Guild Wars 2

Ricky.4706:

The Living stories were an expansion all their own. They didn’t charge for it, so you didn’t see it maybe ?

The Living Story was a failure.

Neither season was “an expansion all their own”. Season 1 lacked permanence, and both it and Season 2 lacked many of the features that actually make people interested in expansions (many new skills, new professions, a new race would also fit, etc).

If anything, they were like small DLCs. Arguably, Season 2 is overpriced at $20.00, considering how little it offers.

But regardless, they both failed. ArenaNet faced heavy criticism from players after how temporary the content from Season 1 was; and Season 2 was then considerably more subdued, keeping most of it content in short instances (other than the horribly designed, grind-based Silverwastes).

More importantly, both couldn’t prevent GW2’s earnings from falling. Season 1 was followed by a very different business model in season 2, which was followed by a very different business model in season 3 (which became HoT). It’s rather obvious that ArenaNet is experimenting, to see what works, and that they keep changing their approach because so far nothing has really worked.

If HoT is successful, we will see ArenaNet moving away from the Living World model and focusing more on expansions, until they are hit by the same things that hit GW1 and stop working in the game.

VOLKON.1290:

We’re getting a lot of stuff, including effectively ten new professions (consider the specializations early phases of new professions)

LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL!

Khristophoros.7194:

Sometimes I imagine what it would be like to have an open world area that’s more difficult than everything else in the game. Like the community would have to make an organized effort to explore and chart the area.

After the Tequatl fiasco, if ArenaNet were to design a challenging open world experience, I’m sure they would just copy-paste the enemies from Orr and give them 10 times more health, while keeping everything else the same. I honestly wouldn’t look forward that kind of content.

Quintuplebeta.3914:

No reason to complain as you would pay nearly the same for a WoW expansion which has less content.

“Nearly the same” is not the same. It also remains to be seen if there is any WoW expansion with less content than HoT; based on everything ArenaNet has shown, nope, HoT has at most a tenth of the content from a WoW expansion.

Gendou.9620:

Regardless of anyone wanting to disagree with what amount of content we will actually be getting, I prefer quality over quantity

Which is funny, because you follow that with…

Gendou.9620:

and a game where I can spend more than 40-50 hours(in this case probably getting hundreds) in unlike most 60$ games which have 5 hours campaign, maybe 10-20 hours additional content also

Arguably, from your first statement it would be better to play a great 5 hours campaign than 40 hours in a cesspool of grind.

And do you know what GW2 is? Here’s a hint: HoT will be based on a map that is the laziest design I have even seen in a game, with the same buildings and same events copy-pasted four times in the same area, with the same two events repeating over and over in four places, culminating with the most farmeable world boss in the game.

That is what HoT will be based on. And honestly, under that design, I would rather play those 5 hours great campaigns than GW2.

zengara.8301:

I do get that people are rather mad that it got more difficult killing a boss that they would instantly kill by keep repeating the 1 number, over and over……

Now people kill it by repeating the 1 number, over and over, and hoping there are more people in the map doing the same thing.

The way to make content more challenging isn’t by increasing a boss’s health. That just makes the big, slow and dumb HP sponges into bigger sponges. The way to make more challenging content is by creating mechanics that require more tactical play.

If ArenaNet’s definition of “challenge” is making people spam 1 for a very long time against HP sponges, I’m going to laugh a lot at the “challenging group content” so many people are holding their breaths for.

Ayrilana.1396:

Whether HoT contains only a fraction of the content of the core game is irrelevant. For one thing, no expansion that I have heard of contained more content than its core game.

And no expansion that I have heard of had the same price of its core game. We can clearly see there is something wrong with HoT, and it’s not only how it lacks content.

Lucky.4263:

What makes HoT worth $50?

Nothing.

Keep in mind ArenaNet has seeing declining profits, and that they invested a lot in the China release, which was a failure. They’re now releasing an overpriced expansion in order to make up for the money they have lost, but this is clearly a move to help them, not for the benefit of their players.

Leo G.4501:

Test.8734:

Ergo, it doesn’t really take a genius to easily understand how the warhorn is the worst weapon in the game, clipping with skirts-wise.

Apparently it does take a genius since you haven’t figured out for yourself that your argument is only working when you make specific exceptions aimed directly to make warhorn the worst-case scenario.

