Guild Wars 2

like everyone else i was expecting HoT to be the new expansion everyone was looking for but I feel like after the cloud goes away and now from a different perspective
was it worth 40 euro? i don’t know.
we got some awsome speciallization (that i really liked)
we got some nice meta events but that’s not enough
a story that is easy to finish
in return anet destroyed any reason to go for any of the existing dungeons
so fractals became the new thing but no new fractal just all the same thing jsut now we can decide to take 3 times swamp and be over with it all
droprates are crap and gw2 developers rightly decided not to make it a gear rush game
but is that all? meta events are nice and all but they get unrewarding/boring after a while. please. we don’t need or want to glide over tyria we want something interesting,hard and fun to do ty.

You can just stop playing.

Many people, including me play GW2 for it’s value. Other mmorpg have subscription, premium, power creep Pay to win.

If you think GW2 is too expensive, just don’t play.

I don’t think GW2 is a expensive mmorpg. But if you think you can get your value else where in other mmorpg or other type of game, feel free to go play other game.

Many of us warned on this forum about the scam that represented this dlc. Given the flop in all areas of the game and the poor sales, many chose to not buy it and to quit playing gw2.

GW2 is definitely worth what I paid for and I did not get the super, duper one, just the middle one. Got money back on the basic game after I downloaded and installed the HoT expansion, supper fun to actually look through my achievements and see which ones I can go complete.

Much cheaper than movies for 2 people for a month. I don’t always purchase anything, but once in a while I do pick up gems…which I then can convert to gold if I so desire. However, I usually have enough loot to sell that I can build up my bank account quite nicely and with little effort.

I am also a “shiny hunter” and grab everything in sight I can: plants, trees, metal, mobs, you get the picture.

But the game is extremely entertaining for me. I am not a hard core player but one of the casuals. I do quite well because I also belong to a very large and active guild. We do weekly events and have a lot of fun laughing in mumble about the silly jokes and one liners everyone tends to throw out during these sessions.

But as an old saying goes: “you get out of it what you put into it.”

Marcus Aurelius.1374:

like everyone else i was expecting HoT to be the new expansion everyone was looking for but I feel like after the cloud goes away and now from a different perspective
was it worth 40 euro? i don’t know.
we got some awsome speciallization (that i really liked)
we got some nice meta events but that’s not enough
a story that is easy to finish
in return anet destroyed any reason to go for any of the existing dungeons
so fractals became the new thing but no new fractal just all the same thing jsut now we can decide to take 3 times swamp and be over with it all
droprates are crap and gw2 developers rightly decided not to make it a gear rush game
but is that all? meta events are nice and all but they get unrewarding/boring after a while. please. we don’t need or want to glide over tyria we want something interesting,hard and fun to do ty.

I don’t understand why you feel you’ve been cheated, if you got a bunch of stuff you like a lot.

Also, ANet only changed one reason to do dungeons: the coin reward (it was reduced, not removed), so if people aren’t doing dungeons now, it means they really only did them for the easy gold. Fractals might not have any new ones, but neither do dungeons, so moving much of the gold reward to fotm should be a wash.

I do understand that you aren’t enjoying all the changes (I don’t like many of them myself), but that’s hardly an example of being cheated. At most you could say, this update wasn’t as great a value as the original game. Disappointing? Sure. A waste of your money? The rest of the original post suggests otherwise.

Simzani.4318:

Many of us warned on this forum about the scam that represented this dlc. Given the flop in all areas of the game and the poor sales, many chose to not buy it and to quit playing gw2.

It’s not a scam. All information was available weeks before the expansion went live. Those that pre-ordered well before then made the choice to purchase based on what information they had at the time. If what the expansion contained was worth the price to them then they bought it. If not, they didn’t. Nobody was forced or tricked into buying the expansion.

There’s also not enough information to call the expansion a flop or to say if there have been poor sales. The earliest that we would know would be in about two weeks.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Marcus Aurelius.1374:

like everyone else i was expecting HoT to be the new expansion everyone was looking for but I feel like after the cloud goes away and now from a different perspective
was it worth 40 euro? i don’t know.
we got some awsome speciallization (that i really liked)
we got some nice meta events but that’s not enough
a story that is easy to finish
in return anet destroyed any reason to go for any of the existing dungeons
so fractals became the new thing but no new fractal just all the same thing jsut now we can decide to take 3 times swamp and be over with it all
droprates are crap and gw2 developers rightly decided not to make it a gear rush game
but is that all? meta events are nice and all but they get unrewarding/boring after a while. please. we don’t need or want to glide over tyria we want something interesting,hard and fun to do ty.

I don’t understand why you feel you’ve been cheated, if you got a bunch of stuff you like a lot.

Also, ANet only changed one reason to do dungeons: the coin reward (it was reduced, not removed), so if people aren’t doing dungeons now, it means they really only did them for the easy gold. Fractals might not have any new ones, but neither do dungeons, so moving much of the gold reward to fotm should be a wash.

I do understand that you aren’t enjoying all the changes (I don’t like many of them myself), but that’s hardly an example of being cheated. At most you could say, this update wasn’t as great a value as the original game. Disappointing? Sure. A waste of your money? The rest of the original post suggests otherwise.

people treat the new changes from diffferent perspective i’ve been playing gw2 for 3 years and i even took short breaks and all gw2core has great value, HoT isn’t because i’m expecting way more from anet than just that. ofc some people will enjoy this but ask yourself how many players returned to gw2 after hot launch? pretty good, how many of them still ingame? not many. the dungeons were a goldmine that’s true and ppl did them for their benifit including myself but let’s say this, now let’s assume a new player wanna experience arah path 4, a path that already didn’t had enough participants , s/he might have a difficulties finding a group. there’s more to it. they tried to tune down economy which was stable and proper and when i look to gw1 expansion imo they offered way more than what HoT gave us. they chose to price
4 maps ,4 meta events, glider, 1 raid and speciallizations for 40euro-100euro. proportional to the amount of work invested? i feel not.

laokoko.7403:

You can just stop playing.

Many people, including me play GW2 for it’s value. Other mmorpg have subscription, premium, power creep Pay to win.

If you think GW2 is too expensive, just don’t play.

I don’t think GW2 is a expensive mmorpg. But if you think you can get your value else where in other mmorpg or other type of game, feel free to go play other game.

i did try other games each one has strong points and weak points like gw2.
gw2 core has great value ,. hot simply doesn’t if i’m asking myself this question so soon.. i’ve checked and you’re an old player like me. so for 3 years doing the same thing i hoped for some fresh content, how many times can you kill modremoth and feel “wow this is an awsome event”? or ab or any of the others…

Simzani.4318:

Many of us warned on this forum about the scam that represented this dlc. Given the flop in all areas of the game and the poor sales, many chose to not buy it and to quit playing gw2.

Clearly the forums are still providing value.

I don’t get the complaint … almost every MMO you will play will have things you like and don’t so if you feel cheated because of the few you don’t, MMO’s are clearly not your bag. Furthermore, from how you describe it, it does sound to me like you got your value from HoT; a pay structure like this game is some of the cheapest entertainment you can have and many of the features do cross over to core game.

