Have Expansions Actually Gotten Smaller? (Follow-Up)

A while back, I published an article where I catalogued the content added by every* release in Guild Wars 2's history. At that time, the final release of Janthir Wilds, Absolution, was not out yet, and I promised to make a follow-up once it released. It's time to make good on that promise, so let's see if Absolution changed any of the conclusions I reached in the previous analysis.

Before we begin...

If the intro and title didn't make it clear enough, this is a follow-up to a very extensive article. The things I say here likely won't make a ton of sense without the context of that original article, so I highly recommend you go read it if you haven't already. Among the important things discussed there is my methodology for how each type of content was counted; I won't be going over that again here.

If you did read the original article back when it was published, I'll list the conclusions I reached back then here as a quick reminder:

1. New-model expansions are smaller than pre-SotO release cycles in terms of total content.
2. In terms of content released per-year, new-model expansions are either on par with or more content rich than living worlds were, depending on your definition of "content".
3. In terms of content released per-year, new-model expansions range from being on par with to less content-rich than pre-SotO releases as a whole, and in particular tend to be less content-rich than old-model expansions; however, that difference is much smaller than the community as a whole believes.

As another reminder, the spreadsheet where all my data for this project is catalogued is publicly available. You can find it with this link, and the community is free to use that data however they like. I hope it can serve as a useful resource for you all.

Finally, I'd like to clarify that I have not changed my methodology since the original article. Many of you suggested various improvements or additional content types I could consider, but for the purposes of this follow-up, none of those ideas have been implemented. 

Now, without further ado, let's talk about Absolution and see if it challenges any of those conclusions.

Absolution's New Content

In the previous article, I didn't discuss the individual items counted in each content type for each release. This was primarily because there were several dozen releases, so describing each one would take forever and probably be very boring and repetitive. Since we're only dealing with one release this time, however, I felt it appropriate to go over exactly what I added to the data. (If you do want some additional context on what exactly I counted for each previous release, the spreadsheet contains notes for almost all the data describing what I counted and why)

First, all the straightforward stuff. Absolution gives us 3 story steps (Forced Entry → A Titanic Undertaking → Salvation's Cost), 1 new map (Bava Nisos), 1 new meta-event (A Titanic Voyage), and 1 new piece of legendary equipment (Orrax Manifested).

I counted 2 new world bosses in Absolution. First is Lextalion the Merciless, the Gorseval-like boss you face halfway through the meta. The second is Saevus Saxum's heart and lungs, faced at the end of the meta; I decided to collectively count them as one boss.

I counted 3 new instanced bosses in Absolution. First is the Whispering Shadow found at the end of the Kinfall fractal. Second is the Ura convergence, and third is the Mount Balrior Convergence CM.

I counted 1 new activity, that being the jumping puzzle found in Bava Nisos. There is also 1 new combat addition in the form of a new relic set. As this update did not add any new mastery lines, there are no new major or aesthetic masteries; the individual masteries added did not change my opinion on whether the existing lines count as major or aesthetic, either.

Finally, I didn't count any game system additions for Absolution. There are the new QoLs we got in the form of the omnitome and omnigobbler, but I do not deem these to be large enough additions to qualify as major systems. These items, while very nice to finally have, are just add-ons to existing minor systems.

Does Absolution Change the Data?

In my original analysis, Janthir Wilds held one of the lowest scores in terms of both gameplay content and all major additions, largely due to the yet-to-be-released Absolution being absent from the data. Now that all of JW's content is out, let's see how it fares.

 

First, a few clarifications. The raven-eyed among you may notice that some of the non-JW values in this data are slightly different than they were when I showed this data back in the original article. This is due to a small number of corrections I made after that article was published, adding some content I missed or forgot about and adjusting a few values where I made a mistake regarding my methodology. These changes didn't end up impacting the data in a significant way, but I only felt it right to explain why they're present.

The second thing I'd like to point out are the newly-added "SotO + JW" rows. I added these after I updated the data with Absolution's content. This row simply shows the average of SotO and JW's values in each column, allowing us to more easily make generalizations about the new-model expansions.

Now, let's discuss how the data has actually changed. The most notable difference is that, in terms of gameplay content per year and all major additions per year, JW now beats both the median and average Living World season. I find this particularly interesting, as I have seen many members of the community claim that the new model has "run its course" and we would be better off with a return to the Living World model. In terms of quantity, at least, that is objectively untrue.

What I find the most interesting about the completed data are the median values for all major content per year. Based on SotO and JW, new-model expansions scored 84.02 per year. The median pre-SotO release cycle, Living World 3, scored 84.05 per year. The values are almost identical.

New Conclusions

So, with the completed data, what new conclusions can we reach? My revised conclusions are as follows:

1. New-model expansions are smaller than pre-SotO release cycles in terms of total content.
2. In terms of total content per year, new-model expansions are significantly more content-rich than Living World seasons were.
3. In terms of total content per year, new-model expansions are providing almost exactly as much content as pre-SotO release cycles.
4.  Heart of Thorns and Path of Fire massively outscore all other release cycles, and this disparity is responsible for much of the community discourse regarding expansion size—players view these two releases as examples of how much content an expansion "should" contain when they are, in reality, outliers.

Overall, the completed data has granted me more conviction than before in my conclusions; I have been able to quite firmly prove that new-model expansions are larger than their Living World counterparts. Looking at the data again also made me realize just how much HoT and PoF both outperform other release cycles, which is reflected in my new 4th conclusion.

I believe the topic of why HoT and PoF were so large in comparison to all other releases is one worth debating. There are many potential factors: the budget at ArenaNet's disposal, the personnel involved,  the team's design philosophy, etc. I also believe that my methodology for measuring the length of release cycles was highly beneficial to these two expansions in particular; I went into detail on that being the case for PoF back in the original article, but upon revisiting the data, I realized HoT seems to benefit significantly from that methodology as well. I would be interested to see how EoD scored compared to them, in terms of content per year, if I excluded the portions of its lifespan dedicated to LW1 and the Gyala Delve releases.

This follow-up is rather short as far as my articles go, but I hope it was an enjoyable and insightful read nonetheless. I'm interested to hear others' thoughts on the new content model at this stage, as well as any thoughts anyone may have regarding the unusual size of HoT and PoF. Regarding the spreadsheet, I believe I will likely continue to update it with the releases of the next expansion, but I likely won't make another article about it; make sure to bookmark it if you want to check the data again when that time comes.

Thank you for reading!