First Impressions

[Jim]

Hi

FYG...Let me try to answer some of your questions & I hope this helps you on your Adventure in the MMORPG world...BTW I Still have in a Diablo folder...>
Jarulf’s Guide to Diablo and Hellfire version 1.31 by Pedro Faria / Jarulf :D

I don't know of any specific taunt option.

In EQ Taunt is a SKILL, as Thenryb pointed out & a Good one, since both War Mages & Mage Clerics can not wear Heavy Armor, I never could understand this, but that is the way things are in RPG...They can wear Leather, Cloth or Lite Armor...>[Gandorf the Grey only wears a White Bath Robe to fight in]

Anyway, a monster will pick and switch targets as it is attacked. As a rogue I try to get up behind a monster to do a back stab attack. I think there are more into target selecting than actually who attacked last but I can be wrong.

Monster Ai is set for switching attacks based on "DAMAGE" Received, that damage factor might be "Total Damage" per Hit or getting hit more than ONCE by the SAME Attacker, like you stabbing it in the Back 3 times.

One thing that doesn't work is if you are getting beaten up, you can't simply run back and past others to have the monster switch to them, it will continue charging you right through others. You need to have them actually attack the monster, at least in most cases I have experienced.

Monster Ai includes "Memory" IF you turn & Run [BTW running is my favorite tactic] the Mob will follow you till you DIE or you reach a Safe Zone outside the monsters SPAWN Area...in Asherons Call a monster will only follow you till you reach the EDGE of your COMPASS within the Mobs Spawning zone, while running you watch the compass & note when the Mob disappears of your compass...the Compass is kind of like RADAR.

FYG running Close to other players in the game to Throw off an "AGRO MOB" chasing you is NOT GOOD & you will most likely receive a Message from that Player, because that monster Returning to his Spawning Zone Will NOW attack that poor player it Remembers it passed by while chasing you...There will come a time when your Running and say 10 Monsters are chasing you, it is Polite to send out a Message like this...> TRAIN <...in MMORPGs WE all know what a train of AGRO MOBS is.

In EQ the MOBs Memory is so Good that in order for you to return to where your party is you need to Log Off to erase the Ai Memory of the Monster who btw is Waiting for you on the other side of the Safe Zone, like in Diablo 1 when you use a Town Portal to escape the Butcher, ...in EQ or Dungeon Seige you can also run to Guard & have the Guard help you.

What is great having are potions...Monsters heal often faster than yourself if you break away for a heal.

My Melee fighter carries both Health & Stamina potions, since both get depleted during a Fight. YEP Monster do Heal same as you, some Bosses even faster, I hope Boltys Mage has a Spell that can Slow Health Regeneration.

As for corpses, I would say they stay even after you get back and "resurrect" from ghost to person. It is thus more an indication of were people have actually died. No idea for how long they stay and if one can have lots of corpses in different places.

Each Game be it MMORPG or a MP Game have their Own way of dealing with CORPSES...Your corpse might have some of your Best Equipment on it & you will Loss it ALL if you don't get back to it in Time...TIME is Usually "X" amount of Minutes or Hours Per character level depending on the game...Remember your in a "ON GOING" [Persistent = Never Ending] WORLD, TIME does not stop when you Go to Bed it keeps going & going, so a High level characters can get their Corpse tomorrow, you can't :(

HINT: Never DIE in a Spawning Zone IF you know your going to DIE, RUN try to Die a safe distance from the Spawn.

[Bolty]

Well today's the first day I actually was free to sit down and try this out. I've been avoiding the "content" sections of this forum and most of the WoW site lately so that I could start fresh. Well, from my experience so far, that might not have been the best choice!

N00b. :lol: :lol: :lol:

Seriously, though...Gris, I'm not sure how you got off on that bad a foot. The game has plenty of tutorial stuff in the beginning (look for little caption bubbles on your screen) that teach you the interface. I think somehow you missed those, or skipped a lot of reading somewhere. I had no interface problems at all with the game and I have to admit, it all seemed pretty intuitive.

There are help menus in the game, too...

If you were dying in the "kiddie area" (the place you start out in), and it sounds like you were, make sure you get a lot of practice there before heading out. Dying because of interface troubles is an embarrassing way to go out. :)

But I want to establish for the record that I think the game's interface is pretty slick - it was the gameplay difficulty that nailed me.

-Bolty

[Baylan]

Just a few 'newbie' tips, particularly for you Bolty - as your opinion will likely carry the most weight with the vast majority of loungers :-)...

