MobBoss
Off-Topic Overlord
Well, I just got through playing this on Open Beta this last week and have pre-ordered the game so I can get to play starting on Tuesday the 16th.
Anyone else looking to play this?
Just in case you are thinking about it, here is my Open Beta Review.
Initial thoughts:
The open beta build is quite stable, and the game is meant to be playable on essentially any machine that can play WoW. I have been playing at 1600x1200 with all settings on 'high' and only see any slowdown at all if there are an absolutely huge number of players in a small area, say 60+. As expected, the graphics are quite WoW-ish in nature, but the overall look is slightly darker, not as bright or defined as WoW. I think thats on purpose.
I will take you through the first initial steps of the game.
Character creation is similar to pretty much any MMO out there. My first Character I took was a Squig Herder - a ranged DPS arch-type. There are basically only 4 archtypes: Melee tank, damage tank, healer/support, and ranged DPS - however, I must stress that even similar classes in an archtype have quite a differnt look, play and feel to them as well as different mechanics. To explain simply: Although a Black Orc and a Chaos Chosen are both melee tank types, both offer a very different playstyle and feel.
So, back to character creation. As in most MMOs you can alter pretty much everything on your toon. Skin color, face, scars, hair, eye color, etc. Give it a name and your off.
You get a quick cinematic and arrive in the racial newbie area of the race you choose. The first thing you will see are NPCs nearby that have bright green circles over their head. Those are quest givers. Go talk to one, and you will get a quick synopsis of the quest, hit accept and carry on.
Now, a quick word about a unique WAR feature. The Tome of Knowledge. The tome is like a huge diary of everything your toon does or comes in contact with. It will record everything that is significant that your toon does. When you get a quest, you can either click on your tome to view the quest in detail or click on it from the right side screen quest tracker. This will give you the quest details and draw a red circle on the local map where the quest goal is located. The Tome also keeps track of hours played, players killed, deaths, titles, etc. etc. You name it, it tracks it. A very nice feature indeed.
Player quests run the gamut of the usual type. Go kill X critters. Find X, collect X, deliver X, and so forth. You will soon get the feel that the quests are steering you down a path. Essentially they are broken down into what is called 'Chapters' with your newbie zone being chapter 1. A kind of a storyline of the game if you will. As you progress the quest lines will steer you into what is called a Public Quest and here is another great WAR feature.
A Public Quest is an ad hoc timed quest in a local/chapter area that anyone and everyone can participate in. Everything you do to participate in that area from damage dealt to healing party members, counts as participation points for that PQ. Being in a group in a PQ seems to give you a bonus, so be sure to look for close by open groups to join (groups in an area can be set to open so that people can join automatically and not have to be invited - another nice WAR feature). PQs at first have 3 stages with the last stage being a hero type npc to defeat. At the end of the final stage those that participated the most get a bonus to their dice roll and everyone that particpated gets a chance to win loot in a big golden chest that appears. The roll seems to be 1-1000 so I have been in the top 3 and not gotten loot and been as high as 17th and still finished in the money. Also, you get a roll bonus for every PQ you have participated is and not won an item, so you WILL eventually get something no matter how bad your luck. Loot is divided into colored 'bags' with the top scores getting progressively nicer loot.
Let me say that PQs are very, very fun to participate in. There are typically three PQs or so in each chapter, and some are decidedly more difficult than others. You also get fame points by doing PQs which in turn will unlock infamy rewards from an NPC called a 'rallymaster'. These also get quite nice the higher the chapters go.
A quick note about levels and toon skills. As a toon levels you get base skills called 'core' skills. And typically a toon will get at least 1, but sometimes up to 3 on any particular level. As in most MMOs these go from attacks to buffs and de-buffs etc. Once a toon hits level 11, they can start a 'Mastery' tree, which is a similar to a skill tree in WoW, but with some significant differences. The mastery tree itself confers skills and tactics (yes, tactics are a part of this game) to your toon, in addition to adding a specific increase to career/core skills associated with that tree. For example: my squig herder can essentially call up three different types of masteries: Quick Shootin, Big Shootin, and Stabbin....which translates into big but slower damage, quick but smaller damage, and sticking them with your spear.
