Guild Wars 2

mrstealth.6701:

What Anet has to show so far doesn’t live up to the price.

Is it really what Arenanet have show so far that doesnt live up to the price is it more what they havent shown people decided doesnt live up to the price even if its still unknown?

Let me explain what I mean…. What has Arenanet shown so far?

Masteries. A whole new progression system. It includes tracks for the new content and and this is key for the old content While every Expansion generally provides a progression system its generally limited to the new content released with that expansion. Not Gw2, its progression system spans both old a new content. So its safe to say progression in HoT exceeds progression in most expansions.

Elite specializations + Revenant. Elite specializations bring with them 1 new weapon, 1 new healing skill, 4 new utilities, 1 elite skill and 1 new trait line and 1 new mechanic. All in all this makes every elite specialization about 1/5 of a full profession ergo HoT essentially contains exactly the equivalent of 3 professions. Generally Expansions contain only 1 or 2… we get 3, once again HoT exceeds what other Expansions generally have.

Guild Halls. Do I really need to go through this? Most expansions that brought guild halls to MMOs provided castle size guild halls, HoT provides an entire MAP that can be changed at will with no penalty once unlocked. Again exceeds what most other Expansions did.

PvP what we get in sPvP and WvW isnt really bigger then what other expansions do but it isnt smaller either. Well at least compared with those expansions that actually release new PvP content, plenty of examples of expansions that didnt contain any PvP content. That being said I wouldnt say this exceeds expectation but that it rather meets them.

Quality of life.
HoT will also redesign Guild chat, Guild Currencies, Guild missions, guild claiming in WvW, the trait system and PvP Queuing system (already happened but was dont for HoT), introduce PvP Leagues, Map reward bonuses, Fractal redesign, fractal leader boards, revised WvW Scoring. Certainly not the first Expansion to include a quality of life update to an existent system but personally I’ve never see one that includes so many updates to so many systems all at once. Once again as expansion go this is bigger then what you generally get with an expansion.

That all that was revealed so far and none of it is really underwhelming like people seem to claim. Based on what we know so far, this expansion is definitely not smaller then what you generally get, quite the opposite, its pretty bigger on all accounts.

That being said there of course is a concern that it will be lacking in terms of new maps.. thats possible especially since Colin more then once said that they’re not focusing on making a huge number of maps but rather making quality maps. So yeah its possible it may lack in that respect however we dont know anything in that regard so we cant really judge. Besides the number of maps on its own is meaningless. It needs to be taken in context with content. I mean having a ton of empty maps is not better then having a few content rich maps. We have to wait and see when they get around to unveiling what content HoT will have in that regard.

Lets stop claiming that what we know so far isnt worth the price because its far from true. What we know so far exceeds in scope of what other expansion of similar or slightly less price offer.

Focusing on the issues you have with the story.

I am afraid you missed a lot of it as you have quite a few misconceptions in the parts you talk about. The story is not nearly as simple as you seem to think and indeed already contains the elements you ask for.

First of all Zaithan. Zaithan was not the ruler of Orr transformed into a dragon. Zaithan like Modremoth was always an elder dragon.

The ruler of Orr right before its demise was King Reza. His advisor Vizier Khilbron is the one who sunk Orr using a ritual he used in order to try and defeat the invading Charr Army (Charr and humans arent really friends, humans displaced Charr out of their lands in Ascalon only so that later Charr faught and took the land back. At the time of Gw2 Humans and Charr are more in a state of Cease fire and cooperation based on necessity. Its a fragile alliance and these cant be seen better then around the city of Ebonhawke. The city has been center to the Human/Charr conflict and up to today there are still skirmishes from elements of both sides who refuse to recognize the alliance.

“All” Zaithan did when it awoke did was raise Orr from the bottom of the ocean and reanimate all the people that died on Orr when it was destroyed the Vizier’s ritual. It also made it it’s home of course and why wouldnt it. No other place on tyria with some many dead people at the same place probably. Perfect for a dragon who’s sphere of influence is Death.

And then there is the whole sylvari thing. Spoilers for those who didnt play throught S2 of Living story yet

If you’re genuinely interested in Story it may be worth coming back and give the story a more detailed look. It requires multiple play through with different characters of different races. Personal story has lots of branches and each one is a piece of the puzzle.

Serious.7083:

The Karka invasion added very little to the game and nothing to the base storyline, if anything it was a distraction from core events. The Living World stuff at least led you to find a new dragon, but was this necessary to the core game?

The karka invasion introduced the consortium which in turn introduced Canach which is a major character in the story now. Additionally Southsun also propelled Ellen keil into the spotlight when we stopped the consortium from exploiting the refugees created the molten alliance invasion. Its probably what got her elected.

everything is intertwined together.

not just this but also people are really focusing on themselves and not really look at this from Anet point of view.

Anet has one of the biggest if not the biggest MMO team.

At the core of its rewrite, thats when essentially square enix created an MMO in just 2 years, FFXIV had 300 people working on it.

The next in line is ESO and they have less then 250 people working on the game.

Anet have 350.

Many of those other MMOs release an expansion every 1-2 years. Anet is releasing theirs after 3 years. This is critical for everyone but people seem to ignore it. Think about it. 1 year extra means the Expansion has cost Anet more (wages mainly) It means its cheaper for us. a $40 expansion every 2 years equals 20$ a year. a 50 dollar expansion every 3 years means $16 per year. These things matter, its not just about the full price and thats it, you need to see that in context.

Like some MMOs release DLCs that cost a mere $10 a pop. Is that cheaper? if you just look at the price sure, its 5 times less. But in the grand scheme of things those DLCs release approximately every 3 months. All in all in a 3 year period you have to pay 2.5 times more then what you pay for HoT to play all the content released. not really cheaper at all!

DarkSyze.8627:

fysorda.7501:

Ayrilana.1396:

fysorda.7501:

Hi , i dont play gw 2 a long time ago and i was thinking of playing again to see the expansion but why i have to pay the full price game again? i understand that for a new one that price is good because you get all at once but what happen to the old players? the logic think to do is to give us the option to buy only the expanson for 20 or 30 bucks. Is not fair that you punish the old players for only getting new players for more easy sells.

Read the post at the top of the page from Anet.

i already read that , i was trying to give my opinion how unfair is this for old players. I think is important for a game developer to keep the old players happy and to bring new people but in this case they only focus to get new people. well that is my point of view.

I agree with you. This remind me of membership model: members get discount price while regular customer pay full price. Old Players should be treated like this model while new players like me should pay full price.

My suggestion:

Players who are 2 years+ pay= discount price— $20
Players who are 1 and 1/2 years- 2 years pay= discount price— $30
Players who are 1 and 1/2 year to 1 year pay= discount price— $40
Players who are 1 year and -under pay= Full Price

What do you think?

(Old Players= Old Accounts= Pay Discount Price)
(New Players= New Accounts= Pay Full Price)

Awesome for players, crazy for companies. The biggest market for an expansion is old players why on earth would they gut their own market by up to 60% ? Who does that anyway?

But most of all why would someone who bought a product on day 1 deserve a 60% discount on the next product? As a customer I’d surely love if I could get the next model of my car for 40% of the price without doubt but I most definitely dont feel entitled to it just cause I paid full price on the previous model.

fysorda.7501:

Ayrilana.1396:

fysorda.7501:

Hi , i dont play gw 2 a long time ago and i was thinking of playing again to see the expansion but why i have to pay the full price game again? i understand that for a new one that price is good because you get all at once but what happen to the old players? the logic think to do is to give us the option to buy only the expanson for 20 or 30 bucks. Is not fair that you punish the old players for only getting new players for more easy sells.

Read the post at the top of the page from Anet.

i already read that , i was trying to give my opinion how unfair is this for old players. I think is important for a game developer to keep the old players happy and to bring new people but in this case they only focus to get new people. well that is my point of view.

Okey lets put it this way. 3 years ago company A releases a band new TV for the magical price of $60. 3 years later like all old product that TV fell in price and is now selling for $10. Soon they’re going to release a new product, bluray player complete with sound system that sells for $50. They figured its been 3 years now and the likeliness that people will buy our tv are pretty small. So why not make our new bluray player offering more attractive by giving the tv away for free with our bluray player? That way we might attract people who dont yet have a tv and whom otherwise would never buy our bluray player (because naturally you need a tv to use that)

How is this unfair on old customers who bought the TV? Arent companies free to discount their product if they choose to?

Fred Fargone.3127:

Or, keeping the price of the expansion at the general price range of an expansion. If you’re adding content worth $20, then charge $20.
Alternatively, they could make some other content more valuable.

any how do you decide how much content is worth how much money?

Just for the sake of argument not attacking any game here but lets compare Gw1 and Gw2 at release. Gw1 shipped with 25 story missions and 205 quests. Gw2 shipped with a ton more story missions and 1500 dynamic events. Does that mean Gw2 should have sold for $350 to reflect the amount of content increase it had over Gw1?

How about comparing the actual content, is LA in Gw1 the same complexity in LA in Gw2? nope again should Anet have charged more? even if you could somehow quantify content you cannot simply put a base price on it and scale accordingly. Pricing is a balance between a number of elements. Cost of developing the content, projected sales, expecting markup and what players are willing to pay for it.

Fred Fargone.3127:

The costs of creating a map doesn’t really increase just because the character level is higher.

No of course the cost of creating maps doesnt really increase with character level but it does increase based on added complexity and there is no denying that event the small bit we saw of verdant brink its way more elaborate then any existing map. Even with the vertical space not fulling enabled (Colin said its still lacking the canopy) its way bigger then any map including drytop in terms of vertical space and has a lot more modeling which does increase costs. Thats all stuff that has to be considered.

