Guild Wars 2 Price Model

[tennesseej]

So I have been checking out Guild Wars 2 a bit lately, and overall it looks like it could be pretty sweet.

Gameplay aside though, I have a few questions about the price model and specifically how things went in Guild Wars 1.

1) In the current model, you pay a 1 time fee for the game, and it's free after that. They also have micro-transactions for gems, and gems can be used to buy in game vanity/convenience items, as well as trade for gold. Doesn't that mean that a player could drop a bunch of money on gems and trade them for gold, and get the best crafted/BoE items available in the game without putting in the time?

2) New content might be sold in packs, players essentially buy an expansion. How often did they do these in GW1 and how much came with each pack?

3) How often do the expand/add to the convenience items you can buy with gems? Did the rewards ever reach a questionable point where the player felt obligated to pick them up?

Thanks in advance for your input!

[Bacardi]

Good questions

[Jibjub]

1) When you hit 80 everyone will be getting the "best" gear, stat-wise, basically right away. There aren't "tiers" because there is no gear progress. This means if you wanted to waste your real money to get gear a little faster than everyone else, then you can but it won't at all be an advantage or worth it. The "best" gear will all be cosmetic. However, this doesn't mean gear stats don't matter -- the stats you choose for your build make a big difference.

2) I can't speak to GW1 expacs ... I think they were faster than a year, though. Anyone else can chime in on this one?

3) Again, i can't answer this one ... but nothing will ever be REQUIRED from the gem store. Also, with no sub fee ... you can give yourself a $10 a month allowance for gem shop items and still save money compared to other big MMOs :P

[Milanor]

1) This was answered pretty well above me by Jibjub. You don't get the highest statistical tier of gear as soon as you hit 80 (from what I've heard) but it's a very straightforward process.

2) Taken from the Wiki page on Guild Wars campaigns:
• Guild Wars Prophecies (Initial Campaign) [April 2005]
• Guild Wars Factions [April 2006]
• Guild Wars Nightfall [October 2006]
• Guild Wars Eye of the North [August 2007]
• Guild Wars Bonus Mission Pack [November 2007]

I didn't play the game myself, but from what I heard they offered a very reasonable amount of content for how much they cost.

3) We've only heard that more stuff will be added to the cash shop over time. The only borderline "necessary" features are Server Transfers (for WvW purposes only, as you can play on any server you want for the rest of the game) and extra character slots. The rest is all cosmetic and minor convenience items (most of which you can obtain just by playing the game, and that which you can't can be obtained with gold by turning it into gems).

EDIT: Wanted to clarify a bit on this. Mike O'Brien (the president of ArenaNet and the executive producer on Guild Wars 2) has stated on the ArenaNet blog that "...it's never OK for players who spend money to have an unfair advantage over players who spend time." In later interviews, various staff members have also said that power will never be sold in the cash shop.

[Antheris]

All questions seem to be answered well, however I can add a wee bit to #2.

Factions added 2 new classes, new pvp areas, a whole new pve story campaign (about 20 missions + hard mode versions of each if i remember correct), as well as hundreds of news skills, new factions / weapons / gear etc, as well as changes to existing skills, also I believe heroes were added in the expac.

Nightfall again added 2 new classes, another new pve story campaign (again about 20 missions + hm iirc).. more new skills, weapons, factions, titles and all that.. Plus other things I'm probably forgetting. Also more new heroes added.

Eye of the North was a little different. No new classes, however there was another new pve campaign (done a little differently than the previous ones), Hall of Monuments, new dungeons, abilities, lots of factions and gear, as well as many other things I'm probably forgetting. Again, even more new heroes and dailys were added.

Imo a very reasonable amount of content for the price. Also, there are probably several things for each expac that i'm forgetting about.

Edit: Oh, not to mention that with both factions, and nightfall there was an entire new continent added for each. In EotN the original map from prophecies was expanded so that more of it was explorable.

[Riavan]

The expansions were more like full games, they always had pretty much the same ammount of content as the first game, again. Usually adding new systems or gametypes to the equation, as well as the extra classes etc.

