Guild Wars 2

Sword + Torch is the fastest hitting weapon combo for the guardian, so it’s great for crit builds. Reasonably, all the sword/torch skills are in Radiance. Put some sigils of strength on there with some Virtues spec and watch as you stack all the way to 25 on mobs or even bosses. You could also go get Empowering Might and a staff to be a party might stacker who also jumps around a lot for no reason.

The jump puzzle does not count towards the Emissary of the Mad King title. Neither does pumpkin carving.

So the real fun in the game is during the 2 seconds it takes for you to check the loot in your chest? Should the next event just give everybody 20 gold via mail and call it a day?

Volomon.9147:

I think everyone’s missing the point entirely, most counter arguments are based on you should have known better, it’s gambling, to you should enjoy the game without the gem store.

None of which respond to the main point, which is the value of the gem store and it’s fair and equal value to the money you put in it. I’m glad everyone sees an alternative namely avoiding it. That doesn’t address the point, some of us WANT to support ANET. I gave them that money like I would give a kickstarter company money it’s an investment, but it doesn’t hurt to see some return for my investment. That is the point. It isn’t sololy the chest though that is the main reason I purchased them it’s the alternative. If I took that same money and spent it at a gold farmer I would have the skin and have twice as many gems as I would have if I purchased them directly from ANET.

That’s my point there needs to be a fair and equal value for my money. Ultimately the point of the store was to finance ANET (even though they want to pretend it’s not), and to remove the gold farmer equation.

On average per day I find 3-9 bots and report them ( don’t ask me why they come in pairs of three ), I go out of my way to support ANET I just expect an equal turn about.

Arena Net can never compete with gold farmer prices because it’s substantially easier to botfarm than it is to make bot farming inviable. It’s less a money commitment than a time commitment. If they make the gem store too lucrative, then in order to keep up with the market inflation, people will eventually have to act like gold farmers – playing the game to maximize profit rather than to maximize fun. That’s how gold farmers kill MMO communities – using against-TOS means, they can earn money in the most boring, nightmarish way because they completely forsake its entertainment value.

Buying from the gem store helps people who don’t buy from the gem store because it drives gem prices down, and vice versa. Any buff to the real money side of the gem store will assist fake money speculators, which includes farmers. any buff to in game money earning will boost real money purchase value. Going too far one way or the other destabilizes the market economy and allows people to make illicit profit faster before being banned from the system. That’s why nothing seems profitable.

If you have a guildmate who is a mesmer and is good at the jumping puzzle, here’s what you can do:

Send the mesmer to the top of the puzzle but don’t jump in the tower.

Wait for the mist to reach you and watch while it passes by you unharmed.

When the puzzle resets (the mist reappears at the bottom) jump on to a platform guaranteed to kill you with fall damage that is not the fake chest drop platform.

You will die and instantly be teleported and rezzed to the platform you hit on the jump puzzle. You will get all your skills back and will no longer be affected by mist.

Time a mesmer portal to allow people just starting the puzzle to skip the majority of the jump sections, providing them a good enough buffer to complete the puzzle at their leisure (this is the part I’m unsure will work).

I have reported this bug so it may or may not go away soon, but that’s one way for the people unable to complete the puzzle who are desperate for the achievement.

Bug still isn’t fixed past update.

I found a clock tower bug that makes you immune to mist and gives you your skill bar back while inside the puzzle. I’ve made a bug report via the game, but I was wondering if I should post it here or email an admin. People seeing me test out the bug may have reported me for exploiting, though I’ve done my best not to grief people while testing out the extent of this bug. Am I in the clear?

Proof of concept

I’ll believe it when I see a guardian wearing 6 WvW invaders all the way back to the keep

Cause I’ve already seen that fashion show on the warrior countless times

Feel my feel my feel my feel my feel my wrath!

You might want to try high crit gear when PvEing with the hammer, since you don’t need as much toughness with 100% protection uptime. You may even want to play around with symbol traits if you really feel like it.

I’d rather the demand for skins be determined by the community rather than arbitrary drop rate variation, but that’s just my opinion.

Omnomberry ghosts will be super great for crit builds with an UNPRECEDENTED 66% chance of life steal, combined with a life steal sigil, warriors and especially thieves can have guardian level heals on a successful dagger storm/hundred blades series of hits. That requires candy corn glaze and will probably be the most sought after buff for glass cannon WvWers and magic find farmers.

magic find boost, karma boost, strength boost, regen boost, speed boost, crafting boost, and general XP boost (not killstreak) all work. These are the usables you get from chests or buying directly from the gem store.

