Guild Wars 2

I took this from the Eye of the North website:-

The expansion introduces:
41 new armor sets, including rare, stand-alone pieces
100 new profession-specific skills (10 per profession, none of which are elite)
50 new PvE only skills including 3 elite skills
10 new heroes
18 Dungeons
124 new quests
The Hall of Monuments, a place which allows you to obtain unique titles, companions, weapons, armor, and miniatures in Guild Wars 2 based on your achievements in the original Guild Wars.
More than the previous campaigns, Eye of the North is full of easter eggs and “hidden” quests, which are not immediately accessible.

For those who may not know, Eye of the North was the only expansion Anet released during GW1, the other releases were separate campaigns within the same world.

I’ve not delved too deeply into HoT so far but for those that have, how does what we bought compare to the previous expansion in terms of content and value for money?

+1 for the opp. Yep, I hoped this expansion would be like EotN. But it is the opposite. Looks more like the first GW follow up: Factions. I wonder if it was the same team creating it. Weird that Anet forgot how Factions was critisized because it was not an open world where everyone could go everywhere from scratch. Oh well, maybe the next expansion will bring back the team of heroes?

You are comparing apples and oranges bro; both of these games are entirely different concepts of content where one is dynamically always active and one is completely instanced(making content much easier to create in large quantities). Anet already stated they wanted a living world, but people seem to think this is some easy task…. This isnt some WoW map with stationary npcs and flat terrain that a team can just regurgitate out. Yeah places like southsun cove were thrown out, but these maps are built around huge meta events and are much larger on an XYZ scale(even if people can’t wrap their head around this concept due to two dimensional map views).

Well, you gotta remember that most, if not all, of those “18 dungeons” were straight up kitten and/or copies of other dungeons. As to skills, HoT brings almost as many as EotN if you consider both weapon skills and slot skills, maybe even as much or more if you consider traits and new class mechanics (can’t be bothered to make an exact count).

Regarding armor sets, well, it’s understandable that EotN had more of them considering they only really had to fit two templates (human male or human female), as opposed to the various races, body types and armor types in GW2. That said, lack of new armor sets is one of my main complaints with HoT (together with short story and absurd guild hall decoration prices).

Maybe EotN had more content per se, but one should take into account that it was more of a content expansion and didn’t really bring any new features (except Hall of Monuments), whereas HoT is perhaps a bit lighter on content but brings plenty of features (gliding, masteries, guild halls).

All in all, I’ve had more fun in HoT so far, but I do kind of wish it had perhaps one or two more zones, some additional armor sets and a more fleshed out story. For me, how raids, living story and PvP leagues turn out will decide if this is merely a good expansion, or a great expansion.

In short? It doesn’t even come close enough to warrant a comparison.

Gendou.9620:

You are comparing apples and oranges bro; both of these games are entirely different concepts of content where one is dynamically always active and one is completely instanced(making content much easier to create in large quantities). Anet already stated they wanted a living world, but people seem to think this is some easy task…. This isnt some WoW map with stationary npcs and flat terrain that a team can just regurgitate out. Yeah places like southsun cove were thrown out, but these maps are built around huge meta events and are much larger on an XYZ scale(even if people can’t wrap their head around this concept due to two dimensional map views).

So compare EoTN to core GW1 and see how much new things EoTN brought compared with the base game it was the expansion for.

Now compare HoT with core GW2 and see how much new things HoT brings compared to the base game it is the expansion for.

Even if you compare like this – it’s pretty clear EoTN brought more value to players.
And I don’t even care about pricing at this point – all i would have wanted was more cosmetic options – we got what – 3 armor sets? in a whole expansion?

In the mean time the gem store still has its steady stream of weapons coming in – so there was plenty of dev time to make them but not new armor assets.

The comparison is only fair if you make it at the “end” of HoT’s lifecycle rather that at the start.

I’m expecting loads of new content to be added into HoT over the coming months/years. A living story or two, more gear, more raids, moar lootz etc.
Compare core GW2 with how it was when it started. Today HoT does not seem to offer much (especially to me personally) but it will grow and develop.

DoctorDing.5890:

The comparison is only fair if you make it at the “end” of HoT’s lifecycle rather that at the start.

I’m expecting loads of new content to be added into HoT over the coming months/years. A living story or two, more gear, more raids, moar lootz etc.
Compare core GW2 with how it was when it started. Today HoT does not seem to offer much (especially to me personally) but it will grow and develop.

Most of what got added to the “core” of guild wars 2 is gone. And if you are talking about the LS, you have to buy that on top, so it would probably be the same with HoT. So if you do compare the 2, including price. HoT is lacking big time.

Yes it is harder to add content to Guild Wars 2 because of the way the game is made up… but is it worth the sacrifice? we have a beautiful living world, with tons of moving parts, but to add anything to it takes so much time, that in any other game you could add a whole dungeon for the time it takes to design just a few events in GW2.

I can’t make a decision as to which one is better, but I do think GW2 has way to many mechanics and too great in scope of an art direction for an MMO. It just takes too long to produce content.

Maximillian Greil.1965:

Yes it is harder to add content to Guild Wars 2 because of the way the game is made up… but is it worth the sacrifice? we have a beautiful living world, with tons of moving parts, but to add anything to it takes so much time, that in any other game you could add a whole dungeon for the time it takes to design just a few events in GW2.