In the end its really simple, in the last 3 years Gw2 team didnt become smaller, it actually expanded from ~270 people to ~350 people. None of those people, one assumes, are being paid to do nothing. Hence the content they did in the weekly releases + Expansion in the last 3 years. So in terms of cost if we take the $60 they charged for Gw2, divide it by 5 years and divide that by 270 people each copy sold was essentially generating $0.04,4 per employee per year. if we do the same with HoT its $50 divided by 350 divided by 3 years it comes to $0.04,7 so really they’re charging only marginally more and lets not forget they were 270 employees by release so that $0.04,4 is actually a little on the lower side. So again are they really cheating us?

MiniEquine.6014:

Sorry, ya, 3 new maps. You saying they released 25 threw me off so I just subtracted that from the total 34 in game. Also, my point still stands that there has been a lot that happened in game with temporary content through the Living World S1 and the various events associated with it. None of this was “included at launch”, so it can be used to at least speculate that they would continue to add content as the expansion progresses. If they do not do this, then we have a problem.

just for clarity strictly speaking 3 maps isnt actually accurate either. They also released the tower of nightmares, kessex hills under the toxic alliance, destroyed LA, new rebuild LA, revamped southsun, labyrinthine cliffs, cragstead, the hatchery, the not so secret base, Queen Pavilion, SAB, The fractals, the dungeons (toy apocalypse, Mad king labyrinth, Mad king dungeon thingy, molten facility, the sky pirates base, etc.. ) they may have been temporary (with the exception of fractals, cragstead and the hatchery) but they still had to create them.

Fred Fargone.3127:

Galen Grey.4709:

let me explain the flaw in that logic.

Forget Gw2 for a second. lets go to your favorite super market instead. I am sure like all super markets in the world at one time or another they did the real popular buy one get one free offer. Hopefully they did that on a product you love in which case I am sure you noticed that while the super market was running that promotion the product you so much love did not double in price and once the promotion ended it certainly didnt half in price.

What you’re saying here is because the product in question costs generally costs X because the offer is now giving you 2 products instead of 1 for the same amount of money the product doesnt really cost X but instead costs 1/2 X.

This is ofcourse not true, the product still costs X, the super market or producer is simply giving you a free version to entice you and other customers to buy the product in question. In case of your super market the product they’re giving you costs them money (they still need to pay for the raw material, manufacturing etc..) and yet they still give it away for free. In case of Gw2, its a digital product, giving it away doesnt cost them a single dime. So why it is hard to believe they’d be willing to give it away for free in the hopes of enticing more customers with the better deal?

The thing is, if you’re trying to sell a plank with a nail in it for $100, it doesn’t mean that the plank with a nail in it is worth $100. Sure, you might be able to sell it for a couple of crazy people, but that doesn’t count on grander scale. So, you can either find a price that the plank with a nail in it is actually worth, OR, you can bundle in a fancy table. “For free”.

How is a plank with a nail in it selling for $100 a good analogy? What we have here is an expansion of as yet unknown size selling for 10% more then its average competition but with a time line that’s 33% larger which is also key. because okey some competitors charge $40 for their expansion but they’re released every 2 years not 3 which in the long run still makes them more expensive.

Its also technically cheaper then some of its other competition. Its a lot cheaper then a lot of its competition if you factor in running costs.

Fred Fargone.3127:

Do you think, that if they sold just the expansion for $50 without bundling anything with it, that’d sell?

yes why not? do you really think a single veteran player who bought HoT did it cause it included the core game they already own anyway? Besides think of subscription games. its generally 2 years of sub + $40 for the expansion + $15 for every month you intend to play it and yet they still sell. Do you really think the $10 above the current average is such a show stopper?

Fred Fargone.3127:

I’m sorry, there seems to be a flaw in the logic here. You’re assuming that every expansion will be worth as much, and that the old titles will always be $10, and that they’re going to follow the pricing model for 4 expansions. Sure, they said they would, but things people say don’t always hold true.

the $10 is an assumption that up until the day they announce the next expansion their bundle will not sell for less then $10. Pretty reasonable I think. Then I went with your logic, that since up until that moment the package was selling for $10 thats what it costs.

Fred Fargone.3127:

If they’re charging $50 for every expansion, I know I’m not buying the next one. Not if it’s anything like HoT content wise.

Shouldnt you know what content HoT has before deciding its not sufficient? We’re missing the most crucial information (how many maps are there?, how many events? how many story instances? what is the difficult group content? how many dungeons/fractals are there if any? How can anyone make an assessment if content is sufficient before they can answer these basic questions?

Fred Fargone.3127:

I know there are whole lot of people who didn’t buy HoT because it’s $50 (=$100). I know there will be whole lot people, who will buy the next expansion, but not the 3rd when it also costs $50 (=$200).

There are a whole lot of people who will not play an MMO unless they can play without paying a single cent. There are also people who are willing to pay $200 a year to play their favorite MMO. A game is not a charity, HoT charging $50 essentially means $16 a year. I am not sure Arenanet would be loosing much if they loose people who think their game is not worth the extra $3 a year we’re talking about.

Fred Fargone.3127:

Most likely, 2rd expansion would, include 1 more “free” character slots AND a totally “free” bank tab, or something else to appease the people who have now paid $100 already for the game, and are required to pay $50 more for yet another expansion.

Yes cause provided they take another 3 years to develop the next expansion they wouldnt deserve $150 for 6 years of work but were’ly $130 right? Is it really that imperative for people to save $3 per year? I dont know is it such a huge sacrifice to just save a little $3 once every year to support your favorite game?

Fred Fargone.3127:

That’s the thing. The expansion isn’t worth $49.99. That’s why they’d have to bundle stuff with it. It’s not necessarily even worth $39.99, but it’s worth $39.99 with beta benefits for enough people.

Too premature to make that statement as already explained.

Fred Fargone.3127:

No, but I said “well 49.99 is a bit steep but since it includes a character slot, sure why not?” Quite a few people said that in the threads complaining about the HoT pricing. That’s why they included a “free” character slot as an alternative for the core game. The game wasn’t worth $49.99 alone for enough people.

No thats not what happened, people felt because new players were getting something for free so should they. It had nothing to do with HoT being worthed it or not. For the 3rd time how can you determine if something is worthed or not without barely knowing what it contains?

Fred Fargone.3127:

Money, obviously. It sounds whole lot better when you say "AND THAT’S NOT ALL! You get this nice knife-rack for FREE when you order your deluxe knife-set now! " But for whatever reason, my local supermarket will always have the deluxe knife-set for cheaper without the knife-rack.

Somehow I doubt thats true. Because while discounting that deluxe knife set would certain be a better value to the customer psychology is a weird thing. Study after study has proven that people respond better to getting free stuff rather then saving money. Thats why generally get free stuff is preferred. Super market makes more money, customers are happier. win win.

Fred Fargone.3127:

Well, I made it easier for myself to accept the fact by deciding the expansion costs $40 and can only be bought bundled with either the original game which is now worth $10, or a character slot of equal value. I don’t see any flaw in that logic.

let me explain the flaw in that logic.

Forget Gw2 for a second. lets go to your favorite super market instead. I am sure like all super markets in the world at one time or another they did the real popular buy one get one free offer. Hopefully they did that on a product you love in which case I am sure you noticed that while the super market was running that promotion the product you so much love did not double in price and once the promotion ended it certainly didnt half in price.

What you’re saying here is because the product in question costs generally costs X because the offer is now giving you 2 products instead of 1 for the same amount of money the product doesnt really cost X but instead costs 1/2 X.

This is ofcourse not true, the product still costs X, the super market or producer is simply giving you a free version to entice you and other customers to buy the product in question. In case of your super market the product they’re giving you costs them money (they still need to pay for the raw material, manufacturing etc..) and yet they still give it away for free. In case of Gw2, its a digital product, giving it away doesnt cost them a single dime. So why it is hard to believe they’d be willing to give it away for free in the hopes of enticing more customers with the better deal?

I get it, people just dont want to believe Anet are giving Gw2 away for free. Its being assumed that they’re lieing that for some reason the cost of the expansion is 39.99 (as if there is just a thing as a cost for a digital good) and that they’re secretly charging $10 for their core game forcing everyone to pay for what they already own.

Now consider this. They already stated every expansion they release will always include the on before hand so do you really think its feasable for them to charge $10 for everything they say they’re including for free? If they did that next expansion will sell for $60, the one after that for $70 and Expansion number 4 will go for a whooping $80 all the while claiming that they’re actually being included for free.

You seriously see that happening?

And actually adding a bit to this… why exactly would they do that? Just to get an extra $10? if they wanted to do that couldnt they simply have priced the expansion $49.99 and not bundle anything with it?

Its not like any of us who own gw2 said “well 49.99 is a bit steep but since it includes the core game sure why not?” did we? so again why on earth would they try to deceive anyone by claiming they’re giving away something for free when in truth they’re charging for it? what exactly would they gain by doing that?

Fred Fargone.3127:

Galen Grey.4709:

avesatan.1760:

Who can tell me , the price of full game starts from 49.99.
But i already got the original copy of GW2, and i only want to buy a DLC ( Heart of Thorns) Can i do it just this way, or i have to pay 49.99?

49.99 is the price of the expansion. The expansion also includes the core game for free
if you already have the core game and pre-purchase the game before release you will get a free character slot worth $10.

Anet could create a new bundle that includes just heart of thorns and no core game but it would still cost $49.99 cause that is what they’re charging for the expansion. The core game is just a free bonus just like the free character slot you get if you pre-purchase.

I think it’d be more accurate to say that, the price of the expansion is $39.99, but you can only buy it bundled with the core game, which costs $10. If you already had the core game, they’ll bundle in a character slot instead.

Based on what facts would it be more accurate?

avesatan.1760:

Who can tell me , the price of full game starts from 49.99.
But i already got the original copy of GW2, and i only want to buy a DLC ( Heart of Thorns) Can i do it just this way, or i have to pay 49.99?

