Guild Wars 2

Forum bug.

Omocha.4931:

One has the looks, but the other one certainly has the soul. GW2 is focused on the bling-blings from Gem Store, GW1 was focused on player’s experience more.

Had to quote this because it perfectly explains how I feel. GW1 was just so much more of an… experience. GW2 just feels like going through the motions.

Its like the art and finance departments were too big and the content creation department was too small.

At this point I wish they would’ve just made another GW1 expansion and kept it going.

webtoehobbit.4201:

Spent all day yesterday making this up, to compare what we received content wise from ArenaNet in the past with their other expansions to what has been officially announced so far with Heart of Thorns.

I will continue to update this as more info is revealed with Heart of Thorns, but here is what we have so far, enjoy!

Edit: This comparison is based off of features that were DAY 1 features and not added at a later date.

Well somebody made an interesting point…

Just updated the comparison to include Heroes from Nightfall and Eye of the North. Also added in The Falls (name unconfirmed) to HoT as there has been more or less confirmation from the livestreams that there is a zone in that area.

Reading a couple of responses that said guild halls should be included as zones. I won’t be listing them under zones because if I did I would have to do that as well for all of the GW1 xpacs, and I would run out of room.

Looking on your comparison again, I’ve remembered something: Nightfall had also 3 challenge missions and Factions had… 5 (Dragon’s Throat, I think and two for suxons an 2 for kurzpicks)?

Johje Holan.4607:

Omocha.4931:

One has the looks, but the other one certainly has the soul. GW2 is focused on the bling-blings from Gem Store, GW1 was focused on player’s experience more.

Had to quote this because it perfectly explains how I feel. GW1 was just so much more of an… experience. GW2 just feels like going through the motions.

Its like the art and finance departments were too big and the content creation department was too small.

At this point I wish they would’ve just made another GW1 expansion and kept it going.

Yeah the story and characters were much better too. Actually I think they had too many people involved in iteration. But aside from that yes, GW1 really was an unforgettable experience for a lot of us Veteran fans.

This chart is amazing, by the way.

Sorry if this was already mentioned in this thread, but EOTN is cheaper because it was considered to be the first real expansion to the GW franchise. Factions and Nightfall were campaigns which were stand alone games that could be played without the others.

To people concerned about context etc. How about this kind of context: GW1 had 3 xpacs in ~2+ years after release. For GW2 it’s gonna be 3 years in August and the main achievement we have here is all this effing drama all over the place. Nice kittening context.

Omocha.4931:

Looking on your comparison again, I’ve remembered something: Nightfall had also 3 challenge missions and Factions had… 5 (Dragon’s Throat, I think and two for suxons an 2 for kurzpicks)?

gw1 also had way more events, every weekend there was a special. Cantha new year that didnt suck, dragon festival, and fun wintersday. Oh how good was the snowball fight in that

aspirine.6852:

gw1 also had way more events, every weekend there was a special. Cantha new year that didnt suck, dragon festival, and fun wintersday. Oh how good was the snowball fight in that

The events are also here. Can’t say I enjoyed Wintersday all that much, but Halloween was quite nice. Were it not for the latest addition to GW1’s event (that UW race), I would’ve even said better than GW1’s. Maybe the Dragon Festival (Festival of the Four Winds here maybe?) and GW2 bday will improve too, for whoever will be left to play this game. Also, there’s something special every weekend here too! If memory serves, last weekend we had the Mini Rock special moment ._.

It just seams like they count on us dying for new content and they put zero effort on making this deal more appealing to us.

They gonna buy it anyways, so lets make as much money as possible, who cares… That’s the vibe I get.

About Context: GW2 has no history of expansions for comparison. So if people make comparisons to similar MMO games from other companies some people complain about how the comparison isn’t valid because of a list of differences. So some other people try to make a more compelling comparison by staying in the same franchise and looking at that history. The context isn’t being ignored, but trying to argue context is missing the point.

Fantastic chart. You could add all of the unique armor, weapons, and face/hair styles that each “expandalone” brought to GW1 (since right now with GW2 you have to buy make over kits to get access to the new looks).

I didn’t make a pretty chart but I did make a comparison between first expandalones of both GW1 and 2:

If you bought Factions without previous GW1 Core:
character slots: 4
regions: 0 Core + 4 New
missions: 0 Core + 22 New
classes: 6 Core + 2 New
guild halls: 0 Core + 4 New

If you bought GW1 Core without Factions:
character slots: 4
regions: 6 Core + 0 New
missions: 25 Core + 0 New
classes: 6 Core + 0 New
guild halls: 8 Core + 0 New

purchased both:
character slots: 6
regions: 6 Core + 4 New
missions: 25 Core + 22 New
classes: 6 Core + 2 New
guild halls: 8 Core + 4 New

Now HoT:
If you bought HoT without previous GW2 Core:
character slots: 5
maps: 100% Core + 100% New
events: 100% Core + 100% New
classes: 8 Core + 1 New
guild halls: 0 Core + 2 New

if you bought GW2 Core:
character slots: 5
maps: 100% Core + 0% New
events: 100% Core + 0% New
classes: 8 Core + 0 New
guild halls: 0 Core + 0 New

purchased both:
character slots: 5
maps: 100% Core + 100% New
events: 100% Core + 100% New
classes: 8 Core + 1 New
guild halls: 0 Core + 2 New

Hey OP, I have a question for you. With all the great comparison work you’ve done, and all the comparing, how come you left out dynamic events which the game is centered around. For example Guild Wars Prophecies had 209 quests.

If you add up all the quests in all four Guild Wars 1 products, you’ll find it was less than the number of dynamic events than Guild Wars 2 launched with.

