Guild Wars 2

So. I played GW2 from release day 1 from time to time leaving it just to return few months later. Loved it a lot. Especially I appreciated that I could play it when I feel like it and leave it the same way. It was stated that if you bought the game, you gain access to all content that it contains. And it was true… at least until my recent return.
I never felt that I should play the game when I don’t want to. So I have missed great deal of living world story and was ok with that. It was enough for me just to catch story of what happened by listening from friend or watching videos. And when I was coming back to the game it every time felt like “Welcome back. As you can tell by the look, theres some stuff happened but you’re free to play as it always been”. Yes, there was living story, but the game just kept going. It hadn’t restricted you. You simply rolled in and played. Then came the idea of replaying the episodes of living story that you have missed. It was free for you if you catched it when it was live and you was charged to pay for it some real money/gold if you missed it but was willing to play it. Firstly it was optionable. When HoT came out, it was stated that things will stay the same. You bought it, you free to play all the content it has. And so I’ve been away from the game for last 2 years. A few days ago when I felt that now I like to play it, I bought my copy of HoT. With a full pants of joy I rolled in just to find out that I don’t have access to like half of new content including the entire maps just because I don’t have access to living world season 3. It means I bought the expansion that consists of that maps and as a fact at the same time I don’t have access to them. And I won’t until I pay more. It was a game for me about which I thought as my favorite and never felt the way about it as I feel right now. A dissapointment. And not because the game is bad. I enjoyed these days of playing it again a lot. Look at that as like you have been buying lets say tomatoes from the same person for some time. And nothing special happened. You payed the stated price for stated goods on a stated conditions. But one day you come to this person again and when you already gave money and just about to take your goods, trader says that today you must pay a bit more. “I already payed the price I was asked for, it’s mine now” – you say. And you hear: “Nope. I won’t give it to you until you pay me more”. And at this moment I really don’t understand what anet think of when doing something like that. If only you would say “We need a bit more” strictly from the beginning looking in the eyes of your customer. But the way you do it… You guys are the last ones I was expecting things like that from. The thing is not how big or little that price but the way you put it in. I have always felt with gw2 that after I payed the price I was asked for, I’m free and that feeling was very special thing about this game. Well, not anymore.

You still have access to everything you paid for.

You seem to think that paying for one product, the expansion, entitles you to other products, LS3 chapters, for free. You are mistaken. The LS3 chapters were offered to you in return for one of three types of currency. Your choice on how to pay. You could pay with time by spending ten seconds logging into the game during a chapter’s release, or you could convert gold to gems, or you could spend real money.

If a product is offered for sale and you choose to not purchase it, you have no one to blame but yourself.

Your tomato analogy is a bit disconnected from reality. If you go back to the market where you paid for your tomato, and expect free cucumbers, you are bound to be disappointed.

If you have bought HoT, you have full access to the content therein. LS3 is not part of HoT. The confusion comes from needing HoT to play LS3 (you can even bank it for free it as a f2p by logging in every 2-3 months) due to the mastery progression system.

Whilst I’ve never been a big fan of how the seasons are presented for new and rejoining players, Anet have always been clear about the pricing of the seasons.

As Ashen says, your tomato analogy also does not reflect the reality of this situation.

Ashen.2907, Oh… I see. I thought access to all those jungle locations is restricted as restricted bloodstone fen and maps linked to it. So only those few maps weren’t supposed to be original HoT content. That explains it. I’m glad that I was mistaken. Thank you for clearing things out for me.

Living World content is always “the stuff in between expansions”, it has never belonged to an expansion and never will. It continues the story and paves the way to the next campaign. If you don’t want to miss out on future LW content, just log in when a new episode is released and you will get it for free — and can play it whenever you like.

Adrian.4621:

Ashen.2907, Oh… I see. I thought access to all those jungle locations is restricted as restricted bloodstone fen and maps linked to it. So only those few maps weren’t supposed to be original HoT content. That explains it. I’m glad that I was mistaken. Thank you for clearing things out for me.

To get into the jungle areas you have to start the hot story, it will leady you there through the silverwastes.