Yes, because using a warhorn with a skirt is of course a very uncommon example in the game Warhorns are the worst weapon in the game, clipping wise. If you refuse to see that, well, I can recommend a few good ophthalmologists.

Mordalus.8146:

So I took another look at the cultural armor and I love it. Unfortunately, it’s too expensive in terms of gold.

GW2 has been changing since release from a game in which the devs said “We don’t want players to grind” to a grind-filled game. Cultural armor is one of the many rewards for grinders, but it’s far from being the only one – heh, even entering beta access was a reward for grinding the Silverwastes, and as far as we know HoT will be basically a lot of grind (since it will be like Silverwastes, which is ArenaNet’s favourite map and yet is a very lazy design, with copy-paste events being repeated over and over with zero story until you get the only world boss in the game that gives full loot multiple times a day).

ArenaNet’s message is clear: if you are not a grinder, GW2 isn’t for you. So don’t expect them to lower the price of anything. At best, they will give you more places to grind in.

lordkrall.7241:

I did Triple Trouble Wurm yesterday ( and I would assume that it is still harder than Tequatl, seeing as they also got the same increase in health) and the only reason we failed that was due to people not listening to instructions. We would easily have gotten it down if people had done that however.

Wow. Do you honestly think that the hard part in defeating those bosses is spamming 1 while standing still? The challenge there is in coordinating the map. If you failed to do it, which you admit you did, you didn’t get even close to defeating the boss, since you failed to do the one hard thing required to kill it.

It’s like saying “we didn’t reduce its health to zero, but we would easily have defeated it if we had”.

ArenaNet, please ignore those nonsensical comments and fix the bugs you introduced in the latest Tequatl change.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

The way you phrased it implies that it makes GW2 a less well-crafted or maintained game, which is not the case.

Well maintained? Not really.

Would you like a simple example? You are looking at it right now. This forum has been broken since it was created, with a myriad of bugs (like the one that happens when topics reach a new page) and only barebones features. Yet, ArenaNet has lost connection with the company that designed and maintained this forum, so they don’t have the knowledge of how to fix it.

Does that speak of something “well-crafted or maintained” to you? Do you think Blizzard would ever have allowed something like that to happen, or if it did happen that they wouldn’t have provided a new, better forum?

In the end, the platform you are writing in shows how much ArenaNet really cares about their players.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Certainly, US$1,375 over 3 years is more than 15/month. What, my fellow patron, did you choose to spend all that money on? Presumably you received cosmetic or convenience items that you wanted and presumably you got some enjoyment from them. That wasn’t just fourteen hundred bucks that ANet took from your bank account; it was cash you offered to them in exchange for something.

Further, if you have saved the 60% in cash on a traditional sub game, all you would have gotten is the core game. That wouldn’t have paid for any expansions or extras of any sort, including character slots or skins or whatever.

Not really. He would have the core game, all the features he has bought with gems and more, since one of the main differences between the free to play model (which is basically the model GW2 is following right now, given how big the Gem Store is) and the pay to play model is that the former restricts through a pay wall many features that the latter offer completelly in game. So, were this a subscription based game, the great majority of the Gem Store skins would have been available in game instead of through the store, we would have a decent way of obtaining the BL weapon skins instead of the scam-like lottery way we currently have, and so on, and so on.

The OP would have received everything he paid for and far, far more. In this, his comparison is perfectly apt.

Leo G.4501:

Test.8734:

Leo G.4501:

Many hip holstered weapons clip through skirts.

Meanwhile, not many weapons manage to clip through skirts when held, almost every single time. Warhorn is one of the few weapons that manage to do it. It’s probably the weapon type that has the most clipping in the game, whenever drawn or holstered.

Again, many weapons do the same or worse (clip with the ground while wielding and such). Clipping is hardly something you can simply pin on Warhorn. You can try but you’d have to be ignoring an awful lot of clipping to do that.

Again, very few weapons clip with skirts as bad as the warhorns. They’re one of the few (if not the only) weapon that is always held pointing down from the character’s hand; the only other weapon which does the same is the dagger, but only when it’s held in a reversed grip, which isn’t done by all professions nor in both hands. Ergo, it doesn’t really take a genius to easily understand how the warhorn is the worst weapon in the game, clipping with skirts-wise. You can try saying otherwise, but you’d have to be ignoring an awful lot of clipping to do that.

Mirion.9361:

Finally a challenge for the hardcore players

It’s not really a challenge.

