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General discussionAnnouncing The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Expansion Pass(1100 posts)(1100 posts)
(1100 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted April 07, 2015
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
Posted April 09, 2015
high rated
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
Posted April 08, 2015
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xxxIndyxxx: Are you reading this PR? It's a bit in the captain Obvious section but this past few years has learned us how much you suck at PR...
... and how much PR sucks, in comparison to the real product.

Have you EVER read the PR for Freelancer from Microsoft? EVERY SINGLE STATEMENT was a lie, with a little hint of truth.

A masterpiece of seduction.
Post edited April 08, 2015 by mkess
Posted April 08, 2015
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Lonewolf1044: It is not 30 hours per expansion and it cost $12 for each EP, while it is still good it would have been even better if each EP added 30 hours a piece.I am holding off until I get the main game and see how it plays first.
I didn't say it was, i was talking about the season pass (2 expansions) as i guess it was the person that i quoted, it was said that it's 10h for the first one and 20h for the second, 12$ for 10h is still a good deal. Now, if the quality of them will be good or not, i don't know, i wouldn't even want those 10h~30h of expansion for free if it's only fetch quests...
Posted April 08, 2015
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Luned: 1) "Pass" has negative connotations for a lot of gamers. Don't use that word to describe two expansion packs; they're not an episodic season pass.

2) Don't price the expansions and start taking preorders before the main game is released. You can do that a week or two after launch. It just looks arrogant to do it beforehand.

So, if CDPR had presented it like this:

"Great news! Not only is our wonderful new game The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt about to be released in as polished a state as we could make it, we've now begun working on two major expansions. We plan for the combined expansions to have 30+ hours of new side-story content, which will take place in both existing game areas and entirely new ones. We anticipate releasing the first expansion in Fall 2015. We'll be updating you with more details after the launch of the main game."

then I think there would have been more "Oh, that sounds like it could be cool," and less rage.
Agreed on both points. That would indeed be a better way to handle it.
It seems really premature to be parading expansion packs for pre-order a good month before the main game is even released.
The weird naming using the word "pass" definitely does not help.

Not a very good PR move.
Post edited April 08, 2015 by MrAlphaNumeric
Posted April 08, 2015
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Cyraxpt: 12$ for 10h is still a good deal.
I wouldn't say that, because the base game offers: 50$ for 200h aka 0.25$/h versus 1.2$/h for the Hearts of Stone "expansion"
Posted April 08, 2015
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Sellswordnumber2: ...More of a good game is more good game. Its laughable that people see that as bad news.
Here you do not understand what people think. They don't think of it as more but they think of it as the same cake but smeared out over a longer time and for a higher price.

Basically the only real complaint is that this came kind of surprising and some people who had pre-ordered the game obviously thought that any expansion might have been included. Well, they can cancel the pre-order and some actually do and this will hurt CDPR. So maybe, just maybe they should have announced that they are working on expansions much earlier. They have planned them surely since at least a year or two. But they never clearly said it until now.

You and me probably did not pre-order and that's why we have no problem at all with it. It might still be a bit of bad PR for CDPR and this for the biggest title they produced so far. I fear this might cost them a bit of their profit - however rightful or wrong the excitement is. So the question is, if they could have done the communication better.
Post edited April 08, 2015 by Trilarion
Posted April 08, 2015
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Cyraxpt: 12$ for 10h is still a good deal.
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mobutu: I wouldn't say that, because the base game offers: 50$ for 200h aka 0.25$/h versus 1.2$/h for the Hearts of Stone "expansion"
And where did you get the 200h? Last time i check it was said to be around 50h.
Posted April 08, 2015
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mobutu: I wouldn't say that, because the base game offers: 50$ for 200h aka 0.25$/h versus 1.2$/h for the Hearts of Stone "expansion"
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Cyraxpt: And where did you get the 200h? Last time i check it was said to be around 50h.
CD RED developer statement on twitter here: https://twitter.com/Bacon_is_life/status/582276508556869632
Posted April 08, 2015
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mobutu: I wouldn't say that, because the base game offers: 50$ for 200h aka 0.25$/h versus 1.2$/h for the Hearts of Stone "expansion"
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Cyraxpt: And where did you get the 200h? Last time i check it was said to be around 50h.
Yes, see the twitter link, 50hours is only if you follow the main story and ignore the rest
Posted April 08, 2015
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Matruchus: ...they will give you for free already existing ingame content that CD RED pr skillfully packaged in to 16 fixtional DLCs which effectively don't exist since they are already part of the game since its inception but they decided to trickle feed the content to users after release to make them feel special about getting free content. ...
Reminds me of buying a car and getting the engine and the steering wheel completely free.

