New update: Shop's Back

I use Splash Plastic 360 It's basically a Maestro card for under 18's. Works the same as a over 18 one, but you can't use ATM's and you need to put money onto the card via "Paypoint" hotspots( usually your local store which provides mobile phone topup vouchers).

Hope this helps.
Ashleigh

PlayNC does not support Paypal, that's my only way of online payment.

Allow me to explain about Maestro cards for those who don't know:

Solo - This is a Debit card given to those who are under the age of 18 (or 17, not sure). A Solo can be used anywhere it accepted, they are debit cards at heart.

A Solo card can only be used if money is available in the bank account its linked to. If the fund aren't available, it won't work. This prevents kids from overspending.

Maestro (Formally know as Switch) - Maestro/Switch card are debit cards given to people will current accounts and are over the age of 18. They are accepted and can be used pretty much worldwide.

A Maestro/Switch card can be used even if funds aren't available on the card, and providing you bank allows an overdraft... most banks charge fees if you go over your limit, so again while you can go over, its best you don't. Fees vary from bank to bank.


I hope that explains it all more clearly. The online store should accept Maestro/Switch, Solo I'm not sure about, maybe.


Your not going to get that far using that as your only form of online payment. Ask someone to pay on the site for you, and then pay them back. Easy.

Yep RTS You explained fine. If I may add, for the Splash Plastic 360 Cards(Link above) you may need too choose solo as your credit card type when using it online, as Splash Plastic is an affliate with Maestro & Solo.

Thanks
Ashleigh

I just wish I could see the store.

Umm, Quick question. Is the store open yet? Its not on my login screen.

If it's not there it is not open. It will be announced on www.guildwars.com when it is officaly open.

Ashleigh.

I think it's a bad idea, I know a lot of you are going "but it's way cool and I need it!", but I have a feeling this is going to be like giving out free perfect weapons to every account in equivalence. What I mean is, it's going to unbalance the game. Also, part of the game is to be economic, to throw away something good for something better, why would you throw something out when you've got like 10+ accounts to store it on? IMO this is going to be the first step towards the decline of GW.

its a very good idea..
now you should put somthing in the store that alows you to have extra storage space, like...5$ for a extra 10 slots in storage or somthing like that, now that would be cool.

You can get a whole character filled with slots for $10 and some ingame gold for bags, runes of holding and a beltpouch, so why buy 10 slots for $5?

I think you misunderstand what they're doing. For now, it will only be for additional character slots. In the future, other features may be added such as additional storage and so on. But Anet is very conscious of the economy and balancing. They would never do anything to that would harm either.

Ok, I've seen several people post threads stating how if you add everything up and look at it in a monthly fee sort of way that Guild Wars is comparible to all other MMO's with monthly fees. I would have to disagree in some sense. Sorry to pick on your thread, but yours is the last one I read.

If you look at the shelf life of any one campaign as being 6 months, then yes, you can compare the price you pay to a monthly fee. However, once you buy a campaign, you will be able to play that one forever (or until they shut down the servers). So, in my opinion, the earlier you buy a campaign, the lower your "monthly fee" will be. In reality, it shouldn't be called a monthly fee. It should be an amortized contribution. I'll try to give an example of what I mean using simple math so I don't have to do a lot of difficult calculations.

Under the assumption that campaigns are only playable until the next one is released, here is the first example. I will only go out until Nightfall because that is all we know about right now.

Guild Wars Prophecies = $50 - 1 year life = $4.17/month
Guild Wars Factions = $50 - 6 month life = $8.33/month
Guild Wars Nightfall = $50 - 6 month life = $8.33/month

In the above example, we pay a maximum of $8.33/month to play a really good game. Now for how I feel it really works.

Guild Wars Prophecies released April 28th, 2005 (the prices listed below are the relative prices we pay THAT month up to THAT point in time)
Month 1 = $50.00/month
Month 2 = $25.00/month
Month 3 = $16.67/month
Month 4 = $12.50/month
Month 5 = $10.00/month
Month 6 = $8.33/month
Month 7 = $7.14/month
Month 8 = $6.25/month
Month 9 = $5.55/month
Month 10 = $5.00/month
Month 11 = $4.55/month
Month 12 = $4.17/month
Guild Wars Factions released April 28th, 2006
___________Proph Price___Factions Price__Total Price
Month 13 = $3.84/month + $50.00/month = $53.84/month
Month 14 = $3.57/month + $25.00/month = $28.57/month
Month 15 = $3.33.month + $16.67/month = $20/month
Month 16 = $3.13/month + $12.50/month = $15.63/month
Month 17 = $2.94/month + $10.00/month = $12.94/month
Month 18 = $2.77/month + $8.33/month = $11.10/month
Guild Wars Nightfall released ????????, 2006/2007
___________Proph Price___Factions Price___Nightfall______Total Price
Month 19 = $2.63/month + $7.14/month + $50.00/month = $59.77/month
Month 20 = $2.50/month + $6.25/month + $25.00/month = $33.75/month
Month 21 = $2.38/month + $5.55/month + $16.67/month = $24.60/month
Month 22 = $2.27/month + $5.00/month + $12.50/month = $19.77/month
Month 23 = $2.17/month + $4.55/month + $10.00/month = $16.72/month
Month 24 = $2.08/month + $4.17/month + $8.33/month = $14.50/month

Those number may seem to be contridicting the point I'm trying to make, but read just a little bit farther. We'll now compare the price of Guild Wars to a similar MMO (no names will be used to protect their identity). We'll also look at the same time period.

