[Vordox]

Originally Posted by Fozzik

I'm going to go ride my bike and not think about video games at all.

See now you are working my routine! Except I'm making likker and gardening

Sometimes just working other hobbies can focus you and move you in a clearer direction.

Yeah Fozz there are some old timers that still enjoy a challenge you aren't crazy just to intelligent for the masses of lemmings lol.

I hope it is not 15 years until we get a good game again Mmorpeegee I mean I'm getting pretty old now lol.

You can farm gold and buy gems easy enough without buying anything I have done it in P2P before. I also enjoy farming so it is no issue for me.

All in all I think I will enjoy GW2 for the initial cash spent from where it goes after that is up to them.

[ForestWhitakerEye]

The way I see it, cheating is going to happen no matter what. In WoW, not only are there 3rd party gold sellers, people are always going to try to game the system. I remember seeing people buy their way into raids to get gear for thousands of gold. They run in first, die, and the guild kills the boss with 24 people.

I don't think cash shops are going away either. If a company can quickly make a costume but then sell a bunch of them for $10, that's too good to pass up. No shop is ever going to make everyone happy, but ideally they make a shop which makes the most people happy (or grudingly accept it). People generally don't mind cash shops if they're completely cosmetic and they don't devalue anything in the actual game.

I'm not trying to restart the debate, but in light of Fozzik's post, I would like to explore it again with the notion of purity really off the table (short of not playing it, which is still your prerogative).

The way I see the GW2 cash shop, it's like it's designed to be mostly cosmetic. I don't even see it as allowing "cheating" but just trying to appeal to people who have more money than brains.

Take the experience boost for instance. It costs 150 gems and raises xp from kills by 50% for one hour. First, I've heard that it's the DEs themselves which give most of the XP. So if XP breakdown is 80% DE/20% killing, then this boost is really only 10% or so.

But really, think about it. The game itself costs $60 and has no subscription and it takes ~100 hours to reach level cap. Even IF this boost were a pure 50% increase, boosting would knock it down to 66 hours. That means you need 66 boosts at 150 gems ($5 per 400 gems) = $123.75, more than double the cost of the game, just to shave the most time you could off leveling one toon. And the reality will be much much more money for a fraction of that time.

And what has this faster leveling bought you? You still get sidekicked down in lower level zones in PVE, and in structured PVP everyone is sidekicked up to 80 and has everything unlocked. At best you can enjoy a few days of advantage in WvW (except you'll be going up against other servers with a proportional amount of other people who have also boosted) before everyone hits 80. It might have advantages if you were going for a Survivor title, and that's a little odious, but there were XP scrolls in GW1 (just for in game gold). And here you can still trade gold for gems to get the boost if it's what's important to you.

If anything, GW2 will be better capable of keeping people away from the real prestige gear because it will be much harder to kill a boss with 4/5 than with 24/25 (and no vertical progression to trivialize it). And Structured PVP is completely balanced and there's no boost at all except for the one time Glory infusion with the deluxe edition. People can use the cash shop to give real money to get crafting mats or random rare drop armor, but people could do that in any other game already by using a gold seller. The differences here are that ArenaNet gets the money instead of a 3rd party and players who don't want to spend the cash can be the ones purchasing the gems so they can unlock things without spending. There's also much less chance of people getting hacked if they're working with ArenaNet instead of a sketchy 3rd party.

I understand your counterarguments and the idea of fairness and devaluing accomplishments. If it's still a dealbreaker, it's still a dealbreaker and that's fine, I'll stop trying to convince you. But to me what this comes down to is that it allows people to spend what seems like it might be a ridiculous amount of money to either "level faster than you" (for very little benefit) or to "look the way they want to look faster than you looking the way you want to look" (but only for certain looks).

I almost feel like I'm trying to turn you all to the dark side, but if you can live with what little benefit there really is, it's not that bad a system at all. And not that it's really any comfort, but as Fozzik pointed out, Freemium and true P2W games are a LOT worse.

[Vordox]

Oh I'm with you Forest I have seen the worst pay to plays around GW2 is no where close to them. It is a nice balance plus if you don't want to pay for gems you can easily farm some gold. I'm a purist too but I have never been in a game where there wasn't some form of exploitation RMT,Pay to raid, item selling, going on. I frowned on it in some ways though I knew it existed.

