With the impending doom of glory, what does the Scrying Pool suggest to using it on?

In each article of The Scrying Pool, I look at what is and what could be. After taking a look at what is present in Guild Wars 2 now, be that lore or game mechanics, I then ask What If? What if this happened in the lore or this feature was added in a future patch.

The March 18^th patch, in a little over two weeks, is just a maintenance patch. It is not the big feature patch that is coming and will not include the balance or sigil/rune changes. The only announced inclusion in this patch is that Glory will no longer be earned in PvP, that PvP armor and weapon skins can no longer be obtained and PvP crafting is being removed. Glory itself is not actually being removed, just no longer obtainable, as existing glory can still be used to buy a few select items.

Since the announcement that glory is being removed on the March 18^th maintenance patch, I have frequently seen comments asking what glory should be spent on. Many suggestions point to the inventory bags and Tomes of Knowledge (a consumable item that gives a full level to the character). I, on the other hand, have been spending all my glory trying to obtain one of each of the PvP armor and weapon skins.

Almost a year ago now, I wrote The Scrying Pool: Transmutation Woes. To sum it up, I suggested a PvE locker-esque system where players would unlock skins in the locker by using a high end transmutation stone. Players would then be able to use the cheaper transmutation stones to ‘buy’ an unlimited number of these skins out of the locker. These skins would then work like other skin consumable items that changes the appearance of the item without the need of a transmutation stone.

I said this would be good for the game for a few reasons. I don’t see many people using transmutation stones (which is a shame for players and a loss of cash shop funds for ArenaNet), the current level 1-79 transmutation stones are useless for many players who have all level 80 characters and players wanted a place to store their appearances, especially unique items such as Living World meta-rewards and gem store purchases.

ArenaNet has already announced that there will one day be a PvE/PvP skin merge (what I have personally just been calling ‘The Merge’) where players will keep their armor and weapon appearances in all parts of the game. When The Merge happens, the question arises of what happens to the PvP locker. Again, ArenaNet had commented that filling up the PvP locker would be beneficial to players.

So why am I spending all my glory on obtaining the PvP armor and weapon skins? I am trying to fill out my locker as much as possible (which at my current rank of only 29 isn’t much) with the thought that I might bypass the pay to unlock feature of the locker. If ArenaNet does frontload the PvX locker by needing to use transmutation stones to unlock the skins in the locker, I think the beneficial part that ArenaNet is talking about is that any PvP skins already in the locker will be unlocked for free. So every skin I have in there now is a skin I didn’t have to pay to be put in there.

Is this 100% how this is going to turn out? No, this is just another Scrying Pool what if that I personally would like to see. With this system the players get the locker that they want while ArenaNet still gets a cosmetic cash shop pathway. This would also make cash shop gear more appealing to players as they would be unlocked immediately without needing to pay more for a transmutation stone.

Then after skins are unlocked (something that not everyone needs to do if they don’t want to spend the money on it) players can more freely change their appearance using the readily available 1-79 transmutation stones. This gives a use to players who wouldn’t have had a use for the lower level transmutation stones previously. If a player needs more, they can easily farm them by map completing the racial cities much like how some players currently farm Black Lion chest keys or just spend gems to buy more from the gem store.

That is why I am spending my glory on PvP gear, but also because I like seeing the locker slowly fill up.

Matt "Mattsta" Adams can't wait for the season 1 finale!

I want to thank everyone who submitted questions for the Community Q&As covering these last few patcches. The dev answers for the last of these Q&As will come out on Tuesday morning before the last patch of season 1 goes live. It was a lot of fun do these Q&As and see the questions that the community was coming up with.

If you have a question for me or a topic you would like to see talked about here, leave a comment below. You can also tweet your question and topics or follow me on twitter @MattstaNinja.