You also get mastery skills which are skills that build up over time and are typically very powerful one shot type effects. You also get tactics, that you can place into your tactics bar which are essentially constant buffs that remain in place and vary widely across the board from things like a 25% chance on damage to heal 75 damage, or 25% chance on a successful hit to deal a 75 point Dot on the target. You can have up to 4 types of tactics going at one time, so how you use your tactics can make a great deal of difference in your playstyle and effectiveness.
A quick note about leveling. It goes fairly quick until you hit about level 6...then it slows down drastically. This isnt going to be Age of Conan where a toon was hitting level 80 in three days. This is going to take some time and effort. Which is good in my opinion.
At the 7-11 level range you will hit chapter 3. Chapter 3 is where your RvR quests begin. In this chapter you will find 2 or maybe 3 contested points that, if controlled, with give the controlling side an advantage. Quests at the "War Camps' will involve quests venturing into these open PvP areas and essentially force you into RvR if you desire to complete the quest. Some of these also PQ quests and the one in the greenskin zone is essentially a race by either side to kill the others NPCs as quickly as possible while in an open RvR zone. A lot of fun, but very challenging as well.
Thats about as far as I got in my week of open beta. I essentially created several toons in each newbie area to get a feel of what I wanted to play on launch and left it at that.
A few final words before I close. The game graphically isnt going to push the envelope like Age of Conan did...but thats a good thing actually. It is much more playable and the wide variety of options and toon choices you have to make will ensure a lot of variety is available. The Public Quests, Tome of Knowledge, Core skills/Mastery skills and Tactics are all done very well and seem to 'make sense' when looking at them from a big picture. Open groups, where you can opt into a group without having to receive an invite is a nice feature as well.
Now for the bad stuff I saw. There is essentially no tradeskills in the game right now as the only one that seems to work is apothecary (potion making) and actually kinda detracts from the fun of the game to be honest. If you love doing tradeskills this may not be the game for you. Minor graphical bugs do exist, from health bars fading out sometimes to character portraits being a black dot instead of a picture exist - but are not show stoppers. There are places you can get stuck due to the collision detection system in place, but a quick /stuck will get you out of it. If RvR and PvP is not your bag, then this may not be a great game for you either, however, the death penalty is very, very minor in this game and easily removable, so getting ganked really only means a loss of time and nothing more.
Thats about it. I will field specific questions on my experience if anyone has any! I look forward to maybe seeing you on the fields of battle!
Anyone else looking to play this?
Just in case you are thinking about it, here is my Open Beta Review.
Initial thoughts:
The open beta build is quite stable, and the game is meant to be playable on essentially any machine that can play WoW. I have been playing at 1600x1200 with all settings on 'high' and only see any slowdown at all if there are an absolutely huge number of players in a small area, say 60+. As expected, the graphics are quite WoW-ish in nature, but the overall look is slightly darker, not as bright or defined as WoW. I think thats on purpose.
I will take you through the first initial steps of the game.
Character creation is similar to pretty much any MMO out there. My first Character I took was a Squig Herder - a ranged DPS arch-type. There are basically only 4 archtypes: Melee tank, damage tank, healer/support, and ranged DPS - however, I must stress that even similar classes in an archtype have quite a differnt look, play and feel to them as well as different mechanics. To explain simply: Although a Black Orc and a Chaos Chosen are both melee tank types, both offer a very different playstyle and feel.
So, back to character creation. As in most MMOs you can alter pretty much everything on your toon. Skin color, face, scars, hair, eye color, etc. Give it a name and your off.
You get a quick cinematic and arrive in the racial newbie area of the race you choose. The first thing you will see are NPCs nearby that have bright green circles over their head. Those are quest givers. Go talk to one, and you will get a quick synopsis of the quest, hit accept and carry on.
Now, a quick word about a unique WAR feature. The Tome of Knowledge. The tome is like a huge diary of everything your toon does or comes in contact with. It will record everything that is significant that your toon does. When you get a quest, you can either click on your tome to view the quest in detail or click on it from the right side screen quest tracker. This will give you the quest details and draw a red circle on the local map where the quest goal is located. The Tome also keeps track of hours played, players killed, deaths, titles, etc. etc. You name it, it tracks it. A very nice feature indeed.
Player quests run the gamut of the usual type. Go kill X critters. Find X, collect X, deliver X, and so forth. You will soon get the feel that the quests are steering you down a path. Essentially they are broken down into what is called 'Chapters' with your newbie zone being chapter 1. A kind of a storyline of the game if you will. As you progress the quest lines will steer you into what is called a Public Quest and here is another great WAR feature.
