A MMORG Skeptic's POV (long)

[Saxywoo]

Greetings everyone.

Before I begin, I need to give you a little information. I went into this with a rather colored view of the MMORG genre of games. I thought that they were scams. I mean, who pays $60 to be able to install software on thier PC, and then have to pay $20/month to be able to play it, since it's not available offline. So in order to play a game, people are paying, really, $100-$120 to start playing a game, and $20/month after that. That's what I called a scam.

World of Warcraft is a rather unique world, compared to the others that I have seen, but I know that I "haven't seen nothin' yet" with my level 9 Night Elf Warrior. Heck, I just started her what....3 days ago. But what I've seen is rather impressive. And I'm not saying this because I'm a massive fan of Blizzard's games. I'm someone that hasn't played ANY game very actively in about 5 years. Here's what I've learned:

1) Gameplay - The game world looks incredible, though there's one drawback to it. You have to have a pretty decent video card, or you're going to be hurting - not only with your frame rate, but you're going to be doing a lot of running through the forest as a ghost, recovering your body. (Trust me, I know this one..... ask Bolty).

2) Quests - The quests seem simple enough, where you're helping someone out by doing something for them... and in return, you get either cash or an item of your choice. And sometimes both. Now granted, any reward for a quest was promptly sold and better equipment bought, but for the most part, the Quests are entertaining.

3) Community - It's going to be interesting. I got "Trainned" a couple of times, but I think, hey, that's just because people are learning the game, and this poor person realized that the Nightsaber that he thought that he could take on alone was really tearing him to shreds, so he ran...and woke up very monster along the way, and this chacing them right past me, where either the monsters break off, or they really do succeed in killing them. But when the monsters break off from the pursuit, they stick close by. I've been swarmed a couple of times because of this happening.

I've run into people that thought that I should do all the work in a party. I was a level 6, met up with a level 7 to take care of a quest. My quest companion said something to the effect of "You tank, and I'll attack them from behind." Little did they realize that they were the same class that I was - Warriior. He ended up running off (while still in the party), getting attacked by a nightsaber, and then comes hauling a%$ right back to me. Then he dies,, and he's says "Dude, where were you?" He didn't see the "hold - I need to heal" statement.

It'll be interesting to see what sort of trouble makers there will be when the game goes public. I'm sure that you'll have your bands of

[Saxywoo]

(continued)

. I'm sure that you'll have your bands of people that will be just as annoying the PKs an MKs in Diablo (yes, I’m referring to the first one). Either way, I think that it’ll be both interesting as much as it’s annoying.

I saw various messages about so-and-so dying in a duel, but I haven’t tried that. Perhaps that it might be cool to find out about that, should the opportunity arise. I haven’t tried to see if you can just go “hostile” and attack anyone, like you could in the first Diablo. It seems like Blizzard had fixed that issue in Diablo II, where you would have to outright select that you’re going hostile, and it warns the other party.

You then run across the general helpfulness or the courtesy of the other players in the game. I was looking for one of the MPCs, and simply couldn’t find him. I asked the general region of the game “Where is ______ in Darnassus?” No answer, despite seeing about a dozen level 20 elves pass me on the trails or in the city. Then a level 15 elf was kind enough to answer me when I stopped him and asked him, but unfortunately, I was pointed in the wrong direction. It eventually took a level 25 elf on his way back from the main continent, who was kind enough to simply say “follow” and off we went, dropping me off at the very person that I needed to talk to to finish a quest. (Whoever you were, thank you) But when I was asking for assistance with finding the MPC I was looking for, I answered the questions of other people in the region, but nobody answered back to my question.

4) Learning to play the game – I went into this with the thought of “okay, just dive right in, and learn it.” I found that playing the warrior persuasion of the elf was rather easy to learn. Click on a target, and decide if you want to attack…. Pretty straight forward. If you want to attack, you can hit “F” or you can right click on your target. One thing that I learned quickly, and especially after Bolty’s warning was pay attention to the monster’s level. Another thing is some monsters of one level may very well be easier or harder to kill than another kind of monster of the same level. For instance, I was able to take on a level 6 Nightsabor (jungle tiger), but a level 6 Timberling (a walking tree with a lot of angst) would scrub the forest with me.