Control the aggro - or attention/attacks of monsters is absolutely critical in groups, particularly as you move further and further through the game. Control of the aggro of "mobs" of "critters" or "creeps" or whatever the heck they're called in WoW usually revolves around a "tank" character, one with a lot of hit points taking the brunt of the attack and the healer type character healing the "tank". Once attacking and aggro has been established upon the tank, other characters typically join in the attack on the monster. The control of that mob's attacks is a very advanced concept in MMORPG's that leads to much greater efficiency as less heals are needed to be doled out, and it helps dramatically with mana consumption later on in the game.

In EQ, aggro was typically a number on a list that depended on a few factors. Damage, number of hits on the "mob", healing a character who is damaging the mob, "buffing" or giving a protective spell to a character currently on the aggro list. When the numbers add up, the mob attacks the character highest on that list. The Taunt skill in EverQuest was given to the warrior type characters, and allowed them to immediately jump to the top of the aggro list. I'm not sure of an equivilent option exists in WoW as I'm not in the beta, but I imagine something similar would exist for most of the "tanking" classes.

In MMORPG's, the reason to love the game is the people that you meet and enjoying the immersion in the vast world. In the high end game, raids, or massive groupings of people allied together in an effort to bring down the biggest and the baddest mobs take up the vast majority of free time - and while most lurkers likely would not be big fans of raiding, as it is more of a power-gamer aspect of MMORPGs, one of the most enjoyable experiences that I have had gaming is pushing my limits in a group of friends in terms of number of monsters we can take off, speed we can take them on, the power of the monsters we're beating, and all that sort of thing.

Having a guild of sorts, similar to a surrogate family, was one of the things that kept me involved in EverQuest for so long - they were just a ton of fun to talk with, but there was also the stranger factor. While there will always be pompous arses and morons abound in all games in EverQuest I found that the percentage of impolite people were much, much, much lower than that of b.net. I also found that the percentage of people willing to learn, to go for a challange, and to just chat when you need it were much higher than b.net. This was on a server of approximately 2000 people at any one time - instead of on a server of 30,000 or so.

Keep with it Bolty - there is always a very steep learning curve for the first few days, or even weeks of MMORPGing, but if you find that the genre works for you, and you enjoy the game - you may find it difficult to go back to something else :-).

The (apparent) local expert on MMORPGs

Baylan

P.S. - preemptive apologies for my probable poor grammar and incoherency, its late and I should be in bed, in fact, I'm skipping on previewing it because of that :-)

[JustAGuy]

Control the aggro ... Control of the aggro of "mobs" of "critters" or "creeps" or whatever the heck they're called in WoW usually revolves around a "tank" character, one with a lot of hit points taking the brunt of the attack and the healer type character healing the "tank". Once attacking and aggro has been established upon the tank, other characters typically join in the attack on the monster.

I was about to mention something about aggro. I've never played a MMORPG, but I've read about this concept and was going to mention it to Bolty. You summed it up quite nicely, though. This is exactly what a good "tank" needs to do, be the center of attention (get that aggro!), allowing the mages to deal the big damage unfettered. Perhaps a mage is a support class that will never be able to solo, despite Blizzard's claims of "anyone can do it"?

I read on the Blizzard forum that a Paladin can heal himself, thereby pushing himself to the top of the aggro list. Whether he heals himself or another player, it could be that a smart Paladin player can serve as quality crowd control.

While there will always be pompous arses and morons abound in all games in EverQuest I found that the percentage of impolite people were much, much, much lower than that of b.net.

This is why I want to get into WoW! I figure, if there are more credit card holding players, then there will be more maturity. Although, the possesion of money is not necessarily equal to a higher maturity level, still, it's nice to have something to hope for in a gaming experience.

EDIT: Muh grammarrr be bad

[TheDragoon]

What is "aggro" short for? "Aggression" is the only thing that springs to mind for me, but that doesn't seem like it is necessarily correct. It'd help me remember the term if I know where it comes from. :)

[Guest]

Im sure the first time it was used(probably in a MUDD) it was aggression. But I dont think most players discern a difference. The more you aggrivate a monster the more aggressision you stir up essentially.

You hear people say "The tank pulled aggro of the healer". And you hear people say "He aggroed the monster by nuking to fast".

[DeeBye]

[Griselda]

I'm not sure of an equivilent option exists in WoW as I'm not in the beta, but I imagine something similar would exist for most of the "tanking" classes.