Remember, just like the core game, there is more to come with your initial purchase of HoT.

Simzani.4318:

Many of us warned on this forum about the scam that represented this dlc. Given the flop in all areas of the game and the poor sales, many chose to not buy it and to quit playing gw2.

I read your posts from the past 3 years, there is only complaining, negativity and false accusations. What the kitten are you doing here? Just leave the game for good for kitten’s sake…

Players were promised raids and legendary armor with HoT. None of these came with HoT. It was a blatant lie. A single wing was released, but as far as I know, the 50$ spent didn’t say “50$ season pass for all content we’ll be releasing over the period of a year”.
A single new arena was released. There were 45 pvp maps in the first Guild Wars.
Two new armor sets were introduced.

No it isn’t worth $50, you’re not mistaken. The standards are just low.

Marcus Aurelius.1374:

like everyone else i was expecting HoT to be the new expansion everyone was looking for but I feel like after the cloud goes away and now from a different perspective
was it worth 40 euro? i don’t know.
we got some awsome speciallization (that i really liked)
we got some nice meta events but that’s not enough
a story that is easy to finish
in return anet destroyed any reason to go for any of the existing dungeons
so fractals became the new thing but no new fractal just all the same thing jsut now we can decide to take 3 times swamp and be over with it all
droprates are crap and gw2 developers rightly decided not to make it a gear rush game
but is that all? meta events are nice and all but they get unrewarding/boring after a while. please. we don’t need or want to glide over tyria we want something interesting,hard and fun to do ty.

You payed for a season DLC pass. The only way we will truly know if it was worth the money is when the content stops in the build up for the next Season DLC pass, sorry I mean expansion.

These threads are embarrassing.

Justine.6351:

These threads are embarrassing.

Thank you for your valuable point of view on this topic.

Calydro.7268:

Players were promised raids and legendary armor with HoT. None of these came with HoT. It was a blatant lie. A single wing was released, but as far as I know, the 50$ spent didn’t say “50$ season pass for all content we’ll be releasing over the period of a year”.
A single new arena was released. There were 45 pvp maps in the first Guild Wars.
Two new armor sets were introduced.

No it isn’t worth $50, you’re not mistaken. The standards are just low.

Welcome to MMO’s where every expansion is the equivalent to a Seasons Pass.

Blindfoldedchaos.9265:

Calydro.7268:

Players were promised raids and legendary armor with HoT. None of these came with HoT. It was a blatant lie. A single wing was released, but as far as I know, the 50$ spent didn’t say “50$ season pass for all content we’ll be releasing over the period of a year”.
A single new arena was released. There were 45 pvp maps in the first Guild Wars.
Two new armor sets were introduced.

No it isn’t worth $50, you’re not mistaken. The standards are just low.

Welcome to MMO’s where every expansion is the equivalent to a Seasons Pass.

I remember being told before release that raids would NOT be coming at launch and that when they did come we would get a single wing. Legendary armor I can’t say one way or another, but before launch I knew just want to expect with raids.

Maybe people need to a pay more attention.

We were also told they weren’t going to bring gliding to central tyria and they did and we weren’t told about the redone shatterer fight, so that’s already two things that we didn’t know were coming.

And we know Living Story Season 3 is planned for later this year, so in fact we are getting more than what was in the box, which I was saying since before the product launched. It is more akin to a season pass than just a product.

Anyone who’s been around since day 1 should have known this. Anyone knew could have found it out pretty easily.

Marcus Aurelius.1374:

like everyone else i was expecting HoT to be the new expansion everyone was looking for but I feel like after the cloud goes away and now from a different perspective was it worth 40 euro? i don’t know.

For me the money spent was worth it. I had a lot of hours fun while playing in the first month.

Marcus Aurelius.1374:

we don’t need or want to glide over tyria we want something interesting,hard and fun to do ty.

speak for yourself. I do like gliding in tyria.

Blindfoldedchaos.9265:

Calydro.7268:

Players were promised raids and legendary armor with HoT. None of these came with HoT. It was a blatant lie. A single wing was released, but as far as I know, the 50$ spent didn’t say “50$ season pass for all content we’ll be releasing over the period of a year”.
A single new arena was released. There were 45 pvp maps in the first Guild Wars.
Two new armor sets were introduced.

No it isn’t worth $50, you’re not mistaken. The standards are just low.

Welcome to MMO’s where every expansion is the equivalent to a Seasons Pass.

Is that really a bad thing though?

MMOs are getting more complex, more detailed and that means they require more time to build. Just compare Gw1 with Gw2… old zones had a handful of models, new zones have 100s takes time and man power to build. Even the terrain itself, its one thing to have a game with plain terrain thats essentially automatically generated by a heatmap denoting elevation to zones we have in Heart of Thorns were everything needs to be created manually. We know for sure work on Heart of Thorns started at least 2 years prior to launch (source: Maclaine stated on Guild Chat he started working on HoT soundtrack 2 years ago and probably the sountrack wasnt the first thing they worked on just saying) All things being equal we’ll get another 2 years of free content before the next expansion hits.

Free content releases after an expansion hits does sound exactly like a season pass but whats the alternative? wait out those extra 2 years until Anet finish all the content and release it all at once? And whats the advantage? you’re still paying the same amount for the same exact amount of content, is getting it all at once really better then getting it in chunks?

People keep comparing Gw2 with Gw1. Only they just compare raw numbers and ignore all the details. Sure any Gw1 expansion had a ton more maps, does anyone really think it takes the same amount of time to build a Gw1 map as it must have taken to build one of the new maps? How about content wise? Gw1 campaigns/expansion didnt change the game that drastically. They didnt introduce things like Gliding, Add new mechanics to existent professions or even provide new game types like Adventures. Does anyone here thing these things come easy? Flip as switch or something? To implement something like gliding you’d need to do major changes to the engine and that also means major testing. This is a double edged sword of course, major changes to the engine means less time to develop content but at the same time its a one time cost and it allows for a great variety of content in the future.

Marcus Aurelius.1374:

ofc some people will enjoy this but ask yourself how many players returned to gw2 after hot launch? pretty good, how many of them still ingame? not many.

In every expansion of every game there will be players returning to the game when an expansion hits and there will be players leaving the game when they have “finished” the expansion.

How much players will that be in GW2 exactly and do those numbers qualify for “success” or “failure”? Neither you nor I know the numbers. So it is only a speculation about the amount of players based on personal bias.

I think 50€ is exactly what this expansion is worth of. I was always counting 4 maps + living world 3 = 50€. But I too feel cheated by how ArenaNet design their raids which exclude many professions, and by legendary armor and backpack – backpack should had been in game from the start and at least one full piece of legendary armor too (1 piece per each wing or 2 pieces as I heard the full raid is on 3 parts). It feels extremely badly designed and those people probably play WoW too much.

I think that instead of simply doing the simplest thing possible (complain)
why not take the time to invest in actually helping people, perhaps create a youtube channel, or a wiki, this just seems to be another trolling, requesting admin to lock / delete.

