Is this game worth buying?

[Sword_of_Doom]

I am a huge Blizzard fan but i am unsure of this MMPORG. I loved the Warcraft series but won't this just be a poor man or better man's version of Evercrack. For those Beta testing what are some of the features of the game that would make this a worthwhile investment?

[TheDragoon]

Since this game is nowhere near complete, I'd suggest you check back in a few months and ask again. We could tell you things as they are right now, but they may very well change as Blizzard continues to build this game up. :)

[Sword_of_Doom]

I have seen major retailers listing WoW as being available in August? Is this way off and you suspect it might be more realistic that it might be ready by Christmas?

[--Pete]

Hi,

A lot of the content isn't in yet. A lot of the quantitative aspects aren't settled. A lot even of the qualitative aspects are still up in the air.

As usual with Blizzard, the graphics tail is wagging the game dog. Now, the tail is beautiful and I could buy the game (and a much better machine) just to spend a month or more exploring all the great areas that Blizzard's wonderful artists have generated. And the background music is getting better, though it still mostly isn't up to par (however, at least the inns I've been to have nice little ditties).

The trade skills are presently mostly broken, but show signs of a potential richer life in the future. A little more emphasis on trade would help a lot. The system is simple almost to the point of being childish, but with the right tweaks could be made to work. The introduction of high level "branches" of some of the skills might help differentiate characters. Of course, if one branch has the only useful item (something that seems to happen quite a bit in other contexts with Blizzard games), the existence of multiple branches is moot.

Choosing and building a character needs a lot of work still. Blizzard has been waffling on this issue, which is so central to the game it should have been worked out in detail back when the game was first being brainstormed. First there were skills, attributes and talents, and that was confused and muddy. Then there were only skills and attributes (talents were being reworked) and you had to make some very minor choices in using skill points for trade skills or to boost attributes. Other skill "points" for things like attack, defense, etc, were gained by actually using the ability and required a bit of effort to keep maxed or nearly so. Now the attributes are automatically maxed on each level up, and so the skill points are only needed to either buy trade skills or to learn new weapons. The amount of player choice seems to be going down. Talents are still "under construction", but I suspect if the game is more or less "balanced" they will go to the bit bucket and join arenas and guild halls from D2. How much opportunity there is towards making characters unique and how much micromanaging this takes will be a big influence on whether the game is good for anyone. Someone wanting an RPG lite (which WoW is already being accused of) might be happier with Blizzard's choices than I will be.

The whole PvP, PvE, FvF bit needs tons of work. So far, even on the supposed non-PvP server the opportunities for griefing under Blizzard's new (this push) rules have been amply demonstrated. If Blizzard does not include PvP, I suspect they will lose a lot of their client base. If they don't at least have some form of FvF, I think a lot of the WarCraft veterans will be pissed. But if their PvP model causes a lot of griefing, then they will not get much long term loyalty. And a person playing this game for more than a few months is worth a lot more to Blizzard than someone who buys the box and leaves after a month or so. Again, this is a major issue and again it seems to be going in the opposite direction from what I would like.

The quest system is both a bonus and a handicap. It is a bonus because some of the quests are actually interesting, and a lot of the others at least give you a "reason" to grind (you're still grinding for XP, but now you're doing it to "balance nature" or whatever). But it is a handicap in that people don't seem to just be exploring the game out of curiosity for the world. It's almost like having a "to do" list and you're going around getting "tasks" done. Of course, the a large purpose of the quest system is to guide you around the area you're in and then move you to another area when (in the designer's mind) you've been there long enough. The quest system adds a lot to the linearity of the game, perhaps making it more interesting the first time but reducing the re-playability in the long term, I think. A big question will be the ability of Blizzard to add sufficient high level content. As things stand right now, a character played by a reasonably casual player would probably max out in less than 200 hours. That sounds like a lot, but it is only two and a half months for a "couple of hours a night" player. At that point, the high level content needs to keep him in the game (and paying that monthly fee) or most players will quit since building multiple characters doesn't seem extremely viable (besides, many will fell "I beat the game, why do it again?").

