A pretty fair review.
I don't know if this game is the one for me. There's nothing revolutionary (altho I must admit I both hated and loved their solution to killstealing...frustrating when you don't get in the first shot, and good when you do) about it. It's a solid game, and I thought it was very pretty looking, even though it's "behind" other games graphically.
I just wasn't that entertained by it. I mean, yeah, some things were alright, but pound for pound, I like CoH so much more. Some of the Kill X until Y drops missions were incredibly annoying as the drop rates were 1 every 20 or more. Most weren't that bad, but every once in a while there was one quest that was just a ###### to complete. For one quest it was "get 20 bear tongues and 1 spider ichor". The bear tongues I got on a nearly 1 for 1 basis: ie, I killed a bear and got a tongue for it. The spider ichor on the other hand...I kill well over a hundred spiders (leveled while doing it, had over 10K to go for level, each spider was giving me 100 exp so...yeah, at least over a hundred) before I got the damn thing. I was so frustrated towards the end I was almost crying.
A friend that I grouped with a lot (OmeN) had the same problem with a hardened tumor for a vile fin quest. I was lucky and got mine on the 3rd try, without even really trying (they aggroed me). I helped OmeN to get his, by helping him kill them more efficiently, and we killed a LOT. I don't mean "Oh, we cleared one spawn point"...I mean we went to several spawn poitns over and over and over again for at least an hour, with no breaks to rest, and didn't get it.
Instanced "dungeons" I was psyched about....until I found out it was only "special" dungeons and all of them "elite". Elite means things suck, bascially. Think archvillains in CoH. Can you solo them? Hell no. It's hard to solo even one "elite" mob that's four or five levels below you...but it gives you exp as if it WERE four or five levels below you. It's supposed to encourage grouping, but what it did was encourage us to die multiple times to get a damn book from Pyrewood village by running in there and dying. Then, one person rezzing and getting the mobs attention while the other one gets the book. Then rinse and repeat for the other person.
The Elite quests are INSANELY hard. Some people might like a challenge. In this case, I didn't. I got the mission at level 17, and was finishing up other quests so I didn' get around to it til I was level 19. At that level, I teamed up with a group of people to do the quest. 2 were 20, 1 was 21 and 1 was 23. WE tried and tried, but we couldn't complete it. I was told later we didn't even get *halfway* through it, though we thought we were doing pretty good.
Insanely hard.
Now, I was hoping ALL dungeons would be instanced, but they're not. CoH may have spoiled me, but it was incredibly annoying to have one spot camped for a particular mob over and over again because of over-crowding problems. Hence, if I do buy this game, it won't be until at least a few weeks later to avoid bottlenecking with every other person who starts the day it comes out.
Maps are useless unless you've been to the area, then it shows up on the map. However, the time when you'll need the map is when you haven't been to the area. You do get a *little* bit of experience for exploring though, so that's nice.
I did like the crafting system; no crit failures. You CAN fail on gathering herbs and ore and stuff, but not on crafting. I played an architect on SWG and man was it painful to crit fail on a large house. Enchanting was useful, except that to get magical components you need to disenchant magical items. Sometimes you can buy them at the vendor, but that's rare. So, if you're a soloer, it won't make you blink to disenchant a piece of equipment you can't use. But if you're in a guild and share stuff, then it might be hard to get components. Herbalism didn't seem to have a problem finding herbs, and I'm assuming the same for Mining.
Overall, it's ok. It's nothing special but it didn't suck either. Graphics were smooth if cartoony (but I liked the cartoony look), gameplay was smooth (autorun button is 4th button on mouse, btw, very handy...so much so I had to switch over autorun on CoH to work like that) even though it was a stress test. Chat system was easy if a touch awkward (if you use guild chat, you stay in guild chat til you go to another channel, like party or broadcast, so it's ripe for mistelling if you forget to use /p or /1 or whatever). I did have fun dueling Grulg, but I wish I could have had my warlock duel someone. Didn't feel like getting messages like "I pwned u!" or the like, so I didn't try it with anyone else. Talent systems weren't in for warlocks, but I did get a mage up to 12 just messing around (which is anothe rbeef of mine...mages can conjure their own food and water, so wtf do they need to carry around regular food and water for? At level 12 she was conjuring a full stack of water on one spell. just...wrong. However, although people say that mages don't have any downtime, that' sfalse. They have 20 sec of downtime to eat their damn magic food and water after every fight. Warlocks have no downtime. Get in fight, cast DoT's, let pet fight it, loot, find next target, Use Life Tap to get mana back, cast DoT's, heal pet with siphon life, use a healthstone if you need to...I literally could ahve gone hours doing that without breaking stride, so I guess warlocks have something over the mages...however, mages kill so much faster than warlocks it probably goes back to the mages favor)
....where was I? Oh, yeah, talents. So, saw the talent tree for mages and not impressed. For a limited amount of points you don't get very much to "customize" your character. All reports I've seen say that they don't make a difference. I didn' thave a chance to test it thoroughly tho, so I'm not an expert.
There are TOO FEW character classes. My first MMORPG was really DAOC, and each realm had it's own particular classes. Yes, some were very alike, but only on the surface most times. Example, Skalds and Minstrels. Both mez, both have DD shouts, both have pulsing "spells" but there are some crucial differences. Skalds start as warriors, and continue to get good health and can use heavy armor. They do not use an instrument. Minstrels start as Thieves and got less health but more mana. They could stealth (stealth mezzing minstrels...ah, god, I hated them! By the time you heard the song you were already mezzed) and they could chain mez as fast as they could provided they had the mana and the fast fingers to click where skalds had to wait for theirs to come up again. So...even though those classes were alike, they were still different. Minstrels also had to use an instrument.
Each class in this is EXACTLY alike. Well, I didn't take "underwatering breathing" or whtaever spell it was for my undead warlock. Undead don't breath and wtf should she care about anyone else? She didn't leave the undead lands, heh. But the point is, they are the same for each side. If you see a mage, you'll know what spells he has, ditto for a hunter, or a warlock or whatever. Only exception that paladins are alliance only and shamans are horde only. It's not enough diversification. Yes, balance issues might come up, but if you've played a class, then you've seen all that class has to offer. You can't "respec" lines of spells (like you could spec in DAOC, you could have a nuking runemaster or the pulsing bladeturning runemaster or a mix of the two, or...) and you can't pick up additional ones either (via CoH and their power pools). After a week straight (and I mean straight) of playing this...everything seemed...the same. Yes, it was pretty, yes some of the quests were neat, but overall there wasn't anything that felt REALLY new to me.
I think the classes thing is my biggest grief with it. There just wasn't enough variety to keep my interest. I know in CoH if I get bored, I can make a gravity controller, or a dark defender (which are very fun, btw) or a mace tanker or...well, they have lots of combinations of stuff. Not that I'm bored with my characters, mind, but sometimes it's fun to see a build and think "Hey, that looks cool, I think I"ll try that".
Now, granted, WoW is only in beta, so I expect it to go through a few more changes (like putting in the damn talents for warlocks!) before it's released, but it's getting close enough that it's not going to be enough to hold my interest for very long, I do not believe. I will have to hold final judgement until it's out and see how they tweak it.
BTW, I think the getting rid of skill points thing is a v. bad idea. You can really powerlevel crafters then provided you have money. I woulda had a crapload of money if I wasn't crafting, so it would be easy for a guild to geting top fo the line crafters relatively quickly, which seems inherently wrong somehow.
Anyway....I just always have to play devil's advocate. Most people are treating this game like it's the second coming of Christ, and I just have to disagree. It's not BAD, but it's not Jebus either.
