Guild Wars 2

MMOGamer.6175:

Here’s what I’m thinking. Somewhere in this thread there is a link from the Korean(IIRC?) securities/stock exchange which basically stated that 2 million copies of HoT have to be sold. Bundling the core game with HoT allows sales of the core game to be counted as HoT sales and vise versa which COULD NOT be done if the core game was a stand alone purchase.

That data stated what Anet would need to sell in order to meet their projected earnings. Which was 2 million sales at $50 each. Basically it’s the number of copies the firm thought Anet could push, and the price that would need to be in order to meet expectations.

Including the core game doesn’t impact the projection, it only gives the possibility to artificially inflate the number of products sold if they want to count it that way. That number isn’t all that important, as it has no impact on profits. If they were to actually count each HoT sale as 2 sales, 2 million copies would only meet 50% of their projected earnings.

DieselFueled.3257:

mrstealth.6701:

Add Anet continuing to sell the core game while their FAQ falsely stated owning it was required for HoT. I think that is the dirtiest thing they’ve done in this mess.

They have already offered refunds going back 30 and in some reported cases 60 days on GW2 purchases towards HoT upgrades. They changed their mind on how they wanted to distribute the game which made it way easier for new players. I bought my second account during the 10 dollar sale. Do I feel slighted? No.

A refund offer that requires deleting their existing account. And if they have bought any gems in that time, they’re out that money as it’s not refunded.

DieselFueled.3257:

Arguments:

1) Base game is free to new players = slap in face to veterans.
– A veteran would be happy with this, not disappointed as it instantly eliminates the pay wall for new players entering our digital world. A veteran player would recognize that the years of enjoyment this game has already provided with living world, seasonal events, and limited duration items is much more valuable than a new player version of the game. If that wasn’t true the veteran player would use their HoT purchase as a second account while farming laurels with their veteran account.

2) No character included with the basic version of HoT.
– This veteran would also understand that a character slot can easily be purchased (or HoT can be upgraded to deluxe edition) using in game gold. This in game gold can be accumulated in a short amount of time playing the current content quite easily.

3) HoT is not worth $50.
– A truly devoted veteran would have shown support to Anet over the past 3 years by purchasing gems with real money. In turn this devoted veteran would be getting very little additional content with those purchased gems. 20, 30, 40 or infinite dollars of real money have been spent by actual devoted GW2 veterans on skins, minis, and other cosmetic tools. To these devoted veterans a purchase of $50 for actual content is a blessing!

The pre purchase numbers for HoT will prove to all the truly enormous amount of dedicated players in the GW2 community. Do not for 1 minute believe that opinions like those of the OP are shared by the “veteran” or even the new player base.

Add Anet continuing to sell the core game while their FAQ falsely stated owning it was required for HoT. I think that is the dirtiest thing they’ve done in this mess.

GeekDavid.2786:

NecroN.8306:

Straylight.7529 Your only purpose here is to derail this thread. Go troll somewhere else and stick to facts.

Best way to get a troll to move on to another thread or forum… don’t feed it. (i.e. don’t reply.)

I’m starting to follow my own advice right now.

Same for me. I’m not bothering with any more posts (from anyone or any side) over who is the majority/minority unless they bring some actual data with them.

Something without any response bias, and not done on as a voluntary survey (like asking mapchat).

I don’t really care who the majority is, anyway. I’m unhappy, so are lots of others. That’s really it.

Straylight.7529:

mrstealth.6701:

Straylight.7529:

Baldrick.8967:

Here’s some logic:

The vast majority of players are unhappy about the expansion.

If they were exstatic about it, people would be buying it in droves, towns would be full of happy people spouting on about it, and forums and social media would be full of people singing it’s praises.

-snip-

No, I’m sorry but your post already falls apart right there. The vast majority of people are indifferent/happy about the expansion/game. There are hundreds of thousands of GW2 players you never hear of. They never post on the forum. They never complain and they never voice their opinion. Those are all typical behavioral patterns for indifferent or happy people.

So, all of the unhappy people I know are really just indifferent?

…or they just don’t bother posting on forums. Perhaps because they’d rather not have to see people telling them they’re “feeling wrong”. Instead they just vote with their wallet. The vote that really matters to Anet.

No, the unhappy people are unhappy and the indifferent people are indifferent. It just happens that the few unhappy people you know pale in comparison to the number of indifferent+happy people out there.

Sure, there will be people who’re unhappy and simply vote with their wallet without telling anyone. But you forget that people who don’t complain are more likely to belong to the happy+indifferent group opposed to the unhappy group. Most people are not complaining that means most people are indifferent or happy.

Many are complaining, as my friends are, just not on these forums or some other place you see. That’s the fallacy of the assumption. Saying that not posting here, is the same as not complaining. It’s not at all the same.

A lot of people, no matter how unhappy they are, simply aren’t going to go to some forum they don’t use in order to voice that complaint.

In the end, it really doesn’t matter what is the majority or minority. There is really no need to squabble over it. If someone wants to prove either way, they can go do some proper unbiased surveys.

The fact is that a lot of people are unhappy and it’s creating a rather large mess of bad PR. That is really all that matters, and that is what Anet is going to need to deal with.

Scoundrel.2139:

mrstealth.6701:

Straylight.7529:

But the local minority who’s unhappy with this preorder deal is unhappy for all the wrong reasons and I want them to be happy.

Now you’re trying to tell us what we should or shouldn’t be happy about because what you think that’s the majority opinion?

That really does sound like someone trying to desperately be part of the majority they perceive.

I’m guessing your next post will start with “Would you kindly…”

All this to and fro-ing is really counter productive. Mud-slinging here wont accomplish much. Can we turn the thread back towards it’s intended purpose and simply post our thoughts on the content/price? And not on each others thoughts of the content/price?

Edit: spelling

Agreed. And there is so much more wrong here than just the price and amount of content we think it will or will not have. That is really seeming to be one of the more minor concerns.

Straylight.7529:

Baldrick.8967:

Here’s some logic:

The vast majority of players are unhappy about the expansion.

If they were exstatic about it, people would be buying it in droves, towns would be full of happy people spouting on about it, and forums and social media would be full of people singing it’s praises.

-snip-

No, I’m sorry but your post already falls apart right there. The vast majority of people are indifferent/happy about the expansion/game. There are hundreds of thousands of GW2 players you never hear of. They never post on the forum. They never complain and they never voice their opinion. Those are all typical behavioral patterns for indifferent or happy people.

So, all of the unhappy people I know are really just indifferent?

