Guild Wars 2

Seriously. On average it takes hundreds of petrified wood + karma for skritt staches (it took me over 300+ staches to get the rock, other people reporting no drop in a larger amount of staches). More time to open all these staches, just to get a trophy item that leads to an ascended ring after a mystery that took people months to solve.
No aura, no achievement, it does not even have all 3 infusion slots. This whole thing must be a bad joke from Anet considering rings are the easiest ascended equipment to get.
Basically this whole item is a colossal waste of development resources and a missed opportunity to introduce a legendary ring.
I know I should have waited for other people to build this ring before I invest time into it, but this is just another example of effort vs reward not matching.

I don’t see it as a joke. I think its actually quite nice that they put something in the game that took months to figure out. Its boring when people rush through all of the new content within hours. Absolutely boring. Who the hell really cares if its just an ascended ring or not? Its a fun distraction to do

Some people take this game way too seriously…

Come on, it’s nice to have something in the game that takes the player base to figure out instead of being spoon-fed everything and that isn’t tied to some major reward; an activity to participate in for the fun of it.

People like surprises such as easter egg hunts; it’s the thought that counts and you shouldn’t feel like you’re entitled to some state of the art legendary infused ring or what not just for assuming it would be such an item over it’s minuscule implementation.

Seriously, y’all overhyped yourself. It’s meant to be a little bit of local color and people overreacted to what they expected.

It’s not any sort of example of effort versus reward — I’ll get one for straight up gold, no effort other than not spending on something else.

Sorry you didn’t like it.

Here’s the thing – it’s not meant to be farmed hard core.

It’s supposed to be a random drop for people who are playing in the map – and they can up convert it to a HoT stats ring or sell the precursors.

That’s all. People just went mad with greed.

Those little secrets are the essence of video games. I’m very glad that Anet takes old gaming to heart (Triforge Pendant, SAB, JP), this is honestly what puts gw2 quite a few steps ahead of any other mmo.

The only bad joke here is you thinking this would turn into a legendary ring.

Be glad that you didn’t have even more over the top expectations.

It was overhyped yes.

buuutt… technically you caaan put an ascended ring on tp now, which is something new as well :P

Who overhyped it?

If Anet did not even tell players it was there they cannot, by definition, have hyped it, let alone over hyped it.

Therefore any hype must have come from players.

This is a case of the journey being more important than the destination. Back in GW1 Rurik’s body was defiled by the Vizier and you had to fight his reanimated corpse towards the end; This was a very big deal back then. Finding his engagement ring on the very same place he was finished off and recovering it, is a very symbolic journey of cleaning up his legacy, even though mechanically you are just walking around wearing his ring and the ashes of his wife as a trophy!

I think it’s quite sweet that he kept the ring all that time, considering Althea died in the Searing and that was almost 3 years earlier. Although I suppose after the Shiverpeaks he wasn’t in a position to decide which items he would keep with him.

Malediktus.3740:

Seriously. On average it takes hundreds of petrified wood + karma for skritt staches (it took me over 300+ staches to get the rock, other people reporting no drop in a larger amount of staches). More time to open all these staches, just to get a trophy item that leads to an ascended ring after a mystery that took people months to solve.
No aura, no achievement, it does not even have all 3 infusion slots. This whole thing must be a bad joke from Anet considering rings are the easiest ascended equipment to get.
Basically this whole item is a colossal waste of development resources and a missed opportunity to introduce a legendary ring.
I know I should have waited for other people to build this ring before I invest time into it, but this is just another example of effort vs reward not matching.

Hey, I kinda lead the thing to discover it.

I’m not angry about the money I spent, but I’m angry at ArenaNet’s reaction, or lack of thereof.

They hyped a thread where the main speculation was “it’s a legendary”, all over it. And what did they do? Nothing. They sat down and watched the world burn. The hype is our fault, yes, but ArenaNet could have tried to calm things down, instead of throwing more wood into the fire. They made the wrong hype grow harder.

Personally I’m not touching scavenger hunts or anything like that for a long time, and I probably won’t be organizing anything ever again, specially with all the hate coming our way after post-mortem concerns. This was outright disrespectful for the people who spent money and time on it, and some spent a lot of both. They saw our wrong expectations, and instead of calming things down, they made them go wilder.

