Two minds about First Ward

i21.5 is on Beta and open to all VIPs.

Ah. Before I asked, I attempted to log into one of the Beta servers (marked VIP) and was not allowed. I have now confirmed I am able to log into the other.

I just finished the First Ward arc, and I thought it was absolutely amazing. I do agree it ends kind of abruptly, but I understand why they won't just tie everything up if it's expected that they are going to continue with this storyline. I'm now curious if I can take my Preatorian character all the way to 50 without ever having to step foot in Paragon City or the Rogue Isle's.

The ambushes and NPC dialogue don't always blend well together, and I wish that the timing between one and the other was handled better. I'm a very quick reader, so I don't usually have a problem with it, but I know my step father is going to be raising a fit when he starts doing this content and is trying to read dialogue happening across the map while angry snake ladies are bearing down on him.

Now, as far as ambushes in isolation go, I really do approve. Maybe I'd sing a different tune if I wasn't a Dual Blade/Willpower Brute, but I feel like it really kept the action flowing in that it randomly spiked up the difficulty. The vanilla game, by contrast, is always completely at my control, with spawns being perfectly content with just standing around, staring at cave patterns until I decide to come turn them into exp. First Ward was fast, exciting, and not always fair. I loved that. It gave me the impression that my enemies were actually the ruthless, anger driven monsters that were being described to me.


I really liked how they continued to incorporate previous characters into my missions. One of the problems I experience with the vanilla game is that contacts come and go so quickly that they don't seem like they really matter. They are basically just a voice box to point me at my next objective, and don't typically have any lasting, defining characteristic that will help me remember them. Not *all* of them, mind you, a good handful of the missions in City of Heroes and even more in City of Villains are really well done and quite memorable. A lot of the earlier missions, however, are very uninspired, I feel.

First Ward, and Going Rogue in general, actually feels like it has a 'cast' of characters with their own personalities, plots, and relevance. I'm actually going to *remember* the characters in First Ward and the crap we went through together. There's villains who I actually have a reason to dislike beyond them just being evil, and angry, and in my mission so I have to kill them. A re-occuring cast is definitely a good thing, and something I wish the rest of the game utilized more often.

Now to completely contradict myself; I did occasionally feel like some stories were dropped prematurely. For instance, I really liked my role in the Survivor's Camp, and how I brought Palatine into power, but it felt like I just sort of abandoned everyone as soon as it was time figure out what the Apparitions where. Maybe it would have caused a sense of character overload, but I would have liked it if I had more missions where I was working with the compound and Palatine again. I kind of felt like it was going to pick up with them again when one of the crazed Seers recognized my connection to Anna (stopped in my tracks at that point), but was quickly disappointed that nothing came out of that. I even felt kind of awkward asking Noble Savage to risk his life during the PPD raid since I hadn't actually talked to him in so long.


I do kind of agree with Sam about the back story of First Ward needing fleshed out more. I feel like I got more information reading about it on Paragonwiki than I did in the actual game. I can't decide if they're being purposefully discreet about it because they plan to reveal more about it in future arcs, or if they're just leaving it less detailed for the feeling of 'mysticism'. Either way, there's a lot of loose ends floating around in the zone that I want fleshed out, and the zone is definitely done well enough that it deserve fleshing out.


Either way, I *really* liked the story and all the little gameplay elements involved with it. I daresay that it might even be my favorite series of arcs in the game, but perhaps I'm still all giddy with excitement from having just completed it. I am a little bummed that this character has to basically sit around until they finish whatever follows this story segment--I really wanted to get him involved in some of the Halloween stuff. On the bright side, at least I have plenty of time to get all the day-job badges there~

I know a few people here have mentioned it, but is there really anything villainous to do in First Ward? Now lets not muddy the discussion with the "definition" of villainous, because we have an entire game that does ok with it. So far, I have broken the neck of one idiot D.U.S.T. officer all the while saving this person and rescuing that person. As it has been said, why am I here again? Seriously, as a level 20+ I am not yet privy to the bigger picture, so I am still out for self. The villain I have is disgusted by by making friends and that's all I seem to be doing, it's ridiculous!

Well, you get to do some very morally questionable things later on, in the name of the Greater Good and/or self-preservation. (Much to my hero's distress.) Is that enough for ya?