Guild Wars 2

I’m somewhat of an MMO noob. Guild Wars 2 is the only MMO I’ve played for an extended period of time (other than UO over 10 years ago).

I hear alot of folks talk about expansions and I’m just curious as to what an expansion usually contains. What would a Guild Wars 2 expansion likely contain?

It would contain more armors and weapons for gems

Generally speaking:

-increased level cap
-new areas
-new skills, items, enemies and all that
-new custscenes, music, art, and all that
-new gameplay types, such as types of dungeon, pvp arenas, as appropriate to the game genre
-lots of advertising and media hype

Now, that’s your typical MMO. GW1 managed to do all of that but left out the level cap. Whats’ relevant to GW2 (som say) is the advertising, since everything else is already delivered via living story.

The quality of what’s being delivered via LS is also debatable (how to write a LS update: pull 2 factions out of a hat… etc).

-New zones
-New story (and with that I don’t mean just 1 or 2 quests).
-New professions
-New weapon types
-New playable races

This combined with new gear/skins/skills.

Pretty much everything LS doesn’t have, except for skins and some skills.

In defense of GW2, what you’re seeing is this:

Typical MMO’s have an expansion come out around the two year mark after release, and are designed around a sub-fee where the company benefits financially from keeping their players grinding. That’s probably up for debate, but of the ones I’ve played it’s been about two years. With GW2, it’s been a year and a few months now, however the game is designed to be player friendly in regards to the time it takes to level a character to max level, so most of the players are ready for new content earlier than you’d typically see.

So, arguably GW2’s greatest feature (it’s high level of player-friendly design), is working as a catch-22. People are further along faster because the game is easier to be further along with, and are looking for content to be released at a fast pace and in large quantities.

I preferred GW1’s system.

I still hope for an expansion as it (as mentioned above) deliver something different from Living Story. I like LS for most part, but in no way or form does it substitute what an expansion might do.

I want expansions mor like GW1 than of other MMO’s btw, no raising level cap or some such. I am fine that they added ascended as that is afterall still somewhat minor. But beyond that, I don’t wanna see our current toons, made useless all of a sudden.

I would say the only thing expansion-worthy for GW2 is new race/class. Everything is delivered via living story content and updates. It’s not as easily seen cause its small updates over a long period of time with big influxes once a while rather than the traditional large chunks of update at once.

Basically it’s like the original game is volume 1 of a book and the expansions are volumes 2, 3, etc… You still have the same characters in the same “universe” but you have a full new story.

The Living Stories we have now would be more like bonus chapters or spin-offs.

Typical MMO:

-New Race/Class
-New Explorable Map (usually only for high levels)
-New Weapons and Armors
-Increased Level Cap
-New Dungeons/Raids/Instances
-New Quests/Scenarios/Events
-New Skills/Overhaul of Skill or Talent System
-New random QOL Features
-Updates to old content
-New PvP Areas and PvP types

Since GW2 has never had an expansion, and GW1 only did Campaigns (besides EotN), we’ll use GW1 as a base for what you would get with a Campaign:

-New Classes (2 with each Campaign)
-Entirely new Map with all level zones (not just high level zones)
-New Quests/Storyline/Missions
-New Weapons and Armors
-New Dungeons/Instances/Elite Areas (raids kind of)
-New PvP Areas and PvP types
-New Skills/Overhaul of Skills and Builds
-New Heroes/Henchmen

I really hope that if GW2 ever does release an Expansion/Campaign, it is like GW1 Campaigns.

Expansions are basically just large content patches, but the difference is that they cost money and patches are free.

The typical expectable content from an Expasion I guess GW2 could provide are these things:

• Level Cap Increase from 80 to 100

• New Playable Race – the Tengu

• Introduction of a Sub Class System, giving all Basic Classes their first Sub Class.

• New explorable Maps within the Continent of Tyria, like for example
  - Maguuma Jungle
  - Crystal Desert
  - Northern Shiverpeaks
  - Fire Ring
  - Wood Cascades
  - TThe Deldrimor Territory

• New Weapon Categories and alot new Skills together with them for all classes.

