WoW experiences

[Juriel]

With the open beta going on now, I thought it might be prudent to comment a bit on the game here. Those of us who checked it out despite its HUGE download through SLOW channels. This is a thread-starter, while I'm waiting for the thing to update. I'll post my first impressions later on. Please comment on yours.

So far, Paxi has taught us that you start your hero's life by hunting fierce enemies such as a 'Scrawny Baby Tiger'. I expect rats and sewers to feature in at some point during the early levels. Wildlife beware!

[duke-martin]

Heh so far - I'm not impressed, in fact quite the opposite. That Blizzard downloader is using virtually all my upload bandwidth and only comming in at a miserable 20-40kb/s. After 12 hours I'm at 84% and getting anxious to have it done so I can acually play something online with less then 1100 ping. No bandwith controlls whatsoever so I'm completely lagged out until it's done in an estimated 2-4 hours. x(

Then when it is done, I only get to play with people in my geographical area? Sounds like... Well, if the North American players in WoW are anything like 90% of the USWest/East Battle.net servers - Sounds like I'll be doing lots of soloing.

Heh, 86% now. x(

[ikkis]

www.netlimiter.com

Excellent program for those of us who suffer from half-duplex connections at home.

It doesn't sound like the geographical thing is being enforced, what with the three people I know who have been playing it being Scandinavian.

[The Chosens]

well if the game has geographical boundaries like it sounds....i think ill stay away frow WoW for a bit, till all the bugs get worked out and stuff by looking at these posts.
___________
"There is no spoon"---The Matrix

[Juriel]

Downloading the whole 2,5gb package made me miss the Guild Wars method, which was being able to get into character creation after 5 minutes of download, gaming after 10.

Graphically, it's worse than I expected. Nothing wrong with a cartoony look, but...things just look too bland here. It's not terrible, but it's certainly NOT wow-inspiring.

I started my game as an Undead Warrior, but got quickly turned off of that by the undead being played for laughs (animation-wise). I couldn't tolerate looking at them. I changed into an Orc Warrioress, which is much more fun, though the orc's area seems to highlight the worst features of the graphics in its opening fly-by cinematic.

Combat is like NWN - click an enemy to attack it normally, occasionally use special powers. Nothing remarkable, but it's passable.

I started by doing some hunting quests, against boars and scorpions. It was a good thing these animals saw it fit to drop a LOT of gauntlets, cloaks and chainmail armor for me to equip myself with. I do not know if this kind of a stupid loot behavior continues beyond the first levels.

There seems to be a lot of quests about, and you get (a little bit of) experience for finding places that are new to you. You are also not really restricted in where you can go, far as I could see. And oh yeah, you can swim underwater.

There doesn't seem to be a lot of downtime (at least health-wise, I do not know about mages and mana). I lost half my health, jumped into water to hide and before my submerged breath-bar reached its end, I was back at full health.

Will comment more later. So far, seems passable, nothing extraordinary.

[Isaaru]

Not interested in WOW.

WoW seems like a big joke. I cannot take it seriously anymore.

But tomorrow will be the day of joy. Halo2 will be finally mine. MINE! And probably get xbox live too.

[paragrim]

To say that WoW is a joke is bloody ignorant, here you have a game in beta that beats all other mmorpgs out there when it come to stability game variation and pvp action oh yes it beats SWG in pvp .

[Isaaru]

>To say that WoW is a joke is bloody ignorant, here you have a game in beta that beats all other mmorpgs out there when it come to stability game variation and pvp action oh yes it beats SWG in pvp .

It's just my opinion. I had high expectations on WoW and it turned out to be a big pile of smelly wc product. I havent seen a single player on the forums that doesnt flame/insult/etc etc, WoW playerbase is beyond terrible. And its not only about that the forums and players. The game, so far, sucks reasonable amount of a$$. The graphics, whow, so cool /sarcasm. WoW doesnt offer anything new, does it? And god, I hate those mounts. I have watched people playing WoW in winamp tv and omfg is all I an say. Yes, its Beta, but its like 99.9% ready and soon it will hit the stores.

So, its not bloody ignorant to say my opinion. Telling me how my opinion is bloody ignorant is bloody ignorant.