After Nightfall has been out 6 months and assuming you bought GW when it was first released, the numbers above show that you'll have effectively paid $14.50 per month for 24 months totalling $348.00. Now we all know this is wrong. But what you don't notice is that the impact of each game goes down every month you own it. I bought Prophecies for $50, Factions for $50 and Nightfall for $50....that's only $150 for 24 months of play time. That's about $6.25/month. I can still go back and play any of the campaigns that I want to and don't have to pay any more money.

Now lets compare it to another MMO.
Initial release = $50
Expansion #1 = $50
Monthly Fee = $15

Guild Wars = $150.00 for 24 months = $6.25/month
Other MMO = $50.00 + $50.00 + $15*24 = $460 for 24 months = $19.17

By that example, playing the "other" MMO will cost you more than 3 times what it costs you to play GW during a 24 month period.

The concept that I think most people aren't grabbing on to is that all of these things that ANet is offering to us for a fee are a ONE TIME ONLY FEE. The monthly impact of purchasing said item decreases over time. Buying a new character slot for $10 doesn't cost us $10/month. It costs us $10...period. The impact of that character slot the next month is $5, then $3.33, then $2.50...etc. The longer you have it, the less it cost you when looking at it in a "monthly" sense.

Now, after all that, all I really want is for people to stop complaining about ANet's business model and how they are going to charge us for things. They've said they are not going to implement a monthly fee and I don't believe that they will. If they do, I'm done with GW, but I don't see that happening. People also need to stop comparing GW and it's pricing to other MMO's. It's just NOT the same. You cannot compare the two. It's cheaper to play GW....any way you look at it.

[/endrant]

Eh about buying without a CC.

At a few stores, I saw PlayNC play cards. I think you can use those to play city of heroes/villains and other NCsoft games for a few months.

Will we be seeing these types of things for GW slots too?

I prefer putting in an activation key rather than sending money through the Interweb *scared*

You could even raise the price on those cards to 12-14€ for "pruduction cost" or whatever. Just put it on the shelve next to the "play all NCsoft titles for 3 months"-activation cards.. eh, please?

If this is a doublepost then I apologise, something wrong with my isp.

Since the message hasn't been sent yet (I think) here's an additional idea:
Those 1month cards for NCsoft p2p games? How about if you make it so they also pay for GW slots too?

I don't know the exact prices But a 1month card could immediatly function as a slotbuying card?

They have explicitly said, multiple times, that they aren't going to sell things that will unbalance the game.

As far as the economy goes, right now character slots can only be used for storing things, so that hardly seems like some huge economic advantage.

It seems pretty unlikely they'll start selling gold or the equivalent. The only items they might add are special things like the coke-items (which have equivalents for PvP characters already, so it's not unbalanced for competitive play, and they can't be sold, so it doesn't really disrupt the economy).

No worries.

As far as I'm concerned, this is the key. Each player can pay for as much or little content as they want (or can afford). Subscription based services require you keep paying $15 each month (roughly) or you can't play anything at all.

Even if you want to think in terms of dollars per year, the key is that if it ever gets too expensive for you, you can just stop paying and yet keep playing. This is a [b]huge[/i] advantage over other systems, where if you decide you can't or won't spend any more money you just have to stop playing. No other choices.

Technically, players don't have to get the WoW expansion (for instance). But they still have to keep paying each month to get the smaller, non-expansion content.

Anyone know if my Visa/Electron debit card is taken? I don't have Maestro as the Halifax bank is total shite and I'm way too lazy to switch (no pun intended, sort of).

Yep nice yesterday i got error 42 when trying to enter the store and now there is no store well hope someday there will be1.

Is this really so different from people simply buying multiple copies of the game?

Yes, it's marginally simpler to move items around between characters in the same account, but that wasn't really stopping anybody before. You're not describing anything that wasn't already going on for many people.

i wonder what the hold up is? its been 24 hours since the initial bugged store release


once again- im sure they are doing EVERYTHING possible- say 500,000 people get just ONE slot- thats a cool 5 million dollars (easy in just one day, id think)

if 1/3 of the players get TWO slots= 20 million dollars.

Anet is only getting better- If I could work for any company in the world it would be ANet right now.

Hurray!

Hugs & kisses @ ANet for this!

