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My review of preview weekend (warning long read)
rafmeister
Member Posts: 69
Well First of as a disclaimer I went into the preview weekend expecting an easy to play game based on developer comments as well as post NDA beta info. I was not dissapointed in that aspect. I played 4 order characters to level six and one destruction character to level 11. Given we are still in beta and I only made one character to level 11 I can't speak for any content after that.
PVE: Basically if you play conservatively you won't die. The only times I ever died in PVE were when I deliberately suicided myself or did something really really reckless. I could routinely solo anything 2 or 3 levels above me. Given the short level curve and no real death penalty you will fly through the first few levels. This is a very linear game. It makes WOW look like a wide open sandbox in comparison. You are basically put on one of three tracks based on your starting race and you travel along that track with quest depots here and there along the way. At certain points via a flight master you can switch to antoher races track, but you are still on one. There is no mixed level content it is all gradually increased in level as you go down your track. On the positvie side even though the game is still in beta I ran into almost zero bugs. the content that is there seems fairly well polished and other than a couple minor pathing issues and things that loging out and back in fixed fairly solid. Magic items are abundant and drop like candy as far as I can tell. why is it that every developer since EQ1 seems to have contracted munchkinitis.
Quests: Note to developers. Kill x number of creature A or give item B to NPC Y are not quests. They are tasks or chores. Please put more real quest in and less chores. A real quest is epic in nature and should take more than a few minutes of gameplay to complete. The starting "quests" at least are basically cut and past from one race to the next. First quest kill x number of creatures. Second or third quest shoot the crossbow/canon and destroy x number of attackers. The rewards in all starting areas are basically identical to each other with the only differences being the name, and minor class differences. This mostly holds true even between order and destruction. This greatly reduces replayability as you have basically seen it all before. It was getting very repetitve by my 4th order character and I was hoping for something different on the destruction side, but other than a minor twist here or there it was basiclly the same thing.
Public quests: These can be very fun, but there are two main issues with them. The first being that if you play off hours and don't have a ready made group of friends to do these with you most likely won't be able to finish any as there are not enough people online during non-peak times to do these typically. I do play a lot off hours and you just cant do these with two or three people for the most part. The second issue although minor is that getting anything other than experience and influence out of them during peak play time is basically a crap shoot. You have to be there when the quest starts and then basically be in the exact right spot at the right time and get lucky.
Crafting: Well eventually I was abale to find the NPCS that taught the crafting and gathering skills. I purchased the skills but since there was not even a basic how to That is about all I expeinced on the crafting side. There was a bit of explanation for apothecry in the players guilde but even that is very generic. So not too promising a start for crafting.
PVP: Well as far as PVP goes i am more of a PVE guy so you can take what I have to say with a grain of salt. Most of the RVR was basically WOW BG style PVP although there are RVR zones that are not instanced. I particpated in 15 total RVR instances 10 on the order side and 5 on the destruction. Results Order 15 Destruction 0. Only one time was it even close. These were all basically PUGs for the most part and given that I would have expected less domination by the Order side. I would hazard to guess that there may be an imbalance here, but you would have to ask someone more qualified than me about that.
Tome of Knowledge: This thing is a joke. It is difficult to navigate through and tracks almost anything you can think of you get achievements for things like clicking youself 100 times, dying 10 times, criting 25 times. It does have some neat features but is mostly ful lof totally useless information that I could care less about. Getting constant achievement./tome updates is distracting and annoying. This over complicates things way too much.
Now this could all change at higher levels, but all indications point to that it doesn't So I am going to keep an open mind and give it a month or so, but I expect this will be another blow through the content in 2 months game. Le sigh
Comments
I would say you're going to get "flamed" for this post but, the fact is, you're just going to get straight out ignored for being entirely correct.
Great post.
Quote "This is a very linear game. It makes WOW look like a wide open sandbox in comparison"
Thats as far as I got
theres no imbalance.
the empire scenary northward is biased towards orders. because the flags are on a mountain, so have the heigh adventage, and the destro the broken LOS and messages "you can't use that skill"
even that map can be taken by a organized destro group that go for the lighthouse first.
I could say you're an idiot, but I'll let you speak for yourself.
Great post.
I was unaware that height mattered in an MMO. Because being on a mountain doesn't increase the archers range.
The more I read about it the less excited I am about its release.
I was unaware that height mattered in an MMO. Because being on a mountain doesn't increase the archers range.
Umm... he clearly states that being on the bottom interferes with LOS (line of sight).
Thanks for the preview.
I won't buy the game right away. I'm interested but I'll wait a few months for the game to mature and then maybe give it a shot.
Everyone needs to see this review thru the reviewers eyes... he is a pve player, War is an RvR game.
