ArenaNet has published two Guild Wars 2 dev blogs today: one on the economy and one on legendary weapons. ANet economist John Smith begins by explaining how GW2’s economy will be impacted by scarcity tweaks in Heart of Thorns. “Expect instability after launch in multiple major markets,” he writes.
“We’ve made a lot of large changes, and we have a lot of new systems all interacting with our players for the first time. We spent a lot of time modeling and using our past experience to create the new economic changes, so we plan to be in a good place after the dust settles. Instead of promising that everything will quickly and automatically return to equilibrium at a state we think is healthy, I want to promise that we’re paying very close attention and will be looking out for any behavior that we think needs to be addressed.”
Specifically, Smith says changes to precursor crafting, salvaging, dungeon rewards and farming, map rewards, and market fixes are on the way, but “there will be a lot of opportunity for fun and profit for the extremely savvy.”
The studio also discusses what it’s calling its “second set” of legendary weapons for those of you who just can’t get enough of that crafting grind for cosmetic goodies. The main differences between the old legendaries and the new are that “all precursors for future sets will only be acquired through the precursor crafting journey, and unlike existing precursors, future precursors will not be dropped anywhere in the game.” Moreover, the new legendaries will require gameplay and mat-hunting in Maguuma Jungle specifically.
ArenaNet has released images of some of the new legendaries, and they really are pretty. The raven staff shown in the header image above is called Nevermore; there’s also a celestial axe and a sweet pistol.
