Game: Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns 

Condition: Pre-Owned 

Included: Game Disc, Installation Manual, Keyboard Guide, Case & Cardboard Sleeve 

License: Product License Key Not Included

THIS GAME IS SOLD AS MEDIA ONLY

Year: 2012 

Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns is the first expansion pack for Guild Wars 2, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game developed by ArenaNet and published by NCSOFT. It was released for Microsoft Windows on October 23, 2015. It was made available for pre-purchase on June 16, 2015. After the release date was broadcast on August 29, 2015, the base game was made free-to-play, although free players have fewer character slots and have restrictions on mailing and chatting with other players. 

Guild Wars 2 is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game developed by ArenaNet and published by NCSOFT. Set in the fantasy world of Tyria, the game follows the re-emergence of Destiny's Edge, a disbanded guild dedicated to fighting the Elder Dragons, a Lovecraftian species that has seized control of Tyria in the time since the original Guild Wars. The game takes place in a persistent world with a story that progresses in instancedenvironments. 

Guild Wars 2 claims to be unique in the genre by featuring a storyline that is responsive to player actions, something which is common in single player role-playing games but rarely seen in multiplayer ones. A dynamic event system replaces traditional questing, utilizing the ripple effect to allow players to approach quests in different ways as part of a persistent world. Also of note is the combat system, which aims to be more dynamic than its predecessor by promoting synergy between professions and using the environment as a weapon, as well as reducing the complexity of the Magic-style skill system of the original game. 

As a sequel to Guild Wars, Guild Wars 2 features the same lack of subscription fees that distinguished its predecessor from other commercially developed online games of the time, though until August 2015 a purchase was still required to install the game. As reported by NCsoft and ArenaNet, by September 13 (about 2 weeks after launch), despite temporarily halting first-party sales, the game has sold over 2 million copies. By August 2013, the peak player concurrency had reached 460,000. By August 2015, over 5 million copies had been sold, at which point the base game became free-to-play. 

Guild Wars 2 uses a heavily modified version of the proprietary game engine developed for Guild Wars by ArenaNet. The modifications to the engine include real-time 3D environments, enhanced graphics and animations and the use of the Havok physics system. The developers say the engine now does justice to the game's critically acclaimed concept art, and that concept art will be integrated into the way the story is told to the player. 

Guild Wars 2 allows a player to create a character from a combination of five races and eight professions, the five races being the humans and charr, introduced in Prophecies, the asura and norn, introduced in Eye of the North, and the sylvari, a race exclusive to Guild Wars 2. The professions, three of which do not appear in Guild Wars, are divided into armor classes: "scholars" with light armor, "adventurers" with medium armor, and "soldiers" with heavy armor. There is no dedicated healing class as the developers felt that making it necessary for every party to have a healer was restrictive. 

The race and profession of the player determines the skills they can access. Guild Wars 2, like Guild Wars, uses a skill-based combat system, whereby players must select only 10 skills from a much larger pool, introducing an element of strategy. However, unlike Guild Wars, skill slots have predefined roles: the first five are determined by player's weapon and profession, the sixth is for healing, the seventh through ninth will be skills with no defined roles that are unlocked as the game progresses, and the tenth slot will be for an "elite" skill, which is also initially locked. In a departure from the high number of skills present in Guild Wars, Guild Wars 2 will focus on quality of skills over quantity and will also reduce the overall number of game modes to reduce balancing complexity — one of the most common issues present in MMORPGs. 

The low level cap of Guild Wars (20) has been replaced with one at 80, which the developers state strikes the correct balance between allowing for character development and avoiding forcing players into the grind-based gameplay that too often accompanies a high level cap, the elimination of which was a core design principle of the original Guild Wars. Player versus environment features a scaling system that lowers the players level and stats to reflect the levels of monsters, thereby maintaining a global level of difficulty. In player versus player, a player will have access to almost all skills and items, and compete at the fixed level 80, so that all players will be on a level playing field. 

In addition to the small-scale, tactical combat described above, the game features "World versus World", large scale combat taking place in a persistent world independent of the main world. Players are able to drop in and out "on the fly" and possess the ability to construct siege weapons, with rewards commensurate with their success. Guild Wars 2 offers eight crafting disciplines, allowing the player to practice two at a time, with a fee for switching. While there are basic recipes to follow, the player can experiment with different combinations of ingredients to discover new recipes.^[19] As the game is set 250 years after its predecessor, players are unable to carry over their characters. However, the achievements and honors accumulated by all the characters on players' Guild Wars accounts. Each achievement earns points which confer certain bonuses in Guild Wars 2. The accounts of both games must be linked in order to acquire these bonuses.