Guild Wars 2

So, maybe people want to call me entitled, but what ever. Guild Wars Nightfall Collectors Edition was about $50, which I pre-ordered back then, and it came with:

Bonuses:

-Massive Guild Wars Nightfall poster
-Full colour map of Elona
-Two exclusive Skill Pins
-124-page Guild Wars Nightfall Art Book
-Mini Desktop Character Standee of Varesh
-Behind-the-scenes ‘Making of…’ DVD
-Collectable Game Activation Card
-Jeremy Soule CD Soundtrack
(Including a key for exclusive Guild Wars Nightfall tracks)
-Epic trial key and Nightfall buddy key
(Try both previous campaigns and invite a friend to play GW Nightfall)

Game Content:

-A stand alone expansion
-Two big boss fights at the end, Varesh and Abaddon
-Dozens of new explorables
-Two new professions, Paragon and Dervish
-A huge endgame area, Domain of Anguish, with its own boss Malyx the Unyielding
(Released shortly after the launch of Nightfall)
-Two new character slots (And an additional one if you got the pre-release)
-Wurm mounts!

And yes, that is the my actual game box in the picture down below.
So, what am I getting when I buy HOT?

-Not a full stand alone expansion
-No extra character slots at all (unless you register before release)
-No final boss fight with Mordremoth, just one of his champions
-No endgame areas or dungeons as far as been announced so far
-Not even the soundtrack or a “making of…” DVD
-The revenant
-One new Specialization for each profession
-A few explorables
-No physical copy of the game in a box

And yet I pay the same price for it? This feels like I am paying the price of a full game for Living Story left overs, and NOT for a full expansion.

-Not a full a stand alone expansion
-No extra character slots at all
-No final boss fight with Mordremoth, just one of his champions
-No endgame areas or dungeons as far as been announced so far
-Not even the soundtrack
-The revenant
-One new Specialization for each profession
-A few explorables

Every single one that pre-purchase the game either gets the whole base game for free OR a character slot if they already own the game. So clearly we do get extra character slot (or base game.

We have no information whatsoever about how the storyline will end. Unless you already have access to the expansion, and if you do I would love to hear some more about the challenging group content and the story.

The whole expansion is adding end game areas.

There is no need for a soundtrack when you can just listen to the vast majority of the tracks for free on the soundcloud page.

The revenant seems quite a bit more than the Paragon and Dervish I would say.

One sub-class per profession is quite good.

We have no information about the number of maps.

It is of course also worth pointing out that you are comparing a Collectors Edition version to a Standard Edition, which is rather silly.

You have also added trvial things like wurm mounts and varesh, whilst missing out there HoT counterparts – gliding, wyvern and the other bosses in the trailer.

To make comparisons you cant skew lists in favour of your own argument. You also missed out guild halls and masteries. The masteries would then need to be listed in different categories to meet your gw1 comparisons since some are quite substantial

Nightfall came out 9 years ago. As much as I think the economical rule of things getting more expensive over time is a bubble, it still means you can’t compare the two.

lordkrall.7241:

Every single one that pre-purchase the game either gets the whole base game for free OR a character slot if they already own the game. So clearly we do get extra character slot (or base game.

No you don’t. You don’t actually get the base game for free, or else they’d be handing out free copies of the base game to existing players as well. We pay the same price, so where is our free copy of the base game? Oh we already have it? Well then let us gift a buddy with it then. I mean Nightfall CE came with a buddy code. Oh we can’t? Well then I suppose the free core game isn’t included! You have been tricked sir. By marketing.

lordkrall.7241:

We have no information whatsoever about how the storyline will end. Unless you already have access to the expansion, and if you do I would love to hear some more about the challenging group content and the story.

We already know that we won’t be fighting Mordremoth, this has been said in interviews.

lordkrall.7241:

The whole expansion is adding end game areas.

That is a load of nonsense. If you put the bar that low, then anything is end game content.

lordkrall.7241:

There is no need for a soundtrack when you can just listen to the vast majority of the tracks for free on the soundcloud page.

It’s not about need, it’s about want. Many people would love a bonus soundtrack with the expansion. Nightfall did it. So why not?

lordkrall.7241:

The revenant seems quite a bit more than the Paragon and Dervish I would say.

Far from it. Revenant has far less skills than either of those two professions, and the revenant even copies some Dervish game mechanics.

lordkrall.7241:

One sub-class per profession is quite good.

What does that really add?

lordkrall.7241:

We have no information about the number of maps.

Yes we do. So far we know it will not be a huge amount of maps. Certainly not the amount that was in any of the GW1 expansions.

lordkrall.7241:

It is of course also worth pointing out that you are comparing a Collectors Edition version to a Standard Edition, which is rather silly.

No it’s not. They are the exact same price!
No wait, Nightfall CE was even slightly cheaper!

Randulf.7614:

You have also added trvial things like wurm mounts and varesh, whilst missing out there HoT counterparts – gliding, wyvern and the other bosses in the trailer.

