Guild Wars 2

You know, as someone who bought GW2 upon initial release, who played for a while, then was absent, I was very upset to find out today that the Heart of Thorns expansion is $50! Especially since it’s the same price for someone who already bought the original GW2 as it is for someone who’s never owned it before!

I was considering it, but now not sure. How about being reasonable and offering HoT at a discount for those who already own the core game?

-=Lon=-

It’s $10 more than what you typically see for expansions. Keep in mind the the core game that comes for free is only for new accounts and is not part of the price. Their intent was to not force new players behind a paywall where they have to spend so many dollars for the core game, so many for previous expansions, and full price for the existing expansion. They get it all for one price which is $50.

They will not discount the price as that defeats the purpose. The primary customers of expansions are existing players. If they were to have discounts for existing players then they may as well just sell the game at the lower price to everyone.

There is also nothing inherently wrong with a company marketing towards a particular segment: new players. Many companies in the real world do this to attract new customers.

$50 to $100 is the price for the expansion.

That is the price for most MMO’s that are doing expansions. Most MMO’s now are also including the previous core game and/or other expansions into the price of the current expansion. Why is this a problem for people in this game to understand that is how most are doing it now?

PyrateSilly.4710:

That is the price for most MMO’s that are doing expansions. Most MMO’s now are also including the previous core game and/or other expansions into the price of the current expansion. Why is this a problem for people in this game to understand that is how most are doing it now?

Most expansions are $40 and contain much more content then HoT.

Fermi.2409:

PyrateSilly.4710:

That is the price for most MMO’s that are doing expansions. Most MMO’s now are also including the previous core game and/or other expansions into the price of the current expansion. Why is this a problem for people in this game to understand that is how most are doing it now?

Most expansions are $40 and contain much more content then HoT.

Maybe. Maybe not. I remember people criticizing WoW’s last expansion. It’s up to the individual player to determine whether the cost of the expansion is worth it to them.

They said that their pricing policy from now on is to charge for the newest expansion and roll the base game and any previous expansion(s) into it for free for new players. It’s so that new players won’t hit a price wall buying an older game and its previous expansions. If you don’t want to pay the current price you can either look around for an authorized retailer having it on sale or get it free with the next expansion.

lonthor.5046:

You know, as someone who bought GW2 upon initial release, who played for a while, then was absent, I was very upset to find out today that the Heart of Thorns expansion is $50! Especially since it’s the same price for someone who already bought the original GW2 as it is for someone who’s never owned it before!

I was considering it, but now not sure. How about being reasonable and offering HoT at a discount for those who already own the core game?

-=Lon=-

Well you can buy from other sites but then if you dont like it jump through hoops to get refund.

Or could have got the extra char slot for prepurchase long ago, the only other option is wait for next expansion and get both for 50 or what ever bucks that one cost.

dlgamer have it on sale every so often. I picked it up for £22.

Fermi.2409:

PyrateSilly.4710:

That is the price for most MMO’s that are doing expansions. Most MMO’s now are also including the previous core game and/or other expansions into the price of the current expansion. Why is this a problem for people in this game to understand that is how most are doing it now?

Most expansions are $40 and contain much more content then HoT.

How many of those US$40 expansions come without a subscription fee for fully unlocked play?

Regardless, the point is moot: ANet’s been able to sell the expansion at $50 for 10 months. Some of the official retailers sell it for less ($10 cost reductions are common at this point; steeper discounts are rare).

lonthor.5046:

You know I was very upset today

You shouldn’t buy HoT. Not because it’s bad but because you’ll just spend all your time generically complaining about it.

The alternative to what Anet has done is what WoW does where you have to buy 112 different expansions and the core game and apply them one at a time until your PC runs out of room. Oh and then you have to pay a sub to play it.

Making a single install is something Anet should be praised for instead of this whine every time someone comes on looking for misplaced sympathy.

There is a link elsewhere offering it for $40 that I can’t be bothered to dig out for you.

I was planning to buy it but it just sounds too different from the normal game. It’s like they decided to incorporate everything I don’t like in one expansion: difficult content, confusing maps, forced grouping, raids, inflexible timers. That is simply not GW2 in my book.

n I keep reading that this is what the players asked for but I certainly didn’t. Where is the logic in giving a bunch of existing happy players a completely different game to play?

Having said that, I would really like to be able to glide but I don’t want it $40 worth.

bananaman.1685:

I was planning to buy it but it just sounds too different from the normal game. It’s like they decided to incorporate everything I don’t like in one expansion: difficult content, confusing maps, forced grouping, raids, inflexible timers. That is simply not GW2 in my book.

n I keep reading that this is what the players asked for but I certainly didn’t. Where is the logic in giving a bunch of existing happy players a completely different game to play?

Having said that, I would really like to be able to glide but I don’t want it $40 worth.

