Guild Wars 2

I’m not able to purchase the expansion yet, but i have gems saved up for the living story stuff.

Will I still be able to purchase and play through those when the game gets the expansion?

Since the next stage of the Living Story will be telling of the campaign against Mordremoth by the people who went into the new maps, I would not expect it to be playable unless you own the expansion. The beta events, for example, told a bit of the story about after the crash and the reaction to Sylvari turning against the others. The old, previous Living Story episodes will still be playable without the expansion since they don’t require access to the new maps.

I don’t know the answer but I assume you will. The point of making them purchasable later is so they can be permanent content. They are also part of the storyline your character goes through and will continue to experience more of in HoT. ANet will want new players to have access to the content and story, and it makes them money to boot from those that prefer to pay cash for gems.

Until ANet specifically says otherwise, I shall be comfortable in my prediction that the LS will be permanently available even after multiple expansions.

edit based on flesh wound: Now, you will need HoT to play chapters that go beyond LS2 Chapter 8. But the stuff that is available right now? I don’t see why it would be blocked later even to non-HoTters.

The current ls in the gem store is in maps that come with the core game, not HoT. They never said they would remove it from the gem store or that is was limited time.

Because of this, I would agree with Donari, the current LS should still be available to everyone with core game after HoT is released. It would be extremely dumb if they changed that, and would kitten off A LOT of players that already paid for it. They already kittened off the majority of the community with the initial packages/pricing…. I really doubt even if turning LS off was in their plans that they would still go through with discontinuing it.

HoT will be required to play future living story content (season 3+). They somewhat confirmed it during an interview, but didn’t really elaborate.

Season 3 is HoT’s personal story line and and season 4 will likely go deeper into HoT. Without HoT, you wouldn’t be able to access the areas to get to them even if they were “free” for everyone. Moving forward, I would assume that all seasons will now be locked behind the previous expansion.

You can only guess how it’ll end up, but I’m guessing they’re no longer planning on selling the living story. Instead, you now pay for it upfront by buying the expansion (you aren’t paying for just HoT, you’re paying for the next ~2 years of development).

Do we know if they will be including season 2 for free with the purchase of HoT? I haven’t seen anything to suggest they will be, but seems plausible that they would.

I also don’t think they will charge for future living story episodes like they did with season 2, considering we spent $50 for the expansion. Like many others have said, we aren’t just buying the expansion to get access to the content released with the expansion, but also future updates.

Fernling.1729:

Do we know if they will be including season 2 for free with the purchase of HoT? I haven’t seen anything to suggest they will be, but seems plausible that they would.

I also don’t think they will charge for future living story episodes like they did with season 2, considering we spent $50 for the expansion. Like many others have said, we aren’t just buying the expansion to get access to the content released with the expansion, but also future updates.

They didn’t include Season two with the prepurchase and not all the people who bought it have Season 2 unlocked already. So imo it’s unlikely that later they will include Season 2 with the expansion as it would still require some people who prepurchased to pay extra to buy it separately.

Whether further episodes past season 3 require a separate purchase or unlock remains to be seen. For all we know one future Living Story season will be in the vanilla maps and be accessible to everyone who logs in during that time or pays for it later.