I wished it was a legendary precursor, since we already got the blood ruby trinkets that pretty much work like legendaries, but what I was really expecting was some simple aura item, kinda like Koda’s Warmth enrichment. Not a big pile of nothing. And don’t fansplain to me “it’s cool because it has Rurik’s name and is a lore reference”. It’s nothing.

The guys behind this ring need to take a look in the mirror, and grow some empathy here. Next time you want to do something like this, make sure the final reward is much more clear, and remove gold and high RNG from the equation. Make it harder or impossible to speculate with too.

Well so is precursor crafting, but at least you know the end result. This definitely in kin to the Triforge Pendant, expensive sink for nostalgia. My heart sunk when finding out what the rock becomes. The Pendant you can upgrade to ascended. So maybe in the future these two items could be upgraded to legendary, if ever a thing occurs.

Malediktus.3740:

Seriously. On average it takes hundreds of petrified wood + karma for skritt staches (it took me over 300+ staches to get the rock, other people reporting no drop in a larger amount of staches). More time to open all these staches, just to get a trophy item that leads to an ascended ring after a mystery that took people months to solve.
No aura, no achievement, it does not even have all 3 infusion slots. This whole thing must be a bad joke from Anet considering rings are the easiest ascended equipment to get.
Basically this whole item is a colossal waste of development resources and a missed opportunity to introduce a legendary ring.
I know I should have waited for other people to build this ring before I invest time into it, but this is just another example of effort vs reward not matching.

Wow, hyperbole overload here! “A colossal waste of development resources”? Really?

It’s a little drop with a simple, quick, 4-step process (go here and use the thing) that turns it into a free ascended ring that can have any possible stat combination.

The real question here is why did you think that there would be a greater payout than an ascended item? Because it took you a long time to get the drop?

OriOri.8724:

I don’t see it as a joke. I think its actually quite nice that they put something in the game that took months to figure out. Its boring when people rush through all of the new content within hours. Absolutely boring. Who the hell really cares if its just an ascended ring or not? Its a fun distraction to do

I only took months to figure out because the “journey” was absurd and barring any logic. You had to find in extremly small spots in a specific order and throw the rock in yellow glowing lava (I looked it up, its about 1160°C hot). While finding a rock in a skrit stache which contained a ring still made somewhat sense, at the lava part it stops. We throw the tiny rock into the vulcano and it magically comes out cleaner than before instead of getting damaged further (1160°C is high enough to melt silver and gold, some for some gemstones).
There is no hint whatsoever that you have to throw it into volcanos.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Seriously, y’all overhyped yourself. It’s meant to be a little bit of local color and people overreacted to what they expected.

It’s not any sort of example of effort versus reward — I’ll get one for straight up gold, no effort other than not spending on something else.

Sorry you didn’t like it.

It is Anets fault people got hyped for it. They did nothing to calm the expectations of the people and made the start and the end result of this journey full of mystery. Generally people expect that more effort means better rewards. So it is not suprising if they are upset that after all this they get an ascended ring, the most common ascended equipment.

MashMash.1645:

Here’s the thing – it’s not meant to be farmed hard core.

It’s supposed to be a random drop for people who are playing in the map – and they can up convert it to a HoT stats ring or sell the precursors.

That’s all. People just went mad with greed.

If there is a rare drop and noone knows what it used for, you can be sure people farm for it to figure out its use.

Tentonhammr.7849:

The only bad joke here is you thinking this would turn into a legendary ring.

How so? It takes a lot of effort to get a strange rock. So it is reasonable to expect it will turn into something very nice. I did not expect that to finish the effort we will just have to visit 4 volcanos and stand in specific spots. I fully expected there would be a mystic forge recipe at the end using the usual legendary ingredients to finish it.

maxwelgm.4315:

This is a case of the journey being more important than the destination. Back in GW1 Rurik’s body was defiled by the Vizier and you had to fight his reanimated corpse towards the end; This was a very big deal back then. Finding his engagement ring on the very same place he was finished off and recovering it, is a very symbolic journey of cleaning up his legacy, even though mechanically you are just walking around wearing his ring and the ashes of his wife as a trophy!

The journey part of this item is a joke, especially the part of turning the rock back into a ring has no logic. Just slapping Rurik’s name on the item does not make it interesting in any way to the general MMO players.

