you're right.
but now that i now, they put on a dlc season pass to buy, maybe i am going to chancel my pre-order and wait for a GOTY.

So we're going to compare games to meals, well since we're paying for it we need to compare this to eating at a Restaurant i think. And who the hell walks into a restaurant and pays UP FRONT before they know what the food is like? So you pay for your 3 course meal, thinking it's great deal, only to find that the first course is shit on toast! What are you gonna do now, you've paid for all three courses already! You don't want to feel like an idiot so you'll pretend that you actually like shit on toast and give the place a good review, if going by most GOG reviews is anything to go by anyway.

Reading the above over, it occurs to me that it may sound like i'm critising you personally...that's not what i'm intending believe me. I'm just trying to put this whole pre-ordering thing in the same context as the 3 course meal analogy. Don't pay for the food before you see it, that's what i say. Unless you're starving of course, in which case you'll eat anything. But we're not starving.

I think the relevant bit is here:

Iwiński stated at the time that the developer believes consumers shouldn't have to spend "steep" amounts for “lots of tiny pieces of tempting content” post-launch. "Haven’t we just paid a lot of cash for a brand new game? As CD Projekt Red, we strongly believe this is not the way it should work and, with The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, we have decided to do it differently,” said Iwiński.

Taking into consideration them seriously high-balling the length of their games (I can't find the link that shows this anymore, but it was less than a week before the second game released and was incredibly damning given the fact that the interviewee had to know by that time that what they were claiming wasn't the case) and outright lying about certain elements of the game (all the way up to release of W2, it was claimed that you wouldn't be able to simply run away from enemies, which as we know now is a complete and total lie) and you have to wonder if these expansions will truly be what they claim. Especially once the bugs start popping up in the base game and complaints pour in about broken quests and all of that fun stuff inherent to open-world games like this.

Again, there are still things that haven't been fixed about the second game, so it's hard to imagine them having enough manpower to handle all of this at once.

The reason why you're doing this much explaining is of course because you know full well 1. that this isn't the case of that "time when buying an add-on disk or expansion for your game really meant something", and 2. that this path would never be popular with your fans, specially the diehardest, many of which capable of proudly boasting how The Witcher isn't like other games because it's not selling DLC on release day, thus making it obvious that the full price doesn't buy the full game, or worse, pulling that out even before the original game is released.

If you need this to make this game profitable it is truly sad, and if not you're idiots, and in both cases you guys should go to hell.
That's the only way of buying high profile games these days and not feeling like a dork, but that's typically not necessary with trustworthy companies like inXile and CDPR, I mean, only inXile.

Got mixed feelings about this...
Not really happy about this, or the PR...

But, aghrrr! I'll probably end up buying this anyway!

I'm puzzled about GOG\CDPR lately.. bad communication and weird decisions are the usual here, but.. pre-order expansions now?? Are they crazy?

At least they have revealed this before the release, but.. if they had announced it clearly from the start, probably the reactions would have been less extreme (even if a bit annoyed still).

Also.. come on GOG.. SPEAK to us!
What's this silence going on since weeks?

GOG community is officially tsundere :D.

On a more serious note - this is THE community for people with very strong opinions on the gaming industry. Die-hard old-school fans, anti-DRM fanatics, single-player purists... It's a volatile mix and a double-edged sword, but I'll take that over consumer apathy any day. Sure - I'll get upset when some things don't seem to make sense, but I applaud the passion. There's a reason we kept (keep?) calling ourselves "the revolution", and revolutionaries are curious folk...

The same could be said of gamers. Or what happened to "don't like it, don't buy it?" Remember when gamers didn't complain about everything under the sun and let their decisions speak for themselves? The victim mentality gamers have nowadays is so gross and kills any sort of interest I have in discussing games online. Petulant spoiled children who bitch and moan over trivial amounts of money. I hope their moms' raise their allowances in time for the expansion releases.

I'll add it to my wishlist and wait and see how I fare with the base game. That is after I get the hardware upgrade necessary to support it.

Let's suppose, hypothetically, that in mid development, members of the team (writers, directors, etc), ask themselves this; "post release, do we want to release any more content for the game?" and "if so, how big are we talking?". From a business perspective, this is perfectly sound and not to mention smart, but even from a purely creative perspective, one might entertain the notion of a 'sequel' or an 'expansion' during development simply out of personal interest. How is this in any way shape or form malicious or disingenuous to potential customers? Especially when said content hasn't even started production? It should be telling that the screenshots are from the base game, and are merely placeholders after all...

From my understanding, the expansion to BG2 was conceived during the development of the base game as well.

No. Nor do I think "complaining" is inherently bad.

So happy to hear these expansions are happening.

A less scrupulous business model would charge $60 - or more - for the same content as a stand alone 'expansion' that had no relationship to the original title. Thank God CDPR chose not to go on that path.

My only concern is how well the expansions will integrate into the original stand alone title... will they be seamlessly added into the bigger game, like 'Night of the Raven' added content to 'Gothic 2', thus enlarge the overall experience of the game? ...or will these items be isolated and be completely independent experiences for the player?

Either way, I am looking forward to May and playing 'The Wild Hunt'. I'll probably pick up the expansions once reviews and word of mouth have been able to voice their praise or otherwise.

Seriously, people. Claims that they "cut content from the game" are really unfounded and frankly ridiculous.
Here is why:
The game was feature-locked in December. After that it was in polishing phase. That is, mostly just the programmers and qa testers were involved. They needed this much time to eradicate the bugs, in such a huge game. You can't do this and add new content in parallel.
But the whole rest of the team (i.e. artists and so on) had to do something. So they were working on expansions. And the expansions are not going to be released till October and Q1 2016 respectively, which means that they would be in development for almost a year and a year and a half respectively, which is totally reasonable.
When the artists and other team members like this will stop working on the expansions (quite a bit in advance to the release, since, again, you need time for qa), they will move on to new projects, most likely Cyberpunk 2077.

People saying that it's bad timing to announce it now, do you really think that keeping your customers in the dark is better than being transparent? They were going to release these expansions anyway, why make a secret out of it? Knowing this helps you make an informed decision.

People saying that they want "the full game" and feel cheated, do you really want the game to be delayed into 2016? Or do you want no more Witcher content whatsoever? If it's the latter, nobody forces you to buy these expansions, and they were not cut from the base game (see above).

Regarding the price: $25 is totally reasonable for 30 hours of gameplay content by any standard.

To stress it once again, nobody forces you to buy these expansions before they are released. There is even no incentivization to do this, like discount or somesuch, as all the other publishers do. And CD Projekt tells you in the very press release: “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." How often do you hear this from publishers or developers?

And I don't even want to address the people who claim that CD Projekt "lied about free DLC". They didn't.

To conclude, I don't see any issue here whatsoever. Actually, I'm very happy that I'll be able to visit Toussaint, even if I'll have to wait till 2016, and I fail to see how somebody (who read and understood the whole press release and not just the headline) could be unhappy about this. If anyone could explain to me what's wrong with my reasoning, it would be appreciated.

I'm not going to put down anyone's choice to cancel their pre-order or wait for a GOTY edition. That's entirely someones choice and I respect that, even if I don't agree with their motive for doing so. I've done it myself for few games were I didn't mind waiting for the better version.

I am however glad to see this is at spot number 2 on the popular chart, clearly those that feel this way are in the minority and I'm glad that is appears to be successful.