Not rehashing what I already wrote here. I will say I will be playing GW2 and Forest I answered your last email but you never responded back about your mailing list? Did you decide I was a real Douche and dropped me? lol

[mmorpeegee]

Originally Posted by Vordox2

I hope it is not 15 years until we get a good game again Mmorpeegee I mean I'm getting pretty old now lol.

Ditto on both counts :P

You never know though. It could happen any time. I see promising stuff happening already. Minecraft was a big deal to me. I actually don't enjoy it myself, but I love that it was an indie game that was made by one guy (mostly), and it became really popular because the public and media got on board and hyped it, and he released it all by himself. Now he has like $50 million to play around with..

The internet might aid piracy, but it also aids people to self publish and self distribute! So hopefully other companies will come along and do that too. There are quite a lot of little companies that are succeeding like that, and then they become not-so-little companies that can make bigger and better games.

And it just takes one to make the kind of game we love and it becomes popular... and then lots more will pop up trying to do the same

[Fozzik]

@Forrest -
I know the mechanics and systems pretty well. Been following the game as a fairly excited fan for two years.

I'm well aware of how they have minimized the potential for anything to provide an advantage, and how the cash shop items are very much targeted at people who don't really look carefully at what it is they are actually buying. I recognize that much of our mentality of fairness and inequality comes from games with completely different advancement mechanics.

I thought the design was fairly genius, and I've described in excruciating detail some of the reasons why (my series of "spiritual successor" articles and some of the others I've written on the game). I just hope adding this huge lump of crap (cash shop economy) onto the top won't squash all the good stuff.

It is very tough to swallow them keeping the business model under wraps all this time, and I do feel the hype was pretty well spun to make it look like something it wasn't. I blame myself for falling for it (at least a little), and I'm sure being mad at myself is probably half the problem. They got me again, those bastards *shakes fist*. I never learn. "Just a cosmetic MT shop" my ass.

Adding this new information paints their whole design in an entirely different light in terms of their motivations...but it's quite possible that it doesn't change the positive aspects, just sort of coexists with them. I feel like that was their intention, to almost provide several different games side-by-side without any of them stepping on the toes of the other. (PvP game, F2P / cash shop dolly dress-up game, and a new and innovative spin on the traditional MMORPG)

I'll definitely be interested to hear what people who play the beta have to say, once they can talk about it (or once they send me PMs ). If they manage to not pressure the player and the cash shop truly is "on the side" as it were, and not spoiling things for players who don't want to take part, who knows.

I actually did do some conversions and look at the prices and exchange rates a bit myself. I think I understand what they are trying to do to maintain the value of gold in the game, but I don't think there's any way to know for sure what this whole thing will do until they open the gate and let it run. Things are high enough priced where going overboard would truly be expensive...so hopefully it will be more of an every once in a while thing for people and will make even less difference. We'll see.

[mmorpeegee]

Hmm the prices are the worst part about it in my opinion. As I said a few months ago, I was pretty hardcore in to Magic The Gathering Online for a while, and it works in pretty much the same way as games like this. By the end I of my first year, I had spent probably the equivalent of about $300-400 or so. And that's when I quit for good.

I managed to get about $100 back by selling all my belongings when I quit, so not the end of the world, compared to a years MMO subscription (which I wasn't paying in that time) but still, it's a pretty significant chunk of cash. My issue is that there are a lot of people who for whatever reason, have no problem spending a LOT of money, even two or three times what I used to spend, and these are people who you are competing with.

I found a link to this GW2 shop and it's pretty scary. Its about 5 euros for 400 gems, and one extra character slot is 800 gems, so that's about a 10euro in one pop. Then a bigger bag, it's another 300 which is almost another £5/euro. Cooks outfit another tenner. Stack of just 5 portal back to town clickies - another £1 per stack of 5. Then there's all the other crap like XP and Karma boosts and repair kits etc.

That's significant money, especially if you end up needing to spent it monthly, or even weekly. You gotta wonder, just how gimped are you without spending that? How bad is your bag space unless you pay? How long and boring AND REGULAR are your journeys back to town? And if you refuse to spend real money, how much boring grinding would you have to do to buy this stuff? And that's not even going in to what you need to spend to keep competitive in PVP, these are all just anti tedium necessities.