Hey, I know this one! While I haven't played any of the tank classes, I overheard someone at a trainer tonight wondering whether "aggro" was worthwhile.

My second night was much smoother, and I'm getting around, completing quests, and killing stuff just fine. :)

-Griselda

[Jarulf]

I read on the Blizzard forum that a Paladin can heal himself, thereby pushing himself to the top of the aggro list. Whether he heals himself or another player, it could be that a smart Paladin player can serve as quality crowd control.

Heh, how can healing oneself make one the target? That is seriously flawed AI I would think (I I myself play horribly bad). In any typical game (like normal WC), or in this game, I would personally not start out with the guy that heal himself. I would take out the others first, then focusing on this rehealing guy at the end. I think good monsters should do that too, reduce the number of targets and sources of damage to you as quickly as possible.

From some reading, it appears some classes (warriors?) in WoW will indeed have a "taunt" skill, but only after reaching a higher level, not form the start. It would be used to get the attention of monsters.

As for the meaning of "aggro", I always think of agriculture. We had a part of the company I work for to previously be called "aggro" (they deal with fertalizers and such). So I feel it is a horrible word. Beside, even if it means aggression, it is not a so good word since it doesn't tell what it actually mean. Just my thought :)

[Guest]

The nature of killing monsters in D2 sort of averages the danger(Im talking aggressive casulal players not HC). If you dont die immediatly on entering a new area it ussually works out that moderate the danger by how fast you move.

In a MMORP each monster is a seperate event and you have to size up each fight before starting. Chances are if you play a bit youll start thinging this way and it will seem less frusttrating(your original tone seemd to be slightly frustrated.)


Of course if your toon is underpowered or poorly balanced as you suspect, thats a problem, but a seperate one.

[Jini]

I read on the Blizzard forum that a Paladin can heal himself, thereby pushing himself to the top of the aggro list. Whether he heals himself or another player, it could be that a smart Paladin player can serve as quality crowd control.

Heh, how can healing oneself make one the target? That is seriously flawed AI I would think (I I myself play horribly bad). In any typical game (like normal WC), or in this game, I would personally not start out with the guy that heal himself. I would take out the others first, then focusing on this rehealing guy at the end. I think good monsters should do that too, reduce the number of targets and sources of damage to you as quickly as possible.

Strangely enough it is most effective to kill the Healing things first. They can often heal more per unit time than can be dealt by damage dealers of equal numbers. Therefore it is necessary to kill the healers first.

As for the meaning of "aggro", I always think of agriculture. We had a part of the company I work for to previously be called "aggro" (they deal with fertalizers and such). So I feel it is a horrible word. Beside, even if it means aggression, it is not a so good word since it doesn't tell what it actually mean. Just my thought :)

The argriculture abbreviation is agro. Aggro in the MMO context is short for aggression.

[Bolty]

Baylan, thanks for the aggro explanation. Players will indeed have taunting abilities, but as Jarulf says it's more a higher-level thing.

I learned about aggro pretty quickly, and that wasn't so much the problem. Even when partied with tanks, mages will run into difficulties. The difficulty with mages right now can be summed up in 3 points:

1) When a mage is attacked, its spell casting is interrupted/slowed down. Thus, the more hits you take, the less you dish out. With two attackers, you can often reach a point where you cannot strike at all. This doesn't happen to melee'rs.
2) A mage must stand still to perform a spell attack. This does not apply to melee'ers, who can attack while running.
3) Even if a mage misses with its spell, it is still charged with the mana cost of the spell. This doesn't happen to melee'rs, from what I've heard (warriors using rage).

I can attack one monster around my level and win. Anything more than that and I'm in trouble. I take quests that are "green" (meaning easy for my level) and will struggle through them sometimes. I am now level 14 and still plugging away.

-Bolty

[Chesspiece_face]

I think the biggest problems with the Mage class right now is that some of their core skills have been removed because they were FAR too overpowered and they are being reworked.

Chains of ice being probably the most important:

Chains of Ice
Mage Spell
Forms icy chains around the enemy, locking the target in place.

These root spells are common and practically a neccesity for mage type characters. They are also the easiest skill to break in a game. If a skill like this is broken it can give mages 100% impunity while fighting. I'm assuming that the reason that this skill has been removed (temporarily) is that the mobs were being held in one place for far too long or the chance for it to land was way too high.

