Guild Wars 2

I prefer this model to the once/year (or so) expansion model. So, it’s well worth it to me. =)

I prefer this model much much more then the expansion model.

To me it is like getting paid. I would rather get paid every 2 weeks, then every 6+ months.

I would prefer an expansion, but I still play the game and have fun. I really hope there is one added at some point though. Honestly I have had more fun leveling a new character the past month than the new things added.

Edit to say- I do like living story it just has gotten to the point that I get the achievements and move on. I just wish an expansion was on the horizon to go with the living story.

According to Anet’s metric and money, yes, to them.

Knote.2904:

According to Anet’s metric and money, yes, to them.

This is the correct response, all others don’t matter.

I prefer this model. I don’t have to pay for anything extra if I don’t have the money on that particular month, yet I don’t feel guilty and behind for it (I get to experience the same content as everyone else) plus I don’t get to get bored and wait around for months with nothing to do

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

I prefer this model to the once/year (or so) expansion model. So, it’s well worth it to me. =)

All or nothing? Yet most games release some form of special event content, even back 15 years ago. Here though, it’s become all special event content. So I’m not sure what game you are speaking of, and I’ve played many.

I would rather a big quality expansion. I stopped doing the living story a few updates ago and I’m much happier with the game now. Got tired of the shallow stories, paper-thin characters and silly AP grind. To the point where I was just tired of this game all together. Every 2 weeks is “here’s some AP’s, go farm them and get a backpiece!”.

Ever since I stopped, I made new characters and levelled them the old way, running around and doing events and running into people and talking and doing things with them. The game’s enjoyment has come back for me by ignoring the ridiculous format of the living story.

?? I’m speaking about Guild Wars 2. Pretty sure that’s what the topic was about. Lol.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

?? I’m speaking about Guild Wars 2. Pretty sure that’s what the topic was about. Lol.

No you were speaking of the once a year expansion model as well, as a comparison. My point is they had both, expansions and temporary and/or permanent micro-release event content. There were no ‘only expansions’ models, but we seem to be looking at an ‘only temporary content’ model as well as some micro-release content (revamping existing content mostly).

Um..ok..whatever you say. =)

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Um..ok..whatever you say. =)

No worries.

Ode to the days when GM’s, other game staff and recognized volunteers would actually get into the game and lead unique events effecting the world. Umm yeah, with overflows and instancing that could never work. But some of the best game events ever devised, in a true mmo setting.

Here, during early development, I always thought the living world thing was done by the event trigger system. So one event triggers another, triggering another, changing the zone or world as things progressed. Basically like tides of war, changing ownerships of zones, what spawns there, who controls what, player access to towns and settlements. Say as opposed to a static world where everything remains the same for the most part, unless like in games such as SWG where players captured cities and worlds with the Galactic Civil War (factions style pvp) and guards would change etc.

I mean. really, the temporary content is just rehashing what many other games have already done, it’s not all that ‘living world’ in a lot of ways. I like the original concept of this game…

No Walking.6349:

So it’s been over a year. If this game had followed the same path they took in GW1, around this time we would have had a whole new expansion added to the game full of new PERMANENT content, new classes, new races, furthering the dragon story line, maybe added UW, or Cantha, or Elona.

Instead of that however, we’ve gotten a ton of gimmicky, slightly entertaining but overall underwhelming content (most of it reused with scavenger hunts, etc) that is totally removed from the main dragon plot, and injects random sub plots that are pulled out of the devs butts and are killing GW lore.

Was the living story experiment really worth it? I don’t think it was a good trade at all…

For all we know everything that has been happening could have been done by some dragon we do not know about. For all we know Scarlett could be an avatar of a dragon. Or not. Either way, not sure how this stuff is killing GW lore.

Anyways, IMO it has been a really good trade.

There’s nothing precluding the possibility of a traditional boxed expansion one day.

