Guild Wars 2

I can get down with that. Or better yet, give each upgrading player 1000 “untradeable” gems so that they can do with it as they please (not much different from giving each player 1 armor skin of their choice).

Dear SirDrygan.1823
Us and Anet do not care. Stop making thread like these, it’s pointless.

Fair enough. I already got my base game and I’m missing lots of contents. As a semi-veteran and semi-newbie, there are no added incentives if you already got the base game.

ArrogantHero.4965:

Dott.5672:

OP is very aptly named.

Oh god, no, now you’re expressing all over the carpet. We just had that washed!

They better put the char slots on sale before HoT. Even then it would be a rip off.

warbignime.4610:

Us and Anet do not care.

I care.

Maybe $20 at most. Standard edition, the digital fluff isn’t worth extra and i can afford several character slots if i needed them with gold.

Exactly, content added in HoT is too small to price it for 45 euro, lack of even character slot is kick in the face. If it doesn’t change, I’m sure playerbase will dive down like (no offensive intentions) numbers during holocaust.

Fay.2735:

snip

What annoys people is that HoT is sold as a bundle with, as a bonus for new players, the core game. Veteran players, on the other hand, won’t get any bonus at all. Therefore we are questioning ourselves: why keep being so supportive when, in the end, they barely pay attention to us and make everything just to get new players that come and go instead of keeping and taking care of their most solid playerbase.

warbignime.4610:

Dear SirDrygan.1823
Us and Anet do not care. Stop making thread like these, it’s pointless.

I’m sure Anet care. You and a few others may not.

It doesn’t matter what ANet meant. The players are speaking, and they have time to change it.

If they swiftly put the expansion on sale as a standalone for cheaper than their expansion and core at $50, it would be easy to forgive them.

Celtic Lady.3729:

warbignime.4610:

Us and Anet do not care.

I care.

I care that you care.

With all the topics created since the HoT pre-order release came out, I don’t see how some of you are still trying to make light of this. Let’s revise the problems with this pre-release on HoT:

• Newcomers get the game AND the expansion for 50$. That’s 50$ for the expansion and the core game for free. That’s 5 slots to try out the Revenant, and for 25-50$ more, they get ANOTHER slot plus a few extras. Existing players attempting to buy the standard package do NOT get the opportunity to even use the new class, even though they’ve mentioned considering it back then.

• 50$ for an expansion. Now here is where we have lines drawn: on one side, you have people stating the price is reasonable, and on the other, you have people claiming that it’s too much for what it offers. Now, I will say 50$ for an expansion is fine, but as the base price? That’s close to the price of the original game, with far less content! Where’s the logic in that?

• Heart of Thorns isn’t even finished. Let me repeat that.
  Heart. Of. Thorns. Isn’t. Even. Finished.
  They’ve just gotten you to pre-order an expansion that, first of all, isn’t even complete, and secondly, doesn’t even have a release date. For all you know, you could’ve simply paid for nothing but the extra items they included in the package.

To those of you that have money and bought it, good for you. You have access to the Beta of an unfinished, uncertain expansion that is essentially the original game with less content, but no worries. I’m sure those extra toys you’ve gotten along will keep your mind away from that thought.

Please don’t defend this action with ‘Be grateful we don’t pay subscription fees for all the content they’ve handed to us’. We don’t owe Arenanet for that. We paid for the game, and we support its business model by using real money to buy things in the Gem Store. We’re glad they’ve given us free content over the years, but that doesn’t justify the price they’re asking for on an expansion with far less content. You can’t giveaway free things and then suddenly decide to charge for new content at a much higher price so you can get compensation for all that you’ve previously offered.

I honestly don’t know whose idea this was, and Paul’s little comment made it far worse than it should’ve been. All I know that this will not end well either way for Arenanet. Making changes now to benefit the veteran players will cause those who’ve pre-ordered the expansion at the current price to demand some sort of refund or compensation, and not making any changes will cause a loss of many veteran players who feel that they’ve been tricked.

Love the game, but not at all satisfied with this situation.

TL;DR I’m not buying the expansion as it is now, and there’s nothing I can do but wait. If no changes happen, and they continue down the road like this, I’m out. One whiny player out of their way will benefit the entire community, right? And no, you cannot have my things.

Thanks for reading. If I’m wrong, I’d love for it to be cleared up.