You sound familiar …
Maybe we did ’’pvp’’ some time ago

Push ’’H’’ and go in the ‘’Story Journal’’ section .
Try to read slowwwwwwwlly what the descriptions on the right side say , when you try to unlock the LW episode

(small hint : if you have ingame friends , you can unlock it)

Linken.6345:

To get into the jungle areas you have to start the hot story, it will leady you there through the silverwastes.

Yeah. I started it and completed exploring the first map but didn’t find where to go next and it looked to me that first map linked only to Bloodstone Fen and my only way to get anywhere is purchase of LS season 3. So I thought that as I don’t have access to that map I can’t get to the rest of the maps in the region as well.
Now I know that only few of them are unaccessible for me.

Randulf.7614:

If you have bought HoT, you have full access to the content therein. LS3 is not part of HoT. The confusion comes from needing HoT to play LS3 (you can even bank it for free it as a f2p by logging in every 2-3 months) due to the mastery progression system.

Aww – That’s it I guess? Yet, so many voices told us we were wrong when we said that HoT was a half baked, content lacking piece of DLC sold as an “expansion”. People kept defending the lack of content with statements advocating HoT like a “season pass” to the (meager) HoT package + the promise of L3 story content.

So HoT is basically: Gliding, 4 different 4-layered maps, 1 elite spec pr. profession and a few core buffs? Compared to most other games: Overpriced DLC?

Halandir.3609:

Randulf.7614:

If you have bought HoT, you have full access to the content therein. LS3 is not part of HoT. The confusion comes from needing HoT to play LS3 (you can even bank it for free it as a f2p by logging in every 2-3 months) due to the mastery progression system.

Aww – That’s it I guess? Yet, so many voices told us we were wrong when we said that HoT was a half baked, content lacking piece of DLC sold as an “expansion”. People kept defending the lack of content with statements advocating HoT like a “season pass” to the (meager) HoT package + the promise of L3 story content.

So HoT is basically: Gliding, 4 different 4-layered maps, 1 elite spec pr. profession and a few core buffs? Compared to most other games: Overpriced DLC?

Yea they always said it would be more focus on systems then on content.
And you got living story season 3 if you just loged in for 1 second during the months each episode were the current one.

If anything for new players starting today living story is the dlc.

Halandir.3609:

Randulf.7614:

If you have bought HoT, you have full access to the content therein. LS3 is not part of HoT. The confusion comes from needing HoT to play LS3 (you can even bank it for free it as a f2p by logging in every 2-3 months) due to the mastery progression system.

Aww – That’s it I guess? Yet, so many voices told us we were wrong when we said that HoT was a half baked, content lacking piece of DLC sold as an “expansion”. People kept defending the lack of content with statements advocating HoT like a “season pass” to the (meager) HoT package + the promise of L3 story content.

So HoT is basically: Gliding, 4 different 4-layered maps, 1 elite spec pr. profession and a few core buffs? Compared to most other games: Overpriced DLC?

But HoT isn’t half-baked, you just see it that way. Without any of the DLC the four HoT zones are my favorite areas of the game.

Aside from that, however, there are very few triple A MMOs that don’t have a sub free, or an “optional” sub fee. Not like I know anyone seriously playing SWToR that doesn’t sub.

At the end of the day $15 a month for most triple A MMOs (including ESO for the first year), means a lot more than kitten expansion and no monthly fee.

I seriously think people have no clue. They bought a game for $60 or less, played it for three years, then have to pay $50 for an expansion to keep going and they think somehow this is overpriced.

It’s not like people who were here were charged for Season 1 or Season 2 of the Living story.

You can have the opinion that HOT was half-baked, but there are many things in the game that were half baked. We were told at launch we’d have guesting but we didn’t have it for five months. The end game at launch was practically not existent and many people started and left because of it.

The company keeps providing stuff for what is essentially a very low buy in price.

But people will complain no matter what.

Edit: On top of that HoT was a season pass for me, since I have all five episodes of the living story unlocked and I haven’t paid a single cent for any of them.