To make comparisons you cant skew lists in favour of your own argument. You also missed out guild halls and masteries. The masteries would then need to be listed in different categories to meet your gw1 comparisons since some are quite substantial

A valid argument, but even if I were to add those to the list, it’s painfully obvious that the amount of value the customer gets from the Nightfall CE in terms of bonus content AND game content far exceeds the Heart of Thorns expansion… and yet they are the same price!

So we are getting ripped off.

I mean look at it! A soundtrack, a map, skillpins, a making of DVD! That is all included in the $50 pricetag! That is value for your money! That box is a treasure trove of content, and worth every penny!

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

No you don’t. You don’t actually get the base game for free, or else they’d be handing out free copies of the base game to existing players as well. We pay the same price, so where is our free copy of the base game? Oh we already have it? Well then let us gift a buddy with it then. I mean Nightfall CE came with a buddy code. Oh we can’t? Well then I suppose the free core game isn’t included! You have been tricked sir. By marketing.

We get a free character slot instead. The core-game is included if you create a new account, if you do not, you get a free character slot. Simple as that. So no matter how you twist and turn it, we do get at least one character slot.

We already know that we won’t be fighting Mordremoth, this has been said in interviews.

Source?

That is a load of nonsense. If you put the bar that low, then anything is end game content.

Have you seen the new maps? Based on what we have seen in the betas it does seem to be rather hard, and thus could be considered end-game. They are of course also max level all of them.

It’s not about need, it’s about want. Many people would love a bonus soundtrack with the expansion. Nightfall did it. So why not?

Because there is no soundtrack?

Far from it. Revenant has far less skills than either of those two professions, and the revenant even copies some Dervish game mechanics.

Number of skills != how big something is.

What does that really add?

New playing styles for the existing characters and plenty of new mechanics.

Yes we do. So far we know it will not be a huge amount of maps. Certainly not the amount that was in any of the GW1 expansions.

While true, it is worth pointing out that more or less every map in GW2 is much larger than the maps in Nightfall. Especially in HoT where they will have three layers.

No it’s not. They are the exact same price!
No wait, Nightfall CE was even slightly cheaper!

It is rather silly to compare a price from 2006 to a price from 2015. The economy is not the same now as it was back then. In fact, as far as I am aware, if taking inflation and such into consideration, we are paying LESS for HoT than we did for the GW expansions.

Nightfall was a full game though, not just an upgrade. Why not compare it to what you get with Eye of the North?

Aside from which, until we see how much content we’re getting, which hasn’t been discussed yet, any comparison is premature.

Well done to Mad Queen Malafide for the comparison between pre-ordering Nightfall and HoT

Also as a GW1 fan (all campaigns), I feel truly let down by the way this expansion has me hot under the collar regarding value for money, content and playability.

The one thing I now miss being part of a small fun guild is my heroes. What I would give for Koss and Co now in GW2. Perhaps then our guild would stand a small chance of capturing a guild hall perhaps.

However for those who were privileged to pre-order the GW1 campaigns with anticipation and the delight of exceeding all expectation when going live, are perhaps now holding back and dare I say it; probably give this expansion a miss and look elsewhere. Something I haven’t done for ten years, but perhaps a rest is as good as a change.

How can you compare the work need to develope GW1:Nightfall, with the work needed to develop GW2:HoT?

We have just seen one part of one of the maps of GW2:HoT, and leaving on a side if the design liked or not. There was not any doubt about it having a higher visual quality.

GW: Nightfall was a high graphic improvement over GW:Prophecies and GW:Factions, their terrains used a lot of more prefabs to build the walls, mountains, temples and buildings. It stopped to looks a terrain and more an environment. That change, required more modellers, texturers and designers working more hours.

GW2:Hot we see that aspect increase, more objects with more quality, more textures (not just the coloured one, they also use specular, normal maps and masks). Also it looks to show more different enemies mechanics what also demmands more development effort. (We have just seen one part of the first map, and we have already seen 2 bosses with custom effects).

GW Nightfall was my favourite expansion of Guild Wars 1. But I don’t think it were close the work to develop it as the work to develope a map of GW2:Hot. Therefor, I see logic that this new one, results in something more expensive.

Just try to build a copy one of GW:Nightfall and another copy of the GW2:Hot map. You won’t take too much time to see the difference work quantity that have between them.

It is silly to complain that the comparison doesn’t count because of a: one is a ce-edition, b: one is a stand-alone the other is an expansion.

a: monetary fluctuations have not been that extreme that there will be any significant price difference.
b: shouldn’t a stand-alone be significantly more pricey then? Not to mention the price of the original GW2 game was the same does that = the same content? not so far.

And when someone says that pre-purchase guarantees you a char slot, if you don’t already own the game, well pre-order of nightfall also included somethings, among other some epic skins, access to betas + the fact that you didn’t invest fully, so you had a chance to try the beta and get a feel for it first.

