Guild Wars 2

I remember back in november/december a dev saying that we could expect updates as big as an expansion on January/February. I was quite skeptical actually since usually things are blown out of proportion in games but I think it really didn’t even come close to expectations.

What we got is tweaks to professions, Increased drop rate of chests, more ascended accessories. The biggest update was the daily revamp and the laurel system and updates to sPvP. It’s not really that bad but I think close to an expansion was a bit too much.

To me something worth of an expansion is additional pve maps with events or a wvw map, pvp maps is good but just 1 was added, Additional skins, new weapons, levels or profession, or dungeons. And the only other thing that came close was the revamp to AC but I’m not sure if that was necessary.

What do you guys think?

Well, that clearly didn’t happen. Every single 2012 patch was bigger than jan+feb combined.

But sometimes plans change. I doubt what we got these past two months is what that person was talking about.

As a casual player I very much appreciate of the sPvP rework. Also new Daily system is fun in my opinion. Haven’t even gotten to the new PvE content “flame and frost” story and guild missions (my guild is new and whack), everybody loves new maps though…

You have to remember that they had to end up splitting it into three months, instead of just the two. Thus why March is supposed to bring us the rest of the content as well.

So March “should” be a mega patch that will blow us all away (if they are sticking to the whole “big enough to be an expansion” worth of content). So once that arrives, then we can decide if this was an expansions worth of content.

See Colin’s post about halfway down the page. They are releasing the content over the first half of 2013.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/January-updates-Any-sources/first

How convenient that you forget guild missions..

The guild missions are pretty huge amount of content. Will just take a while to unlock it.

yeah guild missions and living story are the other big things I didn’t mention, still not sold.

You don’t need to be sold you didn’t have to pay for it :P

Take things too literal? ever heard of sayings?

Colin came out to the forums to clarify peoples expectations on his remarks. He said there will be no new professions, maps, weapons or any sort of content of that type. From what I understood when I read the news this comes to “an expansion worth of content” not “an expansion of content”. Meaning that he was talking about quantity and scope, not type. I think we have gotten (and will get) our worth of content between the living story, guild missions and the delayed WvW update. This including a lot of tweaks to reward systems and existing content like Orr, Dungeons as well as the Meta Event Chests. To top this off we have gotten quality of life updates such as the dailies, the achievement tracker and the trading post preview.

The expansions worth of content was pushed back to February and March. They’ve said this many times in the last month. The January update was mostly only setting up the game for changes they’re making in Feb and March.

Since they’re not including some combination of new races, profs or maps, I wouldn’t consider it an expansion’s worth of content. ANet has their own history of expansions working against them here; I think perhaps Colin should have used different wording in his comment. GW1 expansions (w the exception of EotN) had new maps, professions and added game mechanics such as opposing factions and the hero system. When people think of an ANet expansion, I think they expect this level of new content, because that’s what expansions have been in the past. I understand those expansions were paid and these patches are not; however, my argument is that the word “expansion” sets player expectations too high. Better off just not using that term in reference to patch content.

schizandra.4587:

Since they’re not including some combination of new races, profs or maps, I wouldn’t consider it an expansion’s worth of content. ANet has their own history of expansions working against them here; I think perhaps Colin should have used different wording in his comment. GW1 expansions (w the exception of EotN) had new maps, professions and added game mechanics such as opposing factions and the hero system. When people think of an ANet expansion, I think they expect this level of new content, because that’s what expansions have been in the past. I understand those expansions were paid and these patches are not; however, my argument is that the word “expansion” sets player expectations too high. Better off just not using that term in reference to patch content.

Pretty much, I didn’t get to read that comment because it was on the forums contrary to that blog post that clearly set out many expectations, after reading it makes more sense however I think they are mostly things that MMOs work in which is polishing the game, fixing bugs and tweaking things.

Bug fixes are not content, they are fixing mistakes that Anet made.

This leaves:

Guild missions
5 clicky objects and 1 portal (“living story”)
1 new sPvP map
Ascended earrings/amulets
1 dungeon revamp

If that is what they consider an expansion worth of content I sure hope their actual expansions will cost $1.99 or less because that’s about the maximum value i’d give what they’ve done so far.