I can’t make a decision as to which one is better, but I do think GW2 has way to many mechanics and too great in scope of an art direction for an MMO. It just takes too long to produce content.

I do think this is part of the problem. Everything about GW2 is so grandiose and over-achieving that developing new content for it probably takes much, much more work and effort than it did for GW1, which was comparatively very simplistic.

Still, it’s not an unfair comparison to make. GW2 has not had an adequate amount of content added since launch for its 3 year lifespan, so Arenanet needs to find a way to make content additions more sustainable.

Einlanzer.1627:

Maximillian Greil.1965:

Yes it is harder to add content to Guild Wars 2 because of the way the game is made up… but is it worth the sacrifice? we have a beautiful living world, with tons of moving parts, but to add anything to it takes so much time, that in any other game you could add a whole dungeon for the time it takes to design just a few events in GW2.

I can’t make a decision as to which one is better, but I do think GW2 has way to many mechanics and too great in scope of an art direction for an MMO. It just takes too long to produce content.

I do think this is part of the problem. Everything about GW2 is so grandiose and over-achieving that developing new content for it probably takes much, much more work and effort than it did for GW1, which was comparatively very simplistic.

Still, it’s not an unfair comparison to make. GW2 has not had an adequate amount of content added since launch for its 3 year lifespan, so Arenanet needs to find a way to make content additions more sustainable.

The hole’s too deep at this point. Either abandon what makes your game unique, or don’t produce content in a timely way. Which gun would you shoot yourself with if it was up to you?

I’d take the four maps I got with HoT over all the maps in EotN any day. The complexity of these maps is astounding.

Don’t get me wrong, I loved Eye of the North. But then, we haven’t seen raids yet, and Eye of the North didn’t have expansion content coming in reguilarly either. We have to see what the new content delivery cadence is. Also EotN offered nothing at all for PvP.

Vayne.8563:

I’d take the four maps I got with HoT over all the maps in EotN any day. The complexity of these maps is astounding.

Don’t get me wrong, I loved Eye of the North. But then, we haven’t seen raids yet, and Eye of the North didn’t have expansion content coming in reguilarly either. We have to see what the new content delivery cadence is. Also EotN offered nothing at all for PvP.

I think it’s okay to do a little of both. I sort of hope the next expansion/set of maps we get goes in a different direction – specifically – reduced complexity and greater quantity.

It seems to be a common mantra that quality > quantity, and that was a major design goal for GW2, but I’ve long argued that you really need a bit of both and should strive to find a middle ground.

Kaz.5430:

A lot of people only seem to count armor if it’s an entire set, and for these same people each set also doesn’t count as a ‘separate set’ when applied to a different race or a different profession.

However, the armor total listed on the EotN releases ‘does’ classify the same armor set on a different profession as separate new sets (in the count). When you look at the EotN armor in the same light as is being used for HoT, then there were actually only 3 new armor “sets” in EotN: Asuran, Monument and Norn.

Every other bit of armor was either already available in a previous campaign (e.g. Elonian, Tyrian and Canthan), an incomplete set (e.g. Deldrimor, Dragon, Silver Eagle), or a stand alone piece of armor.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Category:Eye_of_the_North_armor

classifying them as light, medium, and heavy would devalue the fact that someone sat there and modeled them for each profession. The count they gave was for individual looks. Classifying them as light, medium, and heavy, would not be an accurate way of gauging the different models for the armor… but it would be in Guild Wars 2.

If I remember correctly, the EotN armor were just re-skins of existing armor. Kind of like how a lot of the dungeons were copy and pasted from other dungeons.

DoctorDing.5890:

The comparison is only fair if you make it at the “end” of HoT’s lifecycle rather that at the start.

I’m expecting loads of new content to be added into HoT over the coming months/years. A living story or two, more gear, more raids, moar lootz etc.
Compare core GW2 with how it was when it started. Today HoT does not seem to offer much (especially to me personally) but it will grow and develop.

Yeah but it’s not really how expansions work.
See – Anet ran with HoT as an expansion – an expansion is a thing that brings a lot of features to your core game at one specific time and that you pay a sum of money to get.

HoT is not living world. HoT is not early access – it is an expansion.

Sure they might add new things to the game (Core GW2+HoT now) but that doesn’t mean these are things that came with HoT since they did not.

Buying a car only to have “features” such as climate control, ABS and whatnot be shipped to you at a later time is not something that’s normal.

It’s a mistake to judge HoT in light of things that will be added in the future considering they marketed an expansion and no early access.

Living Story is already a part of the GW2 franchise and is free for everybody so it cannot under any circumstances be considered part of HoT or considered relevant content that came with HoT – since it did not.

The ultimate problem with HoT is that when they marketed it they went about it like “buy our new expansion and get this and that and this and all these new things” – people preordered only to later find that “some of the stuff will come later after the expansion’s release because reasons”.

I get that they didn’t have all the stuff ready at once – but that should have been known to people on the day they opened up the game for preorder – not in a blog post a while after telling us “uhm yeah, so raids and legendary weapons are going to come after the release of HoT – and you’re only getting 3 new legendary weapons”.

Ayrilana.1396:

If I remember correctly, the EotN armor were just re-skins of existing armor. Kind of like how a lot of the dungeons were copy and pasted from other dungeons.

the reskins had some things added to them, some of them had different places you could color them. Most were not reskins though. You can look through them, the GW1 wiki was quite extensive.