49.99 is the price of the expansion. The expansion also includes the core game for free
if you already have the core game and pre-purchase the game before release you will get a free character slot worth $10.

Anet could create a new bundle that includes just heart of thorns and no core game but it would still cost $49.99 cause that is what they’re charging for the expansion. The core game is just a free bonus just like the free character slot you get if you pre-purchase.

phys.7689:

its not just about quality, its about a complete experience.
a book is a complete story
mario was a complete experience
a song is a complete experience.

GW2 hot, as they have advertised it is an incomplete experience.

Well considering HoT is actually incompletely advertised this argument is premature because naturally something that hasnt been completely revealed will always feel incomplete.

phys.7689:

the expansion was supposed to be a complete experience, a real meal, instead it is looking like it is going to be another appetizer, then you wait 8 hours and get another appetizer, etc.

full price of a meal for an appetizer is a big problem.

How so? Do you not like how the personal story ends in HoT?

phys.7689:

also some things you said that i dont think will be accurate in the future:

• i dont think they will wait 3 years for the next expansion.

Still to early to tell. We have no idea how long they’ve been working on HoT and thus we have no idea how long it takes them to finish an expansion.

phys.7689:

• the content they gave out wasnt free, anymore than an f2p content is free, it is paid for by the gem shop, which ultimately always comes down to providing things many people will want to pay for in order to continue to enjoy the game.

Ohh come on, as long as you dont need to pay for the content itself, the content is free. If a bar has a live band and they’re not charging an entrance ticket to see the band you can argue the bar is charging you to see the band just cause they’re selling drinks. You’re free to get in watch the band perform from start to finish not buy a single thing and leave. How is that paid for content?

phys.7689:

• The expansion development cycle probably isnt that long, much of the content coming in this expac was under development, but not as an expansion. Mastery system, came from precursors, which was going to be free, specialization a result of the skills/trait growth we were promised, the new zones are the ones required for mordremoth, which was supposedly planned since they came up with scarlet.(before they planned an expansion)

I dont doubt that one bit but if they were working on the stuff since day one even if they originally intended to release it as part of the LS and then changed their mind it doesnt mean the next expansion will come earlier next time. If it took them 3 years to develop whatever they’re releasing in HoT unless next time they intend to do a smaller expansion they’ll still need 3 years to create the same amount of content.

Wrong Modremoth was planned since before GW2 released. That was said by colin when asked if the tutorial zone for the sylvari that has you fight the shadow of the dragon. If it was intential to have that the big boss at the end of Season 2 from the start or something they came up with later. Even without colin’s statement there are plenty of things that make it obvious modremoth was planed for since before release. We knew of 5 elder dragons yet Gw2 launched with a hinted 6th dragon in places like CoE or even outside in the infinity coil itself. Just to make it super obvious (in hindsight) Subject Alpha also has an ability called Teeth of Mordremoth!

phys.7689:

• you price your items whatever you want, but in reality a price that customers arent willing to pay is not profitable.

True but like I already said pricing your stuff to a level that makes your customers happy that may then result in losses or even not enough return will make your future even harder.

phys.7689:

• is it being blown out of proportion? that depends on what anets plans and execution are. Many people are buying the expansion with the idea that it will provide another 3 years of entertainment, or at the least a complete experience. Much of what anet has implied suggests that it will provide neither.

This is an MMO not a standalone game. I wouldnt say the core game provides 3 years of experience but with what Anet did with the continuous updates it certainly did and at least for me much better then any other MMO I have ever played. I always had something to do, always! In most other MMOs I always got to a point where it got to repeat this dungeon or these quests for a while now and that just doesnt work for me.

I am not sure what you mean by complete experience though, can you elaborate a bit on that?

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Well you seem to have not been there back then when in WoW people complained about too much content in every update, because they were not done with the stuff from before.

I wasnt there for any of it like I already stated multiple times.

However lets be realistic here. WoW released an update every approx 3 months. Each update had in most cases 1 or 2 raids / dungeons

The one you presented could be completed in 3 hours. Now sure some guilds may have failed the run and had to wait a week to retry it again. Some weeks they may not have managed to get 40 people together to even try the run. Sure some people probably didnt manage to earn all the rewards from that dungeon/raid in the 3 months time period but does that really mean those updates were so huge they included 3 months worth of content?

I have people in my guild who are trying to get a full set of amberite weapons and coincidentally one of them celebrated earning their 7th weapon just yesterday. Myself who dont really farm only have 1 amberite weapon done so far. Does that mean the entanglement update included 1 year and 1 month – 3 days worth of content?

fact is if you didnt fail those raid and runs could be completed in less then 3 hours so the amount of content released was 3 hours. factoring in replay value and clever ways to extend content life time like raid locks isnt a correct assessment of amount of content released. Just like I said a single season 2 episode provided 1 hour of story content and bit more in terms of dynamic events and new map part unlocked. If you factored in trying to get all the achievements and earning all the rewards bundled in that release it would potentially go in the 100s of hours but I dont feel thats a proper assessement.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Compared to the complains here, that people couldn’t do the content because it was gone before they had a chance to log in (holidays and stuff). Makes me smile. One could say there was too much content, but that would be sort of a stretch.

The reason why people had that problem was because of the quick release cycle content had which in itself is indeed an issue of too much content being pumped out.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

It doesn’t matter, GW2:HoT will be compared to other first paid expansions of premium titels. This includes WoW:TBC, LotRO:MoM and AoC:RotGS.
I liked them all for what they were, so I won’t be too picky. They were all cheaper but also part of a sub based game. No sub should never be an excuse for mediocre content though, so I will calculate the higher prize of HoT as sub fee.

Those expansions were released a decade ago. How is that a fair comparison. If someone opens a new car manufacturing company do you expect their car to be priced like the first model released by current established car companies? “What you want me to pay $15,000 for this new car? this is your first model, Ford charged $825 for their first model thats how much you should sell your new car!” does that sound right to you? and besides doesnt your logic flow both ways? IE if you consider the $20 extra you’re paying as a form of subscription fee, which over 3 years it would be something like 50c a month btw. then wouldnt you consider the subscription you’d have paid with each one of those games part of the expansion price which would put the cost for the ones you mentioned to $420, $315, $390 respectively? No matter how you look at it you’re still getting a better deal price wise here.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Go through the expansions and what they offered, and you should get a good picture of what at least I am expecting. I would pay $50 if HoT would be close to one of these.

We cant have this discussion until HoT is fully revealed. That being said you also need to consider the work involved in creating content for each of them. Just look at the open world environment of each of them and what we’ve seen of HoT so far. The enviroments of those old expansion are much more simplistic and less detailed that when we have in HoT. Thats why I said its a bad idea to compare what we have today to what we had 8-10 years ago. Takes more people to create content for modern MMOs (more art assets, more detailed models, more elaborate texturing etc..) That in turn means it takes longer to do things and in turn that means it costs more to create.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

When they release fractals in November 2012, I ran four of them on level one in less than 45 minutes.

When they released AQ20 and AQ40, it took the best guilds weeks to beat all of it, and even on early farm, AQ40 took around 6 hours for an experienced raid groups.

And there was Naxxramas too, only shortly after AQ, as a player you got literally drowned in content, while in GW2, they just gave you enough to keep logging in ever two weeks to visit the gem store.

Not that I want to glorify WoW, as I got bored eventually and stopped playing, but in matters of real content released, GW2 should be hiding in the shades…

even if most people doing fractals for the first time could complete 4 in 45 minutes (and i think on average thats definitely not the case) there are 14 different fractals so accounting for 11 minutes each thats 3hrs worth of content which is the same size as that raid you mention so it still wouldnt be true that the update you mention (which I guess is probably the largest one of the bunch) is “bigger than all fractals and added dungeon pathes and mini dungeons added to GW2 together”
and that means that certainlly your statement “Every single dungeon and every single raid added to WoW that you listed is bigger than all fractals and added dungeon pathes and mini dungeons added to GW2 together” isnt true.

at best based on this one example you could argue 1 single WoW update is more or less as big as 2 Gw2 updates but then again for every single update WoW releases Gw2 release an average of 3 – 6 in the same timeframe.

No argument that WoW raids are much more difficult than any content released by Gw2 perhaps with the exception of revamp tequalt and Wurm. But just cause a guild failed to finish a raid and then they’re forced to wait a week in order to try again after which it they may fail again and have to retry a few times it doesnt mean the content released is weeks long. If a successful run takes 3hrs to finish it means its 3 hrs worth of content.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Galen Grey.4709:

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Every single dungeon and every single raid added to WoW that you listed i bigger than all fractals and added dungeon pathes and mini dungeons added to GW2 together.s

Ahn’Qiraj alone probably has the size of the Silverwastes…

Sure GW2 might win in numbers, but this is like saying I have ten times more 1 cent coins than you 100 dollar bills, so I have more money than you…

I have no idea how big Ahn’Qiraj is but that being said i found this full run on youtube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drGxkhfDNP8

Its 2hrs 50 minutes long I am also ignoring pauses in between while they set stuff up, like there is a whole 10 minute of standing still “doing nothing” at 1:09:00 and 10 minutes for photos at the end . .

And this is a full run of echoes of the past:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2lYEozZmSk

1hr 10 minutes. That doesnt include the 1/4 of silverwastes and the events there in released with the same update. I am sure that provided another hour of game play alone.

So no Ahn’Qiraj itself isnt as big as all 4 updates that unlocked the silverwastes its as big as 1 update from what I am seeing.

as for fractals, each fractal is about 30 mins long. which makes that raid you listed as long as approximately 5 fractals certainly not “bigger than all fractals and added dungeon pathes and mini dungeons added to GW2 together”

That’s only half of Ahn’Qiraj, you missed the “Ruins of Ahn’Qiraj” part…

And not even the most elite guilds ran it that fast when it was new and exciting. Who takes 30 min for a fractal anyway? Total beginners thrown into a 30+ fractal?

