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I can only make guesses as to why they made their Steam bundle this way. My personal guess is because it is possible to buy it ingame as well, so they wanted to prevent players from buying it twice. Since you do need to own HoT+PoF in order to buy seasons 3-5, so once you own the expansions they can no longer be certain that you do not own the living world seasons. but like I said, that's just a guess.
Btw, if you don't want to buy gems, you can also convert gold into gems. Though since it costs a total of 4160 gems, which are worth 52$, it's probably also quite expensive gold wise, also since the value of gold dropped a bit recently. Sadly Season 2 is not only the most expensive one but it also has the least amount of content since not only does it only feature 2 new maps, those 2 maps are even included in the free base game, so you don't get any new maps with it. But the other 3 seasons are totally worth it as most episodes provide a new map, except for season 5 that has a new map every 2 episodes.
Also, never buy single episodes, always buy the full seasons in the gem store, as they come with a 20% discount. Not to mention that sometimes those seasons get an additional discount. According to the past discounts it seems to be an additional 20% every 2 or so months, with 30% during december. so there might be a 20% discount during february, like the last 2 years.
And buying th eLiving World via th ebundle on Steam i salso only a bit cheaper, as in th ebundle it costs 40$ while with gems it costs 52$, so you don't lose that much money by just buying it with gems right now, especially if you wait for a discount in the gem store. Though I guess with a Steam discount you could even save 50% for the bundle, so I guess that would still be the cheaper choice.
There also once was a time before End of Dragons got released where they again gave all seasons away for free for all players who logged in during that time, but there are currently no signs of this happening again. And the general idea of the living world was already that all players get it for free when it got released, so there were 2 opportunities to get it for free until now. But sadly for new players the huge price tag of 150€ for all content or even just 100€ for the Elder Dragon Saga can be considered as pretty high, making it more difficult to atract new players. But it at least keeps all old content still pretty relevant, so you won't miss out of much if you start later.
afaik you need to get them with gems like IT or not, good thing is that you dont need to spend any real money, just be patient and farm gold then trade for gems at black lion exchange and finally buy the living world seasons, that's how i did it back in the day with living world season 2, takes time but this is so easy and compared to the grind from other mmos its a walk in the park. Most games wont even let you trade common currency for premium currency and you would have to pay real money with no choice, thankfully gw2 isnt like that.
farming and saving gold to get living world seasons in this game is laughable compared to farming 10 different materials in 10 different zones from 20 different monsters with a drop rate of 1-5% requiring different amounts for each material sometimes by hundreds and then craft just one piece of equipment, rinse and repeat. That's your average korean mmorpg and even some western mmos.
The price of the bundle is lowered by the appropriate fraction.
So when a sale shows up, you can pick up the rest of the season.
Sure, the Elder Dragon Saga Complete Edition, also available here on Steam.
from my guide, which you could find in the Guides section for the game here on Steam.
Instead, open the Gem St[o]re and click on Account Upgrades → Living World, where you will find the "Living World Season Complete Packs" in which each episode costs 160💎, (season 3, 4, and IBS only if you own Heart of Thorns and Path of Fire).
(or buy them piece-meal until a sale comes up and you can get the remaining ones cheaper as RotherHans suggested)
The Living World seasons cost the following when purchased separately via the gem store:
Since the Elder Dragon Saga Standard Collection contains HoT+PoF and EoD,
and the Elder Dragon Saga Complete Collection contains all Living World Complete Packs in addtion, you save $/€ 2, by buying the Complete Collection.
- Buying the Elder Dragon Saga Standard Collection for $50 (or $25 on sale) which contains Heart of Thorns, Path of Fire and End of Dragons
- Grinding for the gold to convert to gems to buy the Living World Season Complete Packs for 1280💎(LWS2), 960💎(LWS3), 960💎(LWS4), and 960💎(IBS) (or less on sale).
If you planned on only buying the expansions that you have to buy with real money, and grind the ingame coin to convert into gems to buy the Living World seasonsAt the time of writing, 1280💎 and 960💎 cost 550 gold and 412 gold, respectively.
(See Exchange rates[gw2efficiency.com] or the second tab of the 🦁 Gem Store in game for current rates.)
- Living World Season 2 Complete Pack[wiki.guildwars2.com]
- Living World Season 3 Complete Pack[wiki.guildwars2.com]
- Living World Season 4 Complete Pack[wiki.guildwars2.com]
- The Icebrood Saga Complete Pack[wiki.guildwars2.com]
as described above, … buying the two DLCs Heart of Thorns™ and Path of Fire™ ($/€ 30) and End of Dragons™ ($/€ 30) will cost you $/€ 10 more on the Steam Store, than buying the Elder Dragon Saga Standard Collection (non-complete, only HoT+PoF+EoD) off buy.guildwars2.com, which you could only get there, directly from ArenaNet.==========================
That is an unreasonable position and you know it.
Expansions you can only buy with real-world money, no way around it.
Living World you can buy with gems which you can buy with real-world money, or convert from in-game gold. So which one gives you more freedom?
You didn't look into how you would get season 2 before buying the HoT+PoF bundle and are now angry about how the whole thing is set up, which is understandable … but it's not like this information was hidden from you.
Or look at it this way, the game doesn't have a monthly subscription. Buying gems supports the game. A whole season isn't that expensive imo and you can convert some of your own gold to gems to alleviate the cost.
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1284210/view/525332679570228168
… all of them together would be $/€ 52 (see long post above).
WoW's cheapest subscription is $13 a month (if you buy half a year in bulk). So, all Living World costs just as much as 4 month of WoW sub fee … which GW2 has never had.