The Trophy System: Worthwhile or Worthless?

As you probably know from readings months and months of my literary dribblings, I'm a bit of a fluff nut -- a fluffernutter, to be exact -- in MMOs. Looks > Functionality, 9 times out of 10, if I have a say in it. If it's completely pointless other than an esoteric pleasure in owning and displaying some virtual item, then I'm all over it.

Why is that? Partially because I can more easily see through the statistical spreadsheet nature of MMOs and have given a huge collective shrug of "meh" to the mix/maxer mindset. Partially because we as people are aesthetically pleased when something looks nice or beautiful or cool, and we seek to differentiate ourselves with such things even though we could all just wrap ourselves up in sackcloth and call it a day instead of paying hundreds of dollars for pre-ripped jeans.

WAR's trophy system, therefore, was one of the few highlights of fluff in an otherwise fluffless game (although fluff is making a comeback, especially with the Live Events). The concept behind it was pretty nifty -- and also necessary, since the silhouette limitation on each career's outfits would keep them looking more or less alike. Along with dyes, trophies give players a way to visually customize their character so they're not just another armor set clone fighting in the Clone Wars under Obi Wan and a romantically frustrated Darth Vader. Prior to game release, there was a lot of buzz about trophies, and it was one of the big talking points that Mythic would tout to reporters -- visual bragging rights to let your character show off past achievements and make their outfit look more "lived in". So how's it panning out so far?

Let's start with the negatives, just because we like to air dirty laundry first, before sending them through the wash cycle:

• Trophies are much more of a mid- to late-game thing -- you'll get one early on via a quest in the newbie zone, and then be waiting a very long while until they make a reappearance. That's mostly due to trophies requiring stringent Tome unlocks (kill 1000 of X type mob) and whatnot.
• Many trophies are far too small or insignificant for people, even the ones playing that character, to easily identify when looking over that toon. You might as well just skip all of the ribbons and medals, in my opinion.
• Trophies were announced as ways for people to show off really big accomplishments, like Big Bad monsters they killed, and yet I've never seen a trophy drop off any mob.
• Finally, since launch trophies have been bugged -- some armor pieces will allow trophy display, some won't, and sometimes trophies won't show up no matter what. It seems like it's gotten better after the last couple patches, but still not completely fixed.

WARdb lists 263 trophies they've identified in WAR, which certainly seems like a great number, although that number gets smaller when you divide them by faction, race or career (nobody has access to all of the trophies). A large bulk of trophies are attained through Tome unlocks (the kill-1000-X things), then picked up at your respective capital city. You frankly won't be getting a lot (if any) through drops, so start grinding those kills to get bestial tokens and the like!

The upshot of the trophy system, like a lot of Warhammer Online, can be summed up in this phrase: when it works well, it works REALLY well. My Engineer is sporting four trophies (out of the ultimate total of 5 spots, the 5th unlocked at rank 40): a gyro, a tome, a mug and a tan pouch. I have several other trophies in the bank, but I'm finally at a point in the game where I've collected enough that I can begin picking and choosing which ones fit the visual theme I'm going for with my character (Engineery, if you must ask -- bulky and clunky and tooly). When you do get big enough trophies to make a visual difference, friends and passers-by sometimes do stop to check you out and ask where you got that item ("the vendor" is the correct answer).

As has been speculated, the trophy system does seem like it's only been partially implemented into the total game, with the broken armor and lack of trophy drops or ways to attain it outside of the Tome's "kill 1000 mobs" requirements. There are some bestial tokens you can attain through a few non-killing Tome unlocks, but they're few and far between. Mythic made big noise about how other players should be able to visually identify your "badassery" by how and what trophies you sport, but I've not yet seen any example of this in game.

Lord and Hero mobs should have a chance to drop trophies, for example, and all PvE instances should have trophies in their end boss loot tables. A lot more Tome achievements should reward trophies, not just the "kill 1000 mobs" ones. It's not even outside of the realm of feasibility that some trophies could provide an aura or graphical effect, such as a singed bottom from being burned in lava too many times.

I really would love to see more work be put into this system, because it is truly awesome for what it is. Players often have a collectible mindset -- it's one of the typical defining traits of gamers -- and trophies are just made to fulfill this need, sort of like how we keep on collecting and changing our titles.

What I'd like to see Mythic do with this system:

• Add more trophies and more ways to get them, particularly early on (T1 and T2 early).
• Make trophies bigger or more visually distinguishing.
• Add graphical effects to some trophies, or have trophies that give auras.
• Trophies that grant special emotes, like little daggers that your character could draw to pick their fingers with as an idle animation.
• FIX bugged armor so all appropriate armor can sport trophies.
• Like many of their unique features, Mythic needs to be (1) continuing to trumpet this system to the public, and (2) educating players on how trophies work and how to get them in-game instead of leaving it up to guesswork.  A trophy tutorial, even.