There’s no equitable “trade” to speak of, as the OP leaves out the consideration that Factions cost money, whereas we’ve received everything in the ~20 content releases there have been so far for free. Factor in the additional caveats that GW2 was a far bigger game than Prophecies+Sorrow’s Furnace to begin with and costs more to operate, and that GW1 was missing an entire primary mode of play in WvW, didn’t have races, and was in fact not an MMO at all, and looking back on what we’ve had given to us for free seems pretty impressive. Again, there’s no “trade,” but it seems to me to be a pretty successful experiment so far.

More than anything it would appear that you simply don’t like the content that has been offered and specifically the storylines involved, which is fair, but seems to be neither a problem with quantity or quality per se. And again, there’s nothing keeping them from at some point producing a traditional expansion if need be in the future.

I feel like small doses of content here and there allows them to be more experimental, I can’t see Super Adventure Box existing in an expansion-type model (and I love SAB).

for me it depends on the content, if it’s like, updates to the world and living story updates i’d rather have those for free

if it was like an expansion to this fabled cantha along with maybe a few new classes and races (or really even just cantha), i would pay for that in a heart beat

Expansion for me.

You get better quality, which has been more thoroughly tested, balanced and polished. Plus because they have 12-18 months to work on it, it allows content like new character classes, multiple new proper zones (with vistas, hearts, skill points, well thought out dynamic events) and the content is more joined together/seamless.

The LS continues to be hit/miss, buggy, a little all over the place and rushed at the cost of creativity.

Nope, not worth it at all. Living Story has completely ruined this game for me. If I could have my $60 back, I would quietly move on.

I’m less than thrilled about the current trend of putting the incentives into small areas of the game, promoting zerg/repetition. There hasn’t been an update that I found truly engaging and fun since Sanctum of the Winds. Before that it was Molten Facility and the Flame/Frost DE’s. I’m not qualified to state whether there was a good trade, or even if there was a trade — but I’m not thrilled with the game’s direction.

Lets talk about “Living World” vs. “Expansions”.

We will take an example from EQ1, and the first expansion Ruins of Kunark. Take a quick peek at the “content”.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EverQuest:_The_Ruins_of_Kunark

Yeah, new playable race, tons of new zones, new dungeons, new monsters, new epic quests, new dragons, new gear, changes to the whole games world, etc. etc.

Now take a look what the “Living World” from GW2 has brought us…

Zerg farms, scavenger hunts, numerous back pieces, more scavenger hunts, more back pieces, scavenger hunts, oh….another back piece, and 1 path to an existing dungeon (that replaces a path that was already there), a totally out of place jumping game. Did I mention back pieces?

So personally, I would rather pay for an expansion that actually adds something solid to my game, not a 2 week scavenger hunt with another dippy back slot item that I delete after getting it.

Yeah, give me something meaningful. The living story aint doing it.

The problem I see is that the player base did not seem willing to wait for an expansion. They were whining about having nothing to do within the first month. They whined that the living story when it was introduced didn’t give them enough to do when it was on a monthly basis.

Simply put, as much as the forum HATES it, it does not appear the majority of customers were willing to wait. And frankly, I don’t think they’re wrong.

And what is so magical about expansions, really? They’re a relic of days gone by. I don’t need no stinkin’ expansion, thank you very much.

chemiclord.3978:

And what is so magical about expansions, really? They’re a relic of days gone by. I don’t need no stinkin’ expansion, thank you very much.

Expansions are like rallying when in a down state.
Living story is like pressing 4 while still being hit.

I prefer new stuff every 2nd week over new stuff once per year (or something like that) which will be completed within a month anyway.

yea I’d rather have an expansion instead of this shallow content. An expansion being new races, new zones, new dungeons, new armor, new jumping puzzles, I mean theres so many ways they can go with it, but whatever I guess it’s cool to have a new baddie attack out of left field every other week and then just disappear.

I prefer the expansion model with perhaps one or maybe two “living world” type events thrown in between to keep our appetites whetted.

This model might help with keeping players that play the game in game. But it will not attract new players to the game. The expansion model will attract new players to the game. So they need expansions, and to me within the year.

pdg.8462:

I prefer the expansion model with perhaps one or maybe two “living world” type events thrown in between to keep our appetites whetted.