Galen Grey.4709:

Blindfoldedchaos.9265:

Calydro.7268:

Players were promised raids and legendary armor with HoT. None of these came with HoT. It was a blatant lie. A single wing was released, but as far as I know, the 50$ spent didn’t say “50$ season pass for all content we’ll be releasing over the period of a year”.
A single new arena was released. There were 45 pvp maps in the first Guild Wars.
Two new armor sets were introduced.

No it isn’t worth $50, you’re not mistaken. The standards are just low.

Welcome to MMO’s where every expansion is the equivalent to a Seasons Pass.

Is that really a bad thing though?

MMOs are getting more complex, more detailed and that means they require more time to build. Just compare Gw1 with Gw2… old zones had a handful of models, new zones have 100s takes time and man power to build. Even the terrain itself, its one thing to have a game with plain terrain thats essentially automatically generated by a heatmap denoting elevation to zones we have in Heart of Thorns were everything needs to be created manually. We know for sure work on Heart of Thorns started at least 2 years prior to launch (source: Maclaine stated on Guild Chat he started working on HoT soundtrack 2 years ago and probably the sountrack wasnt the first thing they worked on just saying) All things being equal we’ll get another 2 years of free content before the next expansion hits.

Free content releases after an expansion hits does sound exactly like a season pass but whats the alternative? wait out those extra 2 years until Anet finish all the content and release it all at once? And whats the advantage? you’re still paying the same amount for the same exact amount of content, is getting it all at once really better then getting it in chunks?

People keep comparing Gw2 with Gw1. Only they just compare raw numbers and ignore all the details. Sure any Gw1 expansion had a ton more maps, does anyone really think it takes the same amount of time to build a Gw1 map as it must have taken to build one of the new maps? How about content wise? Gw1 campaigns/expansion didnt change the game that drastically. They didnt introduce things like Gliding, Add new mechanics to existent professions or even provide new game types like Adventures. Does anyone here thing these things come easy? Flip as switch or something? To implement something like gliding you’d need to do major changes to the engine and that also means major testing. This is a double edged sword of course, major changes to the engine means less time to develop content but at the same time its a one time cost and it allows for a great variety of content in the future.

Yes, its a bad thing. Developers don’t release things in small bundles like this because they have to, they do it to keep players around for longer. I’ve explained this in an earlier post— turning a player into a long term investment is now the business model for several developers, a trendy flaw that NCsoft failed to deviate from, like they did with most other MMO conventions (thankful for that). Content is withheld that otherwise 10 years ago would have come with the box. This keeps players looking ahead, because they want the legendary armor they’ve been lead to grind for months.

You can obfuscate their intentions all day long, but its not out of a lack of time or resources that we have a season pass instead of an expansion, it is solely the result of a greedy business model.

Calydro.7268:

Galen Grey.4709:

Blindfoldedchaos.9265:

Calydro.7268:

Players were promised raids and legendary armor with HoT. None of these came with HoT. It was a blatant lie. A single wing was released, but as far as I know, the 50$ spent didn’t say “50$ season pass for all content we’ll be releasing over the period of a year”.
A single new arena was released. There were 45 pvp maps in the first Guild Wars.
Two new armor sets were introduced.

No it isn’t worth $50, you’re not mistaken. The standards are just low.

Welcome to MMO’s where every expansion is the equivalent to a Seasons Pass.

Is that really a bad thing though?

MMOs are getting more complex, more detailed and that means they require more time to build. Just compare Gw1 with Gw2… old zones had a handful of models, new zones have 100s takes time and man power to build. Even the terrain itself, its one thing to have a game with plain terrain thats essentially automatically generated by a heatmap denoting elevation to zones we have in Heart of Thorns were everything needs to be created manually. We know for sure work on Heart of Thorns started at least 2 years prior to launch (source: Maclaine stated on Guild Chat he started working on HoT soundtrack 2 years ago and probably the sountrack wasnt the first thing they worked on just saying) All things being equal we’ll get another 2 years of free content before the next expansion hits.

Free content releases after an expansion hits does sound exactly like a season pass but whats the alternative? wait out those extra 2 years until Anet finish all the content and release it all at once? And whats the advantage? you’re still paying the same amount for the same exact amount of content, is getting it all at once really better then getting it in chunks?

People keep comparing Gw2 with Gw1. Only they just compare raw numbers and ignore all the details. Sure any Gw1 expansion had a ton more maps, does anyone really think it takes the same amount of time to build a Gw1 map as it must have taken to build one of the new maps? How about content wise? Gw1 campaigns/expansion didnt change the game that drastically. They didnt introduce things like Gliding, Add new mechanics to existent professions or even provide new game types like Adventures. Does anyone here thing these things come easy? Flip as switch or something? To implement something like gliding you’d need to do major changes to the engine and that also means major testing. This is a double edged sword of course, major changes to the engine means less time to develop content but at the same time its a one time cost and it allows for a great variety of content in the future.

Yes, its a bad thing. Developers don’t release things in small bundles like this because they have to, they do it to keep players around for longer. I’ve explained this in an earlier post— turning a player into a long term investment is now the business model for several developers, a trendy flaw that NCsoft failed to deviate from, like they did with most other MMO conventions (thankful for that). Content is withheld that otherwise 10 years ago would have come with the box. This keeps players looking ahead, because they want the legendary armor they’ve been lead to grind for months.

You can obfuscate their intentions all day long, but its not out of a lack of time or resources that we have a season pass instead of an expansion, it is solely the result of a greedy business model.

It may be the result of a business model, but it’s hardly the result of a greedy one.

Unless you seriously believe that a company can make content faster than people can beat content, there’s nothing about this system that’s greedy. It’s called being competitive.

If Anet gave everything up front. Everything they could. Every single thing they had ready at the moment it was ready, and then people burned through it, they’d leave and go to other games that were trickling out their content keeping people playing.

It’s the job of a company like Anet to keep people playing their product. That’s not greed. That’s like saying me advertising my shop is greed because I want people in my store. Calling it greed doesn’t make it greed.

This is a market shift and if you want to be in the market you have to play by the market rules. You can’t do your own thing and ignore the market, because you will be crushed.

Anet has already tried deviating from the market when they came out with a game that has no end game gear that you had to work for. It cost them and they made a change to the game.

You can call that greedy but it’s really just survival.

Five years in this industry is a very long time and what games could do back then, they can’t do now. Voice acting is far more expensive now than it’s ever been. Game developers are paid more. It’s a different market.

Calling it greedy is like saying a subscription company is greedy for charging a sub. It’s just their business model.

Calydro.7268:

Yes, its a bad thing. Developers don’t release things in small bundles like this because they have to, they do it to keep players around for longer. I’ve explained this in an earlier post— turning a player into a long term investment is now the business model for several developers, a trendy flaw that NCsoft failed to deviate from, like they did with most other MMO conventions (thankful for that). Content is withheld that otherwise 10 years ago would have come with the box. This keeps players looking ahead, because they want the legendary armor they’ve been lead to grind for months.

You can obfuscate their intentions all day long, but its not out of a lack of time or resources that we have a season pass instead of an expansion, it is solely the result of a greedy business model.