A few problems exist in the interface, and again Blizzard has sort of promised to try to look into possibly fixing them if it can figure out a way. That in spite that third party UI builders have fixed many of those problems. Some of those problems are strange, given the maturity of graphics interfaces and of Blizzard. Things like clicking the up or down buttons of a scrolling window does not scroll by one line, but by some (arbitrary it looks like) portion of a page. Clicking in the slider part does not move you down one page, but instead moves the slider to where you clicked. And other similar problems. Sometimes it is not possible to open two windows with related information at the same time. User names are not an object, so that even if you have someone's name on the screen in dialog, you can't just click on it to add to friends, guild, ignore, etc. Windows are neither movable nor re-sizable, and the text does not scale with the resolution, so that at high resolution it takes better eyes than mine to read some things. And for a quest based grouped game, the interface is amazingly poor for sharing quest information or finding people to quest with.

As to the actual gameplay in PvE mode, that is too "binary". After a while you learn what you can handle and what you can't -- and what you can handle is no threat and what you can't you flat out can't.

So, as I've said, there is a lot to go, both in implementation (which is to be expected at this stage of the process) and game design (which should have been pretty well worked out before the first picture was drawn or the first line of code written). Because of that, it has the possibility of being a great game or just another MMOG wanna be. And even if it is great, it can be a great Risk or a great Panzer Generals. So ultimately no one can tell you if *you* should buy it or not.

--Pete

[--Pete]

Hi,

might be ready by Christmas

I'd say right now that guessing a *year* is more appropriate than a month. For details, see my other post.

--Pete

[DeeBye]

I agree with a lot of what you say, but this caught my eye.

and the text does not scale with the resolution, so that at high resolution it takes better eyes than mine to read some things.

Text size can be changed. You have to enable Advanced Chat and deselect the little checkmark here.


Click Preferences.


You can now select font size.


Reselect the checkmark to lock it in place, and you're all done.

[Bolty]

For those Beta testing what are some of the features of the game that would make this a worthwhile investment?

I'll answer this as the beta draws to a close (possibly half a year or later from now). Right now I just don't think it's fair to say if I would spend money on this.

-Bolty

[MongoJerry]

I am a huge Blizzard fan but i am unsure of this MMPORG.  I loved the Warcraft series but won't this just be a poor man or better man's version of Evercrack.  For those Beta testing what are some of the features of the game that would make this a worthwhile investment?

I see a lot of potential in the game, and a lot of potential ways that Blizzard could screw it up. I was happy with the way things were looking in the last push, but this new patch has irked me. It's like they had several teams working in parallel with noone having finished anything, and yet some manager said, "There's going to be a riot if we don't get a patch out of *some* kind. Just give me whatever you have!" Really, I would almost have rather have had the old patch for another month than this thrown together one. Oh, well, we'll just have to see what comes out in the next or the following patch to get a better idea of where Blizzard is headed. And, we'll have to wait until before the release to find out if we want to spend actual cash on it.

Also, the August dates you've been seeing are dates pulled out of, er, the air by those retailers. They have no relationship to any timetable Blizzard has set. Blizzard has said that they're looking for a US and Korea release sometime in the final quarter of 2004. Most likely, that date will be pushed back, but it's possible that it could happen by the end of this year if there is a lot of stuff that has been worked on or designed but hasn't made it into the current patch, yet. I think we need to wait for two more pushes before we can see in what shape the game is really in.

[--Pete]

Hi,

Right you are. You can indeed set many features and options in advanced chat. When I tested higher resolutions, I did not have it enabled. My bad.

--Pete

[Jarulf]

Now the attributes are automatically maxed on each level up, and so the skill points are only needed to either buy trade skills or to learn new weapons.  The amount of player choice seems to be going down.

