Guild Chat - Episode 12

The following is an unofficial, player-written transcript of the episode. The accuracy of this transcription has not been verified by ArenaNet.
The 12th episode of Guild Chat aired on October 2, 2015. Mike Z, Rubi and Colin cover the topic of the "Legendary Journey" in depth live from TwitchCon on September 25-26 2015!
Transcription[edit]

Note: The text below hasn't yet been converted from raw subtitle text into pretty print like above.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0CD9htascI
this is a segment that I know a lot of 
you have been super excited about we are 
going to talk about the legendary 
journey in Gil Wars to hard of thorns 
Mike is like let's go let's do this all 
right so Colin why don't you I'm going 
to put you on the spot since Z's driving 
um why don't you give us a quick rundown 
of what legendary weapons are for those 
who are new so uh Legendary Weapons yes 
for those of you who are new turning 
into the 
legendary uh legendary weapons are sort 
of the ultimate uh achievement in Guild 
Wars 2 of building an item out that you 
can show off to everybody else in the 
game um statistically they are not more 
powerful than the other top tier of 
items ascended um but they change the 
look of your character um they allow you 
to do things like if there's a bow that 
lets you literally shoot rainbow 
unicorns uh there is a a a hammer that 
uh we'll be talking about very shortly 
here that actually turns your entire 
character kind of into Quick Silver and 
leaves little Footprints behind um a lot 
of the legendaries leave Footprints they 
change the look of your character um 
they're really really just awesome 
pieces of art that uh change up the way 
everything looks about your character 
when you're playing with them yeah they 
are they are pretty great they represent 
this they represent this journey through 
Guild Wars 2 through the entire game so 
it's it's kind of a big thing to get one 
and it takes quite a bit of time the 
problem that we ran into though because 
we wanted it to represent Mastery of the 
entire game but we ran into this we were 
running into this random element that 
was kind of a hard blocker yeah uh I 
think you know when when you think about 
a legendary weapon it should be a 
legendary journey uh to go acquire it uh 
and un this is an area that we could 
really improve the game uh and that's 
why we're showing this here today uh you 
know the uh the whole process of you go 
to the Mystic Forge currently was your 
best chance of building a precursor by 
throwing items Into the Mystic Forge or 
as some players like to call it the 
Mystic toilet uh and every now and then 
something magical comes out of it and a 
a precursor can be that um there's also 
the very lucky chance that one might 
drop for you out in the world and this 
is the key component to building your 
legendary it's the most important part 
it's kind of the weapon for the 
legendary uh and then when you have your 
precursor you can combine it together 
with all these other components that um 
you go out in the world and that allows 
you to actually build your legendary we 
felt like that process of acquiring your 
precursor of throwing things into the 
Mystic Forge or hoping to get lucky or 
buying one off the Trading Post uh it 
wasn't the real vision of what we think 
a legendary weapon should be we think it 
should be a legendary journey that you 
get to go on uh and so our our awesome 
rewards team took on the challenge of 
saying let's build a legendary journey 
but let's not just build one let's build 
one for every single weapon that we've 
ever made for legendary really really 
good I actually you know you were 
talking about running into throwing 
things into the Mystic Forge and while 
we were talking about this before it 
reminded me I have two guildmates that I 
play with fairly often that both got 
their legendaries one of them threw 
things in the Mystic Forge for months 
and months and months because you could 
also Farm up a ton of gold buy it off 
the trading post and he didn't want it 
to do that he wanted this is mine this 
is part of my legendary journey so he 
kept throw so he didn't want a 
secondhand one was the thing threw 
things in the Forge for months finally 
got it and was just worn out by the time 
and then we have the other guy we were 
doing a World versus World run and he 
got it off of a random guard that we 
just killed on the way it took him 
something like 10 minutes to even 
realize what was in his bag those are 
those were the two ways to get them yeah 
it's it's it puts a lot of extremes and 
it's not something that is like the 
journey aspect of it it's not something 
that you can you can make progress 
towards and have kind of like a 
checklist like every other aspect of the 
building the legendary weapon involves 
you going to the various aspects of the 
game whether it's World versus World 
whether it's going and uh defeating the 
