We have a new info now. And I can't say I'm very optimistic. It just seems to me that the bad news are piling up. Living Story 8 moths after HoT, Colin's leave and now we are told that we won't see new legendaries. Their development has been stopped until further notice.
This blogpost will be long and messy. You've been warned...
Legendary engame?
First of all, what do we know about the development of legendary weapons?
- the development of one takes few months
- each new legendary has 4 collections
- there were 6 people working on them
- we got 3 and were promised the rest in time (not specified)
I can understand that the development takes so long, IMO mostly because of the collections. I think that to graphically design a legendary is not that difficult in comparison to making their collections work. I think that it takes a lot of testing. With 4 collections/each and let's say one collection could take 1 month, we would need a year for 3 new legendaries. Now I'm sure that the development doesn't take that long.
For many people, legendaries are the endgame. I myself am raiding from time to time. I have finished the first raid wing with my guild but still rather play alone at my own pace. That's why the legendaries are the second most important feature of GW2 for me after Living Story.
New legendaries were presented extensively before the launch of HoT. There was an uproar, when the community had discovered that we'll get only 3 new ones on launch. This was however promised to us together with the rest coming together with other releases.
6 man army
We were told that the 6 people, working on them, were moved back to the living story team. 6 other people are working on raids. In 5 months they managed to release 2 raid wings. Many people compare these 2 teams and ask how it's possible that one team delivers and other doesn't? I would agree with this question and would love to see into their creative process but it's not that easy. One team designs map, bosses, mechanics, rewards, etc. Other designs the weapon, effects and works with a lot of data to make the collections work. So I don't think it's comparable.
When we talk about the group of 6 developers it seems that they are able to deliver a lot of content (raid team) and therefore can possibly make a huge difference by adding them into the LS team.
This brings up the question: If 6 people are able to deliver, why do we see everything else being postponed? Mo has said that it's because they don't want to be teams to be too thin and they want the content to be out asap. This however hasn't answered the question. In the previous blogpost I expressed a fear of Anet "overpromising" and then being unable to deliver.
Promises, promises and again promises
As if promising too much wouldn't be enough, Anet has changed their release strategy from biweekly updates to quarterly releases. I'm all for this change, I think it's a good decision but it has one huge downside - people wil expect MUCH MORE from the 12-week release than from a biweekly release and rightly so.
This combined with too many promises is a ticking time bomb. First "boom" was the fractal backpiece that's still not fully ingame. Second one was the announcement of LS in summer release, which is about 7-8 months after HoT. And third one now was the stopping of the legendary weapon development.
Mo has said that he wants to stick to the manifesto and to deliver. That's great and all but now the Living Story will have to be so awesome to be worth all this or Anet won't get back their newly lost reputation. And that's what I fear the most. If the new living story won't be full of fun content that would make us admit "OK, I see, they needed those people to be able to deliver this awesome huge patch", I... I just don't know what to expect next and whether to expect anything anymore.
How about an expansion?
Yeah, we all know that 1/3 of all devs is already working on the new expansion. IMO, it would be better to postpone it and bring them to help with the development of the promised features. At least until the things settle down and the pace will get better.
I liked HoT. Most of the time I spent defending Anet. I actually liked the content brought with HoT. I even liked grinding masteries. Good thing that I don't play wvw much or else I would complain a lot. I guess. I played pve extensively. I made H.O.P.E. I even started playing much more pvp because there's nothing else new now besides legendary backpack. I liked the legendary collections. Now, I only log in to grind daily achievements for pvp and play story with GF just to see what she thinks about it.
For 3 years I was never bored. Now I am. Yesterday's news destroyed my optimism. I'm not even disappointed. I'm sad. When there are 300 people working on this and they struggle to deliver promised content then something is wrong. I'm sure that it's not their fault. I suspect that the management tries to reinvent the wheel, scraps often already finished things to recreate them and causes this mess.
But this is only my speculation. I know that Anet devs are awesome people that are passionate about GW2 and they love the game. I'm sure that they will do their best. Sometimes it's not enough sadly. Let's hope that it's not this case.
Anyway, now that I let it all out, I'm going to watch a movie, read a book or play something else while waiting for the new content. Hope dies the last, doesn't it?
