Gem-based HoT Specializations?
Either buy the expansion to get all the specializations or don’t buy it and don’t have access to the expansion content.
So I’m just wondering if ANet will ever offer individual PvP specializations through the Gem Store?
Short answer: no.
Longer answer: we don’t actually know if they might do this some day, since they wouldn’t tell us until it was about to go live.
However, there’s no incentive for them to do so:
- It would cost them development time, to separate particular unlocks from HoT.
- It would cost them HoT sales.
- It would cause tension in the community, since there are certainly people who spent cash on HoT, who might have preferred just to buy an unlock or two.
- It would also cause customer service issues, not to mention pricing (and refund issues).
In other words, it would require a lot of work, reduce their return on previous investments, and be very unlikely to bring enough new income to replace that, let alone exceed it.
tl;dr too little benefit (to ANet), for too much cost.
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
I would say it will never happen. When you can convert gold to gems it would defeat the purpose of selling an expansion and the day you can buy character skills with real money the games becomes pay to win.