…or they just don’t bother posting on forums. Perhaps because they’d rather not have to see people telling them they’re “feeling wrong”. Instead they just vote with their wallet. The vote that really matters to Anet.

Straylight.7529:

But the local minority who’s unhappy with this preorder deal is unhappy for all the wrong reasons and I want them to be happy.

Now you’re trying to tell us what we should or shouldn’t be happy about because what you think that’s the majority opinion?

That really does sound like someone trying to desperately be part of the majority they perceive.

I’m guessing your next post will start with “Would you kindly…”

GeekDavid.2786:

Straylight.7529:

GeekDavid.2786:

Straylight.7529:

GeekDavid.2786:

Straylight.7529:

1) The majority of players do not post on the forums. That’s a fact.
2) That majority of non-forumgoers can either feel happy, indifferent or unhappy about the game.
3) It’s far more likely that the happy and indifferent players combined are a bigger portion than the unhappy players. Why? because if it was the other way around we would suddenly have a majority of players complaining on the forums since unhappy people are the only ones who complain…and that would interfere with sentence 1).
4) Therefore we can deduce that the complainers are in the minority.

As you can see we don’t need numbers to prove that. All it needs is logic and some common sense.
Also it doesn’t matter if you understand this or not (though I hope you will). All that matters is that Arenanet understands it.

I think before the announcement I’d posted less than a half a dozen times on the forums.

Since the announcement I’ve posted quite a few more, and have not been in-game except for a few minutes to gauge my guild’s reaction to it (it wasn’t “I can’t wait to spend $50 on this expansion!” for the record).

I just proved your logic incorrect.

What? no you didn’t.

The only thing you proved is that you’re an unhappy person who found his way to the forums to complain.

Also you’re still one person no matter how often you post on the forums.

You’re still in the minority.

edit: I’m not saying your complaints are invalid. Just saying that the complainers who post on the forum do not represent the majority. They represent the vocal minority.

You cannot prove that we don’t represent the majority that don’t speak up. You might want desperately to believe it, but you can’t prove it.

And licking ANet’s shoes won’t get you your Legendary any quicker.

No, in fact you’re the one who desperately wants to believe he represents the majority. You belong to the vocal minority. Nothing more, nothing less. That doesn’t make your complaints invalid by the way.

Heh. “I know you are but what am I?” was old when I was in the third grade.

He/she kind of seems like exactly what he/she is saying others are…

But again, we don’t really know which side is the majority.

Straylight.7529:

Therefore they must be in the minority.

They must be? I think that’s quite an assumption to make. The only way to be sure would be a randomly picked sample group (not a voluntary public question) without any bias to the questions asked.

Assuming that people have no strong opinion because they are not being publicly vocal is absurd.

Straylight.7529:

GeekDavid.2786:

Straylight.7529:

1) The majority of players do not post on the forums. That’s a fact.
2) That majority of non-forumgoers can either feel happy, indifferent or unhappy about the game.
3) It’s far more likely that the happy and indifferent players combined are a bigger portion than the unhappy players. Why? because if it was the other way around we would suddenly have a majority of players complaining on the forums since unhappy people are the only ones who complain…and that would interfere with sentence 1).
4) Therefore we can deduce that the complainers are in the minority.

As you can see we don’t need numbers to prove that. All it needs is logic and some common sense.
Also it doesn’t matter if you understand this or not (though I hope you will). All that matters is that Arenanet understands it.

I think before the announcement I’d posted less than a half a dozen times on the forums.

Since the announcement I’ve posted quite a few more, and have not been in-game except for a few minutes to gauge my guild’s reaction to it (it wasn’t “I can’t wait to spend $50 on this expansion!” for the record).

I just proved your logic incorrect.

What? no you didn’t.

The only thing you proved is that you’re an unhappy person who found his way to the forums to complain.

Also you’re still one person no matter how often you post on the forums.

You’re still in the minority.

edit: I’m not saying your complaints are invalid. Just saying that the complainers who post on the forum do not represent the majority. They represent the vocal minority.

We really don’t have any way of knowing which side of this issue is the minority. Of course, the those of us taking the time to post on the forums are a minority of the overall game community. But there are also a lot of players that are just as unhappy and not posting about it.

Of the friends I play with regularly, only one has bought HoT. The rest are unhappy about the current situation. But only one other has actually posted on the forums about it, and that was just a few comments.

Odyssey.2613:

Those infomercials late at night that offer you those “free” gifts? It’s included in your bill. Either in shipping & handling, promotional kickbacks, or the products are close to dirt cheap to manufacture.

But if I call in the next 10 minutes, Ron Popeil will send me TWO Chop-O-Matics for the price of ONE!

Everyone gets that “deal”, and everyone is paying for two of them. Like they’re actually tracking that closely enough to know if you’ve been able to see a that commercial within the last 10 minutes. And with all the channels showing them, across multiple times zones, it’s been on somewhere in the last 10 minutes, anyway.

I’m sure people want to think that developers are all just great people, fellow gamers, and want to treat us all like we’re their best friends. And I’d say that is true about quite a few of them. I’d say that’s likely true about a lot Anet’s devs. But even if they want to be your buddy, and let us all have great deals, they are still answering to a bunch of execs and investors that are primarily concerned with how much money they can convince you to give them. So we shouldn’t be so quick to trust everything they claim, and take every statement at face value.

Ragnarox.9601:

matrix seishin.5312:

Ragnadriel.2879:

Almost completely stopped playing due to lack of content, and now you have ensured that I will definitely not be coming back. Bye bye!

Sorry but are you crazy?! Living under a rock or something?! Lack of content?! I’m actually sorry I stopped playing for awhile because I missed half of seasons 1 and 2. But if that is too little for you I can’t help you. I don’t know any subscription free MMO that offers this much content.

1 mission of 10 mins every 2 weeks doesen’t count as a content that much(or you talking about GEM store content that you pay for 800 gems?) . Real content is silverwastes.

Season 2 was only a few hours of content. It really only stands up as a decent amount if you’re considering the time repeating it to get achievements and other rewards as additional content.

I think Silverwastes does count for more content partly because of the open world nature. You’re free to go around doings things as you wish. Living story instances are very linear affairs, that don’t offer any alternate activities or ways of getting them done. Silverwastes does get repetivite after a while, though.

khani.4786:

Cormac.3871:

mrstealth.6701:

Cormac.3871:

gryph.8734:

Regina Buenaobra.6193:

To clarify: $50 is the price of the expansion. We included the core game as a free bonus to make it easier for new players to get into it.