I disagree. having people pay in advanced for content doesnt keep them around. Case in point, check the forums / reddit. You will find many posts especially around the time HoT launched of people claiming to have quit soon after launch and are thinking of coming back. With the core game purchase price they also got 3 years of free content but that didnt keep them around did it?

I even more strongly disagree with greedy business model. Look at what most other b2p MMOs do. They still cut their content in chunks, because it takes X amount of time to develop or on purpose is something thats debatable fine… but what they do is sell that content for “cheap” at regular intervals. $10 every quarter is most common. Well $10 per quarter for 3 years is $120 more then twice what Anet charged for the same period of time. How is that better?

Besides which modern MMO releases an expansion more often then 2 years?

Additionally were they really less greedy before? You had to pay Box Fee and Subscription. Sure content was less content and quicker to develop and you had an expansion every year which also carried a box fee. 2 years of your mmo back then would end up costing $480 are you really sure they were less greedy?

Vayne.8563:

Calydro.7268:

Galen Grey.4709:

Blindfoldedchaos.9265:

Calydro.7268:

Players were promised raids and legendary armor with HoT. None of these came with HoT. It was a blatant lie. A single wing was released, but as far as I know, the 50$ spent didn’t say “50$ season pass for all content we’ll be releasing over the period of a year”.
A single new arena was released. There were 45 pvp maps in the first Guild Wars.
Two new armor sets were introduced.

No it isn’t worth $50, you’re not mistaken. The standards are just low.

Welcome to MMO’s where every expansion is the equivalent to a Seasons Pass.

Is that really a bad thing though?

MMOs are getting more complex, more detailed and that means they require more time to build. Just compare Gw1 with Gw2… old zones had a handful of models, new zones have 100s takes time and man power to build. Even the terrain itself, its one thing to have a game with plain terrain thats essentially automatically generated by a heatmap denoting elevation to zones we have in Heart of Thorns were everything needs to be created manually. We know for sure work on Heart of Thorns started at least 2 years prior to launch (source: Maclaine stated on Guild Chat he started working on HoT soundtrack 2 years ago and probably the sountrack wasnt the first thing they worked on just saying) All things being equal we’ll get another 2 years of free content before the next expansion hits.

Free content releases after an expansion hits does sound exactly like a season pass but whats the alternative? wait out those extra 2 years until Anet finish all the content and release it all at once? And whats the advantage? you’re still paying the same amount for the same exact amount of content, is getting it all at once really better then getting it in chunks?

People keep comparing Gw2 with Gw1. Only they just compare raw numbers and ignore all the details. Sure any Gw1 expansion had a ton more maps, does anyone really think it takes the same amount of time to build a Gw1 map as it must have taken to build one of the new maps? How about content wise? Gw1 campaigns/expansion didnt change the game that drastically. They didnt introduce things like Gliding, Add new mechanics to existent professions or even provide new game types like Adventures. Does anyone here thing these things come easy? Flip as switch or something? To implement something like gliding you’d need to do major changes to the engine and that also means major testing. This is a double edged sword of course, major changes to the engine means less time to develop content but at the same time its a one time cost and it allows for a great variety of content in the future.

Yes, its a bad thing. Developers don’t release things in small bundles like this because they have to, they do it to keep players around for longer. I’ve explained this in an earlier post— turning a player into a long term investment is now the business model for several developers, a trendy flaw that NCsoft failed to deviate from, like they did with most other MMO conventions (thankful for that). Content is withheld that otherwise 10 years ago would have come with the box. This keeps players looking ahead, because they want the legendary armor they’ve been lead to grind for months.

You can obfuscate their intentions all day long, but its not out of a lack of time or resources that we have a season pass instead of an expansion, it is solely the result of a greedy business model.

It may be the result of a business model, but it’s hardly the result of a greedy one.

Unless you seriously believe that a company can make content faster than people can beat content, there’s nothing about this system that’s greedy. It’s called being competitive.

If Anet gave everything up front. Everything they could. Every single thing they had ready at the moment it was ready, and then people burned through it, they’d leave and go to other games that were trickling out their content keeping people playing.

They did it with the original Guild Wars. Every console game did it. Every MMO did it at one point, until developers discovered how to coaxingly milk players. I’m not sure why you’re advocating this new behavior.

Galen Grey.4709:

Calydro.7268:

Yes, its a bad thing. Developers don’t release things in small bundles like this because they have to, they do it to keep players around for longer. I’ve explained this in an earlier post— turning a player into a long term investment is now the business model for several developers, a trendy flaw that NCsoft failed to deviate from, like they did with most other MMO conventions (thankful for that). Content is withheld that otherwise 10 years ago would have come with the box. This keeps players looking ahead, because they want the legendary armor they’ve been lead to grind for months.

You can obfuscate their intentions all day long, but its not out of a lack of time or resources that we have a season pass instead of an expansion, it is solely the result of a greedy business model.

I disagree. having people pay in advanced for content doesnt keep them around. Case in point, check the forums / reddit. You will find many posts especially around the time HoT launched of people claiming to have quit soon after launch and are thinking of coming back. With the core game purchase price they also got 3 years of free content but that didnt keep them around did it?

I even more strongly disagree with greedy business model. Look at what most other b2p MMOs do. They still cut their content in chunks, because it takes X amount of time to develop or on purpose is something thats debatable fine… but what they do is sell that content for “cheap” at regular intervals. $10 every quarter is most common. Well $10 per quarter for 3 years is $120 more then twice what Anet charged for the same period of time. How is that better?

Besides which modern MMO releases an expansion more often then 2 years?

Additionally were they really less greedy before? You had to pay Box Fee and Subscription. Sure content was less content and quicker to develop and you had an expansion every year which also carried a box fee. 2 years of your mmo back then would end up costing $480 are you really sure they were less greedy?

You’re equivocating. System A is bad but so Is System B, but System A is worse therefore we should exonerate System B.

I laid out the facets of the the game where the greed and underhandedness is evident. You’ve pointed me to prior games that also have a greedy model. Does that nullify the points I’ve made? does it exonerate A-net? Guild Wars 2 isn’t the first game to milk its players, there have been many before and will be many after. . .

Calydro.7268:

Vayne.8563:

Calydro.7268:

Galen Grey.4709:

Blindfoldedchaos.9265:

Calydro.7268:

Players were promised raids and legendary armor with HoT. None of these came with HoT. It was a blatant lie. A single wing was released, but as far as I know, the 50$ spent didn’t say “50$ season pass for all content we’ll be releasing over the period of a year”.
A single new arena was released. There were 45 pvp maps in the first Guild Wars.
Two new armor sets were introduced.

No it isn’t worth $50, you’re not mistaken. The standards are just low.

Welcome to MMO’s where every expansion is the equivalent to a Seasons Pass.

Is that really a bad thing though?

