Guild Wars 2 - A Look At The Cash Shop In 2020 - MMORPG.com

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Guild Wars 2 - A Look At The Cash Shop In 2020 - MMORPG.com

Join Steven as he breaks down the state of Guild Wars 2's cash shop in 2020. Guild Wars 2 has come a long way from its humble Buy to Play days. ArenaNet has always touted a fair cash shop, but after 8 years, and providing the entire legacy game free of charge with restrictions, has ArenaNet delivered their promise of keeping the cash shop to cosmetic and account specific items? The answer is actually kind of surprising.

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foxgirl

Legendary weapons are more like owning a super-expensive car, or having a mansion with 25 bathrooms.

alkarionlog

the game should be doing ok, new year the first talk about the game is the cash shop, lets forget the fails expansions who are not even worth the price

Scot

For once we have welcome "cash shop news", a look at how fair the cash shop is, a yearly appraisal like this for every major MMO out there would be most useful.

There do seem to be only minor P2W elements, unless posters know otherwise I think that's quite an achievement after eight years.

Po_gg

Scot said:

For once we have welcome "cash shop news", a look at how fair the cash shop is, a yearly appraisal like this for every major MMO out there would be most useful.

I agree, but it'd be tough as well, since the borders of P2W are different with each player... and same applies to the "fairness" of the more average items too.

Like the mentioned crafting tool, if you look at LotRO there's a Universal crafting tool in the store too. Is it "fair", or p2w?

If you don't care about crafting, it's indifferent, if you're a serious crafter you can get much better tools for free (craft them yourself, or buy from other crafters in the AH).

However, for a starting crafter, the difference from a lowbie tool is like night and day. So, is it just a convenience boost, or more? Tough to decide, and you can't write an entire paragraph for each items in the store...

(or a more blatant example, cash store pvp gear in a game with a pvp side. P2w? Sure. And if you play on the PvE server and never pvp? Not so much then, since mobs couldn't care less about pvp stats )

For the article's "Guild Wars 2 has one of the most transparent item shops in the MMO industry today."  I believe you haven't seen AoC's shop after the revamp 3 years ago... since the game is on maintenance mode, its store is really transparent: it barely has anything.

Add to that the layout change (my favourite comment on the forums to that change was: "looks like something a mentally challenged grade-schooler would draw in ten minutes" ), the lack of functions (A search bar? What for, when we only have a handful of items in there?), and you'll end up with a really transparent shop.

Ungood

Some legendary weapons are available on the Auction House, to be bought from other players.

You do not in any way need to exchange gems or spend real money on these items, you can use in-game gold, that you can farm all on your own, without paying a cent to get them.

Also, IIRC, only Gen I legendary weapons are available on the AH, all the others are BtA.

Aeander

foxgirl said:

Legendary weapons are more like owning a super-expensive car, or having a mansion with 25 bathrooms.

I would like to trade my four legendary weapons for a mansion and three cars. Where might I do this?

Wizardry

I do not want ANY cash shop in my games.I never had one in FFXi and still don't have one within Atlas either.
I do not like devs interfering with the game world,cosmetics or not,a shop that is outside the game world is a big NO.There is also the possibility...probability that no matter what state a cash shop is presently in,can take a turn for the worse and ruining your experience within the game.

Simply put,devs should be told to keep your cash shop ideas away from our game.

If a developer wants to show some love to the people who made them rich,then add in some new content and assets for FREE.

A subscription is NOT the same thing as a cash shop because every single player is on the exact same pay system and items or other are not segregated into money segments.

Ungood

Aeander said:

foxgirl said:

Legendary weapons are more like owning a super-expensive car, or having a mansion with 25 bathrooms.

I would like to trade my four legendary weapons for a mansion and three cars. Where might I do this?

I mean no diss here, nothing personal, but GW2 is kinda flattened out, and I have come to believe that at this point they pretty much have done all they can do to alienate everyone and anyone that tried to be invested into the game, and all they have left are the uber-casuals that didn't care about any of that stuff to start with, and still don't care about it now.

And if they have half a clue, they will do what they can to keep that little group happy, which, to be fair, given how they seem to have slowed down their losses over the last few quarters, what they are doing right now (Which I have no clue about) seems to be somewhat working.