So we early adopters are getting hosed. Lemme put it to you another way, Anet staffters: Someone who starts playing the game now gets all the content for $50. I paid roughly $50 to start with, and now I’m paying another $50 for the expansion. In what universe should I be happy to pay twice as much cause I’ve been playing longer?

So were you complaining when the base game went on sale for ten dollars because you paid five times as much? Look, you have a point here, but don’t try and overstate it.

When it was $10, I wasn’t expected to pay for it again.

Now, I’m being asked to pay for it as part of a bundle, and not even kittening get it.

You are not paying for it again. They decided to give it away for free as part of a bundle that doesn’t apply to you if you wish to link it to your existing account. That is something to complain about, but don’t misrepresent it.

Actually, we are paying for it again. Because Hot+Core is not a bundle. If it were a bundle you would have gotten two serial codes: one for core + one for Hot. I’ve gotten bundled games before, you get a serial code for every single part of the package.

Since you can’t even buy stand-alone core anymore.

HoT is the new core game. To say that HoT includes core is misleading at best.

There is probably some specific definition of a bundle that this offer doesn’t fit, but there’s also other game bundles that do only use a single key. I’ve had bundles from Humble Bundle and at least a couple other sources that were like this. In the end, “bundle” is probably the simplest way to describe it.

I do agree that the way Anet is handling this, essentially makes HoT the core product. Specifically the statement that they won’t be selling the core game alone anymore.

brently.7946:

Super duper so obvious simple solution it will BLOW YOUR MIND.

The current price/bundle is backwards. As it is now, current players (not even just vets) are getting the short end and are rightly upset. Most players would be happy with an extra character slot for the $50, and I’m willing to bet the ones that are asking for even more than that would end up settling because they wouldn’t have enough backing to keep fighting.

That being said, here is my proposal.
$50 includes GW2 HoT + 1 character slot.
GW core game price dropped to $10.

With this, current players are happy and Arena Net loses no money. In the long run they could possibly be making more money this way because you can’t farm gold to get a core game purchase like you can with a character slot. And I highly doubt people will complain about paying $10 for the core game. Some will QQ (there’s always some) because they didn’t purchase before the change, but they would still buy and get over it pretty quickly.

I would have been fine with that as the initial offering. But after the fact, they need to do better than that. They were deceptively selling the core game for months, and now offering a terrible solution to those that bought it in the last 30 days.

Anet needs to fix the problem with the HoT packages, make up for the lies/deceptive marketing/false advertisement, and re-earn the trust of their players.

Zhaneel.9208:

A very good article illustrating the point that we don’t know if HoT will be worth the amount we pay for:

“Here’s the thing: we still don’t know a whole lot about the expansion. ArenaNet says that it’s built for repeatable, challenging content, and that the design of the jungle creates more verticality than ever before. But we don’t know how big the expansion will be. When I asked Colin Johanson this, after the expansion was announced, his reply was that ArenaNet wanted to “do a smaller sized area for total scope, and focus really on depth.” Even after a beta weekend, we’re still not fully sure how that depth will manifest.”

http://www.pcgamer.com/guild-wars-2-players-rightly-upset-by-heart-of-thorns-pre-purchase-scheme/

I made a post in another thread with the same point, but found this article right after that. I’m glad that some members of the press are sympathetic at least.

The only pve content that’s even been hinted at is Verdant Brink, new story/LS that we see one short instance of, and yet to be disclosed “challenging group content”. Several features they are hyping as HoT features are, in fact, being made available to everyone. They’ve shown more of this new wvw map(that everyone gets), than any type of pve content.

If they have pve content, why aren’t they showing it off, or at least giving us some information about what is there?

The more I think about it, and see this mess of cash grabs and greed, the more I think that Verdant Brink and a few story instances is all of the pve content $50 will buy. Even if they promise more, it doesn’t make that cost worth it, as in-between updates are paid for by gemstore sales.

Anet is asking for a whole lot of faith in the value of HoT, but not giving much reason to have that faith. Not long ago, I had that faith. But not after this week.

Cormac.3871:

mrstealth.6701:

Cormac.3871:

gryph.8734:

Regina Buenaobra.6193:

To clarify: $50 is the price of the expansion. We included the core game as a free bonus to make it easier for new players to get into it.

So we early adopters are getting hosed. Lemme put it to you another way, Anet staffters: Someone who starts playing the game now gets all the content for $50. I paid roughly $50 to start with, and now I’m paying another $50 for the expansion. In what universe should I be happy to pay twice as much cause I’ve been playing longer?

So were you complaining when the base game went on sale for ten dollars because you paid five times as much? Look, you have a point here, but don’t try and overstate it.

When it was $10, I wasn’t expected to pay for it again.

Now, I’m being asked to pay for it as part of a bundle, and not even kittening get it.

You are not paying for it again. They decided to give it away for free as part of a bundle that doesn’t apply to you if you wish to link it to your existing account. That is something to complain about, but don’t misrepresent it.

I’m a bit tired of having to explain this over and over, so I’ll just quote myself from a previous post

It’s a fairly safe assumption to say that the base game is not free. It doesn’t really make any sense to say that Anet, over the course of a single day was willing to change their perceived value of the core game from being $40(or $10) to $0. If they did indeed value their game at $0, they would have no issues with giving that “free” copy to all existing players that buy HoT.
But this is just simply not how business works. Everything has a value, and “free” products have their cost recouped. Included in that $50 is some minimal amount that Anet is willing to sell that product for. And it’s probably lower than it would be if veteran players also got that copy, because all of the vets that pay them $50 are still paying for it yet not getting it.
Anet can claim all they want to that the expansion alone is $50, but they have already stated that we won’t see it sold without the core game. As customers, we have no way of knowing the true price of a product if it is always being sold as a bundle.
It’s no different than buy one, get one free offers. These are products they are already willing to sell at significant discounts, but don’t expect to see that much discount along with the BOGO offer. It’s marketing to create the illusion of a better deal, when in fact BOGO is in fact the same as 50% off.
It’s the same concept stores use when they try to draw you in with lower prices. If they’re undercutting their competitors on a few items, they are making up for that by having higher prices on other items.

And there is also this lovely wikipedia page that someone else linked earlier.

Point being, nothing is free. Everything you receive, no matter how it is offered/claimed/packaged/bundled, is being paid for in some way. Anyone claiming otherwise has no idea how business works.

[edit]Had to use a link shortener because the wiki article shows as a “bad link” on the forums. I think due to the apostrophe in it.

gryph.8734:

mrstealth.6701:

Cormac.3871:

gryph.8734:

Regina Buenaobra.6193:

To clarify: $50 is the price of the expansion. We included the core game as a free bonus to make it easier for new players to get into it.

