This game tricks Steam Users into wrong purchases!!

[Bonebreaker]

First off, yes this is a bit of complaining and warning for complete new users like me.

I bought the game through steam with both expansion packages. I realy thought buying all expansions from steam would give access to all ingame content until today. But after playing the game for a while i realized that there is this living season stuff which cant be unlocked through normal playing (except trading gold for diamonds which can take some time as a new player). To unlock all the missing content i would need to pay around another 60€ (maybe a bit more) as a Steam user. And you cant upgrade to the big package after you allready purchased an expansion to save a bit money!

After thinking a bit about i decided to buy a GEM Card for this game, which normaly could be redeemed through the Arena.net side. BUT since we are just stupid STEAM USERS, Arena Net dosnt thread us the same as the rest of its community.

The Offical Support told me: "Unfortunately, gem card codes cannot be redeemed in-game (or on the site) for Guild Wars 2 accounts that were created on Steam. If you attempt to add a gem code to your Guild Wars 2 Steam account, an error will be presented."

Why the f.... isnt such important shown or told us at place where everyone can see it right from the start and dosnt need to figure it out for himself first. A Good place for a warning would be the Tab where you can purchase GEM Stones in the Lions Store.

I wasted now over 20€ for something that i cant use and Store where i bought it dosnt refund Currency Codes.

[Nothing]

Doesn't trick anyone at all or try to. There have been hundreds of these threads so if you did some looking into the forums you would have known. lol @ u

[r.szergi]

Steam take their share from every ingame gem purchases a steam player make. With gem cards they would lose this money, so most probably they are the ones who wanted the system this way not Arenanet.
The best thing you can do find a friend/trustwothy ppl who play on the original client and trade your gem code for steam money or wathever.

[Sychon]

From the Store Page:

Living World seasons continue the Guild Wars 2 story between expansions and must be purchased separately through your Story Journal or in Gem Store bundles.

If you read the contents of the Complete Collection, you will see that Living World is listed there, too. Hence its price tag of $100.

Since the combined price of the expansions only amount to $60, one could easily deduct that there must be differences in what you get from each purchase.

The bundle info on the complete collection lists three DLCs while there are only two available separately.

Also, while it's not on the Store Page and we can argue about it whether it should be or not, but from the pinned FAQ:

In-game purchases can only be made with the Steam Wallet within the Steam client. Gem and game codes obtained outside of Steam cannot be redeemed by Steam users.

[Xylion]

Originally posted by Bonebreaker:

To be fair, when you go on the shop page on steam, you can see that there's a pack that says "Guild Wars 2 - Complete Collection", reading through it, it literally tells you that with the pack you get all the expansions and all the living world. If you click on the blue "more info" button, it explains even further what you get with it -
Quoting: "The Complete Guild Wars 2 Collection includes the Guild Wars 2 Base Game and all three expansions: Guild Wars 2: End of Dragons, Guild Wars 2: Path of Fire, and Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns. You'll also receive 5 Living World seasons to continue with your journey between the expansions.


*The Living World DLC (Seasons 2-5) is non-refundable and cannot be purchased on Steam separately. Living World episodes become playable at level 80."

That, plus the fact that there has been several topics on here, reddit and the official gw2 forums about it, makes the whole thing pretty transparent, without any kind of tricks.
Additionally, there's also this line: "**Please note that existing Guild Wars 2 player accounts cannot be accessed via Steam", which makes it pretty obvious, that the 2 accounts and services aren't connected to each other.
In regards to the gems code, if you can't get a refund for it, try finding someone to exchange it with.

[Nico]

I can agree on that it's not super obvious that you can't buy gem cards and use them for the Steam version. But I don't get why one would even want to do that in the first place, just buying gems ingame with the Steam wallet seems way easier to me ...

And well, did you really thought that the Complete Edition they offered here on Steam would not actually contain all of the content? Or why did you think that you get access to all content if you just buy part of the content of the complete edition? Though it is kinda annoying that you can't buy the living story seperate from the complete edition.

Also, your math is wrong, it costs a total of 4160 gems to buy all living story, which is just around 52€. Or 50€ for 4000 gems and you get the rest with ingame gold. still more expensive than the 40€ DLC but not the 60€ you mentioned.

It feels like most of the problems come from Steam guidelines, that don't allow a game to be here on Steam but you can make all purchases for the game outside of Steam, like on the ArenaNet website or via gem cards.

https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/store/review_process

Your product must use Steam Wallet for any in-game transactions.
This means that your product cannot link to other store pages that does not offer Steam Wallet.

So it's not entirely ArenaNet fault that the purchases are so restricted.

[Bonebreaker]

Originally posted by Nico:

And well, did you really thought that the Complete Edition they offered here on Steam would not actually contain all of the content? Or why did you think that you get access to all content if you just buy part of the content of the complete edition? Though it is kinda annoying that you can't buy the living story seperate from the complete edition.

Well in other games words like "complete collection" refer to optional bonus stuff that isnt realy that usefull. Like mounts, skins, weapons, some desktop oder music extras or art book. Only few games add some very short side mission which also are not needed or important. Thats why i thought i would be fine if i just bought both expansions.

