Guild Wars 2

I quit more than a year ago, right around the time the expansion was announced – I was primary a WvW and FoTM player with over 1800 ( playing since first open beta ) hours behind my back. I never played open word PvE and neither did I play Living Story, never bothered to even finish personal story beyond level 20 something, futhermore, I never cared about sPvP.

Should I return, or should I wait for more substantial additions to the game? I really dont want to pay around 30 euro just to get bored after few hours of gameplay.

If you most play WvW no. WvW still a mess right now. Anet suppose to work on WvW. Most HoT is PvE stuff. Many people seem to like new PvE map many seem do not.

imo it depends how you look at it -

after all the bad reviews, and the announcement of gliding coming to tyria, i set my expectations low, and was pleasantly surprised with all the new elements – such as new viper stats which are great for making new pvp type builds, creating new characters and gliding them across tyria is fun, it gives a new feel to the old areas, the multi-level style in hot is intuitive and fun to explore…can get annoying though in areas that getting from point a to point b a multi level maze – like when you are looking for mastery insights and have to travel 4 levels of back and forth in what looks like 2 feet away in an overhead map. that map will test your patience when doing it solo lol.

BUT if you buy it with expectations – it’s disappointing, for example, the new area npcs are insanely deadly, plus lots of mini-events, and this would be fun if there were more people, but since there maps are mostly empty – it leaves you soloing some really hard content, and the new items require a ton of grind, further if you make it a point to get the new specializations on all your characters – it get’s redundant fast and the maps start to feel smaller

so i’ve experienced both sides of this coin, loved the new additions, but got that feeling of been there done that pretty quick, and the maps are pretty empty to do new harder metas like dragon stand. plus they adopted a new policy of “you have to do this this and this, even if you don’t like playing that stuff to get something we know you need and want” – so that can burn you out quick.

Overall, i wont complain because first i came with low expectations, and i am enjoying the revenant and new specializations – definitely opens new possibilities for pvp / wvw / team play

but it brings me back to ….oh wait, wvw is kinda empty and the fights are still unbalanced.

if you love the art, exploring new areas and building your character, you will love it more than dislike it, but beyond that you might dislike it more than you like it lol

If you haven’t gotten past level 20 in the personal story then HoT is practically useless to you. It’s an expansion designed for level 80 players who have completed the personal story. It’s also a continuation of the living story, so you’re going to be lost in regards to what’s happening.

If you’re primarily a WvW player then the only draw of getting HoT would be if you wanted to play as a Revenant.

the revenant is pretty awesome for pvp though, so are the new specializations. so that aspect is def a +1

Can’t make up your mind for you, but…

WvW: New Borderlands are deserted in T6-7 in NA whenever I’ve gone there, can’t speak for elsewhere. Preponderance of Forum opinion on WvW is that it’s in a bad place right now, with changes promised. given the track record, it’s hard to imagine Anet fixing what people think is wrong with WvW.
FotM: better rewards are now gated behind a Mastery line, so playing Fractals without HoT (i.e., can’t access Masteries) is less rewarding than with it. Changes in the way FotM is set up have led to 3x swamp dailies in a lot of PuG’s. Tiers to 100 now, and there’s some debate about whether the high levels are worth anything other than having the max number.
Elite Specializations: Currently seen as OP on the forums and in game. Playing without them is seen as a disadvantage, so playing without buying HoT will mean an uphill fight in WvW (if you can find fights, that is).
Story: If the Personal Story did nothing for you, it’s hard to imagine the HoT story changing that. I was meh on the Personal Story, and stopped LS2 due to disinterest, and the HoT story I’ve done did nothing to make me more interested.
HoT zones: If you loved Silverwastes, you might enjoy the HoT zones. If not, well, they’re kind of the same thing with tweaks. Sounds like the biggest part of the XPac is not for you based on your past patterns.
Raids: Not sure what it is about FotM that interested you, so I can’t say that the raids will fit your tastes. Be aware, though, that PuG raids are using filters like all-Ascended gear (which practically requires crafting weapons and armor), high Achievement Points and past experience in raids for entry. As is often the case with harder instanced PvE content, being a late adopter makes it harder to get involved.

Good luck on whatever you choose.

Nick.6972:

I was primary a WvW and FoTM player with over 1800 ( playing since first open beta ) hours behind my back. I never played open word PvE and neither did I play Living Story, never bothered to even finish personal story beyond level 20 something, futhermore, I never cared about sPvP.