So we early adopters are getting hosed. Lemme put it to you another way, Anet staffters: Someone who starts playing the game now gets all the content for $50. I paid roughly $50 to start with, and now I’m paying another $50 for the expansion. In what universe should I be happy to pay twice as much cause I’ve been playing longer?

So were you complaining when the base game went on sale for ten dollars because you paid five times as much? Look, you have a point here, but don’t try and overstate it.

When it was $10, I wasn’t expected to pay for it again.

Now, I’m being asked to pay for it as part of a bundle, and not even kittening get it.

Or to put it another way, you as a veteran shelled out for what the new players are getting for free. And if you purchased the core game 31 days ago, there’s not a kitten thing you can do about it.

What they are doing to their recent customers that they deceived into paying for the core game is just pathetic. And that “offer” to customers of the past 30 days is just a joke. On top of the fact that anyone accepting that “offer” gets any money they spent on gems stolen from them.

Cormac.3871:

gryph.8734:

Regina Buenaobra.6193:

To clarify: $50 is the price of the expansion. We included the core game as a free bonus to make it easier for new players to get into it.

So we early adopters are getting hosed. Lemme put it to you another way, Anet staffters: Someone who starts playing the game now gets all the content for $50. I paid roughly $50 to start with, and now I’m paying another $50 for the expansion. In what universe should I be happy to pay twice as much cause I’ve been playing longer?

So were you complaining when the base game went on sale for ten dollars because you paid five times as much? Look, you have a point here, but don’t try and overstate it.

When it was $10, I wasn’t expected to pay for it again.

Now, I’m being asked to pay for it as part of a bundle, and not even kittening get it.

Null Shock.3745:

The $50 dollar price is fair. Think of it as paying the monthly fee for the last however many years you have been playing. Even then you would have payed a lot more in subscription fees in a lot of cases(Like people who have been playing since GW2’s launch).

Take a look at NCSoft’s earning reports from 2014. GW2 brought them about $77 million. That’s the equivalent of 430,000 players paying a $15/mo sub for a year. How many players do you think Anet would retain if they actually started charging that?

Point is, they are doing quite well from gemstore earnings. GW2 is earning NCSoft more money than all of their other games except Lineage.

In comparison, Wildstar gave a nice $25 millon boost in Q2 of 2014 with initial sales, but quickly flopped to only $2.2 million in Q1 of this year. That’s an average of about 48,000 subs for WS in Q1, while GW2’s sub equivalent is nearly 9 times that.

Null Shock.3745:

I get the whole bit about wanting a free character slot with the basic package, but people complaining about paying $50 for an expansion of a MMORPG with no monthly fee. I am willing to throw down cash that 90% of the people complaining buy gems with in game gold, or at least haven’t spent over $20 Real world money in the gem store. . .You sound like entitled brats. The $50 dollar price is fair. Think of it as paying the monthly fee for the last however many years you have been playing. Even then you would have payed a lot more in subscription fees in a lot of cases(Like people who have been playing since GW2’s launch).

Actually, we don’t really have any information about what this expansion includes, so calling $50 a fair price is extremely premature. I’ll bet that opinion would quickly change if HoT’s pve content turns out to be just 2 maps, or even worse, only Verdant Brink. So far, Verdant Brink and the first story instance are the only bits of content anyone is aware of. If there is $50 worth of content in there, why aren’t they hyping that up, instead of hyping features that we all get without HoT?

It also doesn’t matter if you buy gems with cash or gold, both methods support Anet and give them money. The gem exchange is based on the supply of players buying gems with cash to sell for gold, and the demand of players buying gems with gold to buy ingame items. Every gold->gem exchange serves to increase the gold value of gems, making gem->gold exchanges more tempting for those purchasing with cash.

As for my spending, I’ve bought gems with both cash and gold. After spending $120 for the collector’s edition, buying their charr plushy, and the GW2 artbook, I also dropped at least $60 on gems in the first month the game was out. Plus all of the gems I’ve bought since.

And I spent even more on GW1. Collectors editions for 2 of the 3 campaigns, 2 accounts will all content bought, over 20 characters slots purchased in addition to the ones included with those games. I bought every cosmetic thing they put in the ingame store, and every other extra bonus item that was sold in it. I even supported the soundtrack’s composer and bought every available piece for GW1 and the GW2 sountrack.

I’d say I’ve put at least $1000 into this game franchise. But ok, I’m entitled apparently.

The only thing I’m entitled to is being treated fairly and equally as a customer, and being given honest information about the products I’m being asked to purchase. And yes, I am entitled to these things because their are laws to ensure that all consumers are.

PorceleinEve.2973:

ChoChoBo.6503:

The forums was offline for nearly a day, and when it came back up, every HoT rage/qq thread was merged here.

Was this Anet’s answer to everyone?

You have a complaint? We’ll just drown you out with everyone else.

There’s over 90 pages here, I can’t possibly follow all the conversations. Are you telling me that someone from Anet is? Why have a forum for feedback if you don’t actually want the feedback?

yes, they keep consolidating the posts, and it feels like it’s being done on purpose. i expect they’ll merge the already merged posts about a character slot in the expansion…

It’s a common thing for Anet to do. Merge any topic remotely related to some negative subject spread across the forums into a single thread. I can understand some of it, but topics about very specific related issues always seem to get swept up with it.

When even the threads that don’t deserve a merger start getting piled up together, you know Anet is in damage control mode and attempting to contain the bad PR. A single topic is much easier to overlook.

In this case, it’s far too late for that to help them. It’s all over their social media, reddit is up in arms, and even mainstream gaming news outlets like PCGamer are running articles.

I want a list of features that are actually part of HoT, so I’ll start with what we know already. Please correct anything I’ve missed, or that we have hard evidence belongs in a different category.

Features that we are certain will require a HoT purchase
-Revenant Class
-Elite specializations
-Access to the Heart of Maguuma region, which so far is only known to include Verdant Brink
-Masteries relating to the Heart of Maguuma region
-Continuation of the Living Story in the Heart of Maguuma region

Features that likely require a HoT purchase, but might still be available to everyone.
-Guild halls (we know a leader/some members have to go claim it in HoT areas)
-non-Heart of Maguuma masteries (Fractal Mastery, Precursor crafting)

Features that will not require a HoT purchase, and will be available to everyone
-Stronghold PvP mode
-New WvW borderland
-Specialization system (excluding elite specs) and overhaul of trait/skill unlocking system (we get this stuff in 3 days)

Hidden Dragon.7523:

- Factions/Nightfalls gave us multiple new PvP maps and systems such as Alliance Battles/Hero Battles for example -> Okay so we get Stronghold, 1 map, with a game-mode which kind of looks like GvG which is another thing which the game lacked right from the start – and should be a standard content update rather than being something expansion worthy.