Einlanzer.1627:

Maximillian Greil.1965:

Yes it is harder to add content to Guild Wars 2 because of the way the game is made up… but is it worth the sacrifice? we have a beautiful living world, with tons of moving parts, but to add anything to it takes so much time, that in any other game you could add a whole dungeon for the time it takes to design just a few events in GW2.

I can’t make a decision as to which one is better, but I do think GW2 has way to many mechanics and too great in scope of an art direction for an MMO. It just takes too long to produce content.

I do think this is part of the problem. Everything about GW2 is so grandiose and over-achieving that developing new content for it probably takes much, much more work and effort than it did for GW1, which was comparatively very simplistic.

Still, it’s not an unfair comparison to make. GW2 has not had an adequate amount of content added since launch for its 3 year lifespan, so Arenanet needs to find a way to make content additions more sustainable.

Let’s not forget that while GW2 is more “grandiose” and “over-achieving” with content taking more work to get done Anet has more funds and more employees than it had in the days of GW1.

So yes – it is more difficult to develop stuff for GW2 but their pool of resources is also higher.

Vayne.8563:

I’d take the four maps I got with HoT over all the maps in EotN any day. The complexity of these maps is astounding.

Don’t get me wrong, I loved Eye of the North. But then, we haven’t seen raids yet, and Eye of the North didn’t have expansion content coming in reguilarly either. We have to see what the new content delivery cadence is. Also EotN offered nothing at all for PvP.

The maps – that’s preference. I hate the convoluted mess some maps are.
Still – the fact that we haven’t seen Raids yet is another reason HoT falls short for me – we all paid for the Xpac only to have parts of it held off until later – we weren’t told this would be the case and many had preordered already. See my post above.

Also I don’t see how having content coming in via the Living World somehow gets attributed to HoT now.

Harper.4173:

Vayne.8563:

I’d take the four maps I got with HoT over all the maps in EotN any day. The complexity of these maps is astounding.

Don’t get me wrong, I loved Eye of the North. But then, we haven’t seen raids yet, and Eye of the North didn’t have expansion content coming in reguilarly either. We have to see what the new content delivery cadence is. Also EotN offered nothing at all for PvP.

The maps – that’s preference. I hate the convoluted mess some maps are.
Still – the fact that we haven’t seen Raids yet is another reason HoT falls short for me – we all paid for the Xpac only to have parts of it held off until later – we weren’t told this would be the case and many had preordered already. See my post above.

Also I don’t see how having content coming in via the Living World somehow gets attributed to HoT now.

This stance I consider too far on the harsh side towards arenanet. We knew living world would require HoT, so that is a part of the expansion. It’s similar to buying a season pass.

Harper.4173:

DoctorDing.5890:

The comparison is only fair if you make it at the “end” of HoT’s lifecycle rather that at the start.

I’m expecting loads of new content to be added into HoT over the coming months/years. A living story or two, more gear, more raids, moar lootz etc.
Compare core GW2 with how it was when it started. Today HoT does not seem to offer much (especially to me personally) but it will grow and develop.

Yeah but it’s not really how expansions work.
See – Anet ran with HoT as an expansion – an expansion is a thing that brings a lot of features to your core game at one specific time and that you pay a sum of money to get.

HoT is not living world. HoT is not early access – it is an expansion.

Sure they might add new things to the game (Core GW2+HoT now) but that doesn’t mean these are things that came with HoT since they did not.

Buying a car only to have “features” such as climate control, ABS and whatnot be shipped to you at a later time is not something that’s normal.

It’s a mistake to judge HoT in light of things that will be added in the future considering they marketed an expansion and no early access.

Living Story is already a part of the GW2 franchise and is free for everybody so it cannot under any circumstances be considered part of HoT or considered relevant content that came with HoT – since it did not.

The ultimate problem with HoT is that when they marketed it they went about it like “buy our new expansion and get this and that and this and all these new things” – people preordered only to later find that “some of the stuff will come later after the expansion’s release because reasons”.

I get that they didn’t have all the stuff ready at once – but that should have been known to people on the day they opened up the game for preorder – not in a blog post a while after telling us “uhm yeah, so raids and legendary weapons are going to come after the release of HoT – and you’re only getting 3 new legendary weapons”.

I disagree. The people who didn’t get HoT won’t be getting the new living story for free. We know it’s going to take place in the new zones and we know they can’t get to it.

Hot is like a combination expansion/season pass, just as Guild Wars 2 was. It’s a hybrid model. I’m not sure why some people can’t see this.

Maximillian Greil.1965:

Ayrilana.1396:

If I remember correctly, the EotN armor were just re-skins of existing armor. Kind of like how a lot of the dungeons were copy and pasted from other dungeons.

the reskins had some things added to them, some of them had different places you could color them. Most were not reskins though. You can look through them, the GW1 wiki was quite extensive.

Re-skins are where you have essentially the same model but just change the textures. The wiki has the comparisons.

Here’s one for warrior.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Warrior_Monument_armor/Male_comparison

Ayrilana.1396:

Maximillian Greil.1965:

Ayrilana.1396:

If I remember correctly, the EotN armor were just re-skins of existing armor. Kind of like how a lot of the dungeons were copy and pasted from other dungeons.

the reskins had some things added to them, some of them had different places you could color them. Most were not reskins though. You can look through them, the GW1 wiki was quite extensive.

Re-skins are where you have essentially the same model but just change the textures. The wiki has the comparisons.