You also left out species and starter areas. Seems to me I can play five races in this game, but only play 1 race throughout all of Guild Wars 2.

Vayne.8563:

Hey OP, I have a question for you. With all the great comparison work you’ve done, and all the comparing, how come you left out dynamic events which the game is centered around. For example Guild Wars Prophecies had 209 quests.

If you add up all the quests in all four Guild Wars 1 products, you’ll find it was less than the number of dynamic events than Guild Wars 2 launched with.

You also left out species and starter areas. Seems to me I can play five races in this game, but only play 1 race throughout all of Guild Wars 2.

This is an expansion comparison. Not an original game comparison. When we spend the 45eur hot costs, we are not getting 5 new races to play, nor a ton of dynamic events

Aenesthesia.1697:

Vayne.8563:

Hey OP, I have a question for you. With all the great comparison work you’ve done, and all the comparing, how come you left out dynamic events which the game is centered around. For example Guild Wars Prophecies had 209 quests.

If you add up all the quests in all four Guild Wars 1 products, you’ll find it was less than the number of dynamic events than Guild Wars 2 launched with.

You also left out species and starter areas. Seems to me I can play five races in this game, but only play 1 race throughout all of Guild Wars 2.

This is an expansion comparison. Not an original game comparison. When we spend the 45eur hot costs, we are not getting 5 new races to play, nor a ton of dynamic events

No, we’re not. However, we are getting events, and we don’t know how many and we’ve have to compare that to the original game, since events replace quests. They content. We don’t have enough information to compare at this point, and so the comparison is premature.

One might argue then that the pre-purchase is premature, but then no one is forcing anyone to buy it. Why make a comparison when we don’t have the information we need to compare yet?

Vayne.8563:

Hey OP, I have a question for you. With all the great comparison work you’ve done, and all the comparing, how come you left out dynamic events which the game is centered around. For example Guild Wars Prophecies had 209 quests.

If you add up all the quests in all four Guild Wars 1 products, you’ll find it was less than the number of dynamic events than Guild Wars 2 launched with.

You also left out species and starter areas. Seems to me I can play five races in this game, but only play 1 race throughout all of Guild Wars 2.

I’ve played all 5 species in GW2. Made a total of 8 characters. Wouldn’t make any more ‘cause it just gets incredibly dull, especially if running through the “wonderful” story and especially near the climax, once you reach Trinity. Also, I’d say that 5 races don’t give that much replayability within GW2. New classes – sure, it’ll give you an insight as to how each functions. But the races… guess after you roll all of them once, you settle for one and that was it. In terms of variety, it could’ve been just quaggans with 5 different origins, colours, or voices.

Also, I hope you’re not talking about starter areas in GW2, to compare them with GW1 and I also hope you won’t start counting the amount of pixels each game had. The chart doesn’t containt the GW1 outposts. As for GW1’s starter areas, most are included, and maybe the only one worth mentioning would be in Prophecies, a microverse on its own – the Presearing.

As for quests and dynamic events… what can I say?! I never got to do them all in GW1. Guess there was so much else to do that doing all the “hearts” was really left out. On the other hand, in GW2, why do you do them?! certainly it’s not really the fun factor, since, for example, the pre’s for a WB are afk’ed by the whole map with a few exceptions. It may be because they’re less demanding than the dungeons. Or maybe because there’s karma to be gained, which could mean easy cash by abusing the toilet…

Omocha.4931:

Vayne.8563:

Hey OP, I have a question for you. With all the great comparison work you’ve done, and all the comparing, how come you left out dynamic events which the game is centered around. For example Guild Wars Prophecies had 209 quests.

If you add up all the quests in all four Guild Wars 1 products, you’ll find it was less than the number of dynamic events than Guild Wars 2 launched with.

You also left out species and starter areas. Seems to me I can play five races in this game, but only play 1 race throughout all of Guild Wars 2.

I’ve played all 5 species in GW2. Made a total of 8 characters. Wouldn’t make any more ‘cause it just gets incredibly dull, especially if running through the “wonderful” story and especially near the climax, once you reach Trinity. Also, I’d say that 5 races don’t give that much replayability within GW2. New classes – sure, it’ll give you an insight as to how each functions. But the races… guess after you roll all of them once, you settle for one and that was it. In terms of variety, it could’ve been just quaggans with 5 different origins, colours, or voices.

Also, I hope you’re not talking about starter areas in GW2, to compare them with GW1 and I also hope you won’t start counting the amount of pixels each game had. The chart doesn’t containt the GW1 outposts. As for GW1’s starter areas, most are included, and maybe the only one worth mentioning would be in Prophecies, a microverse on its own – the Presearing.

As for quests and dynamic events… what can I say?! I never got to do them all in GW1. Guess there was so much else to do that doing all the “hearts” was really left out. On the other hand, in GW2, why do you do them?! certainly it’s not really the fun factor, since, for example, the pre’s for a WB are afk’ed by the whole map with a few exceptions. It may be because they’re less demanding than the dungeons. Or maybe because there’s karma to be gained, which could mean easy cash by abusing the toilet…

I’m not even counting hearts in what I said. There are more hearts in Guild Wars 2 than there were in Prophecies, but I didn’t mention them. Nor did I mention jumping puzzles. Or the fact that Guild Wars 1 pathed. Or the fact that it didn’t have a TP. Or a z axis.

See, that’s the thing, they’re very different games. Just the idea that Guild Wars 1 was completely instanced in any area you could play in, that you knew exactly how many people were running around, made it much much easier to program. No Z axis made it easier to program too. You may not care about those things, but they’re a part of business. The longer and harder something is to program, the more it’s going to cost.