The funny (and sad) part is that Stronghold isn’t even part of Heart of Thorns. It’s been added along with HoT’s release, but it’s for everyone. The gametype doesn’t even get its own queue, so any time any player queues for PvP they can end up in a stronghold game.

The same goes for the new WvW borderland, which is being marketed as a HoT feature, despite being available to all players.

So there’s two major “HoT features” that aren’t even part of HoT at all. They are free updates for all players.

matrix seishin.5312:

mrstealth.6701:

I decided to show the information from the HoT pre-purchase page and FAQ to my mother, who has been done work in the main offices wholesalers and retailers for over 30 years. Everything from a billing clerk to now running her own business.

Her reaction to the information on the HoT per-purchase page was confusion because of the lack of clarity. And the reaction to the actual facts of who does/doesn’t get the core was simply “that’s illegal”.

It certainly wasn’t a surprise to me, as I feel the same way. I do have some knowledge of the subject from working with her in recent years, but not decades of experience.

I wouldn’t say “illegal”, I would say “fine use of a loop-hole”.

I think the situation the FAQ change and marketing of the core game over the last 6 months is more clearly false advertisement. I’d still consider the wording/lack of clarity in the HoT editions as fasle advertisement as well, but that is closer to the grey zone.

Customers considering purchase of GW2 were blatantly mislead by the HoT FAQ and Anet’s marketing to think that they were required to already own GW2 before buying HoT. US false advertising statutes only require the potential to deceive customers in a manner that could influence their purchasing decisions. I’d say telling us that we needed to already own GW2 to upgrade to HoT clearly influenced customer’s decisions to buy GW2.

I decided to show the information from the HoT pre-purchase page and FAQ to my mother, who has been done work in the main offices wholesalers and retailers for over 30 years. Everything from a billing clerk to now running her own business.

Her reaction to the information on the HoT per-purchase page was confusion because of the lack of clarity. And the reaction to the actual facts of who does/doesn’t get the core was simply “that’s illegal”.

It certainly wasn’t a surprise to me, as I feel the same way. I do have some knowledge of the subject from working with her in recent years, but not decades of experience.

The only information on the pre-purchase page is the follow.

The text on the “buttons” for choosing your game edition

Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns expansion(includes Guild Wars 2 core game)

And the text in the pop-up tooltip when you mouse over those choices (emphasis my own)

A game serial code for account creation or upgrade for Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns expansion and the award-winning Guild Wars 2 core game.

The first clearly lists both products, implying that all customers get both.

The second is unclear, giving information can imply both inclusion and exclusion of the core game for existing customers. The text is very ambiguous as to whether “a game serial code” is given to encompass both products or for each product. The core is listed as an “and” appended to the end of the statement.

That tooltip should be more like the following

One game serial code for account creation for the Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns expansion including the award-winning Guild Wars 2 core game , or the upgrade an existing Guild Wars 2 account for the Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorn expansion.

WSG Delen.9203:

Ok, I have relented and bought HoT both for myself and my pal BUT neither of us received a CD Key for the base game. While this may be of limited use as both of us already own the base game having the CD Key would have allowed us to have second accounts. Given the store clearly states “includes Guild Wars 2 core game” they are in contempt of the trade description act in the UK by not delivering CD Keys for the Core Game.

This is unfortunately (for us and Anet) the “offer” they decided go to with. Despite the fact that the pre-purchase page states both are included, the core game is only for new accounts. The wording is quite unclear, but does imply both are included. Such offers usually give clear language (in the ‘fine print’ below) to clarify under which circumstances the offer applies or does not apply. This is the very reason that false advertisement laws exist, and why such clarifications are necessary (or even required by law).

papry.8096:

mrstealth.6701:

Far more money and sales would be made via the following solution (prices not included but would be cheaper).

^^

That quote was actually from mordepth.7615

PorceleinEve.2973:

mordepth.7615:

This is bad sales techniques. Far more money and sales would be made via the following solution (prices not included but would be cheaper).
1. Standard Expansion HoT WITHOUT core game.
2. Deluxe Expansion HoT WITHOUT core game.
3. Ultimate Expansion WITHOUT core game.
option 4 for new players.
4. Any of the above options WITH core game at 50% discount.
Simple to implement and means far higher sales than there will be at this rate. Happier Player Community too.
a tick box for the core game means emailing a voucher to get the core game at 50% reduction depending on the core game pack you wish for.

and i will keep saying this. HoT with free core game is a new client altogether like factions was and nightfall. yet they expanded the game. sorry but they were also separate continents. HoT is the same continent. I ain’t stupid ANet.

they can’t do that, because then, most of the 400k veterans in the game would probably go with option 1 (since options 2 and 3 are kinda weak), and that means we would pay less than the 45 euros (+10 for that character slot for us with 8 and over geared alts) they dream we’ll be spending now.

I don’t see how this changes which editions veterans would buy. We would still get the exact same package we get now, minus the core game which we can’t even use anyway.

If every package is $5-10 less, the options are really no different, they just don’t rip off existing players.

$50/75/100 vs $40/65/90

Anyone planning to buy the Deluxe is still going to choose that package at $65 or $75

papry.8096:

mordepth.7615:

1. Standard Expansion HoT WITHOUT core game.
2. Deluxe Expansion HoT WITHOUT core game.
3. Ultimate Expansion WITHOUT core game.
option 4 for new players.
4. Any of the above options WITH core game at 75% discount.

Like that no one Is left behind.

This is also completely consistent with the promotions they’ve had in the run-up to HoT’s pre-purchase. And it is in-line with the original version of the HoT FAQ.

The only things anyone would really have left to complain about are the price not being justified, and not including a character slot. Both of which are rather minor in comparison to the accusations of forsaking loyal customers and false advertisement.

Chant.6915:

This enlightens me as to why this may have been done. I had presumed that the core game with HoT expansion was an either/or …but if you get expansion code separate with the option to apply to either new OR existing account…then this appears to be a way to artificially inflate their user numbers.

