Whats YOUR opinion on spending real life money?

StormHydra - Sanctuary wrote: »

Yeah, but LoL is so popular that they dont really need to have really powerful stuff in the store to make people buy stuff more.

Less popular games make their cash shops insanely overpowered, because they have to make up for the low player base.

This game functioned perfectly fine for exactly 1 year before they made cash shop imbalanced. It's not like they weren't making enough before the game became pay to win.



And, even if they DID need to sell enough in the cash shop to make someone a factor overnight, that still doesn't address that the money is being used for NOTHING.

No bug fixes. No new content. No class balances.

Absolutely freaking nothing.

Rawrgh - Raging Tide wrote: »

This game functioned perfectly fine for exactly 1 year before they made cash shop imbalanced. It's not like they weren't making enough before the game became pay to win.



And, even if they DID need to sell enough in the cash shop to make someone a factor overnight, that still doesn't address that the money is being used for NOTHING.

No bug fixes. No new content. No class balances.

Absolutely freaking nothing.

Really?
A for-profit company like PWE does just that....makes profit. It offers a game that is for all intents and purposes, free. I do not recall seeing anywhere that they promise to take any percentage of the profits to pay for anything, nor guarantee anything of any sort. Sure, keep the customer happy should apply, but the game still runs, with a high player base. So who's to say wether the majority of their player base is happy or not. You certainly cannot go by the small fraction that visit this forum.
And above all else - the game is free. Anyone can choose to delete characters and leave at any time. Anyone can choose to spend their own money on the game. There's nothing being forced here. The world of MMO's is huge. If you don't like how this one is run, go to another.

And as for that 1 year prior....I was here for some of that year. Now do you honestly believe that the income from the cashshop then is equal to how it is now?
I don't defend them nor condone them. I'm just saying, its friggin business. They are here to make money. As long as people keep spending enough to keep the servers running, the employees paid, whatever other costs, and bring in a fair profit......then one must assume the majority of the playerbase is at least content, because who would pay for something they hate?

It depends on the person, really.

Personally, I have previously spent some 20-30 euroes on F2P games so I'm not against it on just that. I haven't spent a cent on PWI and most likely will not spend a cent just because it's not necessary for what I want out of the game. I also want to see how far I can go as a non-cash shop player. Of course, there are records of people who went F2P to an extent that does not lose to a high-end cash shopper, such as RoidAbuse, WarrenWolfy or Kitamura. And then there's the fact that PWI has been **** the playerbase since the first Anniversary, losing the "support a good cause" reason.

As for what I think of others' spending: I don't care. It's their problem. And besides, I'm a cash shop merchant so people buying gold to sell it in the Gold Auction allows me to continue my craft.

I started playing PWI on October 25, 2008 and, at first, didn't spend a dime of real money on it and thought that would work out just fine. After a few months, I thought, "What the heck, 20 bucks is no big deal." Then it was $50 more... and $50 more... and so on. I'd guess by this point, I've spent at least $500 on PWI - and that doesn't include the fairly equal amount of charges my RL husband was making at the same time I was (we always tried to be fair, so if I charged, so did he, and vice versa).

Just to note: Gold ran around 100k in the AH at the time I started playing.

At first I told myself, "Well, I'm not buying any PS3 games or PC games, so what's 50 bucks or so a month? That's what I'd spend on a console/PC game if I was playing them instead." Now, looking back, I wish I'd spent on some other games instead of PWI because, no matter how much I put in, someone else always put more. When I was able to buy rank 8 by cashshopping, others were able to buy rank 9 but it was too expensive for me. When I was able to buy 50 packs and not get jack out of them, others were buying 500 packs at a time and getting scrolls of tome and all kinds of super-expensive items.

Does cashshopping give a serious advantage over non-cashshoppers in PWI? You bet. Does it make you a better player or a better person? No. Does it teach you the skills needed to be even somewhat successful in TW? No. Does having all rank 9 +12 gears expand your epeen? Probably, but it sure won't get you laid IRL.

Does PWI use the cash we put in to actually better the game? No, they use it to make new games, leaving PWI in the dust to rot away with it's bugs and glitches. Sure, we get expansions and really lame pay-to-win events that most of us can't even dream of competing in because we didn't blow our life's savings on the game.

Do I regret all the cash I spent? You better believe it, because I can never get it back, can never earn some kind of return on it. May as well have flushed it down the toilet or started a bonfire with it. In the future, perhaps I can come up with some better ways to spend my money, maybe invest it in something that will actually earn me something, because all I've earned from PWI is a bunch of pixel **** that has no practical use in the real world.