[iCandy]

The expansions were more like full games, they always had pretty much the same ammount of content as the first game, again. Usually adding new systems or gametypes to the equation, as well as the extra classes etc.

Agreed. GW1 Expansions(Campaigns) Were huge. Main story line was really long and then there were tons of optional quests mixed in. Not to mention new skills, heroes, minis, etc etc. Tons of stuff.

[Hockeyhacker]

So I have been checking out Guild Wars 2 a bit lately, and overall it looks like it could be pretty sweet.

Gameplay aside though, I have a few questions about the price model and specifically how things went in Guild Wars 1.

1) In the current model, you pay a 1 time fee for the game, and it's free after that. They also have micro-transactions for gems, and gems can be used to buy in game vanity/convenience items, as well as trade for gold. Doesn't that mean that a player could drop a bunch of money on gems and trade them for gold, and get the best crafted/BoE items available in the game without putting in the time?

2) New content might be sold in packs, players essentially buy an expansion. How often did they do these in GW1 and how much came with each pack?

3) How often do the expand/add to the convenience items you can buy with gems? Did the rewards ever reach a questionable point where the player felt obligated to pick them up?

Thanks in advance for your input!

1) Takes no time upon hitting 80 to have the best gear you can get, this isn't WoW/Rift/ToR/DCUO/etc the gear grind will be for two things, certine suffix/prefix gear to fit your build, and cosmetics, other then that the level 80 gear isn't tiered other then blue<green<yellow<gold=red, but gold doesn't take that long to get and red(legendaries) has the same stats as gold but have unique skins to them. Most reds are BoP and thus must be made by the player with mats that are also BoP so money doesn't get you a leg up on making legendaries either since you can not simply buy the mats.

2) GW1 sold 2 standalone expansions and 1 that required at least one of the 3 before it, its a different model so the answers not going to help you much, much original came out 4/26/05, Factions 4/28/06, Nightfall 10/26/06, and Eye of the North 8/28/07. EotN was the only one that required one of the three before it, the other three where all standalone campaigns.

3) As for how often I can not answer, but no nothing in the store besides character slots for altoholics is a "must buy", its all pretty much vanity items. And even in the GW2 shop with junk like +50% monster kill xp for 1 hour is kinda useless since monster kill xp is a negligable portion of the xp you earn via DEs, exploring, crafting, gathering, etc. And to extend onto that, the gems->gold works in reverse as well so long as someone has sold their gems they bought into gold... so if you don't want to pay the $10 for a new character slot or whatever the price for a bank tab or bag slot you can buy gems with your gold using the same menu screen as gems to gold given that someone has sold gems to the exchange in the first place.


There is nothing to fear about their micro transaction store, there is nothing that is "buying power", nor "skipping a grind", sure the +50% karma for an hour saves you some time if your buying multiple sets of gear, but you still have to do the DEs to get the karma in the first place so you don't really gain that much anyways since by 80 you should have enough karma to get a full set of non tiered gear very second you hit 80 without grinding.

This whole "selling gold will ruin the market" is overly exaggerated, all the built in system does is allow the people who would buy gold anyways to safely buy gold without risking getting hacked, and to take away most of the power from the hacker gold sellers since it will force the hackers to sell gold for less then the current market rate of the legal way to do so is, if your average hacked account has lets say 200G and the going rate for 200G via the legit way is $15 then the hacker has to sell that for less then $10 to have anyone even think about risking their account... and no one can buy tons of gold to take over the in game trading post since even if they use real money to buy up every single copper ore in the trading post, they can not control the price that much since its a buy for/ sell for system where you can put in a bid order for mats and others can for fill it without their having to be the item in the market at the time. (Not to mention the trade house seems to be cross server so it would be really hard to buy every single copper ore in the trade house since everyone who posts its in there for, not just one server (which also eliminates the extorting different servers for mats to switch servers to sell for triple the price on a older more inflated rate and then switch back to a newer less pricy server to repeat the process).

Anyways legit ways of buying gold will not cause a big issue for anyone other then the hackers who will be much less profitable then if they didn't have a legit way to do it since it takes away part if not most of the demand for a service of stealing from other players for their gold. (Won't eliminate gold selling hackers, but it will reduce its profitability and demand for a fair amount)

[Racthoh]

2) New content might be sold in packs, players essentially buy an expansion. How often did they do these in GW1 and how much came with each pack?

