Why are we paying for Living Worlds?

[Jasperado.6829]

I think it's a fair question. I mean think about it.

Skyscale, and Roller beetle both came from a Living World. Which was free, just for logging in. Now we have to redo the Skyscale in an "expansion" that we've paid for. At an expansion price.

Path of Fire, Heart of Thorns and End of Dragons gave Elite Specializations. Secrets of the Obscure, we can use different weapons without a specialization. Whoop de do.

This "expansion" doesn't even have all of it's content at release. No it's going to come out in three month intervals. Just like Living World did.

We got Strike missions, Fractals, and the like with Living Worlds, for free. SoTO, we're paying for it.

So again I ask, why are we now having to pay for content, that was free, and it's being masked as an expansion? Am I wrong in this thought? I'm curious if anyone else see it this way. Thoughts?

[Eekasqueak.7850]

If it's the price to be paid for less FOMO and a more transparent pay model I'm fine with it. Living world being free also just wasn't a sustainable business model by their own admission. 

[Jasperado.6829]

From a business stand point, for the most part I get it. Charging a full expansion price for a mini expansion though? There are things coming from this that are good. The Wizards Vault for one. I be happy paying half the expansion price for Living Worlds.

[Doggie.3184]

I assume they're hurting for money. Don't want them to shut down. Hopefully they'll be able to afford to hire more people for the balance team, maybe even a Thief enjoyer.

[jokke.6239]

Skyscale isn't the only content though

 

Edited September 3, 2023 by jokke.6239

[Poormany.4507]

LW being free in the first place (all you had to do was log in for one second, assuming you had the expacs) spoiled us as players and I could easily have seen them charging extra for previous LW seasons, but we got them free instead. Anet/NCSoft seem to have realized this and started charging everyone for LW now. No problem with them charging money for LW, as the previous LW model seemed overgenerous and unsustainable.

What I do have a problem is, as others have said, is them renaming a few LW episodes and selling them as mini-expacs (while even calling them full expacs most of the time in their official posts since the announcement of mini-expacs). They should just be transparent about LW not being free anymore. Instead they just massively lowered the standards for what an expac is.

Edited September 3, 2023 by Poormany.4507

[Hindenburg.3415]

54 minutes ago, Jasperado.6829 said:

we have to redo

Have to ? I think it's pretty much optional and I personally is not going to bother with it.

But yes , they should have at least removed saddle collection for people who already have skyscale

[Krajtin.8956]

I started in 2019 and I have paid for everything LW except the IBS half. Living World should always have been paid and we would not be in this situation right now.

The problem with SoTo is that what comes next is going to be of very low quality. Let's just look at the SoTo mobs, the random events there are and the massive use of assets and skills

[Krajtin.8956]

When they told us that instead of 4 maps we will have 3, in my head I said: "Okay, I accept 3 maps but they must be of good quality." And instead we get this that's not even Jahai quality

[quake.9023]

dude. this game is borderline free. and u can still pull something from a hole and complain about. i recommend you spend your time where you feel happy about it

[Linken.6345]

1 hour ago, Jasperado.6829 said:

From a business stand point, for the most part I get it. Charging a full expansion price for a mini expansion though? There are things coming from this that are good. The Wizards Vault for one. I be happy paying half the expansion price for Living Worlds.

It is not full price tho expansions were 30 at release.

[Tuna Bandit.3786]

Here I have to give credit to ArenaNet though. 

In current world, the previous Living World model was no longer sustainable from a financial point of view. 
According to this new model we will get such an expansion pretty much on a yearly base. The benefits of this is less content drought. 

Releasing it in chunks is also not a problem for me. I rather see this than the EoD format, where we got a full expac and then later an added map in 2 parts that felt kinda seperated from the actual EoD storyline to me.

As for the price, yeah it might only be a 5er cheaper than EoD, but we had quite an inflation spike since then.

All in all I am mildly positive about the new model. Gw2, when taking this all in consideration still is one of the cheapest MMO's out there. 

25 for SotO, which in theory would be a year's worth of new content translates to not even 2.10 a month.
Subscription based MMOs charge easely 15 a month just to play on top of paying for expansions.

I am fine with this. 

[Gibson.4036]

$25/year is still an amazingly low price to play an MMO.

[crepuscular.9047]

my advice, skip spoiling your partner at the next dinner date, spoil your self by buy GW2:SotO to enjoy the next 12 months instead

[IAmNotMatthew.1058]

LW was only free during their release cycle and maybe once or twice in the future during special events. 

