Guild Wars 2

This wans’t covered in the FAQ so I’ll ask here.
Also, Why isn’t this added to the vanilla as an update?

The question is confusing. You can play gw2 without the expansion, jus tnto any of the expansion areas elite specs, masteries or various collections or the new class

You won’t need an expansion to play vanilla Guild Wars 2. Why wasn’t it added to vanilla as an update. Several reasons.

If you go to a restaurant and order a dinner, you get soup, appetizer, a meal, and dessert. That’s what you paid for. All of those things take money to produce. If you want more food after that, you pay for it.

You can’t really expect to get large amount of content for free forever. No one should expect that.

Providing a new profession, new weapons for every class, new skills and traits and elites for every class, new zones, new masteries and guild halls and challenging content (whatever that is) is a lot of content that takes time and money to create.

Why should Anet just add it to vanilla as an update.

On top of this, a decent percentage of the fan base has been screaming for a paid expansion for a long time.

It’s my understanding you will need to buy the expansion for key updates that involve quests and certain situations. For example, I doubt you’ll be able to kill Mordy without Heart of Thorns.

I’d venture to guess you also won’t be able to get into the new zones or areas too.

But, as Vayne said, you’ll still be able to play the base game.

Pretty much all games you buy have expansions you buy separately. If you buy WoW for example, you have to buy each expansion to get the full game.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Pretty much all games you buy have expansions you buy separately. If you buy WoW for example, you have to buy each expansion to get the full game.

Not at all. Lots of older games that have a multitude of expansions start including previous expansions with the base product. I believe everything up to Mists of Pandaria is included with the base World of Warcraft game at the moment, so to get into the new content all you have to do is buy the base game and the current expansion. EQ did that as well after a while since they have like 20 expansions at this point.

Ralanost.8913:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Pretty much all games you buy have expansions you buy separately. If you buy WoW for example, you have to buy each expansion to get the full game.

Not at all. Lots of older games that have a multitude of expansions start including previous expansions with the base product. I believe everything up to Mists of Pandaria is included with the base World of Warcraft game at the moment, so to get into the new content all you have to do is buy the base game and the current expansion. EQ did that as well after a while since they have like 20 expansions at this point.

Sure, if you pay $15 a month, you only have to pay once for the game. So if you pay for a year of WoW for a hundred bucks every year and 7 million other people are doing the same, you can certainly say you’re not paying for each and every expansion.

Or are you?

Edit: Not to mention if you already own the game you DO have to pay for the expansion.

Vayne.8563:

Ralanost.8913:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Pretty much all games you buy have expansions you buy separately. If you buy WoW for example, you have to buy each expansion to get the full game.

Not at all. Lots of older games that have a multitude of expansions start including previous expansions with the base product. I believe everything up to Mists of Pandaria is included with the base World of Warcraft game at the moment, so to get into the new content all you have to do is buy the base game and the current expansion. EQ did that as well after a while since they have like 20 expansions at this point.

Sure, if you pay $15 a month, you only have to pay once for the game. So if you pay for a year of WoW for a hundred bucks every year and 7 million other people are doing the same, you can certainly say you’re not paying for each and every expansion.

Or are you?

Edit: Not to mention if you already own the game you DO have to pay for the expansion.

Sorry, that’s a stupid argument. Be against p2p games as much as you want, but making a statement like that is just useless.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Pretty much all games you buy have expansions you buy separately. If you buy WoW for example, you have to buy each expansion to get the full game.

Actually you have all expansions included in vanilla wow except warlords of draenor. So you need to buy basic wow + the newest xpack

Jabberwock.5987:

This wans’t covered in the FAQ so I’ll ask here.
Also, Why isn’t this added to the vanilla as an update?

You can play base game without expansion.
Because devs want money.

Ralanost.8913:

Vayne.8563:

Ralanost.8913:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Pretty much all games you buy have expansions you buy separately. If you buy WoW for example, you have to buy each expansion to get the full game.

