First Impressions

[Fencers]

Personally, I don't think I like the F2P model. In the end, you'll probably end up spending money on it anyway just to get all the things that without cash spent, take a LOT of time to get.

Kinda don't in GW2 though. Most things are unnecessary for anyone but an obsessive altoholic or pack rat. And even then a lot of cash shop "conveniences" can be bought with gold. Gold which is trivial to come by and has very few sinks.

In a certain sense, there is nothing to spend your virtual gold on except cash shop stuff.

I leave the burning desire to buy a cosmetic top hat only usable out of combat for $4.99 or 1 virtual gold up to you.

[Meledelion]

As fencers said, there isn't really a reason to spend gold in the cash shop.
I like primeval armor so I got that, I like to have all classes so I got char slots. I don't like how one of my toons looked at start so I bought a makeover kit.

Boosters can be gotten quite frequently through doing PS or zone completion so you don't need those (same goes for keys btw)

Storage? Well make your own little private guild, represent it whenever you're up for it and 8k influence later you have your own 50slot storage.
Oh you ran out of storage again? Ask someone else to make a guild and give you leadership, bam another 50slots right there.

[nightshark]

I only have the cheapest 8 slot bags on all my characters and two gear sets a piece. Never once have I filled those bags to capacity. Even after 6 hours of DE zerg farming.

Using 6 slots of the default original bank space, 2 of which are just outfits and 1 is candy corn. Can't say I hold on to tonics, no.

I seem to have a much different experience to you in GW2, where gold and backpack space are actually 2 things I can't get enough of. I have 130 slots on my warrior and 80 slots on my Mesmer, my Mesmer's bags can fill up in as little as an hour when farming dungeons. My bank is nearly always full with stuff as well (boosters, dungeon tokens, vials, mats/gear that I don't need to carry on my person). I have about 100 in gold and ~200g invested in items and I feel like I'm barely scratching the surface in terms of how much gold I need. Heck, I could probably dump all of that gold just to get an ascended back piece or some of the mats toward volcanus... or the fact that the mats for legendaries are in the thousands.

[Maarius]

Storage? Well make your own little private guild, represent it whenever you're up for it and 8k influence later you have your own 50slot storage.
Oh you ran out of storage again? Ask someone else to make a guild and give you leadership, bam another 50slots right there.

tried this, it takes far too long + you can't chat with your main-guild while representing the own. + you earn Influence for this guild while you could earn it for your main-guild. Bad idea after all.

[Fencers]

Wait. I lied.

I have a single 10 slot bag from one of the holiday events on my Ranger.

---------- Post added 2013-01-06 at 05:25 PM ----------

tried this, it takes far too long + you can't chat with your main-guild while representing the own. + you earn Influence for this guild while you could earn it for your main-guild. Bad idea after all.

My sister, brother in law, husband and myself all created our own discrete guilds on day 1 of headstart. After a few weeks we each had a guild bank of our own. 3 other friends in guild have done the same recently.

If you get help it can be a great boon and is super fast to get a guild bank stash.

[Meledelion]

tried this, it takes far too long + you can't chat with your main-guild while representing the own. + you earn Influence for this guild while you could earn it for your main-guild. Bad idea after all.

Not at all and tbh any serious guild earns so much influence a day that it gets hard to spend.
50 log ons =500influence.

Sure you can't talk but it's quite easy to time when you earn your influence, last boss in a dungeon switch for a minute or two.
Epic chain going on and nearly at destination, change for a sec.

[Fernling306]

tried this, it takes far too long + you can't chat with your main-guild while representing the own. + you earn Influence for this guild while you could earn it for your main-guild. Bad idea after all.

Just pay a few gold and you will have enough influence to get the guild bank. You won't even have to represent it.

[Hyve]

I recently got Guild Wars 2, and I thought it to be amazing.

I still enjoy World of Warcraft, but I can't even log in for more then 10 minutes now without dying of boredom. Guild Wars 2 is still new to me, the mechanics of the game, the stats, the levelling, the ideas and the mechanism are all still new. It is an amazing game with so much to offer someone who is bored of WoW.