Here’s one for warrior.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Warrior_Monument_armor/Male_comparison

I did say most weren’t reskins right? The ones that were, had some slight changes to the models. In the one you linked, the legs and the Boots were slightly different. The helm too. The spikes stick out about 1/4 of an inch more.

Maximillian Greil.1965:

Ayrilana.1396:

Maximillian Greil.1965:

Ayrilana.1396:

If I remember correctly, the EotN armor were just re-skins of existing armor. Kind of like how a lot of the dungeons were copy and pasted from other dungeons.

the reskins had some things added to them, some of them had different places you could color them. Most were not reskins though. You can look through them, the GW1 wiki was quite extensive.

Re-skins are where you have essentially the same model but just change the textures. The wiki has the comparisons.

Here’s one for warrior.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Warrior_Monument_armor/Male_comparison

I did say most weren’t reskins right? The ones that were, had some slight changes to the models. In the one you linked, the legs and the Boots were slightly different. The helm too. The spikes stick out about 1/4 of an inch more.

I don’t really feel like going through each and every iteration of armor as there’s really no point. Not everything in that expansion was unique and quite a lot of the assets they had used previously were re-used.

It’s been a ongoing issue with this game: They put their energy in a PvE Living Story extension (which is nice but temporary) instead of making endgame content (which is repeatable).

Result is we get only 1 pvp map, no dungeons, no new fractals, delayed raids, and a substantial (and potentially amazing) over-designed WvW map that has been rushed out in an outdated server system.

Guild halls are nice, but only as a place to go between endgame content challenges which are missing.

So, 2-3 weeks after the expansion for me it’s back to GvGs, in Gilded Hollow now instead of Obsidian Sanctum. That’s the only difference.

They need to come out with more repeatable content updates and SAB world 3

Maximillian Greil.1965:

Harper.4173:

Vayne.8563:

I’d take the four maps I got with HoT over all the maps in EotN any day. The complexity of these maps is astounding.

Don’t get me wrong, I loved Eye of the North. But then, we haven’t seen raids yet, and Eye of the North didn’t have expansion content coming in reguilarly either. We have to see what the new content delivery cadence is. Also EotN offered nothing at all for PvP.

The maps – that’s preference. I hate the convoluted mess some maps are.
Still – the fact that we haven’t seen Raids yet is another reason HoT falls short for me – we all paid for the Xpac only to have parts of it held off until later – we weren’t told this would be the case and many had preordered already. See my post above.

Also I don’t see how having content coming in via the Living World somehow gets attributed to HoT now.

This stance I consider too far on the harsh side towards arenanet. We knew living world would require HoT, so that is a part of the expansion. It’s similar to buying a season pass.

Except Living world was something that we had before there was any idea of HoT.
Living world is not something new that comes with HoT and that we will have thanks to HoT.

Living World was their original idea of delivering content to players without the need for big expansions – this idea failed. Regardless of its failure it was free and part of the core game before we ever heard talk of an expansion.

Simply taking it away from there and tacking it on the expansion does not mean you’ve added something new to the value of HoT – simply that you took something that was in another place and moved it.

Is it more clear now?

As far as your argument of a “season pass” there was never any talk of this – they never said “season pass”. They said “expansion”.
If they release another expansion they should make HoT a requirement – that way people can delude themselves into thinking the new hypothetical expansion was also part of HoT somehow – and that makes HoT worth it because look – stuff is tied to it.

Something requiring HoT does not mean it should be considered content that is credited to HoT – if they gated let’s say WvW behind HoT does this mean HoT brought us WvW? Let’s be real.

HoT brought what came with it on release day – that was the amount of work they had ready for us in exchange for what we paid for the expansion. The rest of it is future stuff – which will be judged on its own merits and qualities but not as a part of HoT.

Vayne.8563:

Harper.4173:

DoctorDing.5890:

The comparison is only fair if you make it at the “end” of HoT’s lifecycle rather that at the start.

I’m expecting loads of new content to be added into HoT over the coming months/years. A living story or two, more gear, more raids, moar lootz etc.
Compare core GW2 with how it was when it started. Today HoT does not seem to offer much (especially to me personally) but it will grow and develop.

Yeah but it’s not really how expansions work.
See – Anet ran with HoT as an expansion – an expansion is a thing that brings a lot of features to your core game at one specific time and that you pay a sum of money to get.

HoT is not living world. HoT is not early access – it is an expansion.

Sure they might add new things to the game (Core GW2+HoT now) but that doesn’t mean these are things that came with HoT since they did not.

Buying a car only to have “features” such as climate control, ABS and whatnot be shipped to you at a later time is not something that’s normal.

It’s a mistake to judge HoT in light of things that will be added in the future considering they marketed an expansion and no early access.

Living Story is already a part of the GW2 franchise and is free for everybody so it cannot under any circumstances be considered part of HoT or considered relevant content that came with HoT – since it did not.

The ultimate problem with HoT is that when they marketed it they went about it like “buy our new expansion and get this and that and this and all these new things” – people preordered only to later find that “some of the stuff will come later after the expansion’s release because reasons”.

I get that they didn’t have all the stuff ready at once – but that should have been known to people on the day they opened up the game for preorder – not in a blog post a while after telling us “uhm yeah, so raids and legendary weapons are going to come after the release of HoT – and you’re only getting 3 new legendary weapons”.

I disagree. The people who didn’t get HoT won’t be getting the new living story for free. We know it’s going to take place in the new zones and we know they can’t get to it.

