Guild Wars 2

I have a question to Anet about these episodes. Will new dungeons, pvp maps, wvw maps, or zones be locked inside of Living World Episodes? If for example you add a new dungeon path like Aether Path, or a new fractal path, a new zone like Southsun, or a new pvp map like Temple of the Silent Storm, will I have to pay 200 gems to unlock it if I miss it? These were all added as part of, or concurrently with past Living World releases.

I think this is probably the most important consideration to clear up in regards to today’s news.

I just watched this video and they answered my question.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=9P6Zmg16eEM#t=666

This is good news!

Mike Zadorojny:
“Yeah, the open world content is available to everyone to play. The journal itself is going to give you access to the instanced, more story focused content because I think particularly for telling the story there are really great opportunities within the instance to do character development and progress the plot and so forth and certainly the open world plays in to that, but we really think that the best places to have those character moments and to progress the story is in the instances, and so that is really what you’re going to be gaining access to when you are getting the episode unlocked. The open world content is available for everyone in the open world.”

Thank you, Kate, for bringing that up! And thank you, Mike, for the answer!

Since they made a rather clear distinction between Open-world and Story in the blog post it is very likely that maps, dungeons and such are part of the Open-world rather than Story part of the releases and as such would be free.

The wording isn’t really that clear.

“This means you can play the open world content and the story content (if you’ve unlocked that episode) anytime you want, on every character you ever make on your account!”

Depending on how you read this, it could mean that you have to have the episode unlocked in order to access the open world part of it.

Official clarification would be nice. I don’t see any answers to anything in the questions/feedback thread. One wonders why Anet labels it a questions thread if they aren’t going to provide any answers.

The fact that they place the “(if you’ve unlocked that episode)” directly after story content does suggest that it specifically talks about the story content, at least in my eyes.

I thought the distinction was pretty clear too. What you’re paying for is the story, not the new maps.

I think it would split the player base if you couldn’t access the new maps without unlocking or buying the story parts. But we’ll see.

I think the Devs answer your question here: http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2/profile

it was steven waller not mike

Ambiguous info as always from Anet. It doesn’t doesn’t say NEW maps/open world/dungeons will be available for all. Yes, new content of some sort will exist in LS2, but new maps or areas open that aren’t part of LS2? Hopefuuly anet can clarify.