I’m really worried about the marketing strategy took by Anet with Hot, but I came to the conclusion that that’s ok for Hot but I really wish they will not do the same with the Expac 2..
I know already from a devs’ post from some time ago that the next expansions will come at the price of $50 and include all the previous expansions and base game, that is ok for me, I don’t want to say that they don’t know what they are doing because that’s probably the best way for them, even though selling expac separately will give them much more money imo.
My problem is with the amount of content, yes it is the story that is going forward so you can’t actually play the expansions like the ones of Gw1 (except made for DLC EotN :P ), you have to play the first one then the second and so on, but I always fear that this option will always be an excuse for the expac to not feel like a real expansion but more like a big DLC.
The difference between expansion and a big DLC is thin, I know, for me is mainly about the amount of content that is available.
For me Hot didn’t have enough maps, new armors, new weapons, personal story missions and content in general to be called an expansion, it would have been more an expansion if for example Dry Top and SW and living story 2 were released in Hot.
Do not get me wrong anyway! I think I can count me in the group of people satisfied with Hot, but still I had to come to terms with my idea of an expansion and think that they made a lot of other work, the living story and so on to excuse the fact that we have just 4 maps a short story and a few new armors, thinking that this wil just happen one time, they are testing out and so on.
About the Hot story in the end I was thinking OMG this is amazing it is obviously not finish like this it is an obvious trap that will be followed by other 5 missions at least! And then it was over…. :C
NO! I don’t want this to repeat, I love Gw2 I don’t want to search for an excuse for the lack of content into a new expansion, an expansion like it was for gw1 is something that you look forward for a lot of time you dream about it XD, and then when it is finally out you get overwelmed with new places to explore new things to collect and dress your character with and most important thing, content! Content that will keep you engaged till the next expansion comes out….(ok maybe I’m a bit of an expansion addict 
)
So please Anet! I still trust you!
Make the Expac 2 feel like a real expac
I suggest to look at bright side: this time this new expansion will be planned, which means they are committing to a schedule based on creating a new expact on the side, unlike what we had before with core gw2 for which it was based on LS updates
Even if the expac 2 has double or triple the content in it, i hope they don’t fall into the same marketing pitfalls they did last time and learned something very valuable from the incidents past and current.
To everyone who has any issues with what they got out of their HoT investment:
How many hours of entertainment does it require for y’all to feel you’ve got your money’s worth out of a MMO expansion? How many hours have y’all played HoT?
If the answer to the first question is realistic, and the answer to the second question is larger than the first question, I hate to break it to you but y’all got your money’s worth.
~EW
To everyone who has any issues with what they got out of their HoT investment:
How many hours of entertainment does it require for y’all to feel you’ve got your money’s worth out of a MMO expansion? How many hours have y’all played HoT?
If the answer to the first question is realistic, and the answer to the second question is larger than the first question, I hate to break it to you but y’all got your money’s worth.
~EW
If that’s your point than no, if I think about what I was expecting for an expansion, I didn’t get my money’s worth.
Well actually is not just about hours spent anyway, because I can spend a lot of hours playing the same content over and over because that is what i got this time.
I really enjoyed it, I still do but, even if I can feel the potential of it it doesn’t feel enough.
As pointed out before, this expansion was not planned as an expansion, it was meant to be a series of updates but then they decided to change the release plan. That is for me the problem that makes me and other people feel like this was a DLC and not a full expansion, because as I said before, it could have been more an expansion if at least the living story 2 if not even the 1 were part of Hot instead of selling them separately.
I trust that they will do it properly this time.
One of the main issues with this expansion is that it’s content light and Anet told us before release it would be lighter on content because they pretty much had to retool the game to make it work. So speicalizations were introduced instead of the told trait system. They had to deisgn the mastery system> They had to make it so you could glide, which I’m pretty sure required changes to the physics engine. There were a raft of changes that came with this expansion and whether or not people like that, it took programming time and dollars….but we’ve been told that stuff is largely done now, with the exception of WvW which is still being worked on.
Moving forward they won’t have to redesign the entire game to make the expansion. The specialization system and mastery system is in place and doesn’t have to be designed or debated. They’re in the game now. So in reality the next expansion should have more content.
How much more no one can say, but we were told even before launch that redesigning game systems took something out of this expansion.
