worth to start witchour the expansions?

[Terente22CmRecords]

i cant realy aford em, college is prety nassty to my money, barely aforded to spend 15$ this spring sale, how much content is locked behind em?

[Percello]

Well, you may be able to get a trial mount, but all mounts are in the Path of Fire expansion. You also won't be able to access many of the elite specializations along with some locations and story missions. Can you still play without them? Of course. There's still tons of content even if you don't have any expansions. The only thing that may be inconvenient is not having a mount to travel faster.

[Damian]

You can get to max lvl and obtain the best tier of gear without even buying an expansion. Buying HoT + PoF bundle for 7,5$ is a killer deal though. Both expansion contain some of the best story, maps, features (mounts, gliding, profession upgrades, raids etc.) to date. Core game is surely worth picking up. It has more than enough content to keep you playing until the next steam sale.

[Daniel]

You can play the vanilla game just fine and work on different things like 100% completion (which you would want anyway at some point) exploration, achievements, currency farm, world bosses, crafting professions, do PvP, etc.

Essentially what’s locked behind expansions are new zones, mounts and obviously the storylines. Elite specializations (talent trees) are also locked behind their respective expac, but they are not needed. You can google ‘core specs’ and every class has one that works. Mounts are basically gimmicks to access new places metroid-style and not needed nor intended in the vanilla world and they even feel a little out of place.

Due to the horizontal progression GW2 doesn’t actually force you to buy expacs, compared to like WoW where it’s basically completely pointless to continue playing if you don’t move along with the other people.

The max lvl is always 80, the best gear is always ascended gear, there are no different ‘item levels’ within a gear tier. Likewise, there is no such thing as a ‘next tier’ of crafting materials like ore or cloth, that would only be obtainable in expac zones.

[armyguy]

Originally posted by Daniel:

Due to the horizontal progression GW2 doesn’t actually force you to buy expacs, compared to like WoW where it’s basically completely pointless to continue playing if you don’t move along with the other people.

You're going to need to buy at least one of the expansions to get rid of the restrictions put on the free to preview accounts.
"Free accounts have a number of additional restrictions placed on them, with the intent of preventing malicious persons from using them to disrupt the game and to encourage purchase of the game."
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Account#Free_accounts

Originally posted by Daniel:

the best gear is always ascended gear...
Likewise, there is no such thing as a ‘next tier’ of crafting materials like ore or cloth, that would only be obtainable in expac zones.

The best gear is legendary gear, runes, sigils, relics and weapons because they can be transmuted, change stats and never lose any upgrade (normal runes, sigils, infusions) on the fly. Ascended gear and legendary gear share the same stat levels. Ascended gear needs to be put in the forge to change stats. All upgrades (runes, sigils, infusions) will be lost.

There are different next tier materials/map currency on HoT, PoF, EOD maps which can be turned into magic to be used as yet another currency. These crafting materials are used for crafting different recipes introduced during that expansion.

[Daniel]

Originally posted by armyguy:

Originally posted by Daniel:

Due to the horizontal progression GW2 doesn’t actually force you to buy expacs, compared to like WoW where it’s basically completely pointless to continue playing if you don’t move along with the other people.

You're going to need to buy at least one of the expansions to get rid of the restrictions put on the free to preview accounts.
"Free accounts have a number of additional restrictions placed on them, with the intent of preventing malicious persons from using them to disrupt the game and to encourage purchase of the game."
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Account#Free_accounts

Originally posted by Daniel:

the best gear is always ascended gear...
Likewise, there is no such thing as a ‘next tier’ of crafting materials like ore or cloth, that would only be obtainable in expac zones.

The best gear is legendary gear, runes, sigils, relics and weapons because they can be transmuted, change stats and never lose any upgrade (normal runes, sigils, infusions) on the fly. Ascended gear and legendary gear share the same stat levels. Ascended gear needs to be put in the forge to change stats. All upgrades (runes, sigils, infusions) will be lost.

There are different next tier materials/map currency on HoT, PoF, EOD maps which can be turned into magic to be used as yet another currency. These crafting materials are used for crafting different recipes introduced during that expansion.

This guy is obviously new so you’re just giving out a lot of useless and over complicating info. I know you’re trying hard to look smart on the internet rn but it just makes you look stupid.

It’s like being the guy who uses as much latin-based vocabulary as possible to bring a simple point across.

[armyguy]

Originally posted by Daniel:

This guy is obviously new so you’re just giving out a lot of useless and over complicating info. I know you’re trying hard to look smart on the internet rn but it just makes you look stupid.

It’s like being the guy who uses as much latin-based vocabulary as possible to bring a simple point across.