Well this reveals some of the inner workings of the cosmetic aspect of the game, since a really cool looking skin would compete with legendaries.

Buying gems with gold drives up the price of gems and makes it more profitable to buy them with real money. Buying them with real money reverses this effect.

Buying gems with gold to get a skin doesn’t make sense at all unless you have a lot of gold, because you know that gold will be the only way to purchase the exact one you want. If you want to coincidentally get a skin to resell for a return investment when buying lots of black lion chests, then it makes sense, but otherwise it’s much more feasible to eschew potential profit and either buy gold with gems or use your current gold if you want to get a skin you really like.

I’m going to keep comparing this to TF2 because their descriptions of the chest drops here were sufficient compared to how TF2 introduced their not-guaranteed items. The chest-key system wasn’t mentioned at all in O’brien’s post – the focus was on direct cash-gold exchange – which means that not mentioning TF2 as an example doesn’t mean anything. But the model was exactly the same and definitely did not result in failure for the company or the alienation of the player base. I’m not confident that the amount of complaints here are representative of a higher level of dissatisfaction, just because official game forums are usually contentious and very strife-addicted anyway.

I don’t think anybody who has had experience with this chest system in other games would complain about unexpected unfairness because it was implemented in the exact same time tested way, though I understand that people protected from this mechanic are at a disadvantage in terms of experience.

Shield of absorption abilities are superpowered underwater so you might want to spec for those. Stability also helps a lot.

You might want to take downed state traits because guardians can actually dish out a lot of damage while drowning. Spirit weapons will also do their part to help you rally.

You use them in food as well, and that will continue well past the halloween event for people who want condition damage instead of other buffs with their magic find boons.

SDChargers.8401:

Failth.2935:

Just gotta say….

Opened 6 Black lion chests (Bought 5 keys) -> Got the scythe skin
Opened around 7-9 New Mad King chests -> Got Heavy shoulder skin + Recipe: Gift of the Souls

So yeh… I am satisfied But even if I didn’t get any of those, I would still be. Bcos unlike most ppl here it seems, I knew it was a gamble and the chances are ridiculously low to get the skins or the rare recipes. That’s why I only bought 5 keys in the first place.

If you want to have somebody to blame, blame yourself. If you buy tons of Chests so you can get the skin it is your own fault being so stupid. If you want one of the BLC skins buy them off the TP. Don’t throw your money around like a fool and hope things you want fall from the sky on your lap.

Failth, you are COMPLETELY right. I do “blame myself”. I was “so stupid”… and a lot of people are in my boat. We take full responsibility for it. So in the future, in order to be not stupid, and not need to blame myself, I will no longer be supporting Anet with money. Lesson learned. Like I said earlier. I’m not mad, I’m not complaining, but lesson WELL learned. You have just turned away probably thousands of good paying customers. BUT… when it comes time to place the blame for THAT… please remember your post. ANet will need to “Blame themselves” for being “so stupid.” And when your beloved game turns sub-par, you make sure you remember why… and don’t blame it on us for not supporting anet. Good day. =)

It’s good that you’ve learned to be more fiscally responsible, and I believe that’s worth the loss in revenue to an MMO provider.

TF2 is probably a good “other guy” to be. As far as the goals of the shop are, the important principles – taking money trading away from bots and not giving people who spend cash an unfair advantage – have been upheld.

Kiraki.9761:

kaffaljidhma.1496:

This is the sword I’m talking about. You might be thinking of the scythe or the chainsaw greatsword.

Yeah my character has no use for a sword at all so I was automatically thinking of the scythe and greatsword. So it seems unless you can use a sword, you are just out of luck when it comes to getting these skins.

Greatsaw Greatsword

Scythe Staff

If you still have money and that 100 gems → 1 gold rate is holding like you said, then you might still have a chance based on these price trends. At the worst you’ll still have the 15 or so gold you’re willing to invest, which isn’t a small amount considering how much gems were worth pre-event.

Here, I dug up the red response

I strongly suggest you check out TF2 Mann Co. Supply Crates, which as far as I know were the first to implement this “play for the item, pay to unlock it” scheme. The odds of getting anything not specifically stated as guaranteed from the chest were gradually learned by the community to be low: 1-2%. This was without any written or numerical notification whatsoever. The unusuals did have a written modifier that stated the rarity, because the chance for getting an unusual is somewhere between .05% to .1%. I have just heard that the drop rate for items from black lions chests is between 1%-2%, so that doesn’t surprise me.