Regardless of what some people say, yes 50bucks isn’t that much, but why is european players paying more? don’t give me tax bull- kitten because there is significantly different taxes across EU.

I like A-net, pre-ordered anything I could, supported them through gem-shop. However I’m not blind, HoT(as far as the content revealed) is far from 50dollars. Worst thing is, if the price had been lower. it would’ve been guaranteed that I would’ve bought gems to outweigh that price. Of course I’m getting HoT(when I don’t know) doesn’t change the fact that this is an exuberant price.

Be very careful about comparing NF maps to any GW2 maps, especially new ones. GW1 were generally light on content and had repeat value only for hard mode which was added later. Because of their small size of maps and lack of any real substance, they required substantially and I mean substantially less work work to make and develop than a GW2 map.

Take Dry Top. Dry Top alone has generated more time and content than any single GW1 map across any campaign;
- Coins to collect
- farming
- exclusive crafting reward
- an interesting and unique map mechanic
- a variety of different bosses with different mechanics
- jumping puzzles

By comparison what did Bahdok Caverns or Jahai Plains have? A couple of bosses, most of which had no discernable difficulty, some mobs, some pretty scenery confined by pathing, some non-repeatable quests. And that’s it.

You cannot compare GW2 and GW1 in terms of maps simply because the content ratio is utterly different and more time and effort goes into 1 single map in GW2. That’s why they churned NF out so quickly after Factions.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

So, what am I getting when I buy HOT?

-Not a full a stand alone expansion
-No extra character slots at all
-No final boss fight with Mordremoth, just one of his champions
-No endgame areas or dungeons as far as been announced so far
-Not even the soundtrack
-The revenant
-One new Specialization for each profession
-A few explorables

while I agree with you in spirit, a few of these are off.

-No extra character slots at all
not so, there’s the pre-purchase bonus one for vets. somewhat of a stretch, but you did say “at all”

-No final boss fight with Mordremoth, just one of his champions
the Wyvern has been mentioned, but it’s open-world, like tequatl. I expect Mordy will be end-of-story boss, since we’ve heard nothing about the story so far.

beyond these, you do have a few good points.

Guildwars 2 is a different game and Nightfall was 9 years ago.

The game industry has changed.
The market has changed.
The marketing plans have all changed.

Unfortunately, gaming companies really don’t give a ton of goodies away with their expansions anymore. Instead they give a quarter to half the content to you for one price, offer you several upgraded trivial versions and lock the rest away behind a store or paywall for future releases. I am not saying that is exactly Arena Net’s model either.

It just isn’t the same model anymore.

But to be fair, Arena Net built an amazing game that offers far more than any of their competitors “without a monthly fee”. Which is probably the most valid and relevant point to make. You aren’t paying them 15 dollars a month and this game was built on a far more advance game engine than it’s predecessor. (3 years is a $540 dollar value by comparison.)

I am not that upset about them basically giving people the base game at the cost of the expansion because I understand it’s just good business. I don’t feel cheated because I feel that I have and still am having plenty of enjoyment out of what I paid for.

And Rytlock watches my back as I jam the game here at the computer. (I bought collectors) I have always wanted Arena Net to own the market and who else gives away a base game with their expansions? I mean wow get’s pretty cheap but not free. (And they are the cash-cow of MMO’s) Nobody does that. It will define them once again as revolutionary in the gaming industry.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

So, maybe people want to call me entitled, but what ever. Guild Wars Nightfall Collectors Edition was about $50, which I pre-ordered back then, and it came with:

When Nightfall was released in order to play the FULL Guild Wars experience you had to buy Factions and Prophecies. With HoT you don’t have to buy anything else. Even now, to get the full GW1 experience you have to pay 43€ (8.99€ more to also get the bonus mission pack) while GW2 is at 50€ and will stay 50€ for all future expansions forever.

-No extra character slots at all

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/pre-purchase-community-address/
Everyone will get 1 character slot, those who get the deluxe edition will get 2 character slots.

-No final boss fight with Mordremoth, just one of his champions

Source?

-No endgame areas or dungeons as far as been announced so far

Out of all the zones of Nightfall, the amount of “end-game” zones were very very few. In contrast, all zones in HoT are “end-game”. I’d take 100% end-game zones over 5% end-game zones.

-One new Specialization for each profession

There are a total of 5*8 = 40 Specializations in the game. With HoT we will have 48 Specs, 8 specs are almost 2 profession worth of traits and skills

-A few explorables

A few dense and content filled end-game explorables, over a bazilion boring, empty ones? Yes please.

And yet I pay the same price for it? This feels like I am paying the price of a full game for Living Story left overs, and NOT for a full expansion.

You forgot the Masteries, Adventures, Guild Halls and many others

Have not played either of them so I guess I bow to the wisdom of those who have played both.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

We already know that we won’t be fighting Mordremoth, this has been said in interviews.

Source? Link?

That is a load of nonsense. If you put the bar that low, then anything is end game content.