He is new and you misled him.

[Flushing]

Originally posted by Teemo B-DeFender:

i cant realy aford em, college is prety nassty to my money, barely aforded to spend 15$ this spring sale, how much content is locked behind em?

Yes, it's definitely worth it because it's $0 to try and the F2P content is the full core game that I bought in 2012.

Graphically, I think it's still great and has some truly stunning areas. This game killed World of Warcraft for me because the combat experience is so much better.

In fact both WoW and ESO stole so much (and not well) from GW2.

In terms of single play PvP, the F2P content is the Full game experience and everyone has full stats regardless of gear.

For the PvE content you get access to the full original game, max level cap, and top tier gear. It's essentially what I bought back in 2012.

Also, the player community is really good. If you get into GW2 and join an active guild with discord, they will probably gift you the expansions if you're into the game.

In short, try the F2P and give it a 3 hour chance. If you don't like it, then the retail DLC is a non-issue

The main thing you're going to miss are the mounts. To this day, GW2 has the best mount system in the mmo universe.

[Nico]

It certainly is worth it to play as a free2play player, though you have to live with a few free2play restrictions, most noticeably less bag slots and less character slots and only limited trading post access. But other than that you do have full access to the base game and all its features it had before expansions got released. But you obviously won't have access to most content that got added with expansions, including the glider, mounts .... and auto loot (because auto loot is a mastery).

Sadly the story missions of the base game are rather boring compared to the expansion story missions, but you at least already have access to living world season 1, which is a bit better already. Also, the base game is still very much populated with many players, since old content never gets obsolete, so you won't have to worry about going through empty servers. The GW2 community is also known to be pretty friendly, so you often can just ask for help ingame and there might be someone who wants to help you.

Sadly the spring sale just ended, so you won't be able to get a discount any time soon, and since you seem to be short on money you should totally wait until the next sale. But it at least should give you enough time to test the game out enough to know if you're even interested enough to pay money for it. Sine nobody can tell you if you would like the game or not, and trying it out for free is at least not a waste of your money.

[eastwind]

I thought from the OP post that he had bought a core GW2 account already (for $15), so he's not limited by the F2P restrictions, but he has no expansions. To re-iterate the good advice above, you can play a long time on a core account without needing an expansion or missing anything from them. The only thing you'll really long for and not have is a mount.

And if you can do without a pair of lattes and save up US$7.50 more and buy the PoF+HoT expansion bundle for 75% off the usual $30 during the current spring sale that will get you a mount and more content - you'll be able to play for a long time before you get to the end of that.

Or if you can't find $7.50 before the spring sale is over, just play without a mount until the summer sale and you should have another chance at PoF+HoT for cheap then. And maybe some more pocket money because of a summer job, even.

[Flushing]

Originally posted by eastwind:

I thought from the OP post that he had bought a core GW2 account already (for $15), so he's not limited by the F2P restrictions, but he has no expansions. To re-iterate the good advice above, you can play a long time on a core account without needing an expansion or missing anything from them. The only thing you'll really long for and not have is a mount.

And if you can do without a pair of lattes and save up US$7.50 more and buy the PoF+HoT expansion bundle for 75% off the usual $30 during the current spring sale that will get you a mount and more content - you'll be able to play for a long time before you get to the end of that.

Or if you can't find $7.50 before the spring sale is over, just play without a mount until the summer sale and you should have another chance at PoF+HoT for cheap then. And maybe some more pocket money because of a summer job, even.

Don't they give a Raptor mount to new players? Even if they don't have Path of Fire?

[~T~D~]

Originally posted by Flushing:

Originally posted by eastwind:

I thought from the OP post that he had bought a core GW2 account already (for $15), so he's not limited by the F2P restrictions, but he has no expansions. To re-iterate the good advice above, you can play a long time on a core account without needing an expansion or missing anything from them. The only thing you'll really long for and not have is a mount.

And if you can do without a pair of lattes and save up US$7.50 more and buy the PoF+HoT expansion bundle for 75% off the usual $30 during the current spring sale that will get you a mount and more content - you'll be able to play for a long time before you get to the end of that.

Or if you can't find $7.50 before the spring sale is over, just play without a mount until the summer sale and you should have another chance at PoF+HoT for cheap then. And maybe some more pocket money because of a summer job, even.

Don't they give a Raptor mount to new players? Even if they don't have Path of Fire?

For 10 days only

[Flushing]

Originally posted by ~T~D~:

Originally posted by Flushing:

Don't they give a Raptor mount to new players? Even if they don't have Path of Fire?

For 10 days only

Got it. Thank you