This is the first time I really had a major complaint about a release. Us long time Guild Wars fans played our hearts out in the original series. We paved the way for what evolved into a true MMO in Guild Wars 2. When the Hall of Monuments came out, and allowed us to save our exclusive weapons in it, some of us assumed that we’d be able to pass these weapons down to our ancestors in GW2. Fast forward to release day, we were disheartened to learn that wasn’t the case, and that all our efforts to fill our HoM only gave us Achievement Points (although the boost to 50 AP in each category was a nice gesture later on). So no Tormented weapons…
Then… today comes. And what do we see? Gem Store Tormented weapons. Say what??? The weapons we worked our butts off for aren’t exclusive anymore. New players to the GW series didn’t know just how hard it was to get these weapons. When the Domain of Anguish first came out, we had to grind grind grind in order to get enough Gemstone sets to trade for one. I remember fondly that my friends wanted to be the first ones to get an Armbrace, so we did a 16 hour run, from start to finish, to get the bonus gems for doing the entire 4-part raid run. Waking up at 2am in order to coordinate a run like this is pure dedication. The run took longer than it should because one of our tanks over-napped on the scheduled break at the midway point… To add, this was before we knew about mechanics and pull locations, so we suffered greatly trying to succeed. To further my rant, I was the only Heal Monk, so keeping everyone alive was a chore. Anyways, Torment, Margonite, Stygian, and Titan Gems. Those were our prize for working hard. By doing a 4-part run, we could trade our extra Titan Gems for the other cheaper ones with other players. All in all, we worked for our weapons. We earned them, and proudly showed them off in Kamadan. For a time, they were like Legendary weapons because they were so hard to get. Over time, they got cheaper due to duping scandals which made Armbraces more common, but that’s another story.
To me, the price of having to buy Tormented weapons with tickets, or from the TP isn’t the issue. I can afford to do so, so access to these skins aren’t the problem. What I do feel strongly for is that anyone can purchase these skins now. In my opinion, Anet should have kept these weapons as unique HoM skins for only those players who had them stored. Or, what they could have done is let players from GW1 have a better skinned version (like more glowy or something), and sell a lesser looking one on the Gem Store. I would have been fine with that.
With all this said, Anet needs to really consider their old school players. Bonus AP is nice, but give us something that we can have that Special Snowflake feel. 50/50 HoM took effort, and effort should be rewarded.