Please put the PoF sale on your site!

[Xanadrine.4352]

You are really cutting out a lot of players by going through limited 3rd party sites. Not to mention the codes they have will be gone in 10 seconds leaving a mass of players with nothing and lost revenue for your company. Please put the PoF sale on the official game store site so we can all get a chance to get it. 

[Lefar Thethales.8951]

Yes. 5 of my friends were prepared to buy pof on sale but now dont think they might join me. The base price is indeed of great value but with the sales, i could have brought a lot more people into this game. For this entire year, none of the sales were applicable to my region. No idea why its like this because most other mmos have sales that can be utilised internationally.

[discord.6904]

Yeah this makes absolutely no sense to me....it's a digital code so it can't "sell out." I haven't played GW2 in 8 years but I was going to buy PoF at this sale price but it's no longer available? Guess you lost a customer. 

[WelkinDust.8764]

I was tempted to get PoF at 50% off but is the site down or something? The link to Amazon US takes me to a page where the cursor turns into a general prohibition symbol over the Add to Cart button, saying "Select to the left to add to Shopping Cart" but there's nothing to the left to select.

 

Are they out of keys already? So confused.

[Lefar Thethales.8951]

4 hours ago, discord.6904 said:

Yeah this makes absolutely no sense to me....it's a digital code so it can't "sell out." I haven't played GW2 in 8 years but I was going to buy PoF at this sale price but it's no longer available? Guess you lost a customer. 

Its not a matter of selling out. Anet provides x number of codes to retailers and i think this time they greatly underestimated the interest and so many retailers got sold out perhaps. I mean no body believes less in this game than anet sadly.

[Fuchslein.8639]

I don't understand anet with this sale-stuff. Most games i know put this on there site to get more people. The german gem-sale didn't even have a sale Oo. 

This makes anet look great again ...

[Sarajiel.5830]

43 minutes ago, Fuchslein.8639 said:

The german gem-sale didn't even have a sale

What are you talking about? Germans can easily buy discounted gems from Amazon.de, GameLiebe.com (Swiss company) and Gamecardsdirect.com (Dutch company).

6 hours ago, discord.6904 said:

Yeah this makes absolutely no sense to me....it's a digital code so it can't "sell out." I haven't played GW2 in 8 years but I was going to buy PoF at this sale price but it's no longer available?

Why wouldn't digital codes sell out, at least temporary? You are aware that those things have to be generated and added to a secure payment environment? 

Even if one uses a live-activation system which Anet/NCsoft doesn't seem to offer to their retailers, it's possible to overwhelm such a system temporarily since most of these systems have multiple layers of fraud prevention built in.

Assuming that you live in the US and wanted to buy from Amazon.com, consider upgrading to the deluxe edition which seems to be still available and also be sold with a 50% discount. The goodies for that edition are actually quite nice compared to the other deluxe editions.

[Fuchslein.8639]

2 hours ago, Sarajiel.5830 said:

What are you talking about? Germans can easily buy discounted gems from Amazon.de, GameLiebe.com (Swiss company) and Gamecardsdirect.com (Dutch company).

Why wouldn't digital codes sell out, at least temporary? You are aware that those things have to be generated and added to a secure payment environment? 

Even if one uses a live-activation system which Anet/NCsoft doesn't seem to offer to their retailers, it's possible to overwhelm such a system temporarily since most of these systems have multiple layers of fraud prevention built in.

Assuming that you live in the US and wanted to buy from Amazon.com, consider upgrading to the deluxe edition which seems to be still available and also be sold with a 50% discount. The goodies for that edition are actually quite nice compared to the other deluxe editions.

Then we seem to have two different amazon offers, for me there is nothing in sale.

[Sarajiel.5830]

PoF (15€)

2k gems (20€)

Both links checked at the time of writing with Firefox, Chrome and even Safari.

I was able to buy three of each yesterday. Unless they run out of codes, you should be able to buy some yourself.

Maybe you have to clear your browser cache or something, but that offer should even show if you are on an IP-address outside of Germany.

Edited November 27, 2021 by Sarajiel.5830

[Fuchslein.8639]

Ah i see, so the 20€ are the discount?

But it always costs 20€ at Amazon. And there is just no discount displayed, that's what I meant.

[Sarajiel.5830]

5 minutes ago, Fuchslein.8639 said:

But it always costs 20€ at Amazon. And there is just no discount displayed, that's what I meant.

No, the regular gem cards cost 25€ at all Eurozone Amazon stores that carry them regardless of the local VAT. However I get that it's actually quite annoying that amazon.de doesn't indicate the discount like they do for PoF.

They used to cost 20€ years ago, before Anet adjusted them to compensate for they weaker Euro. Sadly Anet can't be bothered to update their support pages. They still list old Euro and Pound Sterling prices as well as the old 1200 gem cards.

[Fuchslein.8639]

But I bought gems for 20€ there a few months ago when I started gw2 again xD

 

Im so confused~

[Sarajiel.5830]

Must have been a sale then.  

I bought something like 20 gem card codes, not counting those from yesterday, this year from amazon.de and they always were 25€. That price hike I mentioned was sometime mid-2017 from the back of my head.

[Fuchslein.8639]

14 minutes ago, Sarajiel.5830 said:

Must have been a sale then.  

I bought something like 20 gem card codes, not counting those from yesterday, this year from amazon.de and they always were 25€. That price hike I mentioned was sometime mid-2017 from the back of my head.