But with all that said, I would wager, given what I could find, your account might be worth anywhere from 100 - 300 USD.

Not a mansion, but if could be a great way to kick off into your next MMO?

Scot

Po_gg said:

Scot said:

For once we have welcome "cash shop news", a look at how fair the cash shop is, a yearly appraisal like this for every major MMO out there would be most useful.

I agree, but it'd be tough as well, since the borders of P2W are different with each player... and same applies to the "fairness" of the more average items too.

Like the mentioned crafting tool, if you look at LotRO there's a Universal crafting tool in the store too. Is it "fair", or p2w?

If you don't care about crafting, it's indifferent, if you're a serious crafter you can get much better tools for free (craft them yourself, or buy from other crafters in the AH).

However, for a starting crafter, the difference from a lowbie tool is like night and day. So, is it just a convenience boost, or more? Tough to decide, and you can't write an entire paragraph for each items in the store...

(or a more blatant example, cash store pvp gear in a game with a pvp side. P2w? Sure. And if you play on the PvE server and never pvp? Not so much then, since mobs couldn't care less about pvp stats )

For the article's "Guild Wars 2 has one of the most transparent item shops in the MMO industry today."  I believe you haven't seen AoC's shop after the revamp 3 years ago... since the game is on maintenance mode, its store is really transparent: it barely has anything.

Add to that the layout change (my favourite comment on the forums to that change was: "looks like something a mentally challenged grade-schooler would draw in ten minutes" ), the lack of functions (A search bar? What for, when we only have a handful of items in there?), and you'll end up with a really transparent shop.

Yeah, they need the guy who does these articles to be as retentively against P2W ads we are so the scale of good to bad really means something.

Lotro is P2W, you can buy all sorts of stuff from Traits (I think they were called that?) to parts of legendary weapons, real shame as it is one of all time favourite MMOs. I remember when the cash shop launched and it was called the 'Turbine model' for the way it pushed players from using the cash shop to buying a subscription. Within a year that had all changed for the worse.

Lets hope we see some more articles like this, one of the first things I do now (and I am sure I am not alone) when checking to see if a MMO might be for me is to take an extensive look at the cash shop.

Po_gg

It's a good example on how different it is with each of us... I don't see LotRO as p2w. Clearly not the first 6 or so years in f2p, and even this recent (Mordor and Morgul) slip in monetization I just find as greedy and too lootbox-focused, but still "only" on the fence of p2w.

Which is bad, don't get me wrong. I really don't like where they're heading lately, just haven't crossed the thin red line of p2w YET - in my eyes, at least. But, it's all subjective.

Maybe this hypothetical guy behind the upcoming articles should lay down the cornerstones of his view on the term p2w, right at the start

I'm maybe too forgiving, but I only hold p2w the stuff which are giving clear advantages, or spares a huge amount of time, if that time is there only artificially.

So, for me xp boosters, level cap jumps, etc. are not p2w - I've been talking against those since around 2010 when AoC first offered the offline levels and create a level 50 character options, but not because of it would be p2w... I believe it hurts the game as a whole, making the low and mid-range empty, and lead to a "life start at levelcap" mindset and games with irrelevant meaningless worlds and auto-path bullshit, etc.

Gear and item purchases I don't see p2w either, until there are similar (or even better, like in the case of Universal toolkit) available in the game, easily. Or at least not in an artificially hard way.

If there's a piece in the store, and a similar can be crafted fairly easily, and an another can be grabbed from a dungeon with a decent enough chance, not p2w.

If the only similar piece is from a particular dungeon with a week-long raid lock and has a drop chance of 0.001%, that's an artificial hurdle from the devs and just a cheap cop-out of "look, a similar piece is in the game too", so it's p2w in my eyes.

I don't address pvp and cosmetics, since I don't pvp and cosmetics is a hit or miss kinda subjective, if a player doesn't care about it then it's never p2w, while if a player does, then even a $2 cape is massively p2w. Especially if not available by other means.

Ungood

Scot said:

Po_gg said:

Scot said:

For once we have welcome "cash shop news", a look at how fair the cash shop is, a yearly appraisal like this for every major MMO out there would be most useful.