Everyone is different, but I just found Guild Wars 2 to be remarkably better then WoW.

[Deleted]

I just recently started playing the game, after a long post-WoW hiatus away from mmo's, and I have to say, the first 15 levels blew me away - the accessibility of dynamic quests and events, detailed personal storyline, and a big open world really was great. But after another 10 levels I have to say that the way it's presented does take away from the story depth of the World a bit, I'm starting to miss quest text. On the whole though it's a great game, and compares very well to WoW in most respects other than depth of the story elements. Just my opinion, but both WoW and SW:TOR feel like they are old worlds, places with proper history, while Tyria does not.

On limited acquaintance I'm a little worried about the server community. Evening event zergs are fun, but if I compare Lions Arch to Ironforge or Stormwind at prime time the population is significantly less, and the chat channel is a lot less busy... It makes me wonder if finding pugs for some dungeon content is going to be an issue... I think a big guild is going to be a definite advantage in this game, the WvWvW biases towards that anyway.

Like a few others on this I started playing a ranger, and although perhaps it is a little broken, in pve it works quite well, once you a) have a decent set of pets, and b) you get the hang of dynamic switching of weapons and pets. Switching weapons swaps out half your power set, switching pets resets their health. The play style is quite different depending on the weapon you have equipped, it took some getting used to. I can't vouch for later levels, but based on the early experience I wouldn't want anyone to be put off from trying the ranger. My biggest problem has been bag space, so far

[Henako]

The 'dynamic events' and 'hearts' are by any other name, questing. I can't imagine anyone claiming otherwise. It's a bit more free flowing than getting quests from NPCs but not much since you're still talking to NPCs to find out what to do. And there's really no difference between a bar you have to fill up with boar kills and having the NPC tell you to kill ten boars.

I'm gonna disagree with you here. I feel like the heart system is what questing should be, and dynamic events, while repetitive, definitely help to spice things up. I can't fucking stand questing in WoW. I just can't do it. However, questing in Gw2 doesn't feel like questing to me. I'm just jamming out, roaming and doing what needs done in the area. There's no visiting npc's for instructions and then back tracking when I'm done to break up the flow. I can just go.
It makes a lot more sense, at least in my opinion.

[BlairPhoenix]

On limited acquaintance I'm a little worried about the server community. Evening event zergs are fun, but if I compare Lions Arch to Ironforge or Stormwind at prime time the population is significantly less, and the chat channel is a lot less busy... It makes me wonder if finding pugs for some dungeon content is going to be an issue... I think a big guild is going to be a definite advantage in this game, the WvWvW biases towards that anyway.

I think the difference is WoW encourages people to stay in capital cities and queue for everything, while GW2 encourages you to actually be out in the world and DOING things.

[Lane]

Well, I am a hardcore altoholic so my personal bank is full as well as a private guild bank I've filled with anything that isn't account bound. Account bound items are really what kill me. If I could sell all my repair canisters, resurrection orbs, portable merchants, etc. I would.

It takes nothing for my bags to fill up between vendor trash, crafting materials, gear drops, consumables, etc.

I have somewhere around 125g now, which isn't anywhere near enough. I've got at least three characters I'd like to get the T3 cultural armor on, which I believe costs ~110g per set. Not to mention having to buy the same color dyes multiple times since they're not account bound.

As far as the gem store, the only things I'd currently want are character slots and bank space. Can never have enough of either. :P

[Stellan]

I can't imagine a damn thing in the cash shop worth even 1 gold or $1.00 USD.

May companies profit forevermore on "alt-o-holics", "pack rats" and gamblers.

You may think the cash shop doesn't offer anything but I can assure that ArenaNet really really really wants you to spend real dollars in it. It's silly to say that a cash shop game isn't designed to get people to spend real money in the game via the cash shop. That's the difference between a subscription game and a "F2P" game. I know what I'm paying with a subscription game. With "F2P" who knows?

BTW, why do Meledelion and Durzila thinks it's OK to carry on an off topic conversation in this thread? Are they really that rude?

[Meledelion]

Don't know about Durz but I for sure am (just look at my post history and you'll find out how rude I am indeed).