Well compared to the industry 50€ is still overpriced if you see what they delivered. And the capitalism is so well self regulating: it flopped – and a huge reason for it is the steep price compared to the content you get: too few, too much party oriented, too few instanced stuff like dungeons etc. It seems they learned from it and release now a full fledged expansion.

Vayne.8563:

Edit: On top of that HoT was a season pass for me, since I have all five episodes of the living story unlocked and I haven’t paid a single cent for any of them.

HoT should have been a season pass, rather than giving it away to even F2Pers. It would have easily justified the price as well as buying it early and bundling it with the next expansion, whereas their 1 box model has only discouraged people from buying HoT for the last several months. They could have kept HoT at $50 the entire time and simply included season 3, or tricked people by lowering the price but not including any missed episodes. Including season 3 however would have been nicer for other retailers, since that $15 copy of HoT you’ll still be able to find, which is only good for cheap login rewards, would still have the value of season 3.

The only reason they do it the way they do is because activity is the most important thing in an MMO, especially when you rely on an in-game store. It’s probably also why they make everything group content, since it’s best played on release.

Halandir.3609:

Randulf.7614:

If you have bought HoT, you have full access to the content therein. LS3 is not part of HoT. The confusion comes from needing HoT to play LS3 (you can even bank it for free it as a f2p by logging in every 2-3 months) due to the mastery progression system.

Aww – That’s it I guess? Yet, so many voices told us we were wrong when we said that HoT was a half baked, content lacking piece of DLC sold as an “expansion”. People kept defending the lack of content with statements advocating HoT like a “season pass” to the (meager) HoT package + the promise of L3 story content.

So HoT is basically: Gliding, 4 different 4-layered maps, 1 elite spec pr. profession and a few core buffs? Compared to most other games: Overpriced DLC?

Not really. If you look at it as DLC, then that is quite a large DLC compared to what other companies do.

- old secret world – £15-£20 for a single mission pack. Before it closed for the new version, that essentially cost double HoT for some qsts, a raid and half a zone

- zelda – £18 dlc, barely a couple of extra story bits, staggered over 8 months. In fact Mario Kart charged stupid money for extra tracks and characters. Different game type, sure, but still overpriced DLC if you factor in what you get vs what you pay.

- D3 expansion -£35 for a single Act and some extra classes and quests.

Obviously I am cherry picking and many DLCs achieve more for less and there is no denying HoT was lacking in places and really needed more to it, but compared to the rmuch of the market, I wouldnt call it overpriced. £50 for content still going strong after 2 years, even without LS3, seems reasonable to me.

I think it pays to look at the whole picture when evaluating value for money. That includes looking at the entire package, as well as the whole cost. ANet charged a AAA price for HoT, but they neither charge a rental fee to maintain one’s playing privilege (a sub), nor remove/throttle convenience and rent that convenience under the guise of an “optional” sub. The only MMO’s to my knowledge whose optional sub is not something one has to have to make the game not-annoying to play are ESO and TSW. Both of those games were using a DLC model, and offering (last time I checked) either similar value-for-money as or less value-for-money than HoT. Of course, now ESO has published an XPac and charged $10 less than ANet charged for HoT. TSW meanwhile is going fully F2P and doing a mechanics overhaul.

That said, I understand the OP’s complaint. ANet is of course free to decide on their own business model. However, the value of HoT would certainly have been enhanced if they had gone with the idea that purchase of HoT included access to the LS episodes between HoT and the next XPac without the “must log in” requirement.

Taking that approach would have made it clear that HoT was an XPac and season pass. That might have forestalled some of the grumbling and ill-feeling over the price point compared to what HoT brought to the table. It also would be much clearer to customers what they were getting. Finally, it would have been a nod to ANet’s before-launch talk about people being able to take time off and not feel disadvantaged when/if they came back.

I agree with Healix that the necessary login for LS3 unlock is likely about login metrics. Bigger numbers look good when talking to fan sites or the NCSoft people. Also, while not everyone buys gems, the number-crunchers at ANet and NCSoft are going to have $ per login stats, and both the parent and ANet are going to believe that bigger login numbers are going to lead to increased sales.