Heart of Thorns is quite amazing!

[Lotus Victoria]

Hello champions! Good to see ya! 'been awhile since I last posted here.

Yesterday I bought GW: Heart of Thorns, the new xpac (it's 50% off until february 7th, if you didn't grab it, take a look).

I gotta say: I'm quite impressed by how they managed to give the endgame such a new flavor in MMO's. The masteries are awesome, gliding is super fun and, as a Thief, i gotta admit that the Daredevil are super incredible.

What is your opinion on the expansion pack?

[algi]

I think storytelling was better in "vanilla" GW2. I mean, I liked the way how hero was talking with other people. Now he/she seems less nice to me. Also dialogs are no longer in "movie mode", they happens directly in game.

I like how you can choose if you want to play "expansion" or focus on old world with masteries. Gliders, amazing. Same for jumping mushrooms.

[Valeron]

I'm not a particular fan of Dragon Stand but the other three zones are fantastic IMO

[Lazuli]

I thought it was garbage.

Daredevil is just a third dodge with an unviable weapon in pvp, and an autoattack stick in pve. The maps are annoying and require far too much effort to play an alt to get their elite spec unlocked so I just stopped playing shortly after release. Exact same problem Legion has right now, completely alt unfriendly which made me quit that game too as they both are forcing you into a certain playstyle now. If you don't like the changes to your main, well tough shit enjoy grinding it all out on an alt.. yeah no thanks.

It isn't just stat's anymore, but also the weapons and combat style you must play to achieve decent performance in all aspects of the game.

I didn't even get to try the raids on live, but doesn't seem worth the effort anyway. Still a boring combat system with a ton of grind added to the game. pvp is worse in HoT but not too different from vanilla. Spam aoe, rotate points, snooze and repeat.

Maybe if they ever burn D/P with a fucking torch and add some other viable wep set I would come back at least for a few pvp matches. Lol @ that borked leaderboard system.. top 200 and easily manipulated... failnet strikes again and again. Nothing good came out of this xpac for me.

[Zandalarian Paladin]

Highly disappointed in HoT.

Grind, grind, grind.

I grew used to something more flavorful and diversified with the original game and I was looking forward to something similar in HoT.

They didn't deliver.

[PACOX]

Look who finally got HoT!

The only thing I don't like about the expansion is Tangled Depths because I can't seem to wrap my head around that map. Its event chain is fun if you have a map dedicated to it though.

You have to do at least 1 full play through of Dragon Stand (can take anywhere from ~40 min to 1hr 30+).

[Deleted]

Hello champions! Good to see ya! 'been awhile since I last posted here.

Yesterday I bought GW: Heart of Thorns, the new xpac (it's 50% off until february 7th, if you didn't grab it, take a look).

I gotta say: I'm quite impressed by how they managed to give the endgame such a new flavor in MMO's. The masteries are awesome, gliding is super fun and, as a Thief, i gotta admit that the Daredevil are super incredible.

What is your opinion on the expansion pack?

Bolded part - sorry what?

I preffered the original GW2...
both resulted in me only getting trough the leveling part of the game, sticking around for a week or so, and then just going to other games.

I think the economy has become more reasonable nowadays... but it still lacks anything that would keep me in the game.

[Kazgrel]

Being it's over a year old now and 50% off, I don't doubt that HoT is worth that price. That said, I played it for about 3ish weeks at launch, only to be underwhelmed by the story (mainly due to how brief it was at the time) and the grindfest that the Mastery system and the new zones were. Since then, there's been 2 other zones added via Living Story, as far as I know, and there's another LS patch coming out next week.

I ended up dropping HoT to finish up loose ends I had left on WoW's Warlords of Draenor; got done with all the content there in 3ish months, went back to FF14 and haven't looked back, honestly. I just log in GW2 now to flag myself eligible for Living Story episodes and to collect anniversary gifts (all the rare dyes are belong to me...eventually ).

[TriHard]

Eugh, I hate HoT. I hope the next expansion involves more variety, I certainly hope we don't get Asuna / Charr stuff because judging from their capital cities and their overall theme, that'd be boring :L

That is if they plan to make more expansions.

[Lotus Victoria]

Eugh, I hate HoT. I hope the next expansion involves more variety, I certainly hope we don't get Asuna / Charr stuff because judging from their capital cities and their overall theme, that'd be boring :L

That is if they plan to make more expansions.

