Guild Wars 2

I’m kind of surprised that this hasn’t come up yet.

http://massively.joystiq.com/2013/03/05/arenanet-not-planning-guild-wars-2-expansions-or-sequels/

Thoughts?

Good, they need to clean up and fix the base game before adding in more content.

We’ve known about this all along, it keeps getting asked every week.

If anything, expect news in Q4, which is early next year.

“Expansions are definitely something that we’ll potentially look at in the future,” game director Colin Johanson told IGN. “We don’t have a timetable on it. We’re open to it, but I think our major focus as a studio is making the living world concept as strong as we possibly can for the players that we’ve got.”

When the possibility of Guild Wars 3 was broached, Johanson deemed it unlikely, at least for now. “We want to be able to have teams that are literally developing new, innovative features that change the way that you play our game and grow that experience so it literally feels like you don’t leave Guild Wars 2,” he explained. “Guild Wars 2 becomes Guild Wars 2.5 or Guild Wars 3 and it continues to grow.”

I like!

TwoBit.5903:

Good, they need to clean up and fix the base game before adding in more content.

100% correct. The base game should always be perfect (or as near as perfect as they can make it) before adding new content.

Excellent news! Good to know.

Asking questions like that about a game just 6 months after launch is merely shoddy reporting and a lack of creativity.

Airien.4798:

Excellent news! Good to know.

Asking questions like that about a game just 6 months after launch is merely shoddy reporting and a lack of creativity.

It is reporting on what people want to know. How is that shoddy?

I don’t understand the focus on “making the living world”.
Why the wild majority of us sticks to dungeons?
Because the open world is way too easy and unrewarding in comparison.

Players make a world living.
Give players challenging zones that offer good rewards and we will fill the maps.
Give players easy unrewarding zones and they will crowd dungeons.

In GW1 I could go out of Droks, not even harder zones, and find good loots and a hell of a challenge.
One Avicara mesmer is as strong as 20 Risens, and can drop very good stuff.

A lot of us (based on people I’ve talked to in-game and posts in the forum) believe the game is, in effect, still in Beta; that is, it was rushed out the door with inadequate testing. There are far too many broken mechanics and other fundamental issues to even be considering for a moment any kind of expansion…

…not that I see them fixing any of the bugs; not even the most obvious bugs…

It is a very smart move, once they fixed all the issues the game has now they can start building more content on it.

GOOD! This is the best news I’ve heard all day. Why? Because it means they have time to plan the expansions out from scratch at this point.

What does this mean? Considering every forum poll on whether people want the level cap to go past 80 has resulted in the vast majority of people saying “No. keep it at 80”, one of the few times people on both sides of ascended gear are agreeing, they have a chance to listen to the people and leave the level cap alone!

This means there’s a chance that everyone who grinds out their ascended gear set won’t suddenly have it all become outdated because the new level cap is 85. AND it means there is still one part of GW2 that can remain unique to the series and not follow in the footsteps of WoW! THAT alone is awesome news. I liked GW2 being unique.

Suddenly ascended gear isn’t so bad to me. =D

Doesn’t surprise me, they’ve already expanding the game with stuff like Lost Shores and Living Story.

While this is good news, I’m still eagerly looking forward to a timely expansion (hopefully cantha or elona!).

I don’t have any idea how a quote saying they like expansions, plan on doing them, but don’t have an exact time table got translated to no expansions….

that’s like the exact opposite of what his quote said…

This is after the 30 websites mentioned that an expansion was coming lol.

Good. I prefer that they take their time with stuff like that. Also, focusing on “living world” aspects of the game, is a GREAT choice. It has the potential to gradually lead the world into facing the other dragons, bit by bit, instead of just dropping it on our heads, all at once.

This is only surprising if you believed what NCsoft told said in their Investors Conference call, where they said to expect an expansion this fall.

I don’t mind at all! I can wait for an expansion for years Just as long as they improve on the game right now though

A lot of people seem to be on board with this, I don’t know how I feel about it yet. I don’t want to stay in the same places forever, I want to go to new frontiers (or old ones :P) that aren’t open to us yet, and I feel like staying in the same exact place for too long will get stale. I guess they could always begin introducing the new places via free updates, though…

im happy to know that right now they are improving on balancing pve/wvw/pvp, designing better combat encounters, making some endgame
elements more useful (crafting, low level items loot, discourage farming, etc…)

i just hope they stop the gear grind…
i would so much like to start an alt now! but since i only play 15h a week, i need all my time to “keep up with the ascended grind”… this is not ok!
because of that you have less player in wvw and pvp.

i hope that when they nail pvp and wvw they can start to greaty reduce the “grind”.

thats a lot of hope, but yeah… stats grinds are bad for the game i imagine gw2 can be.