GW2 is famous for having horribly designed bosses. Even inside dungeons, they are more often than not big dumb HP sponges that have no chance of killing players. ArenaNet added timers to bosses because that was the only way those encounters could fail, since you can just AFK with autoattack and you would still survive against the great majority of world bosses.

It’s incredibly, incredibly funny that ArenaNet’s answer to the recent buff to players was to increase the bosses’ health. Not only it has become clear that the horrible boss design isn’t going to change, but that whenever it’s changed it only reinforces the same old flaws.

I will laugh loudly when we learn what the “challenging group content” is. Who wants to bet that it will be about killing slow and dumb HP spongers again?

(Ah, and notice how ArenaNet doubled the health of many world bosses, but they didn’t change a thing about the Silverwastes boss. I guess they still want to keep the illusion that the Silverwastes is the map players enjoy the most, while we all know it’s simply the easiest place to farm right now.)

Mafusail.9305:

The point of that system is not to god kitten make highlvl characters equal to lowlvl. The point is to make them be able to help lowlvl players without lowlvl ones feel too slow/squishy/weak.

It must bring the feeling that "yes, i remember that times, but hey, i dont really want them back. WTF i grinded all my asc/exo gear? For what? To be killed by some bronze

Nope. The point of downscalling is so high level characters are equal to low level characters and thus still have a challenge in low level areas. I couldn’t care less for how much of your time you have wasted grinding, if you had a challenge fighting a bronze enemy as a level 12, you should still have a challenge fighting the same bronze enemy at level 80. The higher level isn’t an excuse for you to run around one shooting champions for free loot.

doomaster.5120:

It simply sux. Dungeons like Sorrow embrance and lower are unplayable now.

100% l2p issue.

Sir James.7831:

What can we expect from dungeons in this new Exp?

For ArenaNet to pretend they don’t exist.

They already fired the dungeon team. And dungeons are arguably tied with PvP as the worst aspect of the game, as all the drama around them show. It’s actually a good idea to avoid new dungeons in HoT.

Leo G.4501:

Many hip holstered weapons clip through skirts.

Meanwhile, not many weapons manage to clip through skirts when held, almost every single time. Warhorn is one of the few weapons that manage to do it. It’s probably the weapon type that has the most clipping in the game, whenever drawn or holstered.

Leo G.4501:

Also, phallic shape? Warhorns remind you of kittens?

Not really, they mostly remind me of small ducks: ugly, loud and useless.

Knighthonor.4061:

I assume many people honestly don’t want Warhorn, due to how poorly designed they are in the game, model wise.

They have some of the worst models out of all weapon types. At least shields have cool models.

Warhorn, not so much.

The thing with warhorns is that they clip horribly with almost all the skirts used by light armor characters. They’re also ugly, true, but then again a lot of the one handed weapons are ugly – between scepters, torches and maces, there are way too many phallic objects for our characters to hold. I wish ArenaNet would have used something like orbs, at least they would probably be less like to be the clipping nightmare we have today.

Forsaken.7015:

Condition damage shouldnt be able to compete with power when it comes to damage output. It’s ridiculous to think that it should be equal to power if that were the case then no one thats number crunching would run power

Power shouldnt be able to compete with condition damage when it comes to damage output. It’s ridiculous to think that it should be equal to condition damage if that were the case then no one thats number crunching would run condition damage.

/s

One more players who got ascended berserker gear and is afraid to grind another set with different stats. Sorry, buddy, but conditions are the new meta right now.

Tere.4759:

Wow, complain when they don’t give you what you want and complain when they do give you what you want. Those who don’t pre-order should NOT get a character slot.

Those who don’t pre-order should get a character slot for being smart and not preordering a game, especially one that asks people to pay full price yet doesn’t even have a release date.

I’m amazed at how standards have fallen. When GW: Factions was released, it gave new players 4 character slots (same as GW: Prophecies), but old players who linked accounts got 2 character slots (Factions came with two new professions). The community complained for years about how “4 + 4 = 6”.

This time, we have basically “5 + 5 = 5” (having a full game and getting an expansion that only comes with the full game doesn’t give you a new character slot) unless you prepurchase (which would go “5 + 5 = 6”), and some people are actually ok with that.

If there were ever to be a GW3, I wouldn’t be surprised if it came with no character slot, and looks like some people here would be ok with it.

Galen Grey.4709:

That contrasts with other MMOs I’ve play were you hardly get any content updates while they develop an expansion and the content you get if any is generally dungeons you’re meant to repeat over and over and thats content I personally dont particularly enjoy.

