Clarification Regarding Craftable Weapons (including a list of those excluded from the forge)

[Jonathan]

@Smash

Just disappointed

Yeah, me too .

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@Saltypatra Two questions!

Q1. Can we assume the Urskayan Crown weapon will receive the same treatment as War and Peace, being obtained from quests in Urskaya?

Q2. Did anything change between the Dev Q&A with Sirrian and Nimhain and now?

** Long context section **

They seemed to think weapons like the

@Saltypatra

Celestial Staff (Whitehelm)

would be appearing in the Soulforge, and made a special note of it as the only Ultra-Rare, which would have the same crafting cost as any Epic weapons that might appear. Sirrian also said he had just been working on it on Sunday (a few days earlier).

Transcript (25:26):

"Sirrian: They [event weapons] cost a little bit more, than the current weapons in there cost - 25% more or so. We’re talking in the region of 400, 500 diamonds on the old Event Weapons in there - for Legendaries; I think the Epic ones are cheaper if we have any Epics - I believe there is one Ultra-Rare Event weapon, too.

Nimhain: One, the Celestial Staff - which we did for Whitehelm a very, very long time ago, when-

S: It’ll cost the same as an Epic.

N: Yeah."

This seems to contradict:

@Saltypatra

Please be aware that we never intended to make weapons that were purchasable in the 4.99 packs available for free, or with crafting resources.

Adding other bits and pieces to the story:

@Sirrian

There will be both free and paid options to get all old Event Weapons.

Dev Q&A (in response to the prepared talking point, “What’s going on with old Event Weapons?”) (22:28):

"S: We had trouble finding a good solution -

N: Which was fair for everyone involved.

S: Yes. And- as you know, some of these old Event Weapons were promised exclusively- at the time, we said, you know ‘Get these this week only for Glory’, and- do we wanna put them back in for Glory? That would… be… nice, but, it wasn’t really- I still don’t feel we can do that because we said it was this week only for Glory, in those- I like to keep our word on that, so, much as… a lot of people wanted them back in for Glory, couldn’t add them for Glory. We don’t want to only add them for dollars, either. We want you to be able to get them for free [Nim echoing], because I don’t like locking any of the actual game content away for free[?]; that’s something we try never to do - lock content behind paywalls - apart from Deathknight Armor, it’s just a series of bonuses, you know, we have to have one thing. Gotta give us one (cheeky grin). Uh, but- the actual game, content, we don’t like locking away behind paywalls."
[…]
So I think we have come up with a plan, now, and it’s rolling out - this week! So you’ll be able to get old event weapons as of next week- as of next Monday, that will start."

After watching or reading that, I don’t think this is an unreasonable response:

@EliteMasterEric

I, like almost everyone else, interpreted the statement differently when it was made on stream.

Despite some of the occasions where Sirrian didn’t remember particular game details, I feel fairly confident (and of course, I could be wrong - but that’s why I’m asking this) that Sirrian knows the game well enough to be able to distinguish between Raid, Invasion and ToD weapons, which we currently buy for Gems, as always, and the older Event weapons listed above, which were offered for Glory.

So - just re-iterating the question - did something change between the Q&A stream, or any of these communiqués, and now?

And if something did change, please feel free to just let us know, even if along these lines(!):

@Sirrian

AND a few other spanners, out of our control, flew into the works as we went (more things I can’t discuss as per point 2 up top - nothing sneaky, bad, or nefarious though, I promise).

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@Fourdottwoone

If a weapon has been purchasable in the past in a 4.99 weapon bundle, you won’t be able to craft it with free resources.

Could you please also clarify what happens if you decide to make any of the weapons currently not on the excluded list available for sale in a shop bundle, e.,g. due to popular demand? Reading the above very carefully, would it be correct to assume this would cause such a weapon to get permanently locked behind your paywall?

E.g. Divine Protector (I like being up-front about these things… ).

Given this list of weapons offered for 4.99 won’t be available to craft in the interest of fairness to those who had to pay, or because it wouldn’t be appropriate, Divine Protector should realistically be unavailable for crafting in a Whitehelm event week; or the players who bought it should be compensated, or have reason to be upset.

Salty did say she didn’t like to talk in absolutes; at the same time, though, if the reason for paywalling the listed weapons is an appeal to the value of fairness, we kind of already are (talking in absolutes) .

I don’t think only being offered once, compared to multiple times for weapons on the list, sufficiently differentiates it (Divine Protector).

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@Amadan

This positively reeks of a retroactive decision to justify the awful RNG-selected day 1 weapon for this feature and/or the immediate highlighting of a disastrous flaw in the feature.

Anecdotally, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t, as it was (unintentionally? ) hinted within about an hour of reset that weapons might not always be available from quests in the future.

On the whole, then, I’m fairly sure they really did just want to roll this out ASAP and probably thought it wouldn’t be that big a deal. I think that would have been way more likely to be true if what Slyp mentioned happened - i.e. if it was mentioned/addressed beforehand, or immediately acknowledged.

Tbh, this (unfortunately) kind of resonates with me:

@Fourdottwoone

making mistakes seems to be something that can’t possibly ever happen at IP2