Hot is like a combination expansion/season pass, just as Guild Wars 2 was. It’s a hybrid model. I’m not sure why some people can’t see this.

Yes – you are correct – but taking LS away only to bring it back with HoT does not mean it is a HoT-related thing. Because it isn’t – it preceded HoT.

If Anet took away other features of the game like WvW, PvP, fractals, you name it – and gated it in a way that you had to have HoT to get updates to that content or even play it at all – does that mean HoT came with that content? No. It means they took some content and moved it from one place to another.

Gating things behind HoT does not make them part of the development effort for HoT – the developer effort for HoT was the amount of work and time put into what we got on release day – the day the expansion hit.

The rest of it – the parts that didn’t get released weren’t even ready – but we paid for them up front. That’s the main problem. They never specifically on preorder day told us that the whole “expansion” wouldn’t be released in one clump but in waves.

I can see what it’s trying to be very well – I’m just trying to point out that they didn’t advertise it as such.

On the day me and my friends bought HoT there was no “season pass” mention anywhere. I don’t particularly like season passes and generally hold off on buying them – so I’m upset I was sold one as something else.
Would I still have bought HoT? Most likely.
Do I want a refund? No.
What do I want then? For them to be open, fair and up-front about things so I can make an informed decision with how I spend my money.

The underhanded way they handle a lot of things is upsetting – look at how old finishers were handled – they made this huge “buy them now because they’re going away forever” sale only to return them a few days later (1-2 days later if I remember well) as drops from BL chests.

This sort of situation coupled with many others in the past ( Fractal leaderboards and level reset, new legendary weapons in 2013 and so on) have created a precedent of mistrust – I can (although I would absolutely want to) no longer trust the developers and have doubts about their fairness and sincerity every time they make a statement.

It is an upsetting state that I would like rectified.

Vayne.8563:

I’d take the four maps I got with HoT over all the maps in EotN any day. The complexity of these maps is astounding.

Don’t get me wrong, I loved Eye of the North. But then, we haven’t seen raids yet, and Eye of the North didn’t have expansion content coming in reguilarly either. We have to see what the new content delivery cadence is. Also EotN offered nothing at all for PvP.

Only factions offered anything new in way of PvP. Which was the second game released by ANet in the Guild wars series, or the first xpac if you played Guild wars.(I know it wasn’t an xpac in the traditional sense, but it was to me as I played Guild wars first.)

The maps in HoT are nice, and are a tangled mess. You might like them for that, I do not, so that point is purely subjective.

Also I do not see the 3 biomes. The maps have 2 if you are feeling generous.

Lets look at the face of it, HoT offer a lot less for the price tag than the core game did. They are ever putting a carrot on a stick to get people in to rades with the boots to gold while the raid you are in is the new one. Are ANet felling that HoT is not the sucsess they where hoping it wold be? are they hoping by using a carrot people will be to busy with said carrot to complain about the other problems with HoT?

My only personal problem with HoT is the maps being empty. for a new game this is a bad sign, and before you say use the LFG tool, I should not have to. I waist enough of my play time waiting to have fun.

Harper.4173:

Vayne.8563:

Harper.4173:

DoctorDing.5890:

The comparison is only fair if you make it at the “end” of HoT’s lifecycle rather that at the start.

I’m expecting loads of new content to be added into HoT over the coming months/years. A living story or two, more gear, more raids, moar lootz etc.
Compare core GW2 with how it was when it started. Today HoT does not seem to offer much (especially to me personally) but it will grow and develop.

Yeah but it’s not really how expansions work.
See – Anet ran with HoT as an expansion – an expansion is a thing that brings a lot of features to your core game at one specific time and that you pay a sum of money to get.

HoT is not living world. HoT is not early access – it is an expansion.

Sure they might add new things to the game (Core GW2+HoT now) but that doesn’t mean these are things that came with HoT since they did not.

Buying a car only to have “features” such as climate control, ABS and whatnot be shipped to you at a later time is not something that’s normal.

It’s a mistake to judge HoT in light of things that will be added in the future considering they marketed an expansion and no early access.

Living Story is already a part of the GW2 franchise and is free for everybody so it cannot under any circumstances be considered part of HoT or considered relevant content that came with HoT – since it did not.

The ultimate problem with HoT is that when they marketed it they went about it like “buy our new expansion and get this and that and this and all these new things” – people preordered only to later find that “some of the stuff will come later after the expansion’s release because reasons”.

I get that they didn’t have all the stuff ready at once – but that should have been known to people on the day they opened up the game for preorder – not in a blog post a while after telling us “uhm yeah, so raids and legendary weapons are going to come after the release of HoT – and you’re only getting 3 new legendary weapons”.

I disagree. The people who didn’t get HoT won’t be getting the new living story for free. We know it’s going to take place in the new zones and we know they can’t get to it.

Hot is like a combination expansion/season pass, just as Guild Wars 2 was. It’s a hybrid model. I’m not sure why some people can’t see this.

Yes – you are correct – but taking LS away only to bring it back with HoT does not mean it is a HoT-related thing. Because it isn’t – it preceded HoT.

So if they added more dungeons in HoT that wouldn’t be expanded content because dungeons already existed?

If it meant closing down existing dungeons – pretty much.

With the current implementation LS has gone from something that was free for everybody to something that’s only for HoT buyers.

Harper.4173:

If it meant closing down existing dungeons – pretty much.