We hardly got any content update while ArenaNet has been developing HoT, and what we got more recently what a map we’re meant to repeat over and over, and for the records you have said you like it (Silverwastes).

Galen Grey.4709:

Thats pointless you’re comparing missing information (we dont know all HoT has) with full information (we know all Heavenward has)

ArenaNet thinks we know enough for them to ask us to pay full price in advance for something without a release date or even a release window. Even a Kickstarter campaign needs a release window for it to be accepted on that website, but ArenaNet won’t share even that. So yes, if ArenaNet thinks that information is enough, it’s perfectly reasonable for us to compare what we know of the HoT content with other games.

Galen Grey.4709:

When Vayne and myself speculated an expansion must be in development cause living story was made up for just 20 people out of 350+ employees as well as some promenent people were never heard from again after lunched people laughed too, they told us to dream on etc..

LOOOOOOOOOL! Dream on!

I can’t believe someone actually believes that the expansion has been under development since the beginning of the Living Story. You have zero evidence of that, other than wishful thinking and the information about the size of the LS team.

Meanwhile, let me ask you a very simple question: if they have 330 people working on the expansion for years now, and only 20 on the Living Story… Why has ArenaNet not released any new LS update since they announced the expansion? Haven’t they always worked in parallel? Why would the small LS have to stop because of the expansion the other 330 are working on?

If ArenaNet had so many people working in the expansion, why did they tell us they would have to stop LS production while preparing for the China release, when they could use people from the expansion team to fix that? And, for the records, they did stop content while making the failure that was the release in China.

If ArenaNet has been working on an expansion for that long, why did they say they didn’t have a point in releasing an expansion, in the time frame you claim they were working in one? Are you saying ArenaNet was lying?

It’s extremelly obvious that “HoT” has been in development for at most a little more than one year now, and by “HoT” I mean the creation of the Living Story season 3 storyline, which was hastly adapted into an expansion. It’s laughable to even think otherwise.

And if you want to know what were the other 330 people working on, you need to stop taking things so literally and read some of the Glassdoor reviews about ArenaNet.

Syviren.7086:

You guys have ZERO clue how hard it is to balance a MMO. Every TINY change throws things off. And making huge changes all the time like everyone insists that its broken is silly, and just brakes more parts of the game.

Very poor excuse, tbh.

ArenaNet had three years to balance the game. THREE YEARS. With almost no new skill or trait. This is almost unheard of – which other big MMORPG has spent that long so stagnant, without anything to make balancing the game harder?

In other words, ArenaNet had a great oportunity to balance the game. And what did they accomplish?

NOTHING.

By the end, PvP still had a very small community, due to how poorly balanced it is; PvE had only a couple great builds for each profession, with direct damage being king, and anything other than berserker being less effective in practically every situation.

Were those three years filled with small balance patches to achieve a balanced state without overshooting or overnerfing?

Nope, again. We barely got balance patches during all those years. I wish all the times ArenaNet added skill facts they would also try to make balance better, but alas, it was not so.

Now, ArenaNet has decided to butcher build diversity, in a game already with little diversity to begin with. “It will be easier to balance”, they say, but what does that mean? That it will take them THREE YEARS more to achieve something even close to balance? If it doesn’t work, are they simply going to remove all traits and just give us one build option per profession?

It’s little surprise that there are so many people asking ArenaNet to please not overnerf conditions. ANet’s pattern has always been to, when overwhelmed, overnerf so they can ignore aspects of the game for a very, VERY long time. People know that, if conditions were overnerfed now, they would only be fixed around 2020, assuming ArenaNet will still be around until then.

Vayne.8563:

SWToR started as a sub game, and you can barely play it without paying the “optional” monthly fee. Hardly an example of good business practices if you ask me. Tell me do you still have to pay to unlock your second skill bar?

Have you tried playing GW2 without paying anything? With the incredibly small bank and the few inventory bag slots, only 5 character slots despite having 8 professions? With ArenaNet’s strong focus in adding far, FAR more skins to the Gem Store than to the game? With the scam-like lottery system ArenaNet uses for people who want to get the weapon skins from the Gem Store?

It’s hardly an example of good business practices if you ask me.