world bosses whether it's going and 
doing jumping puzzles and combining all 
these elements together in order to 
really kind of have something that you 
can show off to everyone and say hey 
look how cool everything that I've done 
has been so uh the rewards seem took it 
on themselves to kind of what's let's 
create a new paradigm how do we change 
this up that makes it so that you have 
this element of hey I want to do this 
really cool thing it should feel like uh 
the reward of the precursor is justified 
by all of this um and also kind of allow 
you to to tie it into the lore of the 
world and the lore of the weapon um so 
that it kind of again continues to 
ground itself in in the experience of 
what gu Wars 2 is yeah the collections 
are thematic to the weapon so we thought 
what would be really cool to do today is 
take a legendary weapon that you're 
already familiar with if you've been 
playing Guild Wars 2 and let you see how 
they're formed y so Mike why don't you 
take it away all right so one of the 
things we're adding with uh Heart Of 
Thorns is the Mastery system and this is 
supposed to be your progression once you 
hit Level 80 this is what's going to 
allow you to do more cool things and 
unlock more types of gameplay and one of 
these masteries is legendary crafting 
let take a peek at your desktop then yes 
uh so you already have all these things 
unlocked you've been 
cheating so legendary crafting is a new 
Mastery that players will be able to 
unlock uh and uh through using 
experience points or and master uh 
points to delve into to actually unlock 
different tiers of these collections 
that they're going to be contributing to 
um the very basic one uh the first one 
starts is always going to be a a 
lore-based 
um uh collection the for the The Legend 
that we're going to use as an example 
for this is going to be the Colossus 
which leads into the 
Juggernaut uh and so the first one is 
talking about uh going to all of these 
Giants or statues of prominent figures 
that are big in Tyrion lore and in Gil 
Wars 2 and either you know pondering 
before them kneeling before them this is 
literally just a a world tour of uh you 
know where to go with and celebrate kind 
of the concept of what a juggernaut is 
in Guild Wars 2 right you're sticking 
with that theme so what kind of things 
do we have so like one of them is 
pondering uh in front of the Statue of 
Jorah um out in wer foot hills some of 
them will take to elements of uh like or 
uh cleansing one of the cathedrals in or 
uh and pondering before it some of them 
are kneeling uh before the Colossus in 
the Cliffside fractal like this starts 
bringing in all various elements of the 
world of tyria and having players come 
uh and you know start this journey so to 
speak uh and finishing this collection 
gives you a reward that basically is the 
recipe for completing the first tier of 
the Colossus so uh all new legendary or 
all precur cers come in three tiers the 
first one is very lore based very kind 
of grounded in it and then you'll 
actually kind of build a not so Splendid 
looking version of the precursor uh and 
then once you've done that that unlock 
automatically will unlock the second 
collection uh which col do you want to 
talk about that sure yes so the the 
second collection uh is for most 
precursor weapons uh is relatively 
similar um this this one is mostly 
focused on uh collection of materials 
and collection of uh uh of currencies 
around the game World um this is the one 
where the first and the third collection 
are the most distinct and unique to each 
precursor um the second one is mostly 
the same uh concept uh although the 
items that come out of each of those is 
different in theme to The the thing 
you're building um each of these 
different items uh are things that you 
actually you work with a merchant uh 
generally in the world uh you go talk to 
and they will tell you what you need to 
do to acquire this item for them so for 
example one might say uh go collect 400 
GEOS uh in return to turn this in and in 
return I will give you this item that 
you need for your collection uh this one 
is uh you know it's really important as 
part of adding these items uh these 
ability to build your own precursor that 
we maintain some of the value in the 
economy uh of all the uh total value 
that a precursor currently has in the 
game today um and so this second phase 
is in particular aimed at making sure um 
there's a time value and a gold value in 
each one of these precursors that helps 
kind of maintain the value of precursors 
across the game um but it's broken up 
into really small digestible chunks and 
I think that's a huge difference when 
you think about an Epic Journey uh is 
you want to go on this amazing journey 
to eventually get your precursor but you 
don't want to have to think of I have to 
do all these things all at the same time 
um you want to say today this is the 
