Guild Wars 2

I left guild wars 2 right before HoT was released. I was turned off by the price tag of the expansion(punishing old players, rewarding new ones etc etc), Anets balancing and decision making since the beginning….nope couldn’t buy it.

But i have been playing since beta before i quit. Thousands of hours and a lot of love for my Necro. I’m bored with my current games and wandering how old gw is doing.

Do you guys wish you moved on to another game? Or are you happy with the direction Gw2 has taken since HoT release?

There are aspects I like, and aspects I dislike. But I love the reaper spec. It has made me main a necro after not playing one for 3 years.

For my necro, hell no. It’s been my main almost since I started gw2. But for the gold sinks and what not, kinda. And what they did to guilds I think was pretty shady. I mean I’m glad they’re pushing the guild aspect more, but comon, some of the requirements are ridiculous.

I’m taking a break until things calm down economy wise and they nerf whatever else in PvE, WvW and PvP. Got fallout 4 to entertain me in the meantime.

I enjoy playing GW so i dont have any quarrel paying so that they can keep making content. Heck beats paying a subscription.

Love the new PvE content, new zones sure beat out same event trains through frost gorge or orr
Gliding is pretty cool too.
Masteries can be a bit of a grind, but no gamebreaker
Love the new ways of unlocking rare gear through achievements

I cant speak for PvP balance, but there’s definitely nothing wrong with Necro in PvE

I got the massive backlog of steam games and yet I just keep playing GW

HoT made me actually interested in playing Necro again, and I gladly paid the price while not feeling punished in the slightest.

Not sure what punishing of old players you are talking about. Of course an expansion is going to cost money. They just offered a good deal to new players to entice them. Its selfish entitlement to feel bitter about that.

And no i dont regret it at all. I was on the brink of quitting due to overwhelming boredom. I had actually pretty much quit before release. I was only logging on to check how things were going and following the news. HoT has brought me back to a relatively motivated state. I dont have the time to play much anymore but i do actually want to. So i cant say it was a bad expansion.

Could there have been more? Yes. Could some things have been done better? Of course yes. Am i disappointed with some changes and new directions? Yes, definitely. But overall its brought me back to a point where i can enjoy the game again. So no i do not regret buying HoT and staying. And i do think the expansion was needed and a good thing.

Overall-wise, HoT is a mixed bag. Gliding and the overall mastery system is good. Pacing/gating of things is poorly done in many cases.. They also doubled-down on the old ANet trick of having encounters that simply overwhelm small numbers of players, and of making nearly all of a maps’ waypoints contested during events. (It’s better to basically give up than to try to run back in most cases.)

Necro-wise, it’s great. They didn’t fix many Necro issues, but Reaper is good enough — if you don’t mind a melee-oriented play style — that it makes up for this oversight. I can’t speak for raiders or dungeon-runners, but for my play style it’s very fun.

(That said, I’ve been playing my Engineer and Ranger a lot as well. Gotta say that the new HoT Ranger pets — the Bristleback and Smokescale — rock.)

$50 for as much content as we got with no sub is pretty good in my eyes, I don’t regret it at all. Raids + reaper alone made this worth the money I spent.

If you have to decide between HoT and Fallout 4/Witcher 3/R6 for Christmas, I’d go with latter options.

ArenaNet is now probably in stage when they fix stuff and prepare to add more content (next Living Story, PvP Balance patch, new raid wings) after January and old stuff isn’t going to be outdated. By February a lot of stuff will be improved and you’ll get good overall experience with xpac.

As for myself, I don’t regret buying HoT, because I like the game and it would’ve been unplayable for me without xpac.

I gotta strongly disagree with the statement of “punishing old players , rewarding new ones” but that’s neither here nor there and irrelevant to the question you asked.

Overall my experience in HoT is a positive one , its certainly not a perfect experience however.

Positives
new maps are amazing i know TD fuels alot of rage but i think its awesome a map like this was made in an MMO
Gliding is mounts / flying done right the only problem is now you will wanna glide in the old world as well which can lead to fatal consequences……..
The music is just wow
Elite specializations are great but in many cases possibly too powerful
Mastery is the best leveling system for when your not having levels
The story was fun up until the last mission which drags on and is filled with bugs

Negatives
Adventures , at best they where something i did once then forget about however they gate alot of things such as collections and mastery points considering many of them have quite harsh difficulty curves it can be really really frustrating experience .

Whilst elite specs are fun some are way to powerful my understanding was they would be an alternate way to play your profession the reality is in most cases they are an outright upgrade and i feel like i have less ways to play my characters than before.