Actually the "maxing" of skills as you level up is just a temporary fix for this patch. The system to increase them as you played were not working correctly so instead of problems with that, they simply had it max as you leveled up. It will go back to leveling up as you use them again.

I agree that there is less choice now. I liked how you could focus on stats or skills for example at different times of your character (and perhaps even in the long run). It will be nice to see how talents eventually tie into the whole equation.

With my current warrior (who has gone from level 22 to 25 this weekend :) ), I got a major ammount of skill points with new patch, and kept most old trade skills. This has made me basically get every possible trade skill in the game (except engineering and tracking cirrently I think, I will probably get engineering too though). MOst will only ever be at first "level" (brought up to level 75), I have a bunch at second stage up to 150, and now I am running short to upgrade some more, but will pick a few (with few meaning whatever I can afford depending on how much skill points I get).

I was previous thinking that not increasing the cost for new trade skills when you got your third, fourth, fifth or whatever was bad since everyone would end up getting all. Perhaps it is not THAT much a problem, sure you can get them, but can't get them high enough to be that usefull. Sure, tailoring is fun for a warrior, for 5 (or was it 10 or 15?) skill points I can get it up to 75, that means I can make my own blue shirt and so on, but not really make much usefull things. Skinning is fun and I do start to need some leather for blacksmithing and so on. It is a bit overkill to have both alchamy (for potions) and fishing/coooking for nice food (Thunderlizzard tails make excellent food that heals 1100+ health in 30 seconds and only level 15 req or so for example) and fishing can be fun in it self. Adding in first aid for bandages is perhaps even more so but it give alterantives and can "stack" for emergensies. So it is really fun to have more trade skills but at much lower levels than your main one and what your character is at.

As a side note, is there a mail address to send suggestions to Blizzard at? The ingame system is to "small" and probelmatic I think for what I would like to send.

[Tal]

As a side note, is there a mail address to send suggestions to Blizzard at? The ingame system is to "small" and probelmatic I think for what I would like to send.

As far as I know there isn't a published one. The only email address they throw out with any regularity is wowsupport@blizzard.com. As that may be less than ideal for getting to developer's ears I would post it in the Suggestions Forum. Just make sure you state that you are doing so only because the ingame system is too small for what you would like to send or the jackals that prowl those boards will be all over you. ;)

Sure, tailoring is fun for a warrior, for 5 (or was it 10 or 15?) skill points I can get it up to 75, that means I can make my own blue shirt and so on, but not really make much usefull things.

Odd question but is this on your Alliance character? And if so is there any way I could comission a blue one from you for my Warrior Shalandrax? If you let me know what you need materials wise I'd be glad to gather it for you and mail it to your warrior. :) I'd also be happy to pay you for your time.

[--Pete]

Hi,

QUOTE (Pete @ Jun 23 2004, 02:02 AM)

Now the attributes are automatically maxed on each level up, and so the skill points are only needed to either buy trade skills or to learn new weapons. The amount of player choice seems to be going down.

Actually the "maxing" of skills as you level up is just a temporary fix for this patch. The system to increase them as you played were not working correctly so instead of problems with that, they simply had it max as you leveled up. It will go back to leveling up as you use them again.

Sorry, I wasn't clear. Too many things called "skills" in this game. I wasn't talking about the class skills being maxed. That, as you said, is a temporary solution to a problem they were having. I was talking about character attributes no longer taking skill points to increase:

The focus of the skill system is to allow character the ability to choose secondary skills. As such, attributes will now raise automatically when a character levels. As a result of this change, characters will receive less skill points than before. from here.

I got a major ammount of skill points with new patch

Which is why I deleted all my pre-patch characters (except for Grish) and started over. There was just no good way to see how a character would grow under the new rules except by actually growing one. It seems that the trade skills are still pretty easy to get, making it possible for a character to get a lot of trade skills at low level. As you point out, it is the higher level that will force choices (or so I hope). With the introduction of mounts and tracking, there are even more places where skill points will be needed. The system may indeed sort itself out.

