Guild Wars 2

Now don’t get me wrong, all of these features are welcomed however players want new content. What is the point of specializations (other than PvP) if we are all bored of the current content? Sure, give us new abilities and weapons but in the end if we don’t have new content to compliment these new features/mechanics players are just gonna end up getting bored, and quickly. The same goes for Guild Halls, the Scribe and Masteries.
Are we expected to build our guild hall, craft items, level up with the majority of the current games content?

The problem is we don’t know how much new content we’ll be getting. We do know that we’re getting 1 new distinct region the Maguuma jungle, however how big is this region?
Some players are worried considering we’re only getting 1 new region (compared to the 4-5 we got each GW1 release. Totaling to 19 regions in just over 2 years)
[Bringing the total GW2 region count to 7]

So far we know there are at least 2 zones (2×3 biomes). Which is about 6 maps worth of content. We have only seen Verdant Brink, the only map we have confirmed. In which we have only seen a small glimpse of one biome. This is again why lots of players are worried that there is not much content being added with HoT (Considering devs have said that the focus of HoT is features [for moving the game forward]).
Comparing once again to GW1 we should expect to see somewhere between 16 – 35 maps. (GW1 campaigns brought about 35 zones. Expansions brought 16).

In total we should see at least 6 maps (6×3biomes = 18 maps worth of content) along with the instanced content such as dungeons/etc (Challenging Content) .

In saying that I don’t agree with the OP’s diagram simply because we still don’t know how much content HoT brings (and its minor features). Either way when you compare the content that GW1 and GW2 has offered over the same time frame it’s clear to see that Guild Wars 1 wins.

Vayne.8563:

Inshiro.3620:

Vayne.8563:

Hey OP, I have a question for you. With all the great comparison work you’ve done, and all the comparing, how come you left out dynamic events which the game is centered around. For example Guild Wars Prophecies had 209 quests.

If you add up all the quests in all four Guild Wars 1 products, you’ll find it was less than the number of dynamic events than Guild Wars 2 launched with.

This is just silly.

Because of the nature with dynamic events most players will barely see yet even half of the dynamic events in Guild Wars 2. In the later development of Guild Wars 2 they had to add in hearts because testers were complaining they had nothing to do. Quests on the other hand can be played on demand. You cannot simply ask players to wait around for an event to kick off. (People only do this with World Bosses simply because they are on a fixed timer and give rare loot)

I am not saying quests are better than dynamic events, both have their strengths and weaknesses. But in terms of content, quests can be accepted on demand whereas dynamic events (while they can be triggered) take place randomly (the content will be running regardless of you being there).

Vayne.8563:

You also left out species and starter areas. Seems to me I can play five races in this game, but only play 1 race throughout all of Guild Wars 2.

Saying Guild Wars 2 has more content because it has more races is completely illogical.
While yes it does give you access to new story arcs/instances it does not change the fact that they are playing in the same world as everyone else. ArenaNet have even stated that the racial story branching system was silly because none of the players would even experience that half of all that content (Rough Diagram) . Hence why with HoT there are no branching story arcs that are dependant on your race).

My point was, depending on what you count or look at, different things look differently. With less than 220 quests in Prophecies, that game at launch didn’t have nearly as much actual content as Guild Wars 2 at launch.

But here, the OP is comparing zone numbers, but that doesn’t necessarily represent content either. If I were going to get a comparison, I’d like to know how many quests were in those expansions, compared to how many dynamic events are in this expansion. I’d like to compare how expansive this story is to the story missions.

You can compare things all you want, when you have enough information to compare. So far we don’t have enough information and thus the comparison is premature.

A zone is technically content (exploration wise). The amount of condensed playable content in these zones however do vary between the games.

Guild Wars 1 (Prophecies, Factions, Nightfall, EotN) featured:
999+ Quests (not including special events)
58 Co-op Missions [Story Missions] not including EotN
10 Challenge Missions [3 of which were Elite]
7 PvP Game Modes
19 Mini-games
1319 Skills/Abilities
10 Professions
16 Guild Halls
19 Distinct Regions
18 Dungeons
plus much more (features like Heros, etc).

