Guild Wars 2

Maybe 3-4 maps with biomes and few “normal” maps.

The closer we get to a release date without any actual information on maps outside of Verdant Brink, it seems more likely that more of those will only come as later updates. With so many people wanting to know more about the content we’re getting at launch, where are the screenshots, videos, or other marketing hype about these additional maps?

This game is coming out sometime in the next 4 months. Anet has told us that much. If I were to take a guess, I’d say early/mid October. Because they probably don’t want be going up against games like Fallout 4, Halo 5, CoD: Black Ops 3, Rise of the Tomb Raider, Just Cause 3, and Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate.

Waiting longer also pushes into the holiday season. Being an expansion, the primary market is people upgrading the game for themselves not those looking for a gift purchase. Even though the core game is included in that purchase, it’s being marketed as an expansion.

1: HoT beta is only 25% off the first map. If you run close to the (closed off) east way, the day/night cycle events goes away. This is an indication that it is confined to that 25%. Further they have not shown us all. there is a lot more.

2: GW1 content was way easier to develop and to create. The company was a lot smaller but managed to create a full scale campaign within a year. It took them 7! years to develop GW2 while the team only grew bigger. I’m not a specialist, but also not calloing them lazy. So it seems a modern game like GW2 takes a lot more time to develop.

3: please judge quantity over quality. One thing I disliked in in GW1 is how you needed to run forever from objective to objective. I rather have a smaller and more compact world. specially in an MMO where you share the content with others.

mercury ranique.2170:

1: HoT beta is only 25% off the first map. If you run close to the (closed off) east way, the day/night cycle events goes away. This is an indication that it is confined to that 25%. Further they have not shown us all. there is a lot more.

I could just as easily say this is an indication that content in that area is simply not complete, or in a state they would rather us not see.

We don’t have any assurance that there is really more beyond Verdant Brink. At this point, it’s all speculation based on vague references and implied statements.

2: GW1 content was way easier to develop and to create. The company was a lot smaller but managed to create a full scale campaign within a year. It took them 7! years to develop GW2 while the team only grew bigger. I’m not a specialist, but also not calloing them lazy. So it seems a modern game like GW2 takes a lot more time to develop.

If you go back to pre-release info, GW2 was designed for content (new events, maps, etc) to be added more easily than with GW1. It’s true that modern games are more complex and have their own challenges that older games did not, but this game was designed from the start to be easier to add content to.

Also, GW1 took 5 years to develop, not 1 year. The two additional campaigns took about a year each. You cannot compare the time it takes to develop an additional campaign/expansion to the time it takes to build an entirely new game.

Anet was also rather proud to label content from Southsun through LS1 as “a full expansion worth of content”, so they do seem to think they can make a GW2 expansion in a year. From official statements, interviews, and publicly released investor conferences, it’s very clear that they’ve not spent the last 3 years (or even 2) working on HoT. It is a much more recent project.

mrstealth.6701:

mercury ranique.2170:

1: HoT beta is only 25% off the first map. If you run close to the (closed off) east way, the day/night cycle events goes away. This is an indication that it is confined to that 25%. Further they have not shown us all. there is a lot more.

I could just as easily say this is an indication that content in that area is simply not complete, or in a state they would rather us not see.

We don’t have any assurance that there is really more beyond Verdant Brink. At this point, it’s all speculation based on vague references and implied statements.

2: GW1 content was way easier to develop and to create. The company was a lot smaller but managed to create a full scale campaign within a year. It took them 7! years to develop GW2 while the team only grew bigger. I’m not a specialist, but also not calloing them lazy. So it seems a modern game like GW2 takes a lot more time to develop.

If you go back to pre-release info, GW2 was designed for content (new events, maps, etc) to be added more easily than with GW1. It’s true that modern games are more complex and have their own challenges that older games did not, but this game was designed from the start to be easier to add content to.

Also, GW1 took 5 years to develop, not 1 year. The two additional campaigns took about a year each. You cannot compare the time it takes to develop an additional campaign/expansion to the time it takes to build an entirely new game.

Anet was also rather proud to label content from Southsun through LS1 as “a full expansion worth of content”, so they do seem to think they can make a GW2 expansion in a year. From official statements, interviews, and publicly released investor conferences, it’s very clear that they’ve not spent the last 3 years (or even 2) working on HoT. It is a much more recent project.

