Guild Wars 2 resumes development of legendary weapons

Guild Wars 2 players might recall that back in March, ArenaNet President and Game Director Mike O’Brien announced that he was instructing the team to indefinitely suspend development on new legendary weapons in favor of shifting efforts to living world-style content. The shortbow Chuka and Champawat was the last to roll out, upsetting players who believed that ANet had stiffed them on what had been promised content purchased with Heart of Thorns.

Coinciding with the rollout of Rising Flames today, O’Brien and Game Design Lead Matt Pennebaker have tackled the legendaries problem head on in a new dev blog that declares legendaries are back on the table — indeed, were never really off the table at all.

“Some players viewed ‘suspended indefinitely’ as code words for ‘canceled,’ but for us, it was more of a time-out while we worked to find a different solution,” they write. “We wanted to find a way to deliver legendaries without hurting content development to do it. And that led us to this new method of obtaining legendary weapons going forward.”

That new method “lacks a lot of the story and lore of the old legendary journeys” but will be easier and faster for the developers to push live and easier for players as well in that it’ll “give [them] a way to make progress toward [their] precursor every time [they] play.” Consequently, they announce, the legendary mace Eureka is now attainable in today’s content update, with more on the way until they’re all complete.

Don’t forget to check out Massively OP’s own hands-on with the new living story content out this morning!