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Two full-blown expansions for the epic RPG.




The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is almost here. That means the game is pretty much finished, and the devs are about to take a deep breath while CD-presses and hype machines slowly wind up to take things through the home stretch. It's not gold yet, but now that development is coming to an end, the CD PROJEKT RED team is ready to start their work on two new, ambitious monster-hunting expansions.

The expansions will be called <span class="bold">Hearts of Stone</span>, and <span class="bold">Blood and Wine</span>. Combined, they'll offer over 30 hours of new adventures for Geralt, and the latter introduces a whole new major area to roam. More items, gear, and characters (including a few familiar faces) will all be crafted with the same attention to detail as the game itself.
<span class="bold">Hearts of Stone</span> is a 10-hour adventure across the wilds of No Man's Land and the nooks of Oxenfurt. The secretive Man of Glass has a contract for you - you'll need all your smarts and cunning to untangle a thick web of deceit, investigate the mystery, and emerge in one piece.
<span class="bold"><span class="bold">Blood and Wine</span></span> is the big one, introducing an all-new, playable in-game region to The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. It will take you about 20 hours to discover all of Toussaint, a land of wine, untainted by war. And to uncover the dark, bloody secret behind an atmosphere of carefree indulgence.







There used to be a time when buying an add-on disk or expansion for your game really meant something. That's what CD PROJEKT RED are going for, it's about bringing that old feeling back. You can take it from our very own iWi, (that's Marcin Iwinski, co-founder of CD PROJEKT RED):

"We’ve said in the past that if we ever decide to release paid content, it will be vast in size and represent real value for the money. Both of our expansions offer more hours of gameplay than quite a few standalone games out there.”

Hearts of Stone is expected to premiere this October, while Blood and Wine is slated for release in the first quarter of 2016, so there's still plenty of time ahead. We're offering you the <span class="bold">Expansion Pass</span> now - it's a chance to pre-order the two expansions and even show your support for the devs. But we can't stress Marcin Iwinski's words enough:

“Don’t buy it if you have any doubts. Wait for reviews or play The Witcher and see if you like it first. As always, it’s your call."







The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is just over a month away, and you can pre-order the game right now - it's a particularly great deal if you own the previous Witcher games and take advantage of the additional fan discount (both The Witcher and The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings are 80% off right now!). You can also take a rather unique refresher course on the universe with The Witcher Adventure Game at a 40% discount, all until Thursday, 4:59 PM GMT.
Post edited April 07, 2015 by Chamb
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Hello Everyone,

First of all let me thank you for your feedback. Although a bit harsh at times, it is always very passionate, emotional and we really do appreciate it.

I wanted to add a few words to the original press release, which will hopefully shed some more light on the Expansions and the timing of the announcement.

Let me start with the Expansions themselves. The work on The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is almost done and we are waiting for the final certifications. Thanks to it we were able to allocate part of the team onto the expansions. Yes, we have been thinking about it for some time, as with over 250 people on the Witcher team good planning is essential.

Rest assured, there is no hidden agenda or cutting out any content from the game. Both Expansions are being built at this very moment, from the ground up – hence the release dates long after the launch of Wild Hunt. We develop them in-house by the same team, which was working on Wild Hunt. This is the best guarantee we can give you that our goal is to deliver both the story and production values on par with the main game.

Now, on the timing of the announcement - in other words “why now” and not - let’s say – “a few months after the release of Wild Hunt”. The reason is very simple: we want to get the word out about the Expansions to as many gamers as possible out there. There is no better time for it than during the apex of the Marketing & PR campaign of the game. Doing it sometime after the release would mean that our reach would be much smaller.

Yes, we are a business, and yes, we would love to see both the game and the Expansions selling well. Having said that, we always put gamers first and are actually quite paranoid about the fact that whatever we offer is honest, of highest quality, and represents good value for your hard earn buck.

Yes, these are just my words. So let me repeat myself from the original release: if you still have any doubts -- don’t buy the Expansions. Wait for reviews or play The Witcher and see if you like it first. As always, it’s your call.