5) Monster levels – I like the fact that you can see what the monster levels are that you are thinking about going up against. One thing with this, again through Bolty’s advice, if you’re dealing with a monster that is 3 levels higher than your character level, you’re asking for trouble, and will most likely lose the fight. There have been cases, however, where I have tackled monsters that is either my same level or one level higher than me where I have come out of the fight victorious but with 13 hit points. Just because you leveled up, doesn’t mean that you’re ready to take on monsters your same level. I’ve caught myself making that mistake several times, often to a less than desirable result.

6) Special Abilities – Since I’m only a level 9, I have a lot to see yet. But I think that I might have figured out a decent strategy for taking out monsters, and I apologize if someone else has already written about this. IF that’s the case, then let this be a confirmation for you. These are the abilities that I’ve found are the most useful (to me) as of yet.

Strike: A more powerful strike, which will do about twice the damage as your normal swing with your weapon. Very useful when coupled with a few other special attacks.

Rend: It’s a fact. Monsters, when hurt enough, will run. They do come back, or at least I have never let a monster get away, or they have died due to this attack while running. The closest Diablo II term that I can put on this is Open Wounds. Right now I have only “Rank 1” Rend, but for 31 seconds after the monster is inflicted with this, they lose hit points periodically. This is especially helpful if you are in an area where you are surrounded by monsters that you know that you can’t take them all on at once, and your immediate target runs. If you hit the monster late enough in the fight, and they have low enough hit points, then you can just sit pretty and wait for the monster to either come back to you, or die while running off. I’ve found this to be extremely helpful.

[Saxywoo]

Charge: It’s kind of a close combat ranged attack. Let’s you get into the fray quickly, before the monster sees you. But if you get too close, you can’t use it. This increases your chances of getting the first strike in, but you can also “surprise” the monster, and your first hit may have a better chance of being a critical hit than it would normally. I’ll leave it to the number crunchers to figure that one out. (You know who you are)

Hamstring: A nice little ability that will do, from what I’ve seen, the same amount of damage that the ability “Strike” will do, but it adds a slowing effect to the monster’s movement. This would be good if you’re tackling a harder monster, and may help you get away, should you need to run. But all in all, this also help you get more hits in, so you’re not just standing toe to toe with a monster and trading blows.

7) Game Crashes – compared to Bolty, I consider myself to be rather lucky in the fact that I have only had the game crash on me about 10 times, and all on my desktop system, which is running Windows XP (Retail). But from what I can tell, the game itself is rather stable on the machine that I’m running it on, which is an IBM T40 laptop with a Pentium M running at 1.5GHz. The OS is Windows 2000 (Pro). Knowing Bolty and the specs of his system, I’m beginning to wonder if his system’s speed could be contributing to the issue. I’m wondering if the slower machine might have just a little more stability than another, which is decked out. My laptop has had no crashes as of yet, but we will see how that goes as I get further along. After all, Bolty has been playing for 2 weeks longer than I have. I’m wondering if there is a game stability issue with Windows XP (Retial). What do you all think?

8) Conclusion – Would I buy the game when it comes out? I would actually love to. It’s a joy to play. My only problem with it, and this now bleeds into my real life, is can I justify to my wife the expense of playing the game. And in justifying the playing of the game, I would have to play the game quite a bit for me to consider it to be a worthwhile expenditure. And it’s the time requirements of that which play the major part of the decision to play the game. For $20/month, I feel that I would need to at least play the game for about 5 hours a month (figuring 2.5 movies would cost about $20, minus the second mortgage for concessions). But knowing me, and knowing how I love to get into Blizzard games, I would want to play it a lot more, and would then bring in the possibility of my wife and kids pulling the MSPoF (the old DSF Merciless Short Post of Flaming) out of the corner and using it on me.

