The expansions add that much to the game, their worth the purchase. But you can play the entire base game without them. The reason expansions are needed to do expansion content, is they add like 5 different mounts, all with their own travel ability linked to a certain area of the expansion. High jumping rabbits, far jumping raptors, teleporting sand jackals, flying griffons, and more!

@Almighty Expansions and Living Story Episodes continue the story of the base game. They are meant to be played in order:
Base Game -> Living World Season 1 -> Season 2 -> Heart of Thorns -> Season 3 -> Path of Fire -> Season 4 -> Ice Brood Saga (Season 5) -> End of Dragons.
With the base game you can also play Season 1 (which is free) and Season 2 (which requires in game purchase either with gold or real money)

May i ask u, what it's the expansion is?
i mean, where the farthest story i can go without expansion? it is relevant for the expansion to the main story?

thanks

10 years of relevant content made me crack up

@BluntForceTrauma - If you expect GuildWars to deliver ANY wow-like content, you will be disappointed. WoW is primarily raiding/dungeon oriented and it pushes you towards that "carrot-on-a-stick" so you always go for a higher gear ilvl. There is no such thing in GW2.

There are fractals (think of it kinda like M+ in retail WoW) and there are raids but unlike WoW where you have 100% control of the fight with the tank/heal/dps trinity, GW raids will always feel a bit hectic since there's not "real" tank and/or healer.

Gear-wise, you can literally ding lv80 and buy pretty much the best gear off the trading post for a handful of gold. the same gear that was max-level gear 10 years ago is still the best gear today.

GW2 is mostly about open world, exploration, dynamic and meta evemts events (raid-like content on afull zone scale where you need multiple raid groups to take down dragons). However, vanilla game is noticably lacking to deliver this in comparison to expansion content

@jsaparda20 Raids are expansion content. To start raiding, you will need to own Heart of Thorns for wings 1-4, or Path of Fire for wings 5-7. There are also mini raids which are very popular called strike missions. You need Ice Brood Saga (Living World DLC) and End of Dragons.
However with base game there's plenty of lucrative end game content, namely the fractals. They are like dungeons with 100 levels of difficulty. As you progress through the fractals you can get top tier gear.

dude, it is mandatory to have the 3 expansions?,cuz i wanna play the game, but idk if end of dragons will make a barrier for me in terms of raids, endgame content etc.

OK guys, it sounds cool. I am definitely not a hardcore player anymore, got school,work,house, 14 pets and 2 kids so a casual enjoyable journey is what I'm looking for. However, gear is something that has always been interesting to me. ESO I couldn't stand after being a wow veteran since release and absolutely addicted to classic wow.

You could say that I'm basically looking for a similar experience to wow classic / wow Vanilla. And after all reading and questioning I've been doing this game seems to somewhat be able to deliver on that front, except the gear treadmill difference.

@Zhus

yes and no

It's better for a casual standpoint but it's way worse for a raider or mmo player who spends hours everyday in the game since there's just nothing to achieve or challenging except brainless openworld farm

B2P, no subscription fees model with cosmetic and convenience only shop


could be translated to pay2win since you can buy ingame gold with creditcard swipes


Best mounts in the business

Depends, there are no achievement skins - only cashshop... If you want to get different looking ones