Guild Wars 2

Dear Arenanet, it is time to admit there is many people who doesn’t like crafting at all, no matter how easy it could seem, it is just boring to certain individuals. And as things are right now, in order to make a Legendary weapon you can either grind items to craft one or buy it off the TP for a ludicrous amount of gold.
But, there might be an additional way players could go without resorting to crafting and gold grinding, which is quests. A staple of the MMORPG genre.

Beware though, this is far from making things easier. It’s just about adding a skill factor path in the making of a legendary, to grant the players a sense of accomplishment through own trial, and for those who prefer the battlefield to the crafting station and the trading post.

Imagine a line of quests which you must complete in order to gain your legendary weapon, much like the personal storyline.

The starter quest could become available by trading to an NPC a specific precursor weapon, each having its path of missions (Type of enemies and environments involved in the quests would be related to weapons. For instance, the Kraitkin would follow an underwater story with the Krait as main enemy, while the Frostfang may follow a path that involves the Icebrood and lands of the north).
As the player proceeds through the events of the storyline, he/she faces various instanced situations such as challenging battles in dungeons and against bosses, fractal missions, but also fetching particular key items (such as a Fang of the Claw of Jormag for the Frostfang, for instance) required to complete the weapon.
Once the story has been completed, the player is finally awarded with the preselected legendary weapon.

And that’s it, fair and square for all types of players. How does it seem?

“Adding the skill factor to make a weapon truly legendary instead of a measily farm? Nonsense! Legendaries are meant to be a long-term farming fest so people can show how much of a cool kid they are in Lion’s Arch! "

To me, cutting out the crafting element of a legendary weapon is like cutting out the WvW element, or the world exploration element, or the karma/fractal/laurel element, or the dungeon-running element. It’s part of what makes building a legendary weapon a massive scavenger hunt over a diverse cross-section of the game.

While I won’t argue that giving each legendary weapon a unique quest line would be interesting, it would also lock a large amount of fun content behind “Can you afford <precursor>?” which seems like a terrible waste of resources. It’s a nice idea in isolation, but there are better things that development time could be put toward.

Redenaz.8631:

While I won’t argue that giving each legendary weapon a unique quest line would be interesting, it would also lock a large amount of fun content behind “Can you afford <precursor>?” which seems like a terrible waste of resources. It’s a nice idea in isolation, but there are better things that development time could be put toward.

The price of precursors though is probably going to drop significantly once they become craftable, as Arenanet has planned.