Howdy, Stranger!

It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!

[Review] Wizardry Online: Not Quite Fully Cooked

SBFordSBFord Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129

Wizardry Online has billed itself as a hardcore permadeath game but does it live up to the notion? We've been giving it a whirl over the last several weeks. Keep reading to see what we think before lending your voice to the discussion in the comments.

It was a bad start. After much hype, Wizardry Online went live on a Wednesday, but it was Saturday before I could reliably even get into the game, let alone play it. SOE made, in my opinion, a series of missteps, not the least of which was a barely publicised, five hour maintenance lock-out right in the middle of their launch day. While connection issues had somewhat improved by the weekend, they hadn’t been (and have yet to be) corrected entirely. The threat of an unpredictable connection time, as of this writing, still looms.

Read more of Lisa Jonte's Wizardry Online: Not Quite Fully Cooked.

image


¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 


«13

Comments

  • firelilyxfirelilyx Member UncommonPosts: 2

    The game looked like crikey from the beginning but what I really don't get about the review is this:

    "I really like the idea of an eventual permadeath; a final, oops-you-blew-it-one-too-many-times point of no return"

    Why? Do you like frustration, punishment  and repetition so much?

    Sometimes I hear that people like permadeath mechanics because it makes it more "real", but  permadeath doesn't bring the game closer to any real life stakes because everything else about it is game-like so it's still unrealistic. It's just annoyance for the sake of annoyance.











     










     




     

  • MargraveMargrave Member RarePosts: 1,359
    Tried it, didnt care for it, moved on....
  • DihoruDihoru Member Posts: 2,731

    Originally posted by bakabröd
    [mod edit]

     


     

    Uhmm... Sony handled the transfer from east to west, the game is decent in Japan ergo it's SoE's fault.

    image
  • TheocritusTheocritus Member LegendaryPosts: 9,737
    This game was so bad it was probably my last beta......There wasn't a single good thing about it and I'm a big fan of the wizardry series.
  • MardukkMardukk Member RarePosts: 2,222
    Originally posted by Dihoru

    Originally posted by bakabröd

    [mod edit]

     


     

    Uhmm... Sony handled the transfer from east to west, the game is decent in Japan ergo it's SoE's fault.

    Unless the Japanese version is 90% different I don't believe that the game is decent anywhere.

     

     

  • DorrianDorrian Member UncommonPosts: 16

    After reading this It seems like 

    1. You didnt give the game a fair shot from the start.

    2. You didnt play any class long enough to get a more accurate idea of how they play.

    The game has a learning curve and its not forgiving. Your not being spoon fed they way they do now in almost every other mmo.

    This game is a great change of pace from the same ol WoW clones.

  • BabbuunBabbuun Member Posts: 333

    There are a few things left out in this review:

    1. Classes: You can change your class. This is a big part of gameplay, as changing your class allows you to carry a maximum of 5 skills/abilities over from one class to another, making character customization more diverse. Also you may choose to reroll the stat points you received when you first made your character. When you change class, your character goes back to lvl 1(keeping the skills it carried over from the previous class).

    2. Crafting: You can improve items by forging them. There is a % based chance to forge items into better versions (a la +1) dependent on what items you use and what the luck stat of your character is. If you do not succeed in your forging, you lose the item, unless you used a helper item with station cash. The helper item's penalty is steep as well, allowing you to only keep the basic version of the item, losing the previous enchants it would have had.

    3. Condition: there's a condition stat that goes up to 200 (although only 160 is reachable via staying at an inn). Condition worsens very slowly as time goes by. If you die or step on traps, you lose condition. At certain condition milestones(140 for example) your performance decreases slightly when your condition falls.

    4. Alignment: You choose an alignment at the start, and it influences certain skills for every class. Also completing certain quests will shift your alignment depending on how you respond to the npc.

    5. Player shops: Typical for asian mmorpgs. The player can afk and others can buy items off of him/her for the amount the shopkeeper player has named(so you don't have to buy anything off of npcs, but npcs do have decent items for beginner players for decent prices).

