ArenaNet community manager debunks Guild Wars 2 rumor

Early to mid 2011 by most estimates actualy.

@Qehb: Think he was talking about the world ending.

Making cash in their F2P game worked pretty well with guild wars 1 so why shoudnt it do so with guild wars 2. Just look at the hype right now thats gonna be some huge amount of cash and there is not even a release date confirmed yet as soon as that happens the hype, and as a matter of fact the money they will be making will just go BOOM right through the roof. ;D

It is not F2P it's B2P, because of the extremely important distinction that you have to actually buy the game. Both Guild Wars and Global Agenda are working well this formula.

@Akito. GW is a Multiplayer / Co-op RPG.

GW2 is an actual MMO.

I would think actual MMO's would cost more to manage than a Multiplayer game.


I'm all for buying stuff from the game store as long as there is no monthly fees and the game is awesome.

@Tempes Magus. Herp Derp, MASSIVELY MULTIPLAYER Online.

"A game in which a large number of players can simultaneously interact in a persistent world"

Idiot.

I think I remember them saying in a recent interview that they didn't really want to do XP scrolls or anything like that, because they had established what the leveling curve was going to be like and that's part of the balance of the game. I would be disappointed if they did choose to do XP boosting items or similar game-affecting consumables through the cash shop, at least from the outset, because it runs a little too close to the reason I typically despise cash shops: "I have money, so if I want to spend that money to skip ahead instead of actually playing the game the way it was designed, I should be able to do that." No, you should find another hobby that doesn't bore you so badly that you feel the need to skip parts or play by the same rules everyone else does.

So far, though, I trust ANet to actually base what's in the cash shop on player demand, and I haven't seen a lot of support for things like that. And, if their game is as dynamic and fun as they've sold it to be, there should be no "gotta get max level fast" mentality; they've been confident enough to act as though the journey in GW2 will be half the fun, and since they're holding themselves to such high standards, I will too and I expect them to stand by that.

This, I was happy with how GW1 worked. 30$ or so for each expansion, for tons of content. Overall, considering the amount of time I sank into the game, it's been a much cheaper experience than any other P2P MMO, roughly 8 cents per hour, at 1400 hours over 4 years.

The current cash shop is almost perfect, the usual services, character renaming, character relooking, which were actually added last and not first. You can buy additional character slots (Generally need to own 2 if you want one of each class if you own each expansion), extended vault storage (if you like hoarding). If you're too lazy, you can unlock all skills for PVP, and this doesn't affect balance because it still doesn't change the fact that you can only equip 8 skills into battle and only 1 is elite.

I said almost because only one thing in the cash shop bothers me, I truly love it, it's been great for all my character and I don't know how I could live without it, but some might see it as a "Pay to win" thing, for PVE anyway. It basically unlocks 4 very good missions, that let you play the role of some hero in history, for 10$. Now, for 10$, that would be kinda expensive, so there is an added bonus. Every time you complete a mission, you can turn in a given token to a specific vendor that will give you a "perfect" but empty weapon. Of course, you could always craft a blue one for a relatively cheap sum with equivalent stats, it just wouldn't look as cool. So basically, 4 weapon skins, for each weapon type, are inaccessible to people who don't spend the 10$. Now, for the amount of times I've done those missions, and the less time spent looking for a gold weapon with a decent skin, it paid for itself, but it still gives access to skins no one else can have.

Well, I *hope* they decide eventually, I don't want them to say six months after launch, "we've made a cool new dungeon but we still haven't decided if we want to sell it as DLC or not, so it's just kind of sitting here on our internal servers gathering metaphoric dust".

If it's quality enough for an expansion then it can be added into the game then, no? And if it's not really that great why not just throw it in an update.

I didn't see any hidden meanings there, or indications that he just spoke too soon and revealed more than he meant to. Even the original article, before they updated it, quoted Flannum as saying exactly what he says in the clarification statement: they are open to doing DLC if that's what the players want, and they're open to offering other things that there's player demand for. He even makes it sound as though it'd be an either/or thing: either they do content releases through traditional expansions, or offer it as smaller DLC updates, depending on which the players prefer.