Primal Zed

Regarding the skill wheel, I'm actually rather disappointed at how few categories there are. There's three magic types, three melee weapon types, and three ranged weapon types, and skills for each of those. Yes, it's still a ton of skills, but grouped up like that makes it seem like there's less in the way of diversity.

I suppose they can (and very likely will) add more in post-release content updates.

@Primal Zed Also, arguing that gold farmers won't be able to gems is pretty silly when you consider they do undercut the market rate in other MMORPGs that work similarly, such as EVE and RoM.

@Yoh Ok then, what makes you think gold farmers will be unable to enter into GW2 and from there start running on stolen accounts? The barrier for entry won't be any more of a problem than it is in other MMORPGs. In fact, it will be cheaper to get into than sub-based MMORPGs.

This same sort of argument you provide here for gold farmers not being able to sell - players collectively making more gold than gold farmers - works just as well (or rather, just as poorly) in GW2 as it does in any other MMORPG. If true, it would mean that what is being bought and sold among players for gold would be worth more gold than the farmers are able to provide at a price at which they can make a profit. Obviously, that is not true - gold farmers are able to get tons of gold and sell it very cheaply when the going rate of items in the player market is considered. It doesn't matter what the going dollars-to-gems-to-gold rate is, the gold farmers will be able to easily undercut it.

How did you conclude that gold farmers won't know the going rate of gems-to-gold in the game? That doesn't make any sense. Of course they will be able to find that out, just as easily as players do.

@(Unverified) ArenaNet has already stated what sort of items will be in the cash shop. They won't give more information than that until they're good and ready, regardless of what people on GW2Guru are speculating. If GW2Guru speculation would prompt a concise itemized list of what is and isn't going to be in the cash shop, that would have happened long ago.

@aurickle All that means is that they'd have to make an initial investment to get started. I don't expect that to be too intimidating to the gold farmers. Again, they've been quite successful in infiltrating subscription games and switched to running on stolen accounts once they've established themselves. There's no reason to think they won't be able to do the same in GW2.

From that point, it really doesn't matter how little ArenaNet puts up the gems for, the gold farmers will be able to undercut it. (Besides, how much gold per dollar can be gotten legitimately will be based more on the in-game market value of gems than on how many dollars gems cost. I can guarantee you the gold farmers will be able to undercut that.)

@Yoh What makes you think people won't buy from gold farmers? Like Jeremy said in the above article, the gold farmers will simply undercut the going rate of the 'legitimate ways.'

@Irem Are we talking about actually doing game content or grinding? If it's game content that becomes a 'chore', then that's simply a game not worth playing. If it's grinding for currency, then the dollar value of that grind is going to be determined by the player market exchanging gems and gold.

You seem to be under the impression that there has to be some threshold of grinding for there to be people willing to spend money to forgo that grind. There isn't one, unless that threshold is simply the existence of any form of grind. The moment there is something in the game that a player would have to grind to get, there will be players who would rather spend some dollar amount instead of grinding to get that thing. There's no need to push that grind to extreme levels when there are already people all too willing to spend money to skip even an hour's worth of grinding.

It's easy to play "what if" games to invent worst case scenarios before we have all the facts. I don't see the point in that. All we can do is work with what we know. If you don't think you know enough to be comfortable purchasing the game, by all means delay your purchase to be able to collect more facts from the game's release.

@Irem Where else besides PvP does your "level playing field" matter? GW2 does have levels and gear acquisition outside of competitive PvP, so how can that "level playing field" exist even without a cash shop?

Why is it ok to spend time grinding to get gold but not ok to spend money to get gold? What's the distinction there that makes one acceptable and the other not?

@real65rcncom So what you're saying is you've seen people promote GW2, you've seen people bash other MMORPGs with cash shops, and you've seen people defend the GW2 cash shop, but you couldn't be bothered to see if there are actually people that have done all three before choosing to complain about people doing so?

Tons of money has been made from completely pointless items in online games. Until you stop pretending otherwise, what you say is simply not in touch with reality.

GW1 is not a real MMORPG, but why bring that up when we're talking about GW2? What makes you think the cost of upkeep for an MMORPG is so much higher than it is for a game like GW1, or any other given game with online multiplayer?

@real65rcncom What makes you so sure that selling solely cosmetic items is not a viable business model? WoW has made millions of dollars on single items in their cash shop. League of Legends is free to play and you can't buy anything to give you an in game advantage.

Why do they need to make money beyond box sales in order to be a financial success anyway? Shooters, fighting games, RTS, and so on also need servers to run, but plenty get by with no cash shop or subscription. Plus, ArenaNet will be developing additional content to sell.