They were about the size of the first game in terms of content. The final expansion Eye of the North seemed a little lackluster however. Interestingly enough the original end game content, after Factions/Nightfall/EotN had been farmed to death, went back to being considered THE endgame content to farm for gear/mats/money/prestige.

[mafao]

1) Takes no time upon hitting 80 to have the best gear you can get, this isn't WoW/Rift/ToR/DCUO/etc the gear grind will be for two things, certine suffix/prefix gear to fit your build, and cosmetics, other then that the level 80 gear isn't tiered other then blue<green<yellow<gold=red, but gold doesn't take that long to get and red(legendaries) has the same stats as gold but have unique skins to them. Most reds are BoP and thus must be made by the player with mats that are also BoP so money doesn't get you a leg up on making legendaries either since you can not simply buy the mats.

This is not entirely correct. Getting exotic (best stats gear) is somehow difficult. A full set of exotic gear requires around 44 dungeon runs (source). Still, my calculation show that you will only have 5% attribute benefit by having exotic gear as compared to rare rear (which should be much more common).

[Malthurius]

1) When you hit 80 everyone will be getting the "best" gear, stat-wise, basically right away. There aren't "tiers" because there is no gear progress. This means if you wanted to waste your real money to get gear a little faster than everyone else, then you can but it won't at all be an advantage or worth it. The "best" gear will all be cosmetic. However, this doesn't mean gear stats don't matter -- the stats you choose for your build make a big difference.

This isn't true. Gear power plateaus at exotic quality gear which isn't simply handed to players at level 80, but that gear can't be bought with gold except for crafting it, but the amount of money needed to obtain enough crafting mats would probably not be worth it, and even then the best gear will always be the best gear, there won't be higher Item level gear for you to obtain after that point, only cosmetics and sidegrades.

[Dilen]

1.) Yes and no. Supposedly they will have a level at which max level gear can go, and getting gear of that level is supposed to be easy. However, you could do this to be able to afford the best gear the auction house has to offer all the way up to max level, giving you a significant advantage over anyone else who got their gear from quests/drops alone (or who could not afford the AH prices)

2.) The first expansion for Guild Wars 1 was exactly one year after release, the second only about six months later. The last was about 10 months later. I have no idea how often Guild Wars 2 will release expansions, but given the starting world is rather small, I expect they will push out expansions rather quickly (based on initial sales numbers).

3.) There is nothing solid yet, but I expect they to add new items to the cash shop rather frequently. In Guild Wars 1 the items were mostly cosmetic or digital copies of the expansions.. with the only required purchase being extra character slots if you wanted to have a character of each class type (prior to owning all the expansions)... but you were pretty much forced to buy the other expansions or at least the skill unlock packs for them from the cash shop, as you could not even pretend to be competitive in PvP without them.
...
However, Guild Wars 2 will be Quite different. You will feel Immediately Obligated to spend money in the cash shop (or farm excessively in an attempt to get enough gold to exchange for gems at whatever the current market is on them, given it will pretty much be set by those buying the gems and putting them up for sale) Because with the purchase of Guild Wars 2 you will be getting an extremely limited game, more so that most Free-2-Play games, as GW2 has limited the number of bank slots you get (30 shared across all your characters), the number of bag slots each of your characters gets, and the number or character slots available (ensuring you will need more to play all the classes). Unless you want to be so limited, you'll need to get the rest of the bank slot unlocks and bag slots unlocks (per character) which means either you give them cash or you farm like crazy.

To further make it worse, I believe the in game items like Dye for your armor (which was changed last minute from account wide to per character to make extra money), experience boosters, mobile repair units, etc. will make most people feel they Need those items to be competitive or keep up with others. ArenaNet has a history of being greedy, be it for money or praise, and have made direct statements before about how insanely inexpensive it is for them to run GW1 and how they made a large enough profit off the initial sales to cover the server costs for more than the first five years after release, and how everything since has just been pure profit for them. Their history however, in dealing with their customers, shows a strong likelihood that you will see many many items and options added to the gold store quite frequently that you will feel obligated to buy.