And then as with my Magic Online game, once the company gets giddy with all the cash they are making, are they too going to add totally overpowered stuff to the shop at high prices? And once everyone has already bought the game and is already hooked and invested in it, they are forced to decide to either pay through the nose to continue, or face the only other option of quitting and saying goodbye to everything you've already put in.

I can't judge this stuff unless I know all the details. I wanna see proof that all gear you can buy with gold is only cosmetic, and that the game isn't a big PITA chore to play without these shop items, or that players will have so much gold that you can live happily without needing to buy anything.

Once I know those details, I can decide if I'm going to play or not. But I definitely wont be buying it without finding that stuff out, and it being good news.

[Fozzik]

Originally Posted by mmorpeegee

That's significant money, especially if you end up needing to spent it monthly, or even weekly. You gotta wonder, just how gimped are you without spending that? How bad is your bag space unless you pay? How long and boring AND REGULAR are your journeys back to town? And if you refuse to spend real money, how much boring grinding would you have to do to buy this stuff? And that's not even going in to what you need to spend to keep competitive in PVP, these are all just anti tedium necessities.

And then as with my Magic Online game, once the company gets giddy with all the cash they are making, are they too going to add totally overpowered stuff to the shop at high prices? And once everyone has already bought the game and is already hooked and invested in it, they are forced to decide to either pay through the nose to continue, or face the only other option of quitting and saying goodbye to everything you've already put in.

I can't judge this stuff unless I know all the details. I wanna see proof that all gear you can buy with gold is only cosmetic, and that the game isn't a big PITA chore to play without these shop items, or that players will have so much gold that you can live happily without needing to buy anything.

Once I know those details, I can decide if I'm going to play or not. But I definitely wont be buying it without finding that stuff out, and it being good news.

I'm in the same boat. I know what they SAID, and I know what their supposed intentions are in terms of the cash shop not being needed at all. If they follow through on what they've said, you should be able to play without ever using it and not notice much difference.

Remains to be seen.

At least during the leveling process, there will be more powerful gear available in the auction house I'm guessing (because people will level faster and get it through drops or crafting or however). The idea is that at max level, it should be relatively easy to get max-stat gear, and then you are set. Supposedly, nothing anyone can get by any means at all will be any more powerful. All gear will strictly provide different stats for different builds...and cosmetic variety.

I doubt there would be any need to level faster for people like us (no need for boosts)...we're used to slower leveling so I'm guessing regular speed in GW2 would feel plenty fast.

All of the item type things (the keys, the dyes, etc) are supposed to also drop in the game. we'll have to see what the drop rates are like.

[mmorpeegee]

Yep.

Well hopefully one of us will get in to beta before release and we can work out how it will be. I still wanna play, and I'm willing to give some leaway on this stuff too, but I just wouldn't want to play only to find that it's too tedious without me buying stuff every 5 minutes. If this was SOE, you just know that they would have done stuff like purposely made every journey take 100 real life hours, and you get 1 bag slot etc :P

[ForestWhitakerEye]

Originally Posted by Fozzik

@Forrest -
I know the mechanics and systems pretty well. Been following the game as a fairly excited fan for two years.

I'm well aware of how they have minimized the potential for anything to provide an advantage, and how the cash shop items are very much targeted at people who don't really look carefully at what it is they are actually buying. I recognize that much of our mentality of fairness and inequality comes from games with completely different advancement mechanics.

I thought the design was fairly genius, and I've described in excruciating detail some of the reasons why (my series of "spiritual successor" articles and some of the others I've written on the game). I just hope adding this huge lump of crap (cash shop economy) onto the top won't squash all the good stuff.

It is very tough to swallow them keeping the business model under wraps all this time, and I do feel the hype was pretty well spun to make it look like something it wasn't. I blame myself for falling for it (at least a little), and I'm sure being mad at myself is probably half the problem. They got me again, those bastards *shakes fist*. I never learn. "Just a cosmetic MT shop" my ass.

<snip to save space>

I wasn't really replying to you specifically when discussing the mechanics, but everybody who said they were concerned to the point where they might not play the game at all.

As far as ArenaNet bait and switching us here, I go back to this correction by ArenaNet back in October 2010. http://www.pcgamer.com/2010/10/21/gu...otransactions/

As to whether or not there are going to be items like XP boosts available in the in game store, I can only reiterate what we’ve said before (and will continue to say,)...that our core philosophy of not requiring you to spend additional money to play the game and not making the game difficult or painful to play in order to encourage you to buy things from the store still stands.”