Then simply dont… WvW is dead. New border maps are a disaster, too big, too much PvE oriented. Eternal Batlleground and Edge of the Mists are without major changes.
Fractals are also the same. Sure, you can now purchase fractal weapons for currency, you can get to level 100 but chance to get ascended chest is more pathetic than ever so what is the point ? My experience, after expansion i was doing every possible daily fractal, no ascended drop – while on tequatl i got 4asc weapons in the same amount of time and doing it only once per day.

If you bother with PvE- new maps bring so much grind it hurts to watch. Meta events take 2 hours to complete and even if you find some good quality map (multiserver magic) then you might just get disconnected or kicked out of the map thanks to the infinite amounts of server problems that were not solved since launch.

Gold earning? All new meta maps give less gold than old fashioned silverwastes farming. Dungeon running ? Nonexistent, since gold rewards were nerfed to the ground. I used to enjoy fast run through some dungeons, a little ac, cof, coe… now you cant find a party for any of those cause there is no profit for doing them.

Elite specializations are good, i’ll give you that, but that brought even more inbalance in-game. Some elite specs feel like they should be implemented into core-class mechanic (talking about reaper and dragonhunter virtues) and some feel like they are just buffind already existing things (berzerker is just the same warrior with more damage but less utility). And dont get me started on revenant… For first 2-3 months rev was OP in both pvp and WvW… People in full soldier/knight/cavalier gear were receiving 12-15k hits from a single blow. Then HoT hype ended and arenanet implemented so many bugs the rev cant even use most of his weapon skills. They called it “balancing” again.

I was playing mostly for interesting story and got nothing after HoT launch. (Main story from expansion was so short i finished it 2 days after launch, no living story so far)
If you were playing WvW then HoT has even less to offer for you, since as i said before – WvW exists now only on 1 map. Rest of it is abandoned.

It depends on what $50 means to you. If it’s a lot of money and you can only chose one game this year, then maybe not. In perspective, it’s $50 for years of possible entertainment. You might get 2-3 movies tickets or 5-10 hamburgers for that, depending on where you live, and those would be once-off entertainments. If you buy several games a year then you can afford to spend the money and try this. If it doesn’t work out, no big loss. You can always ask for a refund.

Nick.6972:

I quit more than a year ago, right around the time the expansion was announced – I was primary a WvW and FoTM player with over 1800 ( playing since first open beta ) hours behind my back. I never played open word PvE and neither did I play Living Story, never bothered to even finish personal story beyond level 20 something, futhermore, I never cared about sPvP.

Should I return, or should I wait for more substantial additions to the game? I really dont want to pay around 30 euro just to get bored after few hours of gameplay.

In your shoes, I’d come back and see if you like the game without HoT. I really like the game and I love gliding (almost worth the price of HoT on its own).

If you only do WvW, you’ll probably be disappointed. HoT added 50 levels to FotM, but from the sounds of it, once you finish those, you probably will lose interest. (You can do ~20-30 of those levels without getting HoT; the others require more AR than you’ll be able to afford without the expansion, since it offers new ways to boost AR.)

Well, like everyone said, depends on what you’re here for.

Pros:
-New maps, BIG maps, you can get lost in them, it’s fun.
-New stats
-New monsters that are pretty challenging
-Gliding! Masteries. Mostly gliding. Flying is fun. You can do it vanilla side too.
-Nice music, nice scenery
Not sure what’s up in WvW and PvP.
Cons:
-The story is weak. The characters aren’t well developed or even at all in some cases. The plot feels rushed. You may get uncomfortable with some plot points, but not for the intended reasons.
-Some of the maps get you lost AND killed.
-Mastery grind is annoying for some people.
-maps are all timed, can make traversing some of them difficult with contested waypoints.

I bought the $100 version of HoT and so did my other half and several others that I know. None of us regret buying it. We all play in all areas and are having fun in HoT and Core Tyria.

Really it’s all up to you whether you will think HoT will be a good enough buy to spend the money. No one can make that decision but you.

perhaps wait if your main areas are fractals and wvw, not much has changed with fractals and wvw has a revamp coming

for me though it has been hella worth it

Do you even need HoT to access WvW?

I mean if you’re not going to touch PvE don’t buy it lol

Avarice.2791:

Do you even need HoT to access WvW?

