Purchase More Character Slots!

Once again I'm sorry, I obviously didn't read the EULA carefully enough. Maybe what I saw was something about hacking the client to give yourself an advantage or whatnot. Maybe I'll go see if I can get 2 to run without doing anything to it, even though I only have one account.

Capitalism and Marketing wins another victory against the evil forces of Generosity. And just like in Star Wars Episode 3, it happens to the sound of cheering.

Well, at least it now becomes amply obvious just WHY anet has been so stingy with the slots til now. They wanted to gain maximum revenue from this new gold mine.

Obviously, Anet regrets not having a monthly cost, and now seek to make up for that. They don't want GW to be cheap and sweet. They see the money Blizzard is reaping, and want some of the same.

It's getting scarier and scarier. I'll move to WoW if this goes on. Really. WoW has far more roleplaying features, after all, and that's way more interesting than complex guild combat that I never ever use.

Basically what's happening is Anet is making the nerds more powerful, while casual players suffer.

I can't see why anyone thinks this is positive.

I like the idea of being able to purchase extra slots, one because I lots of people want this for worthwhile reasons, and this will also provide some more funds towards the devs to make our game even better.

However, I think their should still be a cap, or a max number of characters, because like many have said before, if every account has 15 chars... servers are going to be extremely overloaded.

so yay, for the option to buy more char slots, but I hope A-net thought ahead and made a cap for this as well.

Great news. I'll be buying Factions after all.

And, being a very vindictive person by nature, I sincerely hope all the people on the slot issue threads who never offered anything more constructive than flaming me or telling me to get a second account, find themselves in circumstances not of their liking. Like having soon-to-be pointless second accounts.

"Victory is mine!"

Before you get too carried away, how would A-Net be able to afford to just give out $100,000 in cash to a few gamers who win a tournament if they're not making tons of money?

The number of slots a person has will not overload the server. Think about it:

You can only play one character at a time regardless of the number of slots you have on an account. You consume no extra bandwidth when you add slots.

I'd hazard to guess that ANets biggest costs are related to paying for network bandwidth and NOT storage. Storage costs trend downward historically. Bandwidth does too, but ANet's bandwidth usage is probably climbing. (I assume this because if it were decreasing their business would also be decreasing and that would be bad.) So long term adding slots will add a negligible amount of storage cost AND bandwidth costs due to new players is offset by the price of Prophecies/Factions.

The pricing of slots is pure gravy. It's $10 because that's what the market will bare. There's big demand for it and it's probably very profitable for ANet since it costs very little in terms of development (unlike new content).

EDIT: This isn't a complaint, it's an observation.

/signed

...and if merging isn't an option can I please have a refund on my now no longer needed 2nd account so I can use the money to buy slots on my main account? I only got it for extra slots and tbh having two accounts is a pain in the arse when transferring stuff.

/agreed

They won't do this. Think about it: When Prophecies drops to $19.99 at Best Buy what's going to stop people from running out and getting 4 slots for $20? That's half off the $10/slot model ANet is pushing.

I'd bash you, but two people beat me to it, so I thought I'd pull the punch for you. Although I for one would like to know how you equate GW character slots with the fall of the Galactic Republic...

ANet is, from what I can tell, a decent company. They've given us loads of shit for free this past year. A downright insane amount of stuff. They're offering character slots for independent purchase because we asked for it.

I do believe that many of the devs never expected us to want so many slots. But they must now realize that we are in fact insatiable. They are not out to scam us. A company exists to provide goods and services in exchange for money. That is the foundation of our economic system. ANet is no different. They need money. They want money (not in a bad way; merely a fact). We have money. It's a logical progression. We asked for something, and now they're giving it to us. Those aren't just Mursaat tokens they're offering us. They're ectos, baby.

I can just picture Gaile Gray going to talk to Jeff Strain... [warning: dramatization may not have occured] "Hey, word on the forums is that people will pay us money for more character slots." And Jeff's eyes would light up with a gleam. "Jackpot!"