In fact, I have never come across a situation where event items coming from chests was anything other than guaranteed or <=1%. I have never encountered any system that operated in the 33% or 10% range of getting that item or nothing (there are cases where you could get a 10% chance of a specific item, but that was because you could get 9 other types of items and you were guaranteed 1 per chest).

Therefore, when I opened my first black lion chest and did not get an item, I immediately assumed the chance was somewhere around 1%. This was due to my experience with this system in the past.

If you have never been exposed to this type of thing, I’m sorry that you didn’t play the games that established these rules. This is how it always has been, though, and it is therefore reasonable assume that Arena Net did not expect people to approach this with these assumptions, since they were very familiar with the model I just described, which is the standard.

Taisaku.3492:

kaffaljidhma.1496:

Taisaku.3492:

The sample size is far too small for a 1/10 chance to be determined in 15 openings. As many have said in the thread before, some people get really lucky, other are completely unlucky.

At 15 openings, the probability that a chest with 1/10 chance will drop an item is 20%. At 20, it’s 12%. At 30, it’s less than 5%. This is why I’m mystified when people say they’ve opened chests in the hundreds. After a certain amount, you need to stop what you’re doing and re-evaluate your assumptions.

Honestly, I don’t believe the people who’ve said they’ve spend upwards to $100 USD. However, it’s pretty easy to imagine someone paying for say 3200 gems ($40 USD) in the hopes of getting some skins for themselves (because only one character can use a skin at a time) and maybe selling a few others. The problem with this is, they more than likely purchased all their keys at the same time. That leaves them two options. Stockpile the keys and hope that drop rates are later revised, or just keep opening. While it’s not the most intelligent way to go about something this unknown. It’s very likely exactly what happened.

It’s one of those things like using keep depot supply for trebuchets then.

Kiraki.9761:

kaffaljidhma.1496

This was last night, which was the night after all the people with tons of gold went and played the chest game for what it was worth and coincidentally drove the gem price to 1g/100 gems. I’m sorry you missed it.

I did not miss anything, I have been checking the prices daily and yesterday they where already well over 20 gold. Perhaps you just got lucky with a random person selling it for very low.

Also the gem price has also been close to 1g/100 gems for quite a while now, that is actually how I bought my gems on they day the event started.

This is the sword I’m talking about. You might be thinking of the scythe or the chainsaw greatsword.

I was frankly suprised by the expectations of 1/3 and 1/10 that people came up with since 1/1000 seems a much more familiar number to me considering previous iterations of microtransaction shops in games with large communities.

Assuming all 2 million players open 1 black lion chest, with a 1/5000 chance of receiving it, that puts around 400 skins on the market. That’s baseline. Take the current number of skins on the market and multiply by 5000 to get an idea of how many chests were bought specifically for the skins.

Taisaku.3492:

The sample size is far too small for a 1/10 chance to be determined in 15 openings. As many have said in the thread before, some people get really lucky, other are completely unlucky.

At 15 openings, the probability that a chest with 1/10 chance will drop an item is 20%. At 20, it’s 12%. At 30, it’s less than 5%. This is why I’m mystified when people say they’ve opened chests in the hundreds. After a certain amount, you need to stop what you’re doing and re-evaluate your assumptions.

yertle.5837:

I surprised no one mention Valve with their keys and crates from TF2.
No one ever complain to Valve that they are not getting unusual from opening 100 crates.

Know why? People understand they are completely random and extremely rare – its even in the name of the item!

It was never stated or implied in any way that these BLC drops would be equivalent in rarity to TF2 unusuals – a reasonable assumption was that they would be a common drop, maybe 1/3 or 1/10 and not a 1/100 super rare jackpot item.

You could argue that the wording “a chance” does not exclude extreme rarity, but if you look at the october 24 patch notes (with details for Mad King Chests) you will note that Arenanet recognized that as an issue and modified the wording to “a rare chance”. Hopefully they stick to this in the future so that customers don’t misunderstand the rarity and feel cheated.

Wouldn’t the assumption of 1/3 or 1/10 rarity be challenged upon opening more than 15 chests max?

Ghostwhisper.7921:

did i say if the game was successful or not? did i say complaints will make it unsuccessful ? no stay on topic or leave thanks

I’m sorry, did you construe that post as argument? It was made as an observation.