This was the amount of content Guild Wars 1 pushed out in a period just over 2 years [April 2005 – August 2007]. Compare that content to what we’ve gotten with Guild Wars 2 over the past years (almost 3 years) and ask yourself what offered more?

Yes, Guild Wars 2 is very different and has new mechanics and systems (like jumping). However no matter how many systems/features you have in place, if there is no content to utilize these systems/features than people will find the game quite lacking.

A good example of this is jumping. While you can jump over rocks and objects it isn’t completely necessary. However ArenaNet has built content based off this mechanic such as vistas and jumping puzzles. Resulting in jumping much more than a simple movement mechanic.

So far most of the information from HoT is heavily based on features:

• Guild Halls (in which we can choose of 2)
  – Guild Teams
  – Sandbox Arena
  – Hall Customization (we do not know how extensive this is)
• New Crafting Profession
  – Consumables (Banners, Transformations [Char Cars], Deployables [Air Strike])
  – Decorations for Guild Hall
• New WvW Borderlands
  – New/Revamped map mechanics
• New PvP Game Mode
  – Stronghold
• New Profession
  – Revenant
• New Progression system
  – Masteries
• Elite Specializations
  – A total of 9
• Challenging Group Content
  – Nothing of which we have seen yet (Wyvern is not CGC)

Vayne.8563:

Hey OP, I have a question for you. With all the great comparison work you’ve done, and all the comparing, how come you left out dynamic events which the game is centered around. For example Guild Wars Prophecies had 209 quests.

If you add up all the quests in all four Guild Wars 1 products, you’ll find it was less than the number of dynamic events than Guild Wars 2 launched with.

This is just silly.

Because of the nature with dynamic events most players will barely see yet even half of the dynamic events in Guild Wars 2. In the later development of Guild Wars 2 they had to add in hearts because testers were complaining they had nothing to do. Quests on the other hand can be played on demand. You cannot simply ask players to wait around for an event to kick off. (People only do this with World Bosses simply because they are on a fixed/tracked timer and give rare loot)

I am not saying quests are better than dynamic events, both have their strengths and weaknesses. But in terms of content, quests can be accepted on demand whereas dynamic events (while they can be triggered) take place randomly (the content will be running regardless of you being there). Combine this with the branching events (pass/fail/etc) most players will never see the other successions of that event.

Vayne.8563:

You also left out species and starter areas. Seems to me I can play five races in this game, but only play 1 race throughout all of Guild Wars 2.

Saying Guild Wars 2 has more content because it has more races is completely illogical.
While yes it does give you access to new story arcs/instances it does not change the fact that they are playing in the same world as everyone else. ArenaNet have even stated that the racial story branching system was silly because none of the players would even experience that half of all that content (Rough Diagram) . Hence why with HoT there are no branching story arcs that are dependant on your race).

webtoehobbit.4201:

Spent all day yesterday making this up, to compare what we received content wise from ArenaNet in the past with their other expansions to what has been officially announced so far with Heart of Thorns.

I will continue to update this as more info is revealed with Heart of Thorns, but here is what we have so far, enjoy!

Edit: This comparison is based off of features that were DAY 1 features and not added at a later date.

GW2 actually has more than over 300+ employees as of last year.

Dev Confirmation: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/What-to-buy-with-800-gems/first#post1218058

You’d think we’d be getting much more content because they have much more man power, that doesn’t seem to the case though…

People will say that GW2 requires more time to develop for than GW1 because of things like higher res models, more complex systems, etc. However that is not an excuse as development tools have also become more efficient over the past years (not to mention the increase of staff).

While we don’t fully know all the offerings of GW2:HoT yet, we should not set our expectations low considering the amount of people working on it and the time that they’ve had.