Guild Wars 2

It is unclear to me. I’m thinking of purchasing HoT. Does this give me access to all of the season 3 living story quests/missions, or will I then also have to pay for them as well?

The 3rd episode is still active so you’ll get it for free, but you will have to pay in total 400 gems for the 1st and 2nd episodes, Out of the Shadows and Rising flames.

When Anet announced LS3, they also stated how one gets the episodes for free:
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/guild-wars-2s-living-world-returns-on-july-26/

If you have a core account AND you logged in during the time each episode was active, you will get that episode for free when you eventually buy HoT.

Out of the Shadows: 26 Jul – 19 Sep
Rising Flames: 20 Sep – 20 Nov
A Crack in the Ice: 21 Nov – current

onevstheworld.2419:

If you have a core account AND you logged in during the time each episode was active, you will get that episode for free when you eventually buy HoT.

Out of the Shadows: 26 Jul – 19 Sep
Rising Flames: 20 Sep – 20 Nov
A Crack in the Ice: 21 Nov – current

^This answers op’s question well.

If you have been playing on your core account during the time when those episodes went live you will be able to do them normally, as a story, without any additional cost.

If you haven’t been playing recently (dates specified by user above) and just plan to buy hot and jump into the game you will only be able to complete 3rd episode and 1st and 2nd will be available for you to buy with gems.

You can unlock the living story season 3 episodes on your account, whether you logged in during the time to get them free or buy them from the gem shop, but you need to own HoT in order to play them.

Are they still doing this? I don’t know be cause I always log in during new episodes. But imagine you are a new player, you pay a whopping 50€ for this expansion and then they want 200 gems per episode. WTF? That’s just horrible marketing, with this you make your customers angry. No wonder they fare worse and worse. Remove this horrible restriction and give it for free. I can’t imagine new customers will have understanding for this. (200 gems are quite a lot of gold as a new player btw).

ProtoGunner.4953:

Are they still doing this? I don’t know be cause I always log in during new episodes. But imagine you are a new player, you pay a whopping 50€ for this expansion and then they want 200 gems per episode. WTF? That’s just horrible marketing, with this you make your customers angry. No wonder they fare worse and worse. Remove this horrible restriction and give it for free. I can’t imagine new customers will have understanding for this. (200 gems are quite a lot of gold as a new player btw).

They give it for free for quite a while.
And, you won’t believe this i guess, they have to make money one way or the other, so saying: Hey you can get this either logging in or later on with some gems, is quite fair.
It’s even more fair, yes, it is, because you can get gems via ingame gold, other games would tell you to pay with cash right out.

Also, a new payer, as in someone who just started his account has no bsiness in the new aeas or story anyway.

Indeed, they have to make money, but this is the wrong place. And people have no understanding that it is first for free and later you have to play for it.

And yes, they are for free quite a while, but imagine a player starting somewhere in 2018 and has to pay for 20 or so episodes, meaning 4k gems. And this after he paid for the full game. It’s just bad marketing.

Also, the story is an essential part of the game and usually you want to play it to understand how things evolve.

TLDR; HoT didn’t give you LS3.3, it simply unlocked the LS3 journal. LS3.3 unlocked because you logged in when LS3.3 was active and you then had LS3 journal active.
In retrospect, I think you should’ve also unlocked LS3.1 and LS3.2 if you logged in during their active periods, even if you couldn’t play them without HoT

Amaimon.7823:

TLDR; HoT didn’t give you LS3.3, it simply unlocked the LS3 journal. LS3.3 unlocked because you logged in when LS3.3 was active and you then had LS3 journal active.
In retrospect, I think you should’ve also unlocked LS3.1 and LS3.2 if you logged in during their active periods, even if you couldn’t play them without HoT

But they did, or at least ANet has definitively stated that fully logging into game while an episode is live will unlock it for the account, even FtP, for later access once HoT is purchased. If an account did properly log in during the active time of the first two episodes, now owns HoT, and does not have access to those episodes, that player should submit a ticket to Support via the link on this page.

LouWolfskin.3492:

ProtoGunner.4953:

Are they still doing this? I don’t know be cause I always log in during new episodes. But imagine you are a new player, you pay a whopping 50€ for this expansion and then they want 200 gems per episode. WTF? That’s just horrible marketing, with this you make your customers angry. No wonder they fare worse and worse. Remove this horrible restriction and give it for free. I can’t imagine new customers will have understanding for this. (200 gems are quite a lot of gold as a new player btw).

They give it for free for quite a while.
And, you won’t believe this i guess, they have to make money one way or the other, so saying: Hey you can get this either logging in or later on with some gems, is quite fair.
It’s even more fair, yes, it is, because you can get gems via ingame gold, other games would tell you to pay with cash right out.

Also, a new payer, as in someone who just started his account has no bsiness in the new aeas or story anyway.

Also seeing how some ppl got vanilla “free” with HoT will still need to pay 1600 gems (20 euro) for the story line, when HoT might / will be replaced the ls s3 will also cost 200 gems/episode, I think we could see this will be 6 parts bringing the cost for the living story up to 2800 gems (35$/€) for the story line from vanilla till the new expansion content,

This way they( A-net) can still give vanilla and HoT free to ppl on buying the likely to be next expansion pack. We had it so… see it as our payment for the content of vanilla and ls s2/LS s3 and 4+ yrs of gametime…

This also invalidates the well the ppl get the whole of the game for free with their exopansion buy…thingy. whcih is not so unless you expect ppl to be instant 176 mastery, with legendary/ascnedec gear omnn 6 or 7 classes (whcih are possible with both vanilla&HoT purchases)

This said I can see this will be a barrier for new players, who will lock themselves out of decent content, with in certain cvases worthwhile upgrades/ gear unlocks, as well as usefull (well easier to aquire) mastery points.

Remember, it isn’t 1600 Gems for all of Season 2; it’s sold in a bundle for 20% off. I expect the same will hold true for Season 3 once it concludes.