I mean if you’re not going to touch PvE don’t buy it lol

Unless you want to play a Revenant or one of the elite specs.

Nope. Wait for Anet to release some content.

@OP:

HoT made WvW horrible if you enjoy WvW for the fights. They created a new map where large scale fights aren’t really encouraged and instead added a bunch of PvE type stuff. Since you didn’t do personal story, I’m guessing a lot of that PvE isn’t your thing.

I will wouldn’t recommend to buy HoT for one big reason: Mega Servers issues. You will in situation where megaservers are empty and you a not able to join to do group events. Second HoT map they design like dungeon which have plenty bosses and and group events. Even you have a guild and you want to invite players to squad or group, so player not be able to get in same Mega Server because of restrictions.

In other hand HoT is about group gameplay which require populated Megaservers and don’t get confused with World Servers.

Only good about HoT is mastery and elite skills.

Buy HoT you’ll have fun,despite some quite obvious points of friction.
It’ll also make you eligible for any free intermittent updates like LS S3.
If you don’t have HoT,you will have to unlock these for Gems.
And to be fare,if you live in the EU,in order to see what Anet is really asking
for the game you need to subtract the VAT applicable to your country from
the final price.

Well, I’d been fighting back against the HoT haters for months, those that claimed that it wasn’t enough to justify the $50 price tag. I thought it was worth it, but I was making that assumption on the basis that they would maintain the pre-HoT release schedule, that your $50 would be buying you not only HoT, but also LW s3 and other content additions, but so far none of that has materialized, it’s been all PvP leagues and raid kitten.

So no, as of right now, I wouldn’t recommend anyone buy HoT, at least not at $50. Wait for it to come down a bit, or for them to move people onto the content teams.

It looks like you might have a month or two before it’s worth worrying about. So, keep an eye out for it on sale somewhere, and try to get it for less than the normal price.

Palador.2170:

It looks like you might have a month or two before it’s worth worrying about. So, keep an eye out for it on sale somewhere, and try to get it for less than the normal price.

This.

IMO this is not a question of affordability, it is more of what’s worth of your money. And, HoT at it’s current state gets a mixed bag of postive and negative opinions from players.

I want to get the expansion just for the glider mastery and specialization skills but I ain’t gonna pay $50 for them.

I am a casual player. I can wait.

edit: typos

Short answer no.

Explanation for those who care to read

I like Reaper and Dragonhunter.That alone,to me,its worth of money.I am going to repeat once again,to avoid confusion TO ME its worth of money.

Now as you know,you have 4 maps.All those maps are event based maps.On each map you have multiple events,that lead to meta.

I did not rush trough the maps,i complete all achievements,and did meta events many many times.

I spent 2 months in new maps,doing them slowly and not rushing,but if i rushed trough them,id finish them in 5 days.

But now,since i finished every map,i am back to Silverwastes,doing gold farm and doing daily Fractals.I have no intention going to HoT maps,anytime soon,maybe never again

Why?

First of all,for 2 months i spend,doing events,i earned 1020 gold total.I never opened bags as soon as i get them,and i saved everything.In Silverwastes,in 2 months,i can earn 5 k gold.Just to give you picture,how bad events are when comes to rewards.

Second: Once you do for an example Verdant Brink,there’s no reason for you to go back there,ever again.There’s nothing interesting.Again,SW events are better,map is full all the time,and you can chose,events or chest farming.It is easy to coordinate,and it doesn’t take you 5 minutes to run to corpse.

Third : HoT maps are same as maps Ruins of Orr (Straits of Devastation,Malchor Leap and Cursed Shore) Harder than other maps,few people,and no rewards.In couple months,HoT maps will be abandoned same as Orr now.

Leveling mastery is not painful as people say.I am guessing those people who keep complaining how hard leveling masteries is,are same those people,who keep dying in SW at Amber,during the breach,to poison phase over and over again,for 5 minutes,and waiting for others to res them instead running to WP.

But,once you level masteries,which is going to be one month,from moment you upgrade to HoT,if you play game actively,you wont have nothing to do.You will either farm events in HoT maps for no rewards,while me in sw for same time we spent farming,getting 10x more gold,or you are going to farm fractals.

There’s nothing interesting in HoT,at least nothing to keep your attention.