    There are also a few factual errors/misenterpretations:

    1. Stats going down when leveling up is based on rng as well as your "condition" when leveling up. Also by changing class you can negate what negative stat changes may have occurred. The negative stat changes also seldom happen to your primary stats.

    2. Game mechanics are the similar for every class and the first monsters in the first dungeon are zombies that move like sloths = Practice is available for any class.

    3. Many of the low tier items are safe from theft, as well as quest items up to a certain point. It's not a hard landing for a newcomer as you are also shielded from pvp until your soul levels up. Also no sane or permanent pvper is going to be killing others until lvl 10ish. The pkers you run into before that are habitual(for example there was a guy waiting inside the church for anyone that leveled up their soul for the first time, only to instantly kill them. He couldn't loot or corpse camp them, but he just wanted to stab people.)

    Final points:

    As the initial flood of players has gone, the load times are currently working consistently. It takes me a couple of seconds to load a new zone.

    The game is nowhere near perfect, but it's also not worthy of the slamming it has received in terms of a working game. The threshold to keep playing the game at the beginning is quite high, as some of the more rewarding game mechanics do not reveal themselves until later.

  • DakirnDakirn Member UncommonPosts: 372
    I noticed it had about the same score as DK Online, does it mean it's about on that level?
  • ZodosZodos Member UncommonPosts: 12

    For the dude that think permadeath is only frustration: Yes, it can be frustration, but it is also a challenge. To get at a high level in these conditions, it really gives a sense of awesomeness. And, rewards are for hard work only, in most games it's given to players at the end of any kill-rabbits quest.

  • LJonteLJonte Member UncommonPosts: 29
    Originally posted by firelilyx

    The game looked like crikey from the beginning but what I really don't get about the review is this:

    "I really like the idea of an eventual permadeath; a final, oops-you-blew-it-one-too-many-times point of no return"

    Why? Do you like frustration, punishment  and repetition so much?

    Sometimes I hear that people like permadeath mechanics because it makes it more "real", but  permadeath doesn't bring the game closer to any real life stakes because everything else about it is game-like so it's still unrealistic. It's just annoyance for the sake of annoyance.

     

    I like the challenge and the idea that you can't just derp your way through a game, knowing that nothing is dire or really matters. But I also don't care for instant and irrevocable permadeath either. That would certainly be annoyance for the sake of it. The idea of a graduated, as you learn and improve, raising of the stakes intrigues me.

    Of course, that doesn't mean I'd be any good at it. 

     

    -Lisa Jont

  • BloodaxesBloodaxes Member EpicPosts: 4,662

    I play this game and dying permanently is very very easy to avoid.

    When you level your soul you get a passive boost that increases chance to revive, some items increase chance a lot and funny thing, there's a sign in town that shows how many people have died in this week lol.


  • DaranarDaranar Member UncommonPosts: 392

    Thank you for this review, for this 1 reason only:  It was horrible.   I will now know to discredit any review by one Lisa Jonte.   You clearly went into this like a crack head WoW player wanting to be spoon fed everything.  Yes it has some serious short comings, what game at launch doesn't?   

    A review like this makes me wonder, if the original Everquest (a game that defined the genre, has lasted 13+ years and received 18 expansions) came out today in today's MMO market and was reviewed in a similar fashion, how would it fair?   In the original Everquest, it quite honestly took a couple days to figure out what in the hell you were doing.   Gear that in today's standards is shitty, took a bit to save up to buy.  I remember saving up as I battled through Greater Faydark and Clan Crushbone  for my first set of bronze armor (No Stats, Only Armor Rating) for my warrior.   I hated dieing and I thought twice before risking my characters life in fear of losing EXP and having to go on a tedious corpse run (remember corpse runs? those things we all "hated" but still have some of the greatest memories from)   

    I suppose games like this can easily be over bashed (please note I'm not entirely sticking up for the game, it does have some big issues) for not instantly rewarding players, for making you work for armor and rewards, and for not giving you a hand-held path to "end-game," whatever that has come to mean.   But seriously, its clear you didn't give this game a fair chance, and for that I give you, Lisa Jonte, a Stephen Colbert's "Wag Of The Finger."   Yes in the time you spent in this game you probably could have given many modern MMOs a fair chance and probably been max level, but seriously...come on!   