thing I'm going to work on okay I'm 
going to go work on geod and while I'm 
doing it maybe I'm going to get mithil 
and that will help me accomplish another 
one with Mythril ingots in here too um 
but it's it's very one piece at a time 
so you can feel like you're getting 
progression and going through yeah and 
so much of this you're playing the game 
as you're getting it which is really a 
thing that we want to happen it's not 
just okay stop the game play that I'm 
doing and go out and do this other thing 
this is just part of the progression so 
these two Merchants I've been hanging 
out with here in Lions Arch uh grandmas 
uh Craftsman Hobbs and the scholar next 
to him start kind of this the second 
tier and they'll also give you the the 
first collection uh for your legendary 
but they'll also involve like the master 
weapon Smith so it goes back to hey look 
you're building a hammer let's go talk 
to these guys and see what you can do to 
help their War efforts uh and and trying 
to build these things this is in Lion's 
Arch by the way when you start looking 
for this guy after heart of thorns 
that's where he is yes and and some of 
these Merchants they'll send you to are 
not just these ones in La although these 
are the most conveniently located ones 
um you'll also be sent around the world 
to talk to famous characters around the 
world who are great Crafters as well um 
and they'll help guide you through being 
able to build this stuff um and Mike can 
show you here uh where the where the 
volumes uh to begin your entire Journey 
uh kick off once you've unlocked uh the 
Mastery line that allows you to to uh to 
purchase 
and so this once you have the first tier 
Mastery allows you to come by the first 
book which starts that first collection 
you'll need to kind of uh progress your 
Mastery tiers to further down to be able 
to go uh you know T part of the second 
collection and then finally the third 
one as 
well so the third tier uh after we've 
kind of built the actual Hammer aspect 
of 
it um deals again is more of a thematic 
one so this usually will happen uh more 
about like the artistic elements of 
what's going on with the the legendary 
weapon so with the um the Juggernaut it 
basically turn to Silver as Colin was 
mentioning and so the way that you 
actually do that is that first you need 
to build uh this terrarium that will 
house all these oozes that you're going 
to go and collect around the world e uh 
and so you'll the fortunately the 
Craftsman right here will actually sell 
you the recipe of this terrarium that 
you need to build and then from there 
you're going to be going and defeating 
these oozes combining them to create 
kind of a chromatic ooze inside this 
terrarium and that's just the first te 
so you already are going to do some more 
exploration about this and find out 
where all the various uses 
areia and then you're going to start 
feeding it various uh chromatic uh or 
ooze type beverages or Foods uh to kind 
of help grow your your chromatic ooze 
inside the terrarium there was a lot of 
thought that went into each one of these 
of what if someone really was going to 
make this legendary what exactly in our 
world would they have to go out and 
build and what little components should 
they put together and this one you know 
like Mike said because of that chromatic 
feel that it adds it's like well ooze 
clearly somebody stuffed a whole bunch 
of ooze into this hammer and that's how 
this whole thing works obviously I I 
mean it was everybody knows that but 
this here we are now able to do the same 
thing ourselves but you know really I've 
gone through some of the testing of the 
other legendaries that I'm not going to 
tell about right now but that was the 
thing that struck me is how much 
preparation and how much planning went 
into making these fit each legendary and 
it works so well yeah this was a lot of 
work from the rewards guys and and they 
they really put put their heads together 
they came up with what the initial 
Paradigm of what we wanted to do 
legendary journey moving forward and 
we're talking about a weapon here today 
but this is exactly like what we're 
doing moving forward with pretty much 
every legendary that we're doing um so 
like we talked a little bit briefly uh 
about fractals back in the uh couple 
months ago or a month ago now about how 
there's going to be a legendary backpack 
there and it's going to fit a very 
similar Paradigm of you're going through 
this journey you're going to have 
multiple things happening in different 
Collections and different tiers and kind 
of give people kind of check boxes that 
they can say okay today I'm done this um 
and give you your kind of um smaller 
goals to accomplish something big like 
you know a precursor and the legendary 
after it I think just a kicking off 
point too you know of like it's so 
daunting to think about how to go about 
this entire process Uh current you know 