Im a loyal guild wars player since the launch of guild wars and own every game of gw from prophecies to eotn and Guild Wars 2. I even bought my girlfriend alle the games last year to experience all of the lore guild wars has to offer and to understand the world of latest game (gw2) better. My girlfriend has not that much time to play but we enjoy our time together in guild wars 2 sometimes. We both dont have that much money (students) but im glad she shares my passion for guild wars 2 a bit so im the one that buys the games.

Now i was hoping to upgrade our two accounts for 40€ each in the worst case scenario and had hopes for at least one additional character slot. Im just a student atm and i see now way to put 100€ for me and my girlfriend in this game again and buy another slot for 20€ for each of us. Really disappointing.

Edit: Maybe it’s time to switch to another mmo for 50€ each, with a better price/content ratio.

SirDrygan.1823:

I do not feel that opening 1 map.

Not that I necessarily disagree with you, but this whole HoT = 1 map is just factually incorrect. HoT = 1 region would be correct though (regions in the base game are from 4-7 maps).

We already know there are at least two PvE maps (Verdant Brink and the other one from specialization live streams) + 2 maps for guild halls and a WvW borderlands map. And that is likely not all of them.

“Anyone opting to not purchase the HoT expansion by release will be granted access to an exclusive area in the west of the Silverwastes where they can link arms, sway around campfires, and chant about how they only want to pay £5 for the expansion content alone whilst everyone else happily plays HoT on the other side of the wall.”

I implore ArenaNet to make this a thing.

I see the Core Game inclusion as a sweetener for new players. The expansion price seems reasonable to me. There has been a lot of “free” content released to players in the last 3 years. I would ask people to take a long, hard look at their account – particularly those who have played since release and are still complaining about price – to kitten the value for money they’ve had out of their purchase since they bought it. If I pay even £60 for the deluxe version now, I am sure I will easily get my money’s worth out of it before the next expansion hits.

The only problem I have with the structure is that I feel the character slot should have been included in the standard package. If you’re releasing a new profession, just give people a free slot on which to try it. Notwithstanding my opinion on it, Standard game + character slot is cheaper than the deluxe version, so anyone wanting only a new character slot should keep that in mind.

So basically new players are going to get both GW2 and HoT at a reduced price because they get the core game with the expac for only $50 while current players of the game will pay $50USD for the expac and something we already had. New players get to have both the core game and expac for $50USD while I spent around 100 NZD and even more on gems (i know i didn’t need to buy gems to enjoy the game, etc) + an additional 70NZD for HoT and a core game i’ll never use?

They shoud make a Pre order version on the Gem Store that players can buy for a reduced price, say 35USD which only includes the expac (and a character slot if they’re feeling generous) and a seperate web page where people not currently playing gw2 can buy HoT and the core game in one package for maybe $60 or so. That, to me seems fair.

Don’t throw a 50USD preorder on an expac we know little about at us and try to make it better with a free version of a game we already own.

Also, $100 dollars for the expac, gems and a bunch of crap that will be redundant within the first few weeks of release is just insane.

Anet seems to have this thing where they either punish or neglect their loyal veteran players to cater to new players for all they know, wont even stick around.

I am not sure that you understand the core of te issue I have actually been reading the complaints and majority of them don’t care about the price, It fine except for a couple of things.

1. Most long term Vets done have an extra character slot meaning you ether have to grind, pay or by at least the deluxe version or delete a character that you spent alot of time working on.

2. The price complain is about new players getting the same thing for 50 dollars as existing players alot less than what for what people typically would have to pay 100 dollar before anything else was spent. All after being told that wasn’t happening.

3. This complain is alot less about self entitlement more about straight up ethics sure you don’t have to care about the people that you stood on to be successful but you should.

Evans.6347:

zenleto.6179:

Poor kitty. Being able to buy it in your own currency so you needn’t worry about conversions and fees. How terrible!

How lucky I am for you to patronize me.

kitten straight.

At what we have now content wise? I’d happily put 30 to 35 USD into the game. A middle ground between launch price and what we’re getting compared to the base game.

On top of that, as I have been doing ill keep forking money over for gems, since you know they have a gem store that also makes them money.

warbignime.4610:

Dear SirDrygan.1823
Us and Anet do not care. Stop making thread like these, it’s pointless.

I care, and for a player to post his opinion on a forum regarding such a change is not pointless.

stof.9341:

Sold Out.7625:

Because THIS IS THE EXPANSION PRICE. Live with it. You don’t pay more for the Core game. But reading is hard, I know.

This isn’t a matter of “this is the price” or not. It’s a matter of doing it in a way that doesn’t result in kittenstorms on the internet. ANet is notoriously bad at that.