This sounds correct, but more character storage will also require more physical disk storage. Yes, hard disks are getting cheaper all the time, but ANET is probably running NetApp, Fast-T, EMC, or other DASD-type RAID array to protect their customer data. HD's fail all the time, so maintaining and protecting larger databases inherently costs more money.

XANIERA: Well... How about you turn that around? Why do the prize have to be money? Why does it *ALWAYS* have to be about money? It's as unimaginative as it can be. Why not just give them the expansion pack for free or something? Isn't the fun they had winning the tournament enough? Obviously, they think the players were working or something, and needed recompensation. xD

IIRC, you can only login to an account in one instance at a time.

I believe that 10 bucks for extra char slot is not bad, but going beyond this like 5 bucks for skin etc. is bad I hope it will never happen for GW.

10 bucks per slot, I think I'll keep my money.

What makes you so sure? Last I checked it has been because of this fierce forum rats that anet has considered selling us more slots unless its even more spindoctering (ergo stating that they are doing it on demands of the community but were planning to do so from the start) In any case every demographic is an issue as long as it will bring in enough $$ compared to the costs.

4 characterslots or 6 characterslots, not much of a difference seeing that in most cases families can choose to play 1 char. But in the end the limitting factor in this play is not the number of characterslots but actually the inability to log in with multiple chars from the same account. And last I checked i have nowhere seen an option to buy 4 accounts for the price of 3 under certain restrictions (ergo linked to a macadress or the same cc or the identitycard of the users or...)

so how does not handing out 8 characterslots for the combination offer that. If i can play with 2 people on 4 charslots, i'll be able to play for sure with 2 people on 6 charslots.

once more how does that stop me from sharing 2 charslots from account 1 and 2 charslots from account 2. In the end it is the same. If I only care about playing the game and having access to the chapters. It is less convenient I agree, but it sure as hell is not going to dissuade me from not doing so. So meh.
---

My mom once told me what to if I was tired of having to eat chickensoup everyday. Her answer was simply, if you don't like it then to bad, you always have the choice to put your head beside the plate. Ergo, if you are so tired of people arguiing about something like this, then I suggest that from now on you stop reading these threads and ignore these posts. But if these items turn up it is because some people found it meaningfull enough to highlight, even if it was for the umptieth time.

in any case, the magnitude of the content that you can access has no value whatsoever on the content that you can access in a chapterwise setup seeing that a chapter inherently implies access with previous characters to the next chapters. Not to mention that these characterslots aren't linked to the world in question (cantha or tyria) but actually to the account of the person in question... therefore you'll have to look upon these characterslots as standalone in stead of in tandem with the content they are interlinked with, seeing that this content is accountbased in stead of characterbased...

I would disagree seeing that if there is a lack of content, people will want a way to make up for this lack. And this can mostly best be done by taking another char through the same content. Just as a person takes a cleric through baldurs gate 2 it won't stop him from x weeks/days later take a swashbuckler through the game or a sorcerer or a ... The lesser the content the higher the number of characters people will want to take through this content.

depends on the person that you are asking it to. But seeing that presear is not a state of content this is irrelevant.

Well seeing that most people already paid for the account to have access to a certain part of the content, it is actually logical to conclude that the number of characters on your account don't matter since content is a factor of the account and not a factor or variable from the characterslot. It will increase the value of the entire account but not the value of an individual charslot. If you can't understand that, i would suggest you to look up the word synergie.

That is your 'opinion', while other people have the opinion that they get shafted. In the end it is the individual person who decides and in here people are simply stating that 10$ is a tad to much for what they get while other people say it is great. Besides those aren't account slots, those are character slots.

Actually this is so sarcastically written but what you expect with a person like you, but in the end all i'll be saying is that access to content should be free seeing that you payed for that access on that account by buying the game and applying the key. On top of that you also bought access to characterslots for that account. Since that is exactly what a chapter does... it gets comprised in something, a book, a novel, or an account... You don't buy chapters to simply throw out half of it because it is a cost for bundling them...

wouldn't expect anything else, but as long as they get the same as anybody else I won't feel offended. It doesn't matter if they payed a tad less then me and gotten that pack.