Vayne.8563:

1. None of the developers out there know the stuff you put in this post.
2. It isn’t as easy as you make it sound.

Yes, because it’s completelly unheard off that ArenaNet would have a bad idea and people would then have to speak very loudly so ArenaNet sees reason and changes their course of action. No sir, that has never happened in the story of GW2. Ever.

By the way, Vayne, have you decided how you are going to name the character in the slot you got thanks to us? “Test Was Right”? “Test Is Always Right”?

RapidSausage.4620:

Stop whining, start creating, use that organ inside your skull for once instead of letting others use theirs for you.

Sure, sure. It was because people were whinning that you got your free character slot when prepurchasing HoT. Obviously, the whinners were the winners… And everyone else was just freeloaders.

sirsquishy.8531:

Lol. No doubt that the community is 100% to blame for the ‘free’ character slot here. But conceited much?

If I said that everyone should never complain about anything ArenaNet does, I would only be smothering any kind of construtive feedback. I have often read the claim that there is no constructive feedback in this forum and so that no one should complain about anything, but this situation – and the fact ArenaNet reacted thanks to what the players said – is the perfect example of something that was only achieved because players told ArenaNet something was wrong.

This is an important lesson for some people.

Vayne.8563:

Well it may come as a surprise to most of you, but I never doubted Anet would come through and do the right thing. I even may have said so once or twice. lol

Thanks for post, Anet!

You know, Vayne, you should thank US.

If you had what you wanted, everyone would have been quiet and avoided any complaint. Meanwhile, we worked hard to make our point to ArenaNet and let them know how their course of action wasn’t ideal.

As a result, thanks to our work, you will get one more character slot, while all you did was stand on the way.

I think you should name your character “Test Was Right”. Just so you remember who you should be thankful for it.

Crise.9401:

Test.8734:

Crise.9401:

Omocha.4931:

Funny then, ’cause this “free” content is neither free, nor available.

The content was free for a time

Ergo said content isn’t free – it WAS free. Omocha’s point still stands.

Please read the whole post, the cliff notes being it is free, 200 gems = ~40 gold which is an entirely free currency.

Ah, so you can pay 200 gems to replay Season 1? That’s great news! When did ArenaNet implement that?

Crise.9401:

Omocha.4931:

Funny then, ’cause this “free” content is neither free, nor available.

The content was free for a time

Ergo said content isn’t free – it WAS free. Omocha’s point still stands.

It’s an improvement.

…Still, I remember way back.

When Guild Wars: Prophecies was released, it came with 4 character slots.

When Guild Wars: Fractions was released, new players who bought it got 4 character slots. Old players who merged Prophecies and Factions got 2 new character slots, in a total of six.

(Notice how this was not “prepurchasing” – the “pay me now and I’ll release one day eventually” philosophy didn’t exist yet. Plus, players could buy and merge the accounts whenever they wanted, not only when preordering.)

There were many, many complaints about how “4 + 4 = 6”.

Now, years later, what do we have?

“If you prepurchase, 5 + 5 = 6. If you wait until after release, 5 + 5 = 5”

ArenaNet, this may have been an improvement. Don’t think it was enough.

Galen Grey.4709:

Besides we do know living story team was 20 people which leaves a lot of employees unaccounted for, they had to be working on something. There is no way the feature patch teams and pvp teams made up for the other 330 employees right?

LOL.

People are still saying that. Amazing.

Before the Living Story began, we were not getting as many updates as we did it with (which is basically to say that we got barely any update at all). Ergo, if the more complex Living Story required a team of 20 people, what came before it would require even less.

So… What do you think these other “310” people have been working since release? Are you going to say they have been working in the expansion for 3 years now? Wow, if in 3 years all they managed to make was 3 maps, they surely have some content problems.

Nope. The truth is, ArenaNet is poorly organized, so they have a lot of people yet produce very little. See the Glassdoor reviews – almost all of them mention management issues, how teams working in one thing are suddenly expected to make a 180° turn and throw away everything they had been working in.

HoT has been under production for a bit more than one year now. It probably was under production since less than one year from when it was announced. That and ArenaNet’s slow speed explain why it has so little content after all.

Kury.8210:

Call me an idealist, but what I seek in a game company is a group of people who care more about making a great game than money. At the very least, it’s far better if a company sees more advantage in befriending than swindling.

I think the main issue is that ArenaNet has lost the trust of part of the community, who no longer believes in the above – that they are more concerned about making a great game than making money. Hence the complaints that HoT is overpriced – not because people couldn’t afford the 50$, but because it looks like the expansion doesn’t have enough content to justify that price, and many people don’t blindly trust ArenaNet to assume the price is fair.