This is a perfect example of “counting your chickens before they hatch”.

Malediktus.9250:

I only took months to figure out because the “journey” was absurd and barring any logic. You had to find in extremly small spots in a specific order and throw the rock in yellow glowing lava (I looked it up, its about 1160°C hot). While finding a rock in a skrit stache which contained a ring still made somewhat sense, at the lava part it stops. We throw the tiny rock into the vulcano and it magically comes out cleaner than before instead of getting damaged further (1160°C is high enough to melt silver and gold, some for some gemstones).

I take it you’re also angry about the fact that we as characters can hop in and out of the same lava and not insta-die? There’s a whole slew of things in game that don’t make scientific sense. Because it’s a video game, not real life. I feel that needs to be emphasised here.

Bellatrixa.3546:

Malediktus.9250:

I only took months to figure out because the “journey” was absurd and barring any logic. You had to find in extremly small spots in a specific order and throw the rock in yellow glowing lava (I looked it up, its about 1160°C hot). While finding a rock in a skrit stache which contained a ring still made somewhat sense, at the lava part it stops. We throw the tiny rock into the vulcano and it magically comes out cleaner than before instead of getting damaged further (1160°C is high enough to melt silver and gold, some for some gemstones).

I take it you’re also angry about the fact that we as characters can hop in and out of the same lava and not insta-die? There’s a whole slew of things in game that don’t make scientific sense. Because it’s a video game, not real life. I feel that needs to be emphasised here.

I can accept walking on lava for a short moment as part to make the game more playable, but there seems to be no good reason for throwing rocks into lava to clean them. Even if the ring would be out of platinum (or other things elements with higher melting point) how would be manage to extract the ring back out of the lava after it got engulfed by it? Why do we need to go to 4 different volcanos?
If this ring exists for lore reasons, the journey should at least make sense not randomly made up. I do not get how lore interested people can be satisfied with this.

I think its great. People could open one or two stashes or open 300+ and get it. RNG is RNG. You can only blame yourself for making assumptions. Let’s hype something up we know absolutely nothing about and then throw a tantrum because its not what you wanted it to be. A ring with any stat available? Sounds great to me. now if they just add a way to reset it it’d be amazing.

This sounds more like the hungry cat scavenger hunt – which awards you cats running around your home instance – than anything that has ever been involved in making a legendary in this game.

I think no one of strange rock owners is really raging (like some people make it out to be). Except maybe for people who paid 600+g for this thing.

It’s what Malediktus said, total lack of logic in this case.

Think about it, an item has a low drop rate. So low that people (who did research on wiki) opened 5,8k skritt stashes and found ONLY 5 strange rocks. It makes you think it is something special.
Also when the exploit with skritt stashes was found, anet quickly went to fix it so you couldn’t abuse it. So they wanted the drop rate to stay low.

This ring has 4 stages of evolving. The only items in the game with a similar system are legendaries and few ascended backpacks (spinal blades, mawdrey), all of which have visual effects to them. So it is only logical to assume that something like that is more than just an ascended ring. (Also note that no one can see the ring but you, no visual effects whatsoever).

Also the text it came with. ‘This strange rock appears to be humming with magic’. How are you supposed to figure out you should throw it into lava? What does humming magic have to do with all of this?

No one figured it out because there are no clues, you should just stand in a small specific spot next to lava and hope the dialogue window will trigger. It also gives no indication where to go next. And if 4-stages pictures were not datamined, we would not even know there are 4 stages, so you could run around the map forever trying various things.

I still see no reason to lock a simple ascended ring behind all of this. It gives 0 ap (not even symbolic, like 1ap for example), doesn’t unlock any achievements, has no aura, you can only select stats once. If you salvage it, it only gives matrices back.
There are plenty of ascended rings in the game, they drop all the time in fractals. Pre-HoT people were asking to give them an opportunity to salvage ascended rings because it was getting too much. So there was clearly no supply shortage.

It just makes no sense. Yeah, you could say it’s a nod to GW1 lore, but the whole treasure hunt gives no additional lore, just you,rock, and lava. No dialogue, no story.

People got hyped because there were a lot of indications it is more than just an ascended ring. Even if it was not a legendary, they were at least expecting an aura, or SOMETHING.