Honestly, I thought maybe the rumors of an Expansion at the end of the year being true was a good thing. I thought, “well then that gives them about 10 more months to get their base game ready for the expansion”

But now that I know there is no Expansion anytime soon, my mind is filled with thoughts like “Well, nevermind that. I guess I’m going to wait 12 more years (exaggerating!) for class balance and other things.”

Meh, but maybe I’m just a negative nancy. It’ll be a year since Guild Wars 2’s release in late August this year. That means a MININUM of 1 1/2 years before an Expansion. I hope they get their act together this year for fixes and class balance. The clock is ticking.

I like this. Gives you time to really focus on everything, instead of bum rushing to get all your Ascended gear, Legendaries, titles, and what have you before the end of this year or early next year. If I have to wait until late 2014 or early 2015 for an expansion, it’s fine by me, as long as they keep releasing monthly content.

I thought ncsoft investor stuff got leaked saying there was certainly to be an expansion by the end of this year.

It wasn’t as much leaked as reported on. It wasn’t like what they said was a secret. It was just wrong.

Makes you wonder what else they’ve said is also wrong.

Behellagh.1468:

It wasn’t as much leaked as reported on. It wasn’t like what they said was a secret. It was just wrong.

Makes you wonder what else they’ve said is also wrong.

That’s what I’ve been thinking, too. I don’t really get it…I also don’t really understand why they can’t continue improving the core game as they expand it.

Does this mean I’m not going to be able to play a tengu thief any time soon? /sad

If this would be true I will be rather sad tbh. I loved expansions to original GW and the speed with which they were released.

This can be both good and bad news.

If good, it means their revenue is enough to satisfy the investors of NCSoft which allows them to take their time to strengthen the core of their game.

If bad, it means there is not enough revenue and they no longer want to invest into expanding the product beyond basic additions which we are seeing at the moment. Creating expansions costs a lot of money so the risk versus reward is bigger.

Which one it is is yet to be seen but I certainly hope they add new classes or races this year or people will get bored, content only lasts for so long in this competitive enviroment.

p.s. I’m well aware they are making plenty of revenue to make a profit, but whether the investors are satisified or not is something we will never know as customer.

Awe.1096:

If this would be true I will be rather sad tbh. I loved expansions to original GW and the speed with which they were released.

I thought they came out far too quickly. I was ready for Factions when it came out, but Nightfall I wasn’t ready for. I think I ended up starting to really play Nightfall 3 months after its’ initial release. TBH the population wasn’t enough for all the games. When Nightfall came out, the populations in the towns were much less than when everyone was localized to only Prophecies. Heroes was their solution to this, and they did a pretty good job at it.

While looking at world map with all the existing areas boxed off, it shows that there are loads of places where we could go next without the need of an expansion.

Unlock the rest of Orr. Add maps following the Dragonbrand south (not all at once). Or the area south of the Black Citadel and east of Timberland falls. There’s just loads of area they can add to the existing game as part of their “living story” concept.

As long as they keep the player population high and have a relatively small percentage of them buying Gems for cash, no need for an expansion.

But honestly, they really need more attractive merchandise at the Gem store. Unique armor and weapon skins for instance.

Ilithis Mithilander.3265:

Awe.1096:

If this would be true I will be rather sad tbh. I loved expansions to original GW and the speed with which they were released.

I thought they came out far too quickly. I was ready for Factions when it came out, but Nightfall I wasn’t ready for.

I didn’t play Guild Wars until well after the EotN, so I can’t speak to that. I will, however, remind you that the expansions in this game aren’t going to be stand-alone campaigns as they were in the first game (unfortunately). But whether or not that means anything to you is entirely subjective.

I bet we’re gonna get a paid expansion before the end of the year.