MMOs are getting more complex, more detailed and that means they require more time to build. Just compare Gw1 with Gw2… old zones had a handful of models, new zones have 100s takes time and man power to build. Even the terrain itself, its one thing to have a game with plain terrain thats essentially automatically generated by a heatmap denoting elevation to zones we have in Heart of Thorns were everything needs to be created manually. We know for sure work on Heart of Thorns started at least 2 years prior to launch (source: Maclaine stated on Guild Chat he started working on HoT soundtrack 2 years ago and probably the sountrack wasnt the first thing they worked on just saying) All things being equal we’ll get another 2 years of free content before the next expansion hits.

Free content releases after an expansion hits does sound exactly like a season pass but whats the alternative? wait out those extra 2 years until Anet finish all the content and release it all at once? And whats the advantage? you’re still paying the same amount for the same exact amount of content, is getting it all at once really better then getting it in chunks?

People keep comparing Gw2 with Gw1. Only they just compare raw numbers and ignore all the details. Sure any Gw1 expansion had a ton more maps, does anyone really think it takes the same amount of time to build a Gw1 map as it must have taken to build one of the new maps? How about content wise? Gw1 campaigns/expansion didnt change the game that drastically. They didnt introduce things like Gliding, Add new mechanics to existent professions or even provide new game types like Adventures. Does anyone here thing these things come easy? Flip as switch or something? To implement something like gliding you’d need to do major changes to the engine and that also means major testing. This is a double edged sword of course, major changes to the engine means less time to develop content but at the same time its a one time cost and it allows for a great variety of content in the future.

Yes, its a bad thing. Developers don’t release things in small bundles like this because they have to, they do it to keep players around for longer. I’ve explained this in an earlier post— turning a player into a long term investment is now the business model for several developers, a trendy flaw that NCsoft failed to deviate from, like they did with most other MMO conventions (thankful for that). Content is withheld that otherwise 10 years ago would have come with the box. This keeps players looking ahead, because they want the legendary armor they’ve been lead to grind for months.

You can obfuscate their intentions all day long, but its not out of a lack of time or resources that we have a season pass instead of an expansion, it is solely the result of a greedy business model.

It may be the result of a business model, but it’s hardly the result of a greedy one.

Unless you seriously believe that a company can make content faster than people can beat content, there’s nothing about this system that’s greedy. It’s called being competitive.

If Anet gave everything up front. Everything they could. Every single thing they had ready at the moment it was ready, and then people burned through it, they’d leave and go to other games that were trickling out their content keeping people playing.

They did it with the original Guild Wars. Every console game did it. Every MMO did it at one point, until developers discovered how to coaxingly milk players. I’m not sure why you’re advocating this new behavior.

Really? They did it with the original Guild Wars a very very long time ago. The last Guild Wars 1 product came out 8 years ago, and at the time Guild Wars 1 was pretty much the only free to play multiplayer fantasy game and it still wasn’t an MMO.

Cut to today, which is a completely different market.

Every console game does what? Has 20 guys, maybe 30, makes the game and sells it? Sure. Makes a console game for 5 years with 300 devs? Not even close. How can anyone compare a console game with an MMO.

And many console games today have downloadable content you can buy for it anyway, piecemeal, so even that’s no longer true.

But tell me how long does the average console game take to make and how many people work on it? How many copies does that game have to sell to break even? How many people continue to work on that same game once it ships.

I don’t see why you’d compare this to a console game or talk about what happened 8 years ago in an industry that has changed. Why am I condoning this behavior? Because I don’t see it as bad behavior. I’m not even sure why you do.

Calydro.7268:

Vayne.8563:

Calydro.7268:

Galen Grey.4709:

Blindfoldedchaos.9265:

Calydro.7268:

Players were promised raids and legendary armor with HoT. None of these came with HoT. It was a blatant lie. A single wing was released, but as far as I know, the 50$ spent didn’t say “50$ season pass for all content we’ll be releasing over the period of a year”.
A single new arena was released. There were 45 pvp maps in the first Guild Wars.
Two new armor sets were introduced.

No it isn’t worth $50, you’re not mistaken. The standards are just low.

Welcome to MMO’s where every expansion is the equivalent to a Seasons Pass.

Is that really a bad thing though?

MMOs are getting more complex, more detailed and that means they require more time to build. Just compare Gw1 with Gw2… old zones had a handful of models, new zones have 100s takes time and man power to build. Even the terrain itself, its one thing to have a game with plain terrain thats essentially automatically generated by a heatmap denoting elevation to zones we have in Heart of Thorns were everything needs to be created manually. We know for sure work on Heart of Thorns started at least 2 years prior to launch (source: Maclaine stated on Guild Chat he started working on HoT soundtrack 2 years ago and probably the sountrack wasnt the first thing they worked on just saying) All things being equal we’ll get another 2 years of free content before the next expansion hits.

Free content releases after an expansion hits does sound exactly like a season pass but whats the alternative? wait out those extra 2 years until Anet finish all the content and release it all at once? And whats the advantage? you’re still paying the same amount for the same exact amount of content, is getting it all at once really better then getting it in chunks?

People keep comparing Gw2 with Gw1. Only they just compare raw numbers and ignore all the details. Sure any Gw1 expansion had a ton more maps, does anyone really think it takes the same amount of time to build a Gw1 map as it must have taken to build one of the new maps? How about content wise? Gw1 campaigns/expansion didnt change the game that drastically. They didnt introduce things like Gliding, Add new mechanics to existent professions or even provide new game types like Adventures. Does anyone here thing these things come easy? Flip as switch or something? To implement something like gliding you’d need to do major changes to the engine and that also means major testing. This is a double edged sword of course, major changes to the engine means less time to develop content but at the same time its a one time cost and it allows for a great variety of content in the future.

Yes, its a bad thing. Developers don’t release things in small bundles like this because they have to, they do it to keep players around for longer. I’ve explained this in an earlier post— turning a player into a long term investment is now the business model for several developers, a trendy flaw that NCsoft failed to deviate from, like they did with most other MMO conventions (thankful for that). Content is withheld that otherwise 10 years ago would have come with the box. This keeps players looking ahead, because they want the legendary armor they’ve been lead to grind for months.

You can obfuscate their intentions all day long, but its not out of a lack of time or resources that we have a season pass instead of an expansion, it is solely the result of a greedy business model.

It may be the result of a business model, but it’s hardly the result of a greedy one.

Unless you seriously believe that a company can make content faster than people can beat content, there’s nothing about this system that’s greedy. It’s called being competitive.

If Anet gave everything up front. Everything they could. Every single thing they had ready at the moment it was ready, and then people burned through it, they’d leave and go to other games that were trickling out their content keeping people playing.

They did it with the original Guild Wars. Every console game did it. Every MMO did it at one point, until developers discovered how to coaxingly milk players. I’m not sure why you’re advocating this new behavior.

Really? They did it with the original Guild Wars a very very long time ago. The last Guild Wars 1 product came out 8 years ago, and at the time Guild Wars 1 was pretty much the only free to play multiplayer fantasy game and it still wasn’t an MMO.

Cut to today, which is a completely different market.

Every console game does what? Has 20 guys, maybe 30, makes the game and sells it? Sure. Makes a console game for 5 years with 300 devs? Not even close. How can anyone compare a console game with an MMO.