I did every single quest in Guild Wars 1, but I’m not sure I’ve done all the dynamic events in Guild Wars 2.

The story is of course personal taste, nothing more, but there are some experiences I’ve had in Guild Wars 2 that, for me, rival anything I did in Guild Wars 1. Regardless of that, they were both great games.

But comparing a lobby game to a true MMO is just silly.

Not in terms of dedication it isn’t. How many bugs you knew in GW1 to have survived for 3 years without adressing?! Game mechanics, pvp balance, etc. And they had a lot more to look at when balancing classes there than here.

In GW2 I ran all maps and did all events that weren’t bugged at least once, I think. GW2 had good start, but after 6 gifts of exploration, I’d say there’s little to reward doing any event or instance or heart. Everything lurks around that one thing GW1 was missing: TP.

I’d say that the major problem with GW2 for me is how Anet handled every other problem of the game after release. from mechanics, to bugs, to rewards. And looking at everything, they had only one reaction: “here! have this mini rock at the hot price of 350 gems!” (I do admit they always answered with the “Swing your sword…”. “we’re looking into it” before putting up more gem store clutter).

As such, one would think that GW1 was made by Anet, then NC kidnapped the whole team and keeps them in a basement tied up, while having politicians handle the GW2 using their name.

Omocha.4931:

Not in terms of dedication it isn’t. How many bugs you knew in GW1 to have survived for 3 years without adressing?! Game mechanics, pvp balance, etc. And they had a lot more to look at when balancing classes there than here.

You can still exploit Malyx.

maddoctor.2738:

webtoehobbit.4201:

This is a comparison of what was available at launch of expansions, not quality of life updates or living world, those have nothing to do with the expansion.

That’s what I’m saying, do a full comparison. What we got for free over the last 3 years, what we got at release, release Prophecies vs release Guild Wars 2 to have a complete list of things.

When I bought the game I wasn’t buying all the extra stuff that came during the following 3 years. I was buying what was available for me in that box the day I opened it. The fact that we got more stuff, which was paid for the gemstore earnings, is irrelevant. Possible future content shouldn’t be factored into the price of xpac.

Omocha.4931:

Not in terms of dedication it isn’t. How many bugs you knew in GW1 to have survived for 3 years without adressing?! Game mechanics, pvp balance, etc. And they had a lot more to look at when balancing classes there than here.

In GW2 I ran all maps and did all events that weren’t bugged at least once, I think. GW2 had good start, but after 6 gifts of exploration, I’d say there’s little to reward doing any event or instance or heart. Everything lurks around that one thing GW1 was missing: TP.

I’d say that the major problem with GW2 for me is how Anet handled every other problem of the game after release. from mechanics, to bugs, to rewards. And looking at everything, they had only one reaction: “here! have this mini rock at the hot price of 350 gems!” (I do admit they always answered with the “Swing your sword…”. “we’re looking into it” before putting up more gem store clutter).

As such, one would think that GW1 was made by Anet, then NC kidnapped the whole team and keeps them in a basement tied up, while having politicians handle the GW2 using their name.

There were plenty of bugs in Guild Wars 1, from the bridge bug, to the tengu not attacking in the tunnels, that didn’t get fixed for years, and it was a much simpler game. Really having more people in instances makes a big difference. Having a TP makes a big difference.

I’m guessing more bugs have showed up in this game over all than Guild Wars 1. If you look at patch notes from Guild Wars 1 and look at the number of bug fixes each time, I don’t believe it was all that different.

But a bigger program, that’s more complex, with more coders, takes more time to track down bugs. You can look to the past if you like but programs today are far far more complex than programs back then. And a an MMORPG is not a CoRPG. This isn’t a lobby game and comes with a whole Raft of issues that Guild Wars 1 never had to deal with. Underwater stuff, Z axis stuff, TP stuff, different races and their animations. It’s just more complicated.

Julie Yann.5379:

maddoctor.2738:

webtoehobbit.4201:

This is a comparison of what was available at launch of expansions, not quality of life updates or living world, those have nothing to do with the expansion.

That’s what I’m saying, do a full comparison. What we got for free over the last 3 years, what we got at release, release Prophecies vs release Guild Wars 2 to have a complete list of things.

When I bought the game I wasn’t buying all the extra stuff that came during the following 3 years. I was buying what was available for me in that box the day I opened it. The fact that we got more stuff, which was paid for the gemstore earnings, is irrelevant. Possible future content shouldn’t be factored into the price of xpac.

You didn’t pay for what came during the 3 years but fact is lots of free things came to the game over the last 3 years. For 100$ you get GW2 original + HoT + all content in-between. On the other hand in GW1 in 3 years you paid 190$ for all content and nearly nothing in-between expansions. And anyone who will say “War in Kryta”, War in Kryta started in April 2010, 5 years after release. We are not at the 5 year point in GW2 yet.

At the 3 year point you pay 100$ for everything GW2 has to offer and everything that came for free during these 3 years. In the 3 year mark you had to pay 190$ to get all available GW1 content, double the price. So all I asked for is a complete comparison of the 3 years of the 2 Guild Wars games to see if the double price of GW1 was worth it.

Vayne.8563:

Hey OP, I have a question for you. With all the great comparison work you’ve done, and all the comparing, how come you left out dynamic events which the game is centered around. For example Guild Wars Prophecies had 209 quests.

If you add up all the quests in all four Guild Wars 1 products, you’ll find it was less than the number of dynamic events than Guild Wars 2 launched with.

This is just silly.