A: Verdant brinks is announced as the first map. And it is said that the beta only plays on 25%. There is no speculation in it at all.

B: I never said that GW1 was developped in one year. please don’tgg try to win an argument by putting words in other peoples moputh, it is just very bad to do so! I said expansions and campaigns where developped in 1 year.

C: GW2 was not designed to make it easier to add content. They never said it, stop making up facts!

D: Content! not maps. Season one was a lot more then just southsun. And with the biweekly releases we had back then, we had an amount of content that surpassed an expansion big time. That it was not permanent content, is allready aknowledged by Arenanet as a bad thing!

E: the way you try to debate and the way you put things down is just wrong. If you want to debate on facts, please do os, but for now you just like to be toxicating. My best bet would be that you work for Blizzard.

F: Yes other games have more content released, but it comes with a price. For exmaple Blizzard. There you pay 120 euro/USD monthly fee + 45 euro for the xpac that is released once a year. With Arenanet most content is free. The price of 45 euro for the xpac is very reasonable, even if it is small. Yes WoW xpacs might be bigger, but also a lot more expansive. Judge quality for the label!

mercury ranique.2170:

A: Verdant brinks is announced as the first map. And it is said that the beta only plays on 25%. There is no speculation in it at all.

I’m talking about what is done right now, or what will be done and ingame at release. There is absolutely no indication that there are any other maps at release.

And yes, the 25% number seems like it’s accurate with the roots biome being hidden under the currently available area. But we have no way of knowing how much of the remaining 75% is actually completed, and ready at launch. Or whether content beyond it will be done at that time.

It’s impossible to prove that it doesn’t exist, but their silence does nothing to assure us that it does.

B: I never said that GW1 was developped in one year. please don’tgg try to win an argument by putting words in other peoples moputh, it is just very bad to do so! I said expansions and campaigns where developped in 1 year.

You were trying to compare time between a campaign developed for an existing game, and a complete game (campaign, engine, server backend, etc)

C: GW2 was not designed to make it easier to add content. They never said it, stop making up facts!

Unfortunately many of the pre-release blogs and articles are difficult to find now, but I’ll try to find the remarks. It was in early discussion of the dynamic event system where they stated the the system was designed to allow them to quickly add more events and content.

edit: After thinking about it, it was in a video or livestream where they were showing and discussing the custom dev tools they had to make scripting new events easier. The point was to show that they were making a game that was easier to make content for.

D: Content! not maps. Season one was a lot more then just southsun. And with the biweekly releases we had back then, we had an amount of content that surpassed an expansion big time. That it was not permanent content, is allready aknowledged by Arenanet as a bad thing!

I said Southrun through season one, as in including all content (maps or otherwise) added during that time. Don’t put words in my mouth.

Season one did also not start on a bi-weekly schedule. It had a very slow start, as Anet was just beginning to experiment with the idea. The bi-weekly releases didn’t start til late in S1 or with S2, I don’t recall which.

E: the way you try to debate and the way you put things down is just wrong. If you want to debate on facts, please do os, but for now you just like to be toxicating. My best bet would be that you work for Blizzard.

I probably shouldn’t even bother replying to that…but if anything is toxic, it’s statements like this. Everything I’ve said is based on the information, or lack thereof, we have available.

F: Yes other games have more content released, but it comes with a price. For exmaple Blizzard. There you pay 120 euro/USD monthly fee + 45 euro for the xpac that is released once a year. With Arenanet most content is free. The price of 45 euro for the xpac is very reasonable, even if it is small. Yes WoW xpacs might be bigger, but also a lot more expansive. Judge quality for the label!

I’m not trying to compare it to Wow, or any other game. But you are missing one key fact. That additional content outside of retail release was/is to be supported by the gemstore. This, of course, doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t release paid expansions. But it does mean that paid expansions need to stand on their own to live up to the price being asked. HoT needs to add a full expansion worth of content on its release day, which is something many of us doubt will happen. Largely because we’ve yet to see any evidence that it will.

It’s not about knowing for a fact that there is a lack of content, because we can’t be sure about that. It’s about Anet remaining silent on the matter, and not showing off any actual content outside of a small part of one map.

I don’t expect Anet to let us play every map in beta. I think that would actually be a bad idea. But they should at least be answering questions and concerns about how much more content there will actually be.

