Guild Wars 2 has been testing the gem (cash) shop in each of the BWEs. In this final BWE, they are doing it for real: you really buy gems, which you can use this weekend and then they will be reset for release. I find this an interesting economic model, and not necessarily a bad plan on their part, but I’m only as far as thinking, “…interesting.”
If you’re going to pre-sell the game, why not pre-sell the bonus toys, too?
: Zubon
Character slots seem to be $10 each, but I’m not sure where folks got the quote of 800 gems/slot. The game launches with 5 races, 8 classes, and 5 character slots (across all servers, characters are not server-bound except for WvW purposes).
Where are the character slot purchases? I am not seeing them in the gem store.
Me neither, but the wiki says 800 gems. I don’t know where they got that number.
They were in the previous BWEs, just not this one, no idea why not. Bought one with the free gems last time, and it was 800 gems.
Apparently it is a known issue: https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/info/news/Known-Issues-Beta-Weekend-Event-3/page/1#post276056
$10 for a character slot seems very reasonable for a game with no subscription fee. I’d guess that five slots will last most people a good while. By the time you really felt the need for that sixth slot, dropping $10 wouldn’t be much of an obstacle.
Still not clear on the server thing. What does “not bound” to a server mean? I was under the impression that all characters on an account had to have the same home server, so that if I made my first character on Yak’s Bend, my other four would have to be made there too. How can I start characters on different servers if the account is tied to a single server for WvW? What happens at log-in?
I’m having a great time in the City of Steam alpha weekend and I wasn’t planning on playing any more GW2 but maybe I’ll log in just to make some characters and see how that works.
You’re supposed to be able to ‘guest’ on other servers but it hasn’t been active for any BWE, including this one. It’s supposed to be free, but you can’t take part in WvW while visiting another server.
One nifty feature about paid transfers, to change home servers is that the cost scales, 500 gems to transfer to a low pop server, 1000 gems to medium and 1800 gems to high, which should be interesting to see how that works out in practice.
I thought I guested in a previous BWE, but maybe that was a full transfer. I have not tried it in this one.
Ah thanks. I was aware of the “guesting” function but I thought it meant you could move (temporarily) from your Home server to another server to visit friends etc. I didn’t think it would allow you to create a character on another server.
If the function’s not been available so far I guess we won’t find out the permissions/restrictions until launch.
It doesn’t. Guild Wars stores all character data on a central server, from which they are sent into one of the isolated “worlds” (which is probably not located on a single server anyway). The 5 character cap is global. You can enter into any of the worlds via guesting. “Home server” just describes the world your characters is deployed to by default and the team you have to enter WvW for. The home world is account global, so all your characters always represent the same WvW team. Switching costs money, unfortunately.
Dont know if anyone noticed, but all servers were “high” population this time. All transfers were 1800 gems. Really going to be imperative that guildies get on the same server from the start.
They where trying to see how launch would look like, so they have dropped the number of server to have server at near full capacity, expect more server at launch.
While I know they wanted full servers, they narrowed it too much. Not only could my guild not get everyone on the same server (we have about 300ppl) but through most of the beta we couldnt even get our full WvW team in.
Add to this that many spent half their time on “overflow” servers and you get the conclusion that they better have a much higher allowable base server population than what they have now.
That being said, I found I had no lag issues and was only disconnected once (other than announced client restarts).
Beta weekend 2 – I have a screenshoot with 800 gems price :P
I find pre-release cash shops at once hilarious and awe-inspiring. I’ve just been listening to talk about DUST’s pre-release cash shop on Eve TV, in fact the dev actually sold an item to a player expert on air.
What’s so clever about them is that they not only make money but they also get people more invested. If you pay for a shiny you’re more likely to stick with the game. For example, I bought SWTOR, played for the free month then left. Had I bought a load of goodies, or bought the CE, then I would have played it past the first month not because I was having more fun but because I had invested too much to quit after a month.
I do think that as players we should be particularly wary about buying cash shop items during Beta. A lot of Betas have seen amazingly exciting (eg WAR, Diablo 3) but the eventual game has felt somewhat flat.
And of course not every game makes it to launch. You’d feel pretty silly now if you had spent a lot on Copernicus pre-launch cash shop items.