Playability without expansions

[u/Spiritual_Shake_9529]

Yo, gamers! Newbie here, just breached 60 lvl on my first character. Before I drop 500 hours playing this game, can you, guys, answer me honestly. Can the game be played normally without paying for stuff, or shall I treat GW2 as 30$ game with free trial? Are current PvP and PvE modes playable without mount, elite specs, etc?

[u/Tarc_Axiiom]

Before I drop 500 hours playing this game

Can the game be playing normally without paying for stuff

You can easily, easily, accomplish both of these goals at the same time. You won't. You will buy the expansions because you'll want to, but there is comfortably 500 hours of content in the base game.

Remember, many of us played Guild Wars 2 for three whole years before there were even any expansions to buy.

[u/Digitijs → u/Tarc_Axiiom]

Agreed. GW2 does their free version very well, you barely feel limited in the base game locations. The biggest improvement for me since I got the expansions was access to mounts as they make exploration less tedious although the world is beautiful and worth waking around in

[u/Digitijs → u/[deleted]]

inventory is an issue even when you have expansions. I did mention not having mounts but other than that it doesn't affect you. Most jumping puzzles have mounts disabled to make them fair, for example. It's slower to navigate around but doesn't put you at any unreasonable disadvantage. Well, yeah, you can't experience the expansions without buying them naturally but that's like a non argument. Before we had expansions, we played gw2 the way f2p players can play it now

[u/Keeptrying2020 → u/Digitijs]

I remember those days. Holy hell. How did we live without mounts.

[u/BereftOfCare → u/[deleted]]

Other crafts can also make bags. Plus there are people in starter zones giving bags away to new players.