If it would only containt 4 characterslots I would be pissed seeing that they are entitled to the full six (but actually 8) characterslots. The reason behind it is simple though, it is a special bundled offer. Just like we got the special bundled preorder offer which they won't get. Naturally it will all depend on the characteristics of the seperate packages. ergo if they contain the same items as the standard versions (ce, se, the other one) then they should get the same advantages that we get when combining. If however the items are different (ergo chapter 1 and chapter 2 expansion pack) then I won't disagree seeing that the items in questions are a different product. However if we go and buy factions now we get the same product, payed for it but in the end we get less for the same buck.

/agreed

Dear A-net:

I have purchased 2 GW clients, I am supporting A-NET financially twice than most of other players. And I wont be able to win tournament which means I will not take money out from you, I am a total supporter. Would you give me option to merge my 2 accounts for making me feel better.

2 accounts at the same time so you can run yourself/trade among accounts

If you people are willing to pay $10.00 for an extra account, then go ahead.. I really dont understand what the big deal is, how is an extra slot gonna give you advantage in a game were most of the runes you need are only 125 gold, and the rest are 3000 faction. Its not like the weapons people are buying are making that much of a difference anyway. And you unlock skills and weapons so storage is completely useless in PVP anyway. And once factions comes out, are you really going to play your old Prophecies PVE charecters anyway? Your gonna have to buy all the new skills at 1plat a pop.. With over 300 new skills that will get expensive.
Personally id rather pay a $10 - 20 dollar montly charge and get wonderfull new PVP and PVE content then have to suffer through stagnant old Prophices content again. The PVP got insanely dull, i kept on waiting untill there would be more options then tombs and random and team arenas, and it never came. I dont like that im going to be stuck with these options for 6 months or even more, depending.. But hey, what can I do

I'm just saying they're already making plenty of money if they can give this kind of a thank-you for playing their game. We (the players) asked for slots, and they gave them to us. It's called customer service. People like you if you do things for them.

Edit: Didn't see that last post you made. Yes, they wouldn't be hurt by giving character slots for free, but since people think that "no fee = less updates," now think "buy slots = more updates."

Yes, I know, but I was going to try it just to see if I could get 2 running at once. I wouldn't be able to log in with both, I'd have to have one sit at the login screen, say "cool I did it," and close the 2nd one.

The problem is trying to sell the math logic that Gaile and company (yes Gaile I am calling you out on this) try to sell as if the community is some kind of idiots.

They where try to pitch it as if it was some kind of benefit when in fact it was just a backdoor scheme to eek out more money.
ANet scams the whole we don't have a monthly BS. We are not even in chapter 2 and that argument has already become weak. Instead of being honest like other companies about their marketing model - ANet decided to BS the community. Hood winking. Yea no monthly - but they will get you later.


Stop it. Stop it. That is not an argument. That is obvious. If that is your end all be all counter then might as well close the forum since there will be no point in a DISCUSSION.

Its like "if you dont like America - get out."


ANet keeps treating the community like this then it is hard not to be anti ANet. The PvP community has slowly been disillusioned with ANet. And like many things in the gaming industry - the PvP community leads the way.

ANet you have been warned.

Hahaha.. This reminds me of stehen colbert.. Youve been put on notice..

You make a good point. We run NetApp here at work and those babies aren't cheap. Around 100k for each unit we purchase. Most of that cost is in long term service contracts and < 4 hour turn around on dead drives.

Overall, though there is a lot of market pressure to make storage (and it's associated costs) cheaper every year.

this is a better strategy than monthly fees.

two thumbs up.


well we aren't forced to have an additional character slot. if we wanna have a slot, we pay some fixed amount. doesnt hurt right? guildwars has no monthly fee. we all love it and yep we gotta also help it to thrive by say paying for additional services (i.e. this new scheme).

this additional character slot wont affect the PvP realm. so why complain?

edit: and it was suggested by most of the GW players. so why complain?

