dual? Like another sarcastic comment to go with the first?
Times change, standards change. Open betas are marketing tools as much as ads or anything else.
I have been burned on a couple of MMO's now (SWTOR being the most egregious), and I am not going to dump money at a game hoping it is going to be good.
I have tried to get beta key's but haven't gotten one yet. I am not going to crawl all over the internet just to get one. And I am not going to buy the game without trying it. And I am definitely not going to buy a game just to try it.
People need to stop living in the bungholes of developers just because they like games. Demanding more isn't bad at all.
I don't particularly understand why people are treating the purchase of GW2 as anything other than a normal $60 game. I'm sure you guys have purchased a non-MMO without trying it in the past, so why is GW2 any different? You aren't offering up a monthly fee, so it can easily be treated as a non-MMO in my eyes. Usually I'm hesitant about purchasing an MMO without trying it first because it's more than a $60 investment, whereas GW2 isn't. You pay $60 and that's all the money ANet could ever see from you. How many people already had plans to buy D3 before they got the chance to try it? Why is GW2 any different?
I'm sure some people went, "Oh, well... I liked Diablo 2 so I'm going to like Diablo 3." That's all fine and good, but I've never based a game purchase based on past products from that company, SE taught me to be much more wary.
I don't get the 'crawling over the internet' comment. Again, almost literally every beta key giveaway was retweeted by the GW2 twitter account, I didn't have to spam google or anything. And considering they post all the recent news/interviews/etc over the same account, following it seems like an easy choice if you're really interested in the game and not just complaining that a new game is coming out and you couldn't have access 1 BWE. No game has every single part of the beta phase open, parts of it are always closed, and they said before this weekend there is going to be at least 1 more beta event left for GW2 depending on how things went for them this last weekend, so clearly there is time for the open beta that normally occurs before a launch. And considering the first BWE had terrible lag issues since they weren't expecting so many people, they probably care more about stability for this particular BWE than just overall promotion.
Pretty much this, unlike other MMO models where the content is planned to come out over time, similar to GW1 they are planning majority of stuff to be out at launch. Then major content would come with expansions etc. If you play it for 50ish hours that's still more than most console games nowadays, and it has replay value too due to the different professions + repeatable dungeons and pvp. Comparing it to SWTOR, FF11 or any game where the promise of content is always over time so they can continue to collect subscription fees is a stretch.
Seriously, this. Yes, I know there are other ways to try out regular games like borrowing, renting, etc. But right now, the GW2 beta is not your fucking demo. If there is an open beta weekend before release, great. If not, I guess we will just have to deal with playing without the people in this thread who won't buy the game.
People will go drop 60 bucks on Halo 4 no questions asked. There is no difference here besides 100x more hours of enjoyment. Also, before you even say it, gems can be bought with in-game gold so there is no extra cost if you so choose.
Guild wars 1 has a trial offer, 15 hours of free play I think? download, create a trial account and you get some time to try out the game, hopefully they will also have something like that for Guild wars 2 going forward a bit after release. But like everyone above has said, If one is really that interested in the game, enough to bitch about it, using a fraction of that energy spent bitching to try for a beta key would do wonders.
I actually tried to get one for a buddy and it was kind of a nightmare. There was only one website doing click&claim for keys that I saw and they didn't have a lot to begin with. Everybody else was doing the "redeem super fast after I post them" key deals which just always ends horribly.
I can sympathize with people who couldn't get beta keys but didn't wanna drop $60 on something they weren't sure they gonna like. Arenanet needs to get a true open beta out there before launch to really lure people into this game. Its still not really mainstream enough to get the attention it deserves.
Thanks for posting that. look at halo 4. . also does that pre-order also include pre-purchase?
Also how mainstream do you want guild wars 2 to be? I mean its actually reaching people that have never touched an MMO in their lives. I think that's pretty mainstream. I also have realized from the people I have spoken to personally that have doubts, they are actually the mainstream MMOers, that have been burnt before.
http://www.gamebreaker.tv/mmorpg/good-for-noobs/
I'm assuming those numbers are just pre-order and not pre-purchase. I don't think NCSoft or ANet has disclosed those numbers as of yet.