User talk:Jink/Dear Anet

My own rant
This may be a bit longer-winded than my wife's.

I really liked it when Anet first introduced the in-game store. The initial offerings were pretty good. Skill/item unlock packs were great for people who really thought they needed that edge for PvP but couldn't be bothered to spend the time playing PvE. Extra character slots were awesome - between myself and Jink, we've bought at least 10 of them.

The new stuff they've added this year, though, make it seem like Anet's desperate for money, and with no new campaigns/expansions, they've finally decided to cash in on features that people have been requesting constantly for the past four years. Most of the following is paraphrased from actual arguments that I remember Anet making against them in the past.


 * Extra storage? Sorry, the Vault Box isn't really designed for expandability... oh wait, here, have some material storage.  And we guess we'll add some extra panes, but they're dependent on you buying multiple campaigns.  Still not enough?  Sorry, that's really the limit of what we can do... oh wait, here, you can double your storage space now... for $40.
 * Name changes? Sorry, we think that'll be abused too much... oh wait, we guess we can let you have them.  If you're willing to pay $15.  Per change.
 * Appearance changes? Sorry, our system isn't really designed to handle that, it would be way too much work for us to put that in... oh wait, look, we can do it!  Well, temporarily.  No way we could put in functionality to let you make permanent changes like that... oh wait, it wasn't that bad after all.  Let's see, how does $2 for plastic surgery and a hairdresser sound?  Or $10 for a sex change?
 * Pet unlocks? Hrm... well, it's not that hard to level a pet in PvE, and PvP characters automatically get a level 20 pet anyway, so what do you need that for?  Sorry, you shouldn't hold your breath for this... oh wait, look, we did it anyway!  $10 lets you pick whichever fluffy cat or clickety crab you want!
 * Town clothes/costumes? Sorry, it doesn't really seem like there's enough interest in those, and besides, there's really no way for us to work that into our system... oh wait, surprise!  We did it anyway!  But we're lazy so we're not going to bother making them a reward for interesting, lore-related, in-game quests (we're still pooped from all that Halloween and Dhuum stuff we did, wasn't that stuff totally awesome?!?!), and we're also greedy so we're not going to let you buy them with in-game gold [never mind that they would've made an AWESOME gold sink], so ya better cough up $10.

Needless to say, I haven't bought any of those, and I don't plan to. My characters are just gonna have to live with the names and faces I gave them. And unless I'm lucky enough to grab one of the codes they're posting on Facebook/Twitter, they're going to miss out on playing dress up, too. Darn. &mdash;Dr Ishmael 05:04, December 18, 2009 (UTC)