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More first impressions - Nystul - 03-29-2004
I spent the weekend doing the pre-school quests for virtually every available race, so I've probably seen the most mundane parts of the game. I'm having a lot of fun, but there are also quite a few ARGH factors. A lot of the things I don't like aren't really surprising but more like confirming what I have always suspected about this genre.
Anyways, let's start with some of the good stuff. The interface took me a while to get the hang of (although I think it is a fairly standard setup for new RPGs), but it is pretty good. The game world is obviously huge, and the landscapes/cities are breathtaking. There are very distinct difference between the areas inhabited by the various races, and that gives things a different flavor. The combat system has the potential to be pretty solid, although I think it is far too early for anyone to make serious comments on balance issues. I should elaborate though in case this point isn't clear to Diablo fans: this is not Diablo-style action combat. It's less precision clicking and more decision making. If you see a wolf, instead of instantly clicking on it 10 times to make sure you kill it before it kills you, you decide whether to attack it, sneak past it, or go another direction. And if you decide to attack it, you may need to use a variety of spells/abilities, and casting/attacking times may take several seconds. Overall, the game so far seems to have the Blizzard trademark of being surprisingly fun, even if you are just a newbie doing the equivalent of quill rat hunting.
Now, a few of the ARGHs:
My biggest issue is navigation for new players. The mini-map is basically useless, except for finding your corpse or your party. It is basically a blob of mushy colors with no notes except the location of cities (which I presume would be the job of the world map). NPCs almost all give vague directions, and I have yet to see a "welcome to town" NPC or a clickable map or a much in the way of signs. What this all boils down to is that you can easily spend several hours looking for a specific trainer or shop keeper in a given city. You can spend hours trying to find a quest location in the wilderness. I think this will be a big turn-off for new players, and it is something that could certainly be fixed (although given the amount of specific locations involved it would take a lot of time to do).
Also, I think I know what Bolty means about the early game lacking personality. Questing, at least so far, seems to fall under "hack'n'slash" or "fetch". Your typical interaction with a questgiver is either to do the quest, or not, and if you do it you get a scooby snack. When you team this up with the boring monsters early on, you get a lack of personality. The thing I wonder is, the monsters will certainly get more interesting as the game goes on, but will the NPC interactions?
The PC interaction is a mixed bag. If you like trading leather for iron ore for money for enchanted armor, it will be great. For interacting with your guild or for forming a party, it will be fine (although honestly I'm not seeing any huge advantage here over something like D2... the ability to make huge parties I guess). All of the other PCs are primarily just in the way. This isn't so much a problem with the game as with the genre. I always wondered how it would work, and now that I see it firsthand, I don't see that it works at all. It may be an improvement over some MMOGs though, since you have the instance system to help limit spawncamping, the exp/loot system to limit spawnstealing, and the PK issue pretty much out of the picture.
There have also been some crashes and things of that nature, but this is just a beta and Blizzard has a strong track record on cleaning most of those problems up before release.
More first impressions - TheDragoon - 03-29-2004
Quote:My biggest issue is navigation for new players. The mini-map is basically useless, except for finding your corpse or your party. It is basically a blob of mushy colors with no notes except the location of cities (which I presume would be the job of the world map). NPCs almost all give vague directions, and I have yet to see a "welcome to town" NPC or a clickable map or a much in the way of signs. What this all boils down to is that you can easily spend several hours looking for a specific trainer or shop keeper in a given city. You can spend hours trying to find a quest location in the wilderness. I think this will be a big turn-off for new players, and it is something that could certainly be fixed (although given the amount of specific locations involved it would take a lot of time to do).I've found that the mini-map was actually really helpful for me when I was playing in the Human areas. You can distinctly tell if something is a mine or a building or a pumpkin patch or something just from the map.
However, in the Night Elf starting location I can't tell what ANYTHING is! :) For them, you've put it very well, "a blob of mushy colors." I couldn't tell the building from the terrain on the map for the longest time. After an hour or so of playing in those areas, I could start to see where it was, but until then I was randomly walking.
As for the directions to find quests, I've not really had a problem with that, for the most part. The only times I've gotten in trouble are when I either don't read the quest information carefully enough (and so don't know which direction to go) or on some of the delivery quests (like the delivery to Stormwind) where I couldn't find the NPC I was looking for.
Also, I read a post from a Blizzard employee the other day who said that the minimap functions were still being implemented and that they intend to allow you to place markers on the map (as well as for your party) and other stuff so that you don't have to wander around so much when you complete a quest and are looking for the NPC. If they can get everything like that working, I think the map will work out pretty well. :)
More first impressions - lemekim - 03-29-2004
My biggest argh factor from my limited playing so far has probably been the time I had to spend running between places. It would seem to me I spent about 50% of total time running between places. I suppose it gets better once you can buy a horse; and as you discover griffon routes it gets easier as well, but still its an lot of time.