[paragrim]

I dont agree with you , have you even played the game? all the people i have played with thing the game its awsome and they never could go back to DaoC/EQ/SWG or what ever they came from , Quests are great fun and i think they have done a great job getting a distinkt warcraft feel to the graphics. and the ingame music has great variation and realy helps to give each zone a great feel .

[duke-martin]

I wasn't impressed at all untill I finally played it... Now I'm in love :-)

I love the graphics, they are simple but the cartoon effect is quite nice I think. There also fast - considering my old, crappy 1 ghz machine is running the game great I'd say the visual quality I'm getting is incredible. It reminds me alot of Zelda 64 (which I loved)

Gameplay is brilliant. Theres only one small area load after login and then everything I've seen so far is just one silky smooth, seemless transition after another. You go from town, to the wilderness, into a cave perhaps and it all just flows so beautifully.

I was worried about the playerbase, but after 10 or so hours of play I've yet to meet any unsavorty folk and my ignore list is empty. If this was regular battle.net, I'd have locked myself into a passworded game hours ago. :7

Only problem so far is that my PC, more specifically my video card doesnt like it so much. It was putting my monitor irevokably into standby and I'd have to reset. x( After changing drivers it seemed to fix that - but then several hours later it stopped responding and I had to reset, and when I got back into windows my video drivers were somehow uhm gone... Huh!?

Strongly considering subscribing to this one!

[paragrim]

I have my lvl 24 tauren warrior on mountin time pvp server 12 i think (cant check now for servers down atm) but im up for teaming with you and i would be great if we BD folks could meet on one server

we all could do the huge instance quests that are realy awsome

[The Chosens]

just got halo 2 yesterday...my my my that game is quite possibly the coolest thing ive ever seen. This weekend ill be hitting up xbox live and i hear the gameplay blows all other xbox live games out of the water. even heard rumors that its beating counter strike at the best first person shooter multi player game (just a rumor) :-)
___________
"There is no spoon"---The Matrix

[swanhilde]

A few of us have been meeting up in 34 and 35 - the RP servers, sometimes as Horde, sometimes Alliance :)

[Karma]

Generally agreed, although lag has been a pain tonight (CET) on Eastern 19 (PvE). Affects queued up commands meaning for instance you get attacked while mining or collecting and cannot react because the sample still hasn't popped up in the inventory. Or one is trying to shoot a beast in a distance while it's already in melee with him/her.

One phenomenon I don't like at all and for which SWG provided the better solution: Quests are all located at certain points which leads to extreme camping, respectively anarchic gangbanging and grabbing. Reminds me of DAOC and I hope it will change as soon as I leave Dun Morogh. Also communication is reduced to the chat meaning in a crowd it's hard to keep track who is saying what to whom. And where. I would love bubbles above the players' heads.

Then again there is so much to discover. I love the artwork, learned to accept my prime weapon to be a noisy gun, still enjoy the sound (will probably change as soon as the crowd discovers the voice emotes), am traumatized by manga girls bouncing (yes, you can jump) around you all the time (all female gnomes seem to have the very same hair stylist and are dedicated mages while their male counterparts prefer to be warlocks or rogues), humorous plots, dialogues or quests ... and, and, and ... I want to have it all! Meaning from the very first moment I have the urge to play each class, each race and gain access to their exclusive feats, gear, quests etc.

Game, client (to be modified by macros or even complete UI mods some of which like http://www.cosmosui.org/ already can be downloaded), crafting, messaging (you can send items!), trading and auctioning among players ... everything is just comfortable. And fun. In comparison SWG was hard work, although off course far more complex.

Then again I am still a newbie (level 10) and havn't seen much. I hope ... *winks*.

[Krag]

Only the opinions of those playing the beta and those interested in the game are of merit here. As neither seems to apply to yourself please contain yourself.

Flames will not be tolerated from anyone.


--
Krag
whu det da ugre admun da foroms?

[-Jok-]

Hmm, i havent played it much, but so far it seems to be nothing special to me, like every other mmorpg. Especially the quests ive done so far had been pretty boring. All have been silly monster camping quests...kill x monster and collect x items and bring them back.

And the graphic, well i dont dislike the 'comic' style, but some better textures and more polys would have been better.

