The latest Developer Diary by Elliot "Avon" Gilman concerning the Wardrobe System that will be released with the upcoming Free-to-Play release on September 10th. For those who are unaware of what the Wardrobe system might be, it is a “…system designed to store the appearances of these items and includes some unique features not seen with shared storage or the vault.”
So how will the Wardrobe be used? Well first off, it is not exactly storage. Think of it as an area where you can “copy” an item so that it is accessible by all of your characters. The original item will stay in its original location (such as a character’s backpack).
The wardrobe will copy key information, such as the item’s name, appearance, description, and color, leaving the original untouched. What you decide to do with the original item is up to you and has no impact on its doppelganger in the wardrobe. You may decide to delete or sell the original to free up storage space elsewhere, or if the item is not bound to you, you can give it away to a friend.
Elliot suggests to think of it as being similar to how the outfit system currently works. You do not actually put the cosmetic items on your character, rather you create a virtual copy that remains on your character sheet until it is removed. The original item remains in your pack or wherever it is that you choose to store it. So to place an item in your Wardrobe, you will need to drag it from your pack (it cannot be dragged from your vault or shared storage) and then dropped into the Wardrobe interface.
There are some drawbacks to the system though:
- VIP’s will initially have access to 20 slots within the Wardrobe system as a part of their subscription; while Premium and Free players will need to purchase slots to gain access.
- Wardrobe storage will need to be purchased through the store and is purchasable in lots of 10, up to a total of 50 slots.
- The Wardrobe can only store clothing.
- The wardrobe does not copy an item’s stats.
- If the character does not meet the armor proficiency, they cannot wear the item. (Example: Minstrels cannot wear heavy armor; only light and medium if they have Medium Armour-use equipped.)
However, there are some very nice features that will allow you to search for items with much more efficiency:
- Items can be sorted by name.
- Items can be filtered by type.
- Items can also be filtered by colour.
- The wardrobe is shared amongst all your characters, meaning all characters will have access to the same clothes.
- If a character places an item only wearable by obtaining a certain amount of reputation within the Wardrobe, any character may wear that item regardless of their own reputation.
One of the best features I thought was the dying feature of the Wardrobe.
Dyes can be applied to items in your wardrobe by using the dye and selecting the item you wish to have colored. When the dye is applied it will not overwrite the current color but instead add it to the item’s available list of colors. This allows you to collect all color variants of an item without taking up additional space elsewhere!
I mean really, that is pretty stinking cool, don’t you think? Turbine could have easily chosen to make you dye the original item and then replace it in the wardrobe or have it create a copy of the item. However, instead they made a useful feature amazingly innovative. Three cheers for this feature! Also, it’s good to note that if the item hasn’t been dyed by a player will only have its original color to choose from.
Equipping an item is the same as always. First, open your Wardrobe (which is accessed via a Vault-keeper). Then choose which item you want to wear (and its color if available). Finally, drag it to your character window and put it in the relative slot. The item will remain in your wardrobe while your character’s slot will update. If you wish to remove an item from your wardrobe, you will need to select it within the Wardrobe and click the “Remove Item” button. You will receive a confirmation dialogue box, and if you confirm the deletion the item (and all its color variants) is destroyed.
Conclusion:
I want it to be September 8th now! Right now! Seriously, I can’t wait! Yeah, maybe I’m drinking the kool-aid a bit, but I can’t wait for all the new features. Believe it or not, I do dress up all my characters and I like for them all to have unique looks. However, it gets really complicated storing all my cosmetics. I have a trunk in my house dedicated to clothing and its overflowed into other character’s banks and packs. Plus now that I will be able to equip cosmetics that are bound to certain characters through this system I can tell I’m going to have all 50 Wardrobe slots open fairly soon. Right after I open up some Shared Storage!
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August 24, 2010 at 4:06 pm
The dye system is great, but I was really hoping that it would store the original item and not just a copy. Now I’m going to have to decide if I want to destroy the original or continue to have it take up vault space.
I didn’t see where it specifically mention bound items, but I’m assuming that’s not a restriction for sharing among characters like the shared storage or house storage is. Hope fully that’s true, so I can finally share some of my old quest rewards, that I kept purely for appearance, among my alts.
August 24, 2010 at 8:01 pm
Bound items seem to be allowed now, although this was not the case earlier in Beta. I tested for allowing of “bound” items specifically earlier today and had success with all the items I tried. Looks good so far but I’ve got a few more item tests I want to try before I’m totally convinced that I can finally toss all those multiple Festival items from each character.
August 24, 2010 at 7:48 pm
The original item will stay in its original location (such as a character’s backpack).
NOoooooo. Though I love the wardrobe idea, My biggest problem is storage space.
I am looking forward to quickly letting my other characters sharing their new threads.
August 25, 2010 at 1:39 am
Sounds fun, Its to bad though, i wanted to wear heavy Armour on my burglar, oh well, still is going to be a useful feature.
August 25, 2010 at 6:03 am
The original item will stay in its original location (such as a character’s backpack). LAME!
August 25, 2010 at 9:38 am
While this may seem lame at first I think it is actually good because it gives you the ability to sell it or give it away if it is not bound. Once you put it into your wardrobe there is really no reason to keep it but at least you can make a little money off of it instead of it being automatically deleted.
August 25, 2010 at 8:51 am
If I read it right though you could always sell or delete the item once it is copied to free up space.
August 25, 2010 at 10:41 am
This sounds awesome. :3 Do you apply the dye to the original item or the copy in the wardrobe? ’cause I don’t want to have to hang on to a thing for ages to wait until I have it dyed every color.
So, if I have a current outfit made of items I no longer physically have, I can’t get those items into the wardrobe unless I buy them again, right?
And we still only have 2 active outfits on the character itself, right?
August 25, 2010 at 11:24 am
Yes the dye is applied to the wardrobe item, not the inventory item.
Correct you will need the item in your inventory in order to store it in the wardrobe. You will not be able to drag it from your character’s cosmetic screen into the wardrobe.
Last time I looked in beta we still only had the 2 cosmetic outfit tabs.
August 26, 2010 at 8:44 am
I like the dye idea, and cant wait to get my second tank – a little girl hobbit in all the Durins Guard finery.
Its a shame that there will still only be two cosmetic outfit slots, but I supose its a good thing in the long run – I’ll spend less time playing and more time dressing up if I had more options
September 1, 2010 at 2:56 pm
I’m really looking forward to this! However, I’m a bit /confused to hear people complain that items copied to the wardrobe will leave the original in the character’s inventory.
If you really don’t want it, you can still toss it! This way, though, you can still hang onto it if has real equip-value (i.e. useful stats) for your characters.
I’m looking forward to having the freedom to mix & match and experiment with color schemes without wasting storage space to do so!
Send me an in-game mail on Brandywine if you want dyes.
February 2, 2011 at 7:22 pm
Does anyone know if these features really went live? I can say for sure that VIP does not have wardrobe access without buying it.
Also, does the “shared storage” work for sharing clothing as well as items, or is clothing eliminated from being shared forcing you to pay for the “wardrobe” option?
Don’t want to spend the points til I hear for sure…the descriptions do not address this.
February 2, 2011 at 7:29 pm
These changes did go live with F2P in September. I got my 20 wardrobe slots for free as a VIP and purchased the extra 30 slots from the store.
Shared storage will hold just about anything including cosmetics. Wardrobe will ONLY hold cosmetics.
If you are VIP (paying a monthly subscription) you do have 20 slots wardrobe included and if you do not, you should put in a support ticket in game.