Xar.1387:

Yeah, price of this expansion may be too high, if u compare it to the content which is going to appear in the begining of HoT, but ONLY when GW2 would be a P2P game.
Not B2P.

The Gem Store, which happens to get updates more often than ANY other part of the game, and uses shaddy practices like a lottery system with unknown odds or the creation of inconvenience to sell convenience, is evidence that GW2 isn’t just B2P. It has a strong stench of F2P, and the worst kind of F2P while you’re at it.

Xar.1387:

2. Its really easy to destroy a pretty good MMORPG game, which is B2P. This payment model is rly risky. Do not be surprised if they will be forced to make P2W in the future.

P2W? Isn’t GW2 already the most P2W it could be? You can already use gems to buy the most powerful weapons in the game.

matrix seishin.5312:

Sorry but are you crazy?! Living under a rock or something?! Lack of content?! I’m actually sorry I stopped playing for awhile because I missed half of seasons 1 and 2.

It’s funny you would say that.

Did you miss season 1? Then it’s gone. You didn’t play it and you can’t actually play it.

Season 2? If you missed, it, then you won’t play unless you pay more for it.

So, where is that “free content” you were talking about? Looks like it’s also under a rock, because it isn’t anywhere in GW2 right now.

Omocha.4931:

And think about how much time any of the players – veterans or newbies – spend in any, and why?!

• Cursed Shore for the mats from the undead mobs and the easy to hoard champ boxes
• FGS for roughly same things, maybe replacing the heavy bags with a chance to drop some collection related weapons?
• DT for the geodes (be they for Mawdrey or Ambrite collection)
• SW for CFs and maybe Bioluminescence
• 5th to 10th map?!

So you’re saying that the only reason people play in any map is to grind, and since HoT is clearing cattering to grinders only (see the “grind Silverwastes to get beta invite!” thing) they will get their money’s worth even if HoT has only less than a handful of maps?

That argument would make sense, if not for the fact that farming isn’t the main reason to play the game for everyone. Although apparently ArenaNet wish it were.

Omocha.4931:

Let’s try for a moment to ignore this whole expansion crazy.
Imagine GW2:HoT as the only product available.

Yet HoT isn’t the only product available. We have plenty of people here who already have GW2, with everything that entails, and are expected to pay 50$ for… What? 3 new maps?

Vayne.8563:

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

We have all the information ArenaNet chose to give us before asking us to pay 50$ for HoT. If ArenaNet thinks that information is enough to justify paying the price of the full game for the expansion, then it’s also enough for us to use it in comparisons and when judging if the price is worth it or not.

And right now? It’s simply not.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

ArenaNet stated long ago that the Living Story would continue after HoT is released.

That’s VERY unlikely.

Let’s be honest here – the Living World was a failure. ArenaNet got a lot of backlash over how transitory Season 1 was, and the subdued nature of Season 2 made it look more like small DLCs than a prime way to add content to the game.

More importantly, both failed to prevent GW2’s earnings from falling, despite the help of the China release.

This is why we’re getting an expansion now, despite how ArenaNet had already said that they could add everything an expansion has to the game through the Living World.

If HoT is a success – especially under this scam-like overpriced model they’re trying to sell us -, it will cement the success of the expansion model over the Living World model, and thus ArenaNet would very likely focus on a new expansion instead of in making more Living Story seasons.

In the end, what we are buying with HoT is likely only HoT itself. Unlike the core release of GW2, which gave SOME of us access to some of the Living World.

webtoehobbit.4201:

Now fast forward to now. We have been conditioned to fall into a hype cycle where things are overhyped and underdelivered. Can anyone really blame the state of the community? Is anyone really surprised? If you look at the history between ANet and us, the players, the trust has been eroding for quite some time. I think this may finally have been the straw that broke the camels back….

I think you nailed it.

See this video. Compare it to what we got on release. See how it got trashed when ascended gear and fractals were released.

See all the disappointment on Living World season 1. See so many players complaining about the “blink and you miss it and have to buy it” aspect of Living World season 2.

See all the complaints about the stale state of WvW for years. See all the complaints about lack of balance in PvP and the VERY slow pace of balance patch during the last year.

See all the issues with the Gem Store, including the deal with buying gems in packs only.