And because of the low droprate, it is not smth everyone can make. Once the tp supply is gone, it wouldn’t be that easy to acquire strange rock anymore.

I secretly hope it’s just a hidden precursor for a future legendary ring, but no high expectations. Because if it isn’t, then it just makes no sense. You could easily buy an ascended ring for laurels or drop one in fractals, so why get it this way. Just because it says it belonged to Rurik? O_o

Lonami.2987:

I’m not angry about the money I spent, but I’m angry at ArenaNet’s reaction, or lack of thereof.

They hyped a thread where the main speculation was “it’s a legendary”, all over it. And what did they do? Nothing. They sat down and watched the world burn. The hype is our fault, yes, but ArenaNet could have tried to calm things down, instead of throwing more wood into the fire. They made the wrong hype grow harder.

You are overreacting. Read what Lynsey wrote — she didn’t hype it at all; she did exactly what she did with every previous comment she’s ever made on the topic, which is that everything we needed to know shipped with Strange Rock.

They threw no wood into the massive bonfire that the folks in the most recent thread; some of the participants in the reddit thread kept throwing kindling in, while others commented that it wouldn’t end well (except for speculators).

Rurik’s Engagement Ring shipped with the strange rock; we were just slow figuring out what to do. All ANet did was … nothing at all, except to verify that everything we needed to know or do or have was already in the game.

Please stop blaming ANet for your disappointment.

I like that they put these old things into GW2 but requiring the skritt contracts (which require petrified wood) for farming it seems overkill.

Had the rock been a random drop, this would have been awesome. Had the skritt contract been a map unlock instead of the karma unlock (with stacking daily contracts allowing for more rubble searching which would return a large batch of karma instead of small amounts from kills) I would have been fine with it too.

It just seems silly to make the act of farming this ring so unbelievably inefficient as opposed to other methods of obtaining ascended rings -.-

Gerrand.3085:

I like that they put these old things into GW2 but requiring the skritt contracts (which require petrified wood) for farming it seems overkill.

Had the rock been a random drop, this would have been awesome. Had the skritt contract been a map unlock instead of the karma unlock (with stacking daily contracts allowing for more rubble searching which would return a large batch of karma instead of small amounts from kills) I would have been fine with it too.

It just seems silly to make the act of farming this ring so unbelievably inefficient as opposed to other methods of obtaining ascended rings -.-

True that. Not only does it cost petrified wood, but also a decent amount of karma. 980 karma + 1 petrified wood per skritt contract. If we take wiki droprate research into consideration, then it’s roughly 1 strange rock per 1000+ stashes. You would need to purchase 1000 skritt contracts, and therefore pay 1k wood + 980 k karma. That seems to be a bit much for a simple ascended ring with a vague lore reference. That’s the point. Makes no sense.

this game is about cosmetics, they dont have anything to reward us with and it will be the death of the game unless they open up some new types of content like new skills

Malediktus.3740:

No aura, no achievement, it does not even have all 3 infusion slots.

You do know that you can still infuse / attune it and get all 3 infusion slots. Just sayin’….

electricwater.1572:

I think no one of strange rock owners is really raging (like some people make it out to be). Except maybe for people who paid 600+g for this thing.

It’s what Malediktus said, total lack of logic in this case.

Think about it, an item has a low drop rate. So low that people (who did research on wiki) opened 5,8k skritt stashes and found ONLY 5 strange rocks. It makes you think it is something special.
Also when the exploit with skritt stashes was found, anet quickly went to fix it so you couldn’t abuse it. So they wanted the drop rate to stay low.

This ring has 4 stages of evolving. The only items in the game with a similar system are legendaries and few ascended backpacks (spinal blades, mawdrey), all of which have visual effects to them. So it is only logical to assume that something like that is more than just an ascended ring. (Also note that no one can see the ring but you, no visual effects whatsoever).

Also the text it came with. ‘This strange rock appears to be humming with magic’. How are you supposed to figure out you should throw it into lava? What does humming magic have to do with all of this?

No one figured it out because there are no clues, you should just stand in a small specific spot next to lava and hope the dialogue window will trigger. It also gives no indication where to go next. And if 4-stages pictures were not datamined, we would not even know there are 4 stages, so you could run around the map forever trying various things.