Fine. But 1/2 of it ? Youtube disagrees… Ruins of Ahn’Qiraj seems to be 20 – 30 mins long based on a number of runs I saw on youtube.

Why do you really need to believe so hard that Gw2 barely released any content? Yes sure now top elite guilds can easily speed run fractals in far less then 30 mins. I assume elite top level guilds in WoW can run your raid in a fraction of the time now too. In fact no need to wonder.. here’s a solo guy running that nearly 3 hr long raid in 24 minutes flat. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2yel8p2kFI

We’re talking content releases here, ie content that is level appropriate and that people dont yet know how the mecanics work so there is a learning curve + the short cuts are not yet know. Speed runs dont apply in this argument.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Every single dungeon and every single raid added to WoW that you listed i bigger than all fractals and added dungeon pathes and mini dungeons added to GW2 together.s

Ahn’Qiraj alone probably has the size of the Silverwastes…

Sure GW2 might win in numbers, but this is like saying I have ten times more 1 cent coins than you 100 dollar bills, so I have more money than you…

I have no idea how big Ahn’Qiraj is but that being said i found this full run on youtube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drGxkhfDNP8

Its 2hrs 50 minutes long I am also ignoring pauses in between while they set stuff up, like there is a whole 10 minute of standing still “doing nothing” at 1:09:00 and 10 minutes for photos at the end . .

And this is a full run of echoes of the past:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2lYEozZmSk

1hr 10 minutes. That doesnt include the 1/4 of silverwastes and the events there in released with the same update. I am sure that provided another hour of game play alone.

So no Ahn’Qiraj itself isnt as big as all 4 updates that unlocked the silverwastes its as big as 1 update from what I am seeing.

as for fractals, each fractal is about 30 mins long. which makes that raid you listed as long as approximately 5 fractals certainly not “bigger than all fractals and added dungeon pathes and mini dungeons added to GW2 together”

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Really? Read through the fewer updates for other AAA MMO’s and realize that these updates offer more content than all the 42 updates of GW2 together.

Higher frequency of updates doesn’t equal more content. Most of the Living Story Season 1 updates do not even qualify as a content update for most other MMOs.

Seriously, read through what WoW has added in the first three years of its existance and tell me that GW2 would not have to hide in shame compared to what was added back then. Look at LotRO and the updates between expansions.

Living Story updates are thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread. They were an excuse to promote gem store items.

It got a bit better with Season 2, but hey, we didn’t get many of these and the season is over since forever.

42 “content” updates, and adding so little, that is actually quite impressive.

Fine lets go through it (listing new content, ignoring fixes and features).
1 dungeon in 1.2.0
1 dungeon, 2 world bosses in 1.3.0
pvp honor system, 1 new arena, elemental invasion in 1.4.0
2x battle grounds in 1.5.0
1 raid and 1 holiday event in 1.6
1 raid, 1 battle ground and 1 event in 1.7
4x bosses, revamped zone in 1.8
2x instances in 1.9
1 raid in 1.11
new events in 2.0.3
1 raid + 1 arena in 2.1
2 holiday events in 2.2.2
and thats it 3 years source: wowwiki
Total 2 dungeons, 6 bosses, 4 raids, 2 instances, 3 events, 2 holiday events, 2 arenas, 3 battle grounds, 1 zone revamp, some new events.

Now Gw2.
For a release breakdown go here, too many to list
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Release

Totals:
5 holiday events (lunar new year not listed in the above link for some reason)
4 new dungeons
3 new world events
7 new jumping puzzles
2 new mini dungeons
4 new maps
13 new fractals
3 new pvp map
guild missions a bunch of them spread on 2 releases
2 releases of Super adventure box
8 new mini games
2 new world boss
5x new instances
1 world boss revamp
1 dungeon path revamp
3 map redesign
1 map revamp
Edge of the mists
many new dynamic events in multiple releases
38 story instances (Living story episodes and to be clear I didnt double count the dungeons like Molten facility and scarlet’s playhouse)

Not saying WoW had poor updates but how on earth can anyone conclude Gw2 updates are shameful. It clearly wins hands down on the amount of content it released in between expansions. I swear Anets content must have some really advanced cloaking technology.

Guhracie.3419:

Galen Grey.4709:

Anet have the largest MMO development team I am aware of (short of WoW ofcourse). They also chucked out most free content in between expansion of any MMO I am aware off (including WoW) while developing their expansion. They also have a relatively long expansion development cycle. Will some players feel ripped off? sure! does that automatically mean they’re justified? No. You dont price things just to make people happy you also need to factor in your expenses and what return your investors are expecting. Keeping most of your players but loosing investor backing can be just as disastrous after all.

You need to find a balance because ultimately you cannot make everyone happy. If a player is willing to drop your game over $3.33 per year ($10 over 3 years) probably that player has much bigger issues with your game then price anyway. After all using wow as an example once again there are over 5m people who consistently don’t feel ripped off paying $15×24 + $40 = $400 per expansion cycle and that cylce is 33% shorter which makes it even worst. Does any of this mean that everyone should be happy with what Anet charges? No of course not, ultimately you’re right, it will be players who decide if the price is justified or not. That being said it is my opinion that this whole thing is being blown up way out of proportion.

Lol no. I know all the cool kids love to hate on WoW, but don’t straight-up lie. I don’t keep up with patch news anymore, but the seven years I played had tons of content patches in between the expansions. Just don’t. It’s an embarrassing claim to make.

It’s also disproportionate, given the amount of resources and the level of organization they had at that time, compared to what ANET has.

As much as I rail against the things I don’t like about ANET, I do appreciate that ANET has heart. I’m just not sure heart is enough to keep me playing, at this point. Either way, the price has been set.

First of All I am not hating on any MMO just to make that part clear. Secondly I didnt say only Anet release free content in between expansions, I said they released the most free content in between expansions. Even WoW with a budget order of magnitude larger then what Anet have doesnt even come close. Like between the previous and last Expansion according to WoW’s website (dont play it myself) they had 12 updates. Gw2 had 42 updates. Then there is the frequency of the updates themselves which until this year were at least 1 a month and for the most part 1 every 2 weeks. WoW is also not the only MMO around, many others dont even release any content at all in between their expansions or only a handful of releases.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

C’mon Galen, if we get something similar to the 100 hours of Witcher 3 story and gameplay quality, I will be more than willing to pay $50 twice. How can you even compare these titels.

Thats precisely my point though. Thats exactly why I asked you how can anyone ever quantify something like this. Even the order 1886, it may be short but that doesnt mean it didnt have production value that justified its price, does it! like wise The witcher 3 may been 100hrs or so long but undoubtedly it has production value thats really hard to match. You said it yourself you’re willing to pay $100 for something thats essentially 10 times smaller then Gw2 which means value is not something thats simply quantified based on content size.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

But in the end, it will not be me who will quantify how much content is worthy the $50, it will be the community. You are right, I am not yet sure if I will buy the two copies of HoT (for me and my wife) as we both are less than convinced of what this expansion actually got to offer.

Thing is all comments I read on the subject all state the same thing “they’re charging as much as the core game so it better have the same amount of content” never mind that technically its $10 less but anyhow… no one seems to be stopping and considering that its not simply a question of quantity, its also a question of quality and boy playing in the beta one immediately sees there is a jump in quality across the board. Will it have the same amount of content? of course not thats impossible. They’ve been working 2 maybe 3 years on this max, they split their employees in multiple teams (Living story, Festival events, fractals, pvp, supporting the live game etc..) how can whatever they produce match the whole team working unified on the core game for 5 years, its not a realistic expectation. But so what, which expansion is ever as large as the game its expanding. What about all the updates it came with? $50 for a game that kept me busy for 3 years is a huge bargain.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

We are also not in a hurry to buy it, and maybe we will skip it. But here is the thing, I don’t think we will come back, even if the next next expansion looks like a good deal. Because we have moved on at that point.
Like nowadays you only need the last expansion of WoW to play all the content, did I start playing again (stopped end of 2008) for all those free expansions I can enjoy now? No. And it will be the same with GW2.

yeah 10 years later now core game includes all previous expansions though it is still unknown if they will keep doing it going forward.

If you dont like the game you dont like the game, no amazing offer is going to change that but I didnt say regain old players I said new players. If I never tried wow do you really think it will not make a difference to me that paying $20 gets me also all expansions? its much more enticing to try rather then knowing if I enjoy the game I will not only have to pay a sub but also a bunch of $40 in relatively short order.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

ANet is at a high risk with their expansion plans. They might lose more veteran players every single expansion because they feel ripped off, while the newer players will become veterans and will be facing the “worse deal” scenario the next time, an endless circle of disappointment incoming…

Sure, only time will tell, but I am willing to wait and see.

Anet have the largest MMO development team I am aware of (short of WoW ofcourse). They also chucked out most free content in between expansion of any MMO I am aware off (including WoW) while developing their expansion. They also have a relatively long expansion development cycle. Will some players feel ripped off? sure! does that automatically mean they’re justified? No. You dont price things just to make people happy you also need to factor in your expenses and what return your investors are expecting. Keeping most of your players but loosing investor backing can be just as disastrous after all.

You need to find a balance because ultimately you cannot make everyone happy. If a player is willing to drop your game over $3.33 per year ($10 over 3 years) probably that player has much bigger issues with your game then price anyway. After all using wow as an example once again there are over 5m people who consistently don’t feel ripped off paying $15×24 + $40 = $400 per expansion cycle and that cylce is 33% shorter which makes it even worst. Does any of this mean that everyone should be happy with what Anet charges? No of course not, ultimately you’re right, it will be players who decide if the price is justified or not. That being said it is my opinion that this whole thing is being blown up way out of proportion.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

And if ANet always has to start from zero, they could just work on a successor like GW3 and sell it for a full retail prize.