The only place worthy of end-game in Nightfall was the Domain of Anguish. SW and DT are both end-game content as much as DoA was and there is clear indication that the zones of HoT will all be like SW and DT, so they are also end-game.

Far from it. Revenant has far less skills than either of those two professions, and the revenant even copies some Dervish game mechanics.

Depends on how you compare the skills. How about comparing all skills of the Revenant with the Dervish skills including chain skills. You will be surprised. Also, adding skills affected by traits too and even traits themselves work like activated/long duration GW1 skills. They will surely add up.

Dervish has 78 skills. Revenants have 32 that we know off + 48 traits = 80. So yeah so much for the “far less” skills.

lordkrall.7241:

One sub-class per profession is quite good.

What does that really add?

8 new specs = ~2 full professions worth of traits and skills. That’s significant.

lordkrall.7241:

We have no information about the number of maps.

Yes we do. So far we know it will not be a huge amount of maps. Certainly not the amount that was in any of the GW1 expansions.

Thank god. Vast amount of GW1 expansion maps were empty and worthless once you got through them for the first time. If HoT maps have as much replayability and content density as SW/DT then they will be vastly superior to the GW1 maps.

I believe we should also consider that we’re not getting that much.

Arenanet is trying to get new players, not caring much about veteran players.

Arenanet’s concession has been he character slot.. but only for people who pre purchase the game. They want people to buy it before it comes out because otherwise they might wait until all the bugs are out. Which means they’ll have to actually invest additional time and money into fixing things fast.

Remember that Arenanet has been known to leave certain things for long periods of time. Necro’s have been pathetic in PvE almost since the start (don’t know how much the latest patch helped but Condition builds are still a joke). Hall of Monuments has been disabled for quite a few months (it doesn’t give them any money and is only for veterans). By getting people to prepurchase they don’t have to fix expansion flaws as quickly.

We don’t know how much PvE content we’re getting. It might just be 2-3 open world areas. That’s practically nothing.

All we’re really getting are Guild Halls, Masteries, the Revenant, extra legendaries and the ability to glide. Don’t expect too much from the ability to glide.

I don’t know if I’d pay over 35 euro. And since the thread on not buying HoT until they give us a better deal is the most upvoted thread (over 3000) in the entire subreddit I think I’m not the only one.

Arenanet has let it slide in one of the interviews that Mordremoth will not be in the HOT expansion. I do not have a link for you, but they have been remarkably quiet about Mordremoth, so the fact that they are not broadly advertizing it seems to confirm this rumor from one of the interviews.

maddoctor.2738:

When Nightfall was released in order to play the FULL Guild Wars experience you had to buy Factions and Prophecies. With HoT you don’t have to buy anything else. Even now, to get the full GW1 experience you have to pay 43€ (8.99€ more to also get the bonus mission pack) while GW2 is at 50€ and will stay 50€ for all future expansions forever.

That’s a marketing trick. Clever wording. The fact is, Nightfall and Factions were both stand alone games, so you paid the price of a standalone game. HOT is not a standalone game, yet you pay the price of a full game, and the original game is supposedly included for free. Basically you are paying for a more expensive version of the original game, regardless if you already own the original game.

maddoctor.2738:

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/pre-purchase-community-address/
Everyone will get 1 character slot, those who get the deluxe edition will get 2 character slots.

No, this is incorrect:

“For all players who registered the core Guild Wars 2® game prior to January 23, 2015 and who upgrade their account by prepurchasing and registering any Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns edition before Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns‘ launch, we will add one additional character slot to your Guild Wars 2 account.”

Not everyone gets a free character slot. You only get ONE extra character slot IF you prepurchased and register before launch, and otherwise you don’t get one at all.

maddoctor.2738:

Source?

Quote from one of the developers in an interview. I don’t have a link for you, but it WAS mentioned. They are conveniently making use of the automatic assumption of their players that Mordy will be in the expansion, but as far as we know, he won’t be. That is probably why they are so silent about it.

maddoctor.2738:

Out of all the zones of Nightfall, the amount of “end-game” zones were very very few. In contrast, all zones in HoT are “end-game”. I’d take 100% end-game zones over 5% end-game zones.

That is not endgame content. We’re talking raids here. Dungeons. Nightfall provided one really hard endgame area, Domain of Anguish. But HOT? Zip, nada, none, so far.

maddoctor.2738:

There are a total of 5*8 = 40 Specializations in the game. With HoT we will have 48 Specs, 8 specs are almost 2 profession worth of traits and skills

That is a very skewed portrayal of the facts.

maddoctor.2738:

A few dense and content filled end-game explorables, over a bazilion boring, empty ones? Yes please.

Even if it is only three explorables? Or five? That’s not enough for me. Not enough to justify the $50 price tag. No matter how packed with content they are.

maddoctor.2738:

You forgot the Masteries, Adventures, Guild Halls and many others

True, although Guild Halls should have been included with the original game to begin with.

Reminder;

Dont argue with white knights, straight ignore them. Youll save yourself some nerves, hope it helped.

