No discounted sales this year? [Merged]

[Blue D Phoenix.7260]

Since steam version is released and its nearly end of August, I haven't seen any discounted sales (August/anniversary sale) this year, am I to assume there isn't gonna be because of steam?

 

Also what about anniversary supply drop?

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

There have been discounts (including free items) on various items throughout the month.  There's a Sticky with information on what's offered each day. 

Edited August 28, 2022 by Inculpatus cedo.9234

[Harfang.1507]

So far, what I have seen is very much in line with what passed for the 2021 anniversary sale, which was but a shadow of the 2019 and 2020 ones.

[eric.9704]

Does anyone konw when dlc and lws will be discount?

[Luthan.5236]

If it is "dlc" on steam then most likely at the times when there are big steam sales - I guess. Other than that: Yeah there have been certain items that usually often appear on anniversary sales: The shared inventory slots for example. Wiki does not list them at belonging to the anniversary sale.

Some people speculated that there might be another big sale with them again (and other stuff). My opinion: Cause of the economic state the world is in at the moment (war between Russia and Ukraine and inflation in a lot of countries) ... they might not do a lot more. But we'll see ...

I do not expect that there will still be big sales over a few weeks with new items each day. Maybe some special items they alreay hinted at ... and one or another additional thing together with that on sale.

Edited August 28, 2022 by Luthan.5236

[Labjax.2465]

13 minutes ago, Luthan.5236 said:

If it is "dlc" on steam then most likely at the times when there are big steam sales - I guess. Other than that: Yeah there have been certain items that usually often appear on anniversary sales: The shared inventory slots for example. Wiki does not list them at belonging to the anniversary sale.

Some people speculated that there might be another big sale with them again (and other stuff). My opinion: Cause of the economic state the world is in at the moment (war between Russia and Ukraine and inflation in a lot of countries) ... they might not do a lot more. But we'll see ...

I do not expect that there will still be big sales over a few weeks with new items each day. Maybe some special items they alreay hinted at ... and one or another additional thing together with that on sale.

*gets out tinfoil*

*shapes it into a hat and puts it on*

I will be eating crow if there is a big sale tomorrow (or... later today, rather?), but... my pet hypothesis (and fair warning, this is gonna sound pretty doomer) is that despite stuff said about account numbers, the overall engagement with the game is in decline and they are concerned that sales too good will cause a too small playerbase to get most of what they want all at once and then not spend much in future financial quarters. And that said decline is why they turned to steam after all these years, with a hope to turn the ship around.

If I was doing occam's razor tho, I would say it's probably just that they are understaffed and have barely anyone managing the store. Which I guess is doomer in its own way too.

Well, I tried to find a less doomer outlook. 😛

[Tukaram.8256]

I have gotten a few free items from the gem shop this month, and shared inventory slots went on sale.  That was all I was looking for... but there did not seem to as much this year as in previous years. 

[HawittZero.2816]

idk what anet thinking   10 years anniversary and steam launch

this is the best opportunity for sale / celebration / announcement something big about future of their game

are they waiting 20 years anniversary ?  😒 

do they have the marketing team 

what ever ill play thier game anyway i just dissapoint 

maybe 28 aug will have something good for us

 

Edited August 28, 2022 by sahawitZERO.1493

[MinniHowl.3017]

I was hoping for storage expander amongst other things, but that hasn't been on sale yet has it?

[Kori Jenkins.9017]

7 hours ago, Labjax.2465 said:

*gets out tinfoil*

*shapes it into a hat and puts it on*

I will be eating crow if there is a big sale tomorrow (or... later today, rather?), but... my pet hypothesis (and fair warning, this is gonna sound pretty doomer) is that despite stuff said about account numbers, the overall engagement with the game is in decline and they are concerned that sales too good will cause a too small playerbase to get most of what they want all at once and then not spend much in future financial quarters. And that said decline is why they turned to steam after all these years, with a hope to turn the ship around.

If I was doing occam's razor tho, I would say it's probably just that they are understaffed and have barely anyone managing the store. Which I guess is doomer in its own way too.

Well, I tried to find a less doomer outlook. 😛

The playerbase has absolutely grown. PoF was absolutely outsold by EOD. There are certain things they cannot legally lie about. Sure, maybe there's some weird metric they look at that shows players are engaging less with certain elements of the game,  but I doubt it's related to a decline.