Even if it just around 50€ it would be more expensiv than if i had bought just the whole package (the money isnt my issue here). There should be at least an upgrade option or something like that.

The reason why i bought a GEM Card is because it was cheaper than the normal ingame prices which only gives you 1600 gems for 20€ (which seems pretty expensiv to me).

[Karnage]

Originally posted by Bonebreaker:

Originally posted by Nico:

And well, did you really thought that the Complete Edition they offered here on Steam would not actually contain all of the content? Or why did you think that you get access to all content if you just buy part of the content of the complete edition? Though it is kinda annoying that you can't buy the living story seperate from the complete edition.

Well in other games words like "complete collection" refer to optional bonus stuff that isnt realy that usefull. Like mounts, skins, weapons, some desktop oder music extras or art book. Only few games add some very short side mission which also are not needed or important. Thats why i thought i would be fine if i just bought both expansions.

Even if it just around 50€ it would be more expensiv than if i had bought just the whole package (the money isnt my issue here). There should be at least an upgrade option or something like that.

The reason why i bought a GEM Card is because it was cheaper than the normal ingame prices which only gives you 1600 gems for 20€ (which seems pretty expensiv to me).

Huh? Gem cards offer the same amount of gems per price as in-game does. I just confirmed this in my own currency and your own.

[Bonebreaker]

Originally posted by ☣️Karnage:

Originally posted by Bonebreaker:

Well in other games words like "complete collection" refer to optional bonus stuff that isnt realy that usefull. Like mounts, skins, weapons, some desktop oder music extras or art book. Only few games add some very short side mission which also are not needed or important. Thats why i thought i would be fine if i just bought both expansions.

Even if it just around 50€ it would be more expensiv than if i had bought just the whole package (the money isnt my issue here). There should be at least an upgrade option or something like that.

The reason why i bought a GEM Card is because it was cheaper than the normal ingame prices which only gives you 1600 gems for 20€ (which seems pretty expensiv to me).

Huh? Gem cards offer the same amount of gems per price as in-game does. I just confirmed this in my own currency and your own.

The shop where i bougt it, sold the cards a bit cheaper so i could save 2-3 €. But it dosnt matter anymore, after talking to them for a while i will get my refund now.

[Karnage]

Originally posted by Bonebreaker:

Originally posted by ☣️Karnage:

Huh? Gem cards offer the same amount of gems per price as in-game does. I just confirmed this in my own currency and your own.

The shop where i bougt it, sold the cards a bit cheaper so i could save 2-3 €. But it dosnt matter anymore, after talking to them for a while i will get my refund now.

Oh, I see. So you were getting them at a discount.

[Xylion]

Originally posted by Bonebreaker:

The shop where i bougt it, sold the cards a bit cheaper so i could save 2-3 €. But it dosnt matter anymore, after talking to them for a while i will get my refund now.

Just a headsup, buying gemcards on reseller sites like g2a and such, you're risking getting banned. I took a few deals myself as well and didn't experience any issue with it, but I know a few cases where the player got their account restricted, because the original seller refunded the keys after they sold them to them.

[Bonebreaker]

Originally posted by Xylion:

...

I know that problem to, but i have 2 very good and trustworthy sites where i always buy my stuff and never had any issues in the past 20 years. So i think its fine, you just need to know where you buy your stuff.

[Densiz]

"i realized that there is this living season stuff which cant be unlocked through normal playing (except trading gold for diamonds which can take some time as a new player)"
you can still buy with $ from ingame store :/
it will cost you 10$more or you can wait ingame discounts.

[Zethell]

Complete pack on Steam includes the entirety of LWS for a great price.
Doesn't appear to trick anyone in my book, if anything they encourage you to get the complete pack at a good deal.

Obviously you can't redeem a third party gem card on Steam.
If this limitation wasn't mentioned on the third party site or retailer, then those people were the ones who scammed/tricked you.

This limitation was also mentioned on the pinned FAQ post in the Steam Discussions for Guild Wars 2.

[__]

The argument that it takes a long time to grind gold for gems as a new player to get the lw is a bit skewed. There is a lot of game before the 1st paid lw so by the time you are ready for it you won't be new & should have a grasp on making gold. Also a lot of the more valuable mats are in the base game.

[Bonebreaker]

Originally posted by ALPHAFERT:

The argument that it takes a long time to grind gold for gems as a new player to get the lw is a bit skewed. There is a lot of game before the 1st paid lw so by the time you are ready for it you won't be new & should have a grasp on making gold. Also a lot of the more valuable mats are in the base game.

I play this game now maybe for a bit more than a weak, most of the time i only did story so far to unlock all the mastery stuff and so on. Im now at Chapter 10 from PoF and skipped S2 because of GEMs. If im good i get 1g per h at best. Most of the time its less and i allready sell most of the loot at the marketboard and rest to the npc. I still have no idea (except from selling some mats at ah) how to make a decent amount of money in a reasonable amount of time.

Thats why i plan to buy the gems, because otherwise it would take me over a month to be able to continue the story.