Maybe I'm guilty of putting too positive a spin on this kind of thing as well, or just basing it off the GW1 cash shop which is largely cosmetic. But the truth is that the PVP unlock packs are pay to skip (though introduced a year after the final expansion), and the mercenary heroes are actually a slight bit of power. We like to think it's all costumes and account services but the truth is that there's more to it.

Though I still think that perhaps the reason I did put so positive a spin on it is because I still to this day don't see a reason to spend money. To me, GW2 is all about the journey, not the destination. I just scoffed at the idea of XP potions, like what is the point. I still scoff (unless you're trying for Survivor). As long as the gold->gem conversion rate is decent so I can unlock bags without extreme amounts of gold farming, and eventually more and more character slots, then I'm fine.


@mmorpeegee I was going to double quote this post but it's too long. Just to clarify. The game has teleportation back to any waypoint you've unlocked for a small fee. And the human city has something like 13 waypoints inside of it (it's really big). The Portal they're selling is being able to access your bank from anywhere. As far as I can tell, it's a really minor convenience item, same as letting you repair anywhere (there are repairers out in the world).

Structured PVP also has everything unlocked and everyone boosted to level 80. This is important to me. It doesn't really bother me if someone pays to level faster in the purely cooperative PVE world when the arena-style matches are completely balanced.

I agree that the whole thing is a slippery slope and that we should be concerned. I wish I had more concrete evidence that things aren't going to go P2W but I have faith it won't. I suspect that this shop is more aggressive due to the increased development costs (ArenaNet is 4x larger or so), but I hope that the lukewarm reaction coupled with their own policy against "unfair advantage" will keep things in check.

[Fozzik]

I think the whole time, on the wiki and elsewhere, they were pretty heavily implying that the shop would be strictly cosmetic. I know they used pretty ambiguous weasel words, and in hindsight they didn't technically lie... but the whole wiki change a month ago where all of a sudden the idea of "convenience" items started showing up and pay-to-skip turned out to be available...I think it's clear they were trying to let a lot of people operate under a false impression.

It's neither here nor there at this point. Now we know. Like I said, I blame myself just as much...despite maintaining a bit of distance, I did allow myself to build a rather favorable picture of things without full facts.

The "map travel" costs (you don't have to go to a waypoint, just open your map and click on a waypoint to travel there) and the repair costs are obviously not going to be expensive in-game...and with the price of the pay-to-skip items I doubt most people are going to buy them very often. I can't imagine paying per use to access my bank, that seems moronic.

Despite me feeling like they added those little inconveniences like repair costs just so they could sell a way to skip them, I have to be willing to admit that "traditional" MMORPGs have those same kinds of goldsinks, even without the cash shop convenience items.

I wouldn't have been pissed if this was a subscription game and there had been repair costs...I actually like some of the inconveniences because it provides a tiny bit of realism in the virtual world. I'm one of the crazy people who wishes they brought back needing to eat in order to avoid starving, having to practice to learn to swim, learn languages to talk to other races, and needing to carry arrows you made or bought in order to use a bow. I like that stuff. So...I begrudgingly admit that having a bit of cost on map travel and repairs don't constitute anything outside what a non-cash shop MMORPG would do.

If people decide to pay 50 cents every time to access their bank (rather than spending a couple minutes and a few copper in-game), or they want to spend like 80 cents each time they repair, rather than a few copper and a couple minutes...I doubt I would have much in common with those people anyway. That seems like a pretty bad deal to me, but then again I actually LIKE playing MMORPGs. *shrug*

[Fozzik]

Just in case anyone's interested...I did up all the conversions for prices.

These are the beta prices, so may very well change.

400 gems = 4.80 Euros = $6.34 US
Each gem = 2 cents US

Account services:
Character slot - $16

In-game items:
12 slot bag - $6 (available as drops?)
Loot bag (random item) -

1 - $1.40
5 - $6 ($1.20 each)
10 -$11 ($1.10 each)

Bank tab - $12 (available for purchase in-game?)
Bag slot - $8 (available for purchase in-game?)

Pay to access:
Mystic key - $2.50 each (also available as drops?)