I can see gw2 telling investors/press
“HoT expansion draws in 1,000,000 NEW ACCOUNTS”
(while in reality it may be, 25k new accounts and 975,000 mule accounts)

Dated Feb 25, 2014 the website http://2p.com/4680897_1/Interesting-Numbers-about-Guild-Wars-2-You-Might-Not-Know-by-EdwardsLin.htm
shows at that time 5 million copies sold…

Really, what other purpose could there be for this sales technique, then to artificially boost numbers of game sold?

Thoughts? (poof out door to work)

eep edit after shower, had an extra 9 in there…really out door to work now

Existing players buying HoT get nothing but HoT. The “free core game” goes to waste, as there is just one key you get to apply to your existing account, or create a new one with. The only new accounts are coming from HoT buyers that do not already have an account, or the few current players that sacrifice their current accounts and make a new one.

Explodie.9428:

I was thinking, they cant change the pricing on the game anymore!

Because if they lowered it or change it, what would happen to the people who already bought it?

They know exactly who has already ordered it, and are able to refund part of that money to them. If they can offer this ridiculous refund/delete “deal” to people that had recently purchased the core game, they can do partial refunds to all pre-purchasers.

But they should really get this solved before the game goes on sale in retail stores. Handling a price change there would be a multi-company mess that would likely lead to retail stores refusing to carry their products in the future.

CrimsonDX.4821:

PorceleinEve.2973:

CrimsonDX.4821:

The funny thing about all of this is that you people are complaining about Anet betraying you when it is most likely NCsoft, not Anet, are the ones who determine pricing and things like this. NCsoft is a Korean company, and respecting customers is not something the do in Korea.

Not the customer’s problem. Customers don’t need to assume responsibility for the choices of a company.

Except it does matter when all of the idiots on this forum going blaming, “Anet this, Anet that” when chances are they have no way of changing anything. If they decision was made higher up the food chain then Anet really can’t do anything about it.

Unfortunately, Anet is the company we see behind GW2. As far as GW2 is concerned, when is the last time we’ve heard from anyone from NCSoft? I think they had a some NC people with them at game conventions 1-2 years before release.

Whether this mess is Anet’s fault or not, they are the ones that still have to step and deal with the aftermath. If these decisions were really out of their hands (they’ve always claimed that NC gives them a great deal of freedom), then they can tell us that they had no choice in the matter.

But even if that is the case, I still see it as the “I was just following orders” defense. Doing what you are told does not make it acceptable, especially when what you are doing is breaking consumer protection laws.

Amroth.2170:

First off, is there a law somewhere that says ANet can’t release paid content for less than $50? They have a goal to hit in terms of revenue and copies sold, nothing says what the pricing on the different purchase options has to be in order to hit that goal. Unless you’re suggesting they’re beholden to Daewoo Securities, in which case I weep for ANet if their business decisions are now being based around the auguries of an investment firm.

^this

We don’t know what NC/investor expectations for Anet are, aside from projected profits. And in the end, they really shouldn’t care all that much how Anet meets that expected, just that they do it. If they can sell the 20% more copies priced 20% less, they still meet that projection. And do so with more potential gem buyers, and a larger veteran playerbase for the next expansion.

It’s a ‘game’ of trying to find the sweet spot of charging enough to make the money with the number of interested customers, without the price being so high that it drives away too many of them. They could price it at $5 or $200, but in either case they would be very unlikely to meet their projections.

Tranquilnelf.1258:

The point , that a lot of people, including myself are making, is that there is a much higher value being offered to brand new players for their $50 spend.

Agreed , that the base game is not being charged, and that the price tag is for the expansion only, but if you consider the value offered to new players vs the value offered to old gamer, there is a huge apparent difference.

It’s a fairly safe assumption to say that the base game is not free. It doesn’t really make any sense to say that Anet, over the course of a single day was willing to change their perceived value of the core game from being $40(or $10) to $0. If they did indeed value their game at $0, they would have no issues with giving that “free” copy to all existing players that buy HoT.

But this is just simply not how business works. Everything has a value, and “free” products have their cost recouped. Included in that $50 is some minimal amount that Anet is willing to sell that product for. And it’s probably lower than it would be if veteran players also got that copy, because all of the vets that pay them $50 are still paying for it yet not getting it.

Anet can claim all they want to that the expansion alone is $50, but they have already stated that we won’t see it sold without the core game. As customers, we have no way of knowing the true price of a product if it is always being sold as a bundle.

It’s no different than buy one, get one free offers. These are products they are already willing to sell at significant discounts, but don’t expect to see that much discount along with the BOGO offer. It’s marketing to create the illusion of a better deal, when in fact BOGO is in fact the same as 50% off.

It’s the same concept stores use when they try to draw you in with lower prices. If they’re undercutting their competitors on a few items, they are making up for that by having higher prices on other items.

Lord Crevax.7412:

Guys, simple as that, you don’t like the pricing model / content as it is now ? so don’t pre-purchase, just action the money lever, since this is all about money…

Anyone that’s read more than a couple posts in this thread should know that there are much larger issues than the expected cost-to-content ration. Most notably, the fact that Anet has spent the past 6 months selling the core game based on false information, and that the the only options to buy HoT involve existing players paying for a core game key they don’t actually get.

Hammersmash Ureface.2650:

And doesn’t it suck the very most, that it’s all going to go largely to waste or be received sourly by many of us who stuck by them for this ten years If they can’t just start talking to us and find resolution in a manner befitting.. Businesslike, where all parties, us and them, come away feeling slightly stung, but mostly not.

Yeah, this situation is flat out crap. What they’ve done is inexcusable.

I’ve supported Anet for a decade, and this is the first time I’ve actually decided that “No, you can’t have my money for what you’ve done, and you’re not ever getting any more of it unless you fix it.”

I haven’t agreed with every decision they’ve made. I’ve been extremely outspoken against some of them, and unhappy that they stuck to some of those. But overall, I’ve been satisfied. The things I’ve taken issue with, are aspects of the game I can simply avoid with little to no impact on my gameplay or enjoyment of the game.

But what has happened this week, I cannot get over and live with. They need to make up for their mistakes and deception before I consider them deserving of my support, and my money.

Hammersmash Ureface.2650:

mrstealth.6701:

Hammersmash Ureface.2650:

Grav.3568:

AnClar.1304:

While I’m unhappy about the marketing surrounding HoT, I think peeps saying a lack of response from ANet for 3 days equates to ANet doesn’t care is, I think, a bit unrealistic.

Given Anet’s continuing inability to address issues from two years ago, are you really that surprised?

Yep. As I said, it took them 7 years to give us what they said would take 1-2. I’d say, check back in about, oh, a month, 3 perhaps.. A year? It certainly pays not to count with aNets clock…

When did they ever say it would be 1-2 years?

