Wards and banes. They’re one of the hot button meta topics in New World nowadays, and they’re the subject of Amazon’s latest Forged in Aeternum video, which once again gathers game director Scot Lane, creative director David Verfaillie, and lead seasons designer Patrick Smedley to talk more about their removal and replacement.
The primary goal with this shift is to offer ways for players to experiment with their builds more instead of feeling compelled to get specific wards and banes in order to play the content they want. This of course does mean that players who already have corrupted wards will see some adjustment, as ward perks will be replaced with new perks that add new utility, such as a health perk that raises a character’s max health, while perks that the team agrees will never be viable are disappearing.
On top of perk removal, the team is going to apply a broader rebalance of perks, including buffs for less selected perks to make them more attractive to players, nerfs to over-performing perks, and the addition of some new perks to replace the ones that are being culled. Finally, ward potions will be changed to have their effects last the entire length of an expedition instead of before a specific battle.
Meanwhile, despite players’ initial grousing at the implementation of transmog to the MMO this week, the game’s subreddit is already getting flooded with player glamour shots as player sentiment appears to be warming up to the feature. As our own Bree put it, “This is the correct use of Reddit.”
