“Here’s what we believe: If someone wants to play for a thousand hours to get an item that is so rare that other players can’t realistically acquire it, that rare item should be differentiated by its visual appearance and rarity alone, not by being more powerful than everything else in the game. Otherwise, your MMO becomes all about grinding to get the best gear. We don’t make grindy games — we leave the grind to other MMOs.”
-Mike Obrien, President of Arenanet
This is the president of Anet saying the opposite of what ascended weapon is. One thing people forget about ascended weapon is that they do not only give better stats but also better base weapon damage. A exotic rifle have a max base damage of 1205. The ascended rifle bump that to 1265. For comparaison, a rare rifle have a max base damage of 1067. So rare to exotic is a 12-13% base damage boost. Exotic to ascended is a 5% base damage boost. It is smaller damage boost but still a non-negligable boost. So this is not just a continuity of the ascended trinkets that gave only a stat boost. And what does wvw players have to do get a ascended weapon and make sure their gear weighting them down ? Farm pve for the gold and mats or pray that the stats combo ascended weapon you need will drop in wvw. So either Anet clarify the situation and assure us that scended weapon have decent loot table that mean ascended weapon can actually drop in wvw (unlike precursor and this is normal cause precursor should be a extremly rare drop) or give wvw players a way to gain them with actual wvw drop (badges, laurel, could be gold and ecto too). You could make it that you need 1000 badges plus 10 laurel or 1500 badges and it would be a better way for wvw players to get ascended weapon.
I am starting to think that WvW should have just been a part of spvp with everyone on the same lvl, no cost to retrait, no cost for the base equipment (weapon, armor, trinket,sigil and rune) and the only thing that you have to farm, if you want them, is skins.
lol