@zaelex
Nothing of what I mentioned is “pay to win”, these are all convenience and fast track items.
Let’s look closer.
-Sell lvl 80 boosts and individual tomes of knowledge.
Level 80 boosts are already an item in the xpac. Tomes drop frequently. A new player can level to 80 by crafting… nothing “pay to win”, it’s just more of a convenience. WoW offers lvl 100 boosts and that game seems to be doing just fine.
-Map completion packs, per character only.
Having to unlock waypoints is a complete annoyance to a lot of players, and having this convenience, per character, would be welcome. Nothing “pay to win”.
-Sell each booster individually and in packs.
Nothing “pay to win”.
-Race change. This would work really really well coupled with having dwarves as a playable race.
Nothing “pay to win”. WoW and Swtor seem to do just fine with this cash shop feature.
-Sell laurels and various in-game currencies.
I see nothing wrong with players being able to supplement certain currencies through micro-transactions, particularly when I can buy the main currency (gold) for cash to gem conversions, and then buy anything on the tp and many of the materials I need for top level armor and weapons. Let’s not forget about gem store generation 1 legendaries… Buying currency is not “pay to win”, it’s a " pay to bypass some time gates and grind" for players.
-VIP monthly sub with perks.
Lots of games have this and are doing just fine. Again, not “pay to win”.
I’m not going to go into some big discussion about quarterly reports and top grossing mmos, but there are lots of games earning way more than gw2 that have these types of items (and more) for cash… Those game companies are then able to update and improve their game more frequently because they have the finances to do it…
Not directing this comment to you, but I just wanted to say that anyone who doesn’t want anet to improve their resources should not ask for game improvements. Developing this game is not free and you can’t expect anet to improve their game without the necessary $.
No one is saying that what you put is blatant P2W. But the end game is skins and you need map completion to generate legendary weapons so buying map completion could be seen as indirectly P2W.
As for the subscription as soon as they cross the line with regards to P2W, then there would be major problems.
I can buy all gen 1 legendaries in the matter of minutes and most skins off the tp. I can buy most mats for crafting most things… You tell me what I “win” against other players when all players can still earn those items through time and/or game earned gold?
I’m pretty sure an optional VIP subscription would be devoid of giving players the ability to be immortal and 1 shotting players in pvp, raid bossses and dragons…
You get it sooner. You get to devote your time to other things and get more non-buyable rewards than them, such as AP, limited time only items that come from drops in a festival that aren’t sellable on the TP, etc.