Pay to speed up: (may drop in-game)
Crafting boost / exp boost - $3 for one hour 50% boost
Karma boost - $1.50 for one hour 10% boost
Magic boost (find rare items) - $3 for one hour 10% boost

Pay to skip: (may drop in-game)
Bank Portal -

1 use - 70 cents each
5 use - 50 cents each ($2.50)

Instant repair kit -

1 use - $1.40 each
5 use - $1.20 each ($6)

Perfect salvage kit -

1 use - 70 cents each
5 use - 50 cents each ($2.50)

Resurrection Orb - $5 each


Cosmetics:
Dye box (three random dyes) - $3
Transmutation stone - $1
Higher level T-stone - $2
Magic plant food (grows dye plants instantly) - $2.40
Megaphone broadcast - $1.50 each use
Minipet pack - 3 random minis - $6

Non-stat clothing:
Carnival ringmaster's hat - $4
Cook's outfit - $14
Pirate outfit - $14
Scholar's outfit - $6

[Fozzik]

I had a thought this morning.

Someone could basically support GW2 by simply playing, and allowing someone else to pay their subscription fee for them.

Maybe others already though about this...but let's say, for the sake of argument, that I wanted to pay ArenaNet a subscription fee to help fund continued development of the game, like I have with many other MMORPGs.

I could simply play the game, earn gold like I would in any MMORPG, and then buy some gems every month.

My demand on gems each month would lead to someone supplying those gems by spending real life cash. So that person would be paying my sub fee...and I would get to buy this privilege (someone else paying my sub fee) using in-game gold.

Interesting.

My only major issue with this concept is that I think I would have a hard time wanting any of the cash shop stuff enough to actually buy it. Things are kind of expensive, and not all that great in my eyes. Why would I want to speed up a game that I already think is probably too fast?

I was also thinking that it really seems like they've created three separate games here, for totally different types of players, and attempted to put them together in a way where no one game can have much of an affect on the others.

You've got a PvP game, a casual MMORPG, and a cash shop F2P MMO dolly dress-up sort of game.

Clearly the PvP game is pretty well insulated...but I do feel the MMORPG is somewhat affected by the F2P game. In the MMORPG, they have to set up an economy and an item acquisition system where everything's easy to get and vertical progression has an easy-to-reach ceiling, because that's the only way to insulate the MMORPG from the F2P game (i.e. avoid cash from unbalancing things).

The MMORPG is already what I would consider "too fast", in terms of progression and acquisition. This also is a side-effect of needing to avoid the economy unbalancing the experience. Like I mentioned with the little inconveniences creating more realism in the virtual world, I almost wish that they could have made the level curve longer and advancement a little more challenging. Basically, the cash shop provides a choice between fast, and faster. I can't really complain about that, because I wish things were even a little slower in the MMORPG game, if that makes sense.

I think people that will spend money in order to avoid or shorten their play (the ones playing the F2P game) would probably not be people I would relate to in the first place. I won't really be missing out on community...because I can't see myself having much in common in terms of gaming with someone who just wants to buy all the rewards instead of playing to earn them.

For those folks who choose to buy things simply as a way to support ArenaNet, and not really because they actually want or need any of the cash shop items... I almost wish ArenaNet would provide something that those people would deem worthwhile to spend money on. I'm just not sure what it could be that wouldn't create an imbalance or barrier between the two games.

I'm rambling. I don't know if this stuff will make sense to anyone else. I'm just continuing to think out loud.

[AsheMan]

Originally Posted by Fozzik

My only major issue with this concept is that I think I would have a hard time wanting any of the cash shop stuff enough to actually buy it. Things are kind of expensive, and not all that great in my eyes. Why would I want to speed up a game that I already think is probably too fast?

It wouldn't be too hard. You'd probably start with the permanent unlocks like character slots and bags.

[Fozzik]

Maybe... but I don't tend to use many character slots, and I'd rather get bags and that sort of thing in-game.

Besides, after a few months, I would have all of those it was possible to have. I still think my favorite idea is if they offered a special server that was locked off from the others and completely MT-free. I'd pay a monthly sub for that.

Maybe I could just buy gems and sit on them in protest. Amass a huge fortune of them under my bed (virtual bed).

[ForestWhitakerEye]

Originally Posted by Fozzik

I had a thought this morning.

Someone could basically support GW2 by simply playing, and allowing someone else to pay their subscription fee for them.

Maybe others already though about this...but let's say, for the sake of argument, that I wanted to pay ArenaNet a subscription fee to help fund continued development of the game, like I have with many other MMORPGs.