I still see no reason to lock a simple ascended ring behind all of this. It gives 0 ap (not even symbolic, like 1ap for example), doesn’t unlock any achievements, has no aura, you can only select stats once. If you salvage it, it only gives matrices back.
There are plenty of ascended rings in the game, they drop all the time in fractals. Pre-HoT people were asking to give them an opportunity to salvage ascended rings because it was getting too much. So there was clearly no supply shortage.

It just makes no sense. Yeah, you could say it’s a nod to GW1 lore, but the whole treasure hunt gives no additional lore, just you,rock, and lava. No dialogue, no story.

People got hyped because there were a lot of indications it is more than just an ascended ring. Even if it was not a legendary, they were at least expecting an aura, or SOMETHING.

And because of the low droprate, it is not smth everyone can make. Once the tp supply is gone, it wouldn’t be that easy to acquire strange rock anymore.

I secretly hope it’s just a hidden precursor for a future legendary ring, but no high expectations. Because if it isn’t, then it just makes no sense. You could easily buy an ascended ring for laurels or drop one in fractals, so why get it this way. Just because it says it belonged to Rurik? O_o

This guy’s more or less on the money.

The droprate doesn’t validate what the item turns into. For those who didn’t do the journey, there’s no open world indicators about where you need to stand for the locations to turn the rock into the ring. It’s legitimately a pop-up that triggers when you run across the location, no bigger than your player character.

Everything about the Rock was messy, all for a nod to GW1 which I do not personally mind.

However…

It feels like the Rock should have had at least 10x better drop rate or some minor aura as someone mentioned given what you had to do in order to get it. And the last thing that has to be mentioned is that because this is the main reward behind the skritt contracts which cost Ember Bay Currency and Karma, that it is behind such a massive RNG wall means that worker contract is actually destructive to player wallets.

My Feedback is that this is a big no no, especially given the Bitterfrost Ring is something you could earn in a day with a few level 80s. I know Bitterfrost came after, but even Arenanet has come around to fix past content. Please do something about this chain.

Silas Eorth.7348:

Malediktus.3740:

No aura, no achievement, it does not even have all 3 infusion slots.

You do know that you can still infuse / attune it and get all 3 infusion slots. Just sayin’….

I know, but considering it seems to take on average 1000 petrified wood and 980k karma (according to the people who do drop research) to get a strange rock, I would expect those slots to be included at the bare minimum.
It is not like it takes much effort to unlock those 2 extra slots, so it should be baseline for the harder to get ascended rings.

Malediktus.3740:

considering it seems to take on average 1000 petrified wood and 980k karma (according to the people who do drop research) to get a strange rock, I would expect those slots to be included at the bare minimum.

Pretty much this. Also since it is pure RNG, there is absolutely no guarantee you will get it after you buy 1k skritt contracts. One person on wiki opened 1750 and got none at all. Let me put it into perspective. That’s 1750 petrified wood and almost 2 million karma that just went down the drain.

So to recap:

1) Unreasonably low drop rate (for such a usual item) that results in big losses of karma and petrified wood.

2) Even if you manage to get the item (imagine you never heard of strange rock before, got really lucky and dropped it on your 5th stash), how would you know it’s not just a trash item and throw it away.?

3) Even if you go through all the effort with skritt contracts and get one, there are NO CLEAR CLUES how to progress further. No, I’m not talking about obvious hints like ‘go to destruction maw and stand in place x and use your rock’. There’s just absolutely nothing that hints it’s lava-related.

4) The interactive window doesn’t always trigger, especially if you’re just running through the map. So unless you take your time to just stand in every spot imaginable, it is really hard to find. Nothing even indicates it’s in Ember Bay. Could be anywhere.

5) The reward is honestly meh. At least give such thing an aura, so it will be worth the effort. Otherwise it’s just an ascended ring like dozens of others, that you can acquire much faster and much cheaper. There is absolutely NO reason to go for Rurik’s engagement ring at the moment, unless you’re a GW1 lore nerd who collects every memento that has any connection to the lore.

6) Even if it is subpar now, it could be used later and improved. For example as a precursor if legendary rings ever become a thing. Or at least add some aura to it to make it worth it.