I agree, but it'd be tough as well, since the borders of P2W are different with each player... and same applies to the "fairness" of the more average items too.

Like the mentioned crafting tool, if you look at LotRO there's a Universal crafting tool in the store too. Is it "fair", or p2w?

If you don't care about crafting, it's indifferent, if you're a serious crafter you can get much better tools for free (craft them yourself, or buy from other crafters in the AH).

However, for a starting crafter, the difference from a lowbie tool is like night and day. So, is it just a convenience boost, or more? Tough to decide, and you can't write an entire paragraph for each items in the store...

(or a more blatant example, cash store pvp gear in a game with a pvp side. P2w? Sure. And if you play on the PvE server and never pvp? Not so much then, since mobs couldn't care less about pvp stats )

For the article's "Guild Wars 2 has one of the most transparent item shops in the MMO industry today."  I believe you haven't seen AoC's shop after the revamp 3 years ago... since the game is on maintenance mode, its store is really transparent: it barely has anything.

Add to that the layout change (my favourite comment on the forums to that change was: "looks like something a mentally challenged grade-schooler would draw in ten minutes" ), the lack of functions (A search bar? What for, when we only have a handful of items in there?), and you'll end up with a really transparent shop.

Yeah, they need the guy who does these articles to be as retentively against P2W ads we are so the scale of good to bad really means something.

Lotro is P2W, you can buy all sorts of stuff from Traits (I think they were called that?) to parts of legendary weapons, real shame as it is one of all time favourite MMOs. I remember when the cash shop launched and it was called the 'Turbine model' for the way it pushed players from using the cash shop to buying a subscription. Within a year that had all changed for the worse.

Lets hope we see some more articles like this, one of the first things I do now (and I am sure I am not alone) when checking to see if a MMO might be for me is to take an extensive look at the cash shop.

That is one approach, for me, I take a vastly different approach.

I get into the game, and see if I can fully enjoy the game without the cash shop, if the cash shop is invasive, that pulls away from the game for.

Case in point, BDO made it so that unless I bought all kinds of upgrades the whole game was a built around inconveniencing me. While not what I would call P2W, it was annoying, and pulled from the enjoyment of the game.

I played DDO, with is Turbines other game, and, yah, Turbine/Standing Stone games are just flat out P2W all the way through, from inconvenience like bank space/Shared bank, to the best classes/races/Trait lines being locked behind a paywall, to just flat out needing to buy packs to get access to the best gear or even most of the game, and last I looked they were selling levels directly.

I left a ways back because I used to be hardcore into that game, and raided a lot, and then they went and just screwed with their whole gear system and nerfed a lot of my existing raid gear, and when a company is willing to just screw over their players like that, the motive to give a fuck about the game, dies pretty quick.

To be honest, I liked their Module idea,  AKA: Adventure Packs. As that just gave players the content, they still needed to earn the rewards. But, in today's market, I would never get into a game like what Standing Stone makes.

On the flip side of that, when I played GW2, I was vatly unaware of the Cash Shop, as it had little impact upon my game, it was not till they sold unbreakable harvesting tools that really I started to look at the Cash Shop. 

Which was funny, because a lot of what they provided was more convenience, but at the same time it was kinda funny, because they put in this whole system of tiered nodes and tools, like they wanted players to think about this.. and then players were like "This Sucks" and they later, and slowly, put in unbreakable harvesting tools, it did not seem like that was their long plan, but it worked.

But then again, a lot of what GW2 does, does not seem to be something that was part of a "Long Plan" and more a "fly by the seat of their pants and wing it" which, IMHO, has done then a lot of harm.

Theocritus

The day cash shops were introduced was the day I learned to never look in them.

maskedweasel

Theocritus said:

The day cash shops were introduced was the day I learned to never look in them.

That's interesting. I felt the same way, I stayed away from cash shops for a long time.

And then I started playing mobile games.  

Now I check the cash shop sometimes, but MMO's just don't do cash shop as good as mobile games.  In a mobile game I ask myself "how can I get the most out of spending the least".