 

I don't really believe expansion 4 would've been announced as early as it has been if the game was on the brink of death. Realistically as WoW continues to bleed to death, people get turned away immediately by the awful FF14 introduction, and ESO "balanced" the playerbase into quitting entirely, GW2 only stands to gain from that. I assume the executives are aware of that. 

 

The Steam release doesn't feel like it was particularly for any reason other than the industry having shifted from "each game has a launcher" to things like Steam or Origin or Epic long ago. GW2 was simply well behind in jumping on that wagon. It doesn't hurt that it will increase engagement with the game. 

 

It does seem a bit weird that there are no sales though. I don't think it's due to the in-game store being understaffed, realistically it probably takes them 5 minutes a day to manage. 

[Freya.9075]

11 hours ago, MinniHowl.3017 said:

I was hoping for storage expander amongst other things, but that hasn't been on sale yet has it?

It was on sale middle of august with bag slots and shared inventory  (I stand corrected. It was not as I misremembered)

Edited August 29, 2022 by Freya.9075

[Labjax.2465]

3 hours ago, Kori Jenkins.9017 said:

The playerbase has absolutely grown. PoF was absolutely outsold by EOD. There are certain things they cannot legally lie about. Sure, maybe there's some weird metric they look at that shows players are engaging less with certain elements of the game,  but I doubt it's related to a decline.

 

I don't really believe expansion 4 would've been announced as early as it has been if the game was on the brink of death. Realistically as WoW continues to bleed to death, people get turned away immediately by the awful FF14 introduction, and ESO "balanced" the playerbase into quitting entirely, GW2 only stands to gain from that. I assume the executives are aware of that. 

 

The Steam release doesn't feel like it was particularly for any reason other than the industry having shifted from "each game has a launcher" to things like Steam or Origin or Epic long ago. GW2 was simply well behind in jumping on that wagon. It doesn't hurt that it will increase engagement with the game. 

 

It does seem a bit weird that there are no sales though. I don't think it's due to the in-game store being understaffed, realistically it probably takes them 5 minutes a day to manage. 

More people buying alt accounts on sale could inflate account and login numbers without meaningfully growing the playerbase.

But as to "on the brink of death," I guess that's my fault for using the term doomer. I was not meaning to say I think the game is on the brink of death. I don't even think it's in decline necessarily, it's just a hypothesis. And to be more specific, the hypothesis is that the game is in decline in terms of unique players (not to be confused with accounts, which can be alts). But for the sake of argument, say that were the case, it could still be the case that they are managing to make good money off of the most loyal playerbase and it's plenty enough to justify continued development (thus xpac 4). It could also fit with things like the grossly overpriced jade bot skin; prices going up to try to squeeze the same or more amount of money out of less people.

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

3 hours ago, Freya.9075 said:

It was on sale middle of august with bag slots and shared inventory 

This is what was offered on August 9th:

Returning This Week
20% Off—Bank Tab Expansion, Bag Slot Expansion, Additional Crafting License, Shared Inventory Slot

No Storage Expander(s)

[Freya.9075]

1 hour ago, Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:

This is what was offered on August 9th:

Returning This Week
20% Off—Bank Tab Expansion, Bag Slot Expansion, Additional Crafting License, Shared Inventory Slot

No Storage Expander(s)

Ah thank you. I remembered wrong then! 

[Gibson.4036]

15 hours ago, Labjax.2465 said:

*gets out tinfoil*

*shapes it into a hat and puts it on*

I will be eating crow if there is a big sale tomorrow (or... later today, rather?), but... my pet hypothesis (and fair warning, this is gonna sound pretty doomer) is that despite stuff said about account numbers, the overall engagement with the game is in decline and they are concerned that sales too good will cause a too small playerbase to get most of what they want all at once and then not spend much in future financial quarters. And that said decline is why they turned to steam after all these years, with a hope to turn the ship around.

If I was doing occam's razor tho, I would say it's probably just that they are understaffed and have barely anyone managing the store. Which I guess is doomer in its own way too.

Well, I tried to find a less doomer outlook. 😛

I would think if your game was in serious decline, you’d be offering things on sale left and right to squeeze as much income out of it as possible before putting it into maintenance mode.

After all, it costs almost nothing to sell digital goods, so anything sold is income.

The reason to not do sales would be the stuff is selling just fine to players who are willing to pay full price.

