As a new player, Please consider making previous Living Worlds available when you buy End of Dragons or as a "Living World" Expansion

[Raught.3294]

First off, I am a new player and I've made my way through LW2 and halfway through Heart of Thorns, and I absolutely adore this game. It will be my forever game. I can't imagine any other MMO living up to this game and I regret not playing it sooner.

But this is a pretty big issue for new players, when I got to 80, the first thing I did was try to hop into Path of Fire as I had it unlocked, not knowing the Expansions had an order and weren't standalone as they appeared to be. Immediately I was met with HUGE HUGE spoilers, that devastated me, and almost made me wonder if I wanted to continue. Storylines are extremely important to me.
Luckily though I started playing as they released all the Living Worlds for Free this summer. So the next week I started with LW2 and had a blast and that kept me going.

But this has brought up a thought into my mind... New players flooding the world with End of Dragons are going to do the same thing. Hitting 80, and going straight to end of dragons, or one of the other expansions without any knowledge of the story, or worse getting horribly spoiled like I was. 

Before End of Dragons is released I really feel the presentation of Living World and its importance needs to be more clearly stated to players, and perhaps a warning about spoilers before they start it. Especially since so many MMOs, like ESO have each expansion be standalone storylines. 

So I propose one of these options:

 

1. -Present All Living World (LW2-Icebrood) as its own Combined Expansion, and charge like $20 for it. (Tbh this might be the easiest way for customers and new players to understand.)
2. -Give LW2 and LW3 to End of Dragon purchases. (this option at least gives new players some direction at 80)
3. -Give all Living World episodes to End of Dragon purchases. (This is probably the best option. You have to make money somehow)

[Vayne.8563]

While I agree with the desire to see more players have access and particularly transparent access to the Living World chapters, I don't think that selling something that sells for more for a lot less is necessarily an answer. It's work that took time to complete and Anet has the right to charge for it, particularly since there's no monthly fee or even an "optional" monthly fee as many games have.  Devs have to eat too.

 

$20 for five Seasons is like $4 a season which is a ridiculously cheap price. If I played Six months of WoW, I'd need the game for like $40 and then $15 a  month for 6 months or $130 all up.  That's to play WoW for 6 months.  Here you're getting pretty much the entire game for not much more than that, everything that's come out for years. Furthermore, as new episodes of the living world come out, if you log in when it's live, you get them free.   It's a very generous offer.

The problem is less the price and more the transparency in my opinion.  Anet should have an ultimate bundle with all the living world included with all the expansions, instead of the gems, for the price of the Ultimate Bundle.  That's one way to do it.

But since we have no idea of how much reducing the price to $20 for five Seasons would hurt Anet's bottom line, I'm not sure it can be feasibly done from a business point of view. There are two things going on here. One is the barrier to entry due to price and one is the lack of transparency up front.  They're different problems.  But something should be done.

[Strixxe.2019]

Living world was free multiple times already. Its a matter of time when it will become free again

[Rogue.8235]

1 hour ago, Raught.3294 said:

But this has brought up a thought into my mind... New players flooding the world with End of Dragons are going to do the same thing. Hitting 80, and going straight to end of dragons, or one of the other expansions without any knowledge of the story, or worse getting horribly spoiled like I was. 

 

I was under the impression that if you complete the story in order, you'll be aware of the living world seasons.  Has this changed?

 

While I do think that the living world DLC content is fine as is, it really does need better clarity on accessing/purchasing it.  It should probably be much more apparent that there are extra story-step-DLC that isn't part of the expansion bundle that is initially purchased.

As for pricing, I don't feel like doing the market analysis for this.  ArenaNet pays people to do that that and none of us forum posters have any inside knowledge of ArenaNet's financials anyways.

As for living world seasons being free, I'm very sure that is a bad idea.  They're already giving away the core game and early expansions for free.  

 

Edit: Living World season bundles that are as visible as the expansion packs would make things a lot clearer.  Not sure if I made that stance clear in the foregoing.

 

Edited January 12, 2022 by Rogue.8235

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

As for your suggestions about giving any Living World Seasons bar Season 2 with the purchase of End of Dragons (non-Collection), that would not work; as Season 3 requires Heart of Thorns and Seasons 4 and 5 (The Icebrood Saga) require Path of Fire.  There would just be the same laments about needing to make more purchases, albeit less costly, if that were scheme. 

Edited January 12, 2022 by Inculpatus cedo.9234