But Asuras are cute! On topic though...They'll probably make. GW2 is still very popular, but they get most of their $$$ from the in-game gem shop.

[Edge-]

Eugh, I hate HoT. I hope the next expansion involves more variety, I certainly hope we don't get Asuna / Charr stuff because judging from their capital cities and their overall theme, that'd be boring :L

That is if they plan to make more expansions.

Already confirmed that they're working on another, and IIRC they said they had around 70+ people working on it full time (their staff is around 200ish still, I think).

I'm damn hopeful they learned a lot from their struggles with HoT, because at this point they're still fighting an uphill battle to get their player (and revenue) numbers back up to what they were pre-HoT. And I know for myself, I won't be blindly pre-purchasing this expansion like I did for HoT, this expansion did some damage to my faith in Anet.

Also, more asuras. Needs more Taimi. EVERYTHING NEEDS MORE TAIMI.

[TriHard]

Already confirmed that they're working on another, and IIRC they said they had around 70+ people working on it full time (their staff is around 200ish still, I think).

I'm damn hopeful they learned a lot from their struggles with HoT, because at this point they're still fighting an uphill battle to get their player (and revenue) numbers back up to what they were pre-HoT. And I know for myself, I won't be blindly pre-purchasing this expansion like I did for HoT, this expansion did some damage to my faith in Anet.

Also, more asuras. Needs more Taimi. EVERYTHING NEEDS MORE TAIMI.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOO, NO ASURAS D:<
Tbh I hope seeing a new race or something, maybe even a new class!

[Lazuli]

Already confirmed that they're working on another, and IIRC they said they had around 70+ people working on it full time (their staff is around 200ish still, I think).

I'm damn hopeful they learned a lot from their struggles with HoT, because at this point they're still fighting an uphill battle to get their player (and revenue) numbers back up to what they were pre-HoT. And I know for myself, I won't be blindly pre-purchasing this expansion like I did for HoT, this expansion did some damage to my faith in Anet.

Also, more asuras. Needs more Taimi. EVERYTHING NEEDS MORE TAIMI.

Taimi is a 10/10 would bang

[Svifnymr]

Being it's over a year old now and 50% off, I don't doubt that HoT is worth that price. That said, I played it for about 3ish weeks at launch, only to be underwhelmed by the story (mainly due to how brief it was at the time) and the grindfest that the Mastery system and the new zones were. Since then, there's been 2 other zones added via Living Story, as far as I know, and there's another LS patch coming out next week.

3 new zones actually, bloodstone place, volcano, ice place.

I'll occasionally roam around the first two, haven't returned to the ice place in a long time.

[Kazgrel]

3 new zones actually, bloodstone place, volcano, ice place.

I'll occasionally roam around the first two, haven't returned to the ice place in a long time.

Oops...that ice place must've been in the last LS update. I totally whiffed on that detail. I did note they had added Bloodstone Fen or whatever along with the Ring of Fire (or whatever they may call it now).

[Nero Stormchester]

Agreed , amazing game , amazing xpac. Love the zones , exploration , metas, fractals , PvP and Revenants.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

When it first came out, I thought it was fine.

In retrospect, with the horrendous launch problems having been fixed, as well as the addition of a couple new maps, I'd say it's a good expansion, even though it still got many things wrongs.

The Good:
- The new maps were (in general) more interesting to play through than most other MMORPG expansion maps. While HoT had the misfortune of being 90% variations of the same green jungle all the way through, it overall made the best use of it's space. I don't know about Legion, but WoD had dramatically different themes for each zone but in general felt like the same flat landscape (with the exception of Spires of Arrak). Here, the jungle actually feels like you need to figure out how to navigate the multiple layers to get around. Great.

- The event system in HoT feels like a streamlined, seemless version of WoW's questing system. Instead of having to constantly run back and forth between the quest giver and the objectives, I just follow the NPC around to the objective and get rewarded for doing what I am instructed over the audio. It's slick and seamless. The only downside is that since these are server hosted events, I cannot simply take my time to complete them or start an event whenever I want. Overall, great.

- With the mastery system having been fixed, I can safely say that I prefer unlocking a subset of new abilities as opposed to simply leveling up and seeing my stats inflate. Unfortunately, the mastery system so far does not have enough features/abilities/unlocks to feel like it's worth spending another hundred hours playing GW2 to level up, but with more content updates I'll be inclined to say otherwise. Fantastic.

- Hooray, "cutscenes" with two characters side by side in front of a texture are gone!