Oh, and i kinda really dislike the combat system in WoW, that you have to manually move to an enemy. No simply click and your charcter moves to the monster and automatically attacks him.

[paragrim]

oh nice to hear , have you guys done a guild yet? and those RP server are on eastern time right?

[Tyndareus]

I don't have too much MMOG experience, but I'll compare WoW with what I do know and also list my impressions.

I've really only played City of Heroes (and Guildwars for about 4 seconds) so my comparison to those games would be that World of Warcraft is much better. The setting itself does a lot to make a massive multiplay game seem like a good idea. City of Heroes has some kind of storyline to try and justify all the superheroes, but really it stinks. Guild Wars seems more like the Battledale setting in that lots of individuals sort of appear and have to find reasons to work together.

Warcraft on the other hand has a huge storyline and group plot that works. The Hoard is a prime example. Whatever hoard race you pick, the story line, and the history, binds you to that group and their goals. You are part of the hoard, not just a fringe character that can choose to be part of the hoard if you so desire. I find this makes for much more compelling reasons to gather a large army of players.

As such, it appears that the orc, troll, and tauren races have the best plot framework. The humans, undead, dwarves, gnomes, and elves seem to have a more solitary lifestyle attached to the characters who are a part of those races. It would really need a few really good leaders with a lot of time on their hands to get those races to solidify a purpose.

I don't really have much problem with the loot that drops. For the most part you get creature specific items or some coins. You do get some strange equipment drops, but that's fine. Perhaps there were some bodies around that creature that had that equipment on it. Whatever.

The most exciting bit I've seen is that roleplay actually seemed evident. I was part of a bunch of leaders that rallied a Hoard raid on human lands in retaliation for a raid on ours. We ran the length of Durotan calling "RALLY! RALLY TO THE HOARD! FOR THE HOARD!" etc and actually got a pretty good following. Actually getting into human lands was more difficult since for some reason you have to be level 18 or so to get past the obstacles you find on the other side of the sea.

This is the part I like least of all. Warcraft should go out of its way to encourage Hoard attacks and humans banding together to defeat them. As it is, in order to get our hoard raid anywhere near to the humans without dying to uber-creatures on the way was to swim for about fifteen minutes straight up the coast line. Kinda silly. I'd much prefer to have a huge expanse of land to run across with my hoard all yelling behind me and then meet the oncoming humans in the middle.

The graphics are great. The lower res textures and cartoony nature may not be everyone's cup of tea, but when I first walked into Orgrimmar I was blown away. Huge city like something out of Discworld. I would say that if you like the Discworld books, you'd like WoW. The sensibility in the design was exactly what I'd think of in Discworld (though less...kooky if that's possible for Warcraft).

All in all, I think I'll end up subscribing. Hopefully we'll all be able to play together, but if not I still might subscribe and see what happens for the first month or so.

[Tyndareus]

And yes, Pat, I did spell horde incorrectly.

:P

[duke-martin]

Well the Beta is over, so my thoughts after playing?

For starters, the world itself is simply jaw droppingly gorgeous. No screenshot no matter the resolution, or effects enabled will ever do it justice. All the terrain just looks so (for lack of a better word) "right". The way rolling plains slowly become hilly and then mountains is just so bang on, or how you can swim to shore from sea underwater and you see the continental shelf, then some underwater hills that slowly giveway to smoother sands that become shore, then the beach becomes grassy, and finally forrest. It's just so seemless how the terrain blends it's very true to life. Any time I made long journeys from one major terrain type to another I felt so warm and fuzzy just looking around and enjoying the scenery. The trip from the wetlands to the dwarven lands, and finally to the human lands was just incredible. It took nearly 2 hours along the road and I didn't stop to fight anything, nor did I get lost. the entire time I was just blown away by the scenery and when I finally arrived, I felt like I had just stepped off a plane in some exotic land - I really felt like a traveller.

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The quests are pretty good, some are really fun, others are quite tedious. The challenge rating for a few are quite screwy though. There was one that at 22nd level was green for easy and I was slaughted almost right away by level 17-18 mobs, but another was orange for difficult where I was fighting level 23-25 mobs and finished it quite easily.