Chuckles.3754:

Thank you. I’ve finally stopped being a pack rat and got rid of all my mystery tonics from months of rolling alts and getting keys. Didn’t get anything special from the chests but that’s fine, I had no intention of dumping more than $5 on them anyhow.

On a side note, they’re dropping things that aren’t related to Halloween at all. I got a few rare crafting materials that are usually dropped by fire and ice elementals.

That is a property of personalized trick or treat bags, so that’s interesting.

Ghostwhisper.7921:

your wrong those who arent complaining will forget

those who are complainign will never forget and all those i tell wont forget either of what i think of a company that does this and doesnt rectify the problem as i know there are others who feel the same way as me

jeez i hope the elder scrolls mmo is ok…

You are entitled to your own opinion as much as others are entitled to share or not to share your opinion, regardless of how you as an individual express that opinion to them. Therefore, the success of a game depends not on the number of complaints, but on the gross activity of the player population.

Well it’s important to realize the utility of boosters for your own sake if you’re struggling for game income. For some people, any booster will do, and the services part helps alleviate the cost of doing lucrative things (transmuting, mining, salvaging, fighting bosses that kill you or damage your armor, filling your inventory) so if you’re flexible and just want some boost help, the chests are not a bad idea. If you can only do it one way and you only need one type of booster or service, then don’t buy the chest, but I know plenty of people where this is not the case.

I know people who run around with 180% magic find as a result of opening black lion chests, and they’re really close to buying their first legendary despite not ever having done any gem to gold conversion (except for 2 nights ago). So I dunno.

They do, but nobody listens to the people that complain, because Valve is always releasing new content that makes people forget about old grudges.

That’s not true. Most boosters cost more gems than 1 key, which also gives you a service, unless you’re buying karma boosters, which you will need less now that we have liquid karma. Due to magic find, all the rest are interchangeable: put on the buffs and magic find, or put on the magic find booster and your best gear.

you don’t get nothing; you get whatever was in the black lion chests before the event. It’s not like you need 2 keys to open a chest now.

Fortunately gold is easy to come by. Try farming the 15 orichalcum nodes you get per day just on the three endgame maps to see how easy it is to rack up gold.

Obviously the limiting factor becomes how many of the skins they can model. Aside from the resource concerns (having to load all these extra models into the active memory) this was one of the main reasons TF2 decided to outsource its paid content.

Kiraki.9761:

I think these drops are perfectly acceptable, at least you can get something Halloween related now and you get a second chance at dropping the rare skins.

However I think these items should have dropped from the chests right from the start, the whole reason people assumed that they had such a high chance of getting a skin is because the skins where the only Halloween related items you could get from the chests. If there where other items like these in the list people might have realized that the skins would likely be a lot rarer than these items and not gotten their hopes up so high, but at least have had something to show for the chests that they did open.

kaffaljidhma.1496

If you wanted to buy the chain sword skin, last I checked it was about 6 gold.

When did you see one for 6 gold? On the first day of the event perhaps? You might want to change your calculations a bit, they sell for at least 30 gold at the moment.

This was last night, which was the night after all the people with tons of gold went and played the chest game for what it was worth and coincidentally drove the gem price to 1g/100 gems. I’m sorry you missed it.

Eon.5428:

kaffaljidhma i don’t understand you said if everything was available through cash shop then there wouldn’t be any reason to buy gems arent those two basically the same thing? Also how would having the skin available in cash shop be any different then the way it is now what person who dint buy keys from the cash shop is really going to have more than 2 or 3 keys to open chest anyways.

Now sure spending 20 dollars realizing the chest weren’t worth it and stopping is a good idea but why not just have the skin available to be bough and people can spend 20 or whatever bucks and get what they want then think that was a good deal ill buy skins next event too.

This chest thing was such a bad idea i would bet money that next event they will either drastically increases odds or finding things in chest, allow you to earn skins in game someway that doesn’t involve farming tons of gold or buy skins from cash shop because this chest thing is a great way to insure people dont buy gems.

It is terribly easy to afford any one thing in the cash shop using in game gold, which you can earn at an extraordinary rate once you know what you’re doing.

It is best for the microtransaction model if there was some sink enticement for people who have accumulated vast amounts of in game wealth (which earns the company nothing) to re-invest in the gem store. Especially rare items coupled with farming utilities (useless to casual players who want gold fast instead of earning it game) accomplishes this.