That’s a marketing trick. Clever wording. The fact is, Nightfall and Factions were both stand alone games, so you paid the price of a standalone game. HOT is not a standalone game, yet you pay the price of a full game, and the original game is supposedly included for free. Basically you are paying for a more expensive version of the original game, regardless if you already own the original game.

That still means GW2 for old and new players is cheaper than GW1. Standalone or not, they still updated the game and you still needed them to play content with your friends. By saying they are “standalone” while in reality they weren’t exactly standalone as players having all campaigns had a significant advantage in any aspect of the game. Not to mention you couldn’t play the content of said expansions with your friends.

Not everyone gets a free character slot. You only get ONE extra character slot IF you prepurchased and register before launch, and otherwise you don’t get one at all.

Even if you pre-purchase a day before release you will get it. Old players, those who already registered in the past, and prepurchase will get a free slot. That’s different than saying “no extra character slots”

Quote from one of the developers in an interview. I don’t have a link for you, but it WAS mentioned. They are conveniently making use of the automatic assumption of their players that Mordy will be in the expansion, but as far as we know, he won’t be. That is probably why they are so silent about it.

We’ll wait and see about this I guess.

maddoctor.2738:

Out of all the zones of Nightfall, the amount of “end-game” zones were very very few. In contrast, all zones in HoT are “end-game”. I’d take 100% end-game zones over 5% end-game zones.

That is not endgame content. We’re talking raids here. Dungeons. Nightfall provided one really hard endgame area, Domain of Anguish. But HOT? Zip, nada, none, so far.

The Domain of Anguish was hardly a “raid” by raid standards, have you ever done a “proper” raid? And even so, what does end-game content have to do with difficulty and challenge? Isn’t “end-game” what you do once you are done with everything else in a game? FoW was faceroll even for newbies, yet people call it endgame, the Underworld, aside for 2 quests, was remarkably easy too, yet people call that end-game too. Both were doable solo with a full hero team, yet people call them end-game. Are those end game or not?

Because if they are SW and DT are also end-game. Same with Cursed Shore, Frostgorge Sound, all dungeons, fractals etc, everything that players do repeatedly after they get to max level. Isn’t that what end-game means?

HoT has zones similar to SW and DT, zones that are going to be played repeatedly and aside for the dreadful SW chestfarming (I hope nothing like it happens in HoT) they are the most challenging (open world) part of the game. So if SW/DT are end-game, then all HoT zones have the potential to also be end-game.

maddoctor.2738:

There are a total of 5*8 = 40 Specializations in the game. With HoT we will have 48 Specs, 8 specs are almost 2 profession worth of traits and skills

That is a very skewed portrayal of the facts.

huh? 40 specs currently in game, 5 per profession. Adding 8 more specs /2 = 4 so nearly 2 new professions worth of traits. At least 5 new slot skills (utility/heal/elite) per spec so 40 new skills. Funny how each profession has ~20-25 Utility skills, so it’s very close. I admit we won’t get many weapons skills because each spec has one new weapon only, but that doesn’t mean 8 new specs are anything little which was the entire point.

maddoctor.2738:

A few dense and content filled end-game explorables, over a bazilion boring, empty ones? Yes please.

Even if it is only three explorables? Or five? That’s not enough for me. Not enough to justify the $50 price tag. No matter how packed with content they are.

Can’t argue here $50 for what we know is bad price, I’ve been saying that myself. Still, it doesn’t need to have as many zones as Nightfall, since the only zone worth revisiting in Nightfall was DoA and the rest of the game would’ve been completely devoid of life if it wasn’t instanced.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Arenanet has let it slide in one of the interviews that Mordremoth will not be in the HOT expansion. I do not have a link for you, but they have been remarkably quiet about Mordremoth, so the fact that they are not broadly advertizing it seems to confirm this rumor from one of the interviews.

ArenaNet also let it slide that there will be 15 dungeons, 10 raids, 25 maps and 10 new world bosses.
Oh, I don’t have a link for you but they totally said it!

How much did they tell us about Zhaitan and the fight against him before release? As far as I remember, very little.

this can all be fixed with merchandising and creating bundles out of merchandising. heck, just open a www.zazzle.com account or even set up a 3D printing deal with another service to sell miniatures. The bundles could be in the form of coupons that will be honored by a 3rd party provider. It doesn’t have to be a brick and mortar package.

I don’t feel ripped off about that, and I have all the box releases of gw1 – looking at them now actually -g- nice memories, the internet simply has evolved to paperless interaction. It doesn’t mean that physical items lost value as fan merchandise though. Anet let themselves down by discontinuing that stream of revenue. they may save 50 bucks on packaging and distribution costs, but lost thousands on merchandising.

an arena net zazzle store would actually be amazing, i’m sure zazzle would also appreciate their business and it would be win/win/win scenario, – especially if zazzle honored coupons that were purchased in bundles from the game. disney, marvel, hallmark, and getty images already have shops there too so it’s an established modern workflow.

and it seems someone else already started selling guildwars posters lol

http://www.zazzle.com/guild_wars_2_the_charr_print-228398724443391976

tell me an asuran designed golem bike won’t sell!! ^.^
http://www.zazzle.com/custom_big_shot_fixie_bicycle-256594215339253936

zazzle doesn’t just sell t-shirts and posters!