[wsking.2140]

Apparently one of each black lion key, total makeover kit, life with friend box and communal boost bonfire, and some Decade achievements are all we get for 10th anniversary... Just doesn't feel like the game is having anniversary celebration..

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

20 minutes ago, wsking.2140 said:

Apparently one of each black lion key, total makeover kit, life with friend box and communal boost bonfire, and some Decade achievements are all we get for 10th anniversary... Just doesn't feel like the game is having anniversary celebration..

There's more to come, according to the News Blog. 

[wsking.2140]

I see, just couldn't find any info on FB, webpage and twitter as I see, I'll look forward to it 🙂 

[Kaylum.1597]

I was highly anticipating an anniversary sale for their big 10 years. But nothing? Many fellow players suspect its because of the steam launch. This is my first year playing so I don't know much about their sales. Any ideas?

[Psyches.9487]

Yeah, I think the steam release probably has a pretty big reason considering they kinda  already discounted the living seasons in the bulk package on steam. The timing kinda sucks for a sale because if people were to buy something not yet on sale they would probably get a lot of tickets for a refund.  They also said they aren't doing a supply drop this year which used to be a regular thing people would get because it was a pretty solid deal.  They said there would be some sort of sale so we will see Tuesday but part of me feels it won't be as great as the previous years.

[Psyches.9487]

1 hour ago, wsking.2140 said:

I see, just couldn't find any info on FB, webpage and twitter as I see, I'll look forward to it 🙂 

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/studio-update-guild-wars-2-tenth-anniversary-and-steam-launch-on-august-23/

 

About 3/4ths down

 

"As is traditional, we’ll also have a wide range of Gem Store sales to celebrate the anniversary, and maybe even a few freebies to collect (spoiler: mount skin)."

 

 

[Kaylum.1597]

Ok thank you for all the insight! We will see haha

 

[Miragen.6127]

5 hours ago, Psyches.9487 said:

Yeah, I think the steam release probably has a pretty big reason considering they kinda  already discounted the living seasons in the bulk package on steam. The timing kinda sucks for a sale because if people were to buy something not yet on sale they would probably get a lot of tickets for a refund.  They also said they aren't doing a supply drop this year which used to be a regular thing people would get because it was a pretty solid deal.  They said there would be some sort of sale so we will see Tuesday but part of me feels it won't be as great as the previous years.

 

Discounted? Can hardly call that discounted, plus it's not available for any existing player so even if it was a discount it doesn't really matter.

[fatihso.7258]

Twitch drops, previous week blc key and a few total make over kits. Seems to me these are the gifts for 10th year anniversary + Steam launch. There might be a possible freebie mount skin this week to wrap it up for anniversary. More gifts than the expected sales I mean.

 

Edited August 29, 2022 by Teoman.9713

[TheWaternymphHC.1847]

1 hour ago, Miragen.6127 said:

Discounted? Can hardly call that discounted, plus it's not available for any existing player so even if it was a discount it doesn't really matter.

If you look at the Living World seasons alone, it's a ~23% discount buying them via the Complete Collection compared to buying the gem store bundles for each season which would set you back 4160 gems or 52€/$, ignoring the fact that you have to overbuy gems for at least 55€/$. That roughly translates into a 10% discount for the complete collection. I guess, Steam doesn't allow to show this discount if the parts of the bundle aren't available separately.

That said, I fully agree with your sentiment that the Complete Collection and a standalone LWS bundle should be available in ANet's own shop for those who want to buy the seasons with money instead of gems. It's quite surprising that ANet/NC West still haven't streamlined their messy sales & marketing of GW2 for the Steam launch.

Finally offering a decent volume discount for gems would have been the greatest 10th anniversary gift for many, many players as well. No surprise that ANet doesn't show gem prices on GW2's Steam page compared to most other similar MMOs.

Generally speaking, 100€/$ seems to be a hard sell for a 10 year old game regardless of its popularity or the amount of provided content. Personally I think that ANet should have chosen a price point somewhere in the 70 - 80 €/$ range and made it obvious that this is actually a discounted bundle. Maybe even throw in a launch sale for gems to soften the blow once people notice that they pretty much need to spend additional gems for some convenience to make the game a pleasant experience after buying it with all expansions and DLCs.

Edited August 29, 2022 by TheWaternymphHC.1847
typos & clarification... kitten twitch promo robbed me of my sleep ;)