• New PvP Maps/ Modes

• New WvW Maps/ Skills (Class Specific WvW Skills need to be introduced finally to improve the Class Roles in WvW, gainable through Badges of Honor rather than through WExP-Rank Grind)

• New Dungeons/ Dungeon Paths, Dungeon Modes, like Zelda-similar Solo-Dungeons

• Alot new Dynamic Events, alot new Heart Quests, Vistas, Skill Points

• Hard Mode Instances of Maps/ “Vanguishing Mode” basically

• Next Part of Personal Story, I think Personal Story and living Story need to MERGE
  Alot of the Stuff of LS could have been done also as Personal Story i think.
  Anet needs to find a solution anyways between PS and LS for the future.

• New Armor/ Weapon Sets and redesigned old Sets ,like making finally the Dungeon Story Headsets unique skins so that it becomes worth it to keep them instead of deletign them, named armor sets should finally receive individual unique looks and look really after which named npc they were named after… means if I have a set of Devonas Armor for exampe, it really DOES LOOK also like Devonas Armor >.>

and alot more things, like adding new features, that many people wish for, like Mounts for example, like Housing, like alot more Minigames as for example the missing ones (POLYMOK!!)

Expansions are basically used always for adding new content to the game, that has a data amount of a size, that goes far beyond the typical patch size of GW2 around 350 MB.

Expansions are of such a size, that you can’t just simply download them through a patcher, without having to sit n wait there for hours even with a very fast internet connection. Content that goes far beyond several GB of data, thats the stuff thats made for expüansions to be sold on data carriers, like the typical DVD’s (just i think a matter of time, until every PC has Blue Ray Disk Drives as normal Data Carrier System.
Currently you see Blue Ray used only in consoles and movies mostly)

Data Carriers are much better to give everyone the needed data of huge sizes all over the world, regardless of how fast your internet connection is., so they are the much better choice to provide to all of the players the needed huge data and it can be used to make with the same move also profit.

Anet would be just simply said dumb, if they would not make Expansions and I do say this with all of my respect, without intending to put insult into the world dumb for the decision, should Anet ever decide not to make expansions.
I do just say it would be dumb in context of making money and we all nkow, that ANet needs to make money.

The only way Anet could implement so much new content just for free without having to sell copies of all those data carriers would be, if anet would generate through the Ingame Shop so incredible much profit, that they could just gift us all an expansion … lol

We all know, this will never happen… ANet would eventuelly do that, if the shop would really be so extreme profitable, but the hungry wolf behind Anet – NCSoft is just unsatiable, when it comes down to making money with every opportunity that comes into the near of their profit thirsty fangs.

so lets take guild wars 1 as the basis of “expansions”.

it will be new zones content classes

it wont be a lvl cap increase

when ppl talk about “expansion” they use WoW as the basis for it.

an expansion does not need a lvl cap to be an “expansion” all it has to do is expand the game.

id rather have new zones content classes / races weapons with out a lvl cap increase

Expansion usually means new areas to play in, further progression (be it vertical or horizontal), new gear and in general new things to do. Other things that can be added in expansions are increase of the level caps, new races, new classes and stuff like that.

For some examples, GW1 after being released had 2 new campaigns and one expansion released. Each campaign was a full game on its own (you didn’t even had to own the original game to get a new campaign), included areas from beggining to level cap, full new storyline, and each had 2 new classes added (no new playable races were added in GW1, it was all human). The expansion (EotN) added new maps and a new story as well, but they were all meant for level 20 (they upleveled your character, much like GW2 does) but didn’t add new classes to play on.

The other game I’ve played where I’ve played expansions is WoW, which is also what most people use as a yardstick to compare expansions to, this is what they added:

The Burning Legion: Increase of level cap (10 extra levels), a new full continent (I’d estimate about 1/3 of the full WoW map in size), 2 new races with their corresponding starter areas, 2 existing classes becoming available (paladins used to be alliance only, shamans horde only, they became available to the oposite faction as well), and it’s corresponding dungeons, raids and gear.

Wrath of the Lich King: Increase of level cap (10 extra levels again), a new full continent (I think a little bigger than outland from TBC), 1 new heroic class (started at level 50) with its corresponding starter area, and new dungeons, raids and gears.

Orpheal.8263:

named armor sets should finally receive individual unique looks and look really after which named npc they were named after… means if I have a set of Devonas Armor for exampe, it really DOES LOOK also like Devonas Armor >.>

this.