03-22-2004, 10:59 PM
I have not read Jarulf's report that he posted here already. I shall read that after posting here and compare... :)
I've been playing the WoW beta since Friday afternoon, and spent a good chunk of a weekend playing a Gnome Mage named (surprise) Bolty. BTW, if there are any Lurkers on the game, please get in touch with me! I've hit level 12 and have visited, oh, I'd say maybe 5% of the game's geographical area, including 2 of the major cities, Ironforge and Stormhall.
There are plenty of great reviews, thoughts, and previews out there to read. Some by beta testers such as myself, and others by alpha testers who have been playing the game for months now. There are hundreds of screenshots available on the Net (go here for some). I feel no need to supply more, and instead want to limit my description of the game to the basis of my viewpoint - someone who, as previously mentioned, doesn't see the point of MMORPGs and is used to games more like Diablo and Diablo II (what hardcore MMORPG'ers like to call "RPG-lite" games).
First off, WoW is NOT Diablo, which isn't much of a shock. I wouldn't expect it to be. It's also not the "click on monster, go get a drink, or in fact just eat dinner" game that Everquest is (or so I've heard). In Diablo, you encounter packs of monsters and plunge headlong into battle with them, laying devastation all around. You do this in any MMORPG and your posterior will quickly wind up in a sling, to use the vernacular. It's not the click-fest that Diablo is, but then again perhaps we could all use a little less carpal tunnel syndrome. Battle consists of pressing your number keys (or whatever you assign them as) when a monster is selected and watching the activity take place. For example, press 1 for a standard attack and your character will commence beating skulls. As long as you stay near the monster, your character will keep attacking (this becomes a factor only when the monster tries to run away - then you need to keep up with it). Press 5 and you will cast that spell once and return to the aformentioned cranial bashing.
The game world is gargantuan, but not impossible to fully explore, given time (weeks/months). It's wonderfully seamless. "Area" transitions are handled via the use of long hallways that, while you're walking through, apparently have your machine loading up the graphics and other necessary functions for the next area. You won't see a loading screen unless you're entering an instanced area, or when you first enter the game. How big is an area? Well, think of Diablo II's Act 1. All of it. Take the monsters out and just run from the Rogue Encampment to Andariel's lair straight through with a level 1 character (no increased running speed). That's about how big these areas are. It's inconsequential anyway, since load times are out.
Gameplay so far consists of running quests for experience. The quests tend to be the "go out and kill x" sort of thing, with occasional quests that have you just run to a new area. This gets you out and about and takes you down a general path that's designed to give you the ol' learning curve. Since there's no "Acts" and no way to really stop you from travelling 100 miles from "home," the game enforces your development cycle via the quests, which will require you to stick around certain areas until you're ready to move on. If you don't, you'll find yourself dead quite often.
Speaking of death, the penalties for such are rather small. You're forced to either wait for a resurrection by another player, or else respawn at a graveyard site some distance (sometimes long, sometimes short) away. You come back as a ghost. You then can either choose to take an experience hit to become mortal right then and there, or else run to your body and pop back into it to become alive. Sometimes you'll be forced to take that experience hit if you're down deep in a dungeon and will never be able to fight back out.
The game's still buggy, not that I'm complaining. It's a beta test; that's the point. I've had a few "run through walls" experiences already. Once, after a death in an instanced dungeon I had no business being in whatsoever, my ghost could not get back into the instance. So I wound up running right through the instance transition and into the void. The game also crashes from time to time still, and I run pretty standard PC hardware. This is Blizzard we're talking about here, and I know they'll get these fixed long before the game goes final.
The game's been pretty boring for me so far. I'm waiting for it to get interesting. Last night I had a quest to collect 3 items from 3 different monsters (each), obtainable by going out and killing them. Well, to get those 3 items, myself and the party of three I was with wound up killing mobs for about 75 minutes. This was because the items we needed only appeared for loot on the corpses about 15% of the time. At one point I stated in party chat "This is FUN?" and the others agreed with me that it was kind of ridiculous. The drop rate of the quest items was so painfully low that we spent almost an hour and a half in a small area just killing the same three monster types over and over. Imagine playing the Den of Evil for an hour and a half. Exciting!
Adding to that, I'm playing a mage right now. Mages are very weak in the survivability department, due to their lack of hit points and armor. Mages can dish it out, but they can't take it. Now, I know MMORPGs are supposed to be about community. Soloing is supposed to be "possible," but not encouraged. But if I'm playing alone, my gameplay consists of:
1) running out of town to confront an enemy.
2) killing it as soon as I can, because otherwise it wails on me harshly.
3) if possible, kill a second enemy in the same fashion.
4) return to a safe spot town and heal, OR
5) try to heal in that spot.
If 5 is chosen, I generally get killed, because the monster(s) I killed in the early steps come back before I can make much headway with other monsters. This is not fun. See, you can't just drink a potion and get healed quickly. While there are health and mana potions, they're not available much this early on; instead, I conjure bread and water to use. These slowly restore your health and mana (talking about 30-45 seconds a pop here). During that time, the monster respawn timer is ticking down...