And to all the people who act like children with comments like ‘AHAHHAHAHAHAHAH!!!! I’m so glad people wasted their money!!!’ :
If people didn’t buy/farm strange rock, then we would still not know what it is used for. Everything we knew about it was hinting at smth special, it was not just some stupid hype like ‘omg everyone is buying it! I must buy too!’.
There has never been a regular ascended ring depending on RNG and treasure hunt. Yet there were legendaries (HoT introduced collection concept) and aura items like that (Queen B, Chak Egg Sac – all have low RNG values). There is a reason people thought it would turn out to be smth cool. They were not just stupidly following some trend.

You are right electricwater. This ring is easily in my personal top 10 of the biggest GW2 disappointments since HoT release
Sorry for the Anet dev(s) who thought they had a great idea with this addition.

It’s difficult to love everything aspect of a game you play. Some things won’t be for you, scavenger hunts seem to make that list. I think they are quite enjoyable. For an “easy” ascended item this is a good one to go for. Many people are too timid to try high level fractals and would rather spend the money to buy the rock and complete the steps, rather than waiting the few days of playing low tier fractals to obtain rings.

Warcry.1596:

would rather spend the money to buy the rock and complete the steps, rather than waiting the few days of playing low tier fractals to obtain rings.

You seem to forget one little fact. The supply of strange rocks is limited and not constant, since it’s behind a big RNG wall. The fact that there are some on tp right now is tied to the fact that people were saving them (since they didn’t know what to do with them). Once that initial supply is gone, that’s about it. I doubt there will be a huge spike in numbers (unless anet amps droprate), especially since now people know that the end result is so unrewarding.

No matter what people in this thread say, I think this was clever and fun and would like to see more stuff like this released in future patches

I really like the idea of cool little hidden things in game like this and hope anet continues to add this sorta stuff in game.

I found the ring itself to be a nice little poignant nod to gw1 lore.

OriOri.8724:

No matter what people in this thread say, I think this was clever and fun and would like to see more stuff like this released in future patches

Agreed.

I highly doubt when anet do add legendary trinkets they’ll do it as a ‘hidden’ scavenger hunt, The second they add legendary trinkets or shortly before, we will know about it.

Duke Nukem.6783:

this game is about cosmetics

Yep. And this item is not cosmetic. It has no visible component.

Warcry.1596:

Many people are too timid to try high level fractals and would rather spend the money to buy the rock and complete the steps

You do realize, that the new LS3 maps give us a much easier way to obtain ascended rings with all stat sets, without needing to jump through hoops or doing any fractals?

The ring has nothing to differentiate it from others: doesn’t come with any aura, no infusion slots, not a precursor, nothing unique on salvage, probably can’t wear two at the same time and lore connection is weak. Acquisition being locked behind high rng potentially makes it costly and unattainable while other maps offer cheaper/quicker & guaranteed ways to get the same thing with different name.

The idea of small-scale scavenger hunts is great; it just needs tweaking. Increasing drop-rate, reducing contract price or improving ring should fix it.

What a strange thing to get so upset over, I am glad this was put in game. Sorry your investment didn’t pan out they way you had hoped, but in the end it seems like it was really your expectations that set you up for failure and not Anet.

Killdozer.5731:

What a strange thing to get so upset over, I am glad this was put in game. Sorry your investment didn’t pan out they way you had hoped, but in the end it seems like it was really your expectations that set you up for failure and not Anet.

Because everyone likes to grind and waste map currency and karma for an item you could easily get on other maps with half (if not less) the effort. You’re right, the expectations were totally unreasonable here

/s

I get the feeling people who are arguing ‘Oh the rock is fine! It’s a neat scavenger hunt!’ likely haven’t done the hunt to begin with.

Actually, you should join us, pay 350g or open on average 1000 skritt stashes to get your own rock, walk to the unmarked points on the map and get your ascended ring, and come back here and tell us there’s nothing wrong with this particular process.

My only validation for why I am not really upset is because I bought mine back when it was sub-200g, and I hate berry farming with a passion. If this ring was aimed for people who want to buy it off the TP, they better hurry up as no one going forward will ever buy Skritt contracts and open stashes again with the item in its current iteration.

Actually the Skritt Contracts are toxic for the game given this, remove them from the Skritt Vendor or do something about the drop rate.

Sykper.6583:

I get the feeling people who are arguing ‘Oh the rock is fine! It’s a neat scavenger hunt!’ likely haven’t done the hunt to begin with.