The Meh:

- New profession: Haven't really played it, won't comment on it.

- New specializations were hit or miss; Scrapper and Druid feel like major additions, while others like Chronomancer feel underwhelming add ons.


The bad:

- The story. Oh boy; Rytlock comes back and his time in the Mists are never explained during the plot itself, and creates a plothole where Destiny's Edge blindly follows a Char who apparently came from an other worldly dimension - who has acquired superpowers they've never seen before - and simply accept him as their leader without any suspicion whatsoever. Rox, Marjorie, and one other character who's name I have forgotten were completely absent from the plot. Brahm had an opportunity for major character development in the aftermatch of Eir's death... and that goes nowhere. More could've been done with Rata Novus (so it's apparently a legendary city that Asurans have been searching for a long time... and the Commander is only NOW just hearing about it). Faolain wasn't threatening at all, and felt like she was corrupted just to give us an excuse for an antagonist to fight throughout the story before confronting the big bad. I would have much rather had faced off against a characterized Mordrem commander instead. Caithe's betrayal is easily forgiven at the end, when really she should've been tossed in prison for recklessly endangering Tyria until she earns back our trust in the Living Story. Kanac was the most compelling character of the fellowship. Rytlock - despite being advertised as the main character of the story in the trailers for the expansion, on the box art and on the launcher for the game, he was completely, absolutely IRRELEVANT to the plot. The story would not have changed at all if he were replaced with Rox (indeed, Rox actually would have been more useful given his wilderness survival skills). He definitely needed focus. I'm not sure what was the point of picking between Logan or Zojja to save first, considering Anet isn't going to kill the other off since that would make the story going forward a hassle to write and implement. The idea of fighting Mordremoth inside his mind (because it'd be impractical to try to destroy his physical body) was solid, but the actual end fight inside his mind was rather underwhelming. The idea of the Pact being completely destroyed came out of nowhere and made no sense whatsoever, considering I was pushing with them in events all throughout the expansion towards Dragon Stand, and the Pact shows up with a quite a sizable force for the final meta event. Traehearne's death was sorrowful and well executed. The lack of an epilogue however, made the ending feel very anticlimatic; sure the big bad is dead but there are so many questions left open I didn't feel like this chapter of the story was over. And then it was.

- Some of the map content was rather repetitive, and indeed to an extent the entire expansion was. Four maps of straight up jungle got rather tedious after twenty hours of gameplay. Tangled Depths suffers the most from this, as it lacks identity and only the massive underground cavern was interesting to play in. It was also rather presented to the player, as I spent more time running back and forth trying to get somewhere than I did actually enjoying the map. Can't comment on the Living Story maps, as I haven't played them yet. Auric Basin was alright, and at least at an identifiable theme, but that was just it: it was alright. Dragon's Stand and Verdant Brink were the most memorable maps, but Dragon's Stand didn't capitalize on the massive vertical space afforded to developers like in Verdant Brink and Tangled Depths. It also takes WWAAAAYYY too long to play through; being a hundred man raid doesn't do it any favors for players like me who want to hop in and do a few easy events. Verdant Brink was by far the most memorable map of the expansion and indeed, my favorite of the entire game. it's a shame it's the only one of it's caliber.


P.S: I will be binge-playing the episodes over the new few weeks, will give my opinion on them when I do so.

[Deleted]

I think I was one of very few that actually liked the little cinematic scenes when your character would talk to others in vanilla GW2. It felt different and unique. The 'open world' conversations in HoT were kind of awkward most of the time with your character breaking their back when talking to someone behind them and the likes. I wish they had used both styles and mixed it up a bit. Or maybe do it a bit more like they were in Gw1, still cinematic but rendered in-game.

[PACOX]

I think I was one of very few that actually liked the little cinematic scenes when your character would talk to others in vanilla GW2. It felt different and unique. The 'open world' conversations in HoT were kind of awkward most of the time with your character breaking their back when talking to someone behind them and the likes. I wish they had used both styles and mixed it up a bit. Or maybe do it a bit more like they were in Gw1, still cinematic but rendered in-game.

Yeah, a mix of the two would be awesome. Its cool that your character can now speak out in the open and dialogue can happen in real time but its weird when it happens when your back is turned or something. My character can be jumping up and down gliding off a small set of stairs while having a serious conversation with an NPC...And you could skip through most of the little cutscenes if you wanted.

[dat1guy]

I actually hated it. Just wasnt worth what it dished out