Guild Wars 2 reveals transforming, animated legendary armor

MMOs live and die on their endgame content. And a large part of that is the rewards players receive for braving the most challenging of encounters. Guild Wars 2 is taking those rewards to a new level however. In a blog post, ArenaNet raid producer Paul Ella gave players a sneak peek at the heavy legendary armor set coming to Guild Wars 2.He describes the team wanting to create the ultimate reward for the challenging raid content released with the Heart of Thorns expansion, "How could we make it the most spectacular armor in the game? We toyed with a lot of different ideas, different textures, different effects, and different skins, but deep down I think we always knew what we really wanted to do. We wanted an armor that would alter its appearance when you entered combat—animated armor!"

• Kim Phifer
• October 20, 2016
• in Gaming

MMOs live and die on their endgame content. And a large part of that is the rewards players receive for braving the most challenging of encounters. Guild Wars 2 is taking those rewards to a new level however. In a blog post, ArenaNet raid producer Paul Ella gave players a sneak peek at the heavy legendary armor set coming to Guild Wars 2.

He describes the team wanting to create the ultimate reward for the challenging raid content released with the Heart of Thorns expansion, “How could we make it the most spectacular armor in the game? We toyed with a lot of different ideas, different textures, different effects, and different skins, but deep down I think we always knew what we really wanted to do. We wanted an armor that would alter its appearance when you entered combat—animated armor!”

The wording of the article might dash player hopes of having cultural race-locked legendary armors, but an animated set that changes when you draw your weapon is probably beyond what anyone was expecting. Since ArenaNet slowed work on future legendary weapons, it’s apparent that they were thinking of new ways to wow their audience with new effects. The effects on a legendary weapon mixed with particle effects on an armor set would probably just turn the character into a walking disco ball, but animated armor with beautiful particle effects on the weapon could make for a dynamic, awe-inspiring character.

It’s clear that ArenaNet plans on making their raids a more important part of gameplay in the future, as it’s most likely very important for getting the legendary armor sets.

The Guild Wars 2 team hasn’t given a release date for the new content, other than a “We remain hard at work, and release is still some months off.”, which parallel’s the game’s original “when it’s ready” philosophy.