Because of the nature with dynamic events most players will barely see yet even half of the dynamic events in Guild Wars 2. In the later development of Guild Wars 2 they had to add in hearts because testers were complaining they had nothing to do. Quests on the other hand can be played on demand. You cannot simply ask players to wait around for an event to kick off. (People only do this with World Bosses simply because they are on a fixed/tracked timer and give rare loot)

I am not saying quests are better than dynamic events, both have their strengths and weaknesses. But in terms of content, quests can be accepted on demand whereas dynamic events (while they can be triggered) take place randomly (the content will be running regardless of you being there). Combine this with the branching events (pass/fail/etc) most players will never see the other successions of that event.

Vayne.8563:

You also left out species and starter areas. Seems to me I can play five races in this game, but only play 1 race throughout all of Guild Wars 2.

Saying Guild Wars 2 has more content because it has more races is completely illogical.
While yes it does give you access to new story arcs/instances it does not change the fact that they are playing in the same world as everyone else. ArenaNet have even stated that the racial story branching system was silly because none of the players would even experience that half of all that content (Rough Diagram) . Hence why with HoT there are no branching story arcs that are dependant on your race).

Inshiro.3620:

Vayne.8563:

Hey OP, I have a question for you. With all the great comparison work you’ve done, and all the comparing, how come you left out dynamic events which the game is centered around. For example Guild Wars Prophecies had 209 quests.

If you add up all the quests in all four Guild Wars 1 products, you’ll find it was less than the number of dynamic events than Guild Wars 2 launched with.

This is just silly.

Because of the nature with dynamic events most players will barely see yet even half of the dynamic events in Guild Wars 2. In the later development of Guild Wars 2 they had to add in hearts because testers were complaining they had nothing to do. Quests on the other hand can be played on demand. You cannot simply ask players to wait around for an event to kick off. (People only do this with World Bosses simply because they are on a fixed timer and give rare loot)

I am not saying quests are better than dynamic events, both have their strengths and weaknesses. But in terms of content, quests can be accepted on demand whereas dynamic events (while they can be triggered) take place randomly (the content will be running regardless of you being there).

Vayne.8563:

You also left out species and starter areas. Seems to me I can play five races in this game, but only play 1 race throughout all of Guild Wars 2.

Saying Guild Wars 2 has more content because it has more races is completely illogical.
While yes it does give you access to new story arcs/instances it does not change the fact that they are playing in the same world as everyone else. ArenaNet have even stated that the racial story branching system was silly because none of the players would even experience that half of all that content (Rough Diagram) . Hence why with HoT there are no branching story arcs that are dependant on your race).

My point was, depending on what you count or look at, different things look differently. With less than 220 quests in Prophecies, that game at launch didn’t have nearly as much actual content as Guild Wars 2 at launch.

But here, the OP is comparing zone numbers, but that doesn’t necessarily represent content either. If I were going to get a comparison, I’d like to know how many quests were in those expansions, compared to how many dynamic events are in this expansion. I’d like to compare how expansive this story is to the story missions.

You can compare things all you want, when you have enough information to compare. So far we don’t have enough information and thus the comparison is premature.

Vayne.8563:

You can compare things all you want, when you have enough information to compare. So far we don’t have enough information and thus the comparison is premature.

We have all the information ArenaNet chose to give us before asking us to pay 50$ for HoT. If ArenaNet thinks that information is enough to justify paying the price of the full game for the expansion, then it’s also enough for us to use it in comparisons and when judging if the price is worth it or not.

And right now? It’s simply not.

Vayne.8563:

I’m not even counting hearts in what I said. There are more hearts in Guild Wars 2 than there were in Prophecies, but I didn’t mention them. Nor did I mention jumping puzzles. Or the fact that Guild Wars 1 pathed. Or the fact that it didn’t have a TP. Or a z axis.

See, that’s the thing, they’re very different games.
/trimmed/
But comparing a lobby game to a true MMO is just silly.

Vayne you are exactly the kind of person I mentioned in my post. You are misunderstanding the discussion and trying to invalidate the comparison rather than addressing what can and is being compared. The OP is talking about just the expansions and the cost/content comparison of previous “expandalone” products offered by the same company.

Yes they are different games, but you know what GW2 is rather unlike most MMOs out there. So trying to make comparisons to how other games have handled their expansions will be imperfect. It doesn’t make the comparisons invalid.

Yes we don’t have all the information of what will be available in the new version of GW2, but that is what the OP is drawing attention to. The price compared to what is KNOWN about the new content.

In my post I’m drawing attention to the imbalanced value between new players and existing players.

If you want to include different content types in the comparison to balance out the argument that’s great.
I think some similarities are
GW1 = GW2
quests+bosses = hearts+dynamic events
missions = personal story steps
armor skins = armor skins
weapon skins = weapon skins
faces and hair = faces and hair

Let’s try for a moment to ignore this whole expansion crazy.
Imagine GW2:HoT as the only product available.
You know what it containts: 5 races with 9 classes, half-branching story with the other half being dull as a monday at the office, dynamic events, bosses, instances, awesome (or not so) loot, crafting… all you know about GW2 plus all you know about HoT.

It sounds to me as a complete product, with a lot of content. Would anyone buy it for $50?! And 2nd question, would anyone that bought 80% of it over the past 3 years pay anoterh $50 for the “missing” 20%? Potential-wise, it’s a good investment, PR/Marketing-wise (not to mention the lack of mood to solve the game’s problems), it’s better to just get wasted one night and deal with the side effects for 1 extra day. It’s where all this boils down to for me.

maddoctor.2738:

Omocha.4931:

Not in terms of dedication it isn’t. How many bugs you knew in GW1 to have survived for 3 years without adressing?! Game mechanics, pvp balance, etc. And they had a lot more to look at when balancing classes there than here.

