I’ve personally read numerous articles and heard from various related sources that the developers of Guild Wars 2 do not want farming to be huge part of the game. They say that Guild Wars 2 is different than other MMOs in that farming isn’t required. They make it seem as if you can get everything done, i.e. leveling, achievements, specialty weapons and armor, all without the need or use of farming. I’ve even came across articles where they have taken a sort of anti-farming view, acting as if they were against farming and didn’t want it ruining the “character of the game”. This sounds great doesn’t it? I mean, not having to farm for hours and hours, killing mobs repeatedly and being bored out your mind, all to get some sort of achievement or nice looking Greatsword. Well, I’m very sad to say that in my opinion, and to be honest many others opinions, that this couldn’t be further from the truth.
A perfect example of this is the whole Legendary Weapon Progression. If you have ever made, attempted to make, or read the recipe requirements for a legendary, then you know exactly what I mean. I am almost finished crafting “Sunrise”, the Legendary Greatsword. Now you may think, well then why are you writing this? Well, it has taken me nearly 3.5 months to make, and I am a insanely dedicated GW2 player. I am in a sense addicted to this game. I play 8-18 hours a day. There have been many all-nighters. I take breaks to eat, sleep, go to the bathroom, but other than that I have no life. Now I chose this life style because I wanted to take on the nearly impossible goal of creating a legendary, but I also was putting in the necessary time requirements to obtain this goal. Obtaining a legendary is definitely not for sissies. I may have gotten a little off base in this explaination but the reason for this story is to show how Farming is indeed a MANDATORY REQUIREMENT for obtaining a legendary. 90% of the 8-18 hours of gameplay every day was Farming. Now of course there were days when i would spend less than 8 hours because of numerous things, family engagements for example. However the basic idea is that I would farm and farm, then they would nerf my farming areas, then I would have to just farm longer for the same results. Then they would nerf it again, I would then farm for even longer to get the same results. Sometimes, I would find a new spot, then within a week, it would be nerfed, and again I would just have to work harder and longer for the same result. It was if I was being knocked down repeatedly by a bully, but I kept getting up. I kept at it no matter what, even though through every nerf I was becoming less and less efficient at my gold earning, working three times as long for a third of what I was making pre-nerf. Does this seem fair?
It almost seems as if the developers are trying to put a roadblock up between us and our ability to earn gold. Lets look at the rediculousness of the infamous “PRECURSOR”. Dusk, the precursor for the Legendary Greatsword, Twilight, was just recently listed for over 800 Gold. Do you know how long it would take to just earn 800 gold by playing the game without farming? It would take years. Then it takes about1,000 plus Gold to gather the remaining ingrediants. I dont think Anet intended it to take an estimated 5 years to make a legendary. Which without farming it could easily take this long. So the big question is if Anet is so against farming, then why do they allow these precursors to be sold for 800 Gold. Now I know that we the GW2 community control our own economy and we therefore set the prices. However, these prices are set by supply and demand. The rarer the item, the more it’s going to cost. Anet has its own house economist that helped form the trading post and our working economy. Therefore, they had to have some idea that making a precurosr that “RARE” would indeed make the prices of it on the trading post skyrocket to an extremely high amount. So in a very real way, they are more responsible than the community in allowing the price of precursors to be so high.
The reason I wrote this article is to bring up a discussion or debate on this whole idea behind the consistant nerfing to all types of farming, whether it be dynamic events in orr, dungeons, dragon chest, etc. and how this and Anet’s Anti-Farming view totally contradicts the design of the game. For instance how certain achievements can only be met by farming, as well as Legendaries, Precursors, and other high value items. Why keep nerfing every little farming spot? Why make it nearly impossible to create high value items without farming, then punish us for farming with all these nerfs. For those of you reading, please voice your opinions, I’d love to hear what the rest of you have to say. Perhaps if enough of us speak, we might finally be heard and offered an answer to all of the contradiction and confusion. Till then, see you all on the battlefield. -Octavius of Tyria