    And one final thought...to all my beloved reviews remember this.   MMOs at launch are not final products, think about games such as Everquest and compare their current state to that at launch.   18 expansions later it has gone through so many changes, for better or worse, so stop writing off games at launch and let them do what MMOs are created to do, live.

     

    Daranar

    If I want a world in which people can purchase success and power with cash, I'll play Real Life. Keep Virtual Worlds Virtual!


  • mnemic666mnemic666 Member UncommonPosts: 224

    This game is really good at one thing.

     

    Showing UI designers how to not make a UI. Seriously, the UI is atrocious and horribly painful to navigate. Seriously, I tried to give this game a second shot and couldn't handle the UI.

     

    I have no issues with it being a more "hardcore" oriented game, but the quality is so painfully low at times, and it's so arduous. It's not that it's "hard" or "challenging", it's that it's just annoying to deal with -_-

  • WarlyxWarlyx Member EpicPosts: 3,360

    tried it , after tutorial , my health was low and the heart beating non stop drive me away from the game so fast.....uninstalled :(

    horrible game

  • JimmyYOJimmyYO Member UncommonPosts: 519
    MMORPG.com change in brutal honesty lately is undeniable. I gave Wizardry online a try and I have to agree with everything in this article. Thank you for keeping it real.
  • tharkthark Member UncommonPosts: 1,188

    It seems to me by reading this that the reviewer Lisa Jonte only did dabble with Wizardry Online in the beginning, nothing in the text indicates that she actually played more than the tutorial and a few swings in the dungeon after the tutorial, and did a review of that..Infact it is more of a proof that she only did this since so much is left out.

    This in itself is really bad because the tutorial and characther creation  in this game is REALLY bad, It's bad because it shows Wizardrys shortcommings more than anywhere else in the game, all from the poor dialogues to the slow scrolling conversation text and mediocre cut scenes..Even the tutorial dungeon is bad and only gives you a confusing idea what Wizardry is all about, sure there are some combat in it, but the critters in this dungeon is so weak that it really never picks up in pace to give you a real clue about combat either.

    Some other negatives is the asian influences from say older Final Fantasy games, like the race Porkul, It's not even funny..If you do deceide to make a game based on a old IP namely Sir-Tech's Wizardry, why not indicate this more and skip the odd manga/anime style races for just a second. Porkuls are just horrible. And this together with the crappy totorial and consolish asian RPG style dialogues does more bad than good to this game, they SHOULD have changed this when they westernised it.

    The better parts :)

    As a previous poster noted , MANY of WIzardrys great features in not even mentioned in this text, multiclassing beiing one of the bigger ones. Others is the bandits and the system much  like the one in Ultima Online, and the Bounty System..She mentioned some of this but didnt really explain it ..ganking is part of almost any game today , yet the PvP system in Wizardry is something not seen since well...Ultima Online, Lineage 2 had something similar, but only partly.

    I even had problems to recommending this game to friends , since I knew what would happen once they started to play the tutorial, they would quit before the real game even started..I told one friend , that usually not is picky, but he played a few minutes and then stated he would never play this game..Yet I had told him to NOT to judge the game based on the beginning and the tutorial, and yet he did..I even gave up on this game myself when I played it for the first time, but I got curious for some reason after reading some other players posts about it., and I didnt regret it, and even became a royal member (subscriber)

    The game that  picks up, slowly ...Is good even close to great, It's a rather good mix between Dark Souls and Dungeons and Dragons Online, If you like a good dungeon crawler game with a good group to team up with, well than Wizardry Online is that game, rather well designed dungeons with traps and small puzzles, the puzzles is not hard as far as I have played in the game atleast. The combat is not as good as in Dark Souls, but well close, It will still give you a rather good idea how the game plays out.

     

    Disregard the ugly tutorial and really try this game..You won't regret it :)

    Ill give the game a 7/10 and would probably get higher if the beginning wasn't so bad.