Not at all. Lots of older games that have a multitude of expansions start including previous expansions with the base product. I believe everything up to Mists of Pandaria is included with the base World of Warcraft game at the moment, so to get into the new content all you have to do is buy the base game and the current expansion. EQ did that as well after a while since they have like 20 expansions at this point.

Sure, if you pay $15 a month, you only have to pay once for the game. So if you pay for a year of WoW for a hundred bucks every year and 7 million other people are doing the same, you can certainly say you’re not paying for each and every expansion.

Or are you?

Edit: Not to mention if you already own the game you DO have to pay for the expansion.

Sorry, that’s a stupid argument. Be against p2p games as much as you want, but making a statement like that is just useless.

What? LMAO!

First of all if you own WoW already, you DO have to pay for expansions. What you’re not paying for is older games if you never owned WoW in the first place. But if you’re playing WoW, and you’ve bought them all, and a new one comes out, you DO have to pay for it. Not pointless at all.

More to the point, you’re already paying. If you pay $15 a month for a game, but they don’t charge you for an expansion (something WOW does anyway) then you ARE paying for an expansion.

The only person who could possibly call this pointless is someone who isn’t paying attention.

Vayne.8563:

Ralanost.8913:

Vayne.8563:

Ralanost.8913:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Pretty much all games you buy have expansions you buy separately. If you buy WoW for example, you have to buy each expansion to get the full game.

Not at all. Lots of older games that have a multitude of expansions start including previous expansions with the base product. I believe everything up to Mists of Pandaria is included with the base World of Warcraft game at the moment, so to get into the new content all you have to do is buy the base game and the current expansion. EQ did that as well after a while since they have like 20 expansions at this point.

Sure, if you pay $15 a month, you only have to pay once for the game. So if you pay for a year of WoW for a hundred bucks every year and 7 million other people are doing the same, you can certainly say you’re not paying for each and every expansion.

Or are you?

Edit: Not to mention if you already own the game you DO have to pay for the expansion.

Sorry, that’s a stupid argument. Be against p2p games as much as you want, but making a statement like that is just useless.

What? LMAO!

First of all if you own WoW already, you DO have to pay for expansions. What you’re not paying for is older games if you never owned WoW in the first place. But if you’re playing WoW, and you’ve bought them all, and a new one comes out, you DO have to pay for it. Not pointless at all.

More to the point, you’re already paying. If you pay $15 a month for a game, but they don’t charge you for an expansion (something WOW does anyway) then you ARE paying for an expansion.

The only person who could possibly call this pointless is someone who isn’t paying attention.

Sub fees and expansion fees are different. Sure, they are both money, but they are collect for different reasons. Try and calm down your anger and be a bit more rational. Also, there are people that have taken a break from WoW for years that come back and they don’t have to buy old expansions that they skipped now. And brand new players don’t pay for those old expansions either. Remember, sub fees aren’t expansion fees, no matter how much you say they are.

Ralanost.8913:

Vayne.8563:

Ralanost.8913:

Vayne.8563:

Ralanost.8913:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Pretty much all games you buy have expansions you buy separately. If you buy WoW for example, you have to buy each expansion to get the full game.

Not at all. Lots of older games that have a multitude of expansions start including previous expansions with the base product. I believe everything up to Mists of Pandaria is included with the base World of Warcraft game at the moment, so to get into the new content all you have to do is buy the base game and the current expansion. EQ did that as well after a while since they have like 20 expansions at this point.

Sure, if you pay $15 a month, you only have to pay once for the game. So if you pay for a year of WoW for a hundred bucks every year and 7 million other people are doing the same, you can certainly say you’re not paying for each and every expansion.

Or are you?

Edit: Not to mention if you already own the game you DO have to pay for the expansion.

Sorry, that’s a stupid argument. Be against p2p games as much as you want, but making a statement like that is just useless.

What? LMAO!

