Want to return, is living story necessary?
The Living Story and the expac are not the same thing. You’ll need to buy the expac to access the new maps, the storyline, the raids and the rewards in there. The new Living Story is the story that continues from the end of the expac story.
Each living story episode is free to anyone who logs in during the eligible time frame and it’s free to experience if you do the open world parts or do any instanced parts with someone who owns it. You just won’t get all rewards or all achievement points if you don’t own it or if you don’t own HoT you won’t be able to reach all of it. While a good part of the living story is on the old maps there are a couple of new maps added since the expac and the living story goes to there. You won’t be able to go to those new maps unless you own those episodes.
Be careful what you ask for
ANet may give it to you.
ANet may give it to you.
(edited by Just a flesh wound.3589)
The first set of Living Story episodes add a bit of meat between the death of Zhaitan and beginning of Heart of Thorns. I would expect the current set will do much the same.
It’s too bad that the first set of Living Story episodes didn’t start until post-Scarlet. For someone just picking up the game, some instances detailing the rise of Scarlet – the watchknights, the dredge and flaming legion, the aetherblade, and the destruction of Lion’s Arch – would provide a lot of context which is now lost.
I quit the game when they announced the expansion. I was a bit miffed when I saw Anet was releasing endgame raid content behind a 50 dollar paywall. This is something that made a huge number of players leave because it didn’t exist anywhere close to launch. Now I have some friends who would be willing to try it out but I don’t want to pay 50 dollars just to have to pay more in order to proceed with the new content. Is purchasing living story chapters necessary in order to get access to the content in the expac?
Honestly, I think that’s a recipe for frustration on your part. Your friends can buy GW2+HoT now and they can invite you to any story instance they enter (so you don’t have to spend a sou). But you are going to continually run into things in which the pay wall rears its head. Whether that head is ugly or pretty depends on your point of view and it’s clear that you can’t imagine why it would be okay to spend US$30 from Amazon (or whoever is offering a discount this week) or US$50 from ANet.
I really like the game and HoT includes a number of game-changing improvements that I think are well worth the premium I spent (true auto-looting, gliding, the new elite specs, and the new prof).
tl;dr as long as your worldview doesn’t allow for the possibility that HoT has some things worth fifty bucks, I think you’re going to end up being unhappy.
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
(edited by Illconceived Was Na.9781)
I quit the game when they announced the expansion. I was a bit miffed when I saw Anet was releasing endgame raid content behind a 50 dollar paywall. This is something that made a huge number of players leave because it didn’t exist anywhere close to launch. Now I have some friends who would be willing to try it out but I don’t want to pay 50 dollars just to have to pay more in order to proceed with the new content. Is purchasing living story chapters necessary in order to get access to the content in the expac?
After purchasing HoT, you don’t need to purchase anything else to get access to that content. Considering you quit when they announced HoT, you should have all LW season 2 episodes on your account, since they released the last one 11 days before the announcement of the expansion. If you return right now the only thing you’ll miss is LW season 3 episode 1. You won’t have the story that accesses the new map, Bloodstone Fen, but you can still get there with a Teleport To Friend (since it’s a closed off map with no entrances from other maps). So you pay your $50 and you have access to everything, except LW season 3 episode 1. But regardless, not having certain LW chapters does not block you from any content or maps, except the story.
By the way, an expansion isn’t exactly a paywall. It’s as much a paywall as the price for the original game is a paywall. You don’t expect to get that one for free, so why should an expansion be free of charge? I have yet to see the first expansion of an MMO being released entirely for free. If you play other MMO’s this must not be a foreign concept to you. Or do you quit all MMO’s you play the moment they decide to release an expansion?
HoT frequently goes on sale, you could get it for $25-$30 instead of $50 if you catch it at the right time
As mentioned before, if you’d do it now you will only miss episode 1 which you can still get to through friends or the gemstore (if it works the same as season 2 that is). Also it’s a weird way reasoning to start with…. asking money for developed content? How dare they…