I agree completely, a character with multiple skills is fun to play and not very expensive in skill points for apprentice. The gathering skills (skinning, herbalism, mining, and maybe fishing) are something I'm beginning to feel that every character should start with. If nothing else, it lets a young character get a bit more coin with little effort which is always welcome. Especially skinning, since what you get from that is often the most valuable thing that comes off an animal.

Specialization is still too nebulous for me to have much of an opinion on. It depends a lot on how many skill points one can acquire as opposed to how many skill points things cost. In the last push, people at higher levels were reporting getting 2 skill points per kill. And there was no cap on getting skill points. If these are still true, then eventually any character played long enough will have all trades maxed (unless Blizzard constantly adds new skills -- but I think even their imagination will bog down after a bit).

Again, we'll see. It all has the potential to be great or to be frustrating (do I really want to make bolts of cloth one at a time, when I've got thirty to make and I'm not even getting any skill increase from it?). The removal of auto loot, bad as it was in itself, indicates a type of reasoning that would make the game unattractive to me. It is, I think, an RTS way of looking at things rather than an RPG way. Focus on micromanagement rather than more "natural" play. I think that that is shown even more in the find herbs/ore issue. The present 3 minute timer on those abilities is foolish in my opinion. Not because it is three minutes but because it is a *timer*. Making it a timer just makes it a twiddle factor to keep clickers amused. It should either be a one shot spell or a permanent passive ability. If "find herbs/minerals" is supposed to represent an ability of a character to just find those items, there is no reason why it should ever go off. If it is supposed to represent actively searching for those items, then it should be "castable" only when stationary and should act like a radar or sonar "ping", showing those items on the minimap for a period of seconds after the "search" has been performed. In my view, either an ability (always on) or an action (ping to search) make sense. But a timer? Especially a timer that stays active while running, while crafting, and even while fighting? That just makes no sense.

And, while the find herbs/ores is in itself a minor point, and hardly worth noticing, it is the "poster boy" for the whole mentality of the game. This game is clearly coming from a group that is *not* a RPG group. It is also clearly coming from a group that draws it first and designs it after.

Well, enough meandering. It can end up being a great game (I hope so), it can end up being so-so. And, given what's going on at Vivendi, it can end up being junk by being forced out the door too soon. Or it can end up being canceled (as far as I can tell, no one at Vivendi cares about games, just about money).

--Pete

[Sword_of_Doom]

Hi:

Thanks guys for your thoughtful replies. It appears that retailers and gaming magazines i have been buying have been too hopeful of an earlier start time for this game. Wow, a year from now seems a long time. From some of your comments, it seems this game would be worth a look at for about a month or so but paying a monthly fee might not be worthwhile. I will definitely check in on the beta testing with much interest as a means of determining in the future whether i will buy or not.

[TheDragoon]

And remember, Blizzard has said that they'll eventually make it an open beta so you'd be able to sign up, try it out, and see if it's for you before you have to start paying. :)

[Jarulf]

Odd question but is this on your Alliance character? And if so is there any way I could comission a blue one from you for my Warrior Shalandrax? If you let me know what you need materials wise I'd be glad to gather it for you and mail it to your warrior. :) I'd also be happy to pay you for your time.

Nope, Horde character. And it is really not any expenive or rare ingredients, normal linen bolts, a blue die and perhaps some coarse thread. I allready have nice 8 and 10 slot bags done to me from other guild members (and have found some) so no need for that, otherwise I would almost consider looking what one get for next level, just for fun since I never play mages or priests and such it seems. With the new mai system it seems very easy to transfer items arround though, probably between your own chars too so one can make a special tailor/leather maker or something for such things. Just a thought.

[Jarulf]

Ahh, OK Pete, I missunderstood what skills you refered to. I would still prefer to get extra points to be able to put in stats OR to boost trade skills further.