I just wish we had some time frame of when they will announce the content of the expansion as they kind of between the lines worded for a August release date. and price wise Anet did do damage control to include the char slot but I need price match for Canadians 61.62$ with conversion is a little excessive

I just had to stop reading this thread and say that Anet has not announced a collectors box yet you can’t compair something when you don’t have all the facts yet. Anet did say there will be a boxed version of the game for sale but what they haven’t said one way or other will there be a boxed collectors addiond most likely there will be but know one knows for sure or what will be included in it. I can’t see Anet not doing it, they would not want to lose out on those sales.

Look at the FAQ. There will be no physical CE, as stated by ANet.

“Q: Will there be a collector’s edition for this expansion?

A: There are no plans for a physical collector’s edition for Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns. Heart of Thorns will be offered in Standard, Deluxe, and Ultimate Editions (all of which are available for pre-purchase and include digital in-game bonuses only)."

https://help.guildwars2.com/entries/105801626-Guild-Wars-2-Heart-of-Thorns-FAQ

I’m not nearly as cheesed off as the Mad Queen about this, much as I would have liked some physical goodies if I had room in my cluttered house for them, but she is right that there will not be a goodies-filled box.

The physical box in stores is probably just a jewel case holding a serial code.

@OP please repeat after me:

“Nightfall was a standalone, boxed product”

Even putting aside your … narrative-slanted descriptions of the product, what you end up with is:

“A complete product came with more stuff than an expansion”.

@ OP thank you man, genuine thank you.

If after this simple, illustrative, cold hard facts & logic post you people can’t see plain as day that something’s wrong here with the whole HoT offering then all i can say “i give up.”

I for one am giving high five to OP for noticing that something in today’s gaming market is seriously wrong. Back in the day we used to get awesome games with awesome deals.

Now days we get to pay awesomely high $$ for marketing expanses, and are offered deals that in old timem would be called a slap in the face and not “promotion” (0 slots for reve unless you pre-purchase).
I’m not gonna judge HoT content since it’s not out yet, but marketing & sales of this game has already earned my deep scorn.

Except the OP has missed out and changed several facts as has been highlighted by a few people in the thread.

I’m not against comparison, only it needs to be fair, accurate and based in fact

And they barely had a gem/cash shop back then… Or the same amount of people as they do now.

Zeft; the slot has become a preorder incentive. Should they just not have one?

A glider skin is a pre-order incentive. No slot unless you pre-purchase or 10$ extra gets shelled out is arm twisting.

Best example of good practice being nightfall – they had no problem adding 2 slots for 2 new professions baseline, no strings attached.

ZeftheWicked.3076:

A glider skin is a pre-order incentive. No slot unless you pre-purchase or 10$ extra gets shelled out is arm twisting.

Best example of good practice being nightfall – they had no problem adding 2 slots for 2 new professions baseline, no strings attached.

which goes back to my earlier post, you have an inherent misunderstanding of what nightfall was and what it represented as a product.

Nightfall required 3GB of HDD space, HoT requires an increased minimum HDD space of 10GB (from 25GB to 35GB). There is clearly more ‘content’ in HoT than Nightfall.

That irrefutable fact should end the comparison right there. But ignoring that HoT expansion requires more than times more HDD space than the entire Nightfall stand-alone game, which is clearly ‘more’.

However, you’re also not comparing like with like.

One convenient fact that all these GW1/GW2 comparisons gloss over, is that GW1 had ZERO open world content, outside of towns and outposts. All this comparing GW1 maps to GW2 maps is utter nonsense. Every single GW1 ‘map’ was actually an 8 player instance, and is therefore much more comparable to a GW2 storyline or LS episode.

So… Istan had 12 explorable areas and 3 missions, Kourna had 11 explorables and 8 missions, Vabbi had 11 explorables and 5 missions, The Desolation had 8 explorables and 3 missions and the Realm of Torment 12 explorables and 5 missions. That’s a grand total of 78 instances, zero open world maps & zero world bosses from Nightfalls ‘map’ content.

Now we don’t know at this point how many instances come with HoT, and we wont until it’s released, but there were 33 instances with Living Story Season 2, and I think it’s pretty safe to assume that HoT is going to have more instanced content than season 2 did. Will it reach 78 instances, we simply don’t know yet.

Then on top of the directly comparable instanced content, you’ve got all the open world content, the Dynamic events, the mission challenge things, hero challenges, jumping puzzles and so on that GW1 never had.

Then there’s the challenging content, which we know nothing about, other than the fact it’s something different to the open world maps and world bosses that have been announced so far.

These comparisons are a joke TBH.