It’s a matter of perception. I know that perception is very subjective but as I said, manipulating and predicting percetion is part of the job ANet should be doing.

In this case, the perception is that :
- I’m a veteran player, I paid I don’t know how much for the game and currently you can get it for as low as $20 if you do it smartly. I can let that slide since everything lowers in price over time
- The expansion comes out and costs me $50
- The expansion has one of the major features be a new class and it’ll cost me $10 more to play it cause … my char slots are maxed for some strange reason

So, as a veteran, I feel like I’ll have after the HoT purchase spent $80 to get the game, while new players will have spent $50 for more or less the same value. Yes I know it’s not the same thing, those $80 gave me one extra char slot etc… But it’s perception. And the perception currently is that I’ll have to spend $30 more than new players to enjoy HoT.

This is too much plain and simple. Hence the complaints. What ANet should have done is throw us virtual bones that are more or less worthless but shift the value perception to a point where nobody complains. The easiest would be to give a free chat slot to players that already own the core game. It’s shift the value perception by a whole $20 back.

New players will also have to drop $20 for Season 2 pack if they want to play through it and won’t be able to relive the living content that most of us veterans were able to play through. Also the core game is F R E E with the expansion. If you already own the core game it doesn’t effect you since your just paying for the expansion while the core game is F R E E for those you don’t have it, but y’know a SMALL amount of people will complain when they don’t get something free.

yanipheonu.5798:

Largest flaw in this whole theory: it’s not an equivalent value. It doesn’t cost Anet ten dollars to give a new player an account. It just costs whatever it does to activate the account and keep them on them on the servers.

The $50 will go to the same places it usually does: development time, advertisement, the usual business. GW2 vanilla does not cost 20 percent of HoT’s budget. That’s absurd.

This in all likelyhood costs very little for Anet at this point, and as such, even if GW2 vanilla was not included with the expansion, we would not see much if any impact on the final price.

This expansion would cost the same, with or without new players getting a GW2 account.

And seriously, if the worst thing they do is favour new players a bit, you really gotta see how bad it gets in the really scummy MMOs out there. This ain’t a mobile cash grab, this is just people getting worked up over nothing.

Hell, I wish more companies let new players the vanilla game for buying the expansion.

It’s not a matter of what it costs them though, because in this case we’re talking about the responses and reactions of the consumer and our sense of comparative value. The topic here is about people’s anger and why, as customers, we are feeling so shafted.

Not having access to ANet’s account books, none of us can do more than speculate about how much it costs them to activate a new account OR how much it costs them to activate a new character slot on an existing account. We cannot compare those numbers. We can only compare the numbers of how much we spend, which is the received and perceived value of the two things. (Personally, though, I cannot imagine that it costs ANet more to activate/keep open an extra character slot on an existing account than it costs them to activate/maintain a whole new account on their servers!)

Likewise, we can do no more than speculate about HoT’s budget or the flows of company money, and frankly I think it’s a red herring to do so.

As consumers, what we can compare is the end price of an item. As consumers, we can see that X and Y both = a payment of 10$ to the company. We therefore trust that there is something roughly comparable in the value of those two items. We can also see that one group of consumers (i.e. new players) are being offered a bonus while others, despite their loyalty to the franchise, are being left out in the cold. It’s alienating and rude. And frankly, it’s stupid for any company to alienate the customers who spend money consistently over time, especially when it’s so hard to imagine that it would be more costly to them to offer, at the same base price, a character slot with the expansion as an alternative bundling option to selling it with the core game.

I planed to buy gems for 20€ today, but after I saw price of HoT and what we get for that I decided not to buy neither. Luckily I saw it before I bought gems and saved 20€.

Synesence.7546:

With all the topics created since the HoT pre-order release came out, I don’t see how some of you are still trying to make light of this. Let’s revise the problems with this pre-release on HoT:

• Newcomers get the game AND the expansion for 50$. That’s 50$ for the expansion and the core game for free. That’s 5 slots to try out the Revenant, and for 25-50$ more, they get ANOTHER slot plus a few extras. Existing players attempting to buy the standard package do NOT get the opportunity to even use the new class, even though they’ve mentioned considering it back then.

• 50$ for an expansion. Now here is where we have lines drawn: on one side, you have people stating the price is reasonable, and on the other, you have people claiming that it’s too much for what it offers. Now, I will say 50$ for an expansion is fine, but as the base price? That’s close to the price of the original game, with far less content! Where’s the logic in that?