And GW2 didn’t take 7 years, it was 5. They announced it in spring 2007, which was the same time they began work on it. It was released just over 5 years later. And 5 years is a pretty normal time for MMO developement.

As unhappy as I am with the current situation, I’m not going to start spouting off totally inaccurate information to bash them. Use facts for that.

Ok you got me. I was mostly right. You were right about the announcement date, however, GW1 was released in 2005. We waited 7 years for GW2. There was, as I remember plenty of talk about a sequel before the official announcement.
My point still stand that you can’t expect miracles 3 years after release when it took 7 years from GW1 release to release GW2, on almost the exact same engine..

I think it’s obvious that GW2 is a pretty thorough overhaul of that old engine. There are a lot of things possible in it, that were not in GW1’s engine. Looking at other game engines, there is a lot of iteration of the same bases as they shift from v1 to v2, etc.

I think a good example would be Oblivion and Morrowind from the Elder Scrolls series. The games have quite different engines, even though both are the Gamebryo engine. They are just different iterations/versions of the same engine, with very different technical capabilities.

Back to Guild Wars 2.

HoT is still GW2, and isn’t bringing a new engine. There are, as Anet has pointed out already, some technical advancements made in the expansion’s content. But it is still running on the same game client. These are the same types of new tech that we’ve already seen added to to the core game since release. I’m sure anyone that played wvw back in 2012 remembers culling.

AlexanderFalkor.4765:

mrstealth.6701:

AlexanderFalkor.4765:

sighs all this for a game for the love of the gods above you all are taking this way too far

It doesn’t matter what it’s for. It’s a company offering a “deal” that (with no notice) does not apply to all customers, and lying about perquisites in order to sell more copies.

but legal action its a bit extreme for a bloody game your lifes are in no way affected by their shady tactics

They are taking (or at least asking for) money for this product. That makes it matter.

Imagine you’re shopping for a new mobile phone. You get a nice discount on an upgrade/contract re-sign for under $100. The saleperson tells you that you will also need to buy a $25 SIM card for the device, as they don’t include one. It’s still a good price, so you take it. The phone is ordered to be shipped to your home, but you leave the store with the SIM card for it. When the phone arrives, you find that it already has a SIM card ready to be activated.

You contact the phone provider and are informed that you cannot get a refund on your extra SIM card, but also have no ability to use it. They do offer to refund the full purchase of the phone/card bundle, but tell you that you need to buy a new phone a full retail value to make use of the service contract you just signed.

You’d likely be angry, and be willing to take some action against the company if they did not offer a more reasonable solution…right?

It’s no different with a game. It’s still our money, and they are still being dishonest in a shady/illegal attempt to get more of it.

AlexanderFalkor.4765:

sighs all this for a game for the love of the gods above you all are taking this way too far

It doesn’t matter what it’s for. It’s a company offering a “deal” that (with no notice) does not apply to all customers, and lying about perquisites in order to sell more copies.

funkyazn.9062:

mrstealth.6701:

Hammersmash Ureface.2650:

Grav.3568:

AnClar.1304:

While I’m unhappy about the marketing surrounding HoT, I think peeps saying a lack of response from ANet for 3 days equates to ANet doesn’t care is, I think, a bit unrealistic.

Given Anet’s continuing inability to address issues from two years ago, are you really that surprised?

Yep. As I said, it took them 7 years to give us what they said would take 1-2. I’d say, check back in about, oh, a month, 3 perhaps.. A year? It certainly pays not to count with aNets clock…

When did they ever say it would be 1-2 years?

And GW2 didn’t take 7 years, it was 5. They announced it in spring 2007, which was the same time they began work on it. It was released just over 5 years later. And 5 years is a pretty normal time for MMO developement.

As unhappy as I am with the current situation, I’m not going to start spouting off totally inaccurate information to bash them. Use facts for that.

hmmm i dunno, some people are already looking a things from a lawsuit perspective. It won’t be too long till that happens.

A agree that there is likely a precedent for legal action. The information provided in the FAQ before the pre-purchase went up, along with the promotion of the game during that time, very likely falls under false advertisement laws.

phys.7689:

mrstealth.6701:

Hammersmash Ureface.2650:

Grav.3568:

AnClar.1304:

While I’m unhappy about the marketing surrounding HoT, I think peeps saying a lack of response from ANet for 3 days equates to ANet doesn’t care is, I think, a bit unrealistic.

Given Anet’s continuing inability to address issues from two years ago, are you really that surprised?

Yep. As I said, it took them 7 years to give us what they said would take 1-2. I’d say, check back in about, oh, a month, 3 perhaps.. A year? It certainly pays not to count with aNets clock…

When did they ever say it would be 1-2 years?

And GW2 didn’t take 7 years, it was 5. They announced it in spring 2007, which was the same time they began work on it. It was released just over 5 years later. And 5 years is a pretty normal time for MMO developement.

As unhappy as I am with the current situation, I’m not going to start spouting off totally inaccurate information to bash them. Use facts for that.

they actually said when i bought eye of the north that the beta was coming in summer. (there was a beta sign up thingy)

maybe they meant summer 5 years later, i had a joke with my friends who played, when they got excited early on, i would say mannnn guild wars isnt coming out till twentytwen (twen being a non existent number that sounds like ten/twelve/twenty that no one can say what it is)

I don’t recall anything like that. They had only started working on the game in May or so of 2007, and EotN was release in August of that year. There really wouldn’t have been anything to beta at that time. I don’t think they even had a newsletter signup at that point. It was a couple years before we started even getting hints of anything of the sort.

They were pretty clear that at the time of reveal, they had just started on the thing. So there wasn’t any expectation of even gameplay footage for a long time.

Hammersmash Ureface.2650:

Grav.3568:

AnClar.1304:

While I’m unhappy about the marketing surrounding HoT, I think peeps saying a lack of response from ANet for 3 days equates to ANet doesn’t care is, I think, a bit unrealistic.

Given Anet’s continuing inability to address issues from two years ago, are you really that surprised?

Yep. As I said, it took them 7 years to give us what they said would take 1-2. I’d say, check back in about, oh, a month, 3 perhaps.. A year? It certainly pays not to count with aNets clock…

When did they ever say it would be 1-2 years?

And GW2 didn’t take 7 years, it was 5. They announced it in spring 2007, which was the same time they began work on it. It was released just over 5 years later. And 5 years is a pretty normal time for MMO developement.

