The trouble with wards

You thought I was going to say something tribble-related, didn’t you? Well, I didn’t. So nyah. Anyhow, on to the topic at hand. Syp over at WAAAGH! has a debate-provoking post up this morning about WAR’s end-game ward system that I wanted to discuss briefly.

Now, I’m no expert on WAR’s PvE endgame (yet) — I’ve only just hit rank 40 on my Warrior Priest and I’ve only run Bastion Stair a handful of times, and Sigmar’s Crypts and the Warpblade Tunnels once each. So take this with a grain of salt.

Syp’s main point can be boiled down to this:

The impression I get is that the artists are more than happy to show off how cool the gear looks without telling you it’s absolutely necessary to get it if you don’t want to be sitting at the kiddy table for all of your character’s end game life.

First off, World of Warcraft was guilty of this crime in a much more severe fashion, from my experience. Not only did you have to have the right gear to get into each progressive end-game dungeon, you needed to work your way through related epic quests at the same time that required large groups or raids to complete. That was one of the main reasons I quit playing WoW. I don’t think we’re in quite the same boat with WAR, where so far much of the end-game gear is attainable either through scenarios/open RvR or is 6-mannable in a PvE dungeon. Getting a single group together is MUCH easier than organizing a 25 (or previously 40) person raid, repeatedly.

I’m of two minds on Mythic’s ward system — while I don’t mind a post-40 progression, I think I’d prefer to see at least one set fully accessible in PvE and one in RvR/PvP, but accessible. Hell, have you looked at the requirements on the Sovereign set? Renown rank 73-80 AND only drops in contested Cities… good luck with that, and it’s not even a PvE drop. Gated gear progressions are pretty typical in MMO design because once you hit the level cap… well, what else is there to do but grind some more?

As Syp points out, the casual WAR player is blissfully unaware of the ward system if they strictly play the game through to rank 40, questing and running scenarios without a mind to message forums or the Warhammer Herald’s sporadic mentions of how wards work. That’s not good game design. If you’re going to require people to attain specific types of gear to complete these end-game PvE dungeons, you’re going to have to tell them about it in the game, and not via outside, real-world sources. If you’re trying to create an immersive experience, you’re failing miserably if you require people to leave the game to figure out what to do next. As it stands, the general non-40 WAR populace is woefully uneducated as to what wards are and how they work unless they’re constantly listening to their rank 40 guildmates discuss it in guild chat (check!) — that’s a pretty strong indication that the system is flawed before it even gets out of the gate.

As far as armor set drops go, there’s generally one set of warded gear that can be found in PvE (for lesser wards, the Bloodlord set drops in Bastion Stair, and for greater, Sentinel drops in Warpblade/Crypts), and one set that drops in RvR/PvP (Annihilator drops in keeps and scenarios, with a piece purchasable at renown vendors, and requires renown rank 31-35; Conqueror is the same but requires renown rank 40-45 to wear), throughout the entire set progression. But the PvE sets are MUCH more accessible because they just require brute-force farming of dungeons, and not a minimum renown rank. Bastion Stair is easily doable without any wards, though it’s nice to have some on your main tank if possible for the tougher wings. I’ve heard of people in their mid-late 30s duoing the early BS bosses so you should be able to do it without any trouble (and pick up some Bloodlord pieces.)

Of course, you have to deal with the 1-3 day lockout between PvE dungeon runs, which I find artificial and somewhat annoying, but at least you can still work at it without too much trouble if you start at the beginning and work your way up. As Ferrel at Epic Slant points out, it’s a lot more fun to run a dungeon once every 3 days and pick up something you need each time, rather than running it once a day and getting nothing. If you’re a tank, you’re in for a long haul; you’ll be expected to have 4-5 of each ward type for the next stage in the dungeon tiers. At this point, finding groups for Bastion Stair is becoming difficult (now that the bulk of 40s are trying to farm Sentinel gear in the Crypts and Warpblade Tunnels so that they can do Lost Vale), so you had better hope that your guild will be able to help you farm. If you have luck like mine, you have a bunch of overlapping pieces instead of a spread across all of your gear slots. Not great, seeing as you can’t wear two sets of gloves and two sets of boots at once. And if you get stuck too far behind the gear curve, good luck… still, though, it’s not as bad as the epic dungeon progression in other games.

The PvP sets are much tougher to attain and to wear, from my perspective. I can’t just get a group organized and run a dungeon. I have to take keeps and win Keep Lord public quest rolls, which takes a lot more people and luck respectively (especially since contribution is still broken in RvR.) After that, even if I do happen to win a piece of Annihilator or Conqueror gear, I can’t wear it until I’ve attained the appropriate realm rank AND level. And if I luck out and complete my influence bars in the RvR lakes, the gear I get, as awesome as it seems, is of no use in running these dungeons. Without wards, you’re reduced to wearing one of two sets at whatever renown rank range you’re in, and anything else is basically worthless.

Thankfully, though, at least the PvP sets grant wards as well. It could be like WoW used to be, where to PvP successfully you needed to have epic sets of PvE gear, and to run the end-game dungeons at all you needed to PvE like a maniac. There was no way to gain gear in PvP that would allow you to progress up the chain and avoid PvE at all.

As a stopgap measure, assuming Mythic can’t find some other way to improve the system, I’d like to see some intermediary sets at higher renown ranks; after Annihilator, let’s say. Right now the PvP sets have a 4-5 renown rank range to use their individual pieces, and then another 5-6 rank gap in between the highest set piece’s requirement and the next set’s lowest piece’s requirement. Especially once you get past renown rank 40 (and imagine post-70!), that’s a long wait.

What else can Mythic do to improve the system? I think they’ve done a passable job in keeping folks entertained and grinding post-40, but they’re definitely going to need to tweak the end-game content and gear to keep the masses happy. Oh, and nerf witch elves. :)