-2 finger clap- impressive presentation – and i would agree, but…and lets make that a BUT, like you said “Then there’s the challenging content, which we know nothing about”

we no nothing about what’s in the 20-30gb of files, it might be poor compression for all we know ^.^

you have a strong point, but you lost me at comparisons being a joke, such as your speculative argument :p

I don’t know what to say to OP if he thinks that Nightfall had “wurm mounts”…

Windsagio.1340:

“A complete product came with more stuff than an expansion”.

same pricetag though…

lordkrall.7241:

We get a free character slot instead. The core-game is included if you create a new account, if you do not, you get a free character slot. Simple as that. So no matter how you twist and turn it, we do get at least one character slot.

Wrong. It’s only “free” if you pre-purchase.

I agree with op n other people, content is lacking. To many fan boys talking things up ruining the game for everyone else thanks a lot guys

Or alternative, we have a bunch of people who learned that their parents would always cave when they cried loudly enough.

whatever to make those 6 months of teaser campaigns stop.

haven’t you ever watched a developer interview and felt like "Dude, shouldn’t you be coding ? "

now if anet ever decided to host a server on mars, I wouldn’t mind regular updates of their progress…. but for an expansion ?! -wrinkles nose-

Windsagio.1340:

@OP please repeat after me:

“Nightfall was a standalone, boxed product”

Even putting aside your … narrative-slanted descriptions of the product, what you end up with is:

“A complete product came with more stuff than an expansion”.

-For the same price of $50! Don’t forget about the price, because that is what this is about. You pay the same, but you get so much less for your money.

Kaz.5430:

Nightfall required 3GB of HDD space, HoT requires an increased minimum HDD space of 10GB (from 25GB to 35GB). There is clearly more ‘content’ in HoT than Nightfall.

That irrefutable fact should end the comparison right there. But ignoring that HoT expansion requires more than times more HDD space than the entire Nightfall stand-alone game, which is clearly ‘more’.

So more file size means more content? Higher res textures and higher res models can already account for larger file size. That doesn’t mean you get more content. You just get more bytes of data.

Kaz.5430:

One convenient fact that all these GW1/GW2 comparisons gloss over, is that GW1 had ZERO open world content, outside of towns and outposts. All this comparing GW1 maps to GW2 maps is utter nonsense. Every single GW1 ‘map’ was actually an 8 player instance, and is therefore much more comparable to a GW2 storyline or LS episode.

The only real comparison here is that both were the same price, but one was a stand alone game with tons of goodies, and the other is just an expansion and nothing else. An expansion by definition is less content that a stand alone game. If you also take the missing goodies into account, then you are basically paying for something that is priced the same as the Nightfall CE, but offers at least half of what the Nightfall CE had.

Kaz.5430:

and I think it’s pretty safe to assume that HoT is going to have more instanced content than season 2 did.

That’s a very large assumption. What is that based on, if anything at all?

Kaz.5430:

Then on top of the directly comparable instanced content, you’ve got all the open world content, the Dynamic events, the mission challenge things, hero challenges, jumping puzzles and so on that GW1 never had.

So, the explorables in GW2 are packed with more content. This has already been mentioned, but it still doesn’t hold up. You are not getting a special edition of a stand alone game, but you are paying for one!

The price of a hamburger in 2006 was roughly $1, the price of a hamburger today is roughly $1.50

Now I want a hamburger for under two bucks that is as good as the twenty-dollar meal I had from Zin Burger in Arizona …

Yes, prices go up, Nate. I think you undersold by how much.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

-For the same price of $50! Don’t forget about the price, because that is what this is about. You pay the same, but you get so much less for your money.

You know what else sucks? I used to be able to buy a Coke for 25 cents and it was considered terrible that Gas might some day be more than $1/gallon.

ZeftheWicked.3076:

@ OP thank you man, genuine thank you.

If after this simple, illustrative, cold hard facts & logic post you people can’t see plain as day that something’s wrong here with the whole HoT offering then all i can say “i give up.”

I for one am giving high five to OP for noticing that something in today’s gaming market is seriously wrong. Back in the day we used to get awesome games with awesome deals.

Now days we get to pay awesomely high $$ for marketing expanses, and are offered deals that in old timem would be called a slap in the face and not “promotion” (0 slots for reve unless you pre-purchase).
I’m not gonna judge HoT content since it’s not out yet, but marketing & sales of this game has already earned my deep scorn.

There is definitely something wrong with the HoT offering. That is so many people are stuck 8 years in the past, they don’t realize the entire genre has moved on, that it’s far more expensive to make today’s games, that they require more in other ways then just quantity of content and that the prices have risen very little in 8 years.

So those people who are stuck in the past, and yes, that is the answer, are believing that somehow a pathed, completely instanced game with no Z axis in a field with no competition to speak of is going to be comparable to something you get for the same money today. But it’s not. Not with any expansion for any game. There might be a reason for that.

Those who have no clue about business will tell you it’s the greedy, horrible goblin-devs who sit in Grintgotts and count their money, while figuring out ways to rip us off.