Cheers,

Marcin
Post edited April 09, 2015 by Destro
At this moment I do not advise to buy the Witcher 3 + DLC bundle since it does not include the discount for ownership of Witcher 1 + 2 !
Post edited April 07, 2015 by Matruchus
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georgealmighty: Shitty practices by AAA publishers destroyed both the (good IMO if implemented right) ideas of oxpansions and DLC. This thread is just CDPR getting hit by collateral damage.
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mrkgnao: This wouldn't have happened if GOG had not alienated its greatest supporters by earlier introducing regional pricing, regional banning, cutting off communications, and leaving our libraries for weeks in a half-broken state. These supporters would have been here to hold the fort; now they are instead leading the assault. There is just so many times you can be dishonest and supercilious to people.
Greatest supporters? You mean the vocal minority that doesn't care about anything beyond their own extremist and ideological perception of gog, perpetually offended by whatever gog does that is not classic releases? If these "alienated" were really the "greatest supporters", the expansions wouldn't climb to third spot of currently best selling products in just about 5 hours or so.

But yeah, you are right in one thing - these "greatest supporters" wouldn't complain indeed if there was no regional pricing. Because The Witcher 3 wouldn't be available for purchase DRM-free - tough cookie to complain about something that doesn't exist.
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LynetteC: Looks like the UK are even more screwed than Australia with these prices. :-(
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HypersomniacLive: *cough*

* Regional price for Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, The - Game + Expansion Pass in AU: $96.39 instead of $79.99
* Regional price for Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, The - Game + Expansion Pass in BR: $59.99 instead of $79.99
* Regional price for Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, The - Game + Expansion Pass in CA: $64.99 instead of $79.99
* Regional price for Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, The - Game + Expansion Pass in CH: $81.99 instead of $79.99
* Regional price for Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, The - Game + Expansion Pass in CZ: $74.29 instead of $79.99
* Regional price for Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, The - Game + Expansion Pass in DE: $81.99 instead of $79.99
* Regional price for Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, The - Game + Expansion Pass in GB: $95.79 instead of $79.99
* Regional price for Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, The - Game + Expansion Pass in NO: $81.99 instead of $79.99
* Regional price for Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, The - Game + Expansion Pass in PL: $49.19 instead of $79.99
* Regional price for Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, The - Game + Expansion Pass in RU: $35.29 instead of $79.99
* Regional price for Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, The - Game + Expansion Pass in SE: $81.99 instead of $79.99
* Regional price for Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, The - Game + Expansion Pass in UA: $32.99 instead of $79.99
* Regional price for Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, The - Game + Expansion Pass in UZ: $35.29 instead of $79.99
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HypersomniacLive:
So how does this work? The increase on the main game with the expansions is higher for Australia but the Expansion pack on it's own is more expensive in the UK.
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mkess: Yes, they did it ...again.

First regional pricing.

Next regional censorship.

And now waiting for the GotY version.

And in future we are waitting for GOG DRM....
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Davane: Technically, GOG Galaxy is "GOG DRM"...
That's the reason, I am testing it now.
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mrkgnao: Not according to this.
(Not related to the DRM point).
Small nitpicking. The MaGoG logs you are giving us in the What Did Just Update thread are not the same ones you see for yourself. The situation with Galaxy delivered files is similar. Someone has to update the files (both in the installers and in the files Galaxy grabs), and it isn't (yet?) automated.
Anyone checked if the installers and/or extras are identical yet?
Classic expansions! Awesome!!! I'm sure that W3 will live up to its hype, so I will preorder this. Can't say no to the more Witcher content.
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stg83: Indeed, even the much maligned Ubisoft gave away the Assassin's Creed Unity [url=http://assassinscreed.ubi.com/en-gb/news/news_detail.aspx?c=tcm:154-186654-16&ct=tcm:148-76770-32]DLC for free[/url] to all owners of the game. Its all just PR to make CDPR look superior while following in the footsteps of standard marketing practices of all those other typical companies.
Don't think for a single second that Ubi would have given anything out for free for Unity if it wasn't completely and utterly broken on release. CDPR puts out free content as a way to say thanks for buying their game(see the witcher 1 & The witcher 2 as my evidence of this claim). not as an apology for it being unplayable for their entire fan base on release. Sure CDPR and the witcher games have not been perfect on release but none of them have ever been as broken as Unity was.
I do think CDPR is out of line with this announcement (see page 1 of this thread) so I'm not 100% on CDPR's side here. I'm more just pointing out that intentions for free DLC are apples and brown cats different.
Post edited April 08, 2015 by Death_Masta187
Seems many are passing judgement quite quickly. There were expansions to Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale etc. And they were good. Guess the reason for this rattling of the boneboxes is that the expansions were introduced before the actual game was released. Besides, has CDPR ever let anyone down? Don't think so. I doubt it will be a 20-hour Fedex feast. It wouldn't, right?
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BKGaming: Erm, no it's not. Galaxy is simply a delivery method. The games are exactly the same to the ones installed via standalone installer.
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Matruchus: Not if galaxy is going to be needed to play the games (regardless if its multiplayer or singleplayer). In that case its definitely drm.
Galaxy can be bypassed for single player in any Galaxy game. As far as MP, I'm not going to argue over that. MP is a service. GOG simply gave devs a choice and they choose to only provide Galaxy MP. Without Galaxy the game would have simply been released without any MP, if it released at all.

