there are Great things and Terrible things about this game and we should spill it out. Be harsh so everything that needs to be said is said.
I'm lvl 10 at the time of this writing and I want to know, where the hell are the instances. Yeah the RvR instances for pvp are there but I want some PVE instances. We were doing Wailing Caverns by this time if I remember. PVE instances give you a benchmark for how well your skills and gear are and to be honest, just fighting mobs my same level as I level just shows me that I'm at par, but when you do a PVE instance you get your *** kicked the 1st few times but as your gear gets better (and skill) then that instance gets easier then turns to farm mode.
Still some random bugs but it is BETA and even though it's BETA it is a HECK of a lot more polished than WoW was after the 1st year WoW was live... well maybe 6 months. We do have to Mythic a hand and cudos for that. I can't tell you how many times I saw a dead body sliding along the ground in front of me in WoW well after a year into the game...
My /special is lame (zealot) and they need to fix that.
A BIG POSITIVE is that the flight paths are nearly instant travel. No more 15 minute go to the bathroom, make a sandwhich, and mow the lawn flight paths that are a f*ckin waste of time in WoW. a Quick CGI animation, map load, and you are at your destination! And you don't have to "discover" the flight master either, you just walk onto that new map and walk back to that old flight master that you know and you can fly to that new map. EASY! After years in WoW, there are still flight paths I don't have because I couldn't find the little F*cker.
A BIG NEG... kinda... Well the Quests are cool and all if you read them, but well, you don't have to read a single quest if you don't want to. Just spam accept all quests in the area, look at your map, and run to the read areas. If you see something kill it, if you see a glowy, click it... pretty much it. and when you finish the quest, check your map again and run to the red area to turn it it. I honestly over time hated figuring out wtf I had to do in the quests for WoW after a while so in the long run I think this is a great thing, but in the short run, I think I have lost touch with the quest system in this game as I don't know wtf is going on... why am I putting this guy in a barrel and kicking him over the ledge into the water? Not sure but it was fun as hell doing it... Hmm this catapolt is glowing WEEEE I'm shot 1000 yards into another castle... guys here so I guess I'll kill them, WOOT they were part of my quest anyway... Well that's how I have been doing these quests.
The public quests are kinda fun and something different. Some are long and boring, some are short and fun, some are long and fun, some are short and lame.... but there are lots of them. Probably the coolest one or two were fighting a big dragon and watching a huge guy holding a bomb and walking into a castle gate blowing both him and the gate up. These PQ's range from easy to damn near impossible so you won't get bored of them at all. Plus the rewards are fairly nice and worth the time and you get braging rights for getting 1st place. I found as a healer/dps it's fairly easy to get 1st place as my Shammy friend and I found out. Yeah you need to be active and tag and heal everything you see but if you do you probably will get 1st. But you could just walk up at the end of a PQ and do nothing and place 3rd due to the roll... kinda lame but what ever... I think that is there to get more people willing to do the PQ's and not just wait to contribute from the very begining, but if you are there the whole time your odds are better than someone who shows up at the end... I did say "odds" as it does come down to your contribution, and the roll. You could rank 8th but end 10th due to the roll. You could rank 3rd and get 1st due to the roll.
PQ's are a great thing though and will probably be refined further as time goes on.
Customizing your talents/skills/abilities are different than WoW and yet somewhat the same. you can select different builds and natural abilities, have different build outs for some of them based on the situation you are in, and then you have core abilities that will be the same for everyone as well as specialization trees which have 3 branches like WoW. I got my 1st combat rez spell at lvl 10 and my Shammy friend was kind enough to be a nubbin and die on me while I was tanking some elite boar (yeah I am a healer...) so I was able to combat rez him which was fun.
Lag: Well, yep it's there in the newbie zones but things are smooth as butter in the higher lvl areas. I guess if you have 400 people all trying to do the same quest, you have to expect some lag... But when you have a resonable amount of people it is a great experience. All the RvR that I did was lag free which I think is very important since the game is focused on RvR.
Another friend of mine played on his old school laptop. I know he had to crank the graphics down but he was in game playing. I would have to say that's a great sign there.
PVP = Fun times as the Zealot. I'm hard to kill and can outlast most. I am squishy but with 5 healing spells, 2 damage reductions, and a bubble, it's almost a waste of time to attempt to kill a Zealot who has his guard up. If I am distracted then yeah 2 or 3 shots will kill me. If my guard is up I can take 10 or 15 big hits and laugh it off. Think of the zealot as a druid running away... 2 HOTs, instacast big heals, plus instacast 10 second bubble and 2 damage reduction instacasts. I would say the Zealot needs a nerf if the DPS was high but it isn't. At lvl 10 I only have 2 attacks, 1 is instacast w/ a cooldown and the other takes 2 seconds to cast. The other attacks are dots that if used together are ok. There is an AOE which is great for PQ's that I love to use or by a flag in RvR though but only efficient to use if there are 3 or more mobs.
We already started to see a wait to get in game on our server and it was just BETA. And when I picked the server, it was the lowest population out of the entire list of available servers. I am thinking that my idea of picking a random server for the 1st few days, and then when the 2nd or 3rd tier servers go online, pick one of those to make our permanent home to prevent queue times to get in game and make questing easier in the newbie zones. Granted this makes it harder to pick a server where everyone will be together here because people don't always have the insight to be patient for a much better server and think that their time spent for 2 days getting their lowbie toon to lvl 12 would be waisted... but I think we would appreciate it more and have a better gaming experience in the weeks to come. Queque times in Open Beta... sucks. What is that going to be like when the servers go live? We will be playing this for a couple years most likely so what's a few days on a temporary server... But to be honest, those that can't control themselves and roll w/ the group probably arn't the best to work with in an organized team anyway. Tell your friends what server we are on as well. So even if they don't want to roll w/ our group, they can at least form an alliance w/ our group.
I'll be on "DaPoetes" tonight. The goal by Thursday is to get a guild formed so we can see what the guild options are like as well while still in BETA. We need 2 gold and 6 people in a party. I only have 1 gold right now but if you want to send me some silver we can get this going sooner. You can do that via the mailboxes in game. Be sure to add me as friend so we can get this going.
Peace and Hair Grease