With the current implementation LS has gone from something that was free for everybody to something that’s only for HoT buyers.

that’s new living story that will be for HoT players. They’re not locking old content.

Hopefully the devs will get a clue and fix the abomination called HoT. But it won’t happen soon and in the mean time they are going to continue to lose players by the shipload.

HoT is a disaster.

HoT world has more details in comparing to EotN.

Armor in GW1 only need to account for two character models.; human male and female. In GW2, there are five races and two genders. It adds extra efforts to design those armor.

GW1 landscape are mainly texture covers the terrain. HoT maps have a lot objects. If you spend time to look around they are amazing.

Spirited Was Eceni.3869:

1. 41 new armor sets, including rare, stand-alone pieces
2. 100 new profession-specific skills (10 per profession, none of which are elite)
   50 new PvE only skills including 3 elite skills
3. 10 new heroes
4. 18 Dungeons
5. 124 new quests
6. The Hall of Monuments, a place which allows you to obtain unique titles, companions, weapons, armor, and miniatures in Guild Wars 2 based on your achievements in the original Guild Wars.

1. Considering the new engine, developing new armor sets takes far, far more resources, so expecting the same, or even comparable, quantity of skins would be silly. Particularly since selling skins for Gems is part of the monetization of GW2, which automatically discourages dumping a bunch of skins on people.
2. With Elite Specializations, we’re looking at 1 healing skill, 1 elite and 4 utility skills for every profession for a total of 48. There’s also 37 new weapon skills, not counting follow-up skills such as auto-attack chains. Add in the profession mechanics and I’d say you’re at 100+ new skills. Not to mention Revenant.
3. There is no comparable mechanic in GW2 so bringing it up is kind of moot.
4. Well, we’re getting Raids and no one knows how that’s going to compare. And measuring dungeons in quantity is kind of silly, you could easily copy-paste the same dungeon but swap the enemies and end up with a bunch of dungeons that are, for all intents and purposes, one and the same.
5. I don’t know how many quests HoT brings, but as with dungeons, measuring quests in quantity is kind of pointless.
6. We got additional collections and the Mastery System.

More than the previous campaigns, Eye of the North is full of easter eggs and “hidden” quests, which are not immediately accessible.

The thing is, the times have changed. Nowadays we have websites like Dulfy that thrive on revealing everything. Not to mention that we have people actively datamining the game files for any hints of possible future changes, so any “hidden” stuff would most likely be datamined within days of release.

I’ve not delved too deeply into HoT so far but for those that have, how does what we bought compare to the previous expansion in terms of content and value for money

While I haven’t played GW1, I have played other games with expansions. I would say that GW2 does rather well in comparison to the games I have played.

Grim West.3194:

Hopefully the devs will get a clue and fix the abomination called HoT. But it won’t happen soon and in the mean time they are going to continue to lose players by the shipload.

HoT is a disaster.

Thank you for sharing your opinion.

Do you know what’s really funny?

Take a look at the original Guild Wars, 3 years after it had been released. By then ArenaNet had already released two new campaigns, one new expansion, and two big content updates (Sorrow’s Furnace and the Mission Pack). They had taken massive strides at the storyline, more than doubled the amount of maps in the game, more than doubled the amount of skills in the game – which by then had more than 1.000 skills -, added four new professions, more than doubled the amount of armor skins in the game, made some significant graphical updates, added a very large amount of small quality of life improvements, and so on and so on.

They also had already announced GW2. In other words, they had pushed the original GW as much and as far as they could.

Meanwhile, GW2 three years after release… Had next to nothing. That was in august – by then, we barely had any new skill, a handful of new maps (Southsun, Silvergrind and Dry Top), no new profession, and little improvements elsewhere. Even with HoT, this is not a game that has been pushed to its limits – it’s a game that’s spinning in its wheels.

Ayrilana.1396:

If I remember correctly, the EotN armor were just re-skins of existing armor.

Sorry, pet. Based on what ArenaNet said, EotN still had more than 10 times the amount of new armor sets we got from HoT so far.

Vayne.8563:

Hot is like a combination expansion/season pass, just as Guild Wars 2 was. It’s a hybrid model. I’m not sure why some people can’t see this.

Because SOME people actually realize that we know nothing about the LW season 3 update, when it will be released, how much content it will have, and so on and so on.

Some people are conjuring “information” from thin air and believing that their inventions are true (I remember when someone was stating as a fact that the raids would be release this week, only to be proven to be completely, inequivocally wrong). But the truth here is that we have no idea about how much content ArenaNet will release as part of HoT, so it’s incredibly nonsensical to use “future content” (of which we know nothing about) as an excuse for ho expensive HoT is, or how little content it has.

Grim West.3194:

Hopefully the devs will get a clue and fix the abomination called HoT. But it won’t happen soon and in the mean time they are going to continue to lose players by the shipload.

HoT is a disaster.

True.

Test.8734:

Ayrilana.1396:

If I remember correctly, the EotN armor were just re-skins of existing armor.

Sorry, pet. Based on what ArenaNet said, EotN still had more than 10 times the amount of new armor sets we got from HoT so far.

Nope.

BrotherBelial.3094:

Only factions offered anything new in way of PvP. Which was the second game released by ANet in the Guild wars series, or the first xpac if you played Guild wars.(I know it wasn’t an xpac in the traditional sense, but it was to me as I played Guild wars first.).