And many console games today have downloadable content you can buy for it anyway, piecemeal, so even that’s no longer true.

But tell me how long does the average console game take to make and how many people work on it? How many copies does that game have to sell to break even? How many people continue to work on that same game once it ships.

I don’t see why you’d compare this to a console game or talk about what happened 8 years ago in an industry that has changed. Why am I condoning this behavior? Because I don’t see it as bad behavior. I’m not even sure why you do.

Calydro.7268:

Galen Grey.4709:

Calydro.7268:

Yes, its a bad thing. Developers don’t release things in small bundles like this because they have to, they do it to keep players around for longer. I’ve explained this in an earlier post— turning a player into a long term investment is now the business model for several developers, a trendy flaw that NCsoft failed to deviate from, like they did with most other MMO conventions (thankful for that). Content is withheld that otherwise 10 years ago would have come with the box. This keeps players looking ahead, because they want the legendary armor they’ve been lead to grind for months.

You can obfuscate their intentions all day long, but its not out of a lack of time or resources that we have a season pass instead of an expansion, it is solely the result of a greedy business model.

I disagree. having people pay in advanced for content doesnt keep them around. Case in point, check the forums / reddit. You will find many posts especially around the time HoT launched of people claiming to have quit soon after launch and are thinking of coming back. With the core game purchase price they also got 3 years of free content but that didnt keep them around did it?

I even more strongly disagree with greedy business model. Look at what most other b2p MMOs do. They still cut their content in chunks, because it takes X amount of time to develop or on purpose is something thats debatable fine… but what they do is sell that content for “cheap” at regular intervals. $10 every quarter is most common. Well $10 per quarter for 3 years is $120 more then twice what Anet charged for the same period of time. How is that better?

Besides which modern MMO releases an expansion more often then 2 years?

Additionally were they really less greedy before? You had to pay Box Fee and Subscription. Sure content was less content and quicker to develop and you had an expansion every year which also carried a box fee. 2 years of your mmo back then would end up costing $480 are you really sure they were less greedy?

You’re equivocating. System A is bad but so Is System B, but System A is worse therefore we should exonerate System B.

I laid out the facets of the the game where the greed and underhandedness is evident. You’ve pointed me to prior games that also have a greedy model. Does that nullify the points I’ve made? does it exonerate A-net? Guild Wars 2 isn’t the first game to milk its players, there have been many before and will be many after. . .

But you haven’t proved greed. In your opinion it’s greedy. In my opinion it’s competitive. It’s almost as if certain players are greedy expecting more and more for free included in the price, even though stuff takes long to make at greater expense.

Calydro.7268:

Vayne.8563:

Calydro.7268:

Galen Grey.4709:

Blindfoldedchaos.9265:

Calydro.7268:

Players were promised raids and legendary armor with HoT. None of these came with HoT. It was a blatant lie. A single wing was released, but as far as I know, the 50$ spent didn’t say “50$ season pass for all content we’ll be releasing over the period of a year”.
A single new arena was released. There were 45 pvp maps in the first Guild Wars.
Two new armor sets were introduced.

No it isn’t worth $50, you’re not mistaken. The standards are just low.

Welcome to MMO’s where every expansion is the equivalent to a Seasons Pass.

Is that really a bad thing though?

MMOs are getting more complex, more detailed and that means they require more time to build. Just compare Gw1 with Gw2… old zones had a handful of models, new zones have 100s takes time and man power to build. Even the terrain itself, its one thing to have a game with plain terrain thats essentially automatically generated by a heatmap denoting elevation to zones we have in Heart of Thorns were everything needs to be created manually. We know for sure work on Heart of Thorns started at least 2 years prior to launch (source: Maclaine stated on Guild Chat he started working on HoT soundtrack 2 years ago and probably the sountrack wasnt the first thing they worked on just saying) All things being equal we’ll get another 2 years of free content before the next expansion hits.

Free content releases after an expansion hits does sound exactly like a season pass but whats the alternative? wait out those extra 2 years until Anet finish all the content and release it all at once? And whats the advantage? you’re still paying the same amount for the same exact amount of content, is getting it all at once really better then getting it in chunks?

People keep comparing Gw2 with Gw1. Only they just compare raw numbers and ignore all the details. Sure any Gw1 expansion had a ton more maps, does anyone really think it takes the same amount of time to build a Gw1 map as it must have taken to build one of the new maps? How about content wise? Gw1 campaigns/expansion didnt change the game that drastically. They didnt introduce things like Gliding, Add new mechanics to existent professions or even provide new game types like Adventures. Does anyone here thing these things come easy? Flip as switch or something? To implement something like gliding you’d need to do major changes to the engine and that also means major testing. This is a double edged sword of course, major changes to the engine means less time to develop content but at the same time its a one time cost and it allows for a great variety of content in the future.

Yes, its a bad thing. Developers don’t release things in small bundles like this because they have to, they do it to keep players around for longer. I’ve explained this in an earlier post— turning a player into a long term investment is now the business model for several developers, a trendy flaw that NCsoft failed to deviate from, like they did with most other MMO conventions (thankful for that). Content is withheld that otherwise 10 years ago would have come with the box. This keeps players looking ahead, because they want the legendary armor they’ve been lead to grind for months.

You can obfuscate their intentions all day long, but its not out of a lack of time or resources that we have a season pass instead of an expansion, it is solely the result of a greedy business model.

It may be the result of a business model, but it’s hardly the result of a greedy one.

Unless you seriously believe that a company can make content faster than people can beat content, there’s nothing about this system that’s greedy. It’s called being competitive.

If Anet gave everything up front. Everything they could. Every single thing they had ready at the moment it was ready, and then people burned through it, they’d leave and go to other games that were trickling out their content keeping people playing.

They did it with the original Guild Wars. Every console game did it. Every MMO did it at one point, until developers discovered how to coaxingly milk players. I’m not sure why you’re advocating this new behavior.

The MARKET advocates the new behaviour; companies just respond to trends in the market. If people didn’t like the business model that GW2 has, it would struggle or not exist at all. What you see as ‘bad, greedy practice’ is actually what a significant portion of the market WANTS.

Calydro.7268:

Galen Grey.4709:

Calydro.7268:

Yes, its a bad thing. Developers don’t release things in small bundles like this because they have to, they do it to keep players around for longer. I’ve explained this in an earlier post— turning a player into a long term investment is now the business model for several developers, a trendy flaw that NCsoft failed to deviate from, like they did with most other MMO conventions (thankful for that). Content is withheld that otherwise 10 years ago would have come with the box. This keeps players looking ahead, because they want the legendary armor they’ve been lead to grind for months.

You can obfuscate their intentions all day long, but its not out of a lack of time or resources that we have a season pass instead of an expansion, it is solely the result of a greedy business model.

I disagree. having people pay in advanced for content doesnt keep them around. Case in point, check the forums / reddit. You will find many posts especially around the time HoT launched of people claiming to have quit soon after launch and are thinking of coming back. With the core game purchase price they also got 3 years of free content but that didnt keep them around did it?