Maybe next time don’t announce major nerfs to content like they did with dungeons 2 weeks prior to HOT’s release and months after taking pre-orders.
I really hope it’s a return to form for ArenaNet. I know what they are capable of. They are capable of making the best MMOs ever. Let’s all hope they return to that with their words, actions, content, and more.
To everyone who has any issues with what they got out of their HoT investment:
How many hours of entertainment does it require for y’all to feel you’ve got your money’s worth out of a MMO expansion? How many hours have y’all played HoT?
If the answer to the first question is realistic, and the answer to the second question is larger than the first question, I hate to break it to you but y’all got your money’s worth.
~EW
A1) At least 1/3 of the time i’ve spent with core game – i have around 1200 hours of core game
A2) From that 1200hrs i’ve spent maybe 30-40hrs in HoT (max 60hrs – not more)
So this leads to anwser – no, i didn’t get my money’s worth of a content as for a price of that “x-pac”. I don’t like HoT at all – everything is locked behind events, story or some stupid minigames that i wont do and the story itself if short and lame – its worse then personal story is now even after AN butchered it… Plus all those bugs that were haunting HoT since it’s lunch wan’t to ask if testing of content was done by blind and armless gorillas ? All those alpha and beta tests were run by them ?
Oh and let’s not forget what happened to WvW and to requirement to have HoT to use guild buffs and guild creation/expansion…
(edited by Frediosz.2718)
I think the biggest problem with HoT was that they didn’t deliver on many “promised” features. And let’s not get into semantics about delayed release content and whatnot — many players were expecting more at launch or immediately after, myself included.
As long as they don’t repeat that in expansion two, I’ll be happy. Be realistic with the content expectations. Let me know exactly what I am getting with my money. Don’t say there will be a new set of legendaries if it really means “3 now, a couple more in 6 months, and then we’ll see about the rest…”
I said it when HoT came out, and I will gladly repeat it here:
HoT was thrown out of the door as soon as it was halfway running. Something in management happened, and developers were suddenly or maybe basically over night, forced to string some less than good ls2 seasons together for a so-so story.
For the same reason, it is only 4 maps deep with the laughable reasoning that every map has 3 full layers to explore, which is so laughably bad and provable wrong that I feel sorry for anyone buying this argument after setting a foot into HoT.
Even after making DS empty except for the single metaevent, it still was not enough to shove it out of the door. So, adventures were implemented. I mean sure, everybody does a minigame in the dangerous djungle then and when, especially when a big dragon and his slad guard is out there, ok. So adventures are not only totally out of place, they kill the last bit of immersion someone could feel for HoT.
HoT is surprisingly funny despite all it´s flaws. Still it does feel like an expensive season pass.
@torolan while there is definitely some rush and seems to have been some cut content (like the supposed nightmare court lane in ds and nightmare court related content throughout other HoT stuff) i dont at all think that adventures were a stopgap measure. pretty sure from the beginning they were talked about, plus they are quite fun many of them anyways
To everyone who has any issues with what they got out of their HoT investment:
How many hours of entertainment does it require for y’all to feel you’ve got your money’s worth out of a MMO expansion? How many hours have y’all played HoT?
If the answer to the first question is realistic, and the answer to the second question is larger than the first question, I hate to break it to you but y’all got your money’s worth.
~EW
what a stupid question, the right question is " did you have fun playing hot??"
i did not for most part, i hated xp grind and mp, i hated specialization grind, i hated those annoying mini games, i hated short story,i hated lack of new legendary weapons because i still run with kudzu on my male norn which look ridiculous and other LBs look even worser, i was hoping for new long bow legendary but guess what? its no where to be seen yet.
yeah for 50$ hot surely made me hate a lot of things in a game i used to love.
@torolan while there is definitely some rush and seems to have been some cut content (like the supposed nightmare court lane in ds and nightmare court related content throughout other HoT stuff) i dont at all think that adventures were a stopgap measure. pretty sure from the beginning they were talked about, plus they are quite fun many of them anyways
I did not even know about the Nightmare Court getting cut. A complete slap in the face of lore and gameplay all at once if you think how big of a role Faolain plays in HoT. It was a major point of annoyance for me lorewise, nobody seemed to care about what happens to Faolain within the court. She is all alone in HoT, corrupted could both be former pact soldiers or nightmare court but we never hear anything about it.
