The future of living world
NO
YES, but you can’t participate in them, as long you don’t have HoT.
It will mostly be like this for sure with the same method, that if you don#t log in within 2 weeks after the Patch has went up, that you have to pay some Gems/Money to unlock the Living World Chapter for your Account, like it was in Season 2 and that somewhen in the future later will be put HoT with a Full unlock of Season 3 into the Gemstore, like theres is now a Full Unlock for Season 2 in the Gemstore, if you completely missed it.
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The future of Living World is pretty simple. Don’t buy HoT and any other uptoming Add Ons, and you won’t be able to participate in any upcoming Living World Content, you can unlock it for the account, but not play it as long you have not the Add On on which the Season is relating to, unless , cause from now on it its a “POINT OF NO RETURN” and all what happens in the Living World is based on what happens in HoT.
If you don’t own HoT it would be pretty pointless to participate in further in the Living World Events, as you wouldn’t understand the context most likely from the LWC due to not knowing, what happenedcin HoT.
HoT is also not just only Season 3 basically, its also your next part of your Personal Story. You will make further decisions in HoT, that will have effect on your ongoing Personal Story as much as I have understood it so far what would be another strong reason for it to buy HoT, because HoT saiply said progresses for your characters in overall their stories, so if you want to know what happens with your Character, you will want to buy HoT.
However, theres naturally no point in it that you have to buy HoT instantly now, you can wait also simply for it, when the tiem has come and you can buy it in the retail stores or from other online stores like amazon which are also retailers, but just online.
Nobody is forcing you to prepurchase it now, but if you do, Anet rewards you simply for it with a unique title, in regard of ultimate edition with 4000 gems for 25€/$, that would cost normally double as much and the digital extra content, because nobody knows and I’m sure it won’t be that way, that all that digital content will be sold later also with the physical versions in the retailers.
I’m pretty sure, that the Deluxe/Ultimate edition will be for online buyers only and that later the physical version of HoT you can buy fro mretailers wll be just simply only the Standard Edition., so that we will find in the gemstore under Upgrades then a HoT Deluxe Uprade again, like we had for the Main Game there a Deluxe Upgrade.
Like ANet said, Ultimate will always be only avaiable as prepurchase, they wont add later any Upgrades for it, which basically means, also no retails version.
They pretty much made sure to tell us, that if you want Ultimate, you have to prepurchase now. Theres no second chance later from retailers or Gemstore to get an Upgrade from Standard Edition to anything higher.
Personally I like the idea behind sub classes ~ quoted from Chris Whiteside
I was under the impression that Living World method of content delivery is dead, with the expansion model replacing it. Did they say somewhere that LS will still continue?