9) Your Considerations – I guess what you would need to figure out first (after deciding if you can afford the $20/month to play the game) is how much game play in your mind, justifies the expense of playing said game? Then does that amount of time jive with everything else that is going on in your life (i.e. friends, family, spare time, other responsibilities)? Just from what I’ve seen of the game, if you have the system


That's all for now.... there will be more later, when I've been able to delve into the game more.....

SaxyCorp

[BEEFMOTRTON]

Where are you located that it would cost $20 a month? The most Blizzard is going to charge, going off of the questions on the beta application, is $15.95USD and it will probably be less than that. You talking CAD or Euros or something?

[DeeBye]

You have to have a pretty decent video card, or you're going to be hurting - not only with your frame rate, but you're going to be doing a lot of running through the forest as a ghost, recovering your body.  (Trust me, I know this one..... ask Bolty).

It's funny that you mention this.

I have probably the worst video "card" ever made. It's an onboard S3 Graphics ProSavageDDR. Google the name and you'll see how bad it is. It's 32 megs of pure spite and sewer water.

My other specs are:
AMD Athlon 1700+XP
512 MB DDR RAM

Now that's not so bad, is it?

Amazingly enough, I get decent framerates with my crappy chipset. I average about 20-30, which is more than playable. The real problem stems from the fact that my card skips the middle polygons in WoW. The close polygons look great. The far-off ones look nice. The middlegons are non-existant.

Example

New video card, here I come!

[Jarulf]

Charge: It?s kind of a close combat ranged attack.  Let?s you get into the fray quickly, before the monster sees you.  But if you get too close, you can?t use it.  This increases your chances of getting the first strike in, but you can also ?surprise? the monster, and your first hit may have a better chance of being a critical hit than it would normally.  I?ll leave it to the number crunchers to figure that one out.  (You know who you are)

When you hit level 14 (I think) you can get level 2 charge. It has the nice bonus of actually stunning your monster for 4 second. This usually means you can get in an extra strike (in addition to first hit) or or at times even two, before the monster get to do anything.

As for game crashes, it has crashed 3 times on me only and I have played a character to level 13 and one to 17. And I do to run arround exploring and such so I take it relatively slow on leveling.

[Saxywoo]

I put down $20 (thinking US dollars) since that's what I've heard the other MMORPGs charging. But not only that, but it was a nice easy figure to go ahead and figure out the "how much game play would make playing worthwhile" section of my post.

I truely do not have any idea of how much it would cost to play the game.

The only challenge that I have now is trying to get my wife into the game...... :unsure:

And if she does get into the game, then we'll fight over who's going to play.... :blink:

[Roland]

Planetside (a MMOFPS, like a futuristic MMO version of Battlefield) and IIRC EverQuest are both $13.00 a month. Even $15.95 is a bit high, IMO, even (especially?) for a Blizzard game. Chances are, due to competition and the economy, $13.00 is a more likely price. A far cry from $20.00, I must say. Almost half the cost. ;) Whoever told you most MMOs cost $20.00 was either going on ANCIENT (read: 3 - 4 years old) information, or simply has their head up their posterior. I'll leave you to decide. ;)

[Roland]

Ugh. You find that PLAYABLE? My God, I almost had a siezure just from the screenshot. EEP! I'd burn that thing. And bury the ashes. In acid. In a barrel. Under a mountain.

[DarkCrown]

It's 32 megs of pure spite and sewer water.

For some reason this phrase just really hit my funny bone. Thanks for the laugh!
Even though I've never owned that particuar video card, my thought when I read this was: "I've owned that card!"

-DarkCrown

[Syl_Aran]

heh, i don't think i've heard a single bad comment about the actual gameplay. Glad to see your enjoying it, have you decided on any sort of trade skill yet?

However, I'm honestly expecting blizzard to end up charging 49.99 for the game (average, of course) and then only about 10$ for the online play, maybe a little lower. I seriously doubt theyre going to be charging 13$, just doesn't seem like a very blizzardy thing to do considering they normally charge nothing for online service.

That video card picture scared me, but its still a ton better than anything this computer could manage. But, by the time WoW actually comes out, i'll be in an (at least) 2.8 gighz system with a 9800 pro =p

tis a ways off though.