[Valeron]

There was only one expansion for Guild Wars, Eye of the North. Factions and Nightfall were complete standalone campaigns, in that you don't need anything else to play them.

[Malthurius]

snip

I don't agree.

Bank space is pretty generous unless you take up multiple crafting skills. The main items that you would store in your bank have slots dedicated to them in the collection tabs.

You have 5 bag slots I believe out of the box, that's a decent amount of space and I feel it's more than enough when you can sell stuff from anywhere in the world and deposit materials from anywhere as well.

You get 5 character slots for 5 races. I don't quite understand the significance of having to have 8 slots for all the professions when there are no roles you are forced to fill with those characters.

Dyes, exp boosts, and mobile repairs can be obtained in game outside of the cash shop through mystic chests and personal story quests.

I also don't know how you came to the conclusion of "the world is rather small" or "extremely limited game". Inventory space and character slots are not a requirement and are hardly limiting; and we've barely seen any of the game within the betas and stress tests.

[Squirrelbanes]

Because with the purchase of Guild Wars 2 you will be getting an extremely limited game

Utter nonsense.

If you want to know what a severely limited game is go look at SWTOR's new "freemium" options.
To call the massive world of GW2 restricted with what you get with the box price is utterly absurd.

[mafao]

However, Guild Wars 2 will be Quite different. You will feel Immediately Obligated to spend money in the cash shop (or farm excessively in an attempt to get enough gold to exchange for gems at whatever the current market is on them, given it will pretty much be set by those buying the gems and putting them up for sale) Because with the purchase of Guild Wars 2 you will be getting an extremely limited game, more so that most Free-2-Play games, as GW2 has limited the number of bank slots you get (30 shared across all your characters), the number of bag slots each of your characters gets, and the number or character slots available (ensuring you will need more to play all the classes). Unless you want to be so limited, you'll need to get the rest of the bank slot unlocks and bag slots unlocks (per character) which means either you give them cash or you farm like crazy.

A typical attempt to distort the truth, and not even a good one. GW2 has 5 bag slots available to you for free in addition to the starter backpack, you can also use gems (cash shop) to unlock 3 extra slots. In contrast, WoW has only 4 bag slots. True, the default bank space in GW2 is 30 items, which is somehow limiting, - but the crafting materials, pvp gear and pets are stored in an extra collection tab. So its 30 'real' slots which are not wasted on mats and similar things. In comparison, WoW gives you 28 slots for free (this includes slots to store mats), you have to use in-game money (which gets progressively more expensive) and bags to expand this storage. Once you upgrade your bank in GW2, all characters receive the upgrade. Overall, as you can buy gems for in-game gold, it ends up being the same thing as in WoW - you pay in-game gold to unlock more space. GW2 simply gives you the option of getting this upgrade earlier, by paying money. When you take into consideration that you can 'disenchant' items into mats and send mats to your collection tab at any time (no need to go tot eh bank), and also have full access to your mats collections when crafting — GW2 is actually much less limiting in regards to bank access than most other games which require you to constantly run between the working bench and the bank.

So the only 'limiting' thing is having 5 character accounts.

As to the second part of your accusations, the gem shop provides either vanity items or time-savers. The experience boost is basically worthless as it only increases mob xp (which is insignificant source of xp compared to quests). Dyes and all other things like mystic keys etc. drop from mobs. Basically, you can choose: either you want to pay real money or invest some more time for grinding. None of these items gives you an in-game advantage over another player.

P.S. World is small??? Its bigger than vanilla Azeroth by the humblest of estimations :/

Edit: Damn, the guys above me where quicker

[kendro1200]

2) I can't speak to GW1 expacs ... I think they were faster than a year, though. Anyone else can chime in on this one?

Anet said they could produce a new xpack every 4 to 8 months for GW1, but decided not to because they found that the way they did most of their xpacks was slightly overwhelming for most of their community if done in quick successions. Imagine if WoW did an xpack every year, many kids would be happy, but the slow turtles that have issues with adapting to class changes would throw tables and hissy fits. Anet was trying to avoid those problems, because almost all of the xpacks for GW1 were standalone versions of the game, and all had their own variations of skills and specs in the other variations of the game, meaning you could set up a lot of very interesting and focused builds.