ANET did add Codex Arena some time after EOTN released, so Factions wasn’t the only time ANET added new PvP modes. Just the only time they did it with an expansion.

Another thing that Factions did that Nightfall and EOTN didn’t was that factions is the only part of GW1 that had any content for 12 man parties. Factions gave us Alliance Battles, The Deep and Urgoz Warren. After Factions we never saw any more content designed around having more than 8 characters in the party, with 8 being the standard party size in GW1.

Any speculations about why ANET abandoned 12 man content after Factions ?
What does your speculation say about the likely future of raids ?

Snoring Sleepwalker.9073:

BrotherBelial.3094:

Only factions offered anything new in way of PvP. Which was the second game released by ANet in the Guild wars series, or the first xpac if you played Guild wars.(I know it wasn’t an xpac in the traditional sense, but it was to me as I played Guild wars first.).

ANET did add Codex Arena some time after EOTN released, so Factions wasn’t the only time ANET added new PvP modes. Just the only time they did it with an expansion.

Another thing that Factions did that Nightfall and EOTN didn’t was that factions is the only part of GW1 that had any content for 12 man parties. Factions gave us Alliance Battles, The Deep and Urgoz Warren. After Factions we never saw any more content designed around having more than 8 characters in the party, with 8 being the standard party size in GW1.

Any speculations about why ANET abandoned 12 man content after Factions ?
What does your speculation say about the likely future of raids ?

to difficult to balance around. That’s pretty much all of GW1. The game was too hard to balance since there were tens of thousands of skill combinations in the game.

Ayrilana.1396:

Test.8734:

Ayrilana.1396:

If I remember correctly, the EotN armor were just re-skins of existing armor.

Sorry, pet. Based on what ArenaNet said, EotN still had more than 10 times the amount of new armor sets we got from HoT so far.

Nope.

Wow, such raveting arguments! Such fascinating logic! With arguments like that, it’s no wonder you can prove me wrong!

Oh, wait. You can’t. Better luck next time, pet.

Maximillian Greil.1965:

to difficult to balance around. That’s pretty much all of GW1. The game was too hard to balance since there were tens of thousands of skill combinations in the game.

The thing is, GW2 is still not balanced. Even after three years with barely no skill introduced to the game, and with the game having so few skills and so few combinations, ArenaNet still couldn’t balance it very well.

Meanwhile, in the original GW balance was a mess, true… But that was bad mostly in PvP. In PvE, lots and lots of builds were viable, so you had many, MANY options of how to play. In many aspects, the “play how you want” statement was true, but we had hundreds more options than in GW2.

The result is that GW2 is a very stale game. We have been using the same few skills in the same few combinations for years now. ArenaNet has just added some more skills, true, but even those aren’t properly balanced (go ask Tempests or get the Scrappers to talk about their drones, for example).

We lost a lot of the variety, of the room for experimentation and the opportunity to change our builds we had in GW1… And what did we get instead? A 100% balanced game? Not even close. We simply lost way more than what we got.

About the 45 armor sets in GW1, there was that but if you think about the 10 professions each having different armor styles dedicated to them. GW2 has about that many in HoT (5 races, 3 armor styles, 2 different armor sets, + 9 armor pieces from elite specs). So ya…that’s one thing a little more on par with EoTN.

All-in-all…I agree with you. But I still enjoy HoT immensely.

I think the more time passes the more difficult it gets to compare an older game to its successor. Technological advances allow game developers to make far more complex content than ever before.

You need to consider that many players/fans take it for granted that a successor surpasses the original game in both quantity and quality when it comes to content. Unfortunately there’s a trade-off. Heart of Thorns clearly focuses on quality over quantity: Fewer maps/zones but far more complex and interesting than anything GW1 offered (or any contemporary MMO!). Fewer armor sets but (in my opinion) far superior in design and more customizable than anything WoW (for example) has to offer. Instead of boring fetch-quests we got fewer but more meaningful events. Now we have map-wide meta events etc etc..

If you want every aspect of the game to evolve and take it to the next level you need to be prepared to settle for less quantity. In that contex comparing raw numbers becomes more and more meaningless.

Test.8734:

Ayrilana.1396:

Test.8734:

Ayrilana.1396:

If I remember correctly, the EotN armor were just re-skins of existing armor.

Sorry, pet. Based on what ArenaNet said, EotN still had more than 10 times the amount of new armor sets we got from HoT so far.

Nope.

Wow, such raveting arguments! Such fascinating logic! With arguments like that, it’s no wonder you can prove me wrong!

Oh, wait. You can’t. Better luck next time, pet.
.

Please stop calling me pet. I find your usage of nicknames when referring to me offensive.

EotM only had 5 armor sets with one equipable only by warriors.

Concerning armor numbers, I am every bit a Fashion Wars 2 enthusiast as anyone, but one should keep in mind that many of the easy-to-acquire skins in the core game are largely reskins of each other. At least in style if not in detail.

As much as I love new armor skins, I would rather 2 with some thought put into them than 10 that look like copies of the existing skins.

That said, it constantly frustrates me that they are stuck on things like trenchcoats for medium armor and buttcapes for both light and heavy. It’s such a common theme, even in new skins, that I have to believe they’re got a rulebook pinned on the wall somewhere telling them to stick to the theme. I’ve heard all the stuff about models and races and whatnot, but there is no “technical constraints” excuse for having a handful of skins that break the theme while most of them stick to it, i.e. if some can break the theme, they all can.

