Ribeye.1360

Not sure why ANet chose to put GW2's Steam release on hold, but i'd assume the vast majority of account and/or purchase-related issues seen on this forum would be resolved if the game was available on Steam, instead of only through their janky official site or sub-par "authorized retailers"

It's baffling how rudimentary of an oversight this is. Regardless of the rationale behind the placing and enforcing of the restrictions, "making an online purchase" shouldn't be this difficult in 2022. But hey, if they can't sort this out, maybe ANet/NCSoft don't deserve to pocket 100% of their sales, and will therefore always need to pay third-party retailers a cut instead. GW2 is a great game, but in order to jump outside of its niche and compete in the big leagues, it needs to be modernized and be run much better than it currently is.

After another round of communications with customer service, i've gotten the exact same response as I did during my previous purchase attempts: try again at a later date, or go to a retailer instead. At this point, i'm wondering if their CS team is comprised of actual human beings, or if it's just an automated system changing its alias in every email. Good to see that more people in the community are voicing their dissatisfaction as well. The new Path of Exile league looks good, probably gonna take my $80 there for some of their microtransactions instead 😛

Customer service told me to either purchase from an online retailer or "attempt your purchase at a later date". They also said they're "unable to override risk management."

I think lumping all of this into "our new payment processor is a rigid, non-flexible machine that can't/won't compromise, therefore some people are just gonna be out of luck" is also pretty irresponsible. This isn't Paypal's game, this is ANet/NCSoft's game. They're responsible for making sure everything works, not Paypal. If your business partner isn't able to provide its intended services in-full, on-time, and at least tries to resolve any defects, then this partnership should be re-considered. The mere existence of these articles, and the fact that they've been around for months indicate that they've known about these risks/issues for a while now, and instead of attempting to solve the problem, the best we've gotten are...FAQs? FAQ articles are supposed to be the first line of defense when it comes to responses to customer complaints, and when they don't provide sufficient, valuable, actionable information, customer service should interject and handle things case-by-case. However, this doesn't seem to be how the process flow is currently designed, as more and more people seem to be getting funneled BACK to these articles by customer service instead. If you know there might be issues related to this topic, authorize your CS team to override it. Maybe we're too insignificant of a minority for ANet to even bother responding to - our money might just be a drop in the bucket compared to overall sales figures, and therefore doesn't warrant a response. But seeing as how they also still haven't provided a definitive release date for the expansion pack yet either, i'm gonna chalk this up to poor communication and/or a lack of resources, which are definitely fixable.

What's frustrating for me is that ANet doesn't seem to have even COMMENTED ON this issue, let alone provided a solution or workaround to it. Hell, you seem to be more active in these threads than they are 😋 This isn't some type of hardware incompatibility that doesn't allow players to play the game, but rather purchases not going through. A product being sub-par in quality and design is one thing, but not even being able to purchase it due supposed "risk-related restrictions" that CS isn't allow to override is just careless and irresponsible in my opinion. Even if we're in the the minority, at least an acknowledgement of the situation would be appreciated.

Thanks for the input, sounds like it might be a long wait for me... Although with WOW's new patch, a new POE league, and a potential D2R ladder coming up next month, I might not miss GW2 as much then. Hopefully the purchase can go through and I can start enjoying the new content soon.

Yep, and this would be an option for me (as well as seemingly many other players) if my purchases weren't denied due to Error 80808. I emailed customer service and the best they could do was point me to the online retailers, while mentioning that they couldn't override the error/restriction. A 20% sale on gem cards doesn't seem to match the (effectively) 50% off from the Ultimate edition. Probably gonna wait until they either fix their purchase restrictions or make all versions available on retailers before buying the expansion.

They don't offer the Ultimate edition of End of Dragons either. Neither do Walmart or Best Buy.

At least you get to have your blockage overridden - support straight-up doesn't offer that as an option to me, or apparently to a lot of other players here.🤪 Has there ever been an official word/update on this issue...? Never woulda though an issue as rudimentary as this would exist in 2022...Yet again reminding the player base that GW2 is still, in many ways, stuck in 2012.

I recently came back to the game after a 3-year hiatus, and i'm dealing with the same error 80808 other people seem to be running into. Customer service also told me to either "attempt your purchase at a later date" or try an online retailer instead. Problem is: i'm trying to buy the Ultimate edition for the (effectively) half-off gems, but none of their retailers offer the Ultimate edition. If an error this common is driving people to consider alternative purchasing methods, they could at least offer the same products/editions across all of their retailers.