Witcher 3 - Expansion Pass Announced

CD PROJEKT RED announced today you can now buy an Expansion Pass to pre-order two new digital game expansions for The Witcher 3 to play after it releases next month.

Here are the details straight from their GOG website.

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 Hearts of Stone, and Blood and Wine.

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.

Hearts of Stone 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.

Blood and Wine 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.

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More information.

I was very happy when they announced 16 free DLCs. With the Expansions Packs I understand they are charging extra for real extra content and gameplay, however I remeber free scenarios/expansions for the first Witcher game (they offered heaps of extra gameplay, and "XMas Witcher" pack without voice acting but with extra humor made me love CDProjekt RED even more). Anyway I hope they won't get get any angry comments from gamers for trying to capitalize n all their hard work and their great attitude towards gaming community.

More content for a great game is always welcome. And I reckon this game will be pretty good.

I really hope both expansions are playable after finishing the main game, both technically and logically (considering the plot).

As much as I want to play TW3 upon release, maybe I should just wise up and wait until these are out.

I want to support great games - but I don't want to be treated like a fool at the same time.

yea kind of disappointed at the dlc model but will wait and judge later. Certainly won't preorder the expansion and htinking about cancelling my witcher 3 pre-order.

I can't imagine why someone would cancel a preorder because of this, but to each his own.

30+ hours of additional content for $20 sounds good to me. Of course there's no way of knowing how good it's going to be until we actually play it, but that applies to every game or expansion.

30 hours of new game would be a bargain - but 30 hours of more of the same in a 200 hour game isn't all that hot, not to me, anyway.

But it's not about the money to me. It's about feeling like I'm exploring a wonderful world that I KNOW will have something missing, potentially even something they've already partially developed and obviously planned for - meaning I could encounter NPCs and stuff that refer to something I can't actually experience.

That kind of thing annoys me.

However, I know myself well enough to understand that I'll likely just play the release version and replay it a year or two down the line. By then, it'll be cheap.

I just wish they wouldn't announce it before the actual release - and I really think something like the Witcher 3 potentially deserves a REAL expansion, instead of 30 hours additional sidequests without new mechanics or powers.

stupid of them to announce this before the game is out, and also when they've previously said they don't really like DLC's that you have to pay for etc.. Obviously they're taking a big risk here to upset fans rather than make them more interested in doing a pre-order. If the game has 200h of content i will be sick of the world / feel of the game loong before i've finished it

vurt said:

stupid of them to announce this before the game is out, and also when they've previously said they don't really like DLC's that you have to pay for etc.. Obviously they're taking a big risk here to upset fans rather than make them more interested in doing a pre-order. If the game has 200h of content i will be sick of the world / feel of the game loong before i've finished it

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And it seems they did upset them, because there are now 600+ comments following the GOG's announcement and a lot of them are from people saying they've cancelled preorder. Customers are accusing CDPR of many heinous crimes, mainly, adhering to nickel-and-dime DLC model and cutting game content in order to put them on these DLCs. Personally, I must say I don't agree with the 1st said crime and I don't believe in the 2nd one.

Fact: they received a lot of negative reactions. Maybe more than they expected for. Why the hurry, CDPR ? You could talk a little bit about your new new game (Cyberpunk 2077) instead of your old new game (TW3) which everyone and his dog already knows about.

And the overreactions continue...

Yes JDR, of course they continue, what else did you expect?

Just as I said in another thread, those negative reactions are not about additional content in form of an expansion. It's something good if those are standalone expansion like Dishonored's ones. Or DX:HR DLC. Of Blood Dragon standalone DLC.
If those are gamechanger Mass Effect series DLC type, it's a bullshit business.

What made people, and me included, furious, was marketing it as pass.
Do you buy that thing? Ever? In games? You do? So you're actually a reason publisher still scam people?
I don't buy it. I call it scam, scamware and avoidware. And not only that, now I don't buy even main games that contain it on release day (or preorder).

You could notice me praising FarCry3 everywhere, I probably mentioned it more times than Skyrim bugs.
A few months back Ubi released FarCry4.
Me, #1 FC3 fan, refused to buy it. Why? It contained season pass. Now, I'm waiting they pack the game up and sell the whole package for 10 bucks. Because of their bullshit, they won't receive 50-60€ plus possibly more for standalone DLC like with FC3, but just 10€. Their loss.