When ever did they start from 0? thats not what iterating means. in fact it means the exact opposite.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Bottom line:

If ANet just sells the expansion for a lower prize tag, people will accept less content.
If ANet sells the expansion for the prize of a full game, people will expect a full game worth of content.

I really hope ANet can deliver, otherwise this forum will no longer be a place for civilized discussions.

Again how exactly do you quantify how much content is $50?

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Galen Grey.4709:

So why exactly do you think what Anet doing is the cash grab, which alternative model would you like them to use thats more fair?

Sell the kitten expansion as an expansion. And sell a bundle for people that do not own the base game.

That goes counter to what they’re trying to do, which is entice people who didnt think Gw2 was worthy so far by offering them a better deal. It will also become progressively worst. 10 years down the line how many new players will you get when they look at Gw2 and see they need to pay $100s to enjoy the new episodic content? Worst yet you’re not going to charge full price so if people are against anet giving Gw2 for free what makes you think they’d be okey if they charge $10 for it?

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Look , Elite Dangerous wants to do the same, sell the expansion for $49.99 including the base game. But there won’t be a way to buy just the expansion, so this is a 100% similar case.

Wrong. Actually Elite dangerous did exactly as you suggested, they created a seamless bundle. $60 for the Game and the Expansion, $50 if you already have the game. Physically they’re the same item sure but it has different price if you already own the game or not which essentially makes it a bundle that includes the base game for $10 if you dont own it.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

If the GW2 expansion does not come close to the amount you would expect from a full game release, my educated guess is that the forums will burn.

The forum burn if Anet give away stuff for free so yeah no surprise there. Even if they do I am sure people will find something to be unhappy about.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Because people literally pay the price of a full game. They expect the amount of a stand-alone product. And if ANet’s logic is right, just the expansion is worth $50 in their minds.

Which is already flawed logic. Example howlongtobeat.com puts The order 1886 to an average of 8hrs and the witcher 3 to 97hrs. On top of that The Witcher 3 had a slightly smaller price at release. I am sure that HoT will keep people busy for much longer then 97hrs. even assuming we get 3 seasons of living story during HoTs lifetime might account for 97hrs alone. so how much is an hour of game play really worth? Truth is it cant be quantified this way.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

The alarming thing is that everyone at ANet started talking how this expansion will be the foundation for all other stuff, which implies it will be smaller, because they spent so much time doing the ground work.

How does foundation imply smaller? If anything it implies that they’ll continue building onto what they release and knowing Anet that may very well mean we’ll be getting more free updates to enhance HoT while we wait for whatever expansion is next.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

But they did say the same thing about fractals, guild missions, and even dungeons, every single time they introduced some stuff: they did the groundwork for the future. Sure, that worked out well.

Shouldnt we wait for a full HoT reveal before making statements such as this?

Kaiyanwan.8521:

After three years, what this game needs is not more ground work, it needs content. Ground work should be happening all the time and not sold as an excuse for less content for a big price tag.

No reason why ground work and content shouldnt go hand it in hand. If they did what you suggest and never innovated on the existent systems we’d always have more of the same and not sure that would make everyone happy.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

I don’t want to pay for the ground work. This is the game designers job, and if they still have to work so desperately on the basics on a game that has been released three years ago, maybe it is time to hire some more and more skilled people.

Then doesn’t the business model Anet employed and that you dont agree with at all, actually make it perfect for you. If you feel HoT only did ground work and you dont want to pay for that because you feel it doesnt give you anything of value, fine skip it. Come next provided they deliver it meat you’re after you get it for free. Other model would still have you pay for it.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

It is the new strategy of game companies to sell little content at a full price:

Elite Dangerous: Horizons Expansion only comes as bundle with the original game
Destiny: The Taking King Expansion was planned to only be sold as a bundle (massive uproar changed that)
Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns Expansion only comes as a bundle with the original game.

The lesson that should be learnt from Destiny is, that making enough noice can make a difference.

Unfortunately, the GW2 community is one of the best and nicest around, which the DEV’s seem to see as an excuse to throw this kitten at their players without any worries. And true, more players are justifying this madness and defending the cash grab than people actually questioning it.

Impressive, ANet.

How is that the same thing?

For starters both Elite Dangerous and Destiny are not including the base game for free. In case of destiny the issue was the base game was included in the collectors edition (not for Free) so if you wanted the digital goodies that come with the collectors edition you had to rebuy the base game. Proof expansion costs $40, Collector edition costs $80. To fix this issue they’re allowing people to buy the digital goodies with the collectors edition for $20 so essentially people were paying $20 extra for something they already owned. In Gw2 no one is paying anything extra for the core game.

But anyway I am curious about the core of your statement. So you think what Anet did is a cash grab. Fine you’re entitled to your opinion. Whats the alternative ? I mean somehow expansions need to be handled. You can either do what Gw2 is doing, or what Gw1 did or what WoW does.

In Gw1 they made each expansion with the exception of EOTN a standalone campaign. that means you were free to decide weather to buy it or not without any issues great. The only exception being EOTN but since it was the only one exception it pretty much worked like the stand alone campaigns. Had Utopia released most likely it would have followed the WoW model which is each expansion requires all previous expansions.

So which one is really the cash grab? lets check it out shall we ?

Gw2 you pay for which ever expansion you want. if they ever release something that doesnt entice you, you can skip it and buy the next… no harm no foul, you dont get to pay for content you dont like. Great. Expansions are slightly cheaper then full game.

Gw1. you pay for which every campaign you want. If you didnt like say deserty settings for some reason you could skip nightfall and all is good. campaigns cost exactly the same as the core game. You didnt have to pay for content you didnt want. Slightly more expensive then what Gw2 does but still at least you have freedom to buy what you want.

The other alternative used by games like WoW is each Expansion requires the previous ones. They generally cost a bit less then what Anet are charging but if you dont enjoy a particular release ? sorry you need to buy it if you want to continue playing the game.

To be fair there is yet another release model and thats to have no expansion at all, small dlcs which have a modest $5-$10 price tag. This is probably the worst because game that use such model generally throw out 4-5 of these per year making them about 3 times more expensive then all the other models.

So why exactly do you think what Anet doing is the cash grab, which alternative model would you like them to use thats more fair?

Innamorta.5713:

Zalladi.4652:

Innamorta.5713:

It would make more since if they want to give old players; ones who registered a serial code before a certain date, something exclusive.

In case you missed it; veteran players who had purchased the game before January 23rd are given a free character slot when purchasing any edition of Heart of Thorns. So in that regard, there is some form of exclusivity, but as to whether that is worth anything is up to your opinion.

Source

That’s the idea of loyalty to veteran players? I’d be 1000% happier if they would let me refund my account the same way newer players can.

Seriously, let me refund my account so that I can put it towards the xpac – since it comes with the core game. Otherwise I feel like they are trying to bend me over and hammer me from behind.

With all due respect, you’re not thinking this through properly. If you use this line of thinking you might as well only buy the game once Anet announce they’re going to close it.

As Anet already stated this isnt a one time deal, they’ll keep doing this. So 10 years down the line when they’re releasing their 4th expansion that will cost $50 and will include Core game+Hot+Expansion 2 and Expansion 3. But that doesnt mean Core game, HoT, expansion 2- 3 are free.

They only become free once the next one releases.

Since your logic is that as a day one player you deserve the “best Deal” a new player will ever get you’d need to wait until essentially game closure because the best deal will only happen once the last expansion releases.

Tell me is it really worth-ed?

This is also a really simplistic way to look at the whole thing because you didnt factor a lot of important elements.

Lets assume Gw2 closes after 6 years from release.

Yes a new player today gets to pay $50+$20 (Living story Season 2) and enjoy the game for 3 years while totally missing Living Story Season 1 (worth another $20 just to quantify it somehow). So Total payed here is $70 but missed out on $20 worth of content. That means a new player paid $23 per year, $30 if we factor in Season 1

You got to pay $110 and enjoyed the game for 6 years including both Seasons. So you paid $18 per year

new players may be paying less on paper but they’re definitely not getting the better deal.

But thats not all.

New players can fork in $20 an enjoy season 2 but do you think they’ll get the same experience we got? Do you think doing that content solo years later will be the same as doing it while its happening and having the epic scale you get when the whole server is doing events with you? Or the awesome speculation that was to be had in between releases trying to figure out whats next? new players cant really get that.

As for what Arenanet are doing to you personally with this deal, its actually nothing. If they decide to give away their work for free, they’re not cheating you who paid for it years ago, the only one “suffering” here is them who now dont get paid for the work they did for the 5 years prior to release. Doing that decision doesnt in any shape or form mean they shouldnt get paid for those 5 years for work from no one

Xillllix.3485:

Galen Grey.4709:

The Tempest
I dont know why some people felt it was weak, felt pretty strong to me though I do agree that 5s channeling for overload is problematic. I disagree that charging should be reduced, yes 5s in spent in an attunement is a lot but then again thats the cost for overload, it should be a small sacrifice to gather the energy needed to unleash it all at once sort of thing.

Tempest is week because it does less damage than a lava font, and while casting a lava font you can do other things. The damage isnt even ranged. Look at the sort of damage melee classes or the reaper are doing, 3-5k cleaves.

In competitive context 5 second staying still in an attunement before camping a low damage skill for the following 3-5 seconds just doesn’t work and isn’t worth the risk. Mesmers and thieves can interrupt you and burst you down in a tiny fraction of that time.

I was actually looking at it from a PvE side rather then a PvP pov. In a PvP enviroment I wouldnt even dream of poping an overload unless it was an attempt to time it so it pops when enemies get in range or something.

as for power (again from a PvE point of view) and disclaimer I only had like 1hr to try it so it wasnt an indepth analysis or anything of the story. While it may do less raw damage it felt like it had a much more AOE damage potential..