Many mobile games aren't necessarily P2W either, though some do allow for unlockable characters that you may otherwise, never get on an RNG roll, with such poor RNG statistics. For the most part though, I may spend anywhere from 2 - 5 dollars a month on a game I like, and I'm rewards very well for it.

In most MMOs you can't spend 5 dollars an get anything really.  It's like, if you don't spend 20$ why spend anything at all?

Ungood

maskedweasel said:

Theocritus said:

The day cash shops were introduced was the day I learned to never look in them.

That's interesting. I felt the same way, I stayed away from cash shops for a long time.

And then I started playing mobile games.  

Now I check the cash shop sometimes, but MMO's just don't do cash shop as good as mobile games.  In a mobile game I ask myself "how can I get the most out of spending the least".

Many mobile games aren't necessarily P2W either, though some do allow for unlockable characters that you may otherwise, never get on an RNG roll, with such poor RNG statistics. For the most part though, I may spend anywhere from 2 - 5 dollars a month on a game I like, and I'm rewards very well for it.

In most MMOs you can't spend 5 dollars an get anything really.  It's like, if you don't spend 20$ why spend anything at all?

This is a great post. As someone that also plays Mobile games, I can wait for their Sales or Special events, and spend $5 dollars and feel like I walked away with a truck load of goods, where in an MMO, you're right, you can't get anything for less than 20, and even then,. all too often it feels like "That's it?"

Very Good Post! 

Scot

It is clear we all have somewhat different ideas on what p2w is. I would want them to look at anything that has an in game effect, unless it is cosmetic what does it cost and what does it do.

Ungood

A lot of people have different ideas on what P2W is, to each their own.

Octagon7711

Aeander said:

foxgirl said:

Legendary weapons are more like owning a super-expensive car, or having a mansion with 25 bathrooms.

I would like to trade my four legendary weapons for a mansion and three cars. Where might I do this?

Man, do you know how much you would have to pay for upkeep and taxes?

Octagon7711

I do like being able to access the auction house directly from your UI and put up items for sell to easily make room in your inventory while playing. I have that port to world bosses and it is a nice feature. Plus putting it in a community slot means each character can share mining items and such without having to buy one for each.

Asch126

Scot said:

For once we have welcome "cash shop news", a look at how fair the cash shop is, a yearly appraisal like this for every major MMO out there would be most useful.

There do seem to be only minor P2W elements, unless posters know otherwise I think that's quite an achievement after eight years.

"fair" yes, but they do nothing but add stuff to it and focus less and less on the actual game.

someforumguy

While I think the cash shop is not so bad in GW2, there are some things I really don't like. But this is my preference.

- There is only one tool that gives 100% chance on removing an upgrade from gear, which is only available from the cash shop. This is a bad thing imo.

- Wings! I hate wings. They are not even folded. They are always open on players and imo they should slow down running because it would be almost like running around with an open parachute. I've never seen a more stupid idea implemented. I never saw a npc in GW2 have them. They look completely out of place in GW2.

- Over the top garish looking effects on skins (outfits,mounts). I secretly suspect that the players who run around like such an eyesore, turn graphics down so they don't suffer from it themselves
Also, put a couple of them together and you barely can see combat. GW2 lacks proper graphics settings that let you filter useless effects from combat visuals. And the cash shop skins made things worse. I don't know, it just screams to me' LOOK AT ME! PLZ! ACKNOWLEDGE ME!'

I guess I suffer from good taste.

CitizenX007

I'll take a subscription fee over a cash-shop scheme any day. Unfortunately for me, the cash-shop scheme has proven to be a great boon to MMO developers/publishers as it allows them to extract the maximum amount of profit from the players through mental/emotional manipulation; these days, MMO developers/publishers hire unscrupulous psychologists to advise them on how best to manipulate the player-base in order to maximize their profits. A number of years ago I played a MMO called 'FLYFF' - a notorious f2p/p2w MMO - and encountered many people who had spent thousands on their characters; and when I say "thousands" I mean many thousands of $$$ - $10, 20, 30 thousand, and beyond!

Back on topic: I'm currently playing GW2 and I find the cash-shop offerings to be rather bland and mostly uninteresting. The only reason I buy Gems is to convert them to gold, when the exchange rate is favorable to me.

