I Sing The Praises of First Ward

First: I love First Ward.

Second: I'm glad a played through it with a Praetorian, because I was invested in reaching the resolution. If had been playing a Primal character, I would had run screaming back, Primal about halfway end and start (at least in my head) lobbying for Praetoria to be magically sealed off from Primal Earth. If that can't be done: nuke it to ashes.

Hell, I know a couple of my characters would be looking to join Malta.

Third: It was an emotionally draining experience. I think I am going to hold off repeating it until I roll a new Praetorian so I can take him from Praetoria, to First Ward and then Primal because I don't think Praetoria city and its secrets would send him away screaming, but First Ward, and particularly the fate of the Forlorn, will. That alone was enough to make me queasy.

Still working my way through First Ward arcs... but they're very awesome. I think they do a great job of making you feel like what you're doing actually changes things. Plus, they're just interesting and fun, with interesting enemies.

Working my Praetorian Mastermind through First Ward, originally a loyalist up until the final Responsibility moral choice. Man, the final choices in every arc *really* make you want to switch sides XD Was kind of disappointing since you're working for a particular goal following any specific path and then the final choice turns all that on its ear. But I digress.

I really really love the atmosphere of First Ward. It manages to capture perfectly what it is, a forsaken, destroyed city full of survivors scraping by, nasty things around every corner and, of course, the friggen Seed looming over everything. It's incredibly unsettling hearing the thing groaning overhead, more so to see it drifting by while I'm scurrying around trying to avoid its notice as I do my missions.

The factions and critters are varied and interesting, I like the style for the Carnivals and the Awakened and the Apparitions are a neat visual treat (oh and the Awakened Subjugators are *freaky*!)

I'm liking the story so far. I haven't completed the zone yet, just got the 2nd mission from the blind shamen.

I will have to echo a few comments from previous posters. The story is really well written, but it does feel like I'm being railroaded into avenues that only fit a particular character style. Obviously it can't cater to *everyone*, but since this is a continuation of the Praetorian setting that offered a *lot* of choice with 4 separate storylines you can play 2 ways (being able to 'spy'), it is kind of a stark contrast. It feels kind of like if you were suddenly forced to just do the Crusader storyline regardless of what other branches you were pursuing.

I definitely would have liked to see Alignment matter more. I agree with another poster earlier on that it was kind of surprising that the villain side contact is a member of the Carnival of War and immediately I'm set up to help out the Carnival of Light. I am still working my way through the story but so far after completing so much with the Compound the Carnival folk, War and Light alike, are just kind of relegated to the sideline after the initial friction. Honestly I don't know how often I plan to run this arc if it really just doesn't change regardless of what alignment you're playing as, be it Prime or Praetorian. I mean I guess we could just use the generi-contacts that offer repeatable missions to certain alignments to just screw around, but as was pointed out, there's no way to find them without looking it up on the wiki or just stumbling across them. So far I've managed to find the Generic (Vickers, I think), the Villain (Mr.... Coulard? Probably misspelling. Dude in the zoot suit outside the hospital) and... either the Hero or Loyalist, since my resistance mastermind and rogue blaster couldn't talk to her.

As I said, it does feel kind of odd coming out of normal Praetoria where alignment was pretty important and then just being put on this single track that didn't care about any of it, while continuing the plotlines established by the very thing it ignores.

I wouldn't mind additional arcs being added to the zone, or at least some parts that branch. Like Villains working for the Carnival of War, Loyalists helping with the D.U.S.T., etc.

It did also seem like the Carnival of Light came out of nowhere. I like their flavor and concept, but after running through normal Praetoria where we see so many different aspects of the resistance and loyalists to have an entire group that's pretty radically different (aside from Vanessa showing up as the 1st Res Trainer) show up suddenly. D.U.S.T feel like a logical extension of the PPD and T.E.S.T, whereas the carnivals are just entirely new (Not that that's really so bad given the different nature of First Ward).

Still, it's a pretty cool zone and if this is the quality we can expect from future content then I really am looking forward to it.

Short answer: It's still the mask of Giovani Scaldi. And her parties were often considered "carnivals" do to their scale and... uhh... festive-ness.

Though it does make one wonder about the nature of Giovani Scaldi herself in Praetoria, since she was kind of evil in our world.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow City of Heroes is a game about freedom of expression and variety of experiences far more so than it is about representing any one theme, topic or genre.

My initial guesses would be that since Praetoria is very 'magic light', magicians and the like are more prone to being odd balls and misfits, at least for the lower levels. The higher echelons, it's likely symbolic or actually serves a purpose for the kind of magic they use, like it's a kind of defense against the nastiness around First Ward. Dunno, again just guesses but there are lots of things that would work.

But yeah, a little background would've been nice. We get an explanation for what the DUST are for and what they do, but we're not given an introduction by the Carnival even though they're the ones that initially bring us to First Ward.

Ok, I just got done with the arc, stopped Serene and all that.

Now that I've been through it, I don't really see why everyone is thinking how outright evil it was to plug Katie back into the network. She did revile it, yes, but it was the only way to save her from being taken by the Talons, which I think is a far far worse fate given their psychotic nature. The only other option would have been taking her out of First Ward entirely, but by then she'd have become part of the Talons and... well, you probably would have had to *kill* her to stop her, so I and my character were pretty okay doing the short term 'She'll kill me for this' bit to her than letting her become something she'd hate worse and probably have to be put down.

I think the mission's only fault is just missing one line of dialogue from Vanessa saying "Plug her in, it's the only way to prevent the Talons from taking her" or something. I didn't see it as that unreasonable, and checking her unconscious body beforehand tells you *why* you're doing it, though I could see why to some it would suddenly seem like you're just knocking her in and plugging her back in for no real reason.

And I have to agree it does seem to just kind of stop abruptly, you manage to stop Serene specifically but it doesn't really feel like you've stopped the troubles plaguing First Ward, at least the ones Serene was directly involved in. There definitely feels like there could, and should, be more to do, though I did like how long and involved the arc story was and it wraps up certain character's arcs certainly but by the end I don't really feel like I made any considerable impact, like some other arcs do.