• Heart of Thorns isn’t even finished. Let me repeat that.
  Heart. Of. Thorns. Isn’t. Even. Finished.
  They’ve just gotten you to pre-order an expansion that, first of all, isn’t even complete, and secondly, doesn’t even have a release date. For all you know, you could’ve simply paid for nothing but the extra items they included in the package.

To those of you that have money and bought it, good for you. You have access to the Beta of an unfinished, uncertain expansion that is essentially the original game with less content, but no worries. I’m sure those extra toys you’ve gotten along will keep your mind away from that thought.

Please don’t defend this action with ‘Be grateful we don’t pay subscription fees for all the content they’ve handed to us’. We don’t owe Arenanet for that. We paid for the game, and we support its business model by using real money to buy things in the Gem Store. We’re glad they’ve given us free content over the years, but that doesn’t justify the price they’re asking for on an expansion with far less content. You can’t giveaway free things and then suddenly decide to charge for new content at a much higher price so you can get compensation for all that you’ve previously offered.

I honestly don’t know whose idea this was, and Paul’s little comment made it far worse than it should’ve been. All I know that this will not end well either way for Arenanet. Making changes now to benefit the veteran players will cause those who’ve pre-ordered the expansion at the current price to demand some sort of refund or compensation, and not making any changes will cause a loss of many veteran players who feel that they’ve been tricked.

Love the game, but not at all satisfied with this situation.

TL;DR I’m not buying the expansion as it is now, and there’s nothing I can do but wait. If no changes happen, and they continue down the road like this, I’m out. One whiny player out of their way will benefit the entire community, right? And no, you cannot have my things.

Thanks for reading. If I’m wrong, I’d love for it to be cleared up.

+1 Nicely said.

Geez us veteran players have gotten to experience all the game for 2+ years with new patches every few weeks.. These new players won’t get all that the same way we did even if they get a “bonus” free version with buying HoT.

They won’t hear while afk’ing at the bank in LA the asura and char that say “Your face is funny”, “No, your face is funny. It’s like a little raisin”

They won’t see LA getting destroyed and all the events that lead up to it.

They won’t get to fight marionette like we did cause that is all gone and done.

They probably won’t see SAB seeing as people still riot about it to this day.

They didn’t get to farm aetherblades in zones and have tons of champs spawning.

So many other open world events that these new players will never experience even if they do get a “Bonus” free version of the core game.

Stop being greedy and thinking its all about new players when new players will have missed out on a ton of content that is no longer available.

How do you put a price tag on it?

It’s not a loaf of bread after all. And i never really understood all the comparison posts either. The game had this many zones, races, classes upon launch so the expansion has to have this or that many so the price is warranted?

If you measure content based on such things, you should really stop playing video games and get another hobby.

Hello,

First of all i would like to state that this is my opinion.

There are a lot of post,a lot of angry people and a lot of people who are devoted to GW franchise.
Before you start talking that 50$ is to much for an expension take into consideration the following costs:
Everyone knows that making a good game is not cheap think of how many people do you need to pay just for developing the content:

- Software Architects
- UI Designers
- Software engineers
- Testers
- 3D Animators

and people upper the food chain , managers marketing specialists and so on
for a software developer the average salary is 70k$ in US of course if youre a specialist then you earn more.

I think there was at least 100 people involved in creating the content so 7mill$ just for the developers which means that at current price at least 140000 people need to buy the standard edition just to pay the developers creators:D
Of course 50$ is not cheap but everything has a cost i followed the HOT announcements and if you look at all the changes what are developed during this time you will understand hopefully that it isn’t cheap.
Secondly Wow is not like GW. They have different model. (P2P vs B2P) and if you start to think of the Financial part Wow 1 Year is 120$ + Expension which was 20-50$. But if you buy this expension for 50$ now or maybe it will be cheaper in the future you don’t have to spend another dime on your account.

From the content part i think we will get more content in this expension the in an expension in WOW withouth the nneed to grind another 10 levels and grind for new gear. It’s much harder to acquire gear in GW then in WOW but the gear is way more valuable.

It has 3 different editions you can buy which one suites you better, nothing is forced on you.

Sorry for the long post have a potato and a nice day

PS: This is my first post so pls don’t rage.
I’m a software devoper so i know how many people are involved in a game of this magnitude
:D

Acharyn.4738:

It doesn’t matter what ANet meant. The players are speaking, and they have time to change it.

They WON’T remove the core game free with expansion. As bad as you think this backlash may be, that would even be worse. It would be removal of a feature, which is probably the one of the worst things you can do in a game. And it’s up for prepurchase, so there’s already money involved.