You can still exploit Malyx.

isn’t that, like, the entire point of being a revenant? ba-dum tss

Omocha.4931:

Let’s try for a moment to ignore this whole expansion crazy.
Imagine GW2:HoT as the only product available.
You know what it containts: 5 races with 9 classes, half-branching story with the other half being dull as a monday at the office, dynamic events, bosses, instances, awesome (or not so) loot, crafting… all you know about GW2 plus all you know about HoT.

It sounds to me as a complete product, with a lot of content. Would anyone buy it for $50?! And 2nd question, would anyone that bought 80% of it over the past 3 years pay anoterh $50 for the “missing” 20%? Potential-wise, it’s a good investment, PR/Marketing-wise (not to mention the lack of mood to solve the game’s problems), it’s better to just get wasted one night and deal with the side effects for 1 extra day. It’s where all this boils down to for me.

From what we’ve seen so far 50$ is way too high price for HoT

Gray.9041:

maddoctor.2738:

Omocha.4931:

Not in terms of dedication it isn’t. How many bugs you knew in GW1 to have survived for 3 years without adressing?! Game mechanics, pvp balance, etc. And they had a lot more to look at when balancing classes there than here.

You can still exploit Malyx.

isn’t that, like, the entire point of being a revenant? ba-dum tss

hahaha nice one

Yes it is, maddoctor. HoT ain’t a dlc/expansion/addon. Can’t be. 2-3 maps and 1 profession is a bit shabby.

But if those 2-3 maps complete the main continent of Tyria all the way down to Crystal Desert and Deldrimor Front, then you can actually say that map wise, we have a complete GW2 game. (Still missing Crystal Desert and the Fire Islands from Prophecies, but it’s okay, since all EotN areas are here).

On top of that, you get the GvG for the game called Guild Wars. All you need in pvp now is someone carefully watching what’s happening there and balancing skills all the time (yes! splitting them for pvp might be required)

Lastly, HoT comes with a new skills/traits system that the devs think to be a lot better, hence you get fresh out of the box game mechanics (the fix to conditions builds add to this too).

So what’s missing?! End game progression (and content) and some bling blings. They did mention some challenging group stuff (which hopefully won’t be as frustrating as trying to catch a map for TT), and the rest is there.

As a bonus, you get reworked story with improved cabbagehead and less boring Arah (don’t hold your breath on those though, since Trahearne is dull since his birth and there’s little that can prevent Zhaitan from taking that fatal shot to one of its tails).

All in all. It’s a complete game. And no, GW2 standalone is walking its green mile already and will be no more. As such, given all these modifications (remains to be seen if they’re improvements), would you buy the game again?!

Btw, Domain of Anguish wasn’t ready with the release of Nightfall, it was patched in some time after release.

Omocha.4931:

Yes it is, maddoctor. HoT ain’t a dlc/expansion/addon. Can’t be. 2-3 maps and 1 profession is a bit shabby.

IT won’t be just 2-3 maps that’s insane

maddoctor.2738:

Omocha.4931:

Yes it is, maddoctor. HoT ain’t a dlc/expansion/addon. Can’t be. 2-3 maps and 1 profession is a bit shabby.

IT won’t be just 2-3 maps that’s insane

I think someone mentioned 3-5 maps in one of those youtube interviews, not sure though. Maybe someone has a link and a time?

Very interesting chart. The most interesting part, I think, is the approximate employee count.

They say “currently there will be only two guild halls” and, unfortunately, we can’t be blamed for assuming that won’t change for a good while. Why isn’t there a small guild hall team that just designs new guild halls and every 3-4 months we get a mail in-game from the guild hall organization saying they found a location in shiverpeaks/ascalon/orr/kryta that might be suitable for claiming if a guild wants it?

The things we have been shown about Heart of Thorns, I would say, seem very, very awesome and the rework of traits and skill systems do seem like they can introduce new sets of them into the game a lot better. I actually can see maybe something like a Mawdrey-esque quest being introduced that upon completion grants a new Profession Track to put hero points into, either new core skills or unlocking an Elite Spec (kitten, they could add a series region specific quests/collections that reward you with hero points and a new Racial Track to put points into). Much better than when they added that 25 point heal skill that old characters bought because they 25 skill points was nothing and new characters couldnt afford. But will they utilize stuff like this? When they say that these new systems allow for them to expand it in a more logical and easier way than before, does that mean they are already brainstorming practical ways to expand or will we get two new skills over the next two years and thats it?

I’ve decided to not pre-purchase like I was going to until I get a better idea of the PvE zones. I’m certain I will buy it because I know I will enjoy it but I want a clearer view of the additional maps involved and a better understanding of the potential future the devs see.

Omocha.4931:

Let’s try for a moment to ignore this whole expansion crazy.
Imagine GW2:HoT as the only product available.

Yet HoT isn’t the only product available. We have plenty of people here who already have GW2, with everything that entails, and are expected to pay 50$ for… What? 3 new maps?

Let’s imagine HoT comes with 10 maps. Now, let’s pick 10 maps from GW2. And think about how much time any of the players – veterans or newbies – spend in any, and why?!

• Cursed Shore for the mats from the undead mobs and the easy to hoard champ boxes
• FGS for roughly same things, maybe replacing the heavy bags with a chance to drop some collection related weapons?
• DT for the geodes (be they for Mawdrey or Ambrite collection)
• SW for CFs and maybe Bioluminescence
• 5th to 10th map?!
  All the others map get attention during World Boss events and nothing else. So I’m guessing the numbers don’t count for kitten if the incentive to spend time there is missing. They did say they’ll rethink the rewards based on the place they take place. That could revitilize the all the lands of Tyria, by replacing the generic loot with something themed, and maybe by removing the f2p-ish limitation of doing the events 1/day/character

Certainly there are more dire issues here than the number of maps – one of them being the posibility that players are being sold a remake of GW2 as an expansion.