Overload Fire, Overload Air, Cyclone, Feel the Burn as well as flash freeze felt quite effective to deal with multiple foes at the same time. naturally I wouldnt expect Wide range AOE to be as damaging as more focused AOE so I am sure raw damage wise its not the best option but that doesnt automatically make it weak does it.

PvP is another story of course, still useful in most encounters WvW but in sPvP it wouldnt be my choice either.

Unfortunately I didnt get to spend as much time testing as i wanted, bad RL, but I did get to play a little and here’s my feedback.

I tried the reaper, chronomancer and the tempest. They were all awesome. Especially loved the tempest.

The Tempest

I dont know why some people felt it was weak, felt pretty strong to me though I do agree that 5s channeling for overload is problematic. I disagree that charging should be reduced, yes 5s in spent in an attunement is a lot but then again thats the cost for overload, it should be a small sacrifice to gather the energy needed to unleash it all at once sort of thing. The channeling on the other hand is not simply a cost, its a punishment in that you’re essentially making yourself vulnerable. Chances are unleashing an overload will result in giving a couple of free hits to your enemy rather then a benefit for sticking to a particular attunement.

The Mastery System

maybe i skimmed over it a bit too quickly and missed something but it was really non intuitive how the whole thing worked at first. Its like okey I earned a mastery point now how do I progress this line? essentially it took a little while until I figured out mastery points was something I would need later, that first playing the game would result in an unlock I needed in order to spend masteries. that didnt feel intuitive and perhaps will need some explaining to players.

Also I dont believe the game told me how to use glinding once I unlocked it. I personally knew what to do from watching POI but not every player does so perhaps a little tutorial once you unlock a feature would be a good idea.

Map

Map was amazing, in a lot of different ways. Visually its stunning, its so dense and the ambiance, ohhh some areas at night look incredible. Awesome work. Mobs are also much improved, they got great animations and a variety of attacks as well as new mechanics. I was also impressed how many different kind of mobs one can find in that little 25% of the map. Cant wait to properly explore this and all the new maps.

Adventures

Only got to try the burn the tendrils one. But it was fun, There has to be a trick I missed something cause the best I managed to get was around 70 I believe which is like 1/2 the best score and thats with quite a few runs under my belt. Ability to restart at any point is a life saver but had I not know you could do that through watching POI I wouldnt have know it was possible at all. Some perhaps a little pop up or something should explain that to players when they start an adventure?

All in all I am very happy with what I’ve seen so far so keep up the good work! cant wait for the next BWE, hope I will have more time to play a lot more next time

These beta events always bring dilemmas for me.

on one hand generally I like to play the least interesting aspects for me during beta leaving what I am really interested in for launch. In this case though I think I will thrown that philosophy out of the window and experiment with the reaper which is what I am mostly interested in. Want to also try some adventures, dont know why but I am quite looking forward to them.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

selberkh.6859:

the issue their is that you arent re-buying gw2 it comes FREE with the expansion. that means, wether you admit it or not, its not repurchasing as you arent paying for it.

Or so they say. For a price of $50 bucks, I don’t believe that.

they also said future expansion will include previous expansions for free, so 3 expansions down the line you’re expecting expansions to cost $80 ? $10 for core, $10 for expansions 1,2,3 + $40 for expansion 4?

People need to factor time in the deal too. We veterans payed at least $50 for core game + $40 for HoT but got 3 years of game time out of the core game.

Someone who buys the game now pays $40 and gets both the core game and HoT but doesnt get the 3 years of game time we got.

Its also important to realise what those 3 years mean. It means we were there when the karka invaded. We were there when we liberated Southsun. We got to stop the molten alliance, the sky pirates and the toxic alliance. We enjoyed the labyrinthine cliffs. The Zepherite airship. We saw the inauguration of the queen pavilion. We got to experience when modremoth attacked. We got to experience 3 different incarnations of LA. We fought together to defeat the marionette etc… etc.. Isnt 3 years of GW2 + all that followed in those 3 years worth the extra $50?

Anet didnt make Gw2 core cheaper just for the fun of it. Games age, Even if season 2 of the living story is replayable unlike season 1 doing it months after it first aired will not be the same experience of being there when things are actually happening. There just isnt that same epic vibe where you see everyone joining in a common struggle against a big foe.

Fiddlestyx.9714:

It’s called marketing. They sell their customer one thing and give them something completely different. They already have your money.

Manifesto came out 2 years before you could even pre-order gw2. Besides anyone buying stuff based on manifesto is doing it wrong essential. You dont buy an idea, you buy the implementation of that idea.

Imagine buying a car based on its concept.

Thing is and this is key, an idea can translate in a million ways to reality and why you like the idea there is no guarnatee you’ll like the way its implemented.

Example No Grinding
The way Anet implemented it? nearly everything is attainable playing whatever you
enjoy. you can at least get something equally powerful for the few exceptions that limit you on how you can acquire them.

For some that implementation works (you’ll find plenty of people who state they dont grind in Gw2 myself included)
for some that implementation doesnt work. (You’ll find also plenty of people who’ll swear this is the grindiest MMO they have ever played)

in this example at least, its not that Anet twisted their vision for marketing reasons but rather their implementation unfortunately doesnt work for everyone. That however doesnt mean they were not true to their stated ideal !

The first thing that needs to be understood here is what a manifesto really is. Because funny enough had Arenanet stated one thing in their manifesto and then did exactly the perfect opposite, provided they did genuinely try to implement the manifesto but ended up doing the exact opposite because it turned out their original vision was not doable it still wouldnt be considered lying / being manipulative. For the billionth time a manifesto is a statement of intend not a check list of promises.

Luckly Arenanet didnt have to do everything the opposite way so we’re safe there.

Another thing people need to understand is an intent is just that, an intent. It can be implemented in a gazillion number of ways and all of them count. Zergs mentions “Specifically made grind maps with dedicated farm guild sprouting all over the place.” but guess what even had they really done specific grind maps (which they didnt) it wouldnt invalided their non grind policy as long as there was a way to avoid the grind and there are plenty of ways to avoid that grind. Gold is not something you get only if you do champ trains or farm chests in SW. Nothing that drops in those two examples mentioned by Zergs cant be gotten doing any content you enjoy doing.

You dont beat grind by putting in no rewards in a game. You dont beat grind by making every reward attainable in a short period of time. Both those things will result in a very boring game. The only way to beat grind is to let people play what they feel like playing to earn their reward.

Aenesthesia.1697:

Carighan.6758:

The majority are playing, or waiting for the xpack. Those already angry snap at every change and then take to the forums, doesn’t make what it actually is.

As the game sold more than 5 million copies, and the number of players seems smaller with each day, i guess that the majority of the players have quit or are doing something better waiting for the expac to freshen things up.

as is its absolutely impossible to know many people are playing.

You cannot simply based that on how many people you’re seeing on the map you’re currently playing on. Never mind players might be on other maps or doing other content at that moment but also because there is no way to tell if your map instance is the only one running of there are more / how many more.

Ergo in your map you might be seeing absolutely no players but if there are another 10 full instances of your map running with 200 players in each that doesnt mean no one is playing the game does it. Likewise if you’re seeing a ton of players all around you there is no way to tell how many more instance there are of that map. Ergo sure your instance might be busy but it could also be the only instance running which would still make it low pop overall.

In essence there is no reliable way to tell how the population is fairing. Probably the most reliable way is by watching revenue and that was never very reliable in the first place.

Like its been pointed out already a manifesto is a statement of intent, they call it a statement of intent for a reason being that its impossible to say what will turn out to be practical and what will need changing. That being said Anet didnt deviate from their manifesto as much as people like to believe.

The biggest issue people have with the manifesto from what I can see is that people often mistaken what is an alternative solution to their expected solution as no solution at all. IE say a manifesto said you will not have to drive to work, people expected that to mean from now on they’ll be able to work from home, work place implement work transport system and thats considered a lie for some reason.

going into specifics… OP mentions fractals but even though fractals may seem counter to the manifesto, it actually enforces it. Fractals were created post release (IE years after the manifesto) specifically for people who just found horizontal progression unsatisfactory. It was designed for people who want never ending vertical progression and they were vocal enough and there were enough of them that Anet felt they had to be catered for. Other games would have introduced game wide vertical progression there by forcing endless mandatory grind on everyone. Fractals on the other hand limited that on people who wanted vertical progression at all. In keeping with the manifesto though it didnt lock out people who dont care about vertical progression out of the content though, even using nothing more then gear that dropped in the game you can still experience all that fractals have to offer. Seems pretty true to the manifesto to me.

The I swung a sword comment. Sure if you want to swing a sword over and over again you can. But what people choose to do is not the same as what the game allows you to do. Every character in Gw2 has a vast kitten nal of tools. At one point you may be swinging a sword, then you could immediately switch to casting regen on allies in trouble, or fearing away enemies so they get some breathing time. etc.. In Gw2 unlike most other MMOs its not about sticking to a skill rotation, its about what skills the situation calls for. If all you do is autoattack its because you choose to, not because thats all the game does and the deceleration of intent was never you will not be able to swing a sword, it was always you will be able to do other things to which is true.

Everything you love was indeed a bit of an exaggeration, its impossible to hit everything naturally but lets not be too literal. yes some crucial parts like hard content like you correctly state has been omitted but a lot of good has also been included like character versatility, lack of focus on gear power and awesome story telling.

There are two separate “realities” in Gw2. The personal story and the open world. The personal story happens in instances and every choice you do there matters and evolves the story that way. This is especially true in the beginning were singular choices take you on totally different storylines but even later on some choices still have world defining impacts (in that instanced storyline) Example (spoilers from the personal story) some choices in the beginning of the sylvari personal story can lead you to save an ancient orrian mirror. In a late missions that same artifact is used to destroy the eye of zaithan. Of course none of this is reflected in the open world but there is no way to do that. In several points of your personal story you decide to help one group of people and not the other. With so many people playing the game its likely every possible combination has been played at least once which means all villages / people have been saved and lost at the same time. hard to project that in the open world.

