Why Guild Wars 2 Going Free-to-Play is a Good Thing

For fans of the massively multiple online role-playing game Guild Wars 2, it has been an exciting weekend (or week if you include IGN’s quickly removed tweet). For veterans of the game, ArenaNet announced Raids, long promised end game content for players. However, potentially more exciting than that, especially for any non-players of the game, was the announcement that the core game of GW2 was going to be free to play (F2P).

While some people may be outraged at the thought that a game they paid good money for is now being offered to everyone and their dog for free, this is potentially a very positive thing for the game to come.
Most obviously would be the sudden influx of new players this could bring to the game. Being free-to-play will attract any number of people who previously did not have money, or those who didn’t want to spend their money on a game they had no chance to try. I know for a fact this is the case for some of my friends who managed to avoid the hype of both initial release and subsequent sales. GW2 has strongly suffered the lack of any lasting trial, and the core game now being free to play, finally allows people to test the game before committing to paying for expansions in the future.

This onslaught of new players has huge benefits for all areas of the game too. There will be loads of new players flooding the low level zones They will then move on, starting to do their own map completion. This means maps in the game will be busier, with more people talking and connecting. More players would also mean more people playing in World vs World – a game mode where entire servers of people battle and besiege each other. Having more players in these battles makes for more interesting fights, and huge scale battles potentially going on at all times.

Lastly, this would have an effect on the smaller Structured Player vs Player game mode (sPVP). This means people would be better able to find teams, and be playing against more people of their own skill level. This. Combined with ArenaNet’s plans to have a PVP League put into place could even attract people who are only interested in that side of the game, but did not want to pay for a whole game just to access it. With the rise of streaming and esports, this could positively reflect on GW2 as a whole. A lot of these changes will take some time, as the F2P accounts have some limitations on when they can access these other game modes (something I shall address later). However, it is something that is sure to happen, albeit very slowly, and that is still hugely positive.

Currently ArenaNet have only one expansion announced, this could potentially hint at more. Firstly, and most obviously is the idea that more players equals more money. To be specific, more players in the core game means more players enjoying the game and wanting to buy any future expansions, and also means more players who are more likely to spend real world cash on the in-game store. This is supported by how the company has presented it’s announcements. ArenaNet seems very much convinced that a lot of the F2P players will eventually choose to buy the expansion. This hints at future expansions, and future quality content that may often require payment. Being paid expansions for what is now a completely free game, future expansions and content has to be good enough that people will actively be willing to pay, as people don’t need to spend a penny to access all that is already in the game.

The biggest worry with a game like this suddenly becoming free to all would be the potential and the ease for bots (AI often used to gather resources and perform other time consuming, repetitive actions) and gold-sellers/spammers (players, often themselves using bots, trying to make quick money by illegally selling in game items for real world cash) to take advantage of the game. This is why the F2P accounts are somewhat limited. These limits won’t affect gameplay of a real player learning and trying the game. But they do increase the amount of work for bots and gold-sellers.

The F2P accounts have limitations on which maps they can go to at what level, forcing people to put time into levelling their characters before they can travel to the highly populated maps to find people to spam. Another is that F2P accounts aren’t allowed to use the Map Chat (a chat for talking to anyone and everyone within a certain map) and they are limited on how many ‘strangers’ they can talk to directly, again limiting the amount they can ‘spam’ other players. The added bonus of these limitations is that players who have already paid for the game feel better about people getting the same game for free. However, the community as a whole has received the idea more positively than expected in a lot of ways, as people can see the benefits of sharing the game with more people, and likely because everyone knows someone who would gladly try the game now that it is free.

In short, making the base game of GW2 can only be healthy in expanding the community even wider. It will attract so many new players to all areas of the game, and thus will hopefully bring more success to Heart of Thorns and future expansions the game might have in store. I, for one, am now going to spread the word a little more to try and get more of my friends in on the action.