Vayne.8563:

Inshiro.3620:

Vayne.8563:

Hey OP, I have a question for you. With all the great comparison work you’ve done, and all the comparing, how come you left out dynamic events which the game is centered around. For example Guild Wars Prophecies had 209 quests.

If you add up all the quests in all four Guild Wars 1 products, you’ll find it was less than the number of dynamic events than Guild Wars 2 launched with.

This is just silly.

Because of the nature with dynamic events most players will barely see yet even half of the dynamic events in Guild Wars 2. In the later development of Guild Wars 2 they had to add in hearts because testers were complaining they had nothing to do. Quests on the other hand can be played on demand. You cannot simply ask players to wait around for an event to kick off. (People only do this with World Bosses simply because they are on a fixed timer and give rare loot)

I am not saying quests are better than dynamic events, both have their strengths and weaknesses. But in terms of content, quests can be accepted on demand whereas dynamic events (while they can be triggered) take place randomly (the content will be running regardless of you being there).

Vayne.8563:

You also left out species and starter areas. Seems to me I can play five races in this game, but only play 1 race throughout all of Guild Wars 2.

Saying Guild Wars 2 has more content because it has more races is completely illogical.
While yes it does give you access to new story arcs/instances it does not change the fact that they are playing in the same world as everyone else. ArenaNet have even stated that the racial story branching system was silly because none of the players would even experience that half of all that content (Rough Diagram) . Hence why with HoT there are no branching story arcs that are dependant on your race).

My point was, depending on what you count or look at, different things look differently. With less than 220 quests in Prophecies, that game at launch didn’t have nearly as much actual content as Guild Wars 2 at launch.

But here, the OP is comparing zone numbers, but that doesn’t necessarily represent content either. If I were going to get a comparison, I’d like to know how many quests were in those expansions, compared to how many dynamic events are in this expansion. I’d like to compare how expansive this story is to the story missions.

You can compare things all you want, when you have enough information to compare. So far we don’t have enough information and thus the comparison is premature.

A zone is technically content (exploration wise). The amount of condensed playable content in these zones however do vary between the games.

Guild Wars 1 (Prophecies, Factions, Nightfall, EotN) featured:
999+ Quests (not including special events)
58 Co-op Missions [Story Missions] not including EotN
10 Challenge Missions [3 of which were Elite]
7 PvP Game Modes
19 Mini-games
1319 Skills/Abilities
10 Professions
16 Guild Halls
19 Distinct Regions
18 Dungeons
plus much more (features like Heros, etc).

This was the amount of content Guild Wars 1 pushed out in a period just over 2 years [April 2005 – August 2007]. Compare that content to what we’ve gotten with Guild Wars 2 over the past years (almost 3 years) and ask yourself what offered more?

Yes, Guild Wars 2 is very different and has new mechanics and systems (like jumping). However no matter how many systems/features you have in place, if there is no content to utilize these systems/features than people will find the game quite lacking.

A good example of this is jumping. While you can jump over rocks and objects it isn’t completely necessary. However ArenaNet has built content based off this mechanic such as vistas and jumping puzzles. Resulting in jumping much more than a simple movement mechanic.

So far most of the information from HoT is heavily based on features:

• Guild Halls (in which we can choose of 2)
  – Guild Teams
  – Sandbox Arena
  – Hall Customization (we do not know how extensive this is)
• New Crafting Profession
  – Consumables (Banners, Transformations [Char Cars], Deployables [Air Strike])
  – Decorations for Guild Hall
• New WvW Borderlands
  – New/Revamped map mechanics
• New PvP Game Mode
  – Stronghold
• New Profession
  – Revenant
• New Progression system
  – Masteries
• Elite Specializations
  – A total of 9
• Challenging Group Content
  – Nothing of which we have seen yet (Wyvern is not CGC)

Now don’t get me wrong, all of these features are welcomed however players want new content. What is the point of specializations (other than PvP) if we are all bored of the current content? Sure, give us new abilities and weapons but in the end if we don’t have new content to compliment these new features/mechanics players are just gonna end up getting bored, and quickly. The same goes for Guild Halls, the Scribe and Masteries.
Are we expected to build our guild hall, craft items, level up with the majority of the current games content?

The problem is we don’t know how much new content we’ll be getting. We do know that we’re getting 1 new distinct region the Maguuma jungle, however how big is this region?
Some players are worried considering we’re only getting 1 new region (compared to the 4-5 we got each GW1 release. Totaling to 19 regions in just over 2 years)
[Bringing the total GW2 region count to 7]

So far we know there are at least 2 zones (2×3 biomes). Which is about 6 maps worth of content. We have only seen Verdant Brink, the only map we have confirmed. In which we have only seen a small glimpse of one biome. This is again why lots of players are worried that there is not much content being added with HoT (Considering devs have said that the focus of HoT is features [for moving the game forward]).
Comparing once again to GW1 we should expect to see somewhere between 16 – 35 maps. (GW1 campaigns brought about 35 zones. Expansions brought 16).

In total we should see at least 6 maps (6×3biomes = 18 maps worth of content) along with the instanced content such as dungeons/etc (Challenging Content) .

In saying that I don’t agree with the OP’s diagram simply because we still don’t know how much content HoT brings (and its minor features). Either way when you compare the content that GW1 and GW2 has offered over the same time frame it’s clear to see that Guild Wars 1 wins.

