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Guild War 2 Might Cost you more than you think
Atlan99
Member UncommonPosts: 1,332
Interesting post by Valatar on the Guild Wars 2 Beta Forums. He breaks down some of the hidden costs of GW2.
Valatar
Welcome to Guild Wars 2, new player! We’re the fun new game where you don’t pay a monthly fee to play! But you do realize of course that we need money to keep up our servers and update the game, so there are a few modest cash store items to help cover our costs. But it’s probably nothing that you actually need, so don’t pay any attention to it!
How do you like the classes? They’re all great fun, aren’t they? We bet you’d like to play them all! But not so fast, you only have five character slots. If you want the other three, you’ll just need to make a one-time payment in the cash shop to unlock them. It’s only 800 gems per slot, so for only 2400 gems you’ll be on your way!
What’s that, adventurer? Your bags are full? Why shucks, have we got a deal for you! You have seven bag slots, but we locked three of them so you’d have room to grow! For an insignificant 400 gems, you can unlock one bag slot on one character. Of course, if you have eight characters, that’s twenty-four slots, but hey, what’s a little 9600 gems between friends for the luxury of being able to carry things?
Oh, you wanted to actually be able to store things? Like, in a bank? Well other MMOGs make you spend nasty gold to have more than 30 bank slots, but not us! You can just buy them with gems! We’ve helped you out by making the sky the limit and locked a whopping seven bank expansions at 600 gems each, so you can feel extra accomplished when you pull out your credit card to pay for the 4200 gems for that.
tl;dr:
At the current listed rates, you have to pay 16,200 gems to have eight characters with unlocked inventory and bank slots in GW2. With the assumption that the conversion rate is $1=100 gems, that’s $162 dollars above and beyond the box cost of the game. Edit: The actual gem price is believed to be $5=400 gems, which makes the cost $202.50 for those 16200 gems. A year’s subscription to WoW is $156 if purchased in six-month blocks, making it ironically cheaper to play a year of WoW than a year of GW2.
Bear in mind that I’m ignoring vanity items, convenience items, and keys in this tally. Those are all entirely optional, and a player can take or leave those without any particular penalty. I’m focusing entirely on the one universal constant of any MMOG: storage. It’s the thing that is indisputably vital for every player, that nobody can afford to be without, and everybody absolutely requires. Anyone who doesn’t purchase bag and bank space is going to be regretting it, deeply and often. I don’t consider it optional, and doubt that anyone with any length of experience in online games would disagree with me on that.
There needs to be an alternative option to gems for purchasing in-game storage. There’s no telling what the gold value of gems will be after the game’s release, but if the beta weekend’s average around 20 silver per gem holds true, it will cost 120 gold per bank expansion and 80 gold per bag slot, which are fairly ridiculous amounts. Edit: My numbers for the silver price for gems was incorrect, see below.
Alternatively, making the bag slots an account-wide purchase rather than a per-character purchase would save the eight-character player 8400 gems, making the grand total a much more reasonable sum.
Disclaimer:
All of this hinges on beta test gem prices for cash shop items, and involves an assumption on the cash price for gems. Either of those two things may change before release. My goal in bringing this to peoples’ attention is not to incite panicked nerd rage, but to make people aware of the potential cash cost in GW2’s gem store model of business, and the fact that it may be no less expensive than other games with monthly fees.
Comments
If it costs $10 for extra character slots, the most I will ever pay for this game after the initial box price is $30.
Extra bag space? Who cares. Just means you need to instantly teleport back to town 30% quicker than someone who buys the slots. Must be such a pain to instantly teleport back to town and then instantly teleport back to where you were adventuring.
Well yeah of course they need to keep the cash coming in to be able to run the servers and make exp packs and so on..
It was pretty obvious there was gonna be things in the cash shop that people would need to buy, sure its not pay to win but you will still probally end up paying out for these things..
Its just a different way of maknig money out of an MMORPG , but i guess at the end of the day you can choose not to buy the items and play for free..
There Are no free rides
Fair enough on the character sots. In regard to bag slots and bank slots, really? Must have? Maybe in your opinion but not in mine. I played WoW for a long time before finally giving it up for good and I still had characters with 10 slot bags equipped. L85 characters. And no more bank slots opened up then you get at char creation. And no "bank char" either.
This idea that you "need" all this inventory space is BS. It's each person's preferrence. I've never found the need for large inventory space. Perhaps I'm just more organised than most?
And until the prices have been confirmed (seeing as GW2 is still in beta) I think you need to relax a little.