Yeah, yeah, I'm bitter, go ahead, flame all you like. It's just that when you give so much of your time, effort, and hard-earned cash, you generally expect something in return and really, we get nothing in return by playing PWI and continually putting money in their pockets. Now, if we got more new instances, some upgrades to the original classes, bug and glitch fixes that have been complained about and asked for for YEARS... maybe... just maybe it might be worth continuing to pay and play. But from my view at this point, PWI is broken.

If you took your car to be repaired weekly for nearly 3 years, paying cash every single time, and it never got fixed... would you keep trying or just junk it and buy a new car? To me, PWI is that broken old car that we keep sinking money into yet never actually seeing any indication that our money is fixing the problem.

Gold is now over 1mil in the AH. PWI gives a whole new meaning to the term "inflation."

PopppyyP - Raging Tide wrote: »

Hey guys b:laugh

(Im not too sure if this would be the right place, so move it if needed!)

Well I've been wondering recently what everyone elses views are on spending real life money, on a game, such as purchasing zen.
I know that a lot of people would see it as wasted money, whilst some would see it as not a problem, as you're spending on something you enjoy.
I for one, see it as not too much of a problem, because you're free to spend your earned cash however YOU want, and I have no problem with supporting games :P, and I have some spare cash so its okay.

What are your views on this? Do you purchase zen? If not why?
Im bored so would love to read your opinions b:victory

Let me put it this way.


I see nothing wrong with putting money into this game up to a point. For example, the 72 gold for r8? I think that's acceptable. r8 will put you at a level where you can enjoy the game more, and most games are about 50 bucks anyways. So yeah, 50-100 bucks, why not? I used to play another game where I generally paid 50 dollars every birthday and Christmas, but now I don't do that anymore, mostly because I'm not dying to be the best when many of "the best" players are absolutely helpless without their gear, and because there will ALWAYS be a new version of "the best." Why spend a fortune on r9 if it means I need to spend another fortune on r10 in a year's time? What's the point? Even so, I don't see the point in talking down to someone that DOES choose to spend money on this game. If they enjoy it, then whatever.

And now I get to the "to a point" part of my post. The big thing that bothers me about the heavy CSers that WOULD make me speak out against them is this: I find them stupid, pathetic and out of touch with reality. Having said that, I think someone SHOULD speak out against them. Why? Because it'll make them think twice about what they're doing, because in my opinion, these idiots are getting robbed blind.

Why stupid? Because I've spent 0 dollars on this game and I can still have PVP fun. If I go out to west gate to fight people, the majority of the people are like me and have done either no cash-shopping or limited cash shopping. We can fight each other and we all stand a chance. This makes our fights interesting and challenging, which in turn makes the game more fun. A r9 +12 on the other hand? If he goes to west gate, people leave. No one wants to put up with that, so they leave. They go to PK somewhere else against people their calibur. Those that stay? They die in one shot. The r9 literally tab targets and kills everything in one shot, then no one comes back....THIS is fun? Part of basic economics is that when you pay for something, you expect to get bang for your buck. Here I haven't spent a dime and I'm getting this great service absolutely free, whereas they're paying a fortune and what do they have to show for it? Their PK career is boring as snot. Plus, TW is something else. I dunno how it is on other servers, but Harshlands has a heavy CSer guild where almost everyone is R9. They're HORRIBLE at TW. They have two territories remaining, then they're off the map. You can't buy skill and strategy.


Why pathetic? When I was like 8 years old, every time I got a new video game, I was immediately on the hunt for cheat codes. I thought cheat codes made everything better, because I knew winning = good and cheat codes = winning. But after a while, I realized that the games I cheated on were only played for about 20 minutes, and once it was over, I wasn't satisfied. The games I played without cheats however, they lasted long, and I always felt like I'd accomplished something. To quote an old hippie movie, I had learned "the journey IS the destination."
The people who CS to get r9 +12? They apparently haven't learned that. They basically want cheat codes. They want to slam down a pile of $100 bills, get every advantage possible and feel like a winner, never asking themselves if it's all just an illusion, or if they're being played for a fool. They're basically paying the game to give them an ego boost. It makes me picture myself having a bad day at work, fighting with friends and I've got bills to pay, so to fix my bad mood, I play Super Mario World with a permanent Starman cheat code, and as I run through a line of Goombas, I tell myself "Oh yeah, I'm freaking amazing." I dunno another word to describe this except for pathetic.
And again, I dunno how it is on other servers, but on Harshlands, the r9s that PK don't PK each other. Oh no, they're all conveniently "friends." Nevermind that it's totally possible to play a game AGAINST your friends for fun, nevermind the elephant in the room of how convenient it is for EVERY r9 to be "friends:" it's clearly out of the question for these people to fight each other. That to me, says that these people aren't here to play: they're here to win. Such ambition would be great if they were playing basketball or something. That's the ambition that produces Michael Jordans and Kobe Bryants. The problem is the way they're playing the game is as if they played basketball and, instead of actually practicing, they just paid people to fill a stadium and cheer their name as they played against a "team" of people that were paid to lose. Just....wow that's pathetic.
Another good analogy is professional athletes who take steroids to be the best. Ok, you've shattered records, but is there anything to be proud of? You haven't proven YOU'RE capable of it, you've proven the drugs are. Same concept: a r9 +12 player isn't proving they're good, they're proving the gear is. But they're perfectly happy with this illusion that they're something special, and they're willing to let this company suck their wallets dry just to enjoy that illusion. ABSOLUTELY pathetic...



