Guild Wars Factions Dated, Bonus Content Revealed

[Rirath]

Gamespot (http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/guildwarsfactions/news.html?sid=6145757) has a news article up on the April 28th release of Guild Wars Factions, prices, and Collector's Edition contents.

The game's North American collector's edition features a CD of the game's soundtrack, a double-sided poster, an art book, a desk calendar, a mouse pad, a sticker set, and a special in-game emote for the game's new classes, the assassin and the ritualist.
$50 is awful steep for an "expansion-ish" standalone, but that's a nice set of extras!

[bapenguin]

Wow, 70 bucks. I guess they are really marketing it as a stand alone game, not necessarily an expansion pack.

[Steve_Erhardt]

Except, if you don't have the game, the expansion is useless. That $70 for the CE is steep, let alone $50 for the vanilla edition.

That said, they're not charging monthly so I guess they needed to get the $$$ boost on the initial sale. *shrug*

[Rone]

Huh? Factions can stand alone. In that case, your characters won't be able to travel to the original game's continent, but you will have the entire new continent.

[Mozgus]

Huh? Factions can stand alone. In that case, your characters won't be able to travel to the original game's continent, but you will have the entire new continent.
Exactly. Let me see if I got this right.

If one buys Factions, then one will get access to absolutely every class, item and move from the first game, right? On top of all the new ones being introduced in Factions? The only thing you would be missing is the previous game's worlds?

[Lord Dongkey]

It's my understanding that you get access to the new geography and the entirety of the class/skill list, but the linear content alone in the first Guild Wars release is worth the money. The game has a fairly rich history/storyline that develops in a surprisingly clear and linear fashion, so by the time you hit level 20 (doesn't take too long) you really feel like you're a part of something larger than yourself. Unlike feeling like the 123958193258 group that has taken down Vox, for instance.

I need to hurry my ass up and beat the original Guild Wars (story content) with at least ONE character before this comes out...

[Rone]

There's a nice summary of which skills you'd have access to in this thread (http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/showthread.php?t=134138). I believe the items are the same, too. I've even heard of a few people having Factions items drop from monsters already.

[agentgray]

Except, if you don't have the game, the expansion is useless. That $70 for the CE is steep, let alone $50 for the vanilla edition.

That said, they're not charging monthly so I guess they needed to get the $$$ boost on the initial sale. *shrug*
what is this expansion you speak of? It's a stand alone game. Another chapter in the story.

[agentgray]

Exactly. Let me see if I got this right.

If one buys Factions, then one will get access to absolutely every class, item and move from the first game, right? On top of all the new ones being introduced in Factions? The only thing you would be missing is the previous game's worlds?
..and quests and rewards from those quests, I believe.

[agentgray]

Wow, 70 bucks. I guess they are really marketing it as a stand alone game, not necessarily an expansion pack.
It's still a savings from other MMOs (I know. I know. The whole MMO debate thing), but there are some of us who like it more than any other game of it's type out there.

[Tohoya]

Exactly. Let me see if I got this right.

If one buys Factions, then one will get access to absolutely every class, item and move from the first game, right? On top of all the new ones being introduced in Factions? The only thing you would be missing is the previous game's worlds?

No. Buying Factions alone will give you access to all the professions, and all the skills for the two new ones (Assasin and Ritualist). The other six, however, will only have "core" skills to use, in others words, there will be some skills that you have to buy both for. How many core skills there will be exactly I'm not sure. Some have hypothesized that it could be as much as half the skills for the original professions. However, I personally think it will be exactly 15 skills missing, most of them elite- GW:F introduces 15 new skills for the old professions that are not avaliable for vanilla users, so I'd assume they'd try to establish equilibirum between the versions by making 15 per class not avaliable for those with Factions but not vanilla.

And yeah, this is more a standalone than an expansion. Think CoH/CoV. The factions campaign isn't just an expansion; the PvE content is as big as the original GW campaign.

[Vermillion]

Woowoo. I'll have my second character ascended just in time to kick off the next one.

The question is, what is the max character limit you will have? Are they doing +2 so I can do both new classes, or will I only get 1 additional character slot?

[AspectVoid]

You know, I'm actually tempted to buy the Collector's Edition. I'm on a business trip right now, which means bonus money for me next paycheck. I can easily set aside a bit of that bonus for this, and I can use some of the collectors stuff for my Cube back at the company.

[Rone]

The question is, what is the max character limit you will have? Are they doing +2 so I can do both new classes, or will I only get 1 additional character slot?
If you have both games, the limit is raised to 6 characters.

[Ondo]

No. Buying Factions alone will give you access to all the professions, and all the skills for the two new ones (Assasin and Ritualist). The other six, however, will only have "core" skills to use, in others words, there will be some skills that you have to buy both for. How many core skills there will be exactly I'm not sure.
No need to guess, they added the ability to sort skills by campaign March 9th. A quick check says about 35 skills from each class are not core.
GW:F introduces 15 new skills for the old professions that are not avaliable for vanilla users
Actually it's 25 new skills for each old class. A bit short of equilibrium, unfortunately. Still, a Factions only player will have more classes and more total skills than a Prophecies only player.