By now, I hope that I don’t have to lecture any of you on how important wording is in this industry. When Realtime Worlds said that they had no intention of shutting down All Points Bulletin, they didn’t factor in the results of their ongoing chapter 11 bankruptcy forcing the game to shut down. When Turbine stated that they had no intention of selling equipment with stats at the time, they technically spoke the truth. When Sony answered the free to play question by saying they would not alter existing player’s game, and launching a separate product, they were telling the truth.
Guild Wars Guru has noticed an alteration made to the Guild Wars wiki by user JohnSmith, who is a confirmed Arenanet employee. Previously, the article read:
Yes, micro-transactions will exist. These will be cosmetic additions which will not affect balance or gameplay, similar to the transactions offered by Guild Wars.
Now the article reads:
Yes, micro-transactions will exist. Be assured goods and items bought for cash in GW2 do not offer any advantage over those available in the game through the investment of time.
So the wording changes from only cosmetic items to not being more powerful than existing items. Now, this could simply be referring to Arenanet’s plan to include mission packs and transmutation stones in the cash shop, or the possibility of boosters, or it could open the door for selling equipment that is only as powerful as equipment found in-game. Martin Kerstein of Arenanet weighs in later in the thread.
As usual, everybody just needs to calm down a bit. This change was done to actually make the wording easier to understand – seems like that was not the case.
But the statement in it is still the same: Nothing you will be able to buy in the in-game store will give you an advantage over people who are not buying anything. That is the baseline.
So the outcome is that Arenanet, for now at least, is being vague on a familiar level to companies of the past. For now we’ll simply have to wait for clarification by Arenanet on an exact list of what will be sold in the Guild Wars 2 cash shop.
MMO Fallout 