First of all if you own WoW already, you DO have to pay for expansions. What you’re not paying for is older games if you never owned WoW in the first place. But if you’re playing WoW, and you’ve bought them all, and a new one comes out, you DO have to pay for it. Not pointless at all.

More to the point, you’re already paying. If you pay $15 a month for a game, but they don’t charge you for an expansion (something WOW does anyway) then you ARE paying for an expansion.

The only person who could possibly call this pointless is someone who isn’t paying attention.

Sub fees and expansion fees are different. Sure, they are both money, but they are collect for different reasons. Try and calm down your anger and be a bit more rational. Also, there are people that have taken a break from WoW for years that come back and they don’t have to buy old expansions that they skipped now. And brand new players don’t pay for those old expansions either. Remember, sub fees aren’t expansion fees, no matter how much you say they are.

Actually sub fees and expansion fees are not charged for different reasons. They’re charged for exactly the same reason. For the company to make a profit. It’s all part of a larger business plan to make enough money to move the game forward, to keep making money from the game. That’s all it is.

Now, if the $15 a month you’re paying for WoW isn’t for content (which you generally don’t get) what is it for then? Keeping the servers running. We’ve already been told more than once that it’s not that expensive to run those servers. You certainly don’t need $15 from each person per month to run them.

So what, exactly, do you think the $15 a month is for. What it’s for is investors and the bottom line and making the game more profitable. That’s what it’s for.

If WoW released regular content besides expansions, you might have a point, but they really don’t.

You will be able to play gw2 without the expac. Just not the content that comes with the expac.
All the trait/skill Changes will be available Before the expac is released, EXCEPT the elite specs as Ive understood it

In WoW the previous expansions are free because that content is completely useless, that might not the case with Guild Wars 2 as you get everything but the new map, masteries and the new class/specializations

Well. If you don’t want to be alone OP you will but xpack because most ppl will no on new maps.

nope. once xpac drops, people who don’t buy it will be blocked from log in. must purch to play. thats why they say they are addin mastery to old zones. the whole game will be buy to play again. i think this was reported in ncsoft report the other day. they are also adding wildstar to the purch. so buy gw2 xpac, get wildstar. wildstar devs are actually in the process of moving to anet offices.

Jaxom.7310:

nope. once xpac drops, people who don’t buy it will be blocked from log in. must purch to play. thats why they say they are addin mastery to old zones. the whole game will be buy to play again. i think this was reported in ncsoft report the other day. they are also adding wildstar to the purch. so buy gw2 xpac, get wildstar. wildstar devs are actually in the process of moving to anet offices.

/tinfoilhat

(You left this part off)

Short answer: Yes OP you can continue to play the base game without buying the expansion.

Expanded Answer: If you want of the masteries, specializations, etc you will need to purchase the expansion. This is no different than other games.

I see a lot of people pointing out that purchasing the base WoW game comes with most all of the older expansions. Prior to MoP, the only expansion bundled with Vanilla WoW was Burning Crusade. I still needed to buy Wrath and Cata in order to play them. Yes they are included (in some) base purchases now. However, the point people were making (and was being ignored) is that even WoW follows the same model. You must buy the expansion in order to play it. GW2 is not old enough (nor does it have enough expansions) to start rolling them into the base purchase as yet.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Short answer: Yes OP you can continue to play the base game without buying the expansion.

Expanded Answer: If you want of the masteries, specializations, etc you will need to purchase the expansion. This is no different than other games.

I see a lot of people pointing out that purchasing the base WoW game comes with most all of the older expansions. Prior to MoP, the only expansion bundled with Vanilla WoW was Burning Crusade. I still needed to buy Wrath and Cata in order to play them. Yes they are included (in some) base purchases now. However, the point people were making (and was being ignored) is that even WoW follows the same model. You must buy the expansion in order to play it. GW2 is not old enough (nor does it have enough expansions) to start rolling them into the base purchase as yet.

