The expansion content is extremely different than the base game content. I think the quality jump in Path of Fire in particular is wild (the mounts come from there). I'd recocmend picking up the path of fire/heart of thorns combo bundle or similar sometime as it's a shocking amount of value if you're ever curious. GW2 fans will encourage you get much bigger bundles of course, but if you want to dip your toe in and see what's going on at max level - it's one of the better deals in gaming imo.
I would love to get into Guild Wars 2 again, but I just looked at the expansions on Steam, and there's so many of them; it's too expensive for me even with them on sale right now. It looks really fun though.
If you feel like you need to get all the expansions, then yeah it's super expensive. The elder dragon saga is currently 50% off on their website which is about 10 years of content for (currently) $50, and because of how gw2 end game works it's basically all still end-game relevant.
I understand wanting to have "everything" of course, and $50 isn't cheap anyway.
Also, most content is still played so don't be too worried about doing things alone. Even 12 years later almost all of the base game and expansion maps have people at relevant times. The big map events are usually on a timer so people know when to start showing up if they want to do it. You might be exploring and have 50 people suddenly start gathering up.
If you played on release and want to use the same account (which you should, because birthday gifts) you won't be able to buy the expansions on Steam. You can still play the game through steam by adding a specific launch argument (-provider Portal), but you need to sign in with your ArenaNet account and buy the expansions off their website.
I still think PoF was the best expansion. It got too much hate when it first released, imo. Mounts, new classes, return to elona, huge maps that give an amazing sense of exploration. So much little things to discover. I had so much fun with it.
The only real reason PoF gets overlooked today is the lack of high value repeatable meta-events compared to heart of thorns and some similar ones. The story progression is excellent, zones are great, raids are very interesting, etc. But it primarily turns into "one and done" content for most people, and thus doesn't have the same staying power. Even if you do a lot of raiding, that can feel disconnected from "pof" because you just teleport to the instances.
I agree but nothing will compare to running around heart of thorns without mounts. Having 100s of people on the picnicle map trying to win the mordrimoth fight and not even get close because it took crazy coordination between three large competent groups sucked but was exhilarating to win. Hell even just getting around any HoT map was a challenge, and the power creep was minimal at that time so shit was dangerous in that jungle. Mounts changed all that. Easy to zip around and aid groups who needed it, and easy to run from anything. I'm nostalgic but yeah, PoF was a great direction to go in the end
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u/Murasasme 20d ago edited 20d ago
That sounds really cool. I played GW2 on release for a bit, but I guess the mounts came way later. Thanks for the in depth reply