Sorely dissapointing from both perspectives if you ask me. Why not leave a lane out that has only a very limited connection to mordremoth instead? It´s stuff like this I don´t get.
i suggest you google expac. You just made that word up.
Bloin – Running around, tagging Keeps, getting whack on Scoobie Snacks.
To everyone who has any issues with what they got out of their HoT investment:
How many hours of entertainment does it require for y’all to feel you’ve got your money’s worth out of a MMO expansion? How many hours have y’all played HoT?
If the answer to the first question is realistic, and the answer to the second question is larger than the first question, I hate to break it to you but y’all got your money’s worth.
~EW
what a stupid question, the right question is " did you have fun playing hot??"
i did not for most part, i hated xp grind and mp, i hated specialization grind, i hated those annoying mini games, i hated short story,i hated lack of new legendary weapons because i still run with kudzu on my male norn which look ridiculous and other LBs look even worser, i was hoping for new long bow legendary but guess what? its no where to be seen yet.
yeah for 50$ hot surely made me hate a lot of things in a game i used to love.
if you hated everything about the expansion, why did you buy it?
next time, instead of throwing your money on pre-orders for a product you know nothing about, wait until the reviews are out (not IGN bull***, see videos from GW2 youtubers) and decide for yourself if you want to buy it.
i for one didn’t play much of the HOT maps, because my play time is mostly during dead-hours and i can’t do anything alone, but i’m still enjoying a lot of the features the expansion brought to the core game like masteries and elite specs.
To everyone who has any issues with what they got out of their HoT investment:
How many hours of entertainment does it require for y’all to feel you’ve got your money’s worth out of a MMO expansion? How many hours have y’all played HoT?
If the answer to the first question is realistic, and the answer to the second question is larger than the first question, I hate to break it to you but y’all got your money’s worth.
~EW
what a stupid question, the right question is " did you have fun playing hot??"
i did not for most part, i hated xp grind and mp, i hated specialization grind, i hated those annoying mini games, i hated short story,i hated lack of new legendary weapons because i still run with kudzu on my male norn which look ridiculous and other LBs look even worser, i was hoping for new long bow legendary but guess what? its no where to be seen yet.
yeah for 50$ hot surely made me hate a lot of things in a game i used to love.if you hated everything about the expansion, why did you buy it?
next time, instead of throwing your money on pre-orders for a product you know nothing about, wait until the reviews are out (not IGN bull***, see videos from GW2 youtubers) and decide for yourself if you want to buy it.i for one didn’t play much of the HOT maps, because my play time is mostly during dead-hours and i can’t do anything alone, but i’m still enjoying a lot of the features the expansion brought to the core game like masteries and elite specs.
you know the famous saying:
“if you fool me once shame on you but if you fool me twice shame on me”
i wont pre-order the next expansion at all, i might buy it 2-3 weeks after lunch when i saw at least 3 reviews from different people and watched game play videos.
i never cared about IGN reviews to begin with.
you have to understand that HoT was more of a “large feature pack” instead of a “traditional” expansion where you get tons of new maps, more new dungeons,raids, gear, rewards,achievements and such.
they also kinda confessed this and they did say something like " we figured out what we want and how we wish to add new content in the future now. The features we added in HoT allow us to do so"
meaning the expansion No2. will indeed most likely be more filled with actuall content. more maps, more events, more raids, perhaps more dungeons or at least fractals, a new elite spec, more masteries and ..well. more of more
you have to understand that HoT was more of a “large feature pack” instead of a “traditional” expansion where you get tons of new maps, more new dungeons,raids, gear, rewards,achievements and such.
they also kinda confessed this and they did say something like " we figured out what we want and how we wish to add new content in the future now. The features we added in HoT allow us to do so"
meaning the expansion No2. will indeed most likely be more filled with actuall content. more maps, more events, more raids, perhaps more dungeons or at least fractals, a new elite spec, more masteries and ..well. more of more
Those features behind the scenes should not cost content .. that is like they will
next update the engine to DX12 and sell that for 50 bucks as expansion 2 .. or
as if a new game comes out that only has one flat map with nothing than floor
because they firsted needed to make the engine so that the game will have
content in expac 2 and you have to pay for that.
Best MMOs are the ones that never make it. Therefore Stargate Online wins.