To add to this aren't you going off-topic aswell by saying how the b2p/f2p/p2p models work?

But since I was going off topic on a first impressions thread I'll bind it back to the topic by stating my first impression? Or can we only speak about the OP's first impression since he doesn't ask for our first impression? Or does (s)he want us to talk about first impressions regarding everything, eg first impression of dungeons, pvp, wvw,...

Tbh if you want on-topic conversations it's probably better to look for distinct titles or questions in a thread/op and not just statements.

[Durzlla]

Yeah, i don't really care that you think i'm "rude" if you haven't noticed i kinda insult the people i argue with regularly. That being said... yeah, idk what you want us to be talking about instead... I mean, cmon, this isn't really a thread where going off topic is bad... it's a post where the OP goes, "This is what i thought about the game! Yeah!!" and then it just kinda trails off and ends up not being the same.

PS: If us going off topic was so bad we would've been yelled at by a Mod by now.

[Kelimbror]

You may think the cash shop doesn't offer anything but I can assure that ArenaNet really really really wants you to spend real dollars in it. It's silly to say that a cash shop game isn't designed to get people to spend real money in the game via the cash shop. That's the difference between a subscription game and a "F2P" game. I know what I'm paying with a subscription game. With "F2P" who knows?

How do people playing GW2 still fall under the misconception that this game is F2P? The game isn't designed around the Cash Shop, that much is readily apparent to anyone playing. If it was specifically designed around the Cash Shop, you'd find it a much less enjoyable game. The Cash Shop itself was obviously designed to entice people to spend money...that's a no duh statement if there was ever one.

Having some account bonuses, boosts, and cosmetics is almost the exactly fine line that needs to be tread in order to make a Cash Shop superb. GW2, a Buy to Play game, got that part exactly right.

[Fencers]

Yeah, i don't really care that you think i'm "rude" if you haven't noticed i kinda insult the people i argue with regularly.

Do me a favor, ya?

Like, don't do that.

<3s.

It's silly to say that a cash shop game isn't designed to get people to spend real money in the game via the cash shop.

Who said this exactly?

[Karizee]

How do people playing GW2 still fall under the misconception that this game is F2P? The game isn't designed around the Cash Shop, that much is readily apparent to anyone playing. If it was specifically designed around the Cash Shop, you'd find it a much less enjoyable game. The Cash Shop itself was obviously designed to entice people to spend money...that's a no duh statement if there was ever one.

Having some account bonuses, boosts, and cosmetics is almost the exactly fine line that needs to be tread in order to make a Cash Shop superb. GW2, a Buy to Play game, got that part exactly right.

They did. The only reason to purchase gems is if you want the vanity items or extra character slots beyond what gold you have earned to buy them.

The gem store is also an elegant gold sink, keeping the game's economy from spiraling inflation.

I've been buying my vanity items with in-game gold, haven't spent a dollar on gems yet. It's been my personal goal to see how far I can go without spending any dollars and I'm a fan of the game, I just want to test it. I've been tempted a couple times, if they start putting out more and more vanity items or making those items more useful (would love to wear my pirate costume and aviator shades in combat!) I can see where there would come a time when I will pony up some cash to get them.

[Kelimbror]

They did. The only reason to purchase gems is if you want the vanity items or extra character slots beyond what gold you have earned to buy them.

The gem store is also an elegant gold sink, keeping the game's economy from spiraling inflation.

That's just the point though. The content of the game wasn't built with the Cash Shop as a foundation. Anything economical will be factored into those projections, but the fundamental elements of the game aren't impacted by the Cash Shop existing. It's exactly as Fencers said, there's honestly not anything you need off of there to play the game. Not one thing.

You can look at much different and far worse games to see what a striking difference it makes. They also don't throw it in your face every two seconds, reminding you of item or feature xyz you are missing out on...because the game already exists as a complete element without the Cash Shop.

[Elgand]

It is quite interesting to come from playing SWTOR to GW2 and see the difference between their approaches to the cash shop. SWTOR locks content without spending money. GW2 lets you accent your experience with the cash shop.