If I had to say what an “expansion worth of content” meant to me. Taking into account the fact they said no new zones/races/weapons/etc… I would expect something along the lines of:

ALL dungeons revamped
WvW revamped and added rewards
Scaling of ALL events upgraded
New PvP mode, no more of this same old same old
An actual living story event

Now it sounds like they do intend to do some of that in the next few months so they might still keep their promise. But so far it has been very very underwhelming.

They sure made the game unplayable with the Feb patches.

Instead of crashing the odd player here and there on a blue moon. Now it crashes some players here and there every 5 minutes.

Client is broken. And they don’t really care because they didnt promise a stable game month after month, instead they shackled themselves to a promise to deliver new content every month.

Zogyark.4597:

What do you guys think?

I think it was pretty clever of you to make this post now, after we’ve seen the 2 patches that were explicitly described as ‘introduction’ or ’ teaser content’ to the Living Story, instead of waiting to post after the march update that brings the actual Living Story content, as well as the WvW update that was postponed from February.

You’re also not including the revamp of AC, which was pretty big actually, and the ability to not only preview the trading post stuff, a much requested feature, but also to see weapons both sheathed and drawn with their particle effects.

Vayne.8563:

You’re also not including the revamp of AC, which was pretty big actually, and the ability to not only preview the trading post stuff, a much requested feature, but also to see weapons both sheathed and drawn with their particle effects.

I did include the revamp of AC, though a new explorable dungeon would’ve been better or more fractals.

I personally don’t see revamps and tweaks as expansion worthy content. Because obviously, it’s not.

Those are things that should be done normally. They are not what is considered expansion content. When you change a few boss mechanics in a dungeon, that is not a revamp. That is tweaking. The story is still the same, the encounters are still the same, the only thing that changed was minor things that barely make a difference. Sorry, but that is not expansion worthy content.

And previewing items in the Trading Post is not expansion worthy content. That is basic things that should of been in the game from day one.

Reserving judgement until march.

make it happen! no job is easy!
(we d rather stay home and play gw2)

I don’t know what expansions they’ve played, but this is hype at best. This is not expansion worth of depth and systems.

And it’s fine, because it’s not paid like a proper expansion you see in MMO’s like WoW. But please drop the comparison to expansions because it is not.

Expansions also have deep balance changes and overhauls to subpar classes. Nothing close to balancing has happened in all these patches after release. The changes to professions has been marginal.

Just call these what they are — content patches. Cool guild missions, fractals, and a couple extra DE’s on the starter areas. Content addition but nothing on the scale of an expansion.

ColinJohanson.2394:

I’ll throw out feature wise, many of the things we’ll be doing feature wise across the first half of 2013 are typically the type of features you’d likely only see in a paid expansion traditionally. We’re really excited about the opportunity to be able to do that for Guild Wars 2, and think there is something really compelling in that experience, which is really the only message we wanted folks to take from all of this. March will of course continue this tradition of free releases, major features, and of course the growth of living story as we expand its role in Gw2.

All of that being said, this is exactly why we try and avoid talking about stuff until it’s ready, if we say something early and it ends up not ending up exactly what people expect, it doesn’t work out for anyone. Saying something like “expansions worth of content” means different things to everyone, and is nearly an impossible goal to meet expectation wise since everything expects something different, which is a big part of why marketing stepped away from that plan very quickly after asking us to use it when speaking to the press/fans.

I imagine it’ll still get quoted until the end of time, but hope that helps explain where it came from, and what to expect. Just to re-iterate the post I made back in January:

“To set expectations accordingly, the January release will be a relatively small release that sets the table for the stories and features we plan to roll out with the Feb/March releases and beyond. Also, there will be no new race, profession, or new region with these larger Feb/March releases. One of our major goals with these releases is making our existing world as strong as possible, ensuring there are reasons to go to all the locations in the world we’ve already built, and strengthening the core game we’ve provided. In saying this will be an expansions worth of stuff in these releases, we’re talking about the number of new features that will be rolled out across PvE, WvW, and PvP in early 2013, which usually you’d only find in an expansion for a traditional MMORPG.”

