Thoughts on Guild Wars 2 Expansion

Wednesday June 17, 2015 by Jason 'vanRijn' Kasper | 0 comments

As I mentioned previously, I BIG TIME LOVE Guild Wars 2. And now there’s an expansion coming and I am really excited about it. But I’ve seen a lot of complaining from current players that ArenaNet decided to charge $50 for it and also throw the core game in for free for people who don’t have it already. I think the thought process there is “well, I spent $50 on the game already, and now I have to spend another $50, so my investment is $100; whereas new players will only have to pay $50 for all that I have now.” I think this is a flawed mindset and I dumped this into my Guild’s Facebook group post earlier and thought I’d also post it here.

I have a different opinion. I think $50 is a completely fair price for an expansion, especially considering that Guild Wars 2 has no monthly or recurring subscription fee. I think a better question to ask is is $50 a fair price for a major expansion to the game, regardless of all the other issues around core game being included for new gamers? I think it is.

If you think about from the perspective of “I spent $50 and now I have to spend another $50, while people who have never signed up before just have to spend $50 to get the same thing as me”, you’re guaranteed to be frustrated and disappointed. But I think that is a flawed base point of view. The new people don’t get the same thing as you. If you spent $50 on the game even just 3 months ago and played for the last 3 months, you got 3 months of enjoyment and experience and rewards out of it that a new person won’t have gotten. So it’s not like that earlier $50 (or whatever you spent on the game at first) doesn’t give you anything more than the person who is just buying the game now for the first time.

ANet has said that the expansion is $50. Period.

They’re throwing in the rest of the existing game to entice new people to join us.

None of that is bad, IMHO.

$50 is completely fair for an expansion we’ve been waiting for 3 years for. New people don’t have to buy 2 things! Great! Get a bunch of new people in! It’ll drive up the value of the things that us current players have been accumulating! It’ll keep this game alive longer! It’ll enable ANet to continue to invest in adding content and new features! Awesome! Let’s keep it alive! =:)

I’ve invested thousands of hours in this game and spent lots of $RealMonies$, and what I got out of it was a year of having an absolute blast. I’ve tried other games out there and nothing even comes close to GW2. $50 is right in line with every other expansion out there. The fact that you could have bought the game and been playing for $FREE for the last 3 years is amazing and different. I choose to encourage and support a company who is willing to buck the trend of monthly subscriptions. I’d MUCH rather spend $50 here and there on a game that I truly enjoy and that lets me do things that I want to do than have to pay $20 every month just to be able to play the game at all.

Not making any commission here at all, just trying to bring balance to the discussion. =:) FWIW, I’m extremely pleased with having spent $100 last night on the expansion. I immediately got:

4000 gems (which I needed to buy anyway and was going to in the next week or so. this would have cost me $50 by itself anyway)
a Guild Hall decoration thingy that I can hang in our new Guild Hall when it comes out!! Gonna be so cool and SWAG!
a Revenant Rytlock (different from the previous Rytlock miniature!!)
a Revenant Finisher (PLEASE watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrLbseXmp9o and tell me that isn’t one of the most awesome finishers in the game!!! Rytlock is so angry!!!)
an exclusive glider
an exclusive title
access to ALL the upcoming beta events (I spent at least 40 hours grinding in Silverwastes and Dry Top before the last beta to try to get in and couldn’t get the beta portal key to drop. I’d spend $50 just for the ability to not have to do that again!)

Okay, I’ll shut up now. I feel like I’m ranting or trying to win an argument. I’m really not. I just think there’s a flawed base assumption and invalid feelings of entitlement that’s behind a lot of the complaining about the price out there. Every map I’ve been in for the last 13 hours or so is full of people complaining and thinking they’re entitled and it’s frustrating.

So what do you think? =:D