currently in game until the system 
arrives it's a lot it's it's it's a huge 
read through of Wiki Pages buried in 
Wiki pages with more Wiki pages and 
those Wiki pages are amazing shout out 
to whoever put those together also to 
the app the legendary guide app is 
amazing as well um but you know having 
this in game where it's exposed to 
players where they can open up their 
achievement panel and see all of this 
learn it through a Mastery line uh and 
be able to say okay now I know all the 
things that I need to do just to get 
started on this thing that sounds cool 
wow a legendary journey uh I think 
that's a huge addition for us as well 
the percentage of people who are aware 
of what you needed to do to move all the 
way through this process uh I think it 
was very small in the grand scheme of 
Guild Wars 2 players and we're really 
hoping having a system like this will 
allow a lot more people to feel like a 
legendary is a goal they can achieve and 
they have a clear path to get there uh 
and that path involves oo for this one 
yep you can absolutely do it and it's 
it's going to be a little clearer it's 
going to be a lot clearer yeah so can we 
get a peek at what else we have to do on 
this collection yeah I'm I'm like 
pushing for spoilers here but I'm not 
even a little bit sorry so uh the final 
step after you've kind of fed up your 
chromatic goes you're actually going to 
be kind of coding yourself with it and 
then you're going to go take various uh 
damage from places around the world like 
the one I'm highlighted right now is 
going into the lava in the heart of 
Mount melstrom uh and wall coage you 
know if you want to dance in the lava so 
to speak um but it's again kind of 
training your ooze to be able to you uh 
take this damage weather this damage so 
that when you actually Infuse your final 
legendary weapon it's something that 
will be there uh with you the entire 
time I feel is like working out do you 
want to give some of the examples us 
some of the things that you do with 
specifically in in that collection with 
some of them there's like a there's a 
falling damage one right or you actually 
have to jump off of a high place with 
your ooze I believe that is right yeah 
that is a weird thing to say I just want 
to point out that jump off of a high 
thing with your ooze is maybe something 
nobody's ever said before well your ooze 
might be afraid of heights and for it to 
fit into your legendary weapon it has to 
conquer that fear get over that what 
what other fears yeah so like you talk 
about lasers from Spec's laboratory from 
the jumping puzzle um there's the one 
here's the one uh falling for 10 seconds 
without touching the ground uh you know 
it's all sorts of things that we're just 
going to allow our players to kind of 
have fun with and help uh kind of train 
their ooze how to train your ooze uh as 
this journey goes 
on uh yeah so like some of it's going to 
come from various fights like the Risen 
ore uh priest uh some of it's going to 
come from environmental damage some of 
it's going to come from experimentation 
y uh and and then uh finally it's just 
purchasing the uh the the Juggernaut 
volume 3 from Hobs our Craftsman here 
who will actually kind of bring this all 
together uh and that again will finish 
off your collection which then allows 
you to kind of go to 
um over to your weapon smithing 
stations and now there's a new section 
in here as I go hide all this for 
legendary components so like the 
Colossus for the first tier actually has 
an Essence that comes from colle from 
finishing the the first collection and 
you will Al also get this uh from 
salvaging your precursor as you're 
upgrading it cuz it's actually you're 
building one and then you're going to go 
do the collection you're going to 
salvage your initial precursor that or 
tier one precursor oh that's going to 
hurt yep use that as a component for 
your tier 2 one and carry that in as 
you're going from tier to tier until you 
actually build your your full legendary 
so it's it's basically just taking your 
first weapon and making it cooler and 
adding more things to it and ultimately 
adding the like the Ooze aspect of it in 
that final step that brings it into the 
legendary and kind of ties everything a 
thematically together and this is this 
is a good time to point out too that 
actually not just you know Lindsay and 
Andy on the reward team played a huge 
part in building this but it's taken a 
long time for them to put this whole 
thing together uh this was a lot of work 
for the art team as well because they 
ended up going back and making a unique 
skin for every single tier of precursor 
weapon so tier one unlocks a tier you 
Salvage that to get a second tier 
precursor to get a third tier and then 
you've got your precursor 
um and then there's new art for the 
precursors as well as part of all of 
this so there's a ton of new artwork and 
all these different weapons that you can 
