UniChomp Opinion & Solution!

Alright gonna add as a disclaimer that I have not read the whole thread yet and so I apologize if I'm just repeating old arguments.

This is the first I've heard of the Unicorn Chomper being available in any way other than Loyalty Rewards, and I'm sorry, but omg, I hope they do it. I totally get the other side's argument - stick to your word, reward loyal players, all that. Yes. I get it. But this is a character, and character effects rank. I will never hit max rank in GW2 if I do not have the Unicorn Chomper and that is a problem, not only for completion's sake, but look at it this way - so hitting max rank in 1 got you loyalty rewards in 2, right? So what about the possible eventual 3? Hitting max rank in 2 will probably have rewards there - and suddenly you have to have maxed 1 to max 2 to get rewarded in 3, and it's a chain effect that really does sort of punish new fans unfairly. At least the Z7 mech can be purchased through DLC, but there's currently no other way to get Unicorn.

So just play 1, you say! It's not that hard to hit max rank in the 8 or so months you've got left! Well sure, okay, 'hard' is a relative term depending on how much time I have to play and how skilled I am at the game and how busy the GW1 servers are on my platform of choice and etc etc whatever. But this brings up a new issue, and the one that makes me so gosh darn relieved to hear that they might let me get Unicorn another way. My EA account is borked. I play GW2 on Xbox, see, and I played GW1 on PC. Now, apparently at some point in the past I had a different EA account, and linked it to my old 360 and lalala went about my business. Well, that account is not the one I had GW1 on, and it turns out that in order to un-link my old account from my Xbox account and re-connect the Xbox to my new current EA account, it would erase all of my game progress. All of it. On every system. Every game I play that has online connectivity/saves. On both accounts. Everything. I play a lot of EA games. This, to me, is unacceptable (as in I'm not willing to do that, not that I'm like ticked that EA can't change that for me somehow, whatever, technical limitations I get it). So my GW1 rank is currently irrelevant. Barring paying for GW1 again - when I already have it - and starting from scratch on an old account I never use anymore, or giving up GW2 on Xbox and switching to another console losing all the progress I have already made in it, I will not get to benefit from loyalty rewards in GW2. So I will never get Unicorn Chomper and I will never hit max rank in GW2.

I get that this is an edge case and it's possible nobody else will have my problem, but this is where future new players come in, because at some point it will be impossible to earn Unicorn no matter what if you don't already have him. I contend it wouldn't even be a problem if the loyalty reward was not a character whose rank factors into the game's max rank. I see a couple potential solutions for this. 1) Let us all have some way to unlock Unicorn Chomper in GW2. Make it a reward for hitting max possible rank without it sounds good to me - that is going to take a lot of time, dedication, and luck (Legendary stickers anybody?). I get why people feel a little slighted at the idea if they unlocked him through GW1, but let's be honest, he'd still stay pretty rare in this case, because only the most loyal and dedicated players are going to hit that rank. Or, 2) Kill the time limit on loyalty rewards. If I ever hit max rank in 1, I get rewarded in 2. No 'this offer is only valid until 2017'. 'Cause sure, one day I might have the spare change and spare time to go through all the hurdles of buying another copy of 1 and playing all the way up to max, it's possible. Plus this would let any new players have that option, permanently. Lastly, 3) make Unicorn Chomper levels grant no player ranks, so that maximum rank is calculated without the Unicorn factored in. Loyalty players still exclusively get it, but it doesn't give progress towards maximum rank, and nobody is penalized in their rank for not having it.

If either of these is done, especially option #1, then sure, definitely make something loyalty-exclusive. Give them some super-cool customization options - maybe something for every character that no one else will be able to get. Or as I've seen suggested, make the Loyalty Unicorn Chomper the only one with Rainbow Warp, or even make the one that GW2 players unlock look different but count the same when it comes to rank only. But please don't lock everybody out of max rank on 2 if they are for whatever reason unable to achieve it on 1.