Broom.2561:

maddoctor.2738:

Omocha.4931:

Yes it is, maddoctor. HoT ain’t a dlc/expansion/addon. Can’t be. 2-3 maps and 1 profession is a bit shabby.

IT won’t be just 2-3 maps that’s insane

I think someone mentioned 3-5 maps in one of those youtube interviews, not sure though. Maybe someone has a link and a time?

No one except Arenanet knows how many maps HoT will contain. All we know is that it’s going to be at least two maps (Verdant Brink + Jungle map). People who say 3-5 maps are just speculating. If they knew the exact number of maps they would give an exact number and not say 3 to 5.

Omocha.4931:

And think about how much time any of the players – veterans or newbies – spend in any, and why?!

• Cursed Shore for the mats from the undead mobs and the easy to hoard champ boxes
• FGS for roughly same things, maybe replacing the heavy bags with a chance to drop some collection related weapons?
• DT for the geodes (be they for Mawdrey or Ambrite collection)
• SW for CFs and maybe Bioluminescence
• 5th to 10th map?!

So you’re saying that the only reason people play in any map is to grind, and since HoT is clearing cattering to grinders only (see the “grind Silverwastes to get beta invite!” thing) they will get their money’s worth even if HoT has only less than a handful of maps?

That argument would make sense, if not for the fact that farming isn’t the main reason to play the game for everyone. Although apparently ArenaNet wish it were.

Test.8734:

That argument would make sense, if not for the fact that farming isn’t the main reason to play the game for everyone. Although apparently ArenaNet wish it were.

Well, hoarding of valuables is in our nature as humans, I guess. And so competition is buried even deeper in our animal roots. Hence the two reasons to play the mmos, other than using them as social hubs and places to live out some fantasy selves we’d wished we were. But mainly it’s competition and hoarding.

PvP doesn’t usually get much love and it needs lots of to always keep ppl busy, if not happy – balancing and fine tuning maps and mechanics (all of which didn’t make the top priority list for this game just yet).

As for PvE, we were running for the fastest clear in GW1 or marathoning instances for valuables, from armbraces to BDSes and VSes and so on. In other games, you’d do something similar for better gear too, not just rare skins. In GW2, and you can’t really say it isn’t so, the general metality is “better I just farm SW for the cash and buy off the TP”.

Now if people are rejoicing at mini rocks and happily commit themselves to reducing the whole game to gold and TP, it must mean either they opted for this instead of leaving the boat oooorrrr… it’s what they want and ANet would get another kittenstorm coming if they’d change this into something that actually has them visiting more places.

And the paradox hits like a train: “how many maps? boooo! too few!”. They don’t care about the numbers of maps, nor about the content all that much – I think. Unless it provides an even easier way of piling gold up fast. The discussions about the chests output/hour in SW I’ve caught one day in LA was disheartening… you’d think ANet just needs to bring more “Pacman” themed maps, with no mobs and a lot of chests – possibly already revealed and opened, and most people would already be happy imagining themselves kings dual-wielding Eternities.

It’s Anet’s fault for encouraging an economy focused completely on the TP/GS. It’s the player’s fault for tagging along. When your hand is all the way to the knee in the cookie jar, you can’t really say you don’t like them.

Which brings me back to the previous question: why worry about the content when it’s mostly irrelevant for most people?! I’d worry more about the system that powers this content and about the “This expansion will be the new core game” hint (which for me translates into “pay twice for the same product, ’cause the first time you did… well… it was still a work-in-progress”)

The chart is misleading when comparing the New Skills. You only included 3, but all the classes are going to get a new specialization. Everything else is pretty spot on though.

Vayne.8563:

Aenesthesia.1697:

Vayne.8563:

Hey OP, I have a question for you. With all the great comparison work you’ve done, and all the comparing, how come you left out dynamic events which the game is centered around. For example Guild Wars Prophecies had 209 quests.

If you add up all the quests in all four Guild Wars 1 products, you’ll find it was less than the number of dynamic events than Guild Wars 2 launched with.

You also left out species and starter areas. Seems to me I can play five races in this game, but only play 1 race throughout all of Guild Wars 2.

This is an expansion comparison. Not an original game comparison. When we spend the 45eur hot costs, we are not getting 5 new races to play, nor a ton of dynamic events

No, we’re not. However, we are getting events, and we don’t know how many and we’ve have to compare that to the original game, since events replace quests. They content. We don’t have enough information to compare at this point, and so the comparison is premature.

One might argue then that the pre-purchase is premature, but then no one is forcing anyone to buy it. Why make a comparison when we don’t have the information we need to compare yet?

It’s pretty safe to say there won’t be a lot of events in Verdant Brink. From what i played in beta, even Orr had twice as many.

“Why make a comparison when we don’t have the information we need to compare yet?”

The other argument could be, “Why prepurchase if we don’t have all of the information yet?”.

nexxe.7081:

It’s pretty safe to say there won’t be a lot of events in Verdant Brink. From what i played in beta, even Orr had twice as many.

“Why make a comparison when we don’t have the information we need to compare yet?”

The other argument could be, “Why prepurchase if we don’t have all of the information yet?”.

Did you have access to all of Verdant Brink in the beta, including the three biomes? I thought a lot of it was blocked off.

nexxe.7081:

The other argument could be, “Why prepurchase if we don’t have all of the information yet?”.

That one has a very easy answer: don’t prepurchase

I would preorder in a heartbeat, put down $10 and then see what else there is to come. But prepurchase? Seems like another shady system put into place by gaming companies, like day one dlc…

Inshiro.3620:

Vayne.8563:

Inshiro.3620:

Vayne.8563:

Hey OP, I have a question for you. With all the great comparison work you’ve done, and all the comparing, how come you left out dynamic events which the game is centered around. For example Guild Wars Prophecies had 209 quests.