Well, the problem I see with this is that “one or two living world type events” wouldn’t cut it. Hell, the player base was moaning about nothing to do with the prospect of TWELVE such events planned a year.

I just don’t see why or how expansions are necessary except to people who have conditioned themselves in the past that they are necessary. Yay… $50 more for something that players will chew through in a month and spend the next eleven complaining they are bored.

No thanks.

Xcom.1926:

This model might help with keeping players that play the game in game. But it will not attract new players to the game.

May I ask how would expansions help to increase the population? Instead of buying one game a new player would be forced to buy years of expansions, therefore chances are more people would be scared away from it.

Mirta.5029:

Xcom.1926:

This model might help with keeping players that play the game in game. But it will not attract new players to the game.

May I ask how would expansions help to increase the population? Instead of buying one game a new player would be forced to buy years of expansions, therefore chances are more people would be scared away from it.

Expansions bring more areas, races, skills, content that isn’t temporary along with it. If people saw a race they like they’ll hop on board and buy it pretty quick. And for a while they’ll be sedated with the content and areas that are released along with it.

Mirta.5029:

Xcom.1926:

This model might help with keeping players that play the game in game. But it will not attract new players to the game.

May I ask how would expansions help to increase the population? Instead of buying one game a new player would be forced to buy years of expansions, therefore chances are more people would be scared away from it.

The players that quit GW2 will come back for an expansion. New players that never played GW2 will come back for an expansion. Right now if a player wants to play a new MMO he will pick between literally a dozen MMOs most of which are free to play. However, if GW2 had a new expansion with a reset new players are likely to come back since it is a new shiny thing.

I was looking for GW2 on Amazon yesterday and it was doing really bad in sales. There isn’t enough to attract new players. I hope we see an expansion by Spring 2014 or we are in for a hurting.

Xcom.1926:

The players that quit GW2 will come back for an expansion. New players that never played GW2 will come back for an expansion. Right now if a player wants to play a new MMO he will pick between literally a dozen MMOs most of which are free to play. However, if GW2 had a new expansion with a reset new players are likely to come back since it is a new shiny thing.

I was looking for GW2 on Amazon yesterday and it was doing really bad in sales. There isn’t enough to attract new players. I hope we see an expansion by Spring 2014 or we are in for a hurting.

To be honest I never felt like purchasing an MMO that has expansions. It kind of feels like you’re buying a full game, but you’re missing 3/4rths of the content, so you have to buy the full game 4 times over.
How do you check how much of a certain product was sold on amazon recently exactly? Because judging from th in game population and more and more game shops agreeing to sell gem cards, the game still being on the shelves I do not see it as doing badly in sustaining itself.

Skan.5301:

Expansions bring more areas, races, skills, content that isn’t temporary along with it.

It was already said that living story does not equal temporary and no real content. The new dungeon path is permanent, the new tequatl is permanent, upcoming fractals will be permanent, upcoming extra skills will be permanent, upcoming extra weapons will be permanent and we were told that if they would decide to go with the no expansion model eventually living story will lead to opening new areas.

No not worth it.

Living story sounds great on paper but in reality it is the suck.

Its nothing but the same rehashed stuff over and over again with a new story slapped on and a grind for a backpiece/AP. And heres the best part if you weren’t playing those two weeks you missed out on it completely. No new zones, no new nothing really. Its a very cheap way to make it seem like your adding to the game without really having to do much work.

At this point its just rinse/repeat for me. I would much perfer slapping 50 bucks on a new expansion that has a new race, new skills, new weapons, new armors, new encounters, a new zone (thats properly done and added to the world… south sun was not done right thus its a ghost town), new dungeons in the new zone again that fits in the story and isn’t a hashed on event that makes the new zone worthless after the LS is over -.-.

Mirta.5029:

To be honest I never felt like purchasing an MMO that has expansions. It kind of feels like you’re buying a full game, but you’re missing 3/4rths of the content, so you have to buy the full game 4 times over.

