Guild Wars 2 goes free to play

[AVATAR_RAGE]

I bought GW2 on the summer sale last year. I suppose of those restrictions the only ones that I would find annoying would be the bags, as I'm a massive hoarder and the character slots.
Although I'm probably never going to play enough to have more than 2 characters that I actually use, it's useful to have more slots so that you can try out the different classes to see which ones suit you best. It can take a bit of levelling up to see what each class can do and only having 2 slots means you're going to have to delete characters to try new ones. If the price of new slots is reasonable it's not a problem. Neverwinter cost about £5 for 2 extra slots, which is great. Tera costs about £25 for a single slot. Hopefully they do things closer to the former.

New character slots are about 600gems if memory serves, so about £6 (give or take). It's not too steep of a cost anyway, I have a pretty tight seal on my wallet and I did not feel bad about the cost of the extra slot.

The limitations here are pretty fair, it's not like we are dealing with another SWOTOR here.

 

[Bat Vader]

Wasn't GW2 always free to play?

 

[Zykon TheLich_v1legacy]

New character slots are about 600gems if memory serves, so about £6 (give or take). It's not too steep of a cost anyway, I have a pretty tight seal on my wallet and I did not feel bad about the cost of the extra slot.

Yeah, that's a decent price, given that the game is now free, buying 3 extra slots isn't that far off having bought it to begin with.

Wasn't GW2 always free to play?

Technically, yes, but free to play generally refers to games with no outlay at all required, you don't even have to buy the game. I think the term for GW business model was subscription free or something similar.

 

[gorfias]

How so?

I play the game relatively casually and I have never felt as though I've had to buy from the store.

See below... reminder: I love gaming but stink at it.

The micro-transactions don't offer you anything gameplay-wise that you can't get without them. Everything on the store can be acquired through in-game currency.

I'm pretty sure you used the transactions to buy all sorts of things and was under the impression that I could easily spend as much as I would on FF14 subscription.

The things I could buy: are they winnable in the game? Example: I play candy crush. Stop laughing And I CAN buy a bonus, but I can win one too. Just takes more time.

When I quit on this, I'd purchased a bundle with bonuses I never used but was completely stuck.

Your advice is appreciated.

 

[AgedGrunt]

Interesting. To me this is about more than getting people to buy Heart of Thorns (which until the other day was basically a $60 expansion pack). There's an obvious need to inject new life into the game and community for more than just sales and raids.

Not buying another copy of the game, so not returning. I suspect HoT will be more grand wizardry to polish up a stale experience and stave off player fatigue. To be fair, a newer player will probably enjoy the game far more than those of us who bought it years ago, but then again, with the silliness that is the living story, a lot of interesting content came and left.

Well, there goes another game down the drain and into micro-transaction hell.

For me, it was already there. I bought this turkey and quickly realized you could not have fun with it unless you engaged in Micro Transactions.

Depends on your definition of fun. The GW universe is mostly driven by cosmetics, so MTs are not essential at all.

While buying gems with real money is one side of the economy, the real buying power is in gold. There are people who do nothing but play Wall Street with the game economy and venture their way into fortune and could do so (earning all kinds of rewards) without really needing to play the game. IMO, the micro-transaction complaints are overblown. GW2 economy is twisted because gems were designed to eliminate gold farming/selling businesses, but in their entire grand design for the game what Anet ended up doing was turning their players into them, and the company makes the money.

 

[CCLegion]

I'm pretty sure you used the transactions to buy all sorts of things and was under the impression that I could easily spend as much as I would on FF14 subscription.

The things I could buy: are they winnable in the game? Example: I play candy crush. Stop laughing And I CAN buy a bonus, but I can win one too. Just takes more time.

When I quit on this, I'd purchased a bundle with bonuses I never used but was completely stuck.

Your advice is appreciated.

If you have paid for the game, you can convert your ingame currency into the cash shop currency. For economic reasons, this is not available for free accounts.
In addition, most things that are offered are either on the cosmetics or on the "make the game even less grindy" side of things. Examples being harvesting tools with unlimited uses, weapon skins used by major story characters, new outfits and a bunch of miniature pets. What does not fall under these categories is generally a toy or an account upgrade. You can buy kits, musical instruments, placeable stations with party effects such as temporary transformation or giving everyone bobbleheads.
Account upgrades are additional character, bank or bag slots in addition to a bunch of other stuff. While it does not fit perfectly, you can also buy consumables to remake your character with some additional options.

 

[2xDouble]

TLR
The only "real" restrictions for a F2P player is:
No Daily Login
Restricted Currency exchange
Restricted Trading Post (maybe)

Which, compared to most other F2P games out there, this is a pretty lenient one, not Heavily restrictive

I feel the chat restrictions are some of the heaviest. I spent my entire leveling experience using map chat, a lot of useful info gets passed around there especially regarding events/etc. Would suck not to be able to participate in any of that.

True, but there's still Local (red) chat, which most people use interchangably anyway, and is unrestricted as far as I know. Similarly, the new Mentor tag/chat system from Masteries is tailor-made to let veteran players play, organize, and share information with the new free-players... sadly, it's not implemented yet. (That's brilliant, if you think about it... Encouraging paid players to mingle with and mentor free players is by far the best way to get them to "convert".)

One relevant question: can the free players still SEE map chat? Would they still have access to the near-vital intel you describe and merely cannot add to it, or are they locked out completely? I may have to make an alt account and test this...

 

[gorfias]

If you have paid for the game, you can convert your ingame currency into the cash shop currency. For economic reasons, this is not available for free accounts.
In addition, most things that are offered are either on the cosmetics or on the "make the game even less grindy" side of things. Examples being harvesting tools with unlimited uses, weapon skins used by major story characters, new outfits and a bunch of miniature pets. What does not fall under these categories is generally a toy or an account upgrade. You can buy kits, musical instruments, placeable stations with party effects such as temporary transformation or giving everyone bobbleheads.
Account upgrades are additional character, bank or bag slots in addition to a bunch of other stuff. While it does not fit perfectly, you can also buy consumables to remake your character with some additional options.

Thanks very much for this information. If I can find my account information, I'll give it another try.