A Public Quest is an ad hoc timed quest in a local/chapter area that anyone and everyone can participate in. Everything you do to participate in that area from damage dealt to healing party members, counts as participation points for that PQ. Being in a group in a PQ seems to give you a bonus, so be sure to look for close by open groups to join (groups in an area can be set to open so that people can join automatically and not have to be invited - another nice WAR feature). PQs at first have 3 stages with the last stage being a hero type npc to defeat. At the end of the final stage those that participated the most get a bonus to their dice roll and everyone that particpated gets a chance to win loot in a big golden chest that appears. The roll seems to be 1-1000 so I have been in the top 3 and not gotten loot and been as high as 17th and still finished in the money. Also, you get a roll bonus for every PQ you have participated is and not won an item, so you WILL eventually get something no matter how bad your luck. Loot is divided into colored 'bags' with the top scores getting progressively nicer loot.
Let me say that PQs are very, very fun to participate in. There are typically three PQs or so in each chapter, and some are decidedly more difficult than others. You also get fame points by doing PQs which in turn will unlock infamy rewards from an NPC called a 'rallymaster'. These also get quite nice the higher the chapters go.
A quick note about levels and toon skills. As a toon levels you get base skills called 'core' skills. And typically a toon will get at least 1, but sometimes up to 3 on any particular level. As in most MMOs these go from attacks to buffs and de-buffs etc. Once a toon hits level 11, they can start a 'Mastery' tree, which is a similar to a skill tree in WoW, but with some significant differences. The mastery tree itself confers skills and tactics (yes, tactics are a part of this game) to your toon, in addition to adding a specific increase to career/core skills associated with that tree. For example: my squig herder can essentially call up three different types of masteries: Quick Shootin, Big Shootin, and Stabbin....which translates into big but slower damage, quick but smaller damage, and sticking them with your spear.
You also get mastery skills which are skills that build up over time and are typically very powerful one shot type effects. You also get tactics, that you can place into your tactics bar which are essentially constant buffs that remain in place and vary widely across the board from things like a 25% chance on damage to heal 75 damage, or 25% chance on a successful hit to deal a 75 point Dot on the target. You can have up to 4 types of tactics going at one time, so how you use your tactics can make a great deal of difference in your playstyle and effectiveness.
A quick note about leveling. It goes fairly quick until you hit about level 6...then it slows down drastically. This isnt going to be Age of Conan where a toon was hitting level 80 in three days. This is going to take some time and effort. Which is good in my opinion.
At the 7-11 level range you will hit chapter 3. Chapter 3 is where your RvR quests begin. In this chapter you will find 2 or maybe 3 contested points that, if controlled, with give the controlling side an advantage. Quests at the "War Camps' will involve quests venturing into these open PvP areas and essentially force you into RvR if you desire to complete the quest. Some of these also PQ quests and the one in the greenskin zone is essentially a race by either side to kill the others NPCs as quickly as possible while in an open RvR zone. A lot of fun, but very challenging as well.
Thats about as far as I got in my week of open beta. I essentially created several toons in each newbie area to get a feel of what I wanted to play on launch and left it at that.
A few final words before I close. The game graphically isnt going to push the envelope like Age of Conan did...but thats a good thing actually. It is much more playable and the wide variety of options and toon choices you have to make will ensure a lot of variety is available. The Public Quests, Tome of Knowledge, Core skills/Mastery skills and Tactics are all done very well and seem to 'make sense' when looking at them from a big picture. Open groups, where you can opt into a group without having to receive an invite is a nice feature as well.
Now for the bad stuff I saw. There is essentially no tradeskills in the game right now as the only one that seems to work is apothecary (potion making) and actually kinda detracts from the fun of the game to be honest. If you love doing tradeskills this may not be the game for you. Minor graphical bugs do exist, from health bars fading out sometimes to character portraits being a black dot instead of a picture exist - but are not show stoppers. There are places you can get stuck due to the collision detection system in place, but a quick /stuck will get you out of it. If RvR and PvP is not your bag, then this may not be a great game for you either, however, the death penalty is very, very minor in this game and easily removable, so getting ganked really only means a loss of time and nothing more.
Thats about it. I will field specific questions on my experience if anyone has any! I look forward to maybe seeing you on the fields of battle!
