Wouldn't call it "a lot", when you consider other F2Ps.
https://help.guildwars2.com/entries/95982157-Account-types-Free-Core-HoT
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Gold-to-gem exchange on free accounts would totally destroy the gems economy, which is in bad state already. Most of the limitations are there to avoid scammers and spammers, while some of them are to "encourage" upgrading the account. And if 2 character slots are not enough, you can simply create another account :P
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So you can just solo until level 30? My only MMORPG experience has been years of the original Everquest, back in the day, and soloing at low levels was only really feasible on really old content that had been completely trivialized by newer gear.
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GW2 isn't anything like an old mmorpg. It's very casual, you can solo all the way to max level if you want. Most people who go into the game expecting a traditional mmo rush to level cap and get bored. There's no traditional quests, instead you level by exploring the map. I suggest you don't rush to level cap the first time since it's a nice experience. :)
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You can solo until you're max level. There's no need to run Dungeons to level up. Just pick whatever area you want to play (that fits your level) and do the quests.
There's also no need to "overlevel" before entering a new area, because you will be downgraded to fit the max level of the area (so you don't 1-shot mobs or bosses if your inted is to annoy low levels).
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...which means you've been able to play it for years, and you still have access to features the F2P people don't.
Let's say you could travel back in time to when you bought it. Let's say your future self said "Hey, don't buy this game, it will go F2P years and years later!", would you have really decided not to buy it? :P
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Ergh, that's a good point. I often buy games I like to support early on, but then wait for them to gather content , reach 1.0, or release all episodes. By that time the price has often gone down. It's not so bad when it was a full game already as prices always go down, but when you buy an Early Access game and it's price is less than half what you paid for it on the day it hits 1.0, that does feel pretty shitty. \:3/
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With an MMO it's different. The experience at the start, when everyone is new to the game, is much different (in a good way in many cases) than months later.
Also, MMO usually have one time only events, and GW2 had plenty of content that could only be played at the time and will never be playable again (they're avoiding this with all new content, though).
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Living Story season 1 was mostly open world stuff that was only available for one month each episode. This events would change the game world. The most noticeable was the complete destruction of Lion Arch city (which has been rebuilt in a recent patch, and is now completely different than the old Lion Arch). Some of these event were big scale and would require the coordination of the entire map (the Scarlet marionette one was probably the most epic one).
With season 2, they moved to instanced content. So all story stuff is now instanced and can be replayed anytime.
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I get the same a lot. Buy a game, cause it seems so awesome, or the price is good, don't have time of just don't feel like playing it at that moment. Years pass, I forget about that game, then it's on some really cheap sale or for free. So I jump to buy it, and then it's "wtf, I already have this?"
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https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/play-for-free-today/
If it really is the way they say (same game, just buy the expansion), I might actually buy the expansion. I never played the game because I hate trials and never go to try it, but if I enjoy, it's worth.
It's pretty upfront.
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Same. I dislike the open world system and a lot of the changes made.
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Huh, that's pretty nice. Thanks for sharing the news. I got burned by Eye of the North years ago after buying it at full price (it was a huge disappointment to me and ArenaNet pretty much abandoned GW1 before GW2 was anywhere near close to coming out) so I resolved not to buy it until it was really cheap, if I ever did. Didn't expect it to just go free instead, but I guess it kind of makes sense with free games like League of Legends being the big thing these days.
The restrictions don't even sound that bad to me since I've gotten to the point where I don't really care about playing MMOs with people who aren't already friends. Definitely gonna give this a shot sometime.
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I often wondered why they even released it as a pay to play in the first place; the game has a pretty robust (read expansive) cash shop, so it would be insulting to pay full price and be assailed to spend more money in game. That said, you can earn premium currency, even if it is a pain.
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Comes down to its predecessor GuildWars1.