Those who have some inkling that prices have gone up, and that an MMO is much much harder to make than a lobby game, and that there’s more competition and that the amount of voice acting alone is probably the entire price of what it cost to make Nightfall, and that the staff is five or six times larger, will probably not see that anything is wrong…except that some people seem to believe this industry doesn’t change.

Of course WoW and FFXIV do give quite substantial expansions for the same amount, but both of them charge a monthly sub and both of them have a much higher income than Guild Wars 2 does…and not necessarily because more play the game (at least in the case of FFXIV), but because many play the game and buy no gems.

First,GW:Nightfal isnt an expansion. GW:EN is.
Second,2005 economy vs 2015 economy.

I don’t know your economy is froze in time or something. [Analogy time] but I doubt you could sell a Playstation One back in 2005 for 2000 dollars. This is what a Playstation 4 is worth today. (roughly 4000 BRL here,approx. 2000 USD)
Nothing we can do about it.
We pay more because the quality is way higher. PS4 Games takes way more effort to create than a simple PSOne game. People have to work more,people have to be paid more.

No way they can keep selling a game for the same price if the work has doubled

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

So, maybe people want to call me entitled, but what ever. Guild Wars Nightfall Collectors Edition was about $50, which I pre-ordered back then, and it came with:

Bonuses:

-Massive Guild Wars Nightfall poster
-Full colour map of Elona
-Two exclusive Skill Pins
-124-page Guild Wars Nightfall Art Book
-Mini Desktop Character Standee of Varesh
-Behind-the-scenes ‘Making of…’ DVD
-Collectable Game Activation Card
-Jeremy Soule CD Soundtrack
(Including a key for exclusive Guild Wars Nightfall tracks)
-Epic trial key and Nightfall buddy key
(Try both previous campaigns and invite a friend to play GW Nightfall)

Game Content:

-A stand alone expansion
-Two big boss fights at the end, Varesh and Abaddon
-Dozens of new explorables
-Two new professions, Paragon and Dervish
-A huge endgame area, Domain of Anguish, with its own boss Malyx the Unyielding
(Released shortly after the launch of Nightfall)
-Two new character slots (And an additional one if you got the pre-release)
-Wurm mounts!

And yes, that is the my actual game box in the picture down below.
So, what am I getting when I buy HOT?

-Not a full a stand alone expansion
-No extra character slots at all
-No final boss fight with Mordremoth, just one of his champions
-No endgame areas or dungeons as far as been announced so far
-Not even the soundtrack
-The revenant
-One new Specialization for each profession
-A few explorables

And yet I pay the same price for it? This feels like I am paying the price of a full game for Living Story left overs, and NOT for a full expansion.

You are right, no reason for you to buy HoT. There is likely no way to appease you, not that i think anyone will try. Sorry this isn’t the game for you, luckily there is so little being added with HoT that you won’t really need it- furthermore no sub so you can just head out and come back whenever you like.

Cheers.

Caution! Logic ahead! Enter at your own risk!

So let’s see “HoT” is more expensive because it’s an expansion…
Riiiiiiiiight.

So by that logic an xpansion that is smaller then core game, has already base game’s foundation (financial incomes, art & programming assets, general gameplay mechanics and direction, playerbase), should not be cheaper then the core game that has more of everything, is build from scratch facing much more challenges on every front then the xpac, and right now is way cheaper then the expansion…

Because you know….reasons!

ZeftheWicked.3076:

Caution! Logic ahead! Enter at your own risk!

So let’s see “HoT” is more expensive because it’s an expansion…
Riiiiiiiiight.

So by that logic an xpansion that is smaller then core game, has already base game’s foundation (financial incomes, art & programming assets, general gameplay mechanics and direction, playerbase), should not be cheaper then the core game that has more of everything, is build from scratch facing much more challenges on every front then the xpac, and right now is way cheaper then the expansion…

Because you know….reasons!

HoT is more expansive because the entire landscape has changed, internally and externally and you ignore that.

My dad used to talk about getting into the theater for a nickle. I don’t pay a nickle anymore. Theaters are much more expensive and many of them aren’t really making much of a profit anymore. Times change.

Anet is a company that pays more employees, more rent, more to voice actors, the currency itself has inflated, the internal differences between working on a pathed game with no Z axis that’s entirely instanced makes a huge difference in both delivery time and the amount of work to produce the game, but you think it should cost $20 because it has “less content” when all the content has yet to be revealed.

For example, Nightfall had 250 plus quests and 20 missions. Seems like a lot. But we have nothing really to compare it to. Zones aren’t quests. They’re zones. They’re pathed.

I think I’ll wait to see what’s coming before comparing, but even if I do compare later…it’s still much later, and just about everything has changed.

There’s much more logic here than insisting you get the same deal on something 8 years later, between not only different games, but different genres of games. Guild Wars 1 was a lobby game…a CORPG not an MMO. It does make a huge difference in development time.