As for what to expect with GW2, we'll have to see. If they put out their first xpack in a year, I'd be happy. That said, we have very little information and almost no idea on how the end game will actually turn out. The end game could end up something akin to D2, where the focus is really on finding items that match your build perfectly, for PvE/WvW. Then obviously in sPvP we'll have to see how that turns out. I really hope they do add at least one map that isn't based around capturing a node. Variety is the spice of life, and at the moment the sPvP maps have a fairly big lack of spice. Granted they all have their own little variations, between siege weapons, keeps with lords and pseudo-jungling, but the main thing is capture nodes and then starting a blood bath somewhere to rack up points quicker.

[Setekh]

really? Anet is greedy.....?

[Dilen]

--> Malthurius - The idea of having the ability to play all the classes isn't based on being "forced" to fill a role. Many people don't agree, but MMOs should not be taken as a profession, they are for entertainment and some people would enjoy getting to play through with all the classes for fun and to get to explore all the content in the game they purchased (via the experience of playing the same content with different skills and abilities of course, I know it's the same maps every time, but your perspective will change if you're in the back with a bow or casing spells or in the front with a sword and shield)

I have to disagree with you others on what is and isn't a generous amount of storage space, but then again I've played so many MMOs that it's insane. I'm basing my opinion off of my experiences with WoW, Rift, Aion, Guild Wars, LotR online, Rappelz, DCUO, DnD, Vanguard, DiabloX, and undoubtedly many others I've forgotten over the years and those of them that were or went F2P just offered more baseline storage on average than GW2 does, and typically more character slots as well.

I'm also basing my opinions about the small amount of exploreable land in GW2 on the amount of in game land (on average) from the above mentioned games.

I just see no reason for GW2 to not offer up at least the average amount of storage and character spaces that the majority of MMOs do. They don't have a subscription cost, that's great, but I feel that players who aren't on the Hype train for GW2 that are coming in from other games, are going to feel nickle-and-dimed to death.. especially if they've come from other F2P games. It just seems like a bad/greedy business model to me, and one I expect to hurt them in the long run. That's just my opinions though, only time will tell. I hope I'm wrong, I hope GW2 lives up to the Hype, but for many reasons I'm pessimistic about that outcome. Sorry.

[Setekh]

--> Malthurius - The idea of having the ability to play all the classes isn't based on being "forced" to fill a role. Many people don't agree, but MMOs should not be taken as a profession, they are for entertainment and some people would enjoy getting to play through with all the classes for fun and to get to explore all the content in the game they purchased (via the experience of playing the same content with different skills and abilities of course, I know it's the same maps every time, but your perspective will change if you're in the back with a bow or casing spells or in the front with a sword and shield)

I have to disagree with you others on what is and isn't a generous amount of storage space, but then again I've played so many MMOs that it's insane. I'm basing my opinion off of my experiences with WoW, Rift, Aion, Guild Wars, LotR online, Rappelz, DCUO, DnD, Vanguard, DiabloX, and undoubtedly many others I've forgotten over the years and those of them that were or went F2P just offered more baseline storage on average than GW2 does, and typically more character slots as well.

I'm also basing my opinions about the small amount of exploreable land in GW2 on the amount of in game land (on average) from the above mentioned games.

I just see no reason for GW2 to not offer up at least the average amount of storage and character spaces that the majority of MMOs do. They don't have a subscription cost, that's great, but I feel that players who aren't on the Hype train for GW2 that are coming in from other games, are going to feel nickle-and-dimed to death.. especially if they've come from other F2P games. It just seems like a bad/greedy business model to me, and one I expect to hurt them in the long run. That's just my opinions though, only time will tell. I hope I'm wrong, I hope GW2 lives up to the Hype, but for many reasons I'm pessimistic about that outcome. Sorry.

You could buy all the character slots and bag space and still spend less money than just paying the sub fee of most other MMOs. As others have said their bag space isnt very limited if you take into account collectible storage.


also you could just play the game and spend gold instead of cash...