Can't I buy gems with in-game gold?
That'd make this whole discussion at this point in time trivial.
Also you state "you’ll just need to make a one-time payment in the cash shop to unlock them."
So it will be cheaper in the long run.
Ya, you can. Atleast you could in the beta weekend, so I assume its there to stay.
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You can but that will lead to them saying that by selling Gems you will earn enough gold, to pimp your fortress in world vs world - bringing us back on the p2w track.
http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/setView/videos/gameID/473/videoId/2415
Bill Murphy's preview of the cash shop. In this he clearly says that 125 gems is equal to "50c or a dollar, I'm not quite sure of the conversion rates". So where does $5=400 gems come from? There's obviously been no announcement about the costs of gems yet or I think we'd have been told.
[mod edit]
Apparently from what I've read bank space is shared across your accounts.
So rolling an alt would not work.
For bank space anyways. You would have extra inventory space I suppose.
Let me play your game
So I bought everything for 200$
Ok, WoW is cheaper when playing for a year
Ok so I play for three more months...suddenly GW2 is cheaper, and for every other month, the game is cheaper and cheaper
Ofcourse I dont have to buy any of this stuff with real money, I can spend ingame money...Can YOU spend gold in wow for monthly sub? No you cant, what shame
You lost your own game -- > fail
I think I actually spent way more time reading and theorycrafting about MMOs than playing them
I'd pay em thousands of Euros to play the best game since chess.
Freeloaders are annoying btw.
OP, I know that you're on a personal crusade against the game and the cash shop but there comes a time when a man needs to call it quits. You've been at it for days and you're not convincing anyone. Most people who are going to play GW2 know about the cash shop and know what it entails. And you know what? We are OK with it for the simple fact that there is no monthly fee and the stuff that is in the cash shop really is mostly for conveniece.
May I direct your attention to almost every single other AAA MMO (except SWTOR) which has a cash shop on top of a subscription fee? Your energies would be better spent crusading against one of them. For example, TSW is about to launch with a cash shop and a subscription, and it only has *gasp* 3 character slots with the rest being $9.99.
Indeed. There was even a whole article about conversion on this very site. This guy's whole (very cynical) argument is rendered moot by the fact that the only people who will buy gold are those who wish to trade it via the in-game conversion economy, or use it for themselves. You don't need to spend a cent more than the game and its' expansions if you don't want to: you'll just have to fork over some in-game currency. Really, this guy should have done a bit more research.
I'm really sick of the whole "There's a massive fanbase for X", or "Y would be a WoW-killer if it just had a chance".
There is no massive conspiracy waiting in the MMO playerbase.
There are no "sleeper-agent fans" waiting to convert once the X or Y is unleashed on the world.
/facepalm
Are people STILL going on about this?
Look..
You can buy gems for gold, it's not a one way deal. Anything in the cash shop can be got via gold. The conversion rate isn't known but it will be down to supply & demand due to the system in place. This means that neither gems nor gold will be under or overvalued since this is across all servers and not just your own.
The buffs in PvP can be bought easily with influence earned by the guild. We had a guild set up on Istan during the beta for people on MMORPG to join and we had about 5 or 6 active people and in the 3 days we were earning enough influence to keep up 2 or 3 buffs without any worries. This doesnt even consider the rather obvious fact that there are other ways or earning gold in game other than buying and selling gems......
The buffs in PvP only work when the guild controlling a keep have the buffs and are in the area. That means that if your server owns 4 keeps then all 4 guilds who own those would need to keep the buffs rolling and that STILL doesn't get around the fact that all the important upgrades for both defending and attacking keeps use supply and the supply outposts in the game don't confer buff advantage to the defending force (plus the are open ground and not as easily defended)
This whole thing is a complete non-issue. The fact that some people are so insistant that the game is even remotely P2W only undermines their own opinions since they are only showing everyone that they do not understand the mechanisms behind the features of GW2 as well as they proclaim.
I will buy myself however many extra character slots and bank/bag slots I feel I need and I will not spend any real life currency to do so. This is no different than how things work in any P2P game where you need to sink ludicrous amounts of in game currency to gear your characters for content.
Get over this fascination that because a game has a cash shop it means it's P2W. It is not healthy to fixate on something so much.
Realistically speaking, how many people going to level 8 classes to 80? Personally, I may level 1 or 2... but 8? That's an crazy. Maybe, if I decide to play GW2 for the next 5 years.
Because no other MMO have made people create mules to carry extra items. The whole article assumes you are going to want or need the extra space, which is just faulty to begin with.