The simple answer is that.. it's simply unsustainable. People complain about the amount of content, how "<insert MMO charging 10+€ a month and charging 40+€ each 2 years> has more content"

If you've been playing since release that's like... 175€ over 11 years, I don't think it needs to be mentioned how much you'd be spending elsewhere. Even with ""buying Living World"" you'd be still spending 1/10th of what you'd be spending in many other MMOs.

Before Soto I saw someone respond to an exact same rant, it was something along hte lines of "If you are the cheapest MMO you have the cheapest playerbase"

I don't recall ever playing a game that kept releasing content for 2-3 years for a single 30€ payment.

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

i think the expansion was fine, and well-worth the price. we've just been spoiled, and look at what its done to us.

 

another game delivers 8-10 hours of content for nearly $100 now, while this game delivers 200+ hours of content for a quarter of the price, yet all we have to say about it is bad things. this is because of what living world being free did to us, and the unsustainable expectations that it set.

 

if you step back a bit you'll see that you're getting more than enough in this post-covid era. you can hardly buy a single meal for $25 anymore.

Edited September 3, 2023 by SoftFootpaws.9134

[preacher.9370]

4 minutes ago, SoftFootpaws.9134 said:

i think the expansion was fine, and well-worth the price. we've just been spoiled, and look at what its done to us.

 

another game delivers 8-10 hours of content for nearly $100 now, while this game delivers 200+ hours of content for a quarter of the price, yet all we have to say about it is bad things. this is because of what living world being free did to us, and the unsustainable expectations that it set.

yeah.... because 200+ hours of rift farming for essences is such great content. 

[Hashberry.4510]

They had always left money on the table. I hope the revenue is reflected in the product moving forward. It is likely a bad bet though, they don't really understand what they had and are settling for a cash cow.

[IAmNotMatthew.1058]

9 minutes ago, preacher.9370 said:

yeah.... because 200+ hours of rift farming for essences is such great content. 

About as great content as 200+ hours of Branded meteor farming.

[Eekasqueak.7850]

If the writing quality and the map quality remain at how they are in SotO so far I'm happy to keep getting the new expansions. 

[Randulf.7614]

11 minutes ago, Eekasqueak.7850 said:

If the writing quality and the map quality remain at how they are in SotO so far I'm happy to keep getting the new expansions. 

Agreed

[Hindenburg.3415]

2 hours ago, preacher.9370 said:

yeah.... because 200+ hours of rift farming for essences is such great content. 

Right , it's not like there are storyline , metas , exploration , events , achievements , collections, masteries which can easily take 100+ hours to see and do everything.

[Tiamat.8254]

They realised they can't run a live service game at a reduced cost and continue to sustain their bottom line through gem store sales alone probably. I'm all for it but still worried about an expansion per year. When the whole family play the cost gets pretty silly.

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

9 minutes ago, Tiamat.8254 said:

They realised they can't run a live service game at a reduced cost and continue to sustain their bottom line through gem store sales alone probably. I'm all for it but still worried about an expansion per year. When the whole family play the cost gets pretty silly.

i think it was also a tradeoff, because what players don't realise is we're getting gemstore rewards as in-game rewards increasingly more often lately. this is exactly the kind of model which allows us to obtain things like mount skins through gameplay instead of using a credit card.

 

before that wasn't possible outside of a select few items, because they couldn't take revenue away from the gemstore.

Edited September 3, 2023 by SoftFootpaws.9134

[Grouwdi.6279]

9 hours ago, Jasperado.6829 said:

I think it's a fair question. I mean think about it.

Skyscale, and Roller beetle both came from a Living World. Which was free, just for logging in. Now we have to redo the Skyscale in an "expansion" that we've paid for. At an expansion price.

Path of Fire, Heart of Thorns and End of Dragons gave Elite Specializations. Secrets of the Obscure, we can use different weapons without a specialization. Whoop de do.

This "expansion" doesn't even have all of it's content at release. No it's going to come out in three month intervals. Just like Living World did.

We got Strike missions, Fractals, and the like with Living Worlds, for free. SoTO, we're paying for it.

So again I ask, why are we now having to pay for content, that was free, and it's being masked as an expansion? Am I wrong in this thought? I'm curious if anyone else see it this way. Thoughts?

Let's say you took 5 years to write a novel, spent countless hours every night working on it. During that time over those five years you ate food, paid for utilities bill, house/rent, insurance and let's say you had a family, too.

At the end of those 5 years you got your novel printed and ready to go onto shelves everywhere across the country in bookstores.

Now let's say you give that novel away for free.