Guild Wars 2 1-80 now Free-to-Play

Today we’re happy to announce that the Guild Wars 2 core game is available for everyone to play for free. With Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns™ launching soon, there’s no better time to introduce the game to your friends.

Our Business Model

Guild Wars 2 has the simplest of business models: buy the game and play it as long as you want with no monthly fees. We’ve been championing this as a great business model for MMOs since launching the first Guild Wars® a decade ago. We continue to believe in buy-to-play. It’s good for gamers and good for developers.

This business model has been fantastic for Guild Wars 2 and our fans. Since launching three years ago—almost to the day, today—we’ve sold more than 5 million copies of the game. And we’ve delivered more than 40 major content releases, with world-changing events, Living World episodes, and feature packs, all free of charge.

Expansions are the one place where the buy-to-play model gets a little tricky. When you’re coming in as a new player to a game that has a bunch of expansions, what exactly should you buy in order to play with your friends? The base game and also every single expansion? We’ve seen examples in the industry where that kind of thing has gotten out of control. It doesn’t seem right, and we want to do better. As we get ready to ship our first expansion forGuild Wars 2, we want to ensure that we keep the business model friendly and simple. So let’s be clear that when we say Guild Wars 2 is buy-to-play, we’re only asking you to buy one thing: the current release, Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns.

To accomplish that, we’ve already included the core game as a free bundle for anyone who buysGuild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns. And today we’ll go a step further: we’re making the core game free for everyone. For anyone who’s been curious about Guild Wars 2, now you can just go to guildwars2.com, download the game, and start playing.
If anyone can play Guild Wars 2 for free now, does that mean we’re switching business models to free-to-play? Are we going to be one of those games that aggressively monetizes free players through microtransactions? Absolutely not. Guild Wars 2 remains the same game it always has been. We’re making the core game experience free because we’re confident that anyone who loves Guild Wars 2 will buy Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns.

Getting the Details Right

A game like Guild Wars 2 lives and dies by its community. Our goal is to protect our current community but also to make it as easy as possible for you to introduce the game to your friends, to recruit new players into your guilds, to challenge new players to Player vs. Player matches, and so on.

It’s trickier than you’d think to accomplish both objectives. We have to ensure that free accounts can’t be used to abuse the game or its current players (through botting, cheating, spamming, or RMT) while still making sure that free accounts get the authentic Guild Wars 2experience.

Here are the changes we made for free accounts.

First, free accounts start with fewer character slots and bag slots than the paid version of the game. But they still get the full complement of slots as soon as they buyGuild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns.

Second, free accounts have some chat restrictions and economy restrictions so that they can’t be used to disrupt the game for other players. Free accounts can use local chat and whispers, but not map chat. With whispers, they can both start new conversations and reply to existing conversations but are limited to starting new conversations no more than once every 30 seconds. Free accounts can buy and sell common goods on the trading post. They can’t mail gold or items directly to other players, trade gold for gems, or access guild vaults.

Third, free accounts have some restrictions to prevent them from skipping ahead to places where they could be used to disrupt the game. They must play to level 10 before leaving the starter zones, to level 30 before using LFG, and to level 60 before using World vs. World. They can play PvP immediately but must get to rank 20 before using custom and unranked arenas.

We’ve found in testing that it’s hard to read a list like this and know how it’s going to feel in action. All these changes are live today, so we invite you to see for yourself. Test with a free account and see that it’s the same Guild Wars 2 you know and love; test with a veteran account and confirm that the community is protected.

We have an exhaustive FAQ covering these changes and other topics related to the free game, so check it out if you have additional questions.



A Call to Action

Guild Wars 2 is famous for having the friendliest community in online gaming, and that community continues to grow. With Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns on the horizon, of course the game was going to have an influx of new players. And now, with this change, it will have a larger one. I ask you, the game’s veterans, to be the friendly faces that will welcome all these new players to the game.

To celebrate this special three-year anniversary of Guild Wars 2, we’re giving current players an all-new Royal Guard Outfit. Wear it with pride whenever you want to show that you were there early on, and that you’re someone that new players can go to for help.

Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns is full of end-game content, including Masteries, Fractals, Stronghold, and our newly announced challenging group content, raids. It’s coming on October 23, just 55 days from now! This is the perfect time to bring new players into your guild, to help them level up and master their professions, to practice coordinating as a team, and to prepare for all the challenges that the jungle will bring.

Mike O’Brien

 

Most of it is to prevent spam bots and problematic people ruining paid players experiences. Chat, trade and zone advancement restrictions (level based). As you said, it's not really that limiting especially concerning the gameplay itself. Heck I probably met most of them myself back when I first played though. Of course anyone that really likes the game and wants to remove the restrictions simply has to buy the game.

 

I'm undecided on the expansion but I've had the game since launch, playing it on and off since. The F2P model is pretty solid, although so far my server hasn't seen much of it, it's pretty empty still but I kinda like it that way too. Great a good guild and the emptiness just disappears.

Ah it sucks you didn't get the server you wanted but you can join Guild cross server and with the megaserver tech running you might even end up playing with some from that server at times. You can also Guest onto Aurora Glade (assuming it works for F2P), which allows you to play on that server until you log out.

 

Ah very good, WvW is like the one area that server is important. Good it's sorted. WvW isn't my cup of tea but from what i played of it it's still quite fun. Hope you guys enjoy it!

 

sPvP was excellent in Guild Wars 1, I never got around to trying it in Guild Wars 2 though. Good to hear it's well done. I've seen a ton of improvements since launch, they have been really pushing to try to get Guild Wars 2 sPvP into eSports.

 

https://help.guildwars2.com/entries/95982157?_ga=1.54248744.1043658533.1414436536

Instead of breaking it down I'm just gonna say Guild Wars 2 offers a lot of value for what it is, it's definitely one to upgrade if you like the game. I'd say play to 80, if you make it to 80 then upgrade. The biggest restrictions are on gold seller prevention (IE limits on selling on the trading post) and chat so 1 to 80 is possible although they added a few "road blocks" (you probably wont hit them if you don't rush) to make bots work for it instead of standing in the most popular town spamming gold selling.

*If* you reach 80 or are just really enjoying it then upgrade to Hearts of Thorns, it removes all the restrictions completely and adds the expansion for post 80 and unlocks a new class. Think of it as a post-paid so even if you don't get as many hours post purchase you paid for the whole experience.

This isn't League of Legends were they survive on nickel and dimming, they need the game sales. If nothing else consider supporting them for not being complete free-to-play pay-to-win garbage.

 

O no, ArenaNet is too cool for that. Level 80 is just the level cap... and that applies to everyone though Heart of Thorns added post 80 mastery progression but you'd need the expansion anyways so it's not "locked". Basically you got the core game for free with a few restrictions to protect paid players experiences like new players not being able to go to LA until level 35 aka so a bot can't roll on in and spam away. Also restrictions on the trading post so free players can't destroy the economy, real world trade etc. Basically everything pre the Heart of Thorns expansion is unlocked. World vs. World is locked until 60 but that's probably a good thing anyways. Also no daily login bonuses.

The core game has 8 main dungeons plus Fractals. As far as I know free players are not restricted from them in any way.

Also on levels, 80 is just a thing. Guild Wars 2 really isn't about getting to max level. It's pretty easy to do, it's about everything else.

 

For sure, it gives so much free so can definitely get a good feel for it first. Maybe you'll get sucked in, maybe not.

 

It's one of the best F2P models, I just hope it's sustainable long term and doesn't hurt box sales too much.