Holding off on a major expansion can be a double-edged sword. Without having to worry about creating a lot of new content for the expansion they can focus their time on making the current game as great as possible (and we all know there is a lot of room for improvement), but if they wait too long then people will begin to get bored with what’s there and may move on from the game. I expect that they will continue with these mini expansions to hold attention but there comes a point where the players will want something meatier than small, incremental content releases.

Awe.1096:

If this would be true I will be rather sad tbh. I loved expansions to original GW and the speed with which they were released.

While I do agree with loving how quickly GW1 dropped expansions, I am glad that GW2 is taking it more slowly since they have stated they are considering raising the level cap. Raising the cap is bad enough, and after a few polls of these forums it’s become evident it would be frowned upon (especially by the pro-ascended gear crowd who will be just getting their full sets… only to have it all outdated), but raising the cap rapidly would be a nightmare. I would much rather they continue dropping individualized content if it means we won’t see a level cap increase for a while.

This is great news indeed.

With the game in such a tumultuous state, ANet is still trying to find their feet and establish GW2. An expansion is supposed to expand on established systems and evolve the game. GW2 still needs to find itself before it can get to an expansion.

^
exactly

but i believe its doable.

only a few systems need tweaking.
core base is there.

Hmmm I thought they stated there already was a team working on it, like they have teams for several things going on. Who knows.

So far I find that interviewer less than stellar and this odd attempt to paint the game into the “failing” corner very unfair.
Just because ANet isn´t releasing some type of “Panda” this year but instead following their own design goals.

Hope the actual interview will show more competence by the “reporter”.

BTW, next time post THE SOURCE not the umpteenth copy of the article stump.

They have enough revenue to have people working on Cantha and the base game.

Not sure how to take this either.

For me I was hoping there would be more areas/continents to explore. Although this world is huge, the more you explore it the smaller it becomes.

Plus I always wanted more races to play and I would be disappointed that we don’t get anything anytime soon. Charr and Norn, while beautiful, are awkward to play. I, selfishly, would like more choices than Humies, Weeds and Stitch.

they better step up the free updates if they aren’t working on expansions at the moment…

flame and frost has been a joke so far i am expecting some good stuff this and next month

Xuro.5861:

This can be both good and bad news.

If good, it means their revenue is enough to satisfy the investors of NCSoft which allows them to take their time to strengthen the core of their game.

If bad, it means there is not enough revenue and they no longer want to invest into expanding the product beyond basic additions which we are seeing at the moment. Creating expansions costs a lot of money so the risk versus reward is bigger.

Which one it is is yet to be seen but I certainly hope they add new classes or races this year or people will get bored, content only lasts for so long in this competitive enviroment.

p.s. I’m well aware they are making plenty of revenue to make a profit, but whether the investors are satisified or not is something we will never know as customer.

Well they may not have any plans for an expansion, but their team surely is expanding right now. I guess that’s a good sign of the game’s financial health when you look at all the other studios laying off en masse (pun intended).

http://www.arena.net/jobs/

Martin Kerstein.3071:

This isn’t actual news, it is something we have mentioned multiple times before. As the original interview says, and I quote:
“Expansions are definitely something that we’ll potentially look at in the future,” he explained. “We don’t have a timetable on it. We’re open to it, but I think our major focus as a studio is making the living world concept as strong as possibly can for the players that we’ve got.”

No one said we will never do an expansion, all Colin says (again) is that we are currently focusing on Living Story and other ongoing to the live game.

What you SHOULD be working on is the performance issues. I won’t play until it’s fixed.

Vees.7816:

What you SHOULD be working on is the performance issues. I won’t play until it’s fixed.

I’m confused. He certainly didn’t say they are not working on performance issues.

Good. Considering the core game is an objective failure in every possible aspect they need to do a lot of work before even considering an expansion. After about five or six years this game might be ready for new content.

Game needs to be improved in the actual systems itself, no more launch new content without fixing and improving the existing one. Karka update is a good example of wasted work and time of the DEVs in a place that is now… empty.

So, uhm, what are the staff that are not part of the live team doing?

ASB.4295:

So, uhm, what are the staff that are not part of the live team doing?

That’s kind of what I was thinking. Didn’t they say that they have a live team and a team that solely works on expansion content?

I’m actually happy with this.
I don’t want an expansion, I want what vanilla GW1 had like fow/uw/tombs/sf, HA, GvG, more skins etc.
Why bothering thinking expansions when the vanilla game has a lot more coming?