Why do they have no sense of reality? Because holy hell, I own a game called Fallout New Vegas. Owned it for about as long as I've played this game, a couple months less. I still play that game, because it has just that much stuff to do. That game cost me 40 euro. Why aren't the r9 +12 people buying other games? Or hell, I've heard a certain popular pay to play game is like 20 dollars a month or something, which is far cheaper than r9. By the time that pay-to-play game's subscription fee adds up to be more than the cost of r9, Perfect world will already have r12, and the cost to get that will far exceed what the p2p could ever cost.
And most importantly? I'm pretty sure the cost of r9 +12 full sharded could pay my rent. Twice.
What the HELL are these people thinking?


And through all of their stupidity and blind drive to win, what happens? The game becomes less enjoyable for the rest of us. Harshlands PK is now far less interesting because of a certain guild that seems to never get tired of one-shotting with their r9 gear, so they're constantly patrolling all the PK hot spots. The only time there's good PK is if there are players willing to suicide on those r9s so that others can enjoy PK at another hot spot. Server-wide competitions are less interesting as well: same names win the tournament every week, same names place first in the Tiger event every week. All of them have r9.

What PWI should perhaps ask itself is if it's all worth it. Look, I like this game and there's a reason I still play it. I know the company wants money, but sometimes the quick cash opportunities are more harmful in the long run. Yes, PWI makes thousands off these stupid, pathetic, out-of-touch players who will constantly be willing to buy the newest, most powerful gear without fail, but on the side, it makes minor CSers quit. Maybe one minor CSer gets upset because he no longer stands a chance in the tournament, something he used to be the best at. Maybe a guild full of minor CSers jumps ship to another game because they can't beat a CSing guild. People will disagree, but I was happy when PWI's income was packs. They were risky enough that it discouraged minor CSers from buying tons of them, cheap enough per unit that everyone could afford one every once and a while, and risky enough that even if someone DID CS like mad, it could take them a fair amount of time to have much to show for it, or it'd take long enough that even they began to think twice about CSing. When it was just packs, I ran into players I couldn't beat because they CSed so much, but they were so rare that it was tolerable. These days I don't PK much because that stupid guild on my server LITERALLY never gets tired of one-shotting people with their gear. They PK ALL DAY. The way it is now, we can all sit down and calculate out a price for the gears, and when there's a set price like that, the competitive idiots will all run to pay it.

You pay to have fun, the decision is entirely up to you. You don't have to listen to the QQers, *******, heavy CSers or butthurt players. Forums are a plague, I've yet to find a forum where people talk good about a game no matter which. If you so despise this game then quit and GTFO from the forums.

Consider it like this: IF you think you like the game, IF you are actually having fun, and IF you can spare some money and want to, then just go ahead. As long as you find that it is giving you a good time and you are actually having fun, then it is worth the money. The "If you are gonna spend that much go to another better p2p game" is BS, you as a player know what game you like better, and it ain't hard to find MMORPGs around.

Longknife - Harshlands wrote: »

Very well explained opinion.

+1 b:victory

You said out loud finally what some players keep inside and you did it the most respectful way possible.

Oh I'm willing to dish out reasonable amounts of RL cash...

When I have the cash for it XD.

I limit myself to 2 zen charges a month on paycheck weeks, and no more than 20 dollars per charge. Or when I suddenly get money and know I won't run out before my next paucheck, like this week. I've been good at keeping this rate, and in fact, I don't even need to charge that often. I spent 20 dollars this week and I think I'm set for another month, and maybe until next rep sale XD.

I've bought packs, random pigments, two fashion sets before I got into merchanting.

Otherwise, I'm definitely not going to skip groceries for game items.

What I find sad is the people who think they're much better persons and players because they spend RL cash on this game, or any other game for that matter DX.

ColdSnow - Dreamweaver wrote: »

What i find interesting that every CS (doesnt matter if moderate or heavy) regrets spending any real cash in this game after a while.

If you go out with friends and spend it on drinks etc. its not the case...