Another thing to mention is that, at least from the topics on this board, it seems most of the people haven't played many mmorpgs at all. In mmorpgs mages opperate much differently in groups than when soloing. While soloing your main goal is to dish out as much damage as fast as possible, dropping the enemy before it can kill you. (^^^Chains of Ice would help you do that.) While in a group, however you absolutely cannot follow this mindset. Almost all the time you are in a group you will be fighting mobs that are too strong for you to take on your own. If you follow the "mana-dump" mindset you will draw too much Aggro from the enemy and it will come running at you far too early. Not only will you will you get killed much more often but there will be much more downtime between fights cause you now need to wait a long time to refresh your mana supply. In groups where the taunt ability is lacking the mages need to balance the damage they deal over longer periods of time, allowing other members of the party to keep up with the aggro list.

edit:

another thing to mention is that character planning is much more in-depth in these games. When people start playing a new mmorpg it is almost gauranteed that their first character will get trashed when they get a better knowledge of the game and how to build characters. It is very easy to mess up your character by putting points into skills or abilities that you don't fully understand. It is that reason that many of the newer mmorpgs are allowing users to untrain abilities in some way if they find out it isn't a good investment.

This is also a good reason that the lurkers lounge should, in fact, put WoW on their game list. The LL has always been the top page to come to when looking for in depth analysis of Diablos inner workings. In mmorpgs understanding these inner-workings is much more imperative to creating a working character.

[Sabra]

This just gets more and more interesting with each passing day.

I have a few questions for those in the beta.

In WoW when you move your pointer across the screen, does your P.O.V. pan as a camera would?

Because of time constraints, not attitude, I play solo a lot. I prefer coop whenever possible, especially since I'm quite the chatter. But I'm told RL's frequent intrusions will work against me in WoW. Will there be room for soloing, as you currently see it? Certainly Bolty's mage is swimming upstream, when solo. Would an archer or meleer do better with that or is it basically impossible to solo at any but the lowest levels?

[Jarulf]

Strangely enough it is most effective to kill the Healing things first.&nbsp; They can often heal more per unit time than can be dealt by damage dealers of equal numbers.&nbsp; Therefore it is necessary to kill the healers first.&nbsp;

I don't buy this. What you want to do is (theoretically) see how much damage you need to dish out to kill all the enemies and at the same time see how much damage you will take during that time. The ammount you do, is basically fixed. It is the ammount of HP for each monster, plus the ammopunt the healing monster heal while you are attacking it (taking its HP down). The ammount of damage you take, is the ammount of damage each of the enemies dish out, times the duration until each one die.

Assuming they all have the same ammount of HP and do the same damage (otherwise it will be very different), it is obvious that you want to make sure you get kills done as fast as possible since as soon as you kill an enemy, you are recieveing damage from one less enemy. Which monsters are the fastest you can kill? The ones NOT healing, hence kill them first.

Take an extreme, each "period of time" (whatever you have it as) you do 10 damage, the monsters have 100 HP and the healers heal 9 per time period. It will take an AWEFULL lot of time killing it. If you start with it, you have all the other monsters deal damage for all that long time, while if you take it last, you will only have its own damage done to you during that long time.

Perhaps we are talking about different things though.

[Jarulf]

This just gets more and more interesting with each passing day.

I have a few questions for those in the beta.

In WoW when you move your pointer across the screen, does your P.O.V. pan as a camera would?

Because of time constraints, not attitude, I play solo a lot. I prefer coop whenever possible, especially since I'm quite the chatter. But I'm told RL's frequent intrusions will work against me in WoW. Will there be room for soloing, as you currently see it? Certainly Bolty's mage is swimming upstream, when solo. Would an archer or meleer do better with that or is it basically impossible to solo at any but the lowest levels?

I really can't comment on the soloing at high levels, since I only played my rogue up to 13 and now am working on my warrior (at level 8). Heis called Jarulf by the way and is over at the elven island(s) in case anyone want to contact/play with me.

What I can say is that soloing is very possible BUT it is harder and hence, you have to do the quests in a slowe, or rather, letr time compared to your level. A quest you can simply breeze thorugh at level 7 might need level 9 or more to do solo. At that time, you can breeze thorugh it as well though and I think the exp you get (for killings) could compare, although the quest reward would be comparable less to what you need for leveling up.

In addition, quests/fighting done in the open, with monsters scattered arround is easy solo since one can quite easy take on the monsters one by one. If it involves getting into a cave, although it is possible at times to fight one at a time, you will much more frequently find yourself fighting more monsters and die (since you wanted to go there as soon as you handle the monsters one by one :) ). ALso, such palces is harder to avoid having monsters respawn near or on top of you with no room to run away (even for just regaining health) and the risk is thus much higher.

