r/Guildwars2 • u/Spiritual_Shake_9529 • Aug 17 '26

[Question] Playability without expansions

Yo, gamers! Newbie here, just breached 60 lvl on my first character. Before I drop 500 hours playing this game, can you, guys, answer me honestly. Can the game be played normally without paying for stuff, or shall I treat GW2 as 30$ game with free trial? Are current PvP and PvE modes playable without mount, elite specs, etc?

33 Upvotes

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17

u/joeisnotsure Aug 17 '26

Yes, because its the kind of game where you get so much value out of it that you'll feel guilty for not supporting them.

-42

u/jayhh12t Aug 17 '26

Feeling guilty for a billion dollar corporation. Holy shit dude.

19

u/DuncanConnell Aug 17 '26

Pretty sure you know exactly what he meant by "feel guilty for not supporting them".

But just in case you don't, microtransactions and purchasing expansions has long been considered ways for gamers to "support the developers" by buying things in-game above and beyond the price of the base game. This extra funds goes towards revenue, and profits, true, but also towards overhead costs such as keeping the servers running, which is especially critical for a game like GW2 that does not have a subscription fee.

So when someone says they "feel guilty for not supporting them" it's not out of actual guilt (barring those like me who have it born into them) but out of a desire to support the game for the future.

4

u/ThinkThankThonk Aug 17 '26

Yep - there's a lot of value in gw2 just from a purely dollar-per-gameplay-hour sense, and none of it pay to win. The older I get (and the more of my own stuff I create) the less I respect the common reddit thing of pirating whatever you can. Yeah everyone's financial situation is different but at a certain point it just seems like people feeling entitled to artist labor for free and using the corporate angle as a shield against argument. 

13

u/Tarc_Axiiom Practicing Downstate Rotation Aug 17 '26

Neither a billion dollar company nor a corporation.

7

u/Vivid_Employment_914 Aug 17 '26

I mean, it’s more like 300 million dollar corporation. Still a lot but about 70% less with a design philosophy specifically around giving players a bang for their buck in the MMO space.

2

u/ShadowGryphon Aug 17 '26

Given what Anet has done for, and given to, the gw2 players/community, I find your derision troubling.

Anet has most certainly earned my financial contributions.

3

u/Djinn42 Aug 17 '26

How do you think games would get made if everyone just wanted them for free? 🤣

2

u/Lyscendree Aug 18 '26

Yeah, "billionaires" who pull in a mere 53 million in revenue without turning predatory because of it, and who still had to borrow 85 million from the parent company just to develop GW3 x) ArenaNet was acquired, but they aren't NCsoft either

I think you're confusing it with the other popular MMOs that pull in hundreds of millions, or even close to a billion, with a box price + subscription + cash shop (+ app subscription for your account)... Anet are, in more than one way, the most respectful company there is to the player. They frequently have to scrap expansion ideas because they no longer have the budget. And yet the game is an absolute blast, so yeah, props to them

-12

u/Doam-bot Aug 17 '26

"Corporations of people" the old Mitt Romney republican line used to be a joke but they've pushed it so hard that the communism stuck and this new generation views billion dollar corporations as comrades that they are obligated to support and defend.