I hope you continue to be open with the fanbase on future content and dont’ close up due to select comments by minority members of the community. You can’t please everyone but I’m sure the majority of GW2’s fanbase are overall excited and happy with the content that your team has constructed. Keep up the good work!

Now please bring back shelt/pen back to the way it was!!

We all know ANet has a problem with communication. Lets discuss the features we like and dislike for the time being…

Zenith.7301:

I don’t know what expansions they’ve played, but this is hype at best. This is not expansion worth of depth and systems.

Be careful, it’s not a simple matter to add depth to a game. Many try and instead make the game more complex instead.

ColinJohanson.2394:

One of our major goals with these releases is making our existing world as strong as possible, ensuring there are reasons to go to all the locations in the world we’ve already built."

And I guess Guild Missions is the way you do this?

Just give everyone missions, stop restricting the content and the rewards if you want everyone to go to the locations you’ve already built! I dunno who had this idea of “Guild Missions” but to me it’s a complete failure.

I don’t think it was in any way close to real expansion. But I’m not disappointed – new features are really good.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Saying something like “expansions worth of content” means different things to everyone, and is nearly an impossible goal to meet expectation wise since everything expects something different, which is a big part of why marketing stepped away from that plan very quickly after asking us to use it when speaking to the press/fans.

I knew it!
Foo to you! Objectifying your user base!
Either that or you’re giving bots your blessing!
Or, or, or SKRITT ARE REAL AND PLAYING THE GAME!!!

You guys are building on a well solid game – I could name a lot of stuff I’d like to see differently, or stuff I’d like to see added, just as everybody else, but I consider myself very casual and I’m over 500 hours in. Nobody could seriously argue the quantity or quality on offer, more so for a subless MMO. You guys just keep piling on the awesome, andt they’ll come, and stay.

Also, Colin, posting in a thread like this is a gutsy move IMO, and something I wouldn’t expect and haven’t seen anywhere else. The hard work you guys do is printed all over this game, it’s just that lots of people seem to have been raised to expect everything to conform to their wishes, instantly, without any kitten clue how much work is involved (not aimed at TS BTW, your post was well put and argued).

Vol.5241:

How convenient that you forget guild missions..

Well a lot forget them because they cannot do them, now or even down the track many guilds this is conveniently out of reach…

To the OP yeah i believe the Expansion worth of Content to be an exaggeration, i have not seen enough content to deem it an “expansions worth of content”..

No new classes, skills, gear, skins, maps etc … nothing yet to say the above..even the fixes pale badly my ranger is still quite useless as it was months ago..

I don’t really care what was said earlier regarding expansions, I already knew that they weren’t going to deliver what I consider to be an expansion’s worth of new content. I expected some fairly beefy updates and that’s what I got. And that’s all I should be getting.

Going back to GW1, I would call Factions an expansion. I would also call Nightfall an expansion. I’d even go so far as to call Eye of the North an expansion. What those three releases had in common is that they put out an amount of new content that could rival the original release. That’s my definition of expansion. Anyone who thought they would be seeing anything like this at this point in the game’s history, despite the propaganda, deserves to be disappointed.

The updates they have been providing though have been major and they go a lot further and add a lot more to the base game, in a shorter time period, than just about any other MMO I’ve ever played. I can’t even think of one that has dished out more free stuff in this short amount of time that I haven’t played.

I don’t know where it is that people have been getting their expectations from, but as far as getting bang for their buck, they’ve got nothing to complain about with this game.

Now if only ArenaNet didn’t totally mangle so much of what they are putting out these days, I’d have nothing left to complain about.

EDIT: Oh yeah, and +1 for Colin manning up and facing the criticism. Too bad we don’t see more of that.