I even more strongly disagree with greedy business model. Look at what most other b2p MMOs do. They still cut their content in chunks, because it takes X amount of time to develop or on purpose is something thats debatable fine… but what they do is sell that content for “cheap” at regular intervals. $10 every quarter is most common. Well $10 per quarter for 3 years is $120 more then twice what Anet charged for the same period of time. How is that better?

Besides which modern MMO releases an expansion more often then 2 years?

Additionally were they really less greedy before? You had to pay Box Fee and Subscription. Sure content was less content and quicker to develop and you had an expansion every year which also carried a box fee. 2 years of your mmo back then would end up costing $480 are you really sure they were less greedy?

You’re equivocating. System A is bad but so Is System B, but System A is worse therefore we should exonerate System B.

I laid out the facets of the the game where the greed and underhandedness is evident. You’ve pointed me to prior games that also have a greedy model. Does that nullify the points I’ve made? does it exonerate A-net? Guild Wars 2 isn’t the first game to milk its players, there have been many before and will be many after. . .

of course because Everything is relative. Words are meaningless without context. Let me illustrate. Is a car big or small? How would you answer that question? You’d look at that car and compare it with all the other cars you have ever seen. If the car is bigger then most of them you’re going to say its big. If its smaller then most of them you’re going to say its small. Does it make sense to call the smallest car big just because this car happens to have larger then normal side mirrors? No.

Same here. You pointed out to one thing that may be caused by greed. I highlight may because while you say its evident we dont really know the reasons. Greed is a possibility, pacing content releases due to lengthy time to finish all the intended content is another. You feel greed is obvious which is fine you’re obviously entitled to feel anyway you wish. Likewise I feel development time is the driving factor, my reasons are that they have the largest development team we know of after WoW. Most other major MMOs have teams that are 100 people smaller or even less. With that in mind why would they employ such a large team if they actually have a surplus of content? Profit isnt just about selling more its also about cutting costs, employees are the biggest source of cost in a software company so why hire more then needed? That doesnt compute in my opinion. you hire more employees only when you have a higher workload. If they are incuring that costs it tells me that it takes that many employees for them to release what they release. no business is going to leave employees doing nothing and no MMO company is going to develop years of content in advanced.

But lets assume you’re right and its just a ploy to earn more money. Wanting to earn more money doesnt automatically make you greedy, every business wants to earn money. Its only greed when you make your customers pay more then the average. If your MMO over all costs less then competing MMOs using the same business model you’re not being greedy just like the smallest car with large side mirrors is not a large car.

If you think about it, using your approach you can call every business greed because every business tries to maximize their income through some way or another. If you call everyone greedy then the word greedy becomes meaningless because words like greed only have meaning when they are used in a scale. Why? because if everyone is greedy than none one is greedy because being greedy becomes the norm and words like greedy describe something thats outside the norm.

I agree with OP. This so-called ‘expansion’ is a scam, nothing more. There’s just not enough new content to justify it’s cost and what we got is a 2 hours of story nobody cares about, some few additional events, some lil’ part of jungle to explore and absurdly OP new classes/specializations.

Core players – like me – are in a huuuge disadvantage in PvP and PvE due to this ridiculous Power Gap. It’s basically a Pay2Win situation goin’ on right now, coz new specializations are mandatory and you gotta pay, unless you enjoy gettin’ Roflstomped, Steamrolled, Facerolled and REKT by HoT OP classes. It’s. Not. Fair! I wanna play this game and enjoy it, but this not-expansion makes it really hard for me…

Oh, and this creates perfect enviroment for elitist and toxic behavior of ‘hot’ players. Wanna go for a group content? A dungeon, raid or pvp maybe? Too bad, you can’t: ‘lol, no hot no spot! gtfo, scrub, lol!’ <—- a common reaction from 1337 players you gotta deal with as a core…

Please ANet make this patch free and don’t call your future paid content an ‘expansion’, unless it brings at least 2 new balanced classes, whole new continent to explore [Cantha or Elona], lots of new dungeons, legendary gear and a lengthy epic story! Just like ol’ times…

Seraph.6145:

I agree with OP. This so-called ‘expansion’ is a scam, nothing more. There’s just not enough new content to justify it’s cost and what we got is a 2 hours of story nobody cares about, some few additional events, some lil’ part of jungle to explore and absurdly OP new classes/specializations.

Core players – like me – are in a huuuge disadvantage in PvP and PvE due to this ridiculous Power Gap. It’s basically a Pay2Win situation goin’ on right now, coz new specializations are mandatory and you gotta pay, unless you enjoy gettin’ Roflstomped, Steamrolled, Facerolled and REKT by HoT OP classes. It’s. Not. Fair! I wanna play this game and enjoy it, but this not-expansion makes it really hard for me…

Oh, and this creates perfect enviroment for elitist and toxic behavior of ‘hot’ players. Wanna go for a group content? A dungeon, raid or pvp maybe? Too bad, you can’t: ‘lol, no hot no spot! gtfo, scrub, lol!’ <—- a common reaction from 1337 players you gotta deal with as a core…

Please ANet make this patch free and don’t call your future paid content an ‘expansion’, unless it brings at least 2 new balanced classes, whole new continent to explore [Cantha or Elona], lots of new dungeons, legendary gear and a lengthy epic story! Just like ol’ times…

So a story you havent played you somehow found out noone else cares about?

You can still do dungeons and fractals just take abit more work for your to do the higher ones since you cant attune rings can you?

Ofcourse you cant raid since you dont have the expansion that the raid is located in.

Your complaining about an expansion you dont even have so why should they listen to you mate?

Marcus Aurelius.1374:

like everyone else i was expecting HoT to be the new expansion everyone was looking for but I feel like after the cloud goes away and now from a different perspective
was it worth 40 euro? i don’t know.
we got some awsome speciallization (that i really liked)
we got some nice meta events but that’s not enough
a story that is easy to finish
in return anet destroyed any reason to go for any of the existing dungeons
so fractals became the new thing but no new fractal just all the same thing jsut now we can decide to take 3 times swamp and be over with it all
droprates are crap and gw2 developers rightly decided not to make it a gear rush game
but is that all? meta events are nice and all but they get unrewarding/boring after a while. please. we don’t need or want to glide over tyria we want something interesting,hard and fun to do ty.

“repeatable content.”

Marcus Aurelius.1374:

in return anet destroyed any reason to go for any of the existing dungeons

really? you are going to exaggerate that much?

they took away ONE reason to go for existing dungeons and that was liquid gold
if that was your only reason to do them you need to move where that liquid gold has moved. loot drops and dungeon tokens are still there, you can still acquire the unique dungeon skins and then theres the content itself.

[quote=5954368;laokoko.7403:]

This expansion was a scam for costing the same amount as the vanilla Guild Wars 2 which brought SOOOOOO much more content and armor/weaponsets.

Koi

Calydro.7268:

Galen Grey.4709:

Blindfoldedchaos.9265:

Calydro.7268:

Players were promised raids and legendary armor with HoT. None of these came with HoT. It was a blatant lie. A single wing was released, but as far as I know, the 50$ spent didn’t say “50$ season pass for all content we’ll be releasing over the period of a year”.
A single new arena was released. There were 45 pvp maps in the first Guild Wars.
Two new armor sets were introduced.

