjoy the new profession, I have to pay even more money to get a new character slot, because I suppose 50 bucks wasn’t overpriced enough yet.

JustTrogdor.7892:

Fair enough but you will probably have to wait another 2-3 years to play it. Meanwhile the rest of us will be enjoying it.

-Or, will be regretting how little expansion content you got for the price of a full game.
Which is why we wait till we have a reason to buy it, or the price drops.

geekgirlonezeroone.1793:

I think it’s poor policy and bad decision making to offer the core game for free with an expansion pack that shares the same value as the core game. It immediately comes across as a sham and that the players are really paying for the core game with a free expansion with none of the benefits that comes with buying a 2nd core game.

Exactly. I’d be fine with it, if they dropped the price tag for the expansion and offered it as an upgrade, and also provided an alternative bundle that includes the original game as well at a reduced price. Because then we’d see a clear difference between buying just the expansion, and buying the expansion + the full game. But when the price of the expansion is equal to the full game, and the full game is supposedly included for free along with it…. that sounds very dodgy.

I also think the price is too high, compared to how large I expect this expansion to be (given the limited info they’ve released). 30 bucks would be more reasonable, and it better include one free extra character slot.

If they are going to ask the price of a full game, it better also contain 5 character slots, and additional bank slots, like with a full game. They know we’ll need an extra character slot to enjoy the new profession anyway, so that quietly raises the price tag of the expansion if a character slot is not included. Did they think we wouldn’t notice?

That’s like selling a new roof for a car, for the price of a new car, but with a free car included (unless you already have a car, but its still the same price), and you don’t get the wheels. See how this comes across Anet?

Vix.6730:

Watched the video. Bogotter was fair and honest. Can’t say the same for WoodenPotatoes. He’s All In with Anet.

I got the impression that he was actually also quite critical of this situation. And I watched the whole video.

briggah.7910:

Small size of the expansion? So you’ve played the entire expansion? Can you make a list of everything that is in it for all of us that don’t have a time machine into the future?

They have given us previews, and shown us roughly how much landmass will be added. Thats not much.

Maybe a pet rock!

That made me chuckle.

Bog Otter makes good points, although he doesn’t mention how Anet already makes money from the gemstore. So I don’t think 50 bucks is a reasonable price, given the small size of the expansion, and that they are already getting a lot of money from us through the store.

There’s more to it than that. 50 bucks is the price of a full game, but what we are getting is half the content of an expansion.

The new necromancer specialization has really soured my mood about this “expansion”. It seems to me that the new specialization blows the old necro completely out of the water, and kind of invalidates the old necro existing in the first place. And since I play necromancer exclusively, I feel like I’m paying 50 bucks to have my class fixed.

It also seems bizarre to have such a high price for an expansion to a game that already makes tons of money from their Gemstore.

Also, I feel insulted that I have to pay 50 bucks to have my class fixed. The necro specialization looks so good, that it pretty much invalidates ever playing the old necro ever again. So it feels like I’m paying 50 bucks to have something fixed that shouldn’t have been broken in the first place.

Just an extra character slot? Not enough. I want at least an extra bank slot on top of that, or just bring the price down to that of DLC, because that is what it is. 20 bucks, and no more.

WP did some good coverage of this, but we need to get the word out to game journalists that cover more than just GW2. Someone like TotalBiscuit or AngryJoe would help a lot, because this is quite shady, and I don’t like it. Negative publicity is what this needs to bring the price down. The customers deserve better.

We were supposed to have guild halls with the original game. GW1 also had guildhalls, so why would GW2 be different? The game is literally called Guild-Wars. And the emotes are also clearly missing. Just type existing emotes from GW1, and you’ll notice that they are recognized. So that’s missing content that was supposed to be in the original game.

It’s also quite obvious that a lot of explorable areas are missing in GW2. Rata Sum for example, is completely isolated from all the other explorables. And there’s even a gate towards the south in Ebonhawk. The portal to Drytop was visible since the release of GW2, and only recently this zone was added with the Living Story. These are all signs of scrapped content. GW2 was clearly meant to have a lot more landmass, than it ended up having. GW1 had these areas, so why are they missing? And are there no elite endgame areas, such as the Underworld, or Fissure of Woe? Will these be expansions too? Because GW1 shipped with them, and we’re paying full price here.

So is that what we can expect from future expansions now? Missing content from the original game?

So along with guildhalls and the Maguuma Jungle, do we also get the missing emotes, the Crystal Desert, the Ring of Fire, and a fixed Zhaitan fight?

Because I think I’m sensing a trend here. Promise some things, then don’t deliver on them, and then include them in the expansion at full price! Profit!

I’m also seeing some content that was promised for the original game, but turned out to be missing upon buying it. So I’m paying full price for some DLC, and stuff that was missing in the core game? Heck, I also only play PVE, and this seems like a very small expansion, if you can even call it that.

Say, does Heart of Thorns also contain the other missing content?

Now featuring things that should have been in the original game + half the new content of any other expansion! And including crucial fixes to the core game that plagued the original game for years! Full price!

-CHING!-CHING!-

I think I’d use the following example:

Here is BOB, and he’s full price. You buy BOB, and it turns out many promised features are missing, and BOB has many problems.

A few years later, here is the expansion to BOB: BOB2 The price is exactly the same as the original, but basically you get the same BOB with a few extras, and BOB2 now includes some things that were promised with the original BOB, and some fixes for the original BOB’s problems. If you already had the original BOB, and just want the extra content, features and fixes, tough luck, you still pay full price.

Now wait for the inevitable, where BOB2 turns out to also lack some things that were promised, and has problems that will be fixed if you pay full price for BOB3.

So basically, Anet’s idea of an expansion, is worse than the model for buying a new version of Windows?

Giland.4507:

It true Anet could have a ton of surprise content not yet discussed.

Ooooh, skycastles! Take my money Anet!

So… full price for half an expansion, for a product that was already incomplete upon release, and already has a gem store with lots of rewards locked behind a pay wall. Sounds perfectly reasonable. -cough-

(Missing emotes, guildhalls, explorable areas, broken quests/skills/traits/guilds on release, and an unfinished final boss fight)

“They should all be destroyed”

Phadde.7362:

One crude suggestion: What would be the result if there was a hard limit of 1 profession per ‘raid’? (Total groupsize of 9, or perhaps with room for a double of one profession.)

It would become very hard to form groups.

Bhawb.7408:

Flesh Golem doesn’t work underwater because they never added animations for it, and that would take resources away from other stuff to fix.

That is a terrible argument to not fix something. They have animators, and their job is to make animations. Making the Flesh Golem work underwater would do a lot for minion masters.

Oh I do blame Queen Jennah as well. She is after all a mes-… a mm….
a… you know… the M-word.

And they cannot be trusted. But Kiel is also to blame.