With Arena Net acknowledging that they are working on the method of acquiring a Legendary I thought I’d discuss my thoughts on what legendaries should be. I am not an avid MMO player, I can probably count the MMOs I’ve played on one hand, and my most played MMORPGs are Guild Wars and WoW. Whether or not you think Guild Wars is an MMORPG is not the point of this thread. That thread is here: Guild Wars IS an MMO .
In WoW I never acquired what would be considered Legendary weapons, I remember aspiring to Quel’Serrar though. It was an impressive looking blade in itself, and had great stats (at the time) for a tank, but these are not what I consider important for a legendary weapon. I think legendary weapons need legends. What sets something like Quel’Serrar apart from Bolt is the method of acquisition and the story behind it. In WoW, after finding/buying a rare tome you get told a story by Lore Keeper Lydros about the history of the blade, how it was forged, why it was forged, and eventually how you would go about forging your own from the untreated blade you are gifted in exchange for the tome. This process involved going into one of the difficult raid encounters at the time, having Onyxia breathe on the blade to heat it, and after defeating her plunging the blade into her side to finish the process. To acquire Bolt you go through a lengthy grind and are given an impressive looking weapon with no background. Hardly a legend to speak of. The process was huge, but large tasks do not a legend make.
Not all weapons in WoW of similar caliber were acquired this way, but they did have quite a few, like Atiesh. When I see Guild Wars 2 legendaries I do not see a legendary weapon, but an impressive skin after and impressive amount of grind and luck. What I’d like to see is lore, exposition, and some player driven story to create and craft the blade (either through instances, in the world, or a combination of both). This is not to say they should remove the grinding aspects, but that it’d be nice if there was something a but more predictable and progressive about making the blade, such as a story told as you fashion different parts of the weapon. As it exists now, it’s basically just collecting mats, dumping them into the Mystic Forge and out pops a weapon.