Yay thank you for restating what Vayne said! I wonder if Ralanlost will say you are filled with hate too!~

OP: Lanfear is correct on everything she said.

Vayne.8563:

Ralanost.8913:

Vayne.8563:

Ralanost.8913:

Vayne.8563:

Ralanost.8913:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Pretty much all games you buy have expansions you buy separately. If you buy WoW for example, you have to buy each expansion to get the full game.

Not at all. Lots of older games that have a multitude of expansions start including previous expansions with the base product. I believe everything up to Mists of Pandaria is included with the base World of Warcraft game at the moment, so to get into the new content all you have to do is buy the base game and the current expansion. EQ did that as well after a while since they have like 20 expansions at this point.

Sure, if you pay $15 a month, you only have to pay once for the game. So if you pay for a year of WoW for a hundred bucks every year and 7 million other people are doing the same, you can certainly say you’re not paying for each and every expansion.

Or are you?

Edit: Not to mention if you already own the game you DO have to pay for the expansion.

Sorry, that’s a stupid argument. Be against p2p games as much as you want, but making a statement like that is just useless.

What? LMAO!

First of all if you own WoW already, you DO have to pay for expansions. What you’re not paying for is older games if you never owned WoW in the first place. But if you’re playing WoW, and you’ve bought them all, and a new one comes out, you DO have to pay for it. Not pointless at all.

More to the point, you’re already paying. If you pay $15 a month for a game, but they don’t charge you for an expansion (something WOW does anyway) then you ARE paying for an expansion.

The only person who could possibly call this pointless is someone who isn’t paying attention.

Sub fees and expansion fees are different. Sure, they are both money, but they are collect for different reasons. Try and calm down your anger and be a bit more rational. Also, there are people that have taken a break from WoW for years that come back and they don’t have to buy old expansions that they skipped now. And brand new players don’t pay for those old expansions either. Remember, sub fees aren’t expansion fees, no matter how much you say they are.

If WoW released regular content besides expansions, you might have a point, but they really don’t.

Actually they do. The expansions get regular content updates over their lifetime. Granted the time between the last patch of MoP and WoD was very long. But this usually isn’t the case.

“Hello, my name is Tyler Bearce, and I’m here to talk about a significant change we’re making to the way that you’ll upgrade your World vs. World objectives in the Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns™ expansion. "

Please… please… please. Stop saying that things are in the Expansion when they are clearly not. These changes will affect the existing game and the only thing they have in common with the expansion is that you are planning on dropping them the same day.

misterdevious.6482:

“Hello, my name is Tyler Bearce, and I’m here to talk about a significant change we’re making to the way that you’ll upgrade your World vs. World objectives in the Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns™ expansion. "

Please… please… please. Stop saying that things are in the Expansion when they are clearly not. These changes will affect the existing game and the only thing they have in common with the expansion is that you are planning on dropping them the same day.

Or they’re part of the expansion that is being added to the game because of the expansion, but people are going to get them for free.

Vayne.8563:

misterdevious.6482:

“Hello, my name is Tyler Bearce, and I’m here to talk about a significant change we’re making to the way that you’ll upgrade your World vs. World objectives in the Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns™ expansion. "

Please… please… please. Stop saying that things are in the Expansion when they are clearly not. These changes will affect the existing game and the only thing they have in common with the expansion is that you are planning on dropping them the same day.

Or they’re part of the expansion that is being added to the game because of the expansion, but people are going to get them for free.

Was that an attempt at literal double-speak?

misterdevious.6482:

Vayne.8563:

misterdevious.6482:

“Hello, my name is Tyler Bearce, and I’m here to talk about a significant change we’re making to the way that you’ll upgrade your World vs. World objectives in the Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns™ expansion. "

Please… please… please. Stop saying that things are in the Expansion when they are clearly not. These changes will affect the existing game and the only thing they have in common with the expansion is that you are planning on dropping them the same day.

