Guild Wars 2

Two days ago, a new weapon set was added to the cash shop.
On August 11, a new weapon set was added to the cash shop.
On June 23, a new weapon set was added to the cash shop.
On Jun 9, a new weapon set was added to the cash shop.
On May 19, a new weapon set was added to the cash shop.
On April 28, a new weapon set was added to the cash shop.
On March 16, a new weapon set was added to the cash shop.
On February 10, a new weapon set was added to the cash shop.

On January 24, Heart of Thorns was announced at PAX South.

One of the big selling features of the expansion was new Legendaries. Then we were told that only three new Legendaries would be available when the expansion was launched, with the rest to come later. Then we were told that those three Legendaries wouldn’t be available at launch either.

So by my count, that’s eight new sets of weapons added to the cash shop since HoT was announced, and 0 new Legendaries added to the game as of now. Even accounting for any mistakes on my end (if I miscounted or didn’t realize some of the sets were re-releases, etc), I can’t help but feel at least some of the new Legendaries would have been ready to go if ArenaNet had actually shifted some of their resources away from the cash shop weapons and focused on getting the new Legendaries ready. And that feeling has left me most disappointed.

Or the reason the new Legendaries aren’t ready is because of the journey, and not the art.

Who knows? /shrug

^ This exactly. It’s probably a million times harder trying to create the unlock reqs for new precursor crafting, fit them in the game, make sure they all trigger without bugging out, and create 3 (?) slightly different skins based on what tier you finished….

Than make some pretty art. Also, I’m pretty sure that the people who design weapons are not the same people who code and put legendaries into the game.

There’s a lot more to developing legendary weapons than Black Lion weapons. While legendaries do tend to have more effects, most of the time is likely to come from designing the collections/journey, testing things, and trying to balance the economic impact involved.

You have to remember that not everyone does the same thing. Time an artist spends developing a new weapon set is not time that artist could have spent putting together a legendary journey collection.

HOMG. The content will be launched a few weeks late.

Yes, the priority of any company is to support itself, pay it’s employees and in general make a profit. You can bet the people who make weapon skins for the BLTC are a specific team that pays for themselves with the profits from those sales.

Legendary weapons is a completely different team, doing completely different things. This has nothing at all to do with priority. It has everything to do with what’s involved in the creation/testing process.

The legendaries are all part of the collections, which we’ve already seen bug out in a couple of cases. That’s not true of BLTC weapons.

Have you even paid attention to what goes on in this industry?

Archeage told founding members they’d get a discount in their cash shop, a promise which they never delivered on. SWToR went free to play. Apparently you need to subscribe to get a second skill bar and to remove your helm. Lotro is a free to play game with entire areas and professions locked behind a pay wall.

Anet is taking a bit more time to get some legendaries out. Oh the horror.

There hasn’t been an MMO shipped complete in I don’t remember how long. Rift shipped complete but the game was tiny (and they still had a massive security flaw that saw tens of thousands of accounts hacked).

I’m just not sure why you think this is such a big deal.

Vayne.8563:

Yes, the priority of any company is to support itself, pay it’s employees and in general make a profit.

And what better way to do these things than to ship a half-finished expansion for which you charged an industry-high $50 while simultaneously flooding the cash shop with items many believe should have been included in the expansion as rewards for playing the game.

Too many weapon skins, not enough swimsuits.

Update:

On November 17, a new weapon set was added to the cash shop.
As of November 17, three new Legendary weapons have been added to the game.

PS – I’ve chosen to highlight to lack of new Legendary weapons vs the plethora of new weapons made available in the cash shop, but the scope of the discussion need not be so narrowly defined. The question of priorities can be applied to everything from the dissatisfaction many World vs World players are experiencing to the seemingly unfinished state of the new Scribe crafting discipline, and everything between.

I’m sure the artists who do Black Lion Weapons will make working on the Scribe crafting discipline a top-priority.

While you can make all kinds of arguments about what gets prioritized, I don’t see Black Lion weapons as part of that equation. I assume each set of Black Lion weapons makes enough money to cover their own development costs, (so they wouldn’t be taking away from other priorities if they’re self-funding.) It’s relatively easy to keep pumping them out because they don’t require economic planning, difficulty/grind balancing, or even a lot of bug checking, compared to most other things you could add.

Legendary weapons are a waaaay more involved process. They can have significant economic impact, they require a lot more development to create the scavenger hunt for precursors, and if the old precursor hunts are any indication, there’s a lot of room for bugs that need to be dealt with. Comparing Black Lion weapons to legendary weapons is like comparing buying a cake to baking one.

Vayne.8563:

Have you even paid attention to what goes on in this industry?

Archeage told founding members they’d get a discount in their cash shop, a promise which they never delivered on. SWToR went free to play. Apparently you need to subscribe to get a second skill bar and to remove your helm. Lotro is a free to play game with entire areas and professions locked behind a pay wall.

Anet is taking a bit more time to get some legendaries out. Oh the horror.

There hasn’t been an MMO shipped complete in I don’t remember how long. Rift shipped complete but the game was tiny (and they still had a massive security flaw that saw tens of thousands of accounts hacked).

I’m just not sure why you think this is such a big deal.

Yeah, shame on people for expecting ANET to be any better than the companies behind your list of, frankly, appalling treatment of their customers. It’s true that having standards is utterly pointless and that we should just sit down and be grateful that we’re allowed to pay them for whatever they decide to give us.

Allowing shady business tactics to pass is probably the best way to stop perpetuating them.

Sorry, but saying “Look at how much worse it is over there!” is an incredibly sad way of defending anything.