ColinJohanson.2394:

I’ll throw out feature wise, many of the things we’ll be doing feature wise across the first half of 2013 are typically the type of features you’d likely only see in a paid expansion traditionally. We’re really excited about the opportunity to be able to do that for Guild Wars 2, and think there is something really compelling in that experience, which is really the only message we wanted folks to take from all of this. March will of course continue this tradition of free releases, major features, and of course the growth of living story as we expand its role in Gw2.

All of that being said, this is exactly why we try and avoid talking about stuff until it’s ready, if we say something early and it ends up not ending up exactly what people expect, it doesn’t work out for anyone. Saying something like “expansions worth of content” means different things to everyone, and is nearly an impossible goal to meet expectation wise since everything expects something different, which is a big part of why marketing stepped away from that plan very quickly after asking us to use it when speaking to the press/fans.

I imagine it’ll still get quoted until the end of time, but hope that helps explain where it came from, and what to expect. Just to re-iterate the post I made back in January:

“To set expectations accordingly, the January release will be a relatively small release that sets the table for the stories and features we plan to roll out with the Feb/March releases and beyond. Also, there will be no new race, profession, or new region with these larger Feb/March releases. One of our major goals with these releases is making our existing world as strong as possible, ensuring there are reasons to go to all the locations in the world we’ve already built, and strengthening the core game we’ve provided. In saying this will be an expansions worth of stuff in these releases, we’re talking about the number of new features that will be rolled out across PvE, WvW, and PvP in early 2013, which usually you’d only find in an expansion for a traditional MMORPG.”

Thanks for the response Colin! We always appreciate when you guys participate in our discussions. Regardless of semantics, I personally am enjoying the new content. I’m intrigued by the living story so far and believe that it was a good addition to the game. I can’t wait to see how it all plays out!

And when the official GW2 expansions do roll out… *cough*Largos*cough*Tengu! I trust you guys to do what’s best for the game, but I’m just sayin’. You could take my money in advance, even.

lol an expansion my kitten. There has been hardly anything done.

Vol.5241:

How convenient that you forget guild missions..

Yeah, how could you forget something that many guilds are months away from even unlocking.
How rude of him.

Goettel.4389:

You guys are building on a well solid game – I could name a lot of stuff I’d like to see differently, or stuff I’d like to see added, just as everybody else, but I consider myself very casual and I’m over 500 hours in. Nobody could seriously argue the quantity or quality on offer, more so for a subless MMO. You guys just keep piling on the awesome, andt they’ll come, and stay.

Also, Colin, posting in a thread like this is a gutsy move IMO, and something I wouldn’t expect and haven’t seen anywhere else. The hard work you guys do is printed all over this game, it’s just that lots of people seem to have been raised to expect everything to conform to their wishes, instantly, without any kitten clue how much work is involved (not aimed at TS BTW, your post was well put and argued).

kind of true.
lets put aside talking about the obvious problems (we re not paid for it anyway, i jave enough problems to deal with at work already!).
they do some good/interesting move.

ColinJohanson.2394:

I’ll throw out feature wise, many of the things we’ll be doing feature wise across the first half of 2013 are typically the type of features you’d likely only see in a paid expansion traditionally. We’re really excited about the opportunity to be able to do that for Guild Wars 2, and think there is something really compelling in that experience, which is really the only message we wanted folks to take from all of this. March will of course continue this tradition of free releases, major features, and of course the growth of living story as we expand its role in Gw2.

All of that being said, this is exactly why we try and avoid talking about stuff until it’s ready, if we say something early and it ends up not ending up exactly what people expect, it doesn’t work out for anyone. Saying something like “expansions worth of content” means different things to everyone, and is nearly an impossible goal to meet expectation wise since everything expects something different, which is a big part of why marketing stepped away from that plan very quickly after asking us to use it when speaking to the press/fans.

I imagine it’ll still get quoted until the end of time, but hope that helps explain where it came from, and what to expect. Just to re-iterate the post I made back in January:

“To set expectations accordingly, the January release will be a relatively small release that sets the table for the stories and features we plan to roll out with the Feb/March releases and beyond. Also, there will be no new race, profession, or new region with these larger Feb/March releases. One of our major goals with these releases is making our existing world as strong as possible, ensuring there are reasons to go to all the locations in the world we’ve already built, and strengthening the core game we’ve provided. In saying this will be an expansions worth of stuff in these releases, we’re talking about the number of new features that will be rolled out across PvE, WvW, and PvP in early 2013, which usually you’d only find in an expansion for a traditional MMORPG.”

