The Guild Wars 2 blog has been updated with a most interesting post by Arena.Net founder Mike O'Brien. In it, O'Brien discusses the framework for the microtransaction system and the goals that Arena.Net has in mind.

Much of the post centers around this: Here’s our philosophy on microtransactions: We think players should have the opportunity to spend money on items that provide visual distinction and offer more ways to express themselves. They should also be able to spend money on account services and on time-saving convenience items. But it’s never OK for players to buy a game and not be able to enjoy what they paid for without additional purchases, and

Guild Wars 2 has been built, says O'Brien, for microtransactions from the get-go rather than as an afterthought similar to the original Guild Wars. The game will have three currencies: Gold that can be traded and used for ordinary transactions; Karma which cannot be traded and is used for purchasing unique items in-game; and Gems that players purchase and use for microtransaction purchases.

From a player’s perspective, RMT companies have all the wrong motivations: the more money they make from selling gold, the more they spam ads in the game, run bot networks to farm gold, and hack accounts to loot them for gold. Conversely, under our system, players have all the right motivations. If a player buys gold from another player, he gets the gold he wants, the selling player gets gems she can use for microtransactions, and ArenaNet generates revenue from the sale of gems that we can use to keep supporting and updating the game. Everyone wins.

Read the full post on the Guild Wars 2 blog.

Pure win if u ask me.

Here’s our philosophy on microtransactions: We think players should have the opportunity to spend money on items that provide visual distinction and offer more ways to express themselves. They should also be able to spend money on account services and on time-saving convenience items. But it’s never OK for players to buy a game and not be able to enjoy what they paid for without additional purchases, and it’s never OK for players who spend money to have an unfair advantage over players who don’t.

I like their philosophy on Microtransactions, wish more companies would adopt such.

One big question that I would love for mmorpg.com to ask anet on the beta.

Can you buy gems for money and buy gold with those gems to become wealthy in-game??

It sounds to me like you can actually just buy gems and become instantly rich ingame... no $$ from me for Anet... for now at least.

Originally posted by ChuvarHrama

Pure win if u ask me.

 

All cash shop items can be bought with in-game gold! How is this pure win? (if you were thinking on P2W?)

It is pure win because I can elect to either spend my time or my real money for items in the cash shop.  I can't imagine a fairer system.

I think this system is great, because it will eradicate gold sellers.

As a non-future-GW2 player, I think it'll be fine as they have detailed it. STO is set up the same way in that you can buy and sell c-points in the game for dilithium. Last I checked though, the conversion rate was so high that only the trully wealthy (i.e. those that can afford to buy a Galor on the exchange) would actually be making the conversions.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I think the players will balance this out themselves and it won't be a real problem for anyone except the crybabies who need to complain about everything.

Edit: btw Suzie, could you get the mods to start cleaning up the multitude of "GW2 cashshop" threads that popped up?

This actually looks very bright

Originally posted by Kuppa

One big question that I would love for mmorpg.com to ask anet on the beta.

Can you buy gems for money and buy gold with those gems to become wealthy in-game??

In the blog, he does say that you can purchase gems with money, and that you can sell gems ingame to other players for gold.  However, I didn't see anything about buying gold with money.  I think they want to keep players involved in the commerce.  If players could simply buy gold from the game for money, then the value of gold would drop continuously.

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Originally posted by Kuppa
One big question that I would love for mmorpg.com to ask anet on the beta.
Can you buy gems for money and buy gold with those gems to become wealthy in-game??

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It's already answered in the blog

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We have a new player-driven market that allows players to trade gold for gems and gems for gold

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Originally posted by Damon

Originally posted by Kuppa

One big question that I would love for mmorpg.com to ask anet on the beta.

Can you buy gems for money and buy gold with those gems to become wealthy in-game??

 

In the blog, he does say that you can purchase gems with money, and that you can sell gems ingame to other players for gold.  However, I didn't see anything about buying gold with money.  I think they want to keep players involved in the commerce.  If players could simply buy gold from the game for money, then the value of gold would drop continuously.

 

But what they have is just one layer of abstraction from directly buying ingame currency with gold. I know the main reason they did this though is to prevent RMT but its a bit hard to swallow still....

This is about as close to perfect as you can get in a Microtransaction supported game. 

No one loses.  

Player 1 - No time, has some real life money, can either buy cash shop items with Gems, or sell Gems on AH for Gold. 

Player 2 - Plenty of time, no real life money, can earn MT items via farming in the game, buying Gems for Gold in the Trading post. 

Player 3 - Med Time/Med RL Money can do a little bit of both. 

What I'm really liking about this more than anything is, it's more support to the in game economy.  

Lastly, it really discourages gold farmers simply because it'll be likely easier to purchase Gems directly from Arenanet and sell them on the Trading Post for Gold, rather than go outside the game. 

GW2 Microtransaction System = FLAWLESS

I think its a win so, congrats arenanet

I'll be avoiding this until I see how it affects the economy. Since GW2 isn't gear-based (and the pretty stuff comes from Karma, non-tradeable) this may not hurt it. If however, it does deflate the value of gold, I'll avoid it and simply spend money on the item mall as I originally planned to. I can't be arsed to farm. Anet's track record and philosophy are the only thing that's keeping me calm and logical, the current game doesn't really allow a reason to horde gems for anything other than what it's meant to be used for (cash shop items), but the foundation is now there for something worse and it will now be one more thing for Anet to constantly keep balanced as they bring new content to the game.