Short post today: Here are some screenshots of the GW2 cash shop, courtesy of QQ Reporter.
There’s plenty of cosmetic stuff, as expected. And also loot bags and mystic keys (which can be used to open mystic chests that will be dropped randomly from mobs in the game.)
I’m not surprised that they’re going with the lottery route (ie. buy loot boxes to get random items), they want to raise money and some people love throwing money at loot boxes. And the money making possibilities of having locked boxes drop in the game that need some cash shop item (or quest item, or NPC purchased item) to unlock has been well established in other F2P games.
But I am still glad I play games that don’t do that.
Welcome to Spinksville! 
I hate lottery boxes with a passion. Those are really the only thing in the shop that I really dislike. Lockboxes I’m neutral on; apparently in GW1 there is something similar and keys are an uncommon drop ingame as well.
Overall nothing in the shop interests me personally except the dye packs and costumes.
Glad to see they are learning from LoL and TF2, the only free-to-play games I’ve ever been able to stomach.
OMG lockboxes. After a month of endless looting of those stupid boxes in Star Trek Online, it’s FINALLY OVER. Honestly, worst idea ever, it’s very annoying to loot (all boxes are uncommon or more, so there’s a roll), and they drop like 10 times more often than normal loots.
I must say that I went from “very likely to test GW2” to “I’ll wait and see”.
Yeah…after poking threw that link Helistar, I think I went from a fairly still enthusiatic supporter to “I think I’ll give this game a miss for now.” If ANet kept with vanity cosmetics and pets, I would of bare’d and grin’d it, like I did for first Guild Wars….and go off and do my own thing. But if they’re going to put in xp boosters (Why? I thought this game was all about the enjoyment of levelling); loot keys (which are free in GW); and other pay 2 win advantages, then that’s a deal breaker for me. Not only is that unethical and immersion killing, but it cheeses the game like kung-fu pandas and pokapets do with WoW’s next expansion IMO – least those come with the game.
I could on…but no thanks, ANet. Though I was really looking forward to your game at one time.
The shop’s exp boosters work for -mob kill exp- only. Whereas you get the lion’s share of exp from completing events and hearts.
Since grinding mobs is the least efficient way of earning experience in the game (intentionally so), so a 50% increase to the small amount of exp you get for killing things is not much of a gamebreaker imo. If anything it will make leveling alts more convenient for people.
Yeah I gathered that people do not like locked loot boxes and then having to buy something out of the cash shop. I heard STO fans talk about it but it seems they beat players over the head with it. Perhaps ArenaNet will lower the drop rate on them so it doesn’t turn into a consistent reminder that I’m not using the cash shop.
After all that is the point of beta. Test, test, and more test.
As has been pointed out before, lottery boxes are dangerously close to gambling. I predict that in the not-to-distant future some game company in the US is going to get in some serious legal trouble over this.
@Helistar I know. I signed up for STO in the middle of that. I uninstalled three days later.
GW1 has locked chests everywhere that you either buy a lockpick for (which can and often does break) or get dropped keys. I have no problem whatsoever just ignoring them.
If locked boxes drop in GW2 I will be leaving them on the ground or deleting them regardless of whether they require in-game money or real money to open. It’s a dumb mechanic and makes the game look cheap, but it’s very easy to ignore.
The annoying thing in GW1 was that the contents of the chests were totally unexciting and 99% likely to be worth less than the value of the key used to open them. Not GW1’s most stellar mechanic and certainly not something one would want to see replicated in GW2, or any game for that matter.
The loot box thing feels like they saw all that money Team Fortress 2 was making out of them and, given the heavy pvp focus, decided that this was the way to go.
Why they didn’t just opt for a cheaper subscription and a couple of extra months on the initial box price is beyond me.
This whole B2P thing has been pretty much a guaranteed gimmick from the get go, so now all we’re really getting is the second-worst of both worlds (with the worst obviously being the SOE EQ2 model). Happily, what with Vanguard and TSW, I think I’ll be more than happy to wait a bit and see how GW2 actually pans out.
I’m fine with this. They made it clear there wouldn’t be a pay to win thing-and I don’t count XP boosters to that(since they’re doing a sidekicking type thing for one, and for two, level is level, it’s not a gear to power.) Furthermore, how the gear works in the game anyway lacks the gear creep(and you don’t get gear from this anyway.) If the lockboxes just contain a random piece of cosmetic stuff, I’m really not seeing an issue with this, at ALL.I’m still just as excited for the game as I was before. There is nothing I’m hearing from the store that will unbalance the game even a thread.
I agree – I don’t understand the fuss on some forums. there’s already XP boost items in many MMO (I just got a few in Rift by re-subbing). none of the items I’ve seen so far are pay-to-win and gear overall is a different deal in GW2 than let’s say WoW. I think we should give it the benefit of the doubt until we see more.