Many players will share your views on this. There will be some die-hard ANet fans that will defend them till the last forum post, but I think its ultimately up to you to get or not get the expansion. Use whatever online sources (mine is mostly YouTube) and listen to both sides of the expansion. If it looks enticing enough for you to get, then you will do it on your terms at least, not because people on forums told you to get it because they say its “good” or “bad”.
You could always wait as well, ANet started working on the next expansion already, maybe that might be interesting enough? (I say that because I have no idea what its about or what features it will have, but I hope its a bit more than what I got in HoT personally. My two cents, please don’t let this influence your thinking though ;D)

General Health.9678:

lonthor.5046:

You know I was very upset today

You shouldn’t buy HoT. Not because it’s bad but because you’ll just spend all your time generically complaining about it.

The alternative to what Anet has done is what WoW does where you have to buy 112 different expansions and the core game and apply them one at a time until your PC runs out of room. Oh and then you have to pay a sub to play it.

Making a single install is something Anet should be praised for instead of this whine every time someone comes on looking for misplaced sympathy.

There is a link elsewhere offering it for $40 that I can’t be bothered to dig out for you.

I wouldn’t just assume someone is going to complain about something. Maybe they might like it, maybe they might not. You never know, but I wouldn’t go immediately turn people away like that and assume the worst out of them.

112 different expansions? Okay, now that sounds just a bit like you might be throwing a tantrum. WoW doesn’t even have 10 expansions and they even stream-lined them all now with kitten and a free copy just for seeing the Warcraft Movie (assumed from rumors) so its not like you rack up $100+ for everything. I am not a major fan of WoW myself, dropped it for FFXIV, but I doubt misleading tamper tantrums is a good way to get your point across.

Also, what MMO doesn’t do single installs by now? WoW on its own is like 25GB, FFXIV is roughly 30GB, but that’s because they stream-line all the data and memory in order to make it more compact and not fill up space. At this point, its pretty standard to compress data that large for MMO games, otherwise no one would be able to install any of them.

I don’t want to sound like I am dissecting your post line by line, but it seems like you might be one of the bunch of people that defend ANet with HoT till the very end. Not anything regarding you, but I don’t get why people get so upset with their favorite company being negatively commented on. Its as if they know deep down inside that the negative comments might be right but are trying to yell the praises louder to hopefully drown out the negative voices or anything that doesn’t agree with HoT. If you like the expansion, that’s fine, but I see many times again and again players berating others for saying any comments regarding HoT. Where did the decency of being a GW2 player go?? I used to regard this community as something of a wallflower of MMO’s that didn’t support this nonsense and was actually friendly to people, but as of late, it seems to be going sour on the daily.

Fermi.2409:

PyrateSilly.4710:

That is the price for most MMO’s that are doing expansions. Most MMO’s now are also including the previous core game and/or other expansions into the price of the current expansion. Why is this a problem for people in this game to understand that is how most are doing it now?

Most expansions are $40 and contain much more content then HoT.

Yep.

Yeah but Hot has never been advertised as being full of content: they stated crystal clear that it would be light on content. They did bring new systems to the game, they did create new ways of exploring a map and they did develop raids as well….you might not like what what they did but the thing is, it still represents a cost. And developing these new systems in such a short amount of time will raise the price pretty high imo

MashMash.1645:

Fermi.2409:

PyrateSilly.4710:

That is the price for most MMO’s that are doing expansions. Most MMO’s now are also including the previous core game and/or other expansions into the price of the current expansion. Why is this a problem for people in this game to understand that is how most are doing it now?

Most expansions are $40 and contain much more content then HoT.

Yep.

Most expansions are for games that either require a subscription in addition to an expansion or they have some kind of “optional” subscription which you need anyway, or they have some sort of pay to win aspect that requires spending money.

It’s the business plan on which the game survives, not the price of one box. If you want to put it that way, both WoW and FF XIV require about 150 bucks a year, in addition to the price of an expansion.

SWToR, on the other hand, has an optional subscription which if you’re doing anything more than playing through the story, you’re paying.

And many console DLC’s contain less content per DLC for roughly the same cost, often with 2-3 DLC’s per game. One Xbox fighting game asked for £20 just for 6 new characters, more if you wanted early access. Some games (like Battlefront) appeared to offer to less in the core game just to throw out a series of DLC’s at a combined cost equal to the base.
WWE immortals (a fighting game app), asks for £19-£23 to buy a pack of 2-3 characters to play with. An enjoyable game for a button basher/swiper, but hardly value for money there. OK, that’s in app purchase, but clearly ppl will pay that just for such insignifcant content, so why wouldn’t people pay $40 for the slew of content HoT offers in contrast? Yes some MMO’s offer more for your money (I got nearly 10 years gameplay out of Anarchy Online’s Shadowlands expansion). And some don’t (Lotro!)

No matter how you look at it, you can find better or worse value for money in games. What it boils down to is whether you want to pay that or not. We knew HoT wasn’t going to be content heavy – they made very sure of telling us that at every turn. OK we didn’t expect how worryingly short the story was and how some advertised features got cut.

I have got more value for money this week alone out of HoT, than I got out of other recent purchases, like say the latest Zelda game on Wii U, which was essentially was the same price.

You need to compare apples with apples.
Trying to compare WOW expansions with HOT is simply not valid because WOW is a P2P game.
Pick another F2P game that has expansions and compare them to HOT.

Hey everyone, we’re going to go ahead and lock this thread as we already have a price feedback thread going. Thanks!