Stating that Verdant Brink is the first map doesn’t really mean anything other than other maps will exist at some time. I don’t doubt that there will be more maps. But I do have concerns over how many, if any, will be available at launch. It’s been asked many times, and has not been addressed at all.

If you ask someone a fairly simple question, and the only answer you receive is silence, would you not wonder why they are so reluctant to say anything? Even something like “there will be multiple maps available at launch” would be much better than suspicious silence.

In last Friday’s POI, Colin got on and said there will be fewer maps, but those maps would be larger with more things to do. He said a player should be able to play on a single map for 8 hours and still not see everything. Of course, I think that is nonsense just like how before GW2 was released they said there would be so many dynamic events that it would be unlikely that players would see the same ones often. Still a little sour over that because I bought the game on their promises about dynamic events and stayed for everything else lol.

If I had to guess, we will get 4 maps with the amount of content as 6-7 of the older maps. So we would still be getting a new region, but it won’t sound impressive to the type of people who want to hear “X new maps Y new dungeons” rather than the quality of what they are releasing.

The arenanet way is now making mini-maps. I guess we will have at most 3 mini-maps, that translate in a whole 0.75 normal map for the dlc. Their “different layer so it is big you’ll see” is just pr communication ; and the maps will just be boring farm maps with their boring never ending events, in a never changing, stale world. Low quality low quantity is their credo since launch.

Arcadio.6875:

If I had to guess, we will get 4 maps with the amount of content as 6-7 of the older maps. So we would still be getting a new region, but it won’t sound impressive to the type of people who want to hear “X new maps Y new dungeons” rather than the quality of what they are releasing.

They could say just that. It would give a much better impression that simply ignoring the issue.

I’m expecting 2-3 maps at release, with more being promised later. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think they stated earlier that all of LS3 was not coming at release, and would be added later on. Based on what we’ve seen with the multi-stage, story-linked releases of Dry Top and Silverwastes, I think we’ll see some areas not being available until the associated LS3 chapter is released.

With other content already known to be released in pieces, it’s not unreasonable to question whether the maps themselves are going to be done in the same manner.

It should be noted that the GW1 expansions were entire standalone games, not just an expansion.

Yesterday’s announcement (it was technically announced at Gamescom) of PvP leagues is just the type of thing that (for me, at least) casts doubt on HoT standing up to its price. The post certainly does give the impression that leagues are a HoT feature, but it seems very likely that it’s not exclusive to HoT. I don’t think Anet wants to fracture the pvp community. As far as I know, stronghold will be available to all players to keep that from happening. It makes sense that leagues will be open to everyone. Yet, we have announcements and hype touting both of these as HoT features.

While, technically at least, anything being released along with HoT can be called a feature of the expansion, many of them do not require actually buying it. In fact, there are only a few things we’re entirely certain are restricted to HoT owners. The main HoT website lists 7 feature sections under its “Game” header: Masteries, Heart of Maguuma, Specializations, Revenant, Guild Halls, PvP, and WvW.

Out of these features, we’re only sure that the Heart of Maguuma region, elite specs, and the Revenant class will require buying HoT to have any access to.

Several masteries are “Central Tyrian Masteries” for core areas of the game. I’ve not seen a solid confirmation, but there is at least a decent chance these will be available to everyone. The rest (the majority) are for HoT areas, so they are of course limited to those owning it. Overall, masteries are mostly a HoT exclusive, but some are possibly open to all.

Guild halls are another grey area, the most grey area in my opinion. We do know that at least a leader/officer and a group of members large enough to clear and claim a hall will need to buy HoT, but what about everyone else? Can non-buyers still access it after its claimed? It’s a question that has been asked many times since halls were announced, and has been completely avoided by Anet.

PvP is somewhat less grey. Stronghold looks to be for everyone, but guild teams and leagues are more questionable.

WvW is the clearest of all. It’s absoutely not a HoT exclusive feature. Everyone gets every update coming to wvw.

I feel like they are trying very hard to pad their HoT selling points with features that don’t actually require buying the expansion. By far, the biggest feature of HoT should be its PvE content, the Heart of Maguuma region. But that is the feature we know the least about. PvP and WvW are important parts of the game, but PvE certainly takes up the majority of content and player activity. So why isn’t Anet hyping that content we’re asked to pay for, instead of features that are likely free to all?