They’ve made their decision with this. The best they can do is to compensate existing players, no moving backwards.

BLOODY HELL FIRE!

$100 = £63.56. I need to pay £80 to buy HOT Ultimate.

… Okay, I was calm before. Now I am not.

Zero.

Looking how they treated veteran players now and release pre-order expanions with existing piles of bugs they won’t have my support anymore. Starting from Mini rock soon they will literally just put an offer “Pile of garbage – maybe there will be expansion in it” style.

@evilunderling so you are basing a price on a fictive, unproven value that might or might not come. So you are basically gambling?

Caedmon.6798:

Pockets.3201:

They are asking us to pay just about the same price as the base game was on release, for a fraction of the content.

Exactly,i won’t be buying it,not just for that but mostly because they do not listen to feedback,ever..and im so dissapointed in all these skill changes and trait switches and the direction it’s going,besides theyre unable to fix the lag in WvW,add greed and i don’t see why i should buy the exp pack sadly.

They can’t even fix the loot bugs and tab targeting glitches or the movement issues where you are stuck going the opposite direction your camera is facing…..and this has been /bugged many times…anet doesn’t listen to feedback at all. This expansion is the perfect opportunity to vote with my wallet.

This is my biggest issue.

They are adding 9 elite specializations and 1 new profession. 20% of the profession based features are the REVENANT.

Not having a character slot with the purchase means, in order for me to have a Revenant when HoT launches:

1. I need an already empty character slot, or
2. Buy a new character slot for $10, or
3. Delete an old character slot (but they’re adding this horizontal progression system to the game, so players don’t have to delete pre-existing characters)

Anet, “Buy our game, disclaimer: you won’t actually have access to all of the features we’re hyping you for unless you shell out more money”

They could provide free character slot redeem code to pre-phase players for a limited time to create a sales boost anytime before HoT launch, then only the one who bought before the launch got another extra cha slot while anyone who bought the expansion after the launch get 0 extra slot for stand version.

Won’t be buying it unless it’s free.For several reasons
I dont play or like the pve aspect in this game anymore
They cannot fix the lag in wvw ( dont see why i should keep supporting u in this case )
Add a MOBA pvp map ( Come kittening on….Who asked for that kitten ?? )
Add some Eotm style WvW map No one asked for
Changed traits and skills around in ways unimaginable to some,breaking several builds and pushing everything to condi/range..The skill level in this game will drop to 0.

40 bucks for one map ? I dont think so.

Did people go insane and claw the walls when they merged the original GW trilogy in to one pack for a lower cost?

Did they go mad and scream scam when WoW merged it’s first three expansions in to the base game cost?

I really fail to see what the big deal is.

darkdomino.9578:

Europeans pay more because you have VAT.

No, that’s not the reason. Us europeans have different VAT in different countries, yet we pay the same.

Agreed. Can someone just delete all the other threads and pin this? That would be great.

briggah.7910:

Geez us veteran players have gotten to experience all the game for 2+ years with new patches every few weeks.. These new players won’t get all that the same way we did even if they get a “bonus” free version with buying HoT.

They won’t hear while afk’ing at the bank in LA the asura and char that say “Your face is funny”, “No, your face is funny. It’s like a little raisin”

They won’t see LA getting destroyed and all the events that lead up to it.

They won’t get to fight marionette like we did cause that is all gone and done.

They probably won’t see SAB seeing as people still riot about it to this day.

They didn’t get to farm aetherblades in zones and have tons of champs spawning.

So many other open world events that these new players will never experience even if they do get a “Bonus” free version of the core game.

Stop being greedy and thinking its all about new players when new players will have missed out on a ton of content that is no longer available.

You’re forgetting all the new players that bought the core on sale. You’re not scratching the issue.

Aenaos.8160:

ELF.8496:

Although I must admit, it feels like the a giant carrot (dangling guild halls in front of players)

A bit like this?!

GW2 Mounts confirmed!

VergilDeZaniah.3295:

Fay.2735:

snip

What annoys people is that HoT is sold as a bundle with, as a bonus for new players, the core game. Veteran players, on the other hand, won’t get any bonus at all. Therefore we are questioning ourselves: why keep being so supportive when, in the end, they barely pay attention to us and make everything just to get new players that come and go instead of keeping and taking care of their most solid playerbase.

As for taking care of their solid playerbase we got an entire first season 1 for free that nobody new will ever get to experience again in the same way, not to mention all the exclusive items no longer available for newer players. Oh and what about the guild hall, arena, new wvw map, new areas and so forth, is that not for the original player base then? Is that not stuff people been asking for for AGES?

