Guild Wars 2: HoT or Cold?

It’s been over four months now since Arena-Net released their first expansion to their MMORPG, Guild Wars 2 – Heart of Thorns (HoT).

This means I have had four full months to play the expansion. Whilst I have obviously not completed all the content, being the casual player I am, I have a good idea of what this expansion has to offer.

I find myself torn as to whether I would recommend it or not. There are reasons why the expansion was a huge disappointment, but I cannot say that I personally regret buying it.

Firstly: the base game of Guild Wars 2 had 25 explorable maps. A further 3 more were added as part of the game’s “Living World” – free releases to existing players offering a new storyline and new features alongside the maps.
In comparison, Heart of Thorns offered a grand total of just four maps. And whilst these four maps were rich and filled; they can be more of a chore to explore. Exploring is simply no fun if you are dying constantly because you can’t work out how to get to a certain place.

This feeling is made worse by the four maps feeling rather similar. They all feature a common ‘bountiful jungle’ theme. While this is beautiful, especially when compared to the rest of the game, on it’s own, it doesn’t give the variety I was hoping for.

This is then made worse by the fact that all 4 maps have what are referred to as “meta-events”. These are map-wide events and quests, that are all intertwined and affect one another. They are large and complex, and take a very long time to complete. The problem is not the Metas themselves, as they are relatively fun and interesting to do. It again comes down to variety. All four maps have these. Meaning all 4 maps are just that much harder to truly explore. The Meta’s can make large chunks of the maps either harder to access, or just plain unreachable, depending on the ‘stage’ it’s at. This and they all have fixed-time restarts means it can be incredibly hard to find a map in which the Meta is working unless you arrive at the correct time. And on top of all this, you have to commit a full two hours to see each Meta through to the end (which might then just fail anyway if you’ve not managed to convince enough players to participate).

Whilst these Meta-events fit in nicely with the wider world of the game, they don’t offer any variety to veteran players.

Lastly: the story that HoT introduced. I must say firstly, it was executed rather brilliantly. My major problem was the length. Admittedly, I have not finished the story, as the story itself hasn’t caught my interest as much as I would have hoped. To put it bluntly, it’s all been too short. The story itself hasn’t encouraged any sort of map completion, just hopping from various specific places. This means there are whole swathes of all four maps I simply don’t understand. Referring back to the Meta events – I don’t even have any idea what they have to do with the story. The answers are somewhere in the maps, but I’m too busy falling off of unseen cliff edges to really bother having to work this all out.

However, there are a whole host of things that have made the game well worth me buying. Some of these are personal, for example, a number of my friends started playing barely months before the announcement and release of HoT. Therefore I’ve been playing with them and joining in on the excitement of all the new content and this has been worth any money I’ve spent. Also, as mentioned, I’ve been a long time player of the game. This meant that the single new class introduced in HoT offered a new way to play, and I was doubly lucky that it fits in with my playstyle perfectly.

A lot of the other new features, seem small now, but will hugely benefit future expansions. As someone who is very much invested in this game, and thus intend to play other expansions, I am seriously hoping that the fact these new features are already implemented will mean future expansions have more resources to use on new maps and a more in-depth story.

These features will undoubtedly feature in future expansions, and potentially in future Living World updates if Arena-Net decide to continue with those alongside their expansions. As such, whilst the actually tangible content of HoT was disappointing, and not worth the cost, it has the potential to lead to much greater content.

Would I recommend buying the expansion?

Not yet. Exception going to Free-to-Play players, who genuinely think the whole game is worth paying the price of the expansion is for. (I would argue it is, but seeing as the majority of the content is accessible for free, it’s a decision left to the individual).

However, with the announcement of more Living World or expansion packs using a lot of the new features, it is worth thinking about. Especially if the price drops.