Convinced my friend to buy this, sorely dissapointed

[Gehenna.3625]

17 hours ago, Sir Alymer.3406 said:

ANet makes more money on key & skin (Mount, outfit, individual pieces) sales than they ever do on LW chapters.  Why else would they (ANet) be giving them away for free the last few months?

I suspect that it is in support of the pre-orders for EoD.

[Sicktanick.4369]

On 9/18/2021 at 7:56 AM, Swagger.1459 said:

Free doesn’t pay the bills or future development.
 

You gave away free living world in an xpac they lose money.

 

You add in the price of the living world and the cost of the game and Xpacs and the price goes up.

 

You itemize the game, Xpacs, living world makes purchases more of an option.

 

Anet doesn’t charge a sub fee, they can’t survive by doing things for free. 
 

The cost of almost a decades worth of game and lw is not problematic. The problem is all the people who want everything for free from this company, just because the product is a video game.

 

You don’t walk into the local market or store and expect free stuff, but some people expect and want all this free online stuff.

 

Anet is a business. And a very generous one at that. Zero monthly sub. Buy anything from gemstore for free by exchanging gold… Yet, still in 2021, people spend money left and right, and money of frivolous things and nonessentials, but they want free this and free that…

You should educate yourself on the costs of running a business and having hundreds of employees, maybe you’ll get a different perspective. 

 

Lets go ahead and take your supermarket example and roll with it. 

 

If I go to buy lucky charms based on their box for 39.99, obviously its not the cost just using the game cost, you get to the checkout counter pay your priced and go home excited to eat your lucky charms. You open the box to just find the cereal. Inside their is now a notification that says if you want the marshmallows go back and pay another 16 dollars. You would be outraged would you not?

 

Now obviously lucky charms arent worth that. So lets say 4 dollars for the box. You get home, find out you need to pay an extra dollar for marshmallows, you were not aware of this and based on the information the company gave, assumed you were getting marshmallows. 1 extra dollar is nothing, probably even worth the marshmallows, that does not change the fact that I feel scammed (whether it is a scam or not) and I am sure you would feel the same, you just refuse to see it from any other perspective. 

 

Further, imagine ordering a bacon cheeseburger, you get the burger with no bacon and they said, well I mean the burger is the overall meal, the bacon is just to compliment and progress the flavor of the burger, but that is 2 extra dollars. I guarantee most of us here would say no, that is bullsh** and either not pay for the bacon, or take it further and get our money back entirely.

[Swagger.1459]

Oh @voltaicbore.8012

 

Let's blame Anet because people don’t take the time to read… They just assume and buy, so that’s obviously Anet’s fault, right? 

 

https://help.guildwars2.com/hc/en-us/articles/360049722974-Living-World-Episode-Unlocks

 

 

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Living_World

 

 

But I’m assuming  Anet can resolve and make this right by giving everything for free. 

[jcm.8921]

Just because I've seen ESO thrown around a few times now (someone outright asked how expensive it is), I'll give a breakdown of ESO's cost as a former player of around 3.5-4 years who's sunk around 4k hours into it.

ESO is a buy-to-play game with a quarterly release cycle (Q1 - dungeon DLC, Q2 - expansion, Q3 - dungeon DLC, Q4 - story/zone DLC), with paid expansions, and DLCs that can be either accessed by paying for them upfront using the in-game premium currency, Crowns, or by subscribing through the optional ESO+ subscription to gain access to the DLC during the subscription, on top of receiving a bit over the same amount of Crowns as the subscription costs.

The base game costs US$20 from the official ESO storefront, and offers the first expansion, the Morrowind chapter, bundled in. However, there's also an all-expansions-in-one bundle, the ESO Collection: Blackwood edition, that contains all 5 expansions (Blackwood, Greymoor, Elsweyr, Summerset, Morrowind) for US$60. To make the comparison fair, we'll assume a new player wants to get everything the game currently has to offer, so they'll choose the ESO Collection: Blackwood edition, for US$60.

ESO also has 17 individual DLCs as of this moment, which, if you were to purchase the 3 currently available DLC bundles, would cost exactly 24000 Crowns. Because there's an optional subscription involved, our new player essentially has three options here:

1. They could spend US$175 to purchase 24000 Crowns through the 21000 Crown pack (worth US$150) and the 3000 Crown pack (worth US$25) to ultimately purchase all currently released DLC upfront to permanently unlock them, bringing the total to US$235, or US$60 for the base game + all expansions, and US$175 for all DLCs.
2. They could subscribe for around 15 months, as the ESO+ subscription gives 1650 Crowns for each month you've subscribed, meaning that by spending US$15/month for 15 months, or US$225 in total, they could permanently purchase all currently released 17 individual DLCs and finally let their subscription lapse, bringing the total to US$285.
3. They could just subscribe in perpetuity, which essentially means that ESO becomes a subscription-based game for them, costing them US$60 as an entry fee, and US$15/month to maintain access to all currently released and future DLCs.

Note the italicised parts (currently released and future DLCs), because the 24000 Crowns figure it based on all currently released DLC, but by Q1 next year, another DLC will have released, which will add another probably 1500 Crowns onto the total. This isn't the case in GW2, as you can unlock GW2's DLCs (Living World episodes) for free, provided you log in during the claim period after the episode drops.

Sure, ANet should absolutely make the need to purchase Living World content separately more obvious, and an all-in-one bundle probably wouldn't hurt, but GW2 is insanely cheap for what it offers, essentially having a US$50 all-expansions-in-one bundle, plus US$55 for LWS2, LWS3, LWS4 and IBS, bringing the total to just US$105, assuming you can't claim any episodes during the current Return To Living World promotion, you didn't purchase the EoD Collection Ultimate Edition to get the 4000 gems (this'd probably be more expensive, regardless, if you can't convert gold to the remaining 160 gems needed for all the LW bundles), or you can't purchase the expansions from an official reseller that is able to offer them at a discount.

No monthly sub at all, base game is completely free, they give out the Living World episodes completely for free provided you're actively playing during their release, all they ask is US$105 for all story and map content currently in the game, and that's it, anything else you spend money on is convenience.

[Solitude.2097]

Season 2 should permanently  stay on a free update  , and introduce something (collections) that normally can be earned ingame , but if you have unlocked  S4-5(and the appropriate expansion)  , you reduce the "time"