Nuff said
Stop reading after that. Honestly how many of these so call reviews going on in these 2 days? 50? Whats the point of writing a wall of text when you didnt even get to Tier 2 ? THe so call reviewers only play the game in the beginning, Is like review a movie after watching the first 10 minutes. Ya I think the new batman movie sucks IN THE FIRST 5 minutes...haha does that even valid?
These kind of reviews remind me of AoC reviews. Here are some suggestions for all the "reviewers"
a) Play longer, you cant judge something if you only played 1% of the whole game offer.
b) Go back to whatever you played, no one want trolls.
c) This is not a PvE focus game, go back to your PvE easy mode game.
d) Check other useless "reviews" before you post the same old things.
Thanks for the post., I can tell you put a lot of thought into it. Being considered "media" I don't personally do betas, so posts like this help me to visualize game play. Because I am NOT really "media" I never get a preview LOL.
The Public Quests sound awesome. The problems you describe can be solved a couple ways so, who knows, maybe by launch they'll have it all figured out. I am looking forwarded to trying them.
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Nice review. He laid out his baises and I think he gave his honest opinion of the game.
Got more information about this game from his mini review than the War rocks or War sucks posts.
Stop reading after that. Honestly how many of these so call reviews going on in these 2 days? 50? Whats the point of writing a wall of text when you didnt even get to Tier 2 ? THe so call reviewers only play the game in the beginning, Is like review a movie after watching the first 10 minutes. Ya I think the new batman movie sucks IN THE FIRST 5 minutes...haha does that even valid?
These kind of reviews remind me of AoC reviews. Here are some suggestions for all the "reviewers"
a) Play longer, you cant judge something if you only played 1% of the whole game offer.
b) Go back to whatever you played, no one want trolls.
c) This is not a PvE focus game, go back to your PvE easy mode game.
d) Check other useless "reviews" before you post the same old things.
I have to agree with you.
Granted, everybody's opinion is important, but "reviews" of a game that is "BETA" are not real reviews.
Stop reading after that. Honestly how many of these so call reviews going on in these 2 days? 50? Whats the point of writing a wall of text when you didnt even get to Tier 2 ? THe so call reviewers only play the game in the beginning, Is like review a movie after watching the first 10 minutes. Ya I think the new batman movie sucks IN THE FIRST 5 minutes...haha does that even valid?
These kind of reviews remind me of AoC reviews. Here are some suggestions for all the "reviewers"
a) Play longer, you cant judge something if you only played 1% of the whole game offer.
b) Go back to whatever you played, no one want trolls.
c) This is not a PvE focus game, go back to your PvE easy mode game.
d) Check other useless "reviews" before you post the same old things.
I think your forgetting the power of first impressions. If you can't entice someone after 5 min of play, then that player will not bother playing any further. Why should he/she? You play a game to have fun now, not hours and hours later. Believe it or not, people just want to be entertained when playing games.
This is what most MMO companies do wrong when designing MMOs. They only think about the end game.
I was unaware that height mattered in an MMO. Because being on a mountain doesn't increase the archers range.
Er actually, in any fight one knows its better to hold the high ground.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
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Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
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"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
I was unaware that height mattered in an MMO. Because being on a mountain doesn't increase the archers range.
Er actually, in any fight one knows its better to hold the high ground.
Look to this video:
at 1:46
Is hard to take the flag, because the dealers can use the heigh in his adventage. attack and retreat.
healers can heal these dealers, but If one destro enter the flag area, all dealers will focus on him, and the destro healer can't heal it.
this make hills easier to defend, and hard to take.
is just the LOS break for healers, and the ability of dealers to "hide" back in the hill
The only feedback I have is:
1) This is not nearly as linear a game as WoW. You have multiple different ways to advance. With one character I can go and PvP/RvR from rank 1-40. With another I could PVE from 1-40. With another I could combine them and mix in scenarios. This is wide open. The linear part comes in that every 10 levels you advance to the next Tier. I enjoy this system honestly.
2) The Tome of Knowledge stores a ton of information and even though you might not like any of this information a ton of us do. It stores a ton of information about Lore, and it gives more personality and statistics to your character. This is an amazing feature. If you don't want to use it that's fine but why slam it? It's slamming an added option on your car that you never use because YOU never use it.
Someday I will play this game. I don't know when or where but when I do... my first act will be to click myself 100 times to see what happens.
Great post, thanks for the honesty.
The History of the Order of The Golden Shields
The tome is just a "metawindow" that join a few other windows:
- Journal (the quest)
- List of achievements
- Lore unlocks
- etc..
You can brownse back and for like in a "book", but are really normal features. The books is not a new feature, but how WAR show existing features on the screen.
At first, is clunky, once you get used to it, is not clunky anymore. I don't really like much, but.. he!.. that way you just have to remenber one hotkey.