Kinda of a continuation but balance especially in spvp is in a pretty poor spot currently

Overall don’t regret my purchase at all and am having fun in game but as someone who never understood the hype for expansions i believe they could have easily added this stuff bit by bit through the living world updates and we wouldn’t have had that massive content drought.

i don’t feel cheated or anything. you’ve been given how many years of content for the original price of the game? considering the work that was put into it, i don’t mind paying for an expansion.

pros:
- pve is a bit more engaging than before
- elite specs add fun new playstyles to the game
- gliding is radical
- events im finding are actually fun
- maguuma is incredibly designed
- rata novus

cons:
- most elite specs are strong to the point where if you don’t run it, you’re severely hindering yourself compared to players who are. some don’t really change playstyle at all and are just a flat upgrade to the current base class. this is a problem as it seriously hinders build diversity and health of the game, imo
- pvp pacing has gone through the roof to the point where skilful ability usage is barely a factor anymore and just whoever is the faster masher can decide the fight. that being said, positioning is still a factor that hasn’t changed all that much

i more or less have 0 issue with the expansion apart from the cons ive outlined there. pvp used to be well paced, rewarded skilful ability usage and positioning, and had decent enough build diversity. could it have had more diversity? definitely. was class balance an issue? somewhat. but compared to the class balance now as a necro, i preferred d/d ele rather than what we have now

again this is just my opinion on what ive experienced, i know someone is going to come in and “correct” me, but like i said, im just not enjoying pvp all that much since hot was released

I regret HoT. Reaper spec is great, but the content loses its shine very quickly and you will realize very soon how little of it there is.

HoT = 4 open world dungeons that are on global server timers, now with meganerfs to guilds and nickle/dimed f2p model

GW1 > GW2 > HoT

I regret nothing since I think the map is fun and E-spec is very good and also fun.

HoT brings SOOO MUCH to Necro. Reaper is such a good Cond Class that it easily fulfills Necro’s dream of being a viable cond spec!

Meh HoT is alright, but a lot of the reaper stuff should’ve been in core necro ready

get over the past now, Gw1 has had its time soon Gw2 aswell, I know I wont see the next Expansion tho I enjoyed Reaper that came with this, to many stuff mainly in WvW wont keep me around to see next Expansion but I dont regret HoT cause I liked the Reaper Elite.

I think that after 3 years of playing at the cost of 50€ I can give another 40 to ANet to buy the expansion. If you play others MMORPG you have to pay every months and also buy expansions. I spent 90€ in 3 years against people that spend 400€ and more in 3 years.
I think that it’s good, don’t you?

Don’t regret it a bit. Like every product, it has its pros and cons. I’m not a fan of the scribe implementation, for example, but overall, I feel the expansion is great.

In my opinion, HoT was a wonderful purchase. I am not currently active in the game, but that’s through no fault of the game, really. I’m just terrible at making friends in games, and a large part of an MMO experience is social. Exploring mechanics and playing through some of the content can only take me so far before something else grabs my interest (in this case, my Steam controller enabled Dark Souls, and hoo doggies, this game has me in a vice).

However, they turned Necromancer into what is basically my ideal MMO class. I thought the new PvE areas were interesting and fun to explore. I enjoyed playing a bunch of Stronghold matches immensely in sPvP, learning about what the other classes can do by playing against them, and I even enjoyed exploring the Desert BL, as much as people hated (still hate?) it.

Overall, I regret nothing. Eventually I’ll be playing again, and the greatsword on my Necro’s back is going to put a smile on my face.

As a Necromancer, no, because reaper is great, and condi necro was dead to me after the specialization patch,

Yeah it’kitten or miss for people. If you love necro like me and other people here we really got it good with reaper. The spec alone has tinted my view of the expansion even though some of the content isn’t stellar.

Necro wise i don´t regret it, i like reaper. PvE and in general WvW they just plain failed. I pause a bit, hoping that Arenanet will get back to sanity. Until then, i enjoyed Black Desert lately.

Well, maybe in some respects, but since I consider Reaper to be the greatest success in the whole expansion I’m not sure if I’d agree -here- :P

I paid about $70 for the base game when it came out and never spent a dime on a subscription fee. I thing that was in 2012. From that time on, the game has released content, taken most of it back, realized that might not be the best idea, left some of the new stuff in, incorporated some of the withdrawn content into the game permanently, and they did it all without forcing me to pay a dime in the gem store.

Heck, the gem store isn’t even CLOSE to the pay to win type stores in a lot of other mmos. It’s mostly cosmetics or convenience.

So I figured that it was a good investment to sink $70 in, since I was playing the game again.

Is it even close at launch to all the content FFXIV had in their expansion? Nope. FFXIV is a subscription game, though, with bigger income and a different type of gameplay.

Guild Wars is still Guild Wars. If you didn’t like it before the expansion, then you won’t like it now. If you enjoyed it, but we’re bored? Well now there is more grinding to do, more achievements to unlock, more world events to work on, some raiding to play, new specializations and weapons for every class, a whole new class, and guild halls to work on for just way too freaking long.

I think the reaper is probably the single biggest redeeming factor about the expansion.

I genuinely do not like the majority of what came from HoT. Actually, I don’t think I really like anything in particular about it except this specialization.