Guild Wars 2

looks like its going to be a fraction of the zhaitan questline.

At least a LS seasson will be part of HoT, but possibly more than one.

I think they plan to release a limited amount of permanent content and add more as they go, they did so in GW1 and they have done it even more in GW2.

Specially after them making the core game F2P I think we should see the HoT license, not so much as a game but as a ticket pass for next few LS seasons and some extra permanent content. People without HoT won’t have access to most of it.

endersluck.4708:

looks like its going to be a fraction of the zhaitan questline.

What exactly do you base this on? We have 0 information on the length of the storyline, other than the facts that HoT will ship with a story and that after HoT there will be a return of living story updates (which will also require HoT to play).

We have no reason to say the story is going to be short and we no reason to say the story is not going to be short, we can only wait and see.

Well, the map we know of, Verdant Brinks is a little larger than Dry Top and Silverwastes put together and has 2 additional layers or Biomes presumably the same size. Plus at least 2 other maps, one for each Guild Hall, and this is only the ones we know of. WE know there will be a few more maps as posted by the guild Wars team and Colin. Some one posted a reddit comment (sorry can’t find it right now) that was a nice list of items coming out with HoT. It appears to be quite a bit when looked at from that perspective.

Here is a copy of that list:
4 maps, some containing 3 “biomes” – all containing many new events
New races of npcs and monsters
Repeatable adventures with leaderboards
Map bonus reward system
1 profession
9 specializations
New Personal Story
Living World releases including Living Story S3
2 new armor sets per weight (from the open world)
5 weapon sets
Legendary armor
New legendary weapon set
Legendary back pieces
60 new item skins, miniatures and more
7 mastery tracks with 39 tiers
Precursor crafting
1 raid with 3 wings
2 Guild Halls with 6 core buildings and over 175 decorations including a customizable PvP arena
New guild armor and weapon sets
New PvP gamemode with new map
Guild teams and leaderboards
PvP leagues
10 New PvP reward tracks
New WvW borderland
New fractal system, rewards and 50 more levels
More unmentioned or smaller features and updates

All that leads me to think it will take a little while to get through. If your going to do it all that is. Mastery’s will take a little, not sure how much to unlock them all 100%. But you can bet it won’t be in just a couple of days. Guild Wars 2 Team is giving us 3 weeks (approximately) to get our mastery’s leveled some before installing RIADs. After 20hrs of BWE my mastery’s have only 3 left on glider, 3 left on itzle, and 1st unlock for Nuhoch and Exalted. That’s not hunting XP gain and does not include the Tyrian Mastery’s. So maybe at least 3 or 4 weeks?

Diovid.9506:

We have no reason to say the story is going to be short and we no reason to say the story is not going to be short, we can only wait and see.

I did not read that it was asked only about the story length?
“is heart of thorns going to be very short?”

That is everything that comes with HoT not just the story line. As my previous post notes, there is a lot of material | content coming out in October. I presume the story part will be short, to start with, and then added to approximately every 2 weeks as they did in the past with the Living World.

Seth Moonshadow.2710:

I did not read that it was asked only about the story length?
“is heart of thorns going to be very short?”

To be fair if you read more than the title of the post you would see the actual question:

looks like its going to be a fraction of the zhaitan questline.

endersluck.4708:

looks like its going to be a fraction of the zhaitan questline.

I don’t know where you’re getting your information, but we have no idea how long the story will be. There may only be 4 maps on release, but they are probably going to take us back into vanilla zones as well.

Yes I believe the story will be shorter than Zhaitan. It’s funny but I pay the same entry fee to a 90 minute movie and a 3 hour movie. They’re both movies I enjoy.

The question is how many hours are you going to get out of buying this game. If it’s more than 100 hours, it works out to less than 50 cents an hour.

Sounds like a bargain to me.

No matter the size, there is NO way they can go another three years with another expansion. Every year from here on out or the castle will start to crumble.

There are those of us, that don’t even believe this to be a true expac. I want a new race, I want to travel to Cantha, I want two-hand axes, and I want transmutation charges to go the kitten away.

Until I am playing as a Mursaat Dervish on Canthan soil changing the look of my gear as much as I wish, I won’t be content.

But that’s just me.

The entire expansion is focused on repeatable content, because if there’s one thing game developers know we want, its the ability to do the same thing repeatedly for three years with the small chance of finding some rare loot. The actual amount of time it would take to see everything once, without repeating anything, and without grinding a repeatable event for a hundred hours for a rare chance at an item needed to craft one of the only two new armor sets…..probably less than 50 hours, which isn’t that long in terms of MMO’s or open world games.

What you see as a bargain and a good deal might depend on how long you can deal with repeating content and grinding in a supposedly no-grind game.

Presuming that HoT even comes with a story and that ‘preview story step’ isn’t actually part of Season 3 that gets released with HoT or some other stupid kitten like that…

Most likely it will. Comparing Zhaitan’s plot to Mordremoth’s, Season 1 is akin to PS’s chapters 1-3 – until the end there’s no real relation to the ultimate plot; Season 2 is akin to PS’s chapters 4-6 – deals only indirectly with the main plot for the first bit, but quickly heads into fighting a dragon champion at the end (Blightghast the Plaguebringer v Shadow of the Dragon); so HoT’s plot will be akin to PS’s chapters 7-8, the actual assault against Zhaitan/Mordremoth.

Though I guess we can always be wrong…