Friendly reminder about build templates, vote with your wallet.

invest

That’s your problem and that’s the problem a lot of other people who buy things with real money for MMOs have. You make the mistake of viewing money spent on the game as an investment instead of what it actually is, a sunken cost. Any money you spend on any MMO is a sunken cost, it doesn’t add any value to your account because you cannot legally sell it, you can’t eat it, it isn’t something tangible that you can keep forever, it’s not under any warranty if the MMO shuts down.

Whether this sunken cost is acceptable or not is completely subjective, I spend approx $20 a month because there’s no subscription fee but I still want to support the continued running of GW2. As a bonus, I get to choose in-game rewards for that money that would otherwise just be subscription cost for another game. The main difference being that I don’t lose access to the game if I don’t feel like paying on any given month (which does happen.)
I accept that this $20 monthly is pretty much money in the trash. If I quit GW2 and never log in again, if Anet decides to shut down it’s servers, if I get banned for any reason or no reason, it’s not like I’m losing some kind of investment, this money was never invested. It was always and will always be money that I spent while acknowledging that I would never see a dime of that money again and that it didn’t actually add any worth to my experience beyond temporary enjoyment of an in game good.

This isn’t the same as buying an antique that continues to build value with age and displaying it in your home. This isn’t buying stocks. This isn’t buying any kind of commodity really. You’re buying in game gems to use as currency to buy additional build slots beyond the two you already eat for free (if you buy them.)
This is a sunken cost. It adds something to the game that you feel would increase your enjoyment of the game, but beyond that, you haven’t put your money towards anything of tangible value. You’re not investing in anything.

/r/Guildwars2 Thread Parent