Are some people bitter just because spending an extra $10~20 one-time is too much for them? Or is it that they expect getting new contents and new services without having to pay any monthly fee?

IF (and that's a big if) ANet starts to release content on a pay-basis, THEN complain all you want about how ANet is tricking you and stealing your money. As it stands, this whole pay-for-slot thing was our suggestion, our demand.

Like the others have said, we suggested for extra character slots. Is it bad that Anet listens to the community?

Arent they? I mean you can buy a character to store items his name could even be... "storage" for those vast amounts of wares you have to sell.

OMFG I just saw this right now! It's like my birthday came early this year!!

How are they being greedy? Because you want extra slots but aren't willing to pay for them? Hey, guess what? You don't need extra slots! Buying them won't make you any better than anyone else at the game. It's not like you're able to buy an uber-sword of uberness for an extra $30. This is an option for people that want to have all primaries without having to buy a new account. That's all.

It's something that was wholeheartedly asked for by the Guild Wars community. Look in the Factions forum. There's a huge thread about it in there. So please, forgive Anet for listening to their customers and giving them exactly what they asked for.

EDIT: Also, I can't be the only one that's utterly dumbfounded that this is causing as much controversy as it has.

Didn't think I had... But let's put that behind us. As for the meat and potatoes...

We got holiday events, Sorrow's Furnace, the Battle Isles, Faction, and a whole slew of fixes and miscellaneous updates. Oh, and Lina; can't forget Lina. That's significantly more than the vast majority of games with no fees. In fact, it's more than a good number of the ones that do have monthly fees.

They are not being greedy. They are merely being what they are. A company. Companies provide us with goods, services, amd conveniences we would otherwise lack in exchange for our money. The day a large company gives out free stuff like that is the day India and Pakistan share a nice cup of tea over Kashmir while a flock of pigs flies by overhead in the purple sky. Oh, and Hell is experiencing a cold snap.

No offense but they are out to make money like everybody else. They saw an opportunity (we wanted more slots, and even offered to pay for them), and took it. I really don't think that constitutes greed.

/signed 100% Agreement.

OMG!!! thank you ANET!

/applause

Frankly, in e-commerce (particularily WRT credit card transactions), it's not worth it to sell anything online for less than $7, and many processing agencies simply will not process anything under $5. Secondly, it's A.net's prerogative as part of their business plan (you're not paying monthly fees, remember?), and makes for a healthier company, which can (and probably will, from what we've seen thus far) make for a better-supported game. And thirdly, you don't want the cost so low that everyone will have 30+ characters... you do need a way to put a ceiling on it.

Would be nice to see too, but keep in mind they'd likely have to do so at a minimum $5 increment, and will want to first monitor the sales of slots and see if it has any detrimental effect on the game. Meanwhile, you get the extra character personal storage to use.

I'd expect probably 2 slots and 2 professions for each merged expansion, to continue the business model they've established.

If ou don't buy the extra slot, it does not hurt you or reduce any opportunity you may have in any way with your current characters. It is a reasonable add-on that in no way reduces what you got when you bought the game.

Don't expect it to go to any of those extremes, because the business model is all about providing an affordable, accessible product, and they'd become vulnerable to being undercut by someone else on that score.

That said, many such ideas, such as a character skin/armor/hair expansion pack, do not affect the game accessibility in the long run, you simply don't need to buy them to enjoy the game. So I see no harm in development along this line.

Also 100% in agreement. Key words being "we wanted more slots, and even offered to pay for them."

^_^ Hilarious.

Anet gave them what they begged for.

how can they NOT complain.

it is the nature of the beast

I really don't see the problem guys like Tric have with these paid for extra slots. People have been able to buy more character slots from day 1, in the form of extra accounts. (Which I'd never ever do for reasons I explained elsewhere. )

This summer, it'll be more convenient to get more slots, and a heck of a lot cheaper too, considering these slots will be universal across any and all chapters (That's what I assume anyway). With multiple accounts, you'd have to buy new chapter keys for each account to upgrade the options for existing slots on each of these accounts. Have 2 accounts? You'll have to dish out $100 per chapter to keep up.