I could simply play the game, earn gold like I would in any MMORPG, and then buy some gems every month.

My demand on gems each month would lead to someone supplying those gems by spending real life cash. So that person would be paying my sub fee...and I would get to buy this privilege (someone else paying my sub fee) using in-game gold.

Interesting.

My only major issue with this concept is that I think I would have a hard time wanting any of the cash shop stuff enough to actually buy it. Things are kind of expensive, and not all that great in my eyes. Why would I want to speed up a game that I already think is probably too fast?

I was also thinking that it really seems like they've created three separate games here, for totally different types of players, and attempted to put them together in a way where no one game can have much of an affect on the others.

You've got a PvP game, a casual MMORPG, and a cash shop F2P MMO dolly dress-up sort of game.

Clearly the PvP game is pretty well insulated...but I do feel the MMORPG is somewhat affected by the F2P game. In the MMORPG, they have to set up an economy and an item acquisition system where everything's easy to get and vertical progression has an easy-to-reach ceiling, because that's the only way to insulate the MMORPG from the F2P game (i.e. avoid cash from unbalancing things).

The MMORPG is already what I would consider "too fast", in terms of progression and acquisition. This also is a side-effect of needing to avoid the economy unbalancing the experience. Like I mentioned with the little inconveniences creating more realism in the virtual world, I almost wish that they could have made the level curve longer and advancement a little more challenging. Basically, the cash shop provides a choice between fast, and faster. I can't really complain about that, because I wish things were even a little slower in the MMORPG game, if that makes sense.

I think people that will spend money in order to avoid or shorten their play (the ones playing the F2P game) would probably not be people I would relate to in the first place. I won't really be missing out on community...because I can't see myself having much in common in terms of gaming with someone who just wants to buy all the rewards instead of playing to earn them.

For those folks who choose to buy things simply as a way to support ArenaNet, and not really because they actually want or need any of the cash shop items... I almost wish ArenaNet would provide something that those people would deem worthwhile to spend money on. I'm just not sure what it could be that wouldn't create an imbalance or barrier between the two games.

I'm rambling. I don't know if this stuff will make sense to anyone else. I'm just continuing to think out loud.

I've never played EVE but they have a system much like the one you're describing, where you have to pay your subscription in one currency that is purchasable with RL money, but you can buy that currency with the in-game currency.


If people haven't read this article, it's really interesting. It's about how much and what kind of revenue Puzzle Pirates makes.

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/new...hp?story=23970

They earn 70k per month from subscriptions and 230k from F2P. The mind blowing thing to me is that for the F2P side, the average revenue per player is $3. But the average revenue per PAYING user is $50. There's over 5000 people each averaging $50 a month on Puzzle Pirates while the rest of the people pay nothing. $50 PER MONTH....on PUZZLE PIRATES!?!?!?!?!?!?!

I can't even imagine what some people would be willing to pay per month for a true AAA MMO.

When you take into account that these types of people exist (and that it's something like 5% of them if it drops "avg 50 paying" down to "avg 3 total") then GW2's cash shop is pretty genius. The people who don't want to pay anything don't need to pay anything, but at the same time there's really no limit to what you can spend if you want to spend.

I'm also not sure that there's any way to tell who is who. I wonder if the XP boost is an actual buff that someone can see on you. If not, how would you even tell unless someone made a point of having a matching set of armor while leveling or something.

[mmorpeegee]

Been seeing some discussion about this stuff on other sites and some beta leaks. The game got defended pretty well by people in beta and I'm feeling happier about it now! People said that the stuff you can buy with real money is basically completely worthless and a total waste of money, and only really for people with money to burn.

They said that the XP boost potions only give a slight boost for an hour, and it only affects mobs you kill, not the quest XP which is the bulk of your progression. And progression is apparently pretty fast anyway, so most people can't see why you would even bother buying XP pots. I suppose it's for people who have already leveled a few characters and you just want to make your 5th alt go a bit faster.

As for bags, they say that you are very rarely low on bag space anyway, but if you do want more space, you can just get them from drops and quests and you can just buy bigger ones from vendors and the auction house.

Apparently gold is not hard to come by so you can usually just buy whatever you want.

The same goes for Karma, you get about 20 from an event, so even a 20% boost from a potion is only going to give you about 24 - so someone said they would rather just spend another 5 minutes on an event instead of spending 5 Euros or whatever. Makes sense to me.

