Let’s start by saying that any item can require any amount of Effort that you wish to impose on yourself to buy it.
If I decide to impose the rule of earning only 1 silver per day, even something simple as getting an Orichalcum Mining Pick would take me 4 days to acquire.
Therefore, the “grind” is self-imposed for many items, unless imposed by the game such as time-gated currency/materials.
Effort = the MINIMUM work required to guarantee obtaining an item.
Edit: Exclude Luck.
Obtaining a Legendary, or any skin that can be placed on the Trading Post for that matter, has an actual worth of 0 Effort, given that “credit card this way” is the
“least amount of effort required to obtain a Legendary”.
Someone who just started the game can acquire a Legendary within less than 10 minutes if they wanted to. I know of at least 3 people who simply bought gems to acquire their Legendary, 2 of which do not even have Map Completion.
Not to discuss Legendaries obtained by “miraculously receiving one through the mail”.
(Everyone knows what that means)
If you decided to grind your way to obtaining gold in-game through Legendaries, then it falls under the same category as obtaining 1silver per day for an Orichalcum Mining Pick above. (The grind is self-imposed, not necessary to acquire the item)
Obtaining an Ascended Weapon, requires Ascended materials. Given that Deldrimor/Elonian/Spiritwood can be acquired on TP, We are going to assume 0 Effort for these, as well as 0 Effort for making 500 in any Crafting Profession.
(Gems > Gold > Mats > Crafting 500).
What Ascended Weapons require, that are not tradable and require Effort, are Dragonite Ingots and Empyreal Stars, as well as Bloodstone Bricks. None of these items can be acquired without actually playing the game.
Dragonite Ingots require a mixture of World Bosses/WvW. ~17 World Bosses.
Empyreal Fragments require a mixture of Dungeons/JP/WvW. ~20 Dungeon Paths.
Bloodstone Bricks still requires Champion Loot Bags, which implies killing Champions, even though it is so abundant we start throwing it away.
Therefore, having one Ascended weapon proves that the player made the Effort(played the game) for it.
Each Ascended weapon says the following about the player:
The player killed ~17 World Bosses worth of Dragonite Ingots, ~20 Dungeon Paths worth of Empyreal Fragments, or the player is a JP Pro/WvW Pro.
(Going to exclude Bloodstone Bricks math here, but it is also relevant)
Having multiple Ascended weapons multiples this amount of Effort.
(it is cummulative).
tl;dr
Legendary = Legendary credit card
Ascended = Actually played the game
For those who actually acquired a Legendary by getting their precusors, World completion etc etc, you have NO proof that the item did not come from TP, was mailed to you from “someone outside” or that you made any kind of Effort to acquire the item.
For those who actually acquired an Ascended Weapon, you have earned it.
Same concept applies to titles,
Fish Slayer > The Emperor’s New Wardrobe.
Please dont feel offended if you crafted a Legendary. You know in your heart that you made the effort, even though everyone around is just saying that your credit card is shiny.
(edited by Turtle Dragon.9241)