I get the argument for wanting to keep armor classes in line with a particular artistic feel and I get that there’s a portion of the playerbase (a portion I vehemently disagree with) who thinks armor class themes, and even profession armor themes, are something important. I feel very differently. Personalizing a character’s look to fit with my perception of the profession and armor class is very important to me.

Gendou.9620:

You are comparing apples and oranges bro; both of these games are entirely different concepts of content where one is dynamically always active and one is completely instanced(making content much easier to create in large quantities). Anet already stated they wanted a living world, but people seem to think this is some easy task…. This isnt some WoW map with stationary npcs and flat terrain that a team can just regurgitate out. Yeah places like southsun cove were thrown out, but these maps are built around huge meta events and are much larger on an XYZ scale(even if people can’t wrap their head around this concept due to two dimensional map views).

XYZ means pretty much full-map jumping puzzles. Some people weren’t big on jumping puzzles (one friend spent 3 hours on Obsidian Sanctum and then gave up on the game), so that was a funny design choice for EVERY new map. Not to mention WvW borderlands.

The thing is, it’s cool that Anet brought in these new maps. And it’s cool that they added jumping puzzle mechanics as well. But it’s not cool that they didn’t also add a bunch more places to explore (stationary NPCs and semi-flat terrain) that they could build upon in the future but let people explore for now. Seriously, the amount of places to explore was underwhelming. It would be completely cool with me if they just used the same terrain layouts as in Guild Wars 1 and added some nostalgia maps without major events on them. But just releasing a couple of arcade maps…. didn’t really seem to warrant paying the same price as vanilla. It doesn’t really matter how XYZ a map is – after you’ve gotten all the waypoints, you feel like you’ve got very little more to see (even though there sometimes is more).

It’s also not cool that you can’t really use much of your HoT content outside the jungle. I learned how to glide, and I can’t do it anywhere pretty (jungle gets tiring after a while – I was kind of over jungles a few hours after creating my first Sylvari, but that could be just me). Everything you level and grind XP up for in HoT has zero use in 90% of world maps. Will this change in the future? I’ve no clue, but it’d be nice.

I don’t know; maybe they will add a lot of maps under the HoT expansion free of charge. For me, though, a lot of the gameplay is exploration. Vanilla GW2 gave a pretty decent chunk of that. I’ve already “Been there, done that” though, now, and I’ve been desperate for more places to run around for ages. I’m not saying Anet has to release maps with massive events stitched to every corner (I’d rather they didn’t; maps like Southsun Cove feel bloated), but rather that many, many more maps be released with the possibility of future content/events be added to them later.

Five sets:

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Armor_art

If you count what each profession wears as a different set then that 41 sets. This corresponds to what was advertised.

What you’re completely missing is how they got to that 41 and how you’re unfairly not doing the same for the new armor sets from HoT. Let’s look at the HoT armor sets.

You have the bladed armor, leyline armor, and legendary armor. There’s three armor weights so that multiplies it out to 9 potential sets. But wait! Let’s not forget that it differs by race too. With 5 races, that comes out to 45 armor sets. That’s even more than EotN! That’s even on top of the HoT armor being much more detailed and complicated to develop over EotN armor.

Labjax.2465:

Concerning armor numbers, I am every bit a Fashion Wars 2 enthusiast as anyone, but one should keep in mind that many of the easy-to-acquire skins in the core game are largely reskins of each other. At least in style if not in detail.

As much as I love new armor skins, I would rather 2 with some thought put into them than 10 that look like copies of the existing skins.

That said, it constantly frustrates me that they are stuck on things like trenchcoats for medium armor and buttcapes for both light and heavy. It’s such a common theme, even in new skins, that I have to believe they’re got a rulebook pinned on the wall somewhere telling them to stick to the theme. I’ve heard all the stuff about models and races and whatnot, but there is no “technical constraints” excuse for having a handful of skins that break the theme while most of them stick to it, i.e. if some can break the theme, they all can.

I get the argument for wanting to keep armor classes in line with a particular artistic feel and I get that there’s a portion of the playerbase (a portion I vehemently disagree with) who thinks armor class themes, and even profession armor themes, are something important. I feel very differently. Personalizing a character’s look to fit with my perception of the profession and armor class is very important to me.

My feelings too. I would say that some degree of armor class theme is still reasonable (an elementalist in full plate “light” armor would be kind of odd), but limiting styles based on class is just closed-minded.

Swift.1930:

My feelings too. I would say that some degree of armor class theme is still reasonable (an elementalist in full plate “light” armor would be kind of odd), but limiting styles based on class is just closed-minded.

Yeah, I’m definitely ok with some class style. I just don’t like it when it overshadows sub-styles within the theme. For instance, plate almost invariably is going to (and does) have a more weighted look to the fabric, like parts of it are smelted steel. Cloth almost always has a wispier style, like the fabric is lightly woven together. Leather almost always has a thick look to it.

Those aspects I’m completely ok with. It’s more…. everything else. Like the fact that heavy and light have almost zero plain pant designs and medium has almost nothing but trenchcoats. I mean, for one thing, the fact that heavy and light share the butt cape obsession can barely even be called class distinction, since they both have that same problem. :P

forum page bug. >.>

BrotherBelial.3094:

if you are talking about the LS, you have to buy that on top

What? You didn’t have to buy it, it was free unless you failed to spend 30 secs to log on.