Normally, buying in-game virtual currency is a really easy task. Guild Wars 2 in-game cash shop even states this (“getting more gems is easy!”) when you click the “Buy Gems” button.
The reality it that this is anything but easy. Once I confirmed my order, I simply came back to the above (not the expected confirmation that “your order was successful”) or since this was Paypal, you would usually be redirected to the Paypal site to login to complete the actual transaction. Checking the purchase history in-game confirmed the order had not gone through.
So I tried again with a credit card and saw a flash of red before it returned to the above. I had to record the next attempt in order to see what the message was because it went away in less than a second; the error message was as follows.
Doing a quick search, it seems that this has been an ongoing problem for credit cards AND Paypal (following was on the first page and I didn’t bother going further).
https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/49588/unable-to-purchase-gems-merged
https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/54143/cant-buy-gems-using-paypal-merged
https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/85529/unable-to-buy-gems-in-game
Trying some of the troubleshooting steps (like removing the games cache) didn’t work (I tried with several different credit cards for good measure in the process). I also disabled my firewall just to make sure.
Most companies would usually place a very high priority on addressing order and payment flow problems (and there is clearly a problem with the game client properly handing in-game transaction processing). I put in a support ticket (since it’s the best way to serve as documentation).
The fact this has been ongoing for many other players highlights one potential reason for why parent NCSoft ordered the reduction in force earlier this year. This is simply lost revenue for ArenaNet where you have customers willing to spend money, but are unable to have their transaction fulfilled because of a failure in backend order and payment flow. It’s a less than positive customer experience where the company ends up leaving money on the table and making the customer frustrated in the process.
I purchased the Heart of Thorns and Path of Fire bundle via Paypal just fine from their website. There is simply no option to buy gems from their website though. The in-game purchasing failure exists between game client and their (ArenaNet’s) backend (yes, I know their payment processor is Digital River; which I mentioned works fine via their website shop). They don’t seem at all concerned either since even their support document is lacking (the cause of the issues are put on everything else except maybe problems with their own system).
I have credits from my Ultimate package purchase and an additional 1600 gems from the Heart of Thorns refund request. I simply wanted to take advantage of some sales they have going as I have been enjoying my time playing (and I have no issues spending money on titles that I’m enjoying and with companies that have decent business practices). I would’ve given this a pass if it weren’t an ongoing thing (forum links above).
I’m going to try one last time once a CSR replies to my ticket and provides whatever suggestion to help resolve the purchase. If it doesn’t work, I’m just going to chalk it up to the company not wanting mine (and other players) money and just ration what I currently have because this is on ArenaNet to fix their in-game billing system (and if they don’t, I will take that as an implicit message that they don’t want a continued stream of revenue from folks like myself).
UPDATE: It took a little over 2 days for a CSR to reply to the ticket and then several hours later for another agent to provide a resolution (they are probably manually whitelisting accounts temporarily). I was able to make a gem purchase through Paypal on September 6th.