I think ArenaNet has lost the playerbase’s trust, and HoT is basically the last drop in a very large bucket that is already overflowing.

Treetoptrickster.4205:

Can’t we all please return some respect for their providing us with years of free and enjoyable content and what will no doubt be an extremely awesome expansion pack?

“Free” content?

I don’t know about you, but I have bought the right to play GW2. And ArenaNet has furiously been trying to make money through their Gem Store, be it with their scam-like BLC lottery system, by creating inconveniences to sell convenience (see the very small size of the bank), by allowing people to buy gold with gems and thus becoming P2W, or by any of the other questionable ways ArenaNet has used to make money at their players’ expenses.

And “extremely awesome expansion pack”? Really? Based on everything ArenaNet has told us, the expansion looks like a small DLC that other games would have charged 10$ for, made in a hurry so ArenaNet can offset all the losses they had after the failed China release. Hardly “extremely awesome”.

Coulter.2315:

They didn’t edit the FAQ after the decision on HoT+Core was made because it would have caused the announcement of the preorder to happen out of their control

Yeah… Only the FAQ update has absolutely nothing to do with the prepurchase announcement. It would have been very easy to change the FAQ to what it currently says without announcing or beginning the prepurchase, so ArenaNet would still have their “big E3 thing”.

In fact, it wouldn’t only have been easy. It would also have been honest.

Coulter.2315:

What people are thinking is;

They changed position on requiring Core for HoT.
They didn’t change the FAQ to reflect the new position.

This would be the dishonest version…

…Which kinda obviously is exactly what happened.

They changed their FAQ when they began the prepurchase. They had already decided how they would do the prepurchase when they began the prepurchase, obviously; and in order to make the assets (website, the rest of the buying interface, FAQ localization and etc), they had to make the decision A LOT before they began the prepurchase.

Besides, with Colin and other high ups in E3, the decision was clearly made some time ago.

Yet they didn’t say anything. They allowed people to continue buying the game in order to prepare for HoT, even with said money being effectively wasted.

You said yourself what this is.

mPascoal.4258:

I ate the Silverwastes, is just a zerg fest where with my computer I don’t even understand what is going on.

The Silverwastes is the direction ArenaNet is going for. It has been hinted that the icoming expansion, HoT, will basically be a repeat of (a few) Silverwastes-like maps.

We also expect balance to become a mess, given the massive changes to traits that will come next week. Considering how slow ArenaNet is to make balance fixes, expect an upheaval that will take a long, LONG time to be anything even close to balanced.

It’s probably not a good idea to come back right now.

maddoctor.2738:

Comparing content and price can lead to much more interesting conclusions. The price tag of HoT becomes much better if you think what you’ve got for free so far compared with getting nearly nothing in-between expansions.

Not really. That’s actually completelly irrelevant.

Living World, and all the etcs are part of the core release, not a part of HoT.

What people are saying isn’t that the core game wasn’t worth 50$, rather that HoT isn’t worth 50$.

Which makes your request rather pointless. The table in this post is not comparing the core release of GW2 with what we got in each GW1 chapter. It’s comparing what we will get with HoT with what we got in each GW1 chapter.

And incidentally, it’s far, FAR less.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Yes, I played the game. All I’m pointing out here is that the starting weapon you can buy from the store is better than the starting weapon a character gets.

Again, have you seen any starting character with 9 Hammer Mastery?

Just a flesh wound.3589:

And if you feel that selling cosmetics, RNG or not, is worse than the ability to buy your PvP gear and skills from the store

Infinitely worse. If you think deceiving your customers as you make them gamble with hidden odds is better than honestly selling something to your players and telling them exactly what they are paying for, then we have different values.

And do you really think that “buying PvP gear and skills from the store without putting one foot in the PvP area first and then facing someone who hasn’t bought their PvP skills and items but is still in starter gear” is bad? Right, how about buying gold and Black Lion Chests from the Gem Store so you have a high level character with a legendary weapon without playing one minute of the game and then facing in WvW someone who hasn’t bought their levels and items but is still in starter gear?

Or are you going to avoid my question and continue to complain about an imp that people could only use – LOL! – in the tutorial area of most chapters?

Just a flesh wound.3589:

No, the Guild Wars 1 store is not better than the Guild Wars 2 store.

LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL!

The GW2 store has a scam-like lottery system in the Black Lion Chests, in which you cannot buy directly what you want; rather, you have to gamble in a system in which you don’t know the odds and hope you get tickets for skins.