How do you check how much of a certain product was sold on amazon recently exactly? Because judging from th in game population and more and more game shops agreeing to sell gem cards, the game still being on the shelves I do not see it as doing badly in sustaining itself.

The expansion model has seemed to work before for most MMOs including GW1.

About in-game not sure what server you play on. But ET and HoD two servers that I played on since launch saw a drastic decrease so much so that I was forced to move to Blackgate.

I wanted to buy the Heroic Edition for a friend yesterday and noticed it wasn’t selling that well on Amazon. For example for PC games: Mists of Pandaria is 17th best selling game but GW2 Heroic edition is 87th.

Also, if you look at lower level zones even on servers like Blackgate there aren’t a lot of players. So I hope to see a expansion. I personally think it is needed, not for existing players but to bring new players to the game.

But my fear is that NCSoft cares only about WildStar now and won’t give them money to make an expansion.

Xcom.1926:

The players that quit GW2 will come back for an expansion. New players that never played GW2 will come back for an expansion. Right now if a player wants to play a new MMO he will pick between literally a dozen MMOs most of which are free to play. However, if GW2 had a new expansion with a reset new players are likely to come back since it is a new shiny thing.

Maybe. And Maybe.

Expansions are NOT the cure all for a struggling game (presuming Guild Wars 2 is even struggling, which Arena.net claims it isn’t). Generally, I’ve found expansions only reel in players who are already invested. New prospective players often feel INTIMIDATED by expansions, as they feel they have to catch up with old content (and pay twice as much) to enjoy the content that was just released.

I honestly don’t know how new players are intimidated by the living story. Outside of this forum, I can’t say I’ve personally met anyone who ran away from the game because of it… then again… I can’t say I’ve met anyone who excitedly quoted it as a reason for their purchase. You’ll have a hard time convincing me that it’s any more than a zero-sum game here. The Living Story and Expansions really only effect those already invested… I don’t think EITHER encourage or discourage new players any more than the other.

Xcom.1926:

I was looking for GW2 on Amazon yesterday and it was doing really bad in sales. There isn’t enough to attract new players. I hope we see an expansion by Spring 2014 or we are in for a hurting.

Wait… you mean to tell me a year old game isn’t selling like hotcakes? STOP THE PRESSES! At this point, anyone who is going to get the game off the shelves has already done so. That’s just as true for Warcraft as it is for Call of Duty. An expansion would certainly fly off shelves… but it would simply be from all the players who already have the first.

It’s kinda funny… how people complain that Arena.net is just in it for the money… yet the company is reluctant to put out a guaranteed cash cow (in the form of an expansion) in lieu of content offered for free (that they HOPE will encourage gem store sales).

chemiclord.3978:

Wait… you mean to tell me a year old game isn’t selling like hotcakes? STOP THE PRESSES! At this point, anyone who is going to get the game off the shelves has already done so. That’s just as true for Warcraft as it is for Call of Duty. An expansion would certainly fly off shelves… but it would simply be from all the players who already have the first.

It’s kinda funny… how people complain that Arena.net is just in it for the money… yet the company is reluctant to put out a guaranteed cash cow (in the form of an expansion) in lieu of content offered for free (that they HOPE will encourage gem store sales).

MoP and D3 are still in the top 20 as my post above states. Here is what I think, either GW2 is making an expansion secretly without anyone of us knowing and they will surprise us. Or that NCSoft just wants to support WildStar and not give money to GW2. Just assumptions off course.

Xcom.1926:

The players that quit GW2 will come back for an expansion.

Nope, not necessarily. If they released an expansion that wiped the slate clean of all vertical progression tiers, and returned to their original intent for the game, I might consider coming back.

But then again, maybe not. I’m not sure I would ever give ANet another dollar, much less fifty-nine.

Mirta.5029:

Xcom.1926:

The players that quit GW2 will come back for an expansion. New players that never played GW2 will come back for an expansion. Right now if a player wants to play a new MMO he will pick between literally a dozen MMOs most of which are free to play. However, if GW2 had a new expansion with a reset new players are likely to come back since it is a new shiny thing.