If were going to call a service DRM. Where is the line? MP with accounts? CD keys for MP access? MP with no LAN/VPN? MP in general because it depends on the internet? If that is the case pretty much any MP game on GOG is technically DRM. GOG has pretty much always championed keeping the single player DRM free... not MP.
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RadovidStern: What about those who preordered the collector's edition? Do we get it for free cause we paid a hell of a lot more than just for the game and expansion put togheter!
Unfortunately I don't think you'll get it for free ...
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mrkgnao: Not according to this.
(Not related to the DRM point).
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JMich: Small nitpicking. The MaGoG logs you are giving us in the What Did Just Update thread are not the same ones you see for yourself. The situation with Galaxy delivered files is similar. Someone has to update the files (both in the installers and in the files Galaxy grabs), and it isn't (yet?) automated.
Anyone checked if the installers and/or extras are identical yet?
Not sure what you mean about MaGog. Are you referring to the 48-hour delay due to GOG blocking my IP?
What I gathered from the post I linked to, is that the separation is intentional due to separate update schemes.
Lol, yup. This isn't the GOG/CDP-R that everyone used to know. Those guys were against this crap. But I guess they don't believe in gamers and their users anymore. That's a 2 way street. Glad I didn't preorder or I'd be getting a refund and waiting for the complete version.
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d2t: Greatest supporters? You mean the vocal minority that doesn't care about anything beyond their own extremist and ideological perception of gog, perpetually offended by whatever gog does that is not classic releases? If these "alienated" were really the "greatest supporters", the expansions wouldn't climb to third spot of currently best selling products in just about 5 hours or so.
I own two physical editions of the original game, I own two physical editions of The Witcher 2, I additionally bought digital editions of each Witcher game, I own more than 80% of the GOG catalogue, I keep recommending GOG both to friends and on public profiles, I'm often the first to defend an unpopular decision by CDP and GOG whenever I feel like I understand it and I welcome each new release and also the addition of movies to GOG. I like to think that I *am* among CDP's and GOG's biggest fans and supporters but with all my enthusiasm, support and loyalty I'm not just gonna say "hey, thanks, great job guys!" when CDPR + GOG make an announcement that is basically like pissing on our faces and telling us that it's raining. Especially considering the number of "evil" practices both GOG and CDP have been officially opposing in the past and have embraced by now. I still think that both CDPR and GOG are pretty awesome companies but they simply did screw up here and especially their biggest fans should tell them that.
Post edited April 08, 2015 by F4LL0UT
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BKGaming: Erm, no it's not. Galaxy is simply a delivery method. The games are exactly the same to the ones installed via standalone installer.
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mrkgnao: Not according to this.
(Not related to the DRM point).
Just because the game files are from different sources doesn't make them not the same files. The only difference is the Galaxy related files, which are now being put into the standalone installers by default so Galaxy can recognize the game.

Sure there may be some difference it time frame for when they show up, but that simply because it's probably quicker to add the patches ect to Galaxy than have to package/test for a standalone installer. Though I've see stuff show up a lot quicker on the site than on Galaxy.
Big no-no announcing these AND TAKING PREORDERS before the main game's even out.

And calling it a "pass" is stupid. "Passes" are for DRMed products. As in you're permitted in, but that's it.
Post edited April 08, 2015 by mqstout