Yup, that is probably what it was. Strange that they do not directly indicate a discount.

[Gerebos.1065]

I just don't get why they refuse to bring such promotions into the game...20% gem price reduction good I enter the game buy the gem with reduction... etc

Their marketing team is quite bad in my opinion and with such third party sales just makes it worst but they know they got the numbers we can only guess but I hope they change this approach in the close future

[Fuchslein.8639]

Wouldn't that actually make them earn more? I mean, don't they have to give up part of the profit to the third-party suppliers? 

[Gibson.4036]

I wonder if they'll be offering a PoF deal themselves in December.

Don't deals with partners like this often preclude doing the same thing direct because it would undercut the partner? So sometimes you offer the partner deal, but you alternate it with offering the deal directly?

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

I doubt ArenaNet will offer the discount on their own site in December, since they are offering it through their retailers through December 31st. 

[Gibson.4036]

3 hours ago, Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:

I doubt ArenaNet will offer the discount on their own site in December, since they are offering it through their retailers through December 31st. 

Ah, I hadn’t realized it runs that long.

New year, then, as a lead up to EOD launch?

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

Unless, of course, they've misstated how long the discount will run.

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

On 11/27/2021 at 2:52 AM, WelkinDust.8764 said:

I was tempted to get PoF at 50% off but is the site down or something? The link to Amazon US takes me to a page where the cursor turns into a general prohibition symbol over the Add to Cart button, saying "Select to the left to add to Shopping Cart" but there's nothing to the left to select.

 

Are they out of keys already? So confused.

Amazon US offering discounted codes currently (November 29th). 

Edited November 30, 2021 by Inculpatus cedo.9234

[Rogue.8235]

On 11/25/2021 at 5:54 PM, Zuldari.3940 said:

You are really cutting out a lot of players by going through limited 3rd party sites. Not to mention the codes they have will be gone in 10 seconds leaving a mass of players with nothing and lost revenue for your company. Please put the PoF sale on the official game store site so we can all get a chance to get it. 

 

This actually brings up a topic that I never found a solution for.  Say you manufacture shoes, and you wholesale them to various retailers to do the actual selling.   You get to make shoes in bulk and sell them in bulk without worrying about the micromanagement of individual sales.

However, you decide to have an online store, because it's easy to implement and doesn't cost much.  You don't need to keep inventory as it's based on overflow and order mishaps from the retailers, so this excess waste of shoes can actually be sold to recoup any lost costs.

But, how do you price the shoes?  If you price them too low, you're undercutting the retailers you sell to.  How would they feel?  Would that break a contract?  Would they immediately cancel all future purchases?  If so, what do you do with the crazy excess of shoes you just manufactured with no one to buy them?

You may want to find other retailers, but retailers now know that you undercut them.  How would you handle bulk purchases now after burning all bridges to the retail industry?

 

Do you price it the same?  This runs into the same problems as the above, but on a much smaller level of severity.  Retailers won't leave you outright, but they would want to negotiate if they find that customers prefer buying from the manufacturer because it's easier and the same price anyways.

 

So now you're stuck as the shoe maker.  You have to sell slightly above retail so that you don't lose every business relationship you have in the retail industry.

 

 

Turning to ArenaNet, it is not exactly like the manufacturing scenario above, but it is similar.  ArenaNet wholesold a bunch of stuff to all their retail partners.  Those retail partners set a price that ArenaNet must be cognizant of.  The retailers are now running a sale.  

If ArenaNet did the same thing on their own store at the same time as the retail sale, would anyone purchase from retailers or would they just purchase from the ArenaNet store?

If ArenaNet cuts into the profits of their retail partners, how would those business partnerships shake out?

 

It's a very tricky situation that I do not have a clear answer for.  

 

Please discuss this, I'd love to hear input from different minds here.

Edit:  All questions in this post do not have a correct answer that I know of.  These questions are genrally where the discussion revolves.  I certainly do not have good answers for these questions, and it is a problem that I've mulled over for years.

 

Edited November 30, 2021 by Rogue.8235

[costepj.5120]

6 hours ago, Rogue.8235 said:

But, how do you price the shoes?  If you price them too low, you're undercutting the retailers you sell to.

Many manufacturers already do this via factory outlets don't they? The trade off from the consumer perspective is that you might save some money but the choice of available styles and sizes can be fairly limited.

[Gibson.4036]

10 hours ago, Rogue.8235 said:

 

This actually brings up a topic that I never found a solution for.  Say you manufacture shoes, and you wholesale them to various retailers to do the actual selling.   You get to make shoes in bulk and sell them in bulk without worrying about the micromanagement of individual sales.

 

In the case of ArenaNet and Amazon, you also potentially get broad exposure. There have been a lot of threads on the forum despairing that GW2 would be a more popular game if it was only marketed more. Using Amazon's vast global reach to get GW2 out in front of other gamers and even non-gamers is part of the trade of losing part of the profit that would have been gained by selling directly.

So many industries, it's standard that you can get their products a little cheaper third party than you can get from the source. That seems to be how they solve the issue you're describing. The supplier sees that there is enough value to be gained from selling through the third party that they are willing to take the loss.

I think, in this case, nobody would care except that Amazon in some regions was not part of this partnership for this sale. Only ArenaNet and those Amazon regions really know why.

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

ArenaNet/Amazon really should remove this from the Amazon sale page:

Additional Requirements:   Requires full version of Guild Wars 2 to play (sold separately).