Or they’re part of the expansion that is being added to the game because of the expansion, but people are going to get them for free.

Was that an attempt at literal double-speak?

No.

Anet worked on a lot of content, which they weren’t sure they were going to deliver as part of an expansion or through the living story. They decided to go with an expansion, from what I gather, fairly late. They were working on all these projects.

If you want to be pedantic and say they’re not part of the expansion because everyone gets them, that’s fine. But it’s just as fine to say that they were created as part of the expansion and since they affect areas of the game that they can’t lock people out of, everyone will get them free.

It’s okay to be pedantic. But this isn’t really some slate of hand. The expansion is redesigning several systems in the game, some of which will be available to people who don’t buy it. I’m not sure why you see a problem there.

The implication is that you will need the expansion to see these changes, and you end up with threads like this asking if they will need the expansion for changes x, y, and z. This is not the first thread like this.

misterdevious.6482:

The implication is that you will need the expansion to see these changes, and you end up with threads like this asking if they will need the expansion for changes x, y, and z. This is not the first thread like this.

You’ll need the expansion to get elite specializations, but not specializations. Those who play the game will likely buy the expansion.

It’s like going to see the first Lord of the Rings movie and stopping there. There’s no real point to it.

Unless you’re so broke you absolutely can’t buy the expansion (and I can’t imagine very many people are in that situation), it’s not going to be an issue. It’s an issue for the six guys that posted about it sure. But realistically speaking, just about everyone is going to buy the expansion.

Vayne.8563:

misterdevious.6482:

The implication is that you will need the expansion to see these changes, and you end up with threads like this asking if they will need the expansion for changes x, y, and z. This is not the first thread like this.

You’ll need the expansion to get elite specializations, but not specializations. Those who play the game will likely buy the expansion.

It’s like going to see the first Lord of the Rings movie and stopping there. There’s no real point to it.

Unless you’re so broke you absolutely can’t buy the expansion (and I can’t imagine very many people are in that situation), it’s not going to be an issue. It’s an issue for the six guys that posted about it sure. But realistically speaking, just about everyone is going to buy the expansion.

That has nothing to do with it.

It’s simply about the phrasing and the fact that people create useless threads because of it.

It says “in the Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns™ expansion” while it should be something like “in Guild Wars 2 when the Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns™ expansion releases”

Ralanost.8913:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Pretty much all games you buy have expansions you buy separately. If you buy WoW for example, you have to buy each expansion to get the full game.

Not at all. Lots of older games that have a multitude of expansions start including previous expansions with the base product. I believe everything up to Mists of Pandaria is included with the base World of Warcraft game at the moment, so to get into the new content all you have to do is buy the base game and the current expansion. EQ did that as well after a while since they have like 20 expansions at this point.

well if you wait 10 years. and 5 more expansion from Anet, I’m sure Anet will do the same thing.

Just like you can play GW2 for 10$ after 3 years when it is on sale.

op you so innocent
/incert words

Here is what you get without the expansion as a first option.
You can type /sit, /sleep, /beckon, /cry, /kneel, point, /ponder, /shrug, /threaten, or wave as everyone you ever knew suddenly disappear in front of your eyes on their way to a better time into "Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns.
Second option you can stop your whining and type /father can I please get Heart of Thorns for my birthday?
Sure thing there you go have fun.
If you don’t have a father ask mom.
If you ran out of options get a job.
Remember when all options have run out you can always go back to option 1 or visit a friend that has it and type / Hey Jack can I play one of your characters while you have lunch?
Did I mention the game is free if you work at Anet?
Always remember life is like an RPG.
You can improve on yourself, get a new profession buy a new armor or buy a new outfit at Wallmart.
Quit Guild Wars 2 and get a life.
Better yet ignore this whole forum thing it’s depressing, log in and realize you don’t need a life and go play GW 2 in a new Guild if need be and make some new virtual friends.
Always remember you’re the master of your own destiny.

sounds like pay to win.
When the expansion comes out, I’m going to look around at new MMOs made in the last few years.