I simply can't take on 2 monsters at once because I can't get any spells off - when I'm hit, it interrupts/slows down my spellcasting. Spells take between 1 and 2 seconds to cast, or else cast immediately but have "cool down" periods before I can cast them again. So if I get 2 monsters attacking me, I'm screwed, and I die. It's that simple.
If I join a party, I can do just fine. Other characters will "tank" and I can hide behind them. So I go from being a complete wuss to a major damage dealer, and there's little in between.
Yes, I suck at playing MMORPGs, as this is my first character in my first MMORPG ever. But I'm just not having much fun with it at the moment, and players like me (first-timers) are a major target audience for Blizzard. I hope they're paying attention. Studies show that, except for the die-hard crowd, most people tend to stick to the MMORPG they play first, at least for a number of years. That's a crucial thing here, and Blizzard needs to be a little more newbie-friendly in this game.
What the game lacks is personality, which of course is what all MMORPGs lack. There are quests, and a storyline of course, but ultimately what makes MMORPGs successful is the player interaction. You have very little impact on the world, so the interest level has to come from your interaction with the world's inhabitants. I'm getting the impression that if I had a small group of players with me from the very beginning and we went adventuring together, it would be a BLAST to play. But when you're starting out and you don't really know anyone on the server, it's dull, you die a lot, and it starts getting a little frustrating.
So, this game isn't kind to the newbies (IMHO). Longtime MMORPG players will not have troubles with it at all, but I AM a newbie and I have not enjoyed that experience (unlike the Diablo games, which are so kind to newbies that practically anyone can get hooked). I will be checking in with updates as the beta progresses to let you know if my current attitude about the game changes. I bet it will, although that won't change the fact that if you're new to MMORPGs, there's going to be some adjustment necessary.
Zoid keeps telling me that the mages are "broken" at the moment, and I've heard that starting out as a warrior is a lot easier, mostly because they don't have the troubles I'm having (low hit points, being attacked constantly interrupting MY attack, etc). But I am amazed at the sheer NUMBER of dead bodies I see ALL over the place. I mean, WOW. You go to some areas and the bodies are just everywhere, so I know it's not just me and it's not just mages. There's not that many people playing, either, compared to a live version! I get the impression that the learning curve is rather brutal.
If Blizzard reduces the difficulty level early on, then they will alienate the expert MMORPG players who would probably find all the early stuff I'm going through way too simple. But I'm just calling it how *I* see it.
Further updates as I continue playing. Feel free to comment and ask questions.
-Bolty
I've been playing the WoW beta since Friday afternoon, and spent a good chunk of a weekend playing a Gnome Mage named (surprise) Bolty. BTW, if there are any Lurkers on the game, please get in touch with me! I've hit level 12 and have visited, oh, I'd say maybe 5% of the game's geographical area, including 2 of the major cities, Ironforge and Stormhall.
There are plenty of great reviews, thoughts, and previews out there to read. Some by beta testers such as myself, and others by alpha testers who have been playing the game for months now. There are hundreds of screenshots available on the Net (go here for some). I feel no need to supply more, and instead want to limit my description of the game to the basis of my viewpoint - someone who, as previously mentioned, doesn't see the point of MMORPGs and is used to games more like Diablo and Diablo II (what hardcore MMORPG'ers like to call "RPG-lite" games).
First off, WoW is NOT Diablo, which isn't much of a shock. I wouldn't expect it to be. It's also not the "click on monster, go get a drink, or in fact just eat dinner" game that Everquest is (or so I've heard). In Diablo, you encounter packs of monsters and plunge headlong into battle with them, laying devastation all around. You do this in any MMORPG and your posterior will quickly wind up in a sling, to use the vernacular. It's not the click-fest that Diablo is, but then again perhaps we could all use a little less carpal tunnel syndrome. Battle consists of pressing your number keys (or whatever you assign them as) when a monster is selected and watching the activity take place. For example, press 1 for a standard attack and your character will commence beating skulls. As long as you stay near the monster, your character will keep attacking (this becomes a factor only when the monster tries to run away - then you need to keep up with it). Press 5 and you will cast that spell once and return to the aformentioned cranial bashing.
The game world is gargantuan, but not impossible to fully explore, given time (weeks/months). It's wonderfully seamless. "Area" transitions are handled via the use of long hallways that, while you're walking through, apparently have your machine loading up the graphics and other necessary functions for the next area. You won't see a loading screen unless you're entering an instanced area, or when you first enter the game. How big is an area? Well, think of Diablo II's Act 1. All of it. Take the monsters out and just run from the Rogue Encampment to Andariel's lair straight through with a level 1 character (no increased running speed). That's about how big these areas are. It's inconsequential anyway, since load times are out.
Gameplay so far consists of running quests for experience. The quests tend to be the "go out and kill x" sort of thing, with occasional quests that have you just run to a new area. This gets you out and about and takes you down a general path that's designed to give you the ol' learning curve. Since there's no "Acts" and no way to really stop you from travelling 100 miles from "home," the game enforces your development cycle via the quests, which will require you to stick around certain areas until you're ready to move on. If you don't, you'll find yourself dead quite often.
