BWE 3 Black Lion Trading Company Changes

For those of us who are diving headfirst into Guild Wars 2 from other MMOs that don’t feature microtransaction/cash shops, the idea of such a shop in GW2 may still taste a little bitter on our tongues. We’ve all heard the horror stories of games drifting to unwanted pay-to-win territories, and we’re all hoping that ArenaNet avoids going anywhere near that path. Will the company succeed? I sure hope so. They’re doing some excellent things with their cash shop. Still, my eyes remain sharp to the changes being made to it. As a result, I’ve been tracking the shop’s differences between beta weekends.

Every beta weekend event has seen some pretty large changes to the in-game gem/cash shop. Since BWE2, it now sports a new name: Black Lion Trading Company. For those interested in tracking the changes made along with me, here are the changes made between BWE2 and BWE3.

First off, the largest change. We finally have a preview section! All areas of the game, in fact, have a preview option now, which is great. Right-clicking and selecting the option enables it throughout the game, but in the Trading Company window, it shows up naturally on the left side of the window upon viewing any of the clothing items. Here’s what it looks like in-game:

Shown is a female sylvari in the Pirate Captain’s Outfit. All items in the Style tab will pop up the preview window.

Now, for the other changes. They’ll be organized by the tab they’re located in. For a list of the shop items that remain unchanged from BWE2, check here.

Style tab

• Both types of Transmutation Stones are now in Consumables instead of Style.
• New item: Boxing Gloves [300 gems]
Hand Clothing
These exaggerated boxing gloves give you over the top air-boxing abilities. SLAM! POW! WHACK! Town clothes cannot be worn in combat. Account Bound.

Consumable tab

• New item: Cow Finisher [75 gems, 5 for 275]
When activated, your character will drop a cow on your enemies to finish them off in PvP and WvW. Lasts for one hour. Account Bound.
• New item: Tournament Ticket [5 for 75 gems]
Used for certain tournaments which require an entry fee. This item is free for testing purposes only. Trophy. Account Bound.

Services tab (previously Support)

• Blag Slot Expansion moved to Upgrades tab.
• Perfect Salvage Kit is renamed to Black Lion Salvage Kit.

Upgrades tab (previously Account)

• Contains both Bag Slot Expansion and Bank Tab Expansion
• Temporary removal of Character Slot Expansion
I looked into this one. The removal was just for BWE3. Here is the ArenaNet dev quote: “Yes, there are some known issues regarding character slots with this build, so we took them off the store. They will be available at launch.”

Boosts tab

• New item: Glory Booster [75 gems, 5 for 275]
  Gain an additional 50% Glory for the next one hour.

All-in-all, ArenaNet’s changes seem acceptable and fair so far. We haven’t seen a major addition of game-changing items (hopefully we never will) and that’s definitely a step in the right direction.