As you may or may not have heard, Guild Wars 2 announced some pretty interesting things at PAX. Although, some of it was leaked mistakenly by IGN before its scheduled time, They told players that the core game would be free for everyone and of course, this caused quite a shit storm (I was included in this).
If you're new the Guild Wars 2, register via this official link - welcome to Tyria and happy hunting!
Firstly, let me start by saying my initial thoughts of their 'free' model were quite bad, I assumed that it would be a typical shift over and would give some limitations but allow players to access everything as a normal player would - I was wrong, however, there are still some concerns with how this is handled and I will talk more about them as I write this.
Let's take a look at what the different account types will be:
Free Account
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Core Guild Wars 2 Account
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Heart of Thorns Account
| |
Character Slots
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2
|
5
|
5 or more*
|
Bag Slots
|
3
|
5
|
5
|
Revenant Profession
|
No
|
No
|
Yes
|
Heart of Thorns Maps & Content
|
No
|
No
|
Yes
|
Central Tyria (Core) Maps & Content
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Starter maps only until character reaches level 10
Lion’s Arch unlocked for each character at level 35
|
Yes
|
Yes
|
Masteries
|
No
|
No
|
Yes
|
In-Game Mail
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Can only send to mutual friends
Can’t send gold or items
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Yes (accounts created after August 28, 2015 require SMS or app authentication to send gold and items)
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Yes (accounts created after August 28, 2015 require SMS or app authentication to send gold and items)
|
Guild Bank Access
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No
|
Yes (accounts created after August 28, 2015 require SMS or app authentication to withdraw)
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Yes (accounts created after August 28, 2015 require SMS or app authentication to withdraw)
|
Whisper chat *1*
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Except for mutual friends, can only whisper in the same map, one new person every 30 seconds
|
Yes
|
Yes
|
Map chat
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No
|
Yes
|
Yes
|
Squad chat
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Unlocked for each character at level 30
|
Yes
|
Yes
|
Looking For Group
*2*
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Unlocked for each character at level 30
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Yes
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Yes
|
PvP Chat *3*
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Team Chat always available
Chat in PvP Lobby unlocked when the account reaches PvP rank 20
Emotes, Map and Say chat unavailable during matches
|
Yes
|
Yes
|
WvW *4*
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Unlocked account-wide when one character reaches level 60
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Yes
|
Yes
|
Daily Login Bonus
|
No
|
Yes
|
Yes
|
Gem Store
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Items unusable by free accounts (such as glider skin) are unavailable
|
Yes
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Yes
|
Currency Exchange
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Gems to gold exchange available, gold to gems exchange unavailable.
|
Yes
|
Yes
|
Trading Post
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Can buy and sell items from a selected list.
|
Yes
|
Yes
|
Forum Posting Access
|
No
|
Yes
|
Yes
|
Looking for group *2 - As a meta player, I dislike people wasting my time; some of the people in the community join a LFG without reading what the description actually is, but when they get kicked, they start flaming and calling us elitists, I cannot imagine how bad it will be once we have an influx of new people wanting to rush dungeons and not reading the description people put on there.
As a side note - I am in no way bashing or hindering players from joining my groups or my friend's groups, my point is specifically is that there are players who currently don't read the LFG description when entering and now that it requires 3 people to votekick, if you get, say 3 people who didn't read the LFG description, I could have just spent 30 minutes rolling swamp for nothing. I am very specific in my LFG posts, if I want to help newbies (not noobs), I will welcome them with open arms with simply "Path/FOTM# All welcome!"
PvP chat & emotes *3 - I agree with emotes, map and say being disabled during matches but does this mean say chat will be disabled in the PvP lobby? I don't play PvP that much of late, but what caused me to quit was how bad people were at PvP and when you gave them advice they would start insulting you and whatnot. I cannot see this remedying the situation.
WvW *4 - I have only one word to describe the problem with this one; queues. This is going to escalate the ongoing problem with WvW maps being overflowed and filled with pre-80s; I understand that 60 is pretty close to 80 in terms of leveling quickly but if you're a top tier server, then every player counts and this will do nothing but make it extremely difficult if you are playing the higher tier server.
EoTM gives new players the chance to see what WvW on a high scale would be like, I'm unsure if they have access to this pre-60 but if they do, then it will give them an insight to what it is and how WvW genuinely works, it will give them insight on the following:
- Gathering supplies
- Running to doors (PvD lol)
- What siege to build vs what structure
- How to might stack and swiftness stack for zerg vs zerg encounters
- How to farm for exp so you can level alts much quicker
- Karma training
etc..
It's also vital to remember that for the time being, WvW is different depending on the tier that you're in, so my advice and concern is strictly from the top tier servers.
PS (Personal story) farming *5 - This isn't a star on the free account, but one of the great ways of making gold is to try your luck with key farming the level 10 story - if free accounts get free access to the story. then this will only promote excessive botting and drag down the most expensive items, the items that people grind the story for.
Server stress *6 - Server stress and lag, I hope that the lag issues that we had at launch and sometimes throughout the years don't slowly come creeping back. I'd like to say that ArenaNet are prepared for it but honestly, is any company prepared for huge deal of stress on their servers? They certainly weren't.
In conclusion, the change is really positive on the most part, but I feel it's going to hinder LFG quality for players who want to do quick / speed runs, WvW quality and the server lag to increase (possibly). I hope that ArenaNet will closely observe how this is going to work out over the next few weeks.
I love Guild Wars 2 as a majority of my posts are about it - I love welcoming new players, people that don't know of the game and giving them my insights to what the game is like - this change allows them to experience it first hand and see if they like the game, but I must insist that there are going to be some problems when it comes to the basic functions of the game, this isn't an opinion, it's fact.
References / links:
Guild Wars 2 - account types
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