I don't know if it is still there since I have not done much alchemy with this char, but in the push 1, my warrior made a lot of potions, and there was a sort of slider (similar to when you shift click a stack of items) that alowed you to make multiple potions with one click, it would then do them one after each other. I thought that very convenient. They should add that in more. For mining, there is mass smelt that smelt 10 copper bars at once but I have not seen that for other ors to buy.

By the way, my level 25 char is now getting skill points for almost every other monster at times it seems (killing similar level ones). Not sure how it will progress but they are slowly pouring in. Still, with quests and being rested, it will take several levels to collect the 200 I need to raise to level 3 some of the my prioritized skills, and that is one of them.

The herbs/ore finding is possible a problem. I spent 10 silver to upgrade both to longer duration. They should perhaps add a few more for even longer durations, if nothing else, it could be a money sink. I would also not mind if the area increased some with such "upgrade", could be an issue of what to send from server though but if one keep it for herbs and ore and not send monsters, it would not be THAT much extra info to send. I sugestion I allready sent ingame was to make the dots in different colours for herbs and ore (and if others such as tracking have similar, yet other colours), now one doesn't know and also at times won't know if to look for ore or herbs, especially with bad placement as in this patch with ore in the air or below ground, one start looking for a conceald herb instead only to figure out it was a non visible ore.

[--Pete]

Hi,

I would still prefer to get extra points to be able to put in stats OR to boost trade skills further.

Yea, I would too. Although it seems one will have "everything" in the end, the choice of what to get immediately and what could wait till later at least gave the illusion that the player had some control :)

in the push 1, . . . there was a sort of slider . . . that alowed you to make multiple potions with one click

Did you have cosmos installed? Because, as far as I know, this capability was never part of the stock UI, but was added by cosmos (and possibly other modified UIs). A number of us have suggested that all repetitive actions be handled this way. Blizzard's arguments about "immersion" seemed flawed to me. Having to sit there, clicking a button every ten to twenty seconds for five minutes watching the same animation over and over does not add to my immersion in the game, but it does add to my irritation and anger at the designer so inconsiderate as to put me through that form of hell. It is more like running a poor installation script than playing a game.

By the way, my level 25 char is now getting skill points for almost every other monster at times

Glad to hear that the points are still rolling in.

Not sure how it will progress

I haven't seen anything to indicate that it has changed from the "1 skill point per X experience points from monsters without the rest bonus" of last push. Last push X = 300, I don't know if that changed this push but think it probably did since Blizzard said that skill points would come in more slowly. So you should steadily get more and more skill points per level.

Still, with quests and being rested, it will take several levels to collect the 200 I need to raise to level 3 some of the my prioritized skills,

But that still means that your character will have level 3 ('expert', I think -- should have been 'master' if they are going to use the medieval guild rankings) skills at level 27 or 28. Since there are at present 45 levels, and since skill points will roll in even faster as you progress, it will be interesting to see just how "perfect" a character can become as far as having all skills maxed by 45 (or 65 which is what the final game is supposed to be, I think).

They should perhaps add a few more for even longer durations, if nothing else, it could be a money sink.

Actually, I do not believe that any one time expense will ever qualify as a "money sink". But that's another (repeat) discussion for another time.

And I don't think any timer makes sense in this context. I think a longer timer is better than a shorter one, but I think no timer at all would be best. I think both the range and the probability of finding the item you are looking for should go up with skill level.

As to the colors, I would just as soon not have them, but that is because of my color blindness and the fact that many of the colors would probably blend into the background for me. I have no trouble seeing the bright yellow against any background. As for identifying what I'm looking at, I find the present solution (move your mouse over the dot and the tool tip tells you what it is) to be sufficient.

won't know if to look for ore or herbs, especially with bad placement as in this patch with ore in the air or below ground,

Yes, they did seem to have lost control pf the ground level in this patch. Not just ore and herbs, but critters coming out of the ground, being underground while attacking, and being "auto-buried" when they die. In many cases, it turns what should be routine actions (mining, flower picking, corpse looting) into a frustrating game of "find the pixel".

--Pete