I was looking for GW2 on Amazon yesterday and it was doing really bad in sales. There isn’t enough to attract new players. I hope we see an expansion by Spring 2014 or we are in for a hurting.

To be honest I never felt like purchasing an MMO that has expansions. It kind of feels like you’re buying a full game, but you’re missing 3/4rths of the content, so you have to buy the full game 4 times over.
How do you check how much of a certain product was sold on amazon recently exactly? Because judging from th in game population and more and more game shops agreeing to sell gem cards, the game still being on the shelves I do not see it as doing badly in sustaining itself.

Skan.5301:

Expansions bring more areas, races, skills, content that isn’t temporary along with it.

It was already said that living story does not equal temporary and no real content. The new dungeon path is permanent, the new tequatl is permanent, upcoming fractals will be permanent, upcoming extra skills will be permanent, upcoming extra weapons will be permanent and we were told that if they would decide to go with the no expansion model eventually living story will lead to opening new areas.

Meh…maybe. For the most part when expansions hit the original prices usually drop a decent amount. Maybe it scares you off but it seems a ton of people still buy expansions as many other games have shown. Expansions normally indicate pretty big changes and a whole lot of ‘new’ so people get intrigued and go get it.

All the content you just named is cool I guess but is just fluff really. An expansion would probably come with 4-5 now zones, a handful of new dungeons with multiple paths, new weapons for classes, new races with, new storylines. I’m just saying things off the top of my head from what I know of other games expansions. They can say whatever they want about living world but so far it’s been very underwhelming, imo.

The only thing they really have going for them is that this game doesn’t require a sub. So that in itself relieves them of feeling like they aren’t providing enough so I’ll give them that. People can walk away, but really can’t ever quit. Maybe they’ll figure something out…it’s just wishful thinking that they’d do an expansion because my gut tells me they never will, and at the end of the day that’s ok because there are plenty of other games to play when this gets boring, I’m fine with that.

it is a bad trade a REALY REALY bad trade

dcypher.2590:

Meh…maybe. For the most part when expansions hit the original prices usually drop a decent amount. Maybe it scares you off but it seems a ton of people still buy expansions as many other games have shown. Expansions normally indicate pretty big changes and a whole lot of ‘new’ so people get intrigued and go get it.

From what I’ve seen MMOs tend to have a steady increase of players until they hit their peak and expansions are bought only by a portion of those players. Every single expansion normally sees less sales than the last one.

dcypher.2590:

All the content you just named is cool I guess but is just fluff really. An expansion would probably come with 4-5 now zones, a handful of new dungeons with multiple paths, new weapons for classes, new races with, new storylines. I’m just saying things off the top of my head from what I know of other games expansions. They can say whatever they want about living world but so far it’s been very underwhelming, imo.

If it was 4 or 5 new zones only I would be pretty disappointed really XD I expect them to release as much with just on going living story. Really I suppose it’s an argument of a big chunk versus lots of small chunks. We are going to get new weapons and dungeons paths. In small chunks. We’re already in one big storyline, but nobody seems to have noticed. Even the current living story. Scarlet knows a lot about Caithe. Scarlet seems to be progressing very similarly to an asura personal storyline. I’m guessing that Scarlet is Caithe from the dimension that your evil you showed up in asura personal story. I’m guessing that we’re seeing a very long and grand plan to unfold. After all the steam creatures are the exact same ones that came in asura storyline when you did bad things with portals. So we’re getting a new storyline. Slowly. Piece by piece.

I want new skills new classes new races new lands, not temporary content.

Xcom.1926:

MoP and D3 are still in the top 20 as my post above states. Here is what I think, either GW2 is making an expansion secretly without anyone of us knowing and they will surprise us. Or that NCSoft just wants to support WildStar and not give money to GW2. Just assumptions off course.