I disagree with your assessment of events. Sure some make sense more then others (Centaurs are trying to conquer human land naturally they’re not going to give up after one failed assault, makes perfect sense to repeat that). (charr cubs love to hang out at Bria’s manor. Sure I can see it happening a couple of times but at some point you’d expect adults to permanently ground all the cubs, then again they’re charr perhaps the adults secretly encourage it) You’re also wrong about no one remembering our exploits. Just finish a map and talk to the scouts. Instead of telling you about whats around like before they’ll thank you for your exploits instead.

collecting skins isnt the focus of the game, the game has no such focus which is the point. you do what you feel like doing and you pursuit what you feel like pursuiting. Thats actually the only way to deal with grind. It takes a lot of effort to get a legendary weapon sure but because it has no stat advantage it doesnt matter if it takes long to get and that in turn means you can play any content you feel like in its pursuit which is exactly how Anet went about to deliver on their no grind intent.

Jimson.5168:

Reading these forums seems to be the source of my discouragement. Really, this place is downright depressing. I’ve noticed my time in game has significantly been reduced since I started reading in here. I would love to see something of substantial value posted once in awhile instead of pages and pages of useless comments like this one.

(/me wonders why forum reading is so addictive?)

You shouldnt let forum opinion affect your view on things. Nothing in game because better or worst based on opinions on the forum. Besides a lot of things are open to interpretation / subject to personal play style like the never ending fight regarding if this is the grindiest game of all time or one of the few MMOs that has managed to conquer the grind beast.

Teevell.1684:

No one is making it impossible for Anet to communicate on their own forums, they’re choosing not to. And even if you were right and people would still be angry (and of course some people will never be pleased), good companies don’t hide from their customers.

It is not about hiding from your customer its about damage control. Some people think exaggerating points and unfair comments are not a problem but they are. They can do a lot of harm, I know cause back when the original guild wars launched I didnt buy it at launch because of such exaggerated points people were repeating. Things like its not really an MMO, its mainly a PvP game etc.. Then I bought it on a whim and surprise turns out not only most of the criticism I heard was not exactly true but this was actually my favorite MMO for a long long time.

So yes if what Arenanet say ends up twisted and used against them generally in fairly (quoted out of context, miss interpreted, attributed meaning it didnt really have in the first place etc..) they end up with no choice but to limit their damage as much as possible. What options do they have in that regard? silence people, they cannot do that naturally, the only thing they can do is limit communication on their part.

Teevell.1684:

And I find it hard to believe you were following this conversation at all when you started off saying people need to share their opinion with Anet. Obviously you were completely unaware of all the sharing that has been happening. Either that, or you just want to be right, regardless.

No most people arent sharing their opinion and they’re outright attacking. Want an example check out the Golem rush thread in the WvW forum. You need to get down to post 41 in order to get an opinion rather then an all out attacking which simply states in 41 different ways the event is bad without explaining why. And even post 41 had no suggestions on how to make things better only what the event broke. Still has some valuable insight compared to the other 40 posts but hey isnt it in everyone’s best interest to focus on what can be improved rather then what doesnt work?

Teevell.1684:

The one time someone from Anet posted in that forum this week, their post was met with thanks and appreciation. So yeah, it would go a long way. It’s the lack of communication (for multiple years, not just 1 week) that is making people angry. This event was a tipping point, not the start of it.

If you want to join this conversation, you really should read all of it, even though I get most people in this thread/forum haven’t been in it from the start, and are just coming on it at the tail end.

Thing is and this is crucial people ask for communication but at the same time make it impossible for Anet to communicate. In this very thread someone said “They said they would do a patch every two weeks to adjust balance in light of the huge balance patch. Have they? Nope. Have they even mentioned anything about it? Nope.” and that has started a whole debate on what was actually said and meant by Anet.

Everything Anet say will be analysed, people will interpret stuff the way they want to interpret stuff. This has been happening since the manifesto as I am sure you well know. What Anet say people will gladly use against them when it will suite them. You say they will be thanked for their feedback? by a few players sure but unless that feedback makes everyone happy which is impossible it will also be used as proof how clearly Anet must hate their own game or their player base or something even though both statements are clearly wrong.

Not only have I been following this conversation but a lot of the conversations that happened since before the game launched.

Teevell.1684:

Galen Grey.4709:

Now fine maybe this was a poorly thought out event and sure if you dont like it share with Anet why you dont like so next time they do better. But seriously does everything have to reach the I quit, major attacks on anet and the world is falling level?

People did share. They shared when the event was announced, they shared in the days leading up to it, and there is now a 1000+ post thread (plus many others) sharing their thoughts on it for the last week.

Anet has been completely silent throughout the whole thing. So it really shouldn’t be that surprising that people are mad when they feel that their opinions don’t matter and that an entire set of the user base is being completely ignored. If you want to be part of this conversation you really should read those threads to see what’s really been going on. I know it’s 1000 posts, but give it a go.

Thats fine, I dont mind people not liking the vent, thats not where my issues lie. Its the “overreactions” that are the problem.

What do you expect Anet to do? IF they came out and said sorry we regret the exploit but we’re not going to fix it cause it is not feasible to allocate resources for something thats going to be over in a few days anyway. Would that make anyone happy? or will it again backfire on Anet because then you’ll have more people saying Anet dont care about WvW, that it is just not important enough ?

Its actually quite depressing, its like people are always looking for the next witch hunt or at the very least seem to enjoy shooting themselves in the foot. First you get people complaining Anet never really cared about WvW, they complain how some servers have population imbalance. So what Do anet do? they decide to do something nice, a little fun event that might actually entice some new players to WvW.

Things go wrong because hey no good deed can ever go unpunished.

Once again end of the world, people threatening to quit, endless attacks on Anet for not bending the laws of physics etc…

I dont know, perhaps its because people arent used to development but it simply doesnt make sense to fix a bug in something that runs just for 1 week.

I am not sure when the issue was reported but lets say it was the same day. Obviously on day 1 nothing is going to happen, someone needs to see the report, support would need to replicate it, it has to be assigned to the section in charge and assigned to a developer. So 2nd day work starts on it. First whats causing it needs to be identified. It may be something simple which can be pinpointed in an hour, it may be something complex that needs days. Lets be optimistic and say it takes 1/2 a day. Then it needs to be fixed. Again it maybe be simple to fix or it may once again be complex. There are other similar bugs related to golems that have been plaguing WvW so I am going to be its pretty complex to get this fixed, likely needs days of work to sort out. Then you need to test the fix and I bet testing department is pretty busy right now. Then you need to package the update and release which also need to be scheduled especially when your code is likely in flux while working on the expansion. By the time they’re ready to release the event would be over or close to over. Whats more they’d have to impact expansion development / testing and for what? to fix an event the same people complaining about the exploit have been complaining how horrible it is and that it should be stopped prematurely?

Now fine maybe this was a poorly thought out event and sure if you dont like it share with Anet why you dont like so next time they do better. But seriously does everything have to reach the I quit, major attacks on anet and the world is falling level?

Full out evil probably not but I guess its doable through the personal story. It would be pretty good if perhaps in the sylvari personal story you start to turn, have a mission to somehow breakout from the elder dragon control and if you fail you turn and your subsequent missions are about destroying the invading pact fleet (well what remains of it). Then I guess at the end the remnants of the pact fleet rally and manage to break mordremoth’s control over all sylvari and we can all get the same ending or something.

But yeah full on evil, open world PvP, I dont see it and actually hope not to see it. That being said maybe it could go beyond the personal story, say it starts there but then there would be instances you can join from the open world where the pact is fighting for some object against mordremoth’s minions, only if you’re an evil sylvari you join mordremoth’s side not the pact’s. That could be cool tool.

In anycase I better get a 2nd Sylvari character to 80 just in case it turns out to be a choice or something you can win/fail

I dont know why but people feel like a subscription based model is all good no evil. Truth is every model has its pros and cons. Sure with a sub model they can probably put all the skins in the game but they’d need to change things so that people are discouraged from taking breaks. In traditional MMOs thats achieved through gear threadmills and making sure that people fall behind if they stop to effectively discourage stopping. Further more it would add substantially to the game’s cost which for some would be a problem.

What OP say is true, no sub is not being done as a favor but it surely is more favorable to a sub in my opinion. The reason for that is actually mentioned by OP himself.
“ONE of the benefits was unlimited transfigures, does that appeal to you?”, “How many more would be converted by endless make over kits thrown on?”, “Recovering your runes and sigils?”

All these suggestions have on thing in common and that thing is also a major issue with the subscription model, they all make you pay for things you will not fully use. sure for some people unlimited transmutations / makeovers etc would be something they could use but I have no doubt for the majority of people a couple of makeovers a year if even is more then enough. Even less with transmutations some will never need to buy one because what they earn by playing the game more then makes up for the usage. Even if you go above I bet for the majority of people buying the transmutations / make over kits they need would be far cheaper then a sub. So paying a sub would essentially mean overpaying for stuff that people will not ultimately use. (I got unlimited transmutations but only needed 2 ex)

The same thing is ultimately true with Subs. Subs make sense when you’ve got tons of time on your hands. If I pay a sub and get to play 8hrs a day thats a great fair deal. When I was younger I ever ran 3 subs at the same time during summer holidays a few times but I could get my value out of what I was playing. Now that I am older free time isnt easy to come by. There are weeks I barely manage to spend 8hrs playing for the whole week never mind every single day. Thats when sub models start to seem problematic. I still pay $15 a month but I am essentially playing a lot less. Its a lot harder to justify $15 a month when you’re just playing 2 hours here, 1 hour there and a few days when you dont even login at all simply because its starts to feel you’re paying for stuff you’re not using and even though $15 a month isnt a fortune when there are other more necessary expenses, like say upgrading your kids room, you postpone to the subsequent year because you don’t want to stress your finances you have to question if “wasting” money on things you’re mostly not using (8hrs a week vs 60+hrs a week surely feels that way) is the right way to go. Whats even worst though is if you decide to stop you’re essentially throwing away all the money you have ever spend. Like the longest game I subbed to was EvE online, I think I spend close to $1200 on that game yet today I cant enjoy a single cent of that $1200 I spend unless I fork out another $15 and then another $15.

