03-29-2004, 11:44 AM
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.
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.