Please do not make promises that you do not know you can keep. Being let down after reading a dev say they will do this or that is much, MUCH worse than just not getting anything. I know you guys want to do something along the lines of expansion material, however that might just be a few new areas. I realize that the development process is a long and difficult one, so many things can change.

Be straight-forward with us when you have the information ready, present the actual details and data. Don’t just tease us with what we want to hear, that is completely unfair to us, and unfair to you as well. Just look at what happened with Jon Peter’s on the Ranger forums when he promised major changes with the Ranger.

No one is paying 15 a month, so I think what they are doing is perfect. No matter how “underwhelming” it may be its still content, it still bringing things to the game. In my opinion they have added quite a lot of stuff since launch. Anet doesn’t have to add anything if they don’t want to. They got their money up front.

I think everyone has gotten their 60 bucks worth already.

I think people need to settle down and enjoy the game for what it is. Sure there will be things you don’t like but its an MMO. Anet cant please everyone.

One thing you cant take away from them no matter how many PR fumbles they have had is that this game is a great game. Its foundation is what makes it work.

If it wasn’t a great game you wouldn’t have so many complaints about everything. Just goes to show how much the players care about it. Sounds weird but that’s what I believe anyway.

pencapchew.5432:

No one is paying 15 a month, so I think what they are doing is perfect. No matter how “underwhelming” it may be its still content, it still bringing things to the game. In my opinion they have added quite a lot of stuff since launch. Anet doesn’t have to add anything if they don’t want to. They got their money up front.

I think everyone has gotten their 60 bucks worth already.

I think people need to settle down and enjoy the game for what it is. Sure there will be things you don’t like but its an MMO. Anet cant please everyone.

One thing you cant take away from them no matter how many PR fumbles they have had is that this game is a great game. Its foundation is what makes it work.

If it wasn’t a great game you wouldn’t have so many complaints about everything. Just goes to show how much the players care about it. Sounds weird but that’s what I believe anyway.

That is a very dangerous aspect to think about. The idea that hey, we already paid our 60 dollars, so the game doesn’t need to improve. I disagree with that entirely. People are buying gems, spending maybe more than what they bought the game for. I know I did. So as a consumer they should be striving to improve, to gain new consumers and to be competitive in the mmorpg genre.

Zenith.7301:

I don’t know what expansions they’ve played, but this is hype at best. This is not expansion worth of depth and systems.

And it’s fine, because it’s not paid like a proper expansion you see in MMO’s like WoW. But please drop the comparison to expansions because it is not.

Expansions also have deep balance changes and overhauls to subpar classes. Nothing close to balancing has happened in all these patches after release. The changes to professions has been marginal.

Just call these what they are — content patches. Cool guild missions, fractals, and a couple extra DE’s on the starter areas. Content addition but nothing on the scale of an expansion.

This. The expansion comparison is a bad one, because anet themselves have had a pretty clear-cut standard what features you could expect from an expansion. All of the expansions (with the exception of eotn, which did not have new classes, but all of the other) had:

- 2 new classes,
- a complete set of skills for those 2 classes available to every existing class,
- more skills added to existing classes,
- completely new weapon types,
- skin sets for every armor type/class,
- several completely new armors/armor types even,
- a new continent (or equally big connected maps specifically made for the expansion),
- a seperate, completely new story arch (not some tucked on events in existing environments),
- on top of that, completely new gameplay mechanics (heroes etc.)
- more minor changes (difficulties being added, new upgrade components etc.)

Those where the features people would expect from an expansion, coming from anet themselves, as they were very consistent with that. According to what we know about the “living story” so far, it has none of those features, not even one. It will have different features like a new token vendor of course, but I wouldn’t expect it to stand up to that standard, not even close.

