GW2 Goes F2P...Or Does It?

Right after I finished yesterday's post about the new Daredevil specialization for the Thief this dropped into my Feedly. Not an hour before I'd been at Claw of Jormag, where map chat was busy with arguments over whether GW2 was about to go F2P and, if it was, whether the sky would fall.

With the full authority of ignorance I opined to Mrs Bhagpuss that it would make no sense for ANet to start giving the base game away. What would be the point? Apparently there was some rumor going around but you know how these things are. People will make up anything.

Well apparently it's more than a rumor or so IGN reckon:

That's the tweet that started it all. Now deleted at source, as is the official ANet trailer that appeared briefly and which I haven't seen. Supposedly, that suggested the plan was far more sweeping than just another version of the extremely limited Free Trial that that_shaman datamined last year.

There's a substantial reaction thread on the forums but it's by no means a threadnought...yet. Anet themselves have said nothing although there's hardly anything unusual in that. Their Big Announcement is only a day away in any case and with the cat at least poking its head out of the bag the best way they have to maintain tension is neither to confirm nor deny.

The timing of this announcement is interesting. As of today all new accounts for GW2 will require SMS or similar authentication. The requirement is waived for all accounts made before that date. I would imagine that would be a useful control tool for eliminating or pursuing  botting accounts.

They shall not pass!

The two big fears in the community at present seem to be a vast influx of bots, trolls and hackers and the complete collapse of the economy. Somewhat ironically in my opinion, given that GW2 is a B2P game that has had two extremely cheap box sales already, the feeling seems to be that F2P players are entirely different in attitude, ethics and morals to the people already playing.

That last seems to me to be mostly fear of the other. Having played a multiplicity of MMOs under just about all payment models for years now I would say there's very little to choose between any of them in terms of the communities. If pushed I'd say subscription games tend to have the most difficult and abrasive communities and not only for a new player.

On botting it should be remembered that GW2 had an absolutely appalling problem with bots during the first three months after launch. Mrs Bhagpuss and I went on holiday at the peak of the infestation and talked seriously about whether we would leave GW2 when we came back because the botting issue was making the game unplayable.

You've ruined your own lands...

That was when the game was only available at full price. ANet claimed they were working on a solution and it turned out they were. By the time we returned from holiday most of the bots were gone and within six months they were all gone. I haven't seen a single bot in about two years.

So, I can't see the payment model change bringing in waves of bots. As for the economy the issue there appears to be the daily log-in rewards, which can be used to obtain items, mostly crafting mats, that sell for a lot of money on the Trading Post. The fear is that people will create scores of F2P accounts, nab all the log-in rewards and crash the market.

I'm pretty sure GW2's in-house economist John Smith will already have thought of that one. If the base game does go fully F2P I imagine we have yet another revamp of dailies to look forward to.

For now I feel sanguine about this. I have three accounts and only one of them is going to get Heart of Thorns added to it. I'll have the option of playing with or without F2P players around me but I imagine most of my time will be spent down there in the base game with the unwashed hordes so how they handle the changes will very much affect me.

The devil will, as always, be in the details. I guess we'll find out tomorrow whether the sky really is about to fall.

Excess Of It : GW2

A while back Tobold estimated that Guild Wars 2 had about 300 hours of PvE solo content. He extrapolated this from the percentage map completion achieved and how long it had taken, which in his case was 12% in 32 hours.

Last night I discovered that GW2 has a command called /age. It tells you how many hours you have logged, both for the character currently logged in and for the account. My Charr ranger has racked up 268 hours so far. The account he's on is at 345 hours. Map completion stands at 47%, which is exactly where it was last time I mentioned it more than a week ago.

To my way of thinking this points up one of the biggest difficulties in assessing the success of an MMO. GW2 is self-evidently working for me as a player: I'm logging in every day even though I have a wealth of other MMOs vying for my attention. My interest isn't waning and indeed the more comfortable I become with the systems and the world, the deeper and more abiding my interest becomes.

Have snorkel, will travel

On the other hand, by the most obvious measure my progress has come to a complete standstill. My level 80 hasn't found a new place or done a new thing for more than a week. Moreover, neither have any of my many other characters, the furthest-along of whom is my Asuran Engineer, who yesterday reached the giddy heights of level 35.

Just over a month after launch a typical day's play has already settled into the following pattern:

Me! Pick me!

• Log in  Charr Ranger, Level 80, almost certainly in Frostgorge Sound. If not, run there (not wasting two whole silver on a waypoint!).
• If Jormag's up, kill him. Anything from a few minutes to almost an hour, depending what stage the event's at. Grab loot from chest, grumble "No Yellows" in guild chat, sell loot at nearby vendor for six silver.
• If Jormag's not up, go to Orichalcum and Ancient Sapling nodes and harvest, unless there's been a server re-set, in which case run all over Frostgorge looking for where they hid the nodes this time.
• Kill one each of anything that might count for Kill Variety. Including rabbits.
• Report a dozen or so bots, some not for the first time.
• Log Charr Ranger out, log Asuran Engineer, Level 35 in. Probably in Ebonhawke these days. Find some events, harvest some nodes. 
• Get distracted and end up spending half an hour trying to climb a rock or something equally productive.
• Realize time is getting on, Kill Variety is still at 11/15 and Daily Events at 1/5.
• Swap to Asuran Necromancer, Level 11, usually found at Cooking Station in Black Citadel. Go to Plains of Ashford, do four "dynamic" events in five minutes to finish Daily Achievement.
• Swap accounts. Do it all again, only minus Jormag and plus Wayfarer Foothills.

One ram good, two rams better

Once the two Dailies are out of the way I generally take a look at the state of WvW with a view to chipping away at the Monthly. An hour of WvW is generally enough for me but 50 kills in a month is nicely attainable at an hour every couple of days. Throw in Jormag whenever he's around. Other than that I mostly potter.

On a weekday that takes up much of the evening after work. At the weekend I get a lot more pottering done, write something like this about it and generally let my characters drift upwards as they wander around the maps I like.

Even by the highly inaccurate measuring-stick of Map Completion, as a player I have consumed less than half of the content available at launch and I'm well aware that the flagged content is only a taster of what's there to be found. Not that I'm making any significant attempt to find it. I've settled into a groove (you can call it a rut - I call it a groove) that suits me just fine.

Comfortable? Why, yes I am, thanks for asking

ArenaNet are making something of a song and dance about the volume and frequency of new content they intend to add. For my money (I know, what money, eh?) they could hold off on all of that and put everyone on bot-killing duties. A bot-free Tyria is needed much more urgently than a bigger or deeper Tyria.

Isn't GW2 freakin' huge for an MMO at launch, anyway? The level cap could have clamped down at 50, we could have lost a race or two and a couple of starting cities and Blazeridge Steppes and Sparkfly could have been the end zones and it would still have launched as the biggest MMO for years. For me Tyria has already established itself next to Norrath, Telon and Telaria as places where I'm happy to spend unlimited hours for no better reason than I like being there. It doesn't need to grow, yet.

I think we are in bots' alley...

It's not just that there's really a lot more than 300 hours of content even on the first run through. There's immeasurable replayability. I'm already in "replay" mode and I'm not even halfway through "playing" yet! New content I don't need!

And that's why these things are so hard to assess. Some people are going to be finished in a few weeks, some will never finish. Some are already done, some are never going to catch up.

Enough, no more, 'tis not so sweet now as it was before. Oh, alright, yes it is! Go on then!