Somehow free for everyone DLC kind of drives the concept of DLC to the absurd, especially in the digital age where everything is DLC.

One could even argue that it is a big waste of programming to skillfully package parts of a game into DLC and then skillfully assemble all this small DLCs in a unified installer to then put them all together on the users computer, just to get that tiny bit of extra PR.

Makes me want to bang my head against the wall - if only that would reduce the idiocy in the world (and especially in marketing).
Posted April 08, 2015
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Cyraxpt: And where did you get the 200h? Last time i check it was said to be around 50h.
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Matruchus: CD RED developer statement on twitter here: https://twitter.com/Bacon_is_life/status/582276508556869632
Guess i should have checked the date on the news article that had the 50 hours.
Posted April 08, 2015
I know that working at the new content after finishing main game is a normal thing, but it's a little bit unusual to announce expansions before the base game is even out and put it for preorder without a proper screenshots from the expansions so fast.

Maybe because of the prolonged development of The Witcher 3 CD Projekt Red is running out of money and they need at least a small financial injection to finish the game and pay the employees? I hope everything goes well there.
Post edited April 08, 2015 by MichiGen
Posted April 08, 2015
I pre-ordered the game from GoG rather than Steam even though the 20% Witcher brand loyalty discount is exactly the same as on Steam. Yes, I know GoG gives some different "bonuses" vs Steam. How many are really going to play through Neverwinter Nights for the first time or again?

This Expansion Pass a month and a half before the game is released gives me serious trepidation about the quality and value of CDPR's work in the Witcher 3. It seems suspiciously like they know the game is potentially horrid and only the diehards like myself will purchase future related content. Their business model must have made more sense to delay the game, and remove and split content thereby extracting the maximum orens from the fan base and potential new players.

I can't think of another reason why any company would delay a game and then sell expansions to it well before it has been released. If the game was deemed 'incredibly good' they would have waited to announce the 'new' Pass a few weeks after release when most people would be finishing up the game and hungry for more content. (unless the game is like The Order) Then the enraptured players would snap it up and players who were on the fence might be enticed to commit. No, the only reason they would do what they have is if they feel this game may be average at best.

I hope I'm completely wrong and this was simply a marketing SNAFU. Even with this tasteless tack I'm still very much looking forward to playing the Witcher 3.

-UncleElias

P.S. Upon re-reading for errors I was struck that another reason is that CDPR may be cash strapped and in dire need of instant funds.
Posted April 08, 2015
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eligamer: ... CDPR may be cash strapped and in dire need of instant funds.
they are for sure and in my opininon its their own fault
Posted April 08, 2015
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xxxIndyxxx: Are you reading this PR? It's a bit in the captain Obvious section but this past few years has learned us how much you suck at PR...
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mkess: ... and how much PR sucks, in comparison to the real product.

Have you EVER read the PR for Freelancer from Microsoft? EVERY SINGLE STATEMENT was a lie, with a little hint of truth.

A masterpiece of seduction.
I am not talking about the pr of microsoft nor am I comparing the pr to anybody's elses or to the product they are advertising. I am just stating my opinion about their PR...
Posted April 08, 2015
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Luned: 1) "Pass" has negative connotations for a lot of gamers. Don't use that word to describe two expansion packs; they're not an episodic season pass.

2) Don't price the expansions and start taking preorders before the main game is released. You can do that a week or two after launch. It just looks arrogant to do it beforehand.

So, if CDPR had presented it like this:

"Great news! Not only is our wonderful new game The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt about to be released in as polished a state as we could make it, we've now begun working on two major expansions. We plan for the combined expansions to have 30+ hours of new side-story content, which will take place in both existing game areas and entirely new ones. We anticipate releasing the first expansion in Fall 2015. We'll be updating you with more details after the launch of the main game."

then I think there would have been more "Oh, that sounds like it could be cool," and less rage.
This. +1
Pages:
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This is my favourite topic
Community
General discussionAnnouncing The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Expansion Pass(1100 posts)(1100 posts)
(1100 posts)