Doesn't matter as long as you enjoyed it. People get bored, and then regret having spent money. Sure dishing $100 a month is an exaggeration and anyone will regret it unless they can't find a place to put their extra $$. Games cannot be compared to RL stuff like going for a couple of drinks with friends and stuff, they can only be compared to a hobby. You pay and enjoy it, and sometimes eventually you get bored of it, and that money is already gone. Puff!

ColdSnow - Dreamweaver wrote: »

What i find interesting that every CS (doesnt matter if moderate or heavy) regrets spending any real cash in this game after a while.

If you go out with friends and spend it on drinks etc. its not the case...

Not me so far.

Because I expect that eventually I'm going to get bored with this game, I have no problems in limiting myself to small amounts. Who knows. Tomorrow I could decide to quit, or I can be laid off from work, but I won't feel bad for spending money. It's spent, it's what I wanted to spend it on, I had fun. It served its purpose, so why dwell on it?

Either ways, extra money is what I think this is for. Whether it's another game, a book, a night out with friends, or a random gaddet I've been wanting... I honestly never felt like I've truely wasted money.

LovesTragedy - Lost City wrote: »

Not me. I've been spending for about 2 years, well over $2500 on this game. I'm thinking about quitting because I am getting bored, and even still I dont regret it. One way or another, I'm leaving when a certain lightsaber infested mmo comes out, and even knowing I wont be playing for more than a few more months, I still charge, and I still dont regret it. It's money spent for time entertained. As long as I am entertained in the moment I spend it, I wont care once I am done.

Same, whoever actually regrets the money they spent did so for other reasons, not merely because they spent money. It's unfortunate if they can't confront this issue with sincerity and maturity and want to blame other things instead.

ColdSnow - Dreamweaver wrote: »

O.o who said that if they regret spending money in this game, they blame others. Most likely if they regret, they blame only themself. Thats only logical.

If you buy something and you dont like it..you can go and request your money back. On pwi its not possible. If i spend money on something in real life, then realise later on i actually never needed it...then heck yes...ofcourse i would regret it and it has nothing to do with "sincerity and maturity".

The analogy you gave goes for tangible items that denote possession by somebody upon purchase. This game is service based. The items are intangible.. imaginary, and owned by somebody else in every circumstance.

In this case, it's more like you're renting an item. You go rent a car for a week, try taking it back and telling them that you liked another car better and want your money back. Or better yet, try renting a movie, go watch it, take it back, and tell them you didn't like it or didn't like their service and want a refund. It doesn't work. Same goes for this.

As for blame, oh no, most do not blame themselves at all if they regret spending the money they spent. They tend to blame others, and guaranteed if the ability to chargeback were just as easy today as it was several years back when I dealt with chargeback issues for a competitor to PWI, people would sure as hell still be doing it. This does not denote personal responsibility or introspective reasoning.

JanusZeal - Heavens Tear wrote: »

The analogy you gave goes for tangible items that denote possession by somebody upon purchase. This game is service based. The items are intangible.. imaginary, and owned by somebody else in every circumstance.

In this case, it's more like you're renting an item. You go rent a car for a week, try taking it back and telling them that you liked another car better and want your money back. Or better yet, try renting a movie, go watch it, take it back, and tell them you didn't like it or didn't like their service and want a refund. It doesn't work. Same goes for this.

As for blame, oh no, most do not blame themselves at all if they regret spending the money they spent. They tend to blame others, and guaranteed if the ability to chargeback were just as easy today as it was several years back when I dealt with chargeback issues for a competitor to PWI, people would sure as hell still be doing it. This does not denote personal responsibility or introspective reasoning.

The mostly blame PWI, as though their money was somehow supposed to be the one dollar that made them decide not to change anything. They also tend to be the people that complain about the lack of new content. :P Games change, MMOs change, what made you one of the best players one day will be the reason your trailing behind someone who took advantage of the new content the next day. Also, games depreciate in value as do game items. Even tangible items do. That shiny new ipad you spent a ton of money on last year is outdated and crappy compared to the new ipad 2 this year. And that ipad is gonna look liek a joke when you see the ipad 3. If you enjoyed the money when you spent it at the time you spent it, than be happy with that. Don't think of any item in this game as an investment, if you want to invest merchant that way your stock is always changing to whatever is hot and in demand. If you want the best gear at the moment buy it with the realization that it's not going to be the best gear forever.

I have a big problem because i live in a country far away from America....I live in Trinidad so i don't get as much money as you guys especially when my parents don't have a visa debit card and also the currency is way different in my country than your's my money is worth 1/6 of your's and this is my problem thank you for reading.............>.<........... despite all of this i still enjoy the game but it is limited

LovesTragedy - Lost City wrote: »

Not me. I've been spending for about 2 years, well over $2500 on this game.

You're an idiot.

That is all.