But otherwise the impression is pretty good, although it is quite different from Diablo 2 and really is more like other MMORPGs.
More first impressions - Bolty - 03-29-2004
Nystul,Mar 29 2004, 07:35 AM Wrote:Also, I think I know what Bolty means about the early game lacking personality. Questing, at least so far, seems to fall under "hack'n'slash" or "fetch". Your typical interaction with a questgiver is either to do the quest, or not, and if you do it you get a scooby snack. When you team this up with the boring monsters early on, you get a lack of personality. The thing I wonder is, the monsters will certainly get more interesting as the game goes on, but will the NPC interactions?I'll chime in here - the quest interactions do get better. For example, after performing a slew of quests regarding the Defias Brotherhood, it comes to a head and you get the elite quest. The plot of the questline gets better as you go on. One quest had me escorting someone as they pointed out a "secret" location. This mission was quite a good change from the typical "go kill stuff" missions, and shows variety.
-Bolty
More first impressions - JustAGuy - 03-29-2004
Quote:My biggest argh factor from my limited playing so far has probably been the time I had to spend running between places. It would seem to me I spent about 50% of total time running between places. I suppose it gets better once you can buy a horse; and as you discover griffon routes it gets easier as well, but still its an lot of time.Running. Lots of running. I hear ya. I've been back and fourth, from corpse to town, town to corpse, city to city... I just wish we could get mounts earlier. Auto-run is a life-saver, but it's still time consuming.
Either that, or a buff to increase speed that is available to all classes? Is there such a thing?
More first impressions - lemekim - 03-30-2004
You know what would be great? Town Portals! Diablo 2 and even Warcraft 3 have them... Now that I think about it I am surprised I did not see them in WoW. You could make them only summonable out of battle or something, or put 10 second timer on summoning, so people don't abuse them, but that would be such a great time saver.
Waypoints would also be nice, although I guess that would eliminate the need for the "airlines" =)
More first impressions - FoxBat - 03-30-2004
lemekim,Mar 29 2004, 05:18 PM Wrote:My biggest argh factor from my limited playing so far has probably been the time I had to spend running between places. It would seem to me I spent about 50% of total time running between places. I suppose it gets better once you can buy a horse; and as you discover griffon routes it gets easier as well, but still its an lot of time.I'm with you on this one, and it's especially bad for the night elves. There's that one uber-fedex quest where you have to collect water from every place on this island and return to the same darn guy. Darnassus is a beautiful city but it's still boring running around everywhere. And while the 1-minute "gee-wow" factor the first time you hop a hippogryph ride is incredible, you do absoutely nothing while flying; imagine doing that 50 or so times and we can see the problem. That the two continents are currently linked with a teleporter rather than a boat is a godsend of a feature if you ask me.
WoW really doesen't have so much of a "killing rats" problem fortunately, as you can hit level 5 pretty fast and get to do some good travelling instead of hanging in the same spot all the time. So far the player skills, spells, and abilities etc. seem fairly well thought out. I think the main MMOG flaw WoW retains is the obscene travel time. Hopefully there are more travel opportunites later, but there is really no good reason why newbies shouldn't have access to teleporters or waypoints, or a feature like clicking on a direction post makes your character automatically follow the main road towards that location, and you can socialize in the meantime. Simply making characters run faster would help.
Despite what Bolty said earlier, there death penalty can be huge. It's called spending two or three minutes to get back to your corpse. <_<
I did notice some "Portal Trainer" sitting in the Darnassus Temple Garden, but I couldn't talk to her. I would probably kill someone and/or have their baby if it means I could learn some long distance teleport spell.
More first impressions - Bolty - 03-30-2004
FoxBat,Mar 29 2004, 10:20 PM Wrote:I did notice some "Portal Trainer" sitting in the Darnassus Temple Garden, but I couldn't talk to her. I would probably kill someone and/or have their baby if it means I could learn some long distance teleport spell.I think the Portal Trainers are for mages only, but I hope I'm wrong. Level 20 and some gold is all you need to buy a portal, allowing you cast and zip away to the major cities. You can only step through your own portal, and as far as I've found so far, only to the major cities (Ironforge, Stormwind).
-Bolty
More first impressions - lemekim - 03-30-2004
One other feature or change that I would like to see is a 10 second or so "ghosting" of your character upon entering the gameworld, kinda ike being dead ghost, unable to interact. This would give you time to run away from potential enemy while you are not ready.
I am sure most of the people who played beta are familiar with "crash now, join later in the middle of pack of angry *insert your favorite monster here*". It could be helpful if you just crashed for other reason or just left the game in an unfortunate spot.