As unhappy as I am with the current situation, I’m not going to start spouting off totally inaccurate information to bash them. Use facts for that.

Zunnar.8503:

mrstealth.6701:

You get a totally worthless title. Which they apparently feel is worth paying for a product you have no idea when you will actually recieve.

This reminds me the GW2 soundtrack. I heard your money goes into the ether paying for it, and indeed nearly two years later it still hasn’t come. I like Jeremy Soule’s music but man what a stinker of an online store he owns.

I only didn’t complain because I acquired it through other means (a friend) while purchasing due to the abysmal feedback his store has. It’s almost fraud, but I went in knowing I probably wouldn’t get the physical item for a very long time if ever.

I know I can trust ArenaNet to get the product. And indeed, even a free character slot for pre-purchasing would be better than nothing at all for existing customers. Heck, I’ve bought a few gem cards over the years for the simple purpose of wanting to contribute. Giving ArenaNet money isn’t what I’m upset about. Hopefully they fix this up.

I bought the Skyrim (twice for that one) and GW2 soundtracks, and didn’t have any issues with either. This is, of course, just the experience of one person. Since then, I’ve heard several similar reports.

And like you, I don’t have any doubts that Anet will actually deliver HoT. But I do have my doubts about its content, and several issues with the way they are doing business with the pre-purchases. I’m certainly not giving them any money till these problems are resolved.

Frediosz.2718:

That’s right.
Core isn’t there to be free – it up-scales price of said expansion.

Anyway…

Im wondering if base game without HoT will get all those masteries + pvp and wvw stuff or rather HoT will be a patch with 1 class and 3-4 maps that we need to pay for to get this. (i hope that both pvp and wvw changes will be avaible in not HoT game version)

If not well…
You may as well delete GW2 because without this ‘expasion’ it will be like a bike without a handlebar…

I dont wanna feel handicapped without it.

You’ll get the new wvw map, overhaul, and stronghold without HoT. Masteries I don’t expect to see without HoT, as most are related to HoT zones.

Razor.9872:

agrante.2810:

I don’t care about offering the core game free with the expansion, although I understand why some veteran players may feel outraged about this.

For me it’s just that considering what we expect to get and the previous pricing policies (also for other games) it feels overpriced, with a poor bundle of extras for a pre-purchase. Some of the features like guild halls should’ve been in the core game from the beginning anyway!

I think bundling in an extra character slot and lowering the price 10 €/$ for the base package would’ve been the consensus and the sweet-spot to have most of the community happy and spreading hype all over the internet, instead of outrage and boycott.

This whole thing looks like terrible PR and I’m not sure how much it will actually hurt the company – not only economically but also in morale – and if a more modest pricing and generous bundling wouldn’t have payed out more in the long run. I guess we’ll never know for sure.

The whole silence after the community’s reaction isn’t helping, either.

While a character slot would have been nice, they cannot lower the price further than it is now.

They could, but that would require giving a partial credit to everyone that had already bought it.

Quiznos.4296:

Otokomae.9356:

Well, people keep speculating about why HoT was $50 at all, saying that the free game for new players is factored in, or because Warlords of Draenor was $50 (the most expensive expansion in WoW’s history, and tied w/ HoT for the most expensive MMO expansion ever, atm), or that maybe there is just a mountain of new content that Anet hasn’t shown us yet that makes this kitten expansion.

But, if you go back to January 8 (a few weeks BEFORE HoT was even announced), you can find a a 2015 Yearly Projections statement made by Daewoo Securities, currently the LARGEST stock brokerage and investment bank in South Korea, in which they said that NCSoft would release an expansion called Heart of Thorns (weeks before the announcement) and then projected that Anet would sell at least 2 million copies of the expansion at $50 each. This is not a “guess” by analysts about the positive outcome, this was the largest brokerage in Korea saying “You need to sell 2 million copies of this expansion for $50 each or you will NOT make your quarterly projections for the end of 2015”.

You can read a summary of this on Daewoo Securities website here: http://goo.gl/ziO33b

This is essentially like Goldman Sachs telling a company “You must raise the price of your products by 15% this year, or your stock price will drop”. Goldman Sachs, of course, has no authority to actually raise those prices, but as the largest investment bank in the US, they can do more than just predict how stock prices will move.

So that’s it. $50 is the price. It kind of has to be. Maybe Anet will throw in some extras, I don’t know. But if you’re wondering “Why are they giving away the core game w/ the expac”, it’s it NOT entirely because they want to increase the game’s population in order to give everyone playing a better experience. It’s not even about adding more customers to the Gem Store, or anything like that. NCSoft was given a mandate from the most powerful investment bank in the country that essentially said “You must sell 2 million copies of this product at $50 each just to meet yearly projections… or else!”

So yeah, don’t expect a price drop.

That’s some very interesting information. Thanks!
I do have to wonder though, wouldn’t 2.3 million copies at $40 each make the same $?
I honestly don’t think it would take much for a net to exceed 2 million (if they haven’t already).

That’s the game they play with pricing. Find the point where you can maximize profit while not having your customers feel you are being greedy or ripping them off.

I think the reaction so far has shown that Anet chose poorly. Then compounded that by making more bad choices with the product packages. They would be selling more copies if the price was lower, or offered more value at the current price. Of course, they can’t be expected to make 10 million sales at $10, but they are going to have to do better than this.

Zunnar.8503:

The price isn’t the thing that gets me. It’s the total lack of pre-purchase bonus. There’s no incentive for me as an existing customer to pay early. The list of bonuses is totally blank.

Did people who bought GW2 after it came out get the same bonus as a standard pre-purchase exactly? No!

There should be an incentive for pre-purchasing beyond “you get to help us QA the game.”

You get a totally worthless title. Which they apparently feel is worth paying for a product you have no idea when you will actually recieve.

Beta access is nice to have, but it’s not something that really as any value. Once the game is out, it doesn’t mean anything. And they’ll be sending out invites to non-prepurchasers anyway.

This isn’t a kickstarter or early access project. They’re not selling pre-release access to their game in order to support it’s developement. It’s like paying for a reserved spot in the crown for a public event.

Even a 3-5 day head start would make more sense than trying to push beta access as your primary pre-purchase bonus.

shadow.6174:

ReiCH.6273:

Ooh, Colin commented on another thread a few minutes ago, so here’s to hoping he’ll drop over here and make an official statement on things…

fingers crossed

says in Skritt voice: “Where? Where? Wheeere?”

lol ok right. Could you post a link or something to that comment? I got curious here.

Here

It’s also one of the most recent posts in the Dev Tracker on the main forum page