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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
Damnit. I knew I should have brought some popcorn.
Posted April 08, 2015
I think the undercurrent that a lot of people, and clearly GOG, are missing is that a lot of us who have been looong time fans of both CDP and The Witcher series itself have major doubts about The Witcher 3 because of broken promises, delayed release, features cut from the game, and gameplay videos looking sketchier and sketchier as we get nearer and nearer to actual release (to say nothing of the similar problems here at GOG).

I was the only person in my circle of friends who pre-ordered 3 and I just cancelled. Like many, I'll just wait for the on-sale GOTY rollup version in 2016... if it is actually a good game. The fact that we're seeing a fucking season pass pre-order for expansionDLC before the game even comes out is merely one more indicator to me that The Witcher 3 has a more and more realistic chance of severely disappointing. Sad to say all of this, naturally, as The Witcher has been one of my favourite stories of all time and I've played a lot of computer games. But that's how I see it. GOG has been on a slide lately, and CDP created GOG.
Post edited April 08, 2015 by bigsilverhotdog
Posted April 08, 2015
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Lodium: CDproject has worked on ironing out the bugs since then and giving it the final polish.
Write this down on the wall.
And after release start count patches.
Posted April 08, 2015
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gamesfreak64: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ -------------- ---------------------------------------------
It does buy you a full game. Expansion packs are not part of Witcher 3 game. BG2:SOA is full game isn't it. TOB as expansion is not part of SOA. is SOA incomplete because of TOB? HL2 is incomplete as a game because of Episodes?
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bg2soa is indeed a full blown game, i also have it on retail cd/dvd

As for adding the extras in the complete witcher game, that would logically increase the listprice, and thats a normal thing to increase the list price if it has extra missions.
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misz_b: But TOB was samething like next chapter in main storyline. I really doubt if two lat say "area adding DLC's" will have anything to do with main storyline. Of course it's great deal to visit Toussaint, especially beacuse of Dandelion's past. But it's still smells like DLC any other company is making.

What's more not about DLC's it's about CDPR behaving the way, they contested since they started developing games. And it's not the first tmie. After W1 they said they will make PC cRPGs and W2 was console action RPG. I fear they are turning into the dark side and I only hope they wouldn't drag GOG with them.
contested? that word sounds like a negative word, to make certain i got it cause i never or seldom use that word i needed to make sure that it is a negative word:

so i googled and:

oppose (an action or theory) as mistaken or wrong.
oppose, object to, challenge, dispute, take a stand against, resist, defy, strive/struggle against, take issue with; More
question, call into question, doubt;
synonyms:
debate, argue about, dispute, quarrel over

Well thats not that bad afteral there was or there were companies that a big mouth against steam with all its DRM and the fuss about that client, but lateron they also started to resell steamkeys :D
so aint life full of surprises....

Thats why things should never be taken to serious, cause if and when things / rules change, theres nothing
that can be done about it.
Post edited April 08, 2015 by gamesfreak64
Posted April 08, 2015
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Lodium: CDproject has worked on ironing out the bugs since then and giving it the final polish.
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tfrog: Write this down on the wall.
And after release start count patches.
+1
Posted April 08, 2015
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tfrog: Yes, as expected.

First they will test on you live, then add excluded content for extra price (and test it on you live), then they will polish it enough and make it stable, and sold it to you again as "Enhanced edition".

We're seen it in 1, we're seen it in 2, so I don't think they will do any better with 3.

Players, don't pay for testing. No preorders, no first day DLCs, ever.

No way, "Reds", finish it and polish it first. I can wait.
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jerff: Sorry, I don't quite get what you're talking about. Enhanced editions were free.
And what does it have to do with these 10- and 20-hour expansions coming way after the game gets released?
>Enhanced editions were free.
really?
I've got a disk copy of W1 over 5 years ago, "Enhanced" one. Next to it standing "regular" ones.
W2 I've got on GoG.
So I can miss the point when "regular" version can be "enhanced".

Anyway,
All pre-orders in games now is very bad for gamers.
You pay now for unknown quality and quantity later.

Nope, no more games from "Reds" until 12 months or more after release.
I will get all-in one and with decent quality to play.

And I will not "support authors". "Reds" is for-profit, not a charity.
Posted April 08, 2015
high rated
Give me the game 1st, then I will decide about ANY expansion.