I somehow get this feeling too. It’s always the people who just plain out buy the rock from tp for 20g, then follow a dulfy guide, and then come here and say ‘oh it was totally fun and fine, I don’t regret anything!". Aka have all the work done for them.

But newsflash, these rocks on tp come from somewhere, people who were farming for them. And it is always very easy to follow a dulfy/reddit guide, try doing it yourself for once, like the first few minutes it comes out, with no clues from other players. Then come back here and say it was designed perfectly.

Perhaps some didn’t even get the rock at all. They just like to come here and act like everyone is a spoiled brat awaiting free stuff, while we’re giving constructive criticism. Not to whine and blame anet, but to help them improve this.

I think it’s a huge mistake to assume that every rock on the tp comes from someone farming for them. Also you may be giving constructive criticism but the op came across as someone throwing his toys out of the pram because he wanted more and that sets the tone for the thread. As for this drop, it seems like a nice little thing to get and figure out, not something you should farm for, but some people have to have it the moment they hear about something.

Pifil.5193:

Wow, hyperbole overload here! “A colossal waste of development resources”? Really?

It’s a little drop with a simple, quick, 4-step process (go here and use the thing) that turns it into a free ascended ring that can have any possible stat combination.

The real question here is why did you think that there would be a greater payout than an ascended item? Because it took you a long time to get the drop?

Someone’s probably just mad because there wasn’t any AP attached to it.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

It’s an easter egg; it needn’t be easily farmed.

I guess the only ‘easter-eggish’ thing about it is that one line that says it belonged to Rurik. For the rest it offers no further lore.
Compare the method of acquiring it with the way you get ascended rings from other maps. Costs way more effort for the same reward.

electricwater.1572:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

It’s an easter egg; it needn’t be easily farmed.

I guess the only ‘easter-eggish’ thing about it is that one line that says it belonged to Rurik. For the rest it offers no further lore.
Compare the method of acquiring it with the way you get ascended rings from other maps. Costs way more effort for the same reward.

The same could be said for any of the exotic Mystic Forge weapons that cost more than an ascended weapon does (although of course those have skins). Should they all be elevated to ascended weapons because the cost is high?

The “cost” of getting this may be one petrified wood or a million. I can’t imagine they intended for people to farm for this, rather it’s a nice to find if it drops, but they probably knew that a handful of people will farm the hell out of it expecting something amazing and be disappointed at the payout. That’s inevitable.

I wonder, what would be a worthwhile payout for you? (Bearing in mind that an ascended weapon costs about 60 or so gold to make).

OriOri.8724:

I don’t see it as a joke. I think its actually quite nice that they put something in the game that took months to figure out. Its boring when people rush through all of the new content within hours. Absolutely boring. Who the hell really cares if its just an ascended ring or not? Its a fun distraction to do

Like the new weapon skin awhile back that took months. Everyone trying to find that ONE karma vendor

I’d say this event was a failure. I had never even heard of “strange rock” before today.

Pifil.5193:

The same could be said for any of the exotic Mystic Forge weapons that cost more than an ascended weapon does (although of course those have skins). Should they all be elevated to ascended weapons because the cost is high?

The “cost” of getting this may be one petrified wood or a million. I can’t imagine they intended for people to farm for this, rather it’s a nice to find if it drops, but they probably knew that a handful of people will farm the hell out of it expecting something amazing and be disappointed at the payout. That’s inevitable.

I wonder, what would be a worthwhile payout for you? (Bearing in mind that an ascended weapon costs about 60 or so gold to make).

As you said, those exotic weapons at least offer a unique skin, while the ring gives you nothing extra. You’re paying for a skin in that case. And you can decide yourself whether it’s worth it or not, because you know what you gonna get.

It’s just not worth the effort getting this ring when you can easily get it through other sources. Also, why is there a need to add more ascended rings? There’s already lots of them everywhere. You can choose the stats yourself, so it is not stat-specific. Ring is a ring. No need to get a new one because it has a different icon and is called differently. Especially if the way to acquire it requires more than it’s worth.

Getting ascended rings is super easy in this game, so I don’t really see how it can be a proper reward. If it is meant to be symbolic, then at least add some aura to it (don’t think it’s very hard to make those) , or a title that goes with it (even easier to implement).