     

  • TribeofOneTribeofOne Member UncommonPosts: 1,006
    I agree with the reviewer 100%. I was in beta and have played the release game since launch. I wanted to like this game. I gave it more chances than I usually give any mmo to grab me, to impress me, but i just wasn't there. No thanks this game is not for me. However it being f2p if your curious, try it but remember you've been warned.
  • kaiserxxxkaiserxxx Member UncommonPosts: 17

    Wait what? so now reviewers can review a full MMORPG only throught the first 20-30 minutes of gameplay? Thats quite the achievement if you ask me.

    Many gameplay facets weren't mentionned ( mult classing, bounty system). Wasn't a game reviews supposed to show everything about a game and criticise it and point out pro/con?

    Comon for the love of god this isn't an FPS that you can review after 15 minutes of gameplay. 

     



     

  • KarteliKarteli Member CommonPosts: 2,646

    Finally an honest review that doesn't try to decorate a mediocre game with false praise just for advertising endorsements ..  and people are upset over this?

     

    I'd rather hear an honest opinion.  I wish other games had honest reviews.

    Want a nice understanding of life? Try Spirit Science: "The Human History"
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8NNHmV3QPw&feature=plcp
    Recognize the voice? Yep sounds like Penny Arcade's Extra Credits.

  • VindicarVindicar Member UncommonPosts: 138

    WTF is this review ?

    Is that writer an "official" MMORPG.com jurnalist ?

    I've been reading MMORPG.com since its beginnings and allways took everything i rad in here with extreme caution but damn this is now going too far...

    May I quote ?

    "Speaking of levelling up, in WO, depending on your class, some of your stats may go down as you gain levels. I have no idea what purpose my fighter getting stupid is supposed to serve, but I don’t like it."

    ... Wow... Dood has a stat' lowering in a game and doesn't even try to understand why but still state that it is plain stupid ?! Impressives jurnalisms skills !

    WTF MMORPG.com ?

    Old school french hardcore whiner. Online since T4C.

    I was "Namless" and "Daroot" in AO (Rk2)
    Been known as "Vindicar" (Aion (EU), SWTOR (EU), WoW (EU).
    Recently  Known as "Wundicar" and "Wundee" in Age of Wushu (US) and Wulin (EU)

    Franky Rivera Reyes , From the Reyes Brotherhood (Star Citizen)

  • GhernGhern Member UncommonPosts: 134

    It would seem as if some people are upset at the messenger.

    A bad game is a bad game. Kinda silly blaming the reviewer.

    In the end it comes down to different strokes for different folks.

  • KbobKbob Member Posts: 81
    Okay, so the innovation score isn't high enough, its possibly the most unique mmo from asia I've played. Also, the community score should have been higher (since grouping is pretty much the only way of staying alive). Other than that I pretty much agree with the scoring.
  • Panther2103Panther2103 Member EpicPosts: 5,766
    The game definately did feel like a japanese game which was kind of cool to me. It had all the feelings in the town that FFXI had for me when I played it. But the gameplay itself just was so dull that I couldn't keep playing. I tried it multiple times as well seeing as I kept seeing people posting all of these things about it saying how awesome it was and how innovative, I think that their version of permadeath was done decently, but at the same time if you are going to flaunt the fact that your game has perma death, and is so difficult, make it so that when you die you actually die. You don't have a chance to live again, you don't have cash shop items to help you live again, it completely ruins the whole premise of perma death, risk vs reward.
  • NadiaNadia Member UncommonPosts: 11,798
    Originally posted by thark

    As a previous poster noted , MANY of WIzardrys great features in not even mentioned in this text, multiclassing beiing one of the bigger ones. Others is the bandits and the system much  like the one in Ultima Online, and the Bounty System..She mentioned some of this but didnt really explain it ..ganking is part of almost any game today , yet the PvP system in Wizardry is something not seen since well...Ultima Online, Lineage 2 had something similar, but only partly.

    agree - i find the review lacking because it doesnt talk about noteable features in the game

  • VorthanionVorthanion Member RarePosts: 2,749
    After playing this in beta for an hour, it has reinforced my belief that I am not hardcore, nor will I ever like hardcore mechanics or content.  Have fun with your game, but I found nothing about it that was fun or entertaining.

    image
Sign In or Register to comment.