As for the legendary weapons in GW2...imo, they are not worth the MASSIVE amount of effort that it takes to get them. They have the exact same stats as the Ascended gear does...so, essentially, all you're getting for your months of effort is a fancy weapon skin. Again: not worth it, imo.

GW2 will be the last MMO that I'll be playing, like ever; until some Russian MMO developer makes a kick-ass sci-fi VR MMO, that is!

Ungood

someforumguy said:

While I think the cash shop is not so bad in GW2, there are some things I really don't like. But this is my preference.

- There is only one tool that gives 100% chance on removing an upgrade from gear, which is only available from the cash shop. This is a bad thing imo.

- Wings! I hate wings. They are not even folded. They are always open on players and imo they should slow down running because it would be almost like running around with an open parachute. I've never seen a more stupid idea implemented. I never saw a npc in GW2 have them. They look completely out of place in GW2.

- Over the top garish looking effects on skins (outfits,mounts). I secretly suspect that the players who run around like such an eyesore, turn graphics down so they don't suffer from it themselves
Also, put a couple of them together and you barely can see combat. GW2 lacks proper graphics settings that let you filter useless effects from combat visuals. And the cash shop skins made things worse. I don't know, it just screams to me' LOOK AT ME! PLZ! ACKNOWLEDGE ME!'

I guess I suffer from good taste.

Good point about the NPC not having store items, this reminds me of something that DDO did a while back when they put in Cosmetic Armor, they then made it so that all the NPC Hirelings wore it.

So I have to agree with you, that is a great idea to have NPC's, even MOB's using the In-store Cosmetic Items. I think that would really fancy the game up a lot. Especially if the MOBs wore some of the cosmetic items in the game, or used the cosmetic style weapons.

Also, GW2, Lovingly called "Fashion Wars 2" for the very reason that is a gaudy fashion show of players screaming look at me,  and given that is how GW2 makes most of its money, it's full to bursting of a population that positively love that stuff, If you wanted a more sedated bland gaming experience, I would think BDO or ESO might be more your graphic taste.

katzklaw

someforumguy said:

While I think the cash shop is not so bad in GW2, there are some things I really don't like. But this is my preference.

- There is only one tool that gives 100% chance on removing an upgrade from gear, which is only available from the cash shop. This is a bad thing imo.

- Wings! I hate wings. They are not even folded. They are always open on players and imo they should slow down running because it would be almost like running around with an open parachute. I've never seen a more stupid idea implemented. I never saw a npc in GW2 have them. They look completely out of place in GW2.

- Over the top garish looking effects on skins (outfits,mounts). I secretly suspect that the players who run around like such an eyesore, turn graphics down so they don't suffer from it themselves
Also, put a couple of them together and you barely can see combat. GW2 lacks proper graphics settings that let you filter useless effects from combat visuals. And the cash shop skins made things worse. I don't know, it just screams to me' LOOK AT ME! PLZ! ACKNOWLEDGE ME!'

I guess I suffer from good taste.

you'd hate at least 3/4 of my characters then. probably more.  XD

and i keep most of my effects on.. i went to all the effort to look that shiny, i want to look at the shiny, darnit!

Ungood

The idea of NPC's wearing/using Store Cosmetics is IMHO a great idea, I mean, I think having Queen Jenna wearing various Black Lion outfits for the events that take place in Divinity's Reach (Like the Wintersday thing for example) and have Jenna using a store skin staff and the holiday store outfit, would be a great idea overall.

Also, having the citizens swap over to whatever was the outfit of the month, would be kinda cool as well. Basically remove their drab "NPC commoner" clothing that all games do, and replace it with store-skin clothing. While that might not work for every game, but in a game like GW2, where so much is about how you look, I think it would truly shine.

Also would be nice to see iconic NPC's wearing more Store Style clothing and items. Like having everyone in the Personal Story swap over to the current Black Lion Weapon skins every time a new style comes out, just to make it so that my character does not look ridiculously out of place in the cut scenes.

Ungood

So ya know.. it does not always look like this.

or this.



and well since so many of us like black on black with some more black.. it ends up like this.



So yah.. I love the idea of having NPC's also looking gaudy in a game like GW2, it would really fit.