AdventureQuest Worlds Main Criticism: Too Many Armors, Too Soon?

Note: For everyone thinking my posts on AQWorlds have been too overly negative/critical, take heart, soon after this post I will be posting another one, except with the game’s main compliment being the highlight. 🙂From my thorough and detailed analysis of AdventureQuest Worlds, I have identified multiple weaknesses the game currently possesses. Now, these weaknesses must be expected for a game this young in development, but one stood out as becoming a potential problem in the game’s future, and is currently already an issue affecting the game. If the title didn’t give it away, my main criticism of AQWorlds at this point is the pure fact that there are way too many armors currently available at this stage of the game. And when I say way too many, I mean WAY TOO FRIKIN’ MANY. Not a few more than there should be, 15-20 MORE than what there should be.

Now, I’m sure your first thought when reading this is something like: “Well, having so many armors so soon is a sign of the game’s fast development and is a signal of continuous progression of the game’s core progression. Having so many options for armors allows for increased customization and personalization.” Or you might also think: “Wow, TPM is such an idiot. Why the heck I am reading this anyway?” Regardless of you reaction, allow me to explain myself.

Any avid player of AQW would know that to master (or even close to master) any armor in the game, it takes some long, dedicated, and determined farming. Now, there’s nothing wrong with that, in the sense that it should indeed take a while to master an armor’s skills. And that would be perfectly fine if there were only 5-8 or so armors in the game. But there’s 23. 23. TWENTY-THREE. And we just got out of beta. Having 23 armors this early in a game’s development in a situation where making an armor matter takes so long is just way too many, and I see that as a huge problem.

Let’s say a new player starts by choosing the mage class, thinking that will become their main armor. They go and play the game and spend a good amount of time leveling their mage armor as high as they can, maybe even to a respectable rank. But then all of a sudden they decide to upgrade their account and stumbles upon the Sorcerer armor, a cooler-looking version of the Mage. Of course, the player wants to change, but now he/she has to start from page one all over again. So then the player plays some more and he/she finds the Pirate armor. Of course, this player loves pirates and now wants to make the Pirate armor his/her main armor. But now the player has to start from the beginning again. Then the player stumbles upon the Beast Warrior armor, which just happens to appeal to him/her and now the player wants to make that THE armor to be his/her main one. See where I’m getting at?

There are SO many options and SO many armors and it takes SO long to level up the armors, it just doesn’t make sense to have so many armors this early, and complicates matters for players severely. I mean, come on, there are 6 (SIX, SIX, SIX) Mogloween armors alone, and does that really contribute to the amount of armors other than in size only? The same specials are being repeatedly used, and the overuse of armors in general is becoming outrageous, bordering on felony stupid (okay, maybe not, but I always wanted to use that phrase :P). I would be okay with 23 armors in a few years’ time, but just a week and a half out of the beta stage? It just doesn’t make sense.

Honestly, if I had it my way (if only…), there would be Mage, Healer, Rogue, and Warrior armors as the base classes (the way they are now), and maybe keep the Pirate and Berserker armors as side options, but the Pirate, Ninja, Barber, Acolyte, Warlord, Sorcerer, Renegade, Assasin, Paladin, Beast Warrior, and all six Mogloween armors are not needed and unnecessary, and all they really are different-looking carbon copies of already used armors. And they aren’t needed, and only over-complicate the armor system.

Now, I’m sure I’m going to get some fair criticism that this can’t be an actual complaint, and maybe at this stage it might not be valid, but I will stand by my words that in the future (possibly near future) this will become a huge issue with so many armors being out everywhere and anywhere, and I believe it can hurt AQW severely when it happens.