These are all still completely optional purchases.
1. Character slots.
Some people play alts, some don't. Some people play tons of alts, some people will be fine with five slots. The slots are optional and the purchase is permanent. Completely optional, don't know how to make it more clear.
A note needs to be made, however, as to what one character slot gets you in this game. Leveling to the cap is expected to take about 110 hours of actual adventuring. However, the game does not stop at the level cap. I have seen dev estimates of 300+ hours of PVE content for a single character. This is partially possible because of the system of scaling you down in level for lower level content, while still giving you rewards based on your true level. As you level in this game, the amount of viable, fun, rewarding content increases exponentially. You never outlevel content.
This is in sharp contrast to games where it takes maybe 40 hours to reach the level cap and then all you have to do is PvP and raids.
You can get a lot more original game play from one character slot in GW2 than in any other MMO I'm aware of.
2. Bag slots.
How many bag slots do you get for free in GW2? A back pack and four bag slots.
How many bag slots do you get for free in almost every other AAA MMORPG out there? A back pack and four bag slots.
You get, for free, the industry standard amount of bag slots. Optional slots are just that, optional. It's nice that you ate least have the option if you want it!
Many people in the WBE didn't get some of the important ways the game allows you to make the most of your bag space.
Easy, cheap teleportation to way points always puts a vendor with in easy reach and return to your previous location easy as well. Plus, most Heart locations and other settlements have vendors right in proximity to where you will be hunting.
Everyone should carry the best salvage kits that are economical for them to purchase. Unwanted gear you don't want to offer on the marketplace, plus other salvageable drops, should be salvaged in the field, which will break them down into stackable basic crafting components to save space.
Those stacks of crafting mats you salvaged? Guess what? If you right click these, one option is to mail them to your bank, which has dedicated slots for each crafting item type. You don't even have to go back to your bank to store them!
Another often missed feature. You can sell and buy items from the Marketplace from an icon in your user interface! Got some gear drops actually worth selling to other players? You can list them right in the field! The only thing you have to go to an actual Marketplace trading post for is to pick up your profits, or any items you've purchased!
You see? Extra bag slots are even more an optional convenience in GW2 than in a typical MMORPG!
3. Bank Slots.
The 30 included is about standard for an MMO.
Yes, it's space shared by your entire account, so it may get a little crowded. Bank slots may be something many people want to purchase, but it still remains optional.
Some factors that eleviate cramped account storage space?
Being shared account storage, muling to other characters with excess bag space is cheap, easy and secure.
As mentioned above, you have seperate bank space for all the various types of crafting materials, basic and rare, plus you even have slots for your collectible miniatures! None of these have to take up your normal vault space!
It's easy to make a guild and you can belong to more than one guild. If you really want some more free vault space, when ever you aren't representing some other guild, represent your own vanity guild. It may take a while, but you can unlock a guild vault and have some addes storage space!
All the info above on easy waypoints and access to the marketplace have a bearing on vault space. It's very easy to sell saleable items from any where in the world or to get to a vendor.
The maketplace is global, not server wide, so any saleable item you get but don't want to store "for later" can just be sold, with a good chance that you will be able to just buy the same item, if you do end up needing it, in the future for about the same price. There just won't be as many things that you "absolutely have to hold onto in case you want/need them in the future", so those vault spaces can go a long way.
With so many tools that make the need for normal vault slot storage minimal, those 30 basic slots should go a lot further than they do in other games.
Remember, as well, that you can always save up gold to trade for gems on the market exchange and buy any of these things with out the need to spend cash! If you are lucky, another MMORPG gives you the option to buy extra slots for gold or cash. GW2 gives the option of buying them either way!
These are all truly optional, while also providing great value for those who do feel the need/desire to upgrade. It's really a win/win and an issue that just doesn't hold up under the weight of fact and reason.
Want to know more about GW2 and why there is so much buzz? Start here: Guild Wars 2 Mass Info for the Uninitiated
Level them to max perhaps not, however you're not given the space to even try them besides make them and delete them.
Also about the guy mentioning bag space as industry standard, I will have to disagree. There is no industry standard in bag space, your game and its needs dictate the bag space you need (along with the gameplay, although players can work around some limitations, for example by using mule characters. Looks like the mule characters will need to make dummy guilds to gain more space per account in GW2).
Personally I'd be more inclined to buy a digital collectors edition that offered full bag and character slots than what is now offered. What is now offered only worth the standard edition for me personally.