A good cash shop model like that employed on Gw2 is a different story though. It allows me to control my spending without loosing all value of what I have already purchased. I only have to pay for what I am going to use. I am not going to buy 1000 transmutation stones and by the time Gw2 closes down I would have 950 of them left for sure, I can simply buy what I need, when I need and that makes a whole lot of difference.

In theory its an awesome idea, in practice its too expensive to implement because there is no way to implement something like this without having people review the content and it takes a lot of people to review what 100,000s if not millions of players would post.

While not ideal this isnt really a new problem if a problem at all. Thing is all MMOs in existence have lore that predates the events in the game. What LS did differently as such is we got to play the lore leading to the events in the next chapter of the story.

Its pretty much the same thing for people who started gw2 without playing gw1 before in a way. Gw1 is a big lore chunk that relates directly to events in Gw2.

Destroyers, Elder Dragons, searing coldrin, The races of tyria, dwarves and specifically Ogden, Orr, ascalon, and pretty much everything else in the game had backstory that you would get if you played Gw1. But not knowing any of that makes you wonder whats going on? no because the story is laid in such a way that not knowing the details doesnt stop you from enjoying and you’re always free to go read up all the details to your heart content. In anycase its impossible to put in all the lore readily available to players in game. These are not things you can easily put in game.

Even if we simply take scarlet there is so much material that a cutscene to cover it all would need to be hours long. (what scarlet saw short story, a summary of all the living story episodes she was involved in, an explanation on what she was trying to accomplish and why, the thaumanova reactor fractal summary, Her journal. Then there is the background lore you need to fully explain her origins. The pale tree, the dreaming, the soundless, the eternal alchemy etc… A cutscene wouldnt do it, you’d need a movie if not a trilogy of them.

Cash.2385:

after 63 views and counting apparently no one does, I apologize to all those kitten by this but heavy should easy beat light classes regardless of build. OR op profession.

Armor by itself is meaningless. Combat is made of different elements working together.

Thats like saying someone wearing kevlar will easily beat someone in a tshirt regardless of anything else.

Yeah somehow I think a person wearing kevlar armed with a plastic spoon is not going to win against someone wearing a tshirt with an automatic weapon even though kevlar is effective against bullets.

Same thing in a game, strictly speaking a warrior in full plate armor should technically stand no chance against an elementalist wearing nothing but cloth. What would the warrior do against the onsloth of fire the elementalist would throw at them? plate armor would just ensure they cook much faster if anything.

So no its not as clear cut as you thing.

Besides dont forget this is a game as such its not about realism but what really works well and like its been pointed out balance isnt just something you do on singular items but on all the elements working together.

Crovax.7854:

Galen Grey.4709:

They didnt use 1/2 their resources, the living story team is 20 people out of 330. Then like you said you had the achievement and with season 2 they also did some nice rewards. They were also a kittenallenging so it was fun to try different professions too.

You make little sense. ANet may have 330 employees total, however only a small portion of those people are actual developers as has been said many times before.

They have 350 employees and whats the bases for your statement that only a small portion of them are actual developers? We do know they didnt let go of any people and the same people that developed Gw2 are still working there + 80 people new people. Are you suggesting all of Gw2 was developed by 20 – 40 people?

Even if we look at the current open jobs:
https://www.arena.net/#careers

out of 23 openinings, 16 are for direct content development related jobs, 3 are for testing, 3 are producers and 1 is for localization which strictly speaking are also part of the development process. If like you suggest most positions didnt involve development
would that also reflect on their hiring strategy?

Crovax.7854:

Galen Grey.4709:

As for content like the silverwastes.. well how about the silverwastes? you do know the silverwastes and Drytop were released as part of the living story right?

Oh boy, you are right! How stupid of me, acting as if farming/grinding Dry Top for a full year (LS 2 had its debut on july 1st last year) and SW for about half a year could be considered boring by some.

please move the goal posts that will definitely make your point. First you say the living story was a fail because it didnt delivery content like the silverwastes and when called on it that content suddenly became boring. Also I wasnt aware they took the rest of the game out when they introduced silverwastes.

Crovax.7854:

Galen Grey.4709:

Yes each release had about 2 hrs of actual game play but it also had days of speculation for those who followed the story at least.

So you agree that it had very little gameplay but that’s okay because we could spend days speculating, not playing but speculating about the story?
By that logic The Order 1886 had double the content it actually had on disc because I’d spend ~3h online looking for opinions of others regarding game length and how that should play into the price point.
No offense but I think that’s your inner fanboy speaking and not common sense.

I agree you could finish a single run of a single living story release in 2 hrs yes. It was a 2 week update, what do you expect? 80 hrs of content each time? We’re talking about 20 people who had approximately 7 months to deliver 16hrs of story content and thats not including the content in drytop and silverwastes themselves. Thats compared to the 8hrs average for the order accourding to the how long to beat website and the order was in development for 5 years with a team of about 120 people. (not that you can compare the two because of course more work went to in developing the order then LS) but then again the order is a full game, the living story was content to keep you busy until the expansion.

maddoctor.2738:

Orochimaru.4730:

The Living Story was bad, face it.

An update every 2 weeks which most did within a couple of hours. Any more time spent on it was to get the APs.

I would not pay for more of that!

It wasn’t an update every 2 weeks and not all of them took 2 hours to complete, but let’s assume indeed there was 1 update per 2 weeks and each one took 2 hours to complete. This means 26 updates a year, which means 52 hours of content (not for APs) a year.

I can’t remember a single MMO expansion that took more than 52 hours to finish! Again, excluding APs/farming. That’s actually pretty good.

and thats on top of an expansion being developed. I definitely cant recall any MMO that released that much content in between expansions

Crovax.7854:

In my opinion it was the type of content that made it seem like little was added. In season 2 they put a lot of effort and ressources into story instances that many players would play once, twice, maybe a third time for achievements but that’s it. Had they put more effort into developing long lasting content like silverwastes I doubt there would have been as many complaints about those LS releases that literally took an evening to complete, even for casuals, with nothing new to do for the next 13 days -more in some cases-.

Yes the story instances were pretty. But dedicating at least half of your resources to something most players will only spend a tiny fraction of their time seems not smart.
Plus, wasn’t the reason they also didn’t want to do dungeons and raids similar? Not a lot of players spend their time there so it’s not worth developing at all?
What’s -in theory- the difference to story instances in the LS?

That’s what happens when you want to turn an MMO, a genre that lives off replayability and long lasting content, into a single player experience with focus on story.

They didnt use 1/2 their resources, the living story team is 20 people out of 330. Yes each release had about 2 hrs of actual game play but it also had days of speculation for those who followed the story at least. Then like you said you had the achievement and with season 2 they also did some nice rewards. They were also a kittenallenging so it was fun to try different professions too.

As for content like the silverwastes.. well how about the silverwastes? you do know the silverwastes and Drytop were released as part of the living story right?

Lord Kuru.3685:

Crovax.7854:

PlatinumMember.5274:

This is the result of giving the people what they wanted. I preferred the LS route, it was a change, but you (not you OP) people wanted an expansion because this mystic expansion. Supposedly, was going to make all your dreams come true and turn gw2 into the MMO you dreamt off.

Well, this is what it is. The ls was the best thing about this game and you people have ruined it for me anyways.

What makes you think that continuous content updates to the live game and development on an expansion are mutualy exclusive? LS was bad because it never added anything of significance in my opinion. An expansion was needed but nobody could have known that would result in a content drought for well over half a year.

Their hyped “bi-weekly” episodes turned out to be something like 4 episodes of “bi-weekly” content every six months. That’s why LS failed.

All the expansion model does is change release dates from spread out, to all-at-once. Only the content delivery system has changed. So if they were incapable of creating content at a decent pace before, we’re still not going to see enough content with an expansion (which is what all the evidence available points to).

Hey wait a second there. Season one was perfectly bi-weekly with no breaks but players complained about how small each update was. For season two Anet listened to its players and each episode was essentially 4 – 5 season 1 episodes bundled in 1. Thats with the same team and naturally Arenanet aren’t super human, they cant simply produce 4 – 5 times the content in the same time period so something had to give. Living story was split into two and the teams were given a little time to catch up.

Also dont exagerate there were never any 6 month breaks except for now. There were only 2 breaks between end of LS 1 and start of LS 2 april 1st- July 1st and even then there were content releases on April 15 (feature pack) and May 20th Labyrinthine cliffs and Crown pavilion) so essentially it was just monthly instead o biweekly content for a while and the festival of the four winds lasting an entire month.

The 2nd break was between august 26th and November 4th but we got feature pack on sept 9th and halloween event on october 21st so once again they merely switched to montly updates while Living story team was catching up.

No 6 month break anywere.

Anet might have been planning that too but in development you never know when you come across something that destroys all your plans.

Perhaps they even intended to release it close to january this year, I mean we dont know how long its been in the development but it would have been really cool if LS season 2 finished an 2 weeks later Expansion launches. Maybe that was the initial plan ony it had to be delayed because of issues. I mean with the agressive content release they had its kind off hard to imagine they planned for such a long content draught.

Ehh I so miss the Living story