Repairs - there are repair guys in every town you control and the major cities, and travel is pretty quick and easy, so there is not much of a problem with that.

Crafting - far easier than other games, not like WoW etc.. where you have to make lots of crap before you raise your skills. In GW2 you can just make whatever you want, as long as you have the materials.

Gear - all gear is purely cosmetic up until max level. And imbalances in PVP are not a concern either because everyone gets boosted when they PVP so everyone is pretty much even, no matter what.

The only one people apparently have shown concern about is the magic find boost, but again, people say that they seem to get plenty of weapons / armor / crafting stuff, so they never feel like they even need a boost. One guy said that by level 8, his warrior had every weapon he could use, just by looting everything he came across.

Apparently their claims of everyone always being on a level playing field is pretty true and accurate. Again, this makes me think of the game more like a competitive shooter type experience, rather than a traditional MMO, but that's ok for me. And at least it's not pay 2 win! Still no garantee they dont go full on evil some time in the future, but so far so good I think.

Originally Posted by ForestWhitakerEye

I can't even imagine what some people would be willing to pay per month for a true AAA MMO.

I reckon I could do two or three or even four times what I used to spend on EverQuest. But it would have to be good... and I don't like feeling like I'm being wreckless with my money so I would think long and hard about it But yeah... I would REALLY like a killer MMO. Tired of all these little theme park button bashers.

[Fozzik]

@Forrest -
That's unbelievable that people spend that kind of money. I'm guessing it would be a little harder to spend that much with GW2, just because of the limited things that are available.

It's quite frustrating that the business model is so effective...but obviously any company would have a difficult time turning it down if crazy people are willing to spend $50 a month on nothing.

@mmo -
Sounds about like what I'm expecting, in terms of things in the shop providing no advantage, and most everything being pretty universally easy to get. I wonder whether the average F2P person's monthly spending will be lower in a game like this, due to the items in the cash shop only being of very limited use and limited effectiveness. It's very good to hear that stuff like bags are dropping and for sale just like in any other MMORPG. It sounds like I would have a really hard time finding anything worth spending gems on, if I were to buy some. Then again...I'm not one of the crazy pay-to-not-play people. I guess they have their reasons.

I was thinking about previous MMORPGs, and the things I've always considered perfectly acceptable. All part of the re-examination process I'm doing. I've never had a problem playing a game that had raiding content for an endgame, despite how I feel about that (I think the raid treadmills are a cop-out and I hate the bait and switch). I've been fine playing a game where a decent chunk of the population is basically playing a different game than I am. They get additional zones that I don't get to see, they get loot that I'll never get (and is quite a bit more powerful than my loot), and I never group with them, in fact, I very rarely have any contact with them at all. Raiders are pretty much playing a whole different game by different rules.

And I was totally okay with that scenario...

GW2 is sort of the same situation. There will be a segment of the player base who use the cash shop extensively and buy their way through as much as they can. In a way, they are just like the raiders in previous MMOs...they are playing a different game than me. What's different in this case is that they won't be getting any exclusive content or loot (as far as we know right now). So in some ways, it's better. There's no content or loot I'll be missing out on in GW2 simply because of my play style.

In short, I think it's possible for different play style segments to exist in the same MMORPG. They have for a long time. I know this is probably "DUH!" Obvious" stuff to most people, but GW2's business model really made it difficult for me to keep perspective on everything. ArenaNet is just changing things up on the traditional MMORPG, and including the F2P play style and leaving out the raiding folks.

[mmorpeegee]

I reckon they would make far more with a subscription, but then, I don't know how many people they would lose either. It seems like a lot of people when I read the internet, who say they would never pay an MMO with a subscription. But then, it never bothered WoW!

Personally I don't mind as long as it doesn't get out of hand with these so called 'micro' transactions - which can easily add up to be far more than a sub. It seems GW2 has managed to stay pretty fair, but you just know that most companies wouldn't do that. If this was an SOE game they would be thinking...

[Fozzik]

I think this video is quite helpful -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=Kx7o7CRoDXc

[Fozzik]

Leaks from this weekend's beta are saying that some changes have been made -

Instant Repair Canister does not work in dungeons.

Loot bag Removed.

Megaphone removed

12 Slot Bag removed.


So things appear to still be in flux for sure. It would seem that ArenaNet is really listening to feedback and handling this carefully.