Some people like it,some people do not,and there’s third kind of people,they are fanboys,and they will tell you everything positive…But then again,when did u hear fanboy saying something negative about thing he admire?

as a big wvw player and i play the pve too id say no reverant not a big enough deal to just play it for wvw and you dont need the elites really they make things nicer but if you only play wvw i think youll be ticked off. i play enough pve to make hot worth it but if you not playing that id say no

New Player = Yes.
Vet Player = No.
WvW Players = lololololololololololol cries

I found the content in HoT to be worth the price to me. I’ve also got at least twice as much entertainment out of it than I do typical console games that sell for more.

WvW is always there for people who enjoy it and know how to play it. There’s nothing dead in a map with a queue to join – maybe BLs might not have 24/7 actions but once there’s a fight there, tons of people move to BLs and fight.

I play WvW every single night since slightly more than a year – Being part of a WvW guild (not random guilds with pug-roster) is something more fun than anything else in our opinion. Fighting side by side with your friend, gf, neighbor, university dude, teacher, doctor, mechanic guy or even your boss at work is something worth every single second I’ve spent in WvW.

In WvW you fight for a community and you get known for that.
In WvW you don’t fight because you want to get this drop or this achievement.
In WvW you fight as one.

tear drops

You ever have that one professor, that designed his tests, not to test your knowledge of the subject matter, but as a means to bolster his ego at your expense? Just one question after another attempting to catch you on technicalities, lack of clarity, or just outright trick you in to selecting the wrong answer.

HoT is the game version of those tests and its makers the designer version of that professor.

From beginning to the end it is an exercise in frustration. Champion level mobs disguised as veterans, group events disguised as solo events, mere skill point acquisition requires a bloody train of players. It makes you not want to explore as you spend hours trying to get somewhere only to inevitably find at the last step that it requires a mastery that is hours of farming away. Mobs seem purposely designed to have no telegraphing on their attacks whatsoever, and attack at a frequency that completely nullifies everything the base game taught you about active defense and evasion. You want to get to that event? Worse, you need to get to that event for some piece of progression or other? Too bad, waypoint closes down as well as the five nearest. Happen to meet one of those unsoloable champs disguised as a vet while hoofing it? Lets port back to the very entrance of the area, the only WP that is ever open! And then, oh boy, the event credit, is that ever a great system! I have lost event credit literally a fraction of a second after killing an event spawned mob, seconds after going down, walking back to an event from the WP, because mobs didn’t spawn, because mobs clearly within the event circle were not ‘event mobs’, while resurrecting players and event NPCs, and lost event credit because I was fulfilling the event objective but doing so without killing event mobs!

I like challenge, in both exploration and combat. But HoT doesn’t challenge you to use what it taught you better, it throws everything that it taught you back in your face and tells you you’re an idiot. This was an expansion made by developers trying to prove their superiority to players and the gaming/MMO community at large.

I can’t judge how someone other than me would value the expansion, but I consider it a waste of money.

At this point, you might as well wait for the next expansion so that you won’t end up paying for both HoT and the next one.

im currently playing black desert online and a ridiculous amount of the community is from gw2

Nope. I regret my purchase. Unless the next expansion involves a new campaign, I won’t be buying it. Anet has effectively ruined GW2 for me. I still play, but not in the new maps and certainly not in the raids.

Anet completely botched the release of HOT and haven’t given any information about the rest of the content. A prime example is the Legendary issue. A major selling point of HOT was new legendary weapons. So far, three have been released.

so the question is “will i get bored after few hours of playing”

the question to you is why did you left the game and why did you want to return to the game after leaving the game for whatever reason. this should guide you to your answer if hot is worth it or not.

No. All my charr agree.

If you left because you didn’t like the way the game was then HoT is more of the same, although harder and has less balance.

Doing the masteries does take time, and will slow your progress. You won’t be through to the end game in a few hours.

The storyline is interesting but shorter than I would have liked, the main meta events are impressive but require a lot of people, getting into an active one can be an issue at times.

Raids are tough, but the first one isn’t yet all there. You would need a strong group to get through.

Had your main interest been PvE there wouldn’t be any reason not to try it. More content is on the way but it may take some time to arrive.

WvW though…. If this is your main interest don’t buy HoT yet, just log in and ask on your borderland.

Aviator.4382:

WvW is always there for people who enjoy it and know how to play it. There’s nothing dead in a map with a queue to join – maybe BLs might not have 24/7 actions but once there’s a fight there, tons of people move to BLs and fight.

