Free to Play vs Expansions

If you’re a new player, one of the things you might be wondering is whether the game is worth playing or whether it’s pay-to-win in any regard. There are no ways to buy power in this game. The Gem Shop (cash shop) is full of cosmetics and Quality of Life convenience items. Even though you are able to convert gems into gold (and vice versa, which allows players to purchase gem shop items using in-game currency), the items you can buy via gold are not any better than things you can obtain by yourself with absolutely no use of real money.

That being said, there are certain limitations on free to play accounts (and new accounts in general), which you are able to find here. These restrictions are primarily in place to combat gold sellers and other people who are looking to exploit the system. For the most part, you won’t notice these limitations during normal play except for during one part of your personal story, which I will detail later on in this guide. Overall, I think this is one of the most generous free-to-play systems on the market, but feel free to let me know what you think. :)

If you’re looking to be caught up in terms of what content is available to you, I would advise buying Guild Wars 2: Path of Fire - I recommend purchasing it from dlgamer, an official retailer for GW2. It’s often on sale for $19.99 and as of August 2019, it includes a copy of the other expansion, Heart of Thorns, for free. This purchase will lift all restrictions from your account and grants 3 additional character slots for a total of 5. This should be priority number one. HOWEVER, do NOT use your level 80 boost if you’re new to the game - level up traditionally and finish the core story on one character first.

In addition, you’ll notice that there are content packs for Living World. These episodes are free if you log in while its active, but if you aren't logged on while an episode is active, you'll pay 200 gems per episode or you can buy complete packs (recommended). I’ll go into more detail later in the “Story” section, but please note that these contain significant amounts of content (Seasons 3 and 4 include 6 maps each) so if they're on sale snag them.