With the paid for extra slots, you'll only have to buy 1 key for each new chapter and all your slots will be upgraded. It's a bargain compared to keeping multiple accounts. You'll spend only $50 to keep up.

Where's the greed? People interested in more slots will be able to get them cheaper, in a more convenient manner, and no longer forced to buy them in huge chunks (accounts) at once.

For those of you who chalk this up as another marketing ploy to get us to fork out more $ for more character slots, you would seem to be asserting that they knew this was coming from day one and were intending to do this. If that's the case, I'd like to know why they didn't do this right off the bat? On product like this, the later it's released, the less money there is to be made, so it stands to reason that they're losing out by coming out with something like this a full year after the game went retail. Come on, give them some credit. If they knew this would happen, I'm sure they'd have jumped on it the moment they could.

Of course, you might say that if they'd done this right away, they would've lost a lot of game sales. Perhaps, but if so, then why put this out now? Why not wait until after chapter 3's out, where they've sold however many accounts for ~$150 with all 3 chapters merged. They would've made a lot more money per account by doing that than announcing just now that they'll be having this option available. They would've had their millions of game sales for each chapter along with the revenue generated by this particular trick.

Either way, it seems to me that, if they knew this was going to be an eventuality, announcing it now is about the worst possible implementation of this particular economic strategem.

However, I would believe that the idea may have been hatched sometime in the most recent 3-4 months of game development, particularly when they were discussing pricing on Factions, along with the choice in character slot allotment when merging accounts. Let me put it this way (trying to avoid A-net's Fuzzy Math[tm]) - you can view Factions as a stand-alone game equal to Prophecies or as an expansion to Prophecies, and is fully functional in both aspects. I would believe that point is fairly indisputable. Therefore, I propose this:

Factions as stand-alone: $50 w/4 characters; same as a Prophecies stand-alone, priced accordingly

Factions as expansion: $30 for content (equal to other expansions, with a fair bit more content than most in this bracket, I would argue) + 2 character slots @ $10 each = still $50

Seems understandable and reasonably equitable to me. Since this is the first game in my memory that really tries to be both stand-alone and expansion at once, I really can't say we have any frame of reference on this, either. I can't really say it's wholly unfair on their part. It's not a particularly good deal, per se, but I'd say it's far better value than your standard-issue $2 horse armor, which will probably end up being the standard for pay-for-content for the time being. I'm not saying this is a good or bad thing; simply that it's fair.

Though, really it boils down to it being a case of "it is what it is." It's going to be $10 per slot, at least for the time being. And I really don't think it'll change. We can piss and moan about it here on forums, but as long as the vast majority of people see it as a fair price worthy of purchase, and do so with fervor, they'll have no reason to change it. Judging by the amount of people that asked for it, I see that as a likely outcome.

We all know that money speaks louder than any inflamatory speech. If GW players want to spend more money on character storage, that is their personal choice alone.

I'll happily plunk down 4 figures on a cue stick, mountain bike, PC, or any other toy I want at the moment, so $10.00 is hardly worth a second thought.

When I first saw this I'll admit the idea of them trying to make a fast buck crossed my mind.

A $50(+$50) game with 6(+2) professions and 4(+2) slots with the option to buy 2 more (allowing for a primary of each) does seem rather suspicious. People have always asked why they only gave such a limited number of character slots... Although, if this was some master plan, why unveil it just before GW:Factions' release with it's 2 extra slots?

But, I've come to a conclusion... of sorts.

1) Since the game is basically free to download, what are we actually paying for? 4 character slots. Allowing people to perchase 1 slot at a time rather than going out and buying another copy of the game for four more is just convenient.

2) I don't care enough to be outraged. Don't like it? Don't use it. The only thing to really be mad at is the original number of slots, which you've known of and "endured" this long. Or perhaps this merely puts their decision to originally limit character slots in a new light.