I play WvW every single night since slightly more than a year – Being part of a WvW guild (not random guilds with pug-roster) is something more fun than anything else in our opinion.

So you do peak time on a world. You are also probably spending most of your time in EB too.

Elsewhere or off peak and it can mean servers are almost devoid of life. Even on T1 there can be periods where the borderlands maps are virtually empty.

My advise is to go read player post in the WVW section of the forum and go back to when HOT was first launched. It should give you a good idea.

Conncept.7638:

You ever have that one professor, that designed his tests, not to test your knowledge of the subject matter, but as a means to bolster his ego at your expense? Just one question after another attempting to catch you on technicalities, lack of clarity, or just outright trick you in to selecting the wrong answer.

HoT is the game version of those tests and its makers the designer version of that professor.

From beginning to the end it is an exercise in frustration. Champion level mobs disguised as veterans, group events disguised as solo events, mere skill point acquisition requires a bloody train of players. It makes you not want to explore as you spend hours trying to get somewhere only to inevitably find at the last step that it requires a mastery that is hours of farming away. Mobs seem purposely designed to have no telegraphing on their attacks whatsoever, and attack at a frequency that completely nullifies everything the base game taught you about active defense and evasion. You want to get to that event? Worse, you need to get to that event for some piece of progression or other? Too bad, waypoint closes down as well as the five nearest. Happen to meet one of those unsoloable champs disguised as a vet while hoofing it? Lets port back to the very entrance of the area, the only WP that is ever open! And then, oh boy, the event credit, is that ever a great system! I have lost event credit literally a fraction of a second after killing an event spawned mob, seconds after going down, walking back to an event from the WP, because mobs didn’t spawn, because mobs clearly within the event circle were not ‘event mobs’, while resurrecting players and event NPCs, and lost event credit because I was fulfilling the event objective but doing so without killing event mobs!

I like challenge, in both exploration and combat. But HoT doesn’t challenge you to use what it taught you better, it throws everything that it taught you back in your face and tells you you’re an idiot. This was an expansion made by developers trying to prove their superiority to players and the gaming/MMO community at large.

This. Personally, I can relate with everything said here if I knew how to put it in words better. In feel this can resonate with a lot of players out there that are also frustrated or annoyed with HoT

Not really. Wait for the next expansion.

Conncept.7638:

You ever have that one professor, that designed his tests, not to test your knowledge of the subject matter, but as a means to bolster his ego at your expense? Just one question after another attempting to catch you on technicalities, lack of clarity, or just outright trick you in to selecting the wrong answer.

HoT is the game version of those tests and its makers the designer version of that professor.

From beginning to the end it is an exercise in frustration. Champion level mobs disguised as veterans, group events disguised as solo events, mere skill point acquisition requires a bloody train of players. It makes you not want to explore as you spend hours trying to get somewhere only to inevitably find at the last step that it requires a mastery that is hours of farming away. Mobs seem purposely designed to have no telegraphing on their attacks whatsoever, and attack at a frequency that completely nullifies everything the base game taught you about active defense and evasion. You want to get to that event? Worse, you need to get to that event for some piece of progression or other? Too bad, waypoint closes down as well as the five nearest. Happen to meet one of those unsoloable champs disguised as a vet while hoofing it? Lets port back to the very entrance of the area, the only WP that is ever open! And then, oh boy, the event credit, is that ever a great system! I have lost event credit literally a fraction of a second after killing an event spawned mob, seconds after going down, walking back to an event from the WP, because mobs didn’t spawn, because mobs clearly within the event circle were not ‘event mobs’, while resurrecting players and event NPCs, and lost event credit because I was fulfilling the event objective but doing so without killing event mobs!

I like challenge, in both exploration and combat. But HoT doesn’t challenge you to use what it taught you better, it throws everything that it taught you back in your face and tells you you’re an idiot. This was an expansion made by developers trying to prove their superiority to players and the gaming/MMO community at large.

I agree with this post. I’ve long believed that every “improvement” to mobs (whether via revamps like Krait and Risen, or new armies like Karka and Mordrem) has been an ANet reaction to the claims of “too easy” and “faceroll” that are inevitable in MMO’s, especially with this type of quasi-active combat. The kicker is that the people who make such claims will make them no matter what the developer does, unless the mobs are made so hard that only the best players can beat them.