If you add up all the quests in all four Guild Wars 1 products, you’ll find it was less than the number of dynamic events than Guild Wars 2 launched with.

This is just silly.

Because of the nature with dynamic events most players will barely see yet even half of the dynamic events in Guild Wars 2. In the later development of Guild Wars 2 they had to add in hearts because testers were complaining they had nothing to do. Quests on the other hand can be played on demand. You cannot simply ask players to wait around for an event to kick off. (People only do this with World Bosses simply because they are on a fixed timer and give rare loot)

I am not saying quests are better than dynamic events, both have their strengths and weaknesses. But in terms of content, quests can be accepted on demand whereas dynamic events (while they can be triggered) take place randomly (the content will be running regardless of you being there).

Vayne.8563:

You also left out species and starter areas. Seems to me I can play five races in this game, but only play 1 race throughout all of Guild Wars 2.

Saying Guild Wars 2 has more content because it has more races is completely illogical.
While yes it does give you access to new story arcs/instances it does not change the fact that they are playing in the same world as everyone else. ArenaNet have even stated that the racial story branching system was silly because none of the players would even experience that half of all that content (Rough Diagram) . Hence why with HoT there are no branching story arcs that are dependant on your race).

My point was, depending on what you count or look at, different things look differently. With less than 220 quests in Prophecies, that game at launch didn’t have nearly as much actual content as Guild Wars 2 at launch.

But here, the OP is comparing zone numbers, but that doesn’t necessarily represent content either. If I were going to get a comparison, I’d like to know how many quests were in those expansions, compared to how many dynamic events are in this expansion. I’d like to compare how expansive this story is to the story missions.

You can compare things all you want, when you have enough information to compare. So far we don’t have enough information and thus the comparison is premature.

A zone is technically content (exploration wise). The amount of condensed playable content in these zones however do vary between the games.

Guild Wars 1 (Prophecies, Factions, Nightfall, EotN) featured:
999+ Quests (not including special events)
58 Co-op Missions [Story Missions] not including EotN
10 Challenge Missions [3 of which were Elite]
7 PvP Game Modes
19 Mini-games
1319 Skills/Abilities
10 Professions
16 Guild Halls
19 Distinct Regions
18 Dungeons
plus much more (features like Heros, etc).

This was the amount of content Guild Wars 1 pushed out in a period just over 2 years [April 2005 – August 2007]. Compare that content to what we’ve gotten with Guild Wars 2 over the past years (almost 3 years) and ask yourself what offered more?

Yes, Guild Wars 2 is very different and has new mechanics and systems (like jumping). However no matter how many systems/features you have in place, if there is no content to utilize these systems/features than people will find the game quite lacking.

A good example of this is jumping. While you can jump over rocks and objects it isn’t completely necessary. However ArenaNet has built content based off this mechanic such as vistas and jumping puzzles. Resulting in jumping much more than a simple movement mechanic.

So far most of the information from HoT is heavily based on features:

• Guild Halls (in which we can choose of 2)
  – Guild Teams
  – Sandbox Arena
  – Hall Customization (we do not know how extensive this is)
• New Crafting Profession
  – Consumables (Banners, Transformations [Char Cars], Deployables [Air Strike])
  – Decorations for Guild Hall
• New WvW Borderlands
  – New/Revamped map mechanics
• New PvP Game Mode
  – Stronghold
• New Profession
  – Revenant
• New Progression system
  – Masteries
• Elite Specializations
  – A total of 9
• Challenging Group Content
  – Nothing of which we have seen yet (Wyvern is not CGC)

Mostly correct, but the PVP and WvW content will be available for vanilla players too, so it shouldn’t really be in that list.

TheDaiBish.9735:

nexxe.7081:

It’s pretty safe to say there won’t be a lot of events in Verdant Brink. From what i played in beta, even Orr had twice as many.

“Why make a comparison when we don’t have the information we need to compare yet?”

The other argument could be, “Why prepurchase if we don’t have all of the information yet?”.

Did you have access to all of Verdant Brink in the beta, including the three biomes? I thought a lot of it was blocked off.

They’re probably increase the area you have access to as the beta goes on, that’s how they usually do these things.

Omocha.4931:

Funny then, ’cause this “free” content is neither free, nor available.

The content was free for a time, which was announced at the time of release and Living World season one was also free and released with the understanding that all of it would not be permanent (season one did contain multiple permanent elements, kessex hills, great collapse being changed, southsun cove and lions arch changes come to mind off the top of my head, not to mention several mini dungeons and events quietly dropped into the game, with the first halloween patch, that most people forget are still there). Dry Top and Silverwastes are not gated by LS access either. Story instances are also open to anyone, as long as at least one member of the party has access to it, so it is not incorrect to say that all that content can be experienced for free.

Your 2k gems remark is misleading as well, it is 200 gems an episode which is about 40 gold (if you buy in bulk there is a discount as well). Either way the release model for all of the content that has come to this game has been 100% transparent from the get go. The content did not and still does not require a real money purchases. All that has changed is how easy or fast it is to access that content for free, where applicable. Temporary content is temporary now and before but that does not change the fact that it was free either.

Watchwork sprockets are available from TA Aether path btw… so the argument about the mining pick or having to buy sprockets is incorrect as well (plus laurels can get you the sprocket generator as far as I know).

Crise.9401:

Omocha.4931:

Funny then, ’cause this “free” content is neither free, nor available.

The content was free for a time

Ergo said content isn’t free – it WAS free. Omocha’s point still stands.