It would be best if casuals who don’t play this game reguarly just waited for the people with tons of gold to start buying keys en masse with fake money that didn’t drain their actual real bank accounts by one cent, and then when the gem price is inflated, cash in with a reasonable amount of money to get a whole lot of game gold at once. With that newfound, unearned (in the game at least) wealth, they could pick whatever item they wanted without having to rely on the RNG at all, and the game rich/real world poor could supplement their income a bit without having to spike the consumer.

That’s how the system should work, otherwise the farmers would ignore the events (because wasted game time is wasted gold income) and the only profit would be from casuals who actually want the skin – which is not everyone.

The skin could look wicked cool and this could work, but if the skin just looks decent, the absence of rarity to inflate its value makes it a bad investment in company resources.

TL;DR:

People with lots of gold buy gems for keys and face the RNG

They drive up prices of gems

People with no gold and some cash don’t touch the RNG or just dabble a little, then buy gems as a shortcut to gold

They buy the items they want off the gold rich people, who recoup their losses

Nobody becomes uber rich or uber poor, the economy is stable, and Arena Net gets a load of money.

This is how it should work and is how it will work once everyone gets the hang of it.

Tozen.9814:

Prior to buying gems for this event, I loved ArenaNet. Afterwards, I was really mad.

I’m still willing to give the benefit of doubt to the team and say they made a bad call on this one, but I’ve learned my lesson and will not be buying keys from ArenaNet ever again.

Note: Games like League of Legends sell skins for anywhere from $5-$30. This is reasonable. How much does ANet expect their players to pay with this crazy lottery system? $120+?

If you wanted to buy the chain sword skin, last I checked it was about 6 gold. At its peak, during the halloween event, the exchange rate for gems was 100 gems for 1 gold. 100 gems costs $1.25, so $1.25 * 6 = $7.50 for a guaranteed chainsword. Chainsaw greatsword was 50 gold (don’t know how much it is now) so $1.25 * 50 = $62.50 for the most expensive item in this event, but if I had 50 gold I would probably use it for something else.

It is also worth it to note that is extremely possible playing 1 hour a day to average 1-3 gold. So that’s 7 – 21 gold per day assuming you’ve been playing regularly, which means you get the chainsaw greatsword, the most expensive thing in this patch, for a little more than 2 weeks of play if you only have 1 level 80 character.

Gold has zero real world value and is an ever expanding currency. You can’t say the same for real money. Don’t ever forget that.

Bobobejumbo.4951:

@samrogan: This is what I did. Spent $20 on keys, opened chests, was disappointed, put my wallet away. That still doesn’t make me feel any better about the shady business tactics involved here. ANet hyped up the BLC for halloween, but never posted the actual odds of obtaining the items everyone was hoping to get. IMO, this is where they made their biggest mistake. Be honest and upfront with your customers, that’s all.

They’ve never posted the actual odds of getting anything ever – and if they did, words wouldn’t cut it.

because overwhelming the game with reasons to buy gems crowds out the people who do not really want to buy gems.

If everything was made available through the cash shop, then there would not be a huge demand for gem purchases – people would buy the skin they want, and that would be it.

The black lion chests were never meant to be mass purchased with real money. They were meant to be mass purchased if at all with fake money by people who spend a lot of time farming – and for those people, the chests themselves are a great deal in supplementing their farming abilities. These people will get several skins that they can use not for a profit, but to offset the loss from buying so many keys to keep their stockpile of farming implements in check.

That’s why the prices on the market are reasonable. People who farm can afford to sell skins at reasonable prices because they’re better served by going out in the field rather than haggling over prices, which is why the armor is pretty cheap and most of the weapons are affordable as well. It’s not worth it to them to try to control the market; the inventory space is much more valuable.

A good system would be to warn off people from spending tons of real money on the game at once, and instead provide an incentive for people who have lots of fake money that has zero value in real life to get a small perk that will eventually be diffused to the “I’ll pay a little bit of cash for what I want but that’s it” population that benefits from the spike in gem demand to supplement their gold income and buys one item of their choosing. This system at least accomplishes this task.

thekemp.5967:

Participating or not, Still shouldn’t be an option.

There’s different ways to finance your game, kittenit.

You mean like subscriptions?

I’m wondering about those, since I got a lot of tonics that aren’t actually in the mystery tonic rotation. I wonder if I can use those in costume brawl.