It was BuyToPlay since beginning and didn't feature a cash shop although some account level services required payment. Think there was a char slot expansion for instance. Transfering between realms possibly too. Things that forinstance blizzard would charge too. That might be interpreted as a cash shop. Just without the shop.
This seemed to work very well and the initial payment is still a good revenue stream. Especially if you continously sell addons as NC did. With 2 they added the shop. I've played far too little to judge it but it really seemed that devs focussed it to not enter any pay2win through. Still it had some "feeling" attached. Cosmetics and goodies were to be earned though events & hardcore farming - in GW1 that is. With a GW2 thats basically still in place just with secondary from the shop and i think lots of things are shop only. But could be possibly gotten by buying those from players instead. Not for cheap thats for sure.
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It seems more of a demo.. I'll try it nonetheless.
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In my opinion at the moment it isn't really a demo because you will have access to all the content, but once the expansion comes it definitely is going to feel more like a demo. So it might be best for people to try it before the expansion is released.
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Yeah.
I'm downloading it as we speak. I've been wanting this game for ages.
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Thanks. I was looking to play some quality mmo. I'm gonna try it too soon.
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that game was entertaining for a month, i bought it long time ago when it was released, it was a wasted money. I mean it was ok, but wasnt as a good experience as Everquest was for me in early 2000 what i played for like 5 years long, even Everquestmechanicsclone WoW was better.
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Sadly the restrictions are too heavy. I would enter if some of them were lifted, but they are made there intentionally so that you are "forced" to buy the game in order to have "fun". One example is that you can't trade with friends. This would make playing together rather pointless unless you go for PvP in end. So having fun with friends elsewhere is gonna be more beneficial to me.
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I didn't see that...I know you can't send items via mail, but isn't there a trade window or something you can do with a friend (or possibly even others)? Disclaimer: not familiar with the game. =)
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No you can't trade safely. You can do it through the mail or through a guild bank, both of which are restricted for free to play accounts. Interaction with friends is really limited in that regard even for people who buy the game, they want you to do all your trading though the trading post because it's the only safe method and it takes gold out of the economy from tax.
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Yeah I feel like the only people who would stay playing as a free account are people who only play PvP. If you have a group of friends interested though it's nice that you can try it out beforehand? Especially since you do currently get access to all of the content. :D
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Actually PvP in GuildWars was well established. You could create a PVP Char and it would be auto max lvl and equipped with the facto endgame gear. Speaking of GW1 that is. You would initially lack all the skills that would be unlocked through PvE play but this could be done by winning matches and its reward woudl be among others skill unlocks.
And yes... thats great for outsiders to have a direct insight into the game. Online games tend to be so volatile of their nature.
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Thanks for the reply...so to clarify, there truly is no trade window and there is no way to trade an item with a free account? Or there is one, but it's not safe and you could be scammed via trade window hacks, etc.?
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There's no trade window at all or anything like it. If you want to trade directly with someone it has to be a trust trade, or there is middle man services I think. But trading outside of the trading post is pretty rare and generally only done between friends. They recently put in a restriction too. I think it is 500g maximum that you can send to another player per week, this was because of gold sellers but it also impacts people who trade directly with other users.
But no there's no way to trade an item with a free account directly to another player. You can put your item on the trading post and sell it that way, but you can't give it to another player. There is ways to move gold through the trading post to other accounts but that's done with obscure items pretty much, and free accounts have a really vague trading post limitation too so it's probably not possible.
So pretty much: They're trying to prevent all methods of abuse which unfortunately means no trading with free accounts.
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Thanks for the thorough explanation, Miss Mew. =)
Yeah, that is kind of a killer. I guess it means you can just buy and sell items via the trading post...but you're always paying a transaction fee (I assume) and who knows what "items from a selected list" means. Probably only white items. ;-)
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I'm not a fan of MMOs, tried it yesterday, had a lot of fun. Since it's free now you should definitely try it :)
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If you ever wanted to try, you can do it now.
https://welcome.guildwars2.com/en/Play-For-Free
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