Guild Wars 2

(Apologies if this is a duplicate post – I couldn’t find it mentioned elsewhere on the forums, but the search seems to barely work at all so I may have missed it.)

Does anyone else share my opinion that Upper Bound, presumably the reward for the first tier of Ad Infinium collection, ought to be obtainable without HoT? It’s already 99% of they way there; as far as I know the only thing preventing it is the gate from buying Charr-nip without the very first part of fractal mastery.

From a business perspective, I feel like a free player (or, like me, currently unupgraded veteran) who really likes fractals would be more likely to get excited about purchasing the expansion if they managed to obtain their first little set of wings and couldn’t help wanting more. It’s the same principle that makes many of us keep our characters that’ve used a makeover kit: “I put work into this, I want to get more out of it.”

Also, it’d probably serve to entice more free players into fractals, knowing they could get something visible for their work, and we all know a more experienced player is a more likely expansion purchaser. (Personally, I’d be much more likely to log in every day to work on those achievements if I knew I could get something for them.)

And it just seems to make sense given the design. All of these achievements feel doable without mastery. And the legendary backpack achievement tab doesn’t have “please buy HoT” text on top; this would make a good reason why.

Overall, I feel like this would greatly increase enthusiasm among non-upgraded players, and – correct me if I’m wrong, HoT owners – I doubt expansion purchasers would be bothered by it. That’s what Unbound is for.