unlock for uh for your wardrobe um and 
multiply that times every legendary and 
new legendaries in the jungle work 
yes uh so yeah some of this is going to 
be actual going in and crafting using uh 
like shards of Glory uh that you earn 
through PVP Roar track and daes cuz 
again we still wanted to have the 
elements of going and doing you know 
bringing more elements of Guild Wars to 
from like PVP PVE World versus World and 
kind of bringing it all together so you 
are proving that you have Mastery over 
the entire aspect of the 
game and again it's not being able to 
excel at these things but just go in 
there participate get some rewards have 
kind of those tracks that you're kind of 
working towards and just doing them and 
those goals and Mike you can do this for 
one for every precursor in the game 
correct you're not limited to having to 
pick one specific precursor y right uh 
basically going back to our initial our 
vendor will allow you to purchase 
whichever one you want to start with uh 
if you want to you could work on 
multiple these at a time and go through 
any of them or as many of them as you 
want just try them all at once if you're 
feeling incredibly ambitious and you 
don't like sleep so I do want to mention 
something that I think you and I talked 
about it's been like a year but we 
talked about mudrey and how that was 
that helped us figure out how all of 
this works yeah you know uh I'll I'll uh 
I'll first say I stuck my foot in my 
mouth on this one a couple years ago uh 
and yeah we published a Blog saying this 
is these are the next big steps for 
Guild Wars 2 uh and just about 
everything in that blog you know we 
ended up doing in that year uh this was 
one of the things where at the time our 
plan was to add a system to the game 
that allowed you to acquire a precursor 
weapon um and to make that much easier 
to do uh and as we designed and and kind 
of started building out the system that 
we originally planed to have we just 
didn't love it it didn't feel legendary 
it didn't feel cool um and this concept 
of collection was born out of a lot of 
those discussions uh of what can we do 
to truly have epic Legendary Journeys in 
a game that doesn't have quests you know 
we don't other than your personal story 
or Living World there isn't really a 
traditional Quest system um so we don't 
have the the big give you this step and 
then this step and then this step uh and 
collections were born out of that uh but 
we really needed to do some test runs to 
see is this going to be successful um 
what is it going to feel like to break 
up a big epic journey into a bunch of 
Min steps in a collection uh and Madre 
was definitely a big experiment for us 
to to see what that's like uh I think 
the uh the the skins and silver waste 
also to build out your armor set man uh 
that was another time for us to test and 
iterate on this uh and everything we've 
learned from that and all the great 
feedback we've got from all of you guys 
uh about those collections allowed us to 
build this system out uh and really get 
this right uh and and have something I 
think people are really going to enjoy 
you know I don't think that so much 
sticking your foot in your mouth is as 
this is game development and we had high 
standards for this and we got there and 
thought okay we we can do better yeah I 
mean that's that's the tough part of 
saying anything about like hey here's 
the next thing this is something that 
we're we're going to deliver something 
that we're working on uh is you you 
definitely run to this point of sometime 
in development sometimes weeks before 
it's supposed to be done you might 
realize this thing isn't working we need 
to throw it out and do it all over again 
and that's happened before we we've 
built entire systems that we've 
completely thrown out and said this is 
not the right thing for the game let's 
do something different are you telling 
me everything does not go exactly as 
planned and we can't tell the future 
would be amazing that is outrageous that 
it doesn't work like that I I think one 
of the things I'm most proud about about 
this expansion and features like this um 
is I think a lot of time of the first 
couple years of Guild Wars I A lot of it 
was experiments it was a chance for us 
to really we were trying to figure out 
what a live game in this world could be 
um what systems we really want to use to 
grow and expand the game um you know we 
did things like um we put in the 
antitoxin spray as a new way to buy 
skills for spending uh you know the old 
skill point system uh and it just wasn't 
that cool it didn't it didn't feel like 
a meaningful way to add skills and 
traits to the game we added some new 
traits and the new system that let you 
go out in the world and gather traits 
and it just wasn't that cool it it 
didn't feel like a true meaningful 
system for how we allow those parts of 
the game to progress uh and I would say 
what I love most about this expansion 