No it isn’t worth $50, you’re not mistaken. The standards are just low.

Welcome to MMO’s where every expansion is the equivalent to a Seasons Pass.

Is that really a bad thing though?

MMOs are getting more complex, more detailed and that means they require more time to build. Just compare Gw1 with Gw2… old zones had a handful of models, new zones have 100s takes time and man power to build. Even the terrain itself, its one thing to have a game with plain terrain thats essentially automatically generated by a heatmap denoting elevation to zones we have in Heart of Thorns were everything needs to be created manually. We know for sure work on Heart of Thorns started at least 2 years prior to launch (source: Maclaine stated on Guild Chat he started working on HoT soundtrack 2 years ago and probably the sountrack wasnt the first thing they worked on just saying) All things being equal we’ll get another 2 years of free content before the next expansion hits.

Free content releases after an expansion hits does sound exactly like a season pass but whats the alternative? wait out those extra 2 years until Anet finish all the content and release it all at once? And whats the advantage? you’re still paying the same amount for the same exact amount of content, is getting it all at once really better then getting it in chunks?

People keep comparing Gw2 with Gw1. Only they just compare raw numbers and ignore all the details. Sure any Gw1 expansion had a ton more maps, does anyone really think it takes the same amount of time to build a Gw1 map as it must have taken to build one of the new maps? How about content wise? Gw1 campaigns/expansion didnt change the game that drastically. They didnt introduce things like Gliding, Add new mechanics to existent professions or even provide new game types like Adventures. Does anyone here thing these things come easy? Flip as switch or something? To implement something like gliding you’d need to do major changes to the engine and that also means major testing. This is a double edged sword of course, major changes to the engine means less time to develop content but at the same time its a one time cost and it allows for a great variety of content in the future.

Yes, its a bad thing. Developers don’t release things in small bundles like this because they have to, they do it to keep players around for longer. I’ve explained this in an earlier post— turning a player into a long term investment is now the business model for several developers, a trendy flaw that NCsoft failed to deviate from, like they did with most other MMO conventions (thankful for that). Content is withheld that otherwise 10 years ago would have come with the box. This keeps players looking ahead, because they want the legendary armor they’ve been lead to grind for months.

You can obfuscate their intentions all day long, but its not out of a lack of time or resources that we have a season pass instead of an expansion, it is solely the result of a greedy business model.

Console games are responsible for this really, with the birth of payed for DLC. I remember when map packs and the like where free. Something the devs gave out to keep you playing there game in the hope that more people would buy there game as time went on, so the drop off would lessen. Also the reason in the early days of PC gaming most games came with (or shortly after launch) SDK’s.

Now DLC is used to eek out as much money from the players. You only have to look at EA games to see the worst possible example of this. Where gear and weapons are sold as DLC, along with chunks of the games they “add” in later some of which are on the disc when you buy the game, but they still want you to pay for it.

I have no problem with the price tag of HoT, if we get the same amount of content we got from LS 1 and 2. HoT would be worth the £28 I payed for it. I just hope with the next one, ANet let us know exactly what we are paying for up front. By that I mean how many episodes of LW are included in the price of what we get at launch of the next expansion. And for the record I don’t class last Tuesdays patch as part of what I payed for with HoT. That was them fixing things. QoL stuff and balance.

its not expensive for new customers, old customers may feel like it, but all other mmos even f2p mmos, force you to pay much more.

Swtor releases 1-2 hour story every month and in order to get it, you must sub, overall over 120 euros or dollars ++ to get it all. Even if Anet brings new living world content, you can actually get it with your game effort/gems. So for those who look for quality mmo and cheapest sollution, this is really good overall.

Zenith.7301:

This expansion was a scam for costing the same amount as the vanilla Guild Wars 2 which brought SOOOOOO much more content and armor/weaponsets.

That’s a rather uninformed view considering it took 3 years to get all that Core GW2 content, armor/weaponsets and HoT isn’t even 6 months old.

Ayrilana.1396:

It’s not a scam. All information was available weeks before the expansion went live.

Not really all info was avaible – for instance meta events lasting 2h and things locked behind artificial “gates” like some masteries.

They didnt advertise that they’ll make guild banks and buffs HoT ovners “exclusive” content and f-up small guilds…

Anyway…

I have to agree that dungeons are dead and finding a party to complete them is almost impossible, they could have make them other way like – let’s say – A DUNGEON reward which means – 2g (for arah 3g) up to 4 times for doing paths accountwide. This way people would still be doing daily dungeons AND finding a party for i.e. CoE would be still possible.

Something would be better then what we have now – but nope, f it up so now noone plays them anymore – so long achivements and paths that i’ve never done and probably never will do – that’s how you make content.

All that BS about economy… there are still people out there that have loads of money (and i mean couple hundread thousands) and have every item so they only spent dosh on BLTP fluff items.

You get tonns of cash from flipping tp – dungeons were just a single drop in that sea of gold.
Only thing that can fix this is make everything avaible from NPC merchants – maths and weapons so that TP sell/buy would not be worthwhile.

All those “gold sinks” are affecting only those who dont have much – as always.

But enough of this – back on track.

Do i feel cheated ?
Not really, i got my HoT as a gift from a friend – so im fine with mostly everything – mostly.

I refused to pay 50 euros for expac – especially for a game that i’ve purchased for 20 dollars but if i would make a preorder and get what we do have now i would be raging-bolts like Zeus from Olympus – if i pay for something i want to do it not wait for 2h to make it happen.

Cheers

edit:/

Obtena.7952:

That’s a rather uninformed view considering it took 3 years to get all that Core GW2 content, armor/weaponsets and HoT isn’t even 6 months old.

Two theories:

They were working on it longer then 6 months looking at personal story and TT wurm event being added – in this case releasing content so bugged and locked behind metas

OR

They started working on it after announcing it and rushed it spending 2 months (or 3) instead on adding stuff they need to fix that rushed bugfest.

I don’t get what that has to do with what I said … poster was QQing about lack of content in HoT compared to Core; he conveniently overlooked that Anet had more time to release that ‘more content’, to his advantage of course.

My hard drive has a plethora of games bought and paid for. Many of them are good games. NONE of them have been played anywhere near the time I spent on GW@ and HOT.

Money well spent.

You know, people keep saying DS is 2 hours, but it’s not really true. It’s closer to an hour and a half, even less sometimes.

It runs every 2 hours, that’s true, but it seldom takes 2 hours.

HoT cost little more than 3 months of wow subsciption. I think the money was worth the content.

Marcus Aurelius.1374:

a story that is easy to finish

quoting the most of whining players here, “omg, this story is so hard, omg rito Anet nerf it plox”

we can decide to take 3 times swamp and be over with it all

or you can decide to make 2 daily maps and 6 swamps+snowblind.

I’m also not very big fan of those changes, but I can understand reasons for it. Maybe not behind fotm changes, but the rest is fully understandable.