4th anniversary update too expensive for most casual players

I guess Anet is still new to micropayment system, the feature implement is a good start but none the less missing the most important feature of micropayment system, which is "micro".

First of all, all the features in GW currently are real world cash, in many other korean f2p games, they use in game credits such as astros(ogplanet), in-game cash(nexon cash), points(ntreev). Why did they make it a two-part transaction? First it changes people's view on the purchase cash as "virtual" instead of real-world, it is a sale strategy; secondly it unifies the payment system and provides flexibility on purchase, imagine in GW you can buy 5 credits as a credit package, uses 1 GW credit to change your name, 1 credit to increase 1 storage pane and 1 credit to change gender, or you can spend 10 credits to activate these features permanently and only pay 1 platinum per use after that. I am sure a lot more people would agree with me that this is more acceptable way to implement "vanity" features.

On a side note, if Anet break their promise and start charging people for core features such as Zaishen Menagerie, Dungeon Updates and stuff, player base would drop rather quickly, not that the players are too casual, but because Anet should live up to their quality standards rather than blend in with the rest of the mmo companies.


Edit: Fixed for Lyphen :P

Could we stop mixing up casual and cheap, please?

Anet won't charge players for dungeon updates and if they do the game will die as no one with sense would play. No one is going to pay for the people to update the game. If people wanted to pay annually for game updates they would just play a p2p game. If we did have to pay for updates they would have to be similiar to sf update everytime This was dumb /closed.

Wait wait wait hold on


What exactly is the correlation between "being a casual gamer" and "having no money in RL?"

I think he means casual gamers are less likely to blow a big wad of cash on game goodies then us hardcore gamers.

So instead of paying 50$ for 4 storage panes, and 1 makeover, I would spent 50$ and acquire 5 credits, which I spent by buying 4 storage panes for 1 credit each, and the remaining credit on a makeover. That's microtransactions? You still pay the same amount of money, it's just called different, so I don't really see the benefits of this system.

Sure, buy a feature once for an added amount of points so afterwards you can use it by only paying ingame money sounds tempting. But what do I care if I have to pay 10 credits for it or 100$, if 1 credit equals 10$? This has nothing to do with microtransactions, but with paying extra for nice added feature. Just like paying a one time fee of 200$ for a MMO, to play for free for the rest of it's life.

Splendid. So the problem fixes itself. If (If!) Anet is going to charge money for Core features, and the player base would drop rather quickly, they'll find out soon enough that system isn't working.

I'd say ANet isn't just a bunch if programming geeks, with their only area of expertise coding an area. I'd say there are some people in ANet and Ncsoft, that are very well aware of how the market is working and changing these days, and are acting accordingly.

And I don't get your thread title. What exactly are you suggesting?