Note that I didn’t expect that from a free update in the first place, but then don’t promise it or sneak you way out of it by trying to intentionally misinterpret commonly understood terms like these.

Not sure if they’re worth of an expansion, but what’s most important to me is that ANet is constantly working on the game, trying to improve. They can’t do everything at once and I, for one, wouldn’t even require that. No matter what they call these patches and what comparisons they make, the fundamental thing remains the same: they are improving the game and that’s enough for me.

ColinJohanson.2394:

I’ll throw out feature wise, many of the things we’ll be doing feature wise across the first half of 2013 are typically the type of features you’d likely only see in a paid expansion traditionally. We’re really excited about the opportunity to be able to do that for Guild Wars 2, and think there is something really compelling in that experience, which is really the only message we wanted folks to take from all of this. March will of course continue this tradition of free releases, major features, and of course the growth of living story as we expand its role in Gw2.

All of that being said, this is exactly why we try and avoid talking about stuff until it’s ready, if we say something early and it ends up not ending up exactly what people expect, it doesn’t work out for anyone. Saying something like “expansions worth of content” means different things to everyone, and is nearly an impossible goal to meet expectation wise since everything expects something different, which is a big part of why marketing stepped away from that plan very quickly after asking us to use it when speaking to the press/fans.

I imagine it’ll still get quoted until the end of time, but hope that helps explain where it came from, and what to expect. Just to re-iterate the post I made back in January:

“To set expectations accordingly, the January release will be a relatively small release that sets the table for the stories and features we plan to roll out with the Feb/March releases and beyond. Also, there will be no new race, profession, or new region with these larger Feb/March releases. One of our major goals with these releases is making our existing world as strong as possible, ensuring there are reasons to go to all the locations in the world we’ve already built, and strengthening the core game we’ve provided. In saying this will be an expansions worth of stuff in these releases, we’re talking about the number of new features that will be rolled out across PvE, WvW, and PvP in early 2013, which usually you’d only find in an expansion for a traditional MMORPG.”

While I understand that you stated there would be no new classes, zones, or dungeons…the point is that you stated quite clearly that there was still an expansion’s worth of content.

So far, there hasn’t even been a single-player game’s worth of expansion content(yes, I know there is one more month to go here, but you’d have to have probably five times more content in that patch to even come close to your statement).

See, while it may mean different things to different people, we can simply look to a large base history of MMOs to get a feel for what an ‘expansion’ contains. Even taking out new races, classes, zones, duneons, etc from a typical expansion from WoW, EQ, EQ2, etc…the first half that we have received here hast been but a tiny fraction.

Class changes and some small quality of life features do not make an expansion. Where is guild/player housing? New skills, new weapons and armor(and don’t say ascended accessories that the majority of the playerbase either don’t want or simply cannot access right now). Where are the additions to town clothes to make them into something less than utterly pointless? Where are improved guild functionality(guild calenders, MOTD broadcasts, or heck: An option to see when your guild logs on and off)? Where is a LFG system? Where is the ability to actually sort armor based on the type your character can wear?

I’m not even talking about really difficult things to be adding(outside of housing). But instead we are getting these little pittances of ‘content’ in the form of things that many players simply cannot do. Guild missions are something my guild looked forward to greatly…only to find out that we have just about no chance at all in ever doing them due to the insane cost. So what did we get this patch? A daily system that’s worse than the one before it, the ability to preview things on the TP, and new cash shop items.

So I have to respectfully disagree here that this is even close to an expansions worth of content. It isn’t even coming close to a major patch from City of Heroes, WoW, EQ2, etc.

We can’t say for certain yet. But once March is out in the wild we can then say to ourselves, “With what they did with Jan, Feb & March, would I spend $60 for it?” (assumed price of an expansion) My gut is saying not even close. I expect things like new zones, classes, story quests and skills in an expansion, for the most part we are getting enhancements, tweaks and fixes to things already in place. Guild Events being an exception.