As if any company would every say "We're going to make the game unbalanced, you won't have any more fun. Oh and we're releasing a new game, play it now!"... Also, more characters IS unbalancing the game. A player with mor characters has more room, he can afford to stash more materials and will probably sell his materials cheaper then the rest. I'm also pretty sure that like almost all big updates, there will be glitchs or new scams too.

I guess it's an ok idea overall, but I think that players should at least be able to unlock an extra character slot or two, like if some one gets high fame on a character, they're rewarded with a character slot. Kinda ridiculous, but is that really any different from buying one? At least this way they will have to do something (ingame) for the extra slots as opposed to buying them. I guess in the end it won't completely destroy the game, but you have to admit it will make some people "better" then others who have played just as long and hard.

As for what I'd look to see being sold? Maybe some fun items, like items for PvE that are just for fun and non-tradable. E.G., a snowman maker like the one last christmas except that it never runs out and can make a max of 1 snowman at a time(so no one can spam it like crazy). Other then that, I wish they'd make configuring the HUD/interface more flexible. I've always wanted to try making the HP/MP bars look like orbs (like in Diablo II).

That's a good point, but you could always argue that they're making it easier for the mass-account/char players, kinda like saying "well people already use cheats, why not make cheats available to buy?"(obviously a very different situation, but you know what I'm getting at.)

Anyways, I'm done here, I just wanted to post my reluctancy with this new idea. I think it could turn out bad and isn't really necessary.

the ingame store, as long as game balance is always considered, could provide a different revenue source for guildwars.

I have no problem paying for 'extras' infact i have 4 games tied to my 1 account (both standard and collectors edition of both prophecies and factions) along with another account with just prophecies. I have pre-orders on my main for prophecies and factions, and would love to be able to add the extras that were available in Europe, Korea, etc.

I think that it would be great if people could get the pre-order/special edition extras via the ingame store. It wouldn't be a balance issue because there are i'm sure players that have those items from buying the codes and stuff on Ebay.

yeah, the original GW pre-order items werent even max, so what wrong with that?

um, so being a packrat unbalances the game?

maybe not everyone plays the game just for storing and trading...

i dont see the logic in saying "omg u have 4 more items than me" is unbalancing- I sell perfect Golds at the merchant for like 200g every day- whoopdee doo.

It still takes the people time and effort to do the quests/farm the items... which is kind of how its supposed to be.

Besides, its been clearly stated numerous times (come on, read some) that things like storage upgrades will be handled in game- you wont pay real - world money for extra storage, now matter how much you beg to.

End of discussion on storage vs GW Store.

I bought another account the day before the store came out .

Purchasable character slots were announced quite a while ago...

Holy crap HUGE update.....takes long time.....no store in long in screen.>.<

That was incredibly dissapointing...got excited then no store :-(

Hopefully tonight...

Same here......i thought the store would be implemented..perfect time too.No...but on the positive side Minions dont die during cutsenes and The interface has alot more colors lol.

does anyone know why is the face and hair of my warrior changed when i loged in today!? :'(

yay!

i love being proved right.i said when the first mention of purchessable char slots started that they would create an ingame shop in the future just like maple story.although maple story can get away with it because its a free game,gw isn't and therefore i think this is taking waste fluid.but there are so many with more money than sence that a.net will get away with it.as to advantage,well one huge advantage is being able to enjoy the game to its fullest and having more access to teams leaving people without a desired char out in the cold.

p.s. to the guy that said they will never put storage in the shop,check back through the gaile logs and you will find that she answered my question on lack of storage with the first indication of storage improvments and the possibility of maybe buying extra storage slots in the future.so not to burst your bubble but expect to see storage slots in the shop soon.

and thanks for proving me right about the lack of info on how those with full accounts would partake in the pvp event.once they started getting sketchy about preview keys like the factions event had i said they would throw out the purchasable char slots just in time and low and behold they appear the day before the event is due.

just thought i would drop in to show my glee at being right about a.nets intentions all this time,now to get back to better games,cya later guys.

wallet>skill>time a.nets new moto,wait and see.

Please don't oversimplify. It makes us both look stupid.

Oh good lord. Can I please have some of whatever it is that you're smoking.

you guys are gonna buy it? 10bucks for an extra character is insane

Good way for Anet to make money and 10 isnt bad.

$10 isnt too bad. It's what I was expecting.

What would be really nice, actually, would be letting us buy a slot for this weekend

Agreed. I wonder what the problem was that they had to take it down completely...

I'm really still hoping they add them tonight or tomorrow, even saturday. I am using a friends account because all my slots are full (Even though I do PVP on my PvE chars, and I do just as well as the pvp chars) and so all my unlocks or earned fame don't go to me )-:

I don't really care about the unlocks. I would have been happy with a guest account. I do, however, want a look at the character creation screen and styles for all the characters, something that I can't get at without having a spare character slot.