Yep, still playing Guild Wars 2. About 3 months ago, my goals were:

• Play through Icebrood Saga content
• Play through End of Dragons content
• Try some of the new Elite specs
• Work towards completing “Return of” achievements for free Legendary
• Work towards unlocking Skyscale mount
• Work towards unlocking some Legendary gear

As you can see, I have knocked damn near everything off my list.

ArenaNet introducing the “Return of” achievements with a “free” Legendary amulet carrot at the end (plus Legendary weapon precusor in the middle) has to be one of the most genius marketing moves I have seen an MMO developer take. With the stroke of… uh, some achievement code, they instantly made damn near their entire catalog of Living World content relevant again. The immediate impact was to give the general population something to do before the release of the End of Dragons expansion. But for someone like me, it also generated a means of incremental, meaningful progress that weren’t daily quests.

Plus, it kinda forced me to shell out $10 buying the Living World episodes I missed over the years.

The question is “what now?” I have completed End of Dragons content – and the original story conclusion, 10 years late – so there isn’t really anything left in the plot department. Ostensibly, my goals included unlocking some additional Legendary gear. The options I have been looking at include:

• Weapon (Axe)
• Backpiece (PvP)
• Accessory (Vision)
• Accessory (Aurora)

Of those, the Backpiece has been an interesting consideration. There are three different pathways to a Legendary Backpiece: PvE (Fractals), PvP, and WvW. Right from the get-go, WvW is out – it would take an absurd amount of time just sitting in WvW to accomplish anything. Conversely, PvP is achievable from just about anyone, as none of the requirements involve being particularly successful, e.g. top ranks. The roadblock I have with PvP at the moment though is that you need to complete 50 matches before you unlock the ability to queue into Ranked matches, which the achievements revolve around. It shouldn’t necessary be a “roadblock” for someone who enjoys the experience, but… well, let’s just say I am still figuring that out.

Unlocking the Backpiece via Fractals would perhaps be the most preferred method, but I have not been super successful in finding groups for that. Indeed, I only just recently went into my first Strike Mission, which are sort of mini-raids with just a single boss. It probably does not help that I only play late in the evenings. While the general consensus is to just start your own groups and see what happens, I am not necessarily that committed to the endeavor.

As for the accessories… sigh. To unlock Aurora, you first need to complete a collection achievement for four different items across Season 3 Living World episodes. Just one of those involves finding forty (40!) tokens across a map, some of which are hidden in the infamous Chalice of Tears jumping puzzle. Just look at this Wiki page. That’s just ONE piece. Of four. Then you have to charge the final product up at 21 other locations around the world. Then combine that charged up product with three other collections of materials, which are themselves collections of other materials. The whole thing is rather ridiculous when laid out all at once.

Of course, continuing to play GW2 at all might be considered rather ridiculous.

We’ll see what happens. I am making some headway in other games, and I can see further progress on the horizon if/when I free up extra time by putting GW2 on the backburner/on ice. The tricky part will be actually doing that. It’s seductively easy to log in, collect some easy rewards on each of the characters, and then log off. But before then, oh hey, this meta event is going on, let me just get those rewards. And now I just have an hour left to play “real” games. It’s a rough life, I know.