Meanwhile, in the original Guild Wars, you had skill unlock packs so PvP only players didn’t have to buy full games they didn’t want; they could just buy the skills unlocks for a chapter and compete under equal footing with everyone else without paying for content they didn’t want.

It’s a completely different point of view. One sees the players as people to be scammed; the other loses possible profits in order to make players happier.

It’s easy to see which one is the unethical one, and which one is the ethical one.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

The starter weapons were available with any new character in any campaign. You could summon them for Cantha and Elona as well as Prophesies.
For example, here is the Starter hammer stats
Blunt damage: 19-35 (Requires 9 Hammer Mastery)
Damage +15% (while Health is above 50%)
Armor penetration +20% (Chance: 20%)
Here is what a regular character got with a starter hammer.
Blunt Dmg: 3-5
Damage +20%

Bolding mine. Tell me, did you see any starting character with 9 Hammer Mastery? Do you even know how the attribute system worked in the original GW?

The Comfy Chair.7265:

But yeah, it’s not actually too difficult to earn the gold for a character slot, especially if you do a few silverwastes runs.

So, one more sign that the expansion is made for grinders and grinders only?

“Want beta access? Grind the Silverwastes for it!”

“Want a character slot so you can play the new profession we’re introducing? Grind the Silverwastes for it!”

I wonder if the guy who updated the HoT FAQ will also update those statements to “Want to have fun? Grind HoT first for it!”.

A Hamster.2580:

TL;DR: 2 months old customer already lost trust in the company.

I think the players who recently bought the game are the ones that best show how poor of a move it was.

We have topics with the small cat-like argument that “ohoo, you have been playing the game for 3 years and got a lot of free content for it, so you should pay whatever now”.

That’s already a ridiculous argument, since what we are discussing is the price of HoT, not of the core game; but someone who began playing the game two months, or even 3 or 4 months ago, got what, exactly?

Living World Season 1? Nope, gone. Living World Season 2? Nope, have to pay extra for it. Changes to Lion’s Arch? Nope, was already destroyed.

Do the players who bought the game recently get to play a decent, unbroken personal storylne? Nope, it was broken a few months ago and they still have not fixed it (“when it’s ready”, as always).

Do they get to experience the game without the ugly NPE pack (that was created for the China release, a release that is dead)? Nope.

Honestly, everyone who bought Guild Wars 2 this year should just quit the game in disgust after the HoT pricing move. They are the ones who have been hit the hardest by this whole mess.

Doggie.3184:

I’m not too concerned with how China plays as long as we’re not a part of it.

You should be.

Do you remember how ArenaNet stopped making content for us last year while they were finishing up the China release?

Do you remember how much ArenaNet invested in it?

Do you remember NCSoft’s quarterly report mentioning how the China release underperformed?

This is the result of GW2 dying in China. They are so desperate over there that the company taking care of the game is now resorting to selling legendaries.

Meanwhile, ArenaNet was forced to watch GW2’s earnings falling instead of rising with the China release. All that effort was for nothing. It’s little to no surprise that ArenaNet, too, is desperate – desperate enough for the “bait and switch” we just got with HoT.

Inshiro.3620:

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

Do you know what’s really, really funny, though?

A dev once said here that there were, at the time, more people playing WvW than the total amount of people playing the original Guild Wars at its peak.

Meanwhile… The original Guild Wars was released on April 2005. Two years later, on the third quarter of 2007, GW earned NCSoft 13 billion Won. GW2 was released on August 2012. Two years later, on the third quarter of 2014, GW2 earned 19,6 billion Won. Less than Lineage, Aion, and Blade & Soul.

Nearly twice as many people, with better technology, after all this time… And for what? Less than twice the earnings? Still less than a MMORPG released in 1998? Or that a game that has not even been released on the West yet?

I wonder, does ArenaNet think it was really worth it?

warbignime.4610:

You also should not purchase any single player games ever again since I can guarantee you they provide less hours of entertainment than HoT.

Meh, that “guarantee” is worth less than a pile of small cats’ dung.

Based on everything ArenaNet has told us, HoT is basically a glorified DLC that other games would have sold for 10$.

Add to that how it appears it will be basically grind over and over (even the process to enter its beta was through grind), and sorry, but no. I can hardly think of a game that would give less hours of entertainment than HoT.

Between that and this, well, it’s not surprising that people right now have a very good idea of what their money is worth.