Also, some might remember me not preordering Risen3 until the publisher clarified that preorder DLC is "day1, that's it, no more DLC" thing. I do not want a game that will have gamechanging DLC after a month, a few or a year.

To conclude this story.
If I knew TW3 will have a season pass included, I'd never preorder it. I didn't know.
Still won't cancel preorder as when I do a mistake, I'm leaving it there to make me a lesson learned.
But because of this move, CDpr can forget me preordering Cyberpunk that I bet will also have season pass included.
Or saying it differently, because of their TW3 season pass, instead of getting release day cash from me on Cyberpunk, they can expect max 10 bucks when they pack the game with season pass discounted content.
But well, maybe they wanted to sell games for 10 bucks max. If they did, they got the job right.

JDR13 said:

And the overreactions continue…

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I am not overreacting. I'm just agreeing to what DArtagnan said (in his last paragraph above) and to Vurt too, when he says CDPR is taking a big risk to upset fans.

OK, taking risks (every form of risk) is part of business, but to take an unnecessary one ? Right now ?

Anyway, I won't cancel my preorder but I also won't preorder their Cyberpunk game. Like Joxer, I'll wait to buy it at 10 bucks, that is, maybe in 2019!

The problem isn't so much with the paid DLC… it's that they announced it before the game is out, giving the impression that it was cut from the game in an effort to nickel and dime us. But since this DLC is not due for months, and given CD Projekt Red's history of being generous with the fans, I think we should give them the benefit of the doubt (that it was not cut content). After all, if this was EA, those 16 free DLCs would cost us more than the game.

I'd be more worried about important things, like the game resembling your typical open-world action game. The UI and stuff isn't very immersive for an RPG, and the combat seems way over the top.

No one is forcing anyone to buy the DLC. Also don't be surprised by this sales model as Devs make games to turn a profit. Either buy it, don't buy it or move on.

jpnole said:

No one is forcing anyone to buy the DLC. Also don't be surprised by this sales model as Devs make games to turn a profit. Either buy it, don't buy it or move on.

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Devs make games to turn a profit? No, not necessarily.

However, most investors and publishers finance games for that reason. There's a world of difference.

Also, learn to see beyond three feet in front of you - and you won't fall quite so often.

If TotSC or ToB were sold as "expansions" nowadays, people would be lined up to complain about the hypocrisy and base greed behind the marketing scam.

henriquejr said:

I am not overreacting. I'm just agreeing to what DArtagnan said (in his last paragraph above) and to Vurt too, when he says CDPR is taking a big risk to upset fans.

OK, taking risks (every form of risk) is part of business, but to take an unnecessary one ? Right now ?

Anyway, I won't cancel my preorder but I also won't preorder their Cyberpunk game. Like Joxer, I'll wait to buy it at 10 bucks, that is, maybe in 2019!

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I wasn't referring to you. I'm talking about the people you mentioned that actually canceled their preorders over this. (If indeed they actually did)

Hearing about this also demotivated me. CPR can do whatever they want of course, and they're a great company, but for me, the problem is that I'll know when I play it, that the game isn't complete, and that I am 'missing' content.

Content that I can either get by replaying, which I don't usually do for years because the impact is lessened the second time around and I need a long time to 'forget' the experience in order to really value it again. Or I can get the content by holding off playing the game until all content is out. In this case that could be 1 year after release. I'm already pretty demotivated by the fact that the type of person I am has to wait 6 months or so before playing 'new' games due those games needing (in my mind) patching/balancing/DLC/expansions. Wasteland 2, Dead State, Dragon Age, Xenonauts, Pillars of Eternity to name the most recent and virtually every other bigger release.

I can't get myself to play them right at release because I know they are incomplete/buggy and the experience would be better for me personally if I waited. So I wait. But it's not exactly fun, and it can feel demotivating.

I wouldn't like reading some good book either, and then 1 year after the author adds in 3 more chapters to flesh it out. In principle it's the same. We accept it in games, but its not really done for books. Games are way more complex and I'm not saying I don't like expansions, but I mostly like the one polished, complete experience.

Probably also a question of age, I remember that when the BG1 expansion came out I just replayed the game... Twice And loved it. Nowadays I'd like one complete experience though.

Anyway, not to claim some entitlement or rail against CDR, everyone have their preferences and tolerances for this, just saying I understand those who feel demotivated by this early announcement.