Regina Buenaobra.6193:

To clarify: $50 is the price of the expansion. We included the core game as a free bonus to make it easier for new players to get into it.

So if you have bought the core game say last week, are you getting a refund when you buy HOT ?

if so cool because as i see it if ANet didn’t then that would be fraud right? they tell you that you need the core game for HOT so you buy it, then ship HOT with the core game so in reality you don’t need the core game ??? thats a law suit right ?

so if that is true and a refund was due, than would they be offering a refund to all the loyal players that have been playing for the last 5+ years?

when they announced the expansion and said you need the core game for it. every one was cool, a little pricey but that’s ok.

see FAQ as of 15/june/2015
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/external?l=http%3A%2F%2Fwebcache.googleusercontent.com%2Fsearch%3Fq%3Dcache%3AzixDtVWWPHoJ%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fhelp.guildwars2.com%2Fentries%2F105801626-Guild-Wars-2-Heart-of-Thorns-FAQ%2B%26cd%3D1%26hl%3Den%26ct%3Dclnk%26gl%3Dus

Apart from the time span 5+ years, 1 month, 1 week its the same you bought the core game whenever that was, and then they announced the expansion came with the core game.

if they don’t offer a refund to all, then who are they going to refund and is there a case for legal action ?

just asking?

It’s just arrogance, plain and simple. Lot of people are voting with their wallets on this one.

I agree with the price being fair but I guess we are in the minority

Prove us wrong instead of QQing about us QQing. You are not helping the game in any way.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/Question-about-value-price/first#post5159330

Good Morning ANet and fellow players,

After reading numerous complaints and defenders I figured maybe it’s time to weigh in as opposed to commenting after a knee jerk reaction. If you compare HoT pricing to GW1 expansion pricing then HoT is definitely a light over priced package package by those standard.

A GW1 expansion usually included a continent with enough content to justify the cost of an actual game, any new classes included packaged with a free character slot.

HOT includes a Region not a continent, we don’t even know how many zones are in this region, whether it will be Orr sized, or Ascalon sized for example. The Revenant does not come with a character slot.

Consider though that compared to the most financially successful MMO of all time who I shall not name because naming other games tends to get things locked up does charge $50 for what amounts to a 1.5 times GW2 Region. But hey lets face it that company can get away with it because they print money, and it’s been their standard practice for 10 years.

While I respect ANet’s desire to try emulating the expansion business model of the elephant in the room of MMO companies, they need to consider that ANet’s license to print money which is based off of their fan base does not equate to that other company’s license to print money because ANet’s 10 year history of expansion business does not line up with what they are trying to sell here with HOT.

…it wouldn’t cost any less, and all it would do is make it more expensive for new players.

Seriously, it doesn’t cost Anet 10 dollars to make a new account. It likely costs nothing, since the minor loses are recouped from the sale of the actual expansion.

Do veteran players really want new players to miss out on a deal because they bought the game earlier? Is there even a precedence for some MMO veteran discount? Or do MMOs naturally favour new players because it helps grow the playerbase.

Seriously, there’s some real crazy entitlement on some of these threads. Some “doesn’t understand the basics of the adult world” level entitlement.

Shifu.4321:

Acharyn.4738:

It doesn’t matter what ANet meant. The players are speaking, and they have time to change it.

They WON’T remove the core game free with expansion. As bad as you think this backlash may be, that would even be worse. It would be removal of a feature, which is probably the one of the worst things you can do in a game.

They don’t need to. All that is needed is to add a couple of slots for existing players with core game and most people will be satisfied. No veteran player who owns the core game wants to spend $60 to be able to try out the rev. That’s more than new players will need to spend.

2) $50 for an expansion is standard pricing as of 2015. Competition dictates that companies will have to keep prices roughly equal. It’s the reason why almost all high-end smartphones default to $600, or why the Xbox One and PS4 launched at roughly the same price (after factoring in the extra price of the PS Eye).

3) Of course it’s not finished. We’ve seen a small portion of it, and realistically, there’s more to come. And if the past is any indication, they’re much further along than they’re letting on. GW2 announced its pre-purchase in April and launched in August just over 4 months later. HoT is following a very similar pattern.

As for the assumption that we’ve paid for “nothing” – that’s ridiculous. So all of the beta events we’ve had are nothing?

You know what, I’m not even going to bother responding beyond that. Troll post is troll post.