Soniti.6851:

kaffaljidhma.1496:

Soniti.6851:

PlagueParade.7942:

Honestly, the amount of money ppl are spending on these. The thing is ppl want the items for cheap. That, is what it comes down to. Well, if you’re one of those people who is prepared to spend loads on keys for chests you should stop for a few minutes think what you are prepared to spend for it and knowing the chances are insanely slim, buy the 5 key pack to try your luck. If it’s a no go and you don’t get to collect your "$200 " but are still willing to spend more for a chance at a cheaper way to get the skin you want, stop, and just sell turn those gems to gold and buy the skin you want….

It has nothing to do with wanting to get them cheaply or easily. If I could go carve 150 pumpkins for one of the skins, I’d be doing it. I’m not doing it because titles don’t interest me. If I knew I was going to spend 30+ gold on keys and not get the skin I wanted, I wouldn’t have done it and would have saved up to buy it from the trading post.

That’s why PlagueParade said to test the waters first. Spend a small amount of gems on keys to test the waters. If you don’t get one with that minimal investment, you know it’s rare. Stop for a minute then, and go do your research with people who have done the same thing. If only a minimal number of them actually get an item, then you’ll know approximately what your chances are.

Buying tons of keys off the bat and opening chests all at once deprives you of the benefit you would have gotten with a little patience and good natured teamwork. Like the fact that liquid karma is affected by karma boosts – if you chugged them without experimenting and data gathering, you would miss out on 20k karma for the monthly.

Remember that next time: do a bit of experimentation yourself, then rely on the community’s body of science to get you enough data to make an informed decision. Look before you leap.

You’re definitely right, it is my and other people’s own faults for continuing to buy keys. I won’t even be leaping next time if they tie items to a gamble again, that much is certain.

Good for you. There is plenty this game has to offer besides keys, though if you do wish to supplement your playstyle with boosters, opening chests will actually save you money in the long run.

Everyone coming off TF2 has a major advantage in dealing with the microtransaction economy because Valve honed it down to a science. They aimed to maximize profit and gameplay longevity and they did it systematically. Most importantly, the only feedback they got was numbers – there was never any forum response regarding complaints.

Every pay model should emulate the TF2 economy as much as possible because it is based on a wealth of empirical data and carefully tested principles, and every player should at least acquaint themselves with that system to predict how those emulators will be implemented.

Soniti.6851:

PlagueParade.7942:

Honestly, the amount of money ppl are spending on these. The thing is ppl want the items for cheap. That, is what it comes down to. Well, if you’re one of those people who is prepared to spend loads on keys for chests you should stop for a few minutes think what you are prepared to spend for it and knowing the chances are insanely slim, buy the 5 key pack to try your luck. If it’s a no go and you don’t get to collect your "$200 " but are still willing to spend more for a chance at a cheaper way to get the skin you want, stop, and just sell turn those gems to gold and buy the skin you want….

It has nothing to do with wanting to get them cheaply or easily. If I could go carve 150 pumpkins for one of the skins, I’d be doing it. I’m not doing it because titles don’t interest me. If I knew I was going to spend 30+ gold on keys and not get the skin I wanted, I wouldn’t have done it and would have saved up to buy it from the trading post.

That’s why PlagueParade said to test the waters first. Spend a small amount of gems on keys to test the waters. If you don’t get one with that minimal investment, you know it’s rare. Stop for a minute then, and go do your research with people who have done the same thing. If only a minimal number of them actually get an item, then you’ll know approximately what your chances are.

Buying tons of keys off the bat and opening chests all at once deprives you of the benefit you would have gotten with a little patience and good natured teamwork. Like the fact that liquid karma is affected by karma boosts – if you chugged them without experimenting and data gathering, you would miss out on 20k karma for the monthly.

Remember that next time: do a bit of experimentation yourself, then rely on the community’s body of science to get you enough data to make an informed decision. Look before you leap.

Please don’t spend $10,000 on a video game. I am glad to hear that you have finally ceased this behavior.

Soniti.6851:

Caedere.9427:

With all of these “black eyes” and “slaps in the face” people are complaining about, I’m surprised ArenaNet hasn’t been arrested for domestic violence yet. ;D

The level of entitlement that people have about things continues to disappoint me. =/

Care to explain why people who are spending $10 per 800 gems or large amounts of gold are displaying an unreasonable level of entitlement? Shouldn’t people be entitled to something when they’ve paid (sometimes actual, real dollars) for it? At the very least we should be entitled to hard numbers and not just misleading words about rarity.

In my opinion, nobody should spend $100 for any virtual item, no matter how pretty it is. I’d rather rampant spending on such a low yield system be extinguished for the good of all involved.