Guild Wars 2 Microtransactions Explained

[News Portal]

With over a million beta sign ups, [app=6096]Guild Wars 2[/app] is shaping up to be one of the year's most anticipated MMOs. Despite the anticipation, gamers have still been wondering how the title will tackle the taboo subject of 'microtransactions'. ArenaNet's Mike O'Brien has stepped in with all the answers.

Read full article by Matt Williams

[Bluefire]

time saving.. aka xp boosters.. yay.. p2w!

[iambeanie]

[Seakas]

time saving.. aka xp boosters.. yay.. p2w!

I don't see how EXP boosters are P2W. Sure, they will allow people to get to max level faster, but it isn't like it's the only way to get there. Might give a slight advantage in PvP early on, but then it will level out once the non-boosted characters catch up.

[Markamus]

Ugh 'time savers'. Like better travelling such as in LOTRO? Why is it okay for devs to purposely make the game a pain in the arse to play unless you pay them to make it not a terrible experience?

[asmodai]

Runes of Magic shone a light on the problems that trading real money currency could cause the economy. Diamonds (the ROM pay for currency) rapidly became the currency of choice for AH traders, which caused hyperinflation of the gold to diamond exchange rate. Initially it was ~5k gold per diamond. By the time I quit a month later, it was about 70k gold to one diamond. Everything on the AH worthwhile buying was listed in gems. Gold farmers prices were way higher than the cost of buying diamonds for those inclined.

Note: Euro prices seemed to have settled down to 25-35k gold per diamond, but US servers are currently at 70-85k. I've found people looking for diamond sellers willing to buy parcel's of 5000-10000 diamonds for 20k per diamond (100-200 million gold).

I don't know how they adapted to this (never bothered to go back and play again) but any system where you have a work for currency and a bought currency which the player can trade, the world currency will eventually devalue if there are no ways to sink all the funding coming in from real money purchases.

Strangely enough, Eve balances this by making things destroyable. Billions of ISK can easily exit the game with the destruction of certain assets, so atrophy acts as a brake for hyperinflation. I doubt GW is going to feature permanent breaking of items etc though.

EQII's system of real money servers, where people could buy items from other players (or plat) also worked well because you could pay your sub with money proceeding from exchange sales. All money bought and sold was created at the pace at which you could farm it rather than introducing a new currency which is only limited by how much your customers want to spend in the real world.

[Klas]

Well, it has been designed specifically for this game from the ground up and not just tacked on as some scrappy after thought. That alone makes it better than almost all the other free to play models imo!

Sounds promising and I hope it works out. Really need to know what you can buy with gems to offer any meaningful thoughts.

[TheBard]

I think you need to re think P2W boosters were in GW1 did they give any advantage nope.
PvP will be a lvl playing field all the same stats per class so nope again.
Can you buy pretty dies to make you armour all shinny I would say yes owww thats pretty Miss Jane.
GW2 still looks good very good really.
Now what to roll thats the hard bit

[Mythor]

What I read this morning sounded fine to me. Don't want to pay? Earn gold or loot/craft/whatever the stuff yourself. It'll take longer but you're not locked out of getting anything that matters.

If you're in the upcoming closed beta event you can see what it entails for yourself.
If you're not in it... wait for the inevitable leaked screenshots and any authorised articles on the subject.

[Tas]

Christ I really hope we dont have pay to win. GW2 is the last hope I think MMO's have to get back to normal after wow destroyed them. But pay to win services is always bad, there is no good that can be said of the system.
If it's just buying gold off the company I dont give a damn, but it will remove any player economy. I dont know if I read it right, but it kind of sounds like they are gonna make it pay to win on the AH too.

Still I guess we will have to wait an see.

[Syncourt]

I think you need to re think P2W boosters were in GW1 did they give any advantage nope.
PvP will be a lvl playing field all the same stats per class so nope again.

This ^

[Freeride]

Have been playing GW again and the micro transactions make no difference and im sure this will be no different, why do people think they would **** up their game with something they have always said they would never do?

They havent worked this long and this hard and put so much effort into this game just to lose the player base they are mostly after in the first place.

[spitfires_son]

Definitely going to be a bit of a cry about it. Mostly by the uninformed or people who think leveling up faster is P2W.

Arena Net know what they're doing. GW1 Cash shop had a lot of costumes/character slots.

The one thing they did allow you to do that affected the game more directly was buying the skill packs. This was more focused to PVP players who didn't get into the PvE where unlocking skills and capturing the elite skills were part of the game that crossed over. They gave PVP players an option of forgoing PvE content.

(Albeit at a quicker rate than say someone unlocking the skils via PvP play with honor which is another option)

People who are interested in the game need to step back, re-read what they're actually offering in the cash shop and think about how game breaking it really is (barely). The ability to actually "buy" in game gold is also another positive way to control botting and farming and also acts as a gold sink as usually the people who "pay" for the gold will spend it quite quickly in the in game economy and nullify it.

Long post is long so TLDR - This isn't P2W, less botting action via "buying" in game gold, everybody wins, arena net isn't about to ruin their own game that they've spent years hyping up by making it P2W.

[Marius]

time saving.. aka xp boosters.. yay.. p2w!

Games should never be a chore to play. I'd gladly pay real money for a double xp potion to save time sometimes. GW2 promises freedom from grinding, but there are invariably points in every MMO levelling curve you just get sick of and want over.

[Syncourt]

What I don't get is, if every area in PvE is scaling the difficulty by level and PvP is scaling everybody to be the same stats, what is the actual point in paying money just to level faster?

Will there be certain skills with level requirements or something? I haven't actually heard anything about the real benefits of levelling up in GW2 yet.