I think it’s a REALLY dangerous thing to compare sales figures with games that have an already established pool in the roughly 10 million range. By relative measure, MoP has been a pretty big flop, comparing it to the sale numbers of WoW’s previous expansions. MoP has NOT stemmed the tide of decreasing subscriptions, it doesn’t seem… further proof that an expansion isn’t necessarily a game’s go-to saving throw.

Mirta.5029:

We’re already in one big storyline, but nobody seems to have noticed.

If I had to guess it’s because the story telling is pretty bad, at best sub-par. That definitely wasn’t clear to me, at least.

As far as expansions go, sales are sales. If you are still selling 10+ million copies for an expansion to a 9 year old game, I’d say it’s pretty kitten good. Maybe not as good as when it peaked, but still pretty good. Can you realistically expect to have even an 80% retention rate at that stage of the franchise?

Back to GW2 however, I would actually be surprised with 4 new zones. In a whole year we have only seen the addition of one new zone which, besides being pretty pointless to go to (I guess it’s cool for the occasional farming run), wasn’t all that much. The reason I’d be surprised with 4 and not more disappointed like you said would be basically because the way they have the game set up with the events and all tells me they probably are pretty tense about expanding the world too much because of the need to have people around doing these events. (I feel like that sentence was a run-on..too tired…apologies no grammar checking tonight.)

dcypher.2590:

As far as expansions go, sales are sales. If you are still selling 10+ million copies for an expansion to a 9 year old game, I’d say it’s pretty kitten good. Maybe not as good as when it peaked, but still pretty good. Can you realistically expect to have even an 80% retention rate at that stage of the franchise?

The claim is that expansions are an MMO’s saving grace. They bring back old players, retain current players, and entice new ones.

That isn’t necessarily true, as Mists of Pandaria demonstrates. If people are growing tired of a game, more of that game isn’t necessarily going to save it.

Any experiment is always worth it.

It shows us what to do and what not to do next time.

It had to happen eventually, and I’m glad it happened now.

chemiclord.3978:

dcypher.2590:

As far as expansions go, sales are sales. If you are still selling 10+ million copies for an expansion to a 9 year old game, I’d say it’s pretty kitten good. Maybe not as good as when it peaked, but still pretty good. Can you realistically expect to have even an 80% retention rate at that stage of the franchise?

The claim is that expansions are an MMO’s saving grace. They bring back old players, retain current players, and entice new ones.

That isn’t necessarily true, as Mists of Pandaria demonstrates. If people are growing tired of a game, more of that game isn’t necessarily going to save it.

MoP brought at least 1 million additional subscribers. Eventually the subscribers went lower but MoP did bring them back.

The market is too competitive for games to retain players. No MMO is doing it, every MMO is losing players.

Vaxx.3178:

We will take an example from EQ1, and the first expansion Ruins of Kunark.

Heey, that’s no faaaair, you just named the best mmo expansion in all the history of mmo’s. Boo… so shameless hehe
Man that was so epic.

eisberg.2379:

No Walking.6349:

So it’s been over a year. If this game had followed the same path they took in GW1, around this time we would have had a whole new expansion added to the game full of new PERMANENT content, new classes, new races, furthering the dragon story line, maybe added UW, or Cantha, or Elona.

Instead of that however, we’ve gotten a ton of gimmicky, slightly entertaining but overall underwhelming content (most of it reused with scavenger hunts, etc) that is totally removed from the main dragon plot, and injects random sub plots that are pulled out of the devs butts and are killing GW lore.

Was the living story experiment really worth it? I don’t think it was a good trade at all…

For all we know everything that has been happening could have been done by some dragon we do not know about. For all we know Scarlett could be an avatar of a dragon. Or not. Either way, not sure how this stuff is killing GW lore.

Anyways, IMO it has been a really good trade.

This would be absurd simply from the lore standpoint and would pretty much be the most direct way for GW2’s Lore Enthusiasts that Lore isn’t important in this game anymore.

For those who haven’t seen it yet:

Knote.2904:

According to Anet’s metric and money, yes, to them.

Third’d.

Personally, I would’ve preferred an expansion pack because what they’ve been doing has not been of much interest to me, and has been failing to sate my interest.