and this feature in particular is 
indicative of this is everything that we 
have here our systems that we believe 
fundamentally are exactly where we want 
to go with the game in the future and we 
don't have to do anything else with any 
of these we we really have a clear path 
that in the future all we're going to do 
is add to these you know we're going to 
add new legendaries using this system um 
we're going to add new skills and traits 
using the elite specialization system um 
progression for PVE in the form of 
masteries PVP leaks is a form of 
competition for PVP all of these systems 
really are you know they're they work 
for the goals that we have and it means 
that we don't have to spend any more 
time trying to figure out exactly what 
the live experience for Guild Wars I 
should be we know exactly what all of it 
is and now we just can build on it and I 
I think for our players who've been on 
this three-year Journey along with us I 
think that's probably really heartening 
for 
really exting for them to hear as well 
because I think we've definitely heard 
that feedback of like hey figured out 
what are we going to do uh and we 
recognize that and we agree um but I 
think sometimes you have to fail to 
succeed uh and you have to stand up and 
cheer when you fail and say look at all 
these awesome things we learned that's 
how we're going to do great in the 
future yeah and that's how we keep 
making it better and better and bringing 
really really cool things to the game 
and that's how amazing shows like guilt 
chat are boring as well is that was 
smooth thank you yes we we iterate and 
grow and now how many episodes in 2 days 
I have lost track i' I think we're on 
like seven so it's a lot but really it's 
all kind of a blur 
today but seriously that was really good 
can I bring this all back this is all 
stuff that players going to be able to 
get 
into you know in October 23rd when the 
when har Thor launches everyone's going 
to have access to the system this is all 
part of like things that players will be 
able to do within the game um and just 
one more kind of bonus reward or 
progression system that we now have that 
players can actually work towards these 
these epic moments and and we know that 
one thing you guys are all really 
excited about finding more more about 
are the new legendaries as well uh and 
that is something that you everyone has 
to look forward to sometime between now 
and the launch of the expans sometime 
between now and launch uh Lindsay and I 
are going to do a legendary weapon live 
stream we have promised this for so long 
and Lindsay and I have been working 
together on this since I think last 
March when she wrote that blog post we 
have been trying to make this happen and 
that's like you said game development 
things happen and we pull it back and 
the teams behind the scenes have been 
working on this for so long we are just 
about ready to show so yeah before Heart 
Of Thorns launches in 27 days Lindsay 
and I will be on Guild chat together and 
we were going to show off a new 
legendary weapon and some of the 
collection pieces I think uh one one 
really cool thing about the new 
legendaries too and the new precursors 
uh is all of them are a count bound y uh 
and I'll say if I could go back in time 
and change some you know something about 
the reward system one of the things I 
would love for us to do is if all of the 
legendaries had been a countown from the 
start um cuz I think to truly have an 
Epic Journey it should feel like you did 
all the you did most of it yourself 
right this is mine this is the thing 
that I got I created and we we felt like 
we're at a point we just can't go back 
and do that with the existing ones 
there's too much there's too much 
baggage coming along with that there's 
too many of them for sale in the trading 
post to try to fix that uh but every new 
legendary in the game uh and not just 
legendary weapons but you know the 
backpacks that you talked about Mike uh 
legendary armor uh via raids uh all of 
that legendary content uh is account 
bound so you have to play the content 
you you get to play the content and go 
on these epic Journeys uh and if 
somebody is wearing uh any of that gear 
if they have that legendary weapon if 
they have that precursor you know they 
actually went and did it you know they 
personally accomplished that goal uh and 
I think that means the new legendaries 
are going to have an additional uh tier 
of prestige probably over even the 
existing ones today making it worth it 
yeah which means you have to go get them 
all now I do yeah 
all right thank you guys so much for 
showing this off thank you guys for 
spending some time with us and we will 
see you on the next Guild 
chat e
External links[edit]

Guild Chat, episode 12: @TwitchCon, Legendary Journey on ArenaNet's official channel on YouTube
Guild Chat - Episode 12

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