This is really stupid move, to announce any expansion packs at this moment, because the game itself had a lot of problems to hold the original release plan. Now, selling expansion packs "so early" makes me really wonder if we are really getting fully completed product on May or just "a part" of it because you are not able to prolong release date any more...
Post edited April 08, 2015 by Lexor
Posted April 08, 2015
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bigsilverhotdog: ...The fact that we're seeing a fucking season pass pre-order for expansionDLC before the game even comes out is merely one more indicator to me that The Witcher 3 has a more and more realistic chance of severely disappointing....
I don't see how one thing follows from the other here, I mean, how the existence of the pre-order for expansions has any predictive power over the game quality of the main game which will be released soon.

I have not pre-ordered but I think if I would have I would not change my mind because of this. Therefore I'm surprised that several people seem to be prompted by this announcement to cancel the pre-order.

Of course it is the right of everyone to do whatever he likes. CDPR however must be careful here. Wether legitimate uproar or not, there is much at stake for them. TW3 is a very big investment for them. They should try not to lose you and maybe make you an improved offer.
Posted April 08, 2015
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Lexor: Give me the game 1st, then I will decide about ANY expansion.

This is really stupid move, to announce any expansion packs at this moment, because the game itself had a lot of problems to hold the original release plan. Now, selling expansion packs "so early" makes me really wonder if we are really getting fully completed product on May or just "a part" of it because you are not able to prolong release date any more...
I'm not trying to take anything out on you personally, but really tired of seeing these post that hold no truth or proof to them at all. CDPR has finished the game they wanted to make. GOG has already stated via Facebook.

The content put in these expansions is stuff that the guys at CD PROJEKT RED are working on AFTER finishing work on The Witcher.
You see, when a developer finishes a game, it needs to be put on CDs, packaged, distributed, marketing has to be done, press has to get press copies... Things happen that leave the developers not having any more influence over game contents. Instead of sitting around clinking glasses of champagne in celebration until May, they decided to get to work on something that'll expand an awesome game even further
Posted April 08, 2015
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Lexor: ...the game itself had a lot of problems to hold the original release plan. Now, selling expansion packs "so early" makes me really wonder if we are really getting fully completed product on May or just "a part" of it because you are not able to prolong release date any more...
If they would have released last year and announced an expansion shortly after/before release you might have said the same. Every expansion could be seen as taken out of the game and then sold extra. It isn't really like this because much/most work on the expansions will be done after release, but you can always see it like this. Almost always they start working on the expansion right away after stopping to work on the main game (or even before). So you could always feel betrayed just by the mere existence of any expansion.

I feel this argument is a bit unfair. One should judge the main game by its own and whether it is worth the price they ask for it. If it is worth the price, it can be bought, if not one may want to wait a bit until the price is more to the liking.
Posted April 08, 2015
when a developer finishes a game, it needs to be put on CDs, packaged, distributed, marketing has to be done, press has to get press copies
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BKGaming:
How much is that, 1 month?
Posted April 08, 2015
CDPR is very slowly joining everyone else in the gaming business.
Posted April 08, 2015
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eligamer: ...I'm still very much looking forward to playing the Witcher 3. ...
I am doing the same and I hope the game will be good and I wish CDPR a financial success. I mean I liked the previous two games and the Witcher books and the Witcher fantasy world. But of course you cannot always be lucky. Maybe TW3 is bad despite of all the money that was invested in it.

Actually if TW3 flops financially then GOG might be in danger to be sold to Origin or Steam or whoever... Let's better pray it's going to be good. :)
Post edited April 08, 2015 by Trilarion
Posted April 08, 2015
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mobutu: How much is that, 1 month?
Probably a month or two... clearly they haven't got any actual work done on the expansions because it's stated that the pictures used were from the base game. If they had cut this then they would be much farther along. More than likely they got an outline done in the last month or two, with the story and all that and that's how they estimated how long each expansion will last.

This cutting content from the base game or not giving the full game is total nonsense at best...
Post edited April 08, 2015 by BKGaming
Posted April 08, 2015
No incentive to pre-order? So, this is basically just an announcement of planned (future) DLC - of the 'expansion' variety - with an option to purchase now. Yep, it's the end of the world. Forgive me if I don't overreact.
Post edited April 08, 2015 by nascent
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)