I can't say if it is similar later on. But one can always wait a few levels and do the quests at a bit higher level and manage it solo I would say.

As for looking arround, it is a bit hard to explain how it works in text. Basically, the camera is in the same direction as your character looks (I have yet to figure out how to (easilly) look at him from the front). You can soom in, or rather zoom out) form a situation where it is basically a FPS (looking through the actual eyes) up to looking from quite a bit of a distance behind the character. The latter works best outside, while getting in close works best inside (for me, for now), since if there is obstructions in the view between the camera and the character, it will zoom in and change the view and such and it gets confusing inside.

On to of that, you can change the elevation of the camer form right behind to from the above (one can actually go all the way from completely a top to completely below, however, as soon as you go belo the ground, it will instead move the camera closer along the ground until you are basically at the feets looking straight up thorugh the character.

On top of this it IS possible to look to the sides, without spinning the character) by moving the mouse sideways (whicle holding down one of the mouse buttons), which can be good for scouting to the sides, as soon as you let go of the button, the camera pans back (very quickly) to the behind the character. Moving the pointer in itself do nothing though.

There are probably a LOT more ways to do it and look and from what I have seen, one can customize it completely and probably add features not in it by default.

[NuurAbSaal]

Hi guys, been a while, I've been reading WAY too much about WoW to be posting here :)

Jarulf:
I think this whole healing thing comes from a misunderstanding of the phrase "Paladin can heal himself, that gets him on top of the aggro list". IIRC a Paladin can heal himself AND other chars, so monsters don't target him first because he heals HIMSELF, but because, by using his Healing skills he has shown that he is able to cast a HEAL (identified himself as a healing class), something that mobs don't like. The target of the heal is irrelevant (hmmm, maybe not, healing someone that does damage to the bad guys gets you aggro faster, right?). Well, apparently it's not that simple :) Or is it? Ah, wait, Heureka! Paladin attacking mobs+healing himself=super aggro. Someone with more knowledge of how aggro is handled in WoW could probably explain this better (or say why it's wrong).

Healing things in Jini's post IMHO refers to character classes that can heal any party member, not just themselves. If this is true, his argument is pretty sound, from what I've heard about the game. Since you are currently playing it (damn you! :) ), you should have no problem confirming the following:

Why kill the Healer first? What I know from reading about the game (I know, second hand info, sorry), the healing classes have less hit points and armor (except our Paladin example), and they are normally healing the tank(s). So if you switch your attention to the healers you get some easy kills AND rob the tanks of their healing. Which would look like a good tactic to me, and explains why our aggro hugging Paladin would be a boon to any party (more Hps and armor keep him alive longer).

Hmpf, I am great at explaining the obvious, yay, I rule...

And since you are playing a rogue I would like to ask you a question about pick-pocketing. If you are pick-pocketing a NPC trader, how does the game prevent you from pick-pocketing him 1024 times in a row? Does it have a cooldown, do you have to wait to target the same char/NPC again, simply no more stuff to steal after a successful attempt? I cannot remember ever having read about this, any info would be appreciated.

Greetings
Nuur

EDIT: I forgot to thank DeeBye! -> Homer r0xx0rz :lol:

[Guest]

Against a tough MOB the healer is the key to a group surviving.

Any case where this average player would die in half the time it took to kill the MOB it then makes sense to kill the healer first. The same holds true with weaker multiple mobs.

The advanatge of killling the healers for is particularly clear in PvP games like DAOC.

[Jarulf]

Ahh, yes, if we talk about someone that heal OTHERS, then yes, he would sure be at the top (if not nessecarilly at the very top) of the list of targets to kill first. Someone that heal himself though is another issue.

As for pickpoeckting, I picket it, tried it and have stoped using it. It might be great, I just don't like it. You can't target NPCs like sjop owners or other players. I think you can only target those you can attack and that are humanoid. So basically you have to go stealth and then pickpocket and then kill (more or less). The "loot" from pickpocketing has nothing to do with the actual loot though and is a seperate thing. Appearantly it mostly food and such.

[Griselda]

Luckily, I can confirm that they do it this way. Every time my priest heals another player, she becomes the target, which makes sense. In the particular case where I was using it, I was probably also the best tank, so it worked for the monster to be attacking me. This also happened when I healed myself, iirc, but I cast the same spells in both situations.

At one point I helped out a character who was in trouble by healing him, even though I wasn't partied. The monster came to me, so I had to run away to make sure I didn't steal the kill. :P

-Griselda