Speaking of death, the penalties for such are rather small. You're forced to either wait for a resurrection by another player, or else respawn at a graveyard site some distance (sometimes long, sometimes short) away. You come back as a ghost. You then can either choose to take an experience hit to become mortal right then and there, or else run to your body and pop back into it to become alive. Sometimes you'll be forced to take that experience hit if you're down deep in a dungeon and will never be able to fight back out.
The game's still buggy, not that I'm complaining. It's a beta test; that's the point. I've had a few "run through walls" experiences already. Once, after a death in an instanced dungeon I had no business being in whatsoever, my ghost could not get back into the instance. So I wound up running right through the instance transition and into the void. The game also crashes from time to time still, and I run pretty standard PC hardware. This is Blizzard we're talking about here, and I know they'll get these fixed long before the game goes final.
The game's been pretty boring for me so far. I'm waiting for it to get interesting. Last night I had a quest to collect 3 items from 3 different monsters (each), obtainable by going out and killing them. Well, to get those 3 items, myself and the party of three I was with wound up killing mobs for about 75 minutes. This was because the items we needed only appeared for loot on the corpses about 15% of the time. At one point I stated in party chat "This is FUN?" and the others agreed with me that it was kind of ridiculous. The drop rate of the quest items was so painfully low that we spent almost an hour and a half in a small area just killing the same three monster types over and over. Imagine playing the Den of Evil for an hour and a half. Exciting!
Adding to that, I'm playing a mage right now. Mages are very weak in the survivability department, due to their lack of hit points and armor. Mages can dish it out, but they can't take it. Now, I know MMORPGs are supposed to be about community. Soloing is supposed to be "possible," but not encouraged. But if I'm playing alone, my gameplay consists of:
1) running out of town to confront an enemy.
2) killing it as soon as I can, because otherwise it wails on me harshly.
3) if possible, kill a second enemy in the same fashion.
4) return to a safe spot town and heal, OR
5) try to heal in that spot.
If 5 is chosen, I generally get killed, because the monster(s) I killed in the early steps come back before I can make much headway with other monsters. This is not fun. See, you can't just drink a potion and get healed quickly. While there are health and mana potions, they're not available much this early on; instead, I conjure bread and water to use. These slowly restore your health and mana (talking about 30-45 seconds a pop here). During that time, the monster respawn timer is ticking down...
I simply can't take on 2 monsters at once because I can't get any spells off - when I'm hit, it interrupts/slows down my spellcasting. Spells take between 1 and 2 seconds to cast, or else cast immediately but have "cool down" periods before I can cast them again. So if I get 2 monsters attacking me, I'm screwed, and I die. It's that simple.
If I join a party, I can do just fine. Other characters will "tank" and I can hide behind them. So I go from being a complete wuss to a major damage dealer, and there's little in between.
Yes, I suck at playing MMORPGs, as this is my first character in my first MMORPG ever. But I'm just not having much fun with it at the moment, and players like me (first-timers) are a major target audience for Blizzard. I hope they're paying attention. Studies show that, except for the die-hard crowd, most people tend to stick to the MMORPG they play first, at least for a number of years. That's a crucial thing here, and Blizzard needs to be a little more newbie-friendly in this game.
What the game lacks is personality, which of course is what all MMORPGs lack. There are quests, and a storyline of course, but ultimately what makes MMORPGs successful is the player interaction. You have very little impact on the world, so the interest level has to come from your interaction with the world's inhabitants. I'm getting the impression that if I had a small group of players with me from the very beginning and we went adventuring together, it would be a BLAST to play. But when you're starting out and you don't really know anyone on the server, it's dull, you die a lot, and it starts getting a little frustrating.
So, this game isn't kind to the newbies (IMHO). Longtime MMORPG players will not have troubles with it at all, but I AM a newbie and I have not enjoyed that experience (unlike the Diablo games, which are so kind to newbies that practically anyone can get hooked). I will be checking in with updates as the beta progresses to let you know if my current attitude about the game changes. I bet it will, although that won't change the fact that if you're new to MMORPGs, there's going to be some adjustment necessary.
Zoid keeps telling me that the mages are "broken" at the moment, and I've heard that starting out as a warrior is a lot easier, mostly because they don't have the troubles I'm having (low hit points, being attacked constantly interrupting MY attack, etc). But I am amazed at the sheer NUMBER of dead bodies I see ALL over the place. I mean, WOW. You go to some areas and the bodies are just everywhere, so I know it's not just me and it's not just mages. There's not that many people playing, either, compared to a live version! I get the impression that the learning curve is rather brutal.
If Blizzard reduces the difficulty level early on, then they will alienate the expert MMORPG players who would probably find all the early stuff I'm going through way too simple. But I'm just calling it how *I* see it.
Further updates as I continue playing. Feel free to comment and ask questions.
-Bolty
Quote:Considering the mods here are generally liberals who seem to have a soft spot for fascism and white supremacy (despite them saying otherwise), me being perma-banned at some point is probably not out of the question.