Jabberwock.5987:

sounds like pay to win.
When the expansion comes out, I’m going to look around at new MMOs made in the last few years.

First off, there’s been numerous threads proving that adding an expansion (GW2’s as well) is not Pay2Win. It’s intellectually dishonest to say it is or, at the very least, shows a lack of understanding of what Pay2Win actually means.

Secondly, any MMO with expansion content will have a similar (if not the same) process as GW2. If you enjoy GW2, and are willing to buy a whole new game for the same price or more as the GW2 expansion, a new game that you currently have 0 progress or achievements in, all because you don’t like the concept of expansions, I must question your motives. Is it the principle? Unless you don’t actually like GW2, this doesn’t make much sense.

Jabberwock.5987:

sounds like pay to win.
When the expansion comes out, I’m going to look around at new MMOs made in the last few years.

Good luck finding a buy to play like Guild Wars 2 or a subscription game that doesn’t charge for expansions (crazy isn’t ’it, how the Devs want to be paid for their work).

WoW is a terrible example to compare expansions to because their model has always been to basically abandon all previous content and invalidate old equipment with each expansion.

ANet had enough of an uproar when they added ascended equipment (which is barely an upgrade and account bound rather than character bound), they aren’t going to go the WoW path. No, ANet’s challenge is to take their game model and put in actual challenging PvE content that can’t all be done in berserker gear while invigorating sPvP and WvW options.

People really need to learn what “pay to win” actually means. Most game expansions add better gear and more levels creating a very real power gap between players who do and do not have the expansion to the point where they cannot even play together – yet you consider just being given more options pay to win? There will still be plenty of builds that eschew the elite specs in favor of a different 3rd spec.

Jabberwock.5987:

sounds like pay to win.
When the expansion comes out, I’m going to look around at new MMOs made in the last few years.

Please do AND tell if you find any MMO that is less pay to win then GW2
Also you might want to reconsider the term pay to win.

GW2 is buy to play. That means that if you want to play certain content, you have to buy it. That has nothing to do with pay to win.

GW2 doesn’t charge monthly fees, it doesn’t put items in the cashstore that you need to buy to be any good in the game (and you can actually get everything in the cashstore without spending any money at all). The game releases most content updates totally for free. They only charge you for the core game and expansions. If you choose not to buy the expansion then you will have some disadvantages, but only in PvP formats (e.g. noet having access to specialisations). And obviously you can’t play the content in the expansionpack

That is by far the least pay to win option on the market.

obviously, if you don’t buy something, you can’t play, so then you also can’t win.

Dastion.3106:

WoW is a terrible example to compare expansions to because their model has always been to basically abandon all previous content and invalidate old equipment with each expansion.

ANet had enough of an uproar when they added ascended equipment (which is barely an upgrade and account bound rather than character bound), they aren’t going to go the WoW path. No, ANet’s challenge is to take their game model and put in actual challenging PvE content that can’t all be done in berserker gear while invigorating sPvP and WvW options.

People really need to learn what “pay to win” actually means. Most game expansions add better gear and more levels creating a very real power gap between players who do and do not have the expansion to the point where they cannot even play together – yet you consider just being given more options pay to win? There will still be plenty of builds that eschew the elite specs in favor of a different 3rd spec.

The concept of an expansion being something you have to pay for is similar enough to use WoW as a comparison. Yes, Anet doesn’t follow the same pattern of gear tier and content gating, but that’s not what being discussed. Only the general concept being applied.

Technically no MMO I can think of is similar to GW2 in the no level cap, no new gear tier method. So there isn’t anything to compare it to in that respect. The closest thing we could compare to would be the addition of EotN to GW1. Again, that’s not actually what’s being discussed. But either way its the same basic concept – new content that requires purchase in order to play it.

I agree, people really need to learn what “pay to win” actually means. GW2 is no where even remotely close.