I’m not upset as I didn’t pay $60 or anything for Jan/Feb/March, this falls back in line with the other complaint of trust. As a person noted, I’m ok with constant improvement, it does seem a bit slow to me, but worst case is I put the game down for a while and comeback. My fav mmo of all time I do that and prefer that anyway, not healthy living too much in a game.

dont be naive….

f2p games earn lots of money too… ppl can buy their legendary with real money….

they bring new content to keep ppl buying stuff in gem store…. this is where they make money….
dont think they make it for free…. their goal is to keep ppl busy… thats why these changes suck so hard…. they r herding ppl by adding useless stuff that keeps everyone busy…. make farming harder so legendary takes longer and ppl stay longer…. and maybe they spend more real money to reach their goal….

“One of our major goals with these releases is making our existing world as strong as possible, ensuring there are reasons to go to all the locations in the world we’ve already built”

Like overkill nerfing bundles?

With that change, you pretty much killed all desire I had to explore and do every event possible, thanks for leaving me with a bunch of worthless crap.

You guys turned me from a happy player who never used the forums, to an annoyed forum user who hasn’t touched the game in days.

I hope you’re happy. ;[

Zogyark.4597:

yeah guild missions and living story are the other big things I didn’t mention, still not sold.

That’s funny because that’s everything they were talking about.

Just a big bunch of phony promises so far this year. So far the 2 patches have yet to exceed the gerth of either winter or halloween on their own, certainly not a EXPANSION worth. I wont be surprised to hear that spvp and wvw wont be recieving updates until april/may or beyond.

wintermute.4096:

Zenith.7301:

I don’t know what expansions they’ve played, but this is hype at best. This is not expansion worth of depth and systems.

And it’s fine, because it’s not paid like a proper expansion you see in MMO’s like WoW. But please drop the comparison to expansions because it is not.

Expansions also have deep balance changes and overhauls to subpar classes. Nothing close to balancing has happened in all these patches after release. The changes to professions has been marginal.

Just call these what they are — content patches. Cool guild missions, fractals, and a couple extra DE’s on the starter areas. Content addition but nothing on the scale of an expansion.

This. The expansion comparison is a bad one, because anet themselves have had a pretty clear-cut standard what features you could expect from an expansion. All of the expansions (with the exception of eotn, which did not have new classes, but all of the other) had:

- 2 new classes,
- a complete set of skills for those 2 classes available to every existing class,
- more skills added to existing classes,
- completely new weapon types,
- skin sets for every armor type/class,
- several completely new armors/armor types even,
- a new continent (or equally big connected maps specifically made for the expansion),
- a seperate, completely new story arch (not some tucked on events in existing environments),
- on top of that, completely new gameplay mechanics (heroes etc.)
- more minor changes (difficulties being added, new upgrade components etc.)

Those where the features people would expect from an expansion, coming from anet themselves, as they were very consistent with that. According to what we know about the “living story” so far, it has none of those features, not even one. It will have different features like a new token vendor of course, but I wouldn’t expect it to stand up to that standard, not even close.

Note that I didn’t expect that from a free update in the first place, but then don’t promise it or sneak you way out of it by trying to intentionally misinterpret commonly understood terms like these.

Those weren’t expansions at all. They were campaigns. Completely stand-alone games.

The only expansion they released for Guild Wars was Eye of the North. So if you’re going to compare what expansion content is in Guild Wars, use Eye of the North as that was the only expansion for Guild Wars.

Wickedry.7091:

“One of our major goals with these releases is making our existing world as strong as possible, ensuring there are reasons to go to all the locations in the world we’ve already built”

Like overkill nerfing bundles?

With that change, you pretty much killed all desire I had to explore and do every event possible, thanks for leaving me with a bunch of worthless crap.

You guys turned me from a happy player who never used the forums, to an annoyed forum user who hasn’t touched the game in days.

I hope you’re happy. ;[

same here. a few ppl stopped playing since patch and im not rly motivated since things i enjoyed r not enjoyable anymore. servers r overcrowded and i never liked big events…. this hurts my eyes and ears…. how can u enjoy these fights? not challenging, not smooth
now we r forced to play these to farm chests…. worst thing that could happen….