It has been widely accepted, albeit begrudgingly tera gold that as companies looked for ways to make monetization more enticing, we the gamers have often been at a loss when it comes to directing how these companies actually do it.  Enter, the age of the Loot Box. In their simplest form they are miniature RNG loot containers, but in their most devious form they are Pay to Play slot machines with deceiving rewards.  Guild Wars 2 has implemented these loot boxes in the form of Black Lion Chests for a very long time, and with loot boxes under the microscope both by gamers and governments alike, is it time that we say goodbye to Black Lion Chests for good?

But You Still Get Something at Least

Black Lion Chests should be rewarding, every single time that you open them.  Like many loot boxes, Arenanet began giving a special currency away in every chest called Black Lion Statuettes, which, when you accrue enough, will allow you to choose from a number of items, or transition that currency into Black Lion Ticket Scraps, which can then be transferred into a Black Lion Ticket that can then be used to purchase skins of your choosing.  Simply explaining this shows how deep the rabbit hole goes in terms of the secret monetary “grind” that is hidden within areas of gameplay few players may actually tread.

What is really interesting in the grand scheme of things, is that Black Lion Chests, pound for pound are actually fairly good deals when you consider a dollar to gem ratio even with poor RNG.  For the purposes of this article, I decided to do my due diligence and open 25 Black Lion Chests, record my findings, and equate what I found to gems on the closest possible market items, often taking the lesser priced of them, to determine if what I’m getting from the Black Lion Chests are worth the cost of the keys to open them.  Here is what I found.

A Case Against Black Lion Chests

In Guild Wars 2, we have years of content which has accumulated so many tiny tidbits of exceptional game perks that I’d argue most gamers aren’t even privy to them all.  There are quite a few special knick knacks that players will acquire such as revive orbs, experience and crafting boosts, and all manner of airship passes that will teleport you to special vendors throughout Tyria.  In many cases, these items are available in the Black Lion Market, thereby basically equating real money for many of the items players may sometimes obtain for free.

In very rare cases, aside from the one per week story mission key “farm”, players may obtain a Black Lion Key during their game play which is the only way to open Black Lion Chests, which are a fairly commonplace drop, and dirt cheap on the auction house if you find yourself with a key and at a loss for a chest.  Unfortunately, the most common outcome will be a player that has stockpiled plenty of Black Lion chests and next to no keys to open them, pushing them into purchasing the keys from the Market using the cash currency of Gems.

As anyone familiar with loot boxes knows, anything inside these kinds of chests range Choose Products wildly from what the player actually wants, to items that aren’t worth the time spent opening them. Therein lies the crux of the issue with Black Lion chests. Much of what you obtain in these chests, including the Black Lion Material Bags, are items that players can and will accrue in game and aren’t tied directly to the cash shop, making your purchase useless in a wide number of cases.