The combat system is alright, but it can and does take alot of effort to start it off right. You have to be carfull when engaging to be facing the right way or you cant fight back untill you are. When you move in, and they move in you both tend to overshoot leaving you standing there like a moron while they rip away at you from behind giving you that lovely stun/slow effect. (more on that later) The way things respawn is absolutely terrible. You can be fighting something when out of thin air anywhere from 1-3 more just appear and start killing you at record pace because someone had just been through not 5 minutes before. It's really poorly implemented. Which leads me to my other huge complaint. Running is nearly impossible. If you turn to run, and you will anything attacking from behind has a huge chance to stun(slow you) making escape nearly impossible. The stun is total overkill. Even without the stun, if your running from 2-3 mobs your level, or even a few levels down just the damage alone would likely kill you before you can get out of their hostile range. Their also like twice as fast as you are.

Potions have a cooldown on them which in theory is a neat idea to stop potion chugging to stay alive and fight. But in practice you can basically drink 1(one) single potion per fight, and if that was a mana potion, then you cant drink healing either untill the cooldown is gone, a minute as I recall. Potions are rare enough unless your an alchemist and inventory space is extremely valuable so really I don't see a need for this silly timer.

My last and biggest complaint is the camera angles. There isn't any fading that I saw except with your character. Terrain can and does frequently block the camera blinding you quite badly. While very good most of the time, anywhere theres tricky terrain like mountains, fallen pillars, logs, trees, stumps, and the worst - shallow water it can zoom the camera in so badly and won't let you zoom out at all, much like NwN does at rare times but much, much worse. It's simply awefull.

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All in all... I really enjoyed myself and the good easily outweighs the bad, but if I'll subscribe I'm not sure. The world is HUGE, but by 20th level evertyhing felt like more of the same. It might look different, it might be gorgeous, but I found myself making new characters by around 18-20 which is a sure sign I'm starting to get bored of my current tasks.

http://members.shaw.ca/duke-martin/images/Screenshots/wow/

[Karma]

Yes, I did. Open Beta was fun and that's exactly what in my opinion the entire game is about: pure fun. I played a dwarven hunter up to level 22 and mostly soloed respectively grouped with only one, occasionally two mates (warrior and/or paladin). Only exceptions were either overcrowded quest spots where it made sense to temporarily join strangers to avoid annoying killstealing (yes, that's possible) or such.


Class related skills just pour in as you reach certain levels and actually you can obtain all availabe if you've got the riches to pay for getting trained. Actually here the only decisions to be made are how to distribute the limited number of talent points (in my case on the three categories markmanship, beast mastery and survival). One apparently even can redistribute them later although unlearning is pretty expensive for lower characters.

Primary professions are limited to two. They are free to learn yet recipes are costly. I chose skinning and leatherworking which allows you to produce and wear comparably good leather and armor at low levels and also having a decent income. Additionally skinning probably is the only profession taking advantage of other players efforts since you can skin corpses after (and only then) they have been completely looted by them. Travelling is rewarded by finding (and usually buying) rare recipes from other races. Although the dwarven capital Ironforge is one of the rare places with an auction house (ebaylike with bidding and/or buyouts) I personally found selling to NPCs more comfortable and profitable then to wait for the results of my auctions. A friend (priest) choosing tailoring and enchanting had similar experiences while another (warrior) with herbalism and alchemy apparently had to go a long way.

Personally I disliked those always straying off to gather herbs or mine ores because it often led to dangerous situations. Also those animations take their time leaving you kind of defenseless.

All products basically seem to be of the very same quality as soons as you are able to craft them and only differ through addons or enchantments which can be made and obtained from PCs.

Crafting itself is pretty comfortable since the client always shows you (by numbers in brackets) which and how many products you can craft with the resources you got. You then only have to decide about the number, fire and forget (read: get a coffee refill or something).


I found the unlimited secondary professions rather boring or useless. Chose fishing and hardly ever used it although I might after release since it's a comfortable way to collect food for a pet. Cooking never struck me and applied first aid (being raised rather by crafting bandages than using them!) only occasionally on strangers I passed by.


Environment is just great. Plenty of marvellous landscapes, spots and views which sometimes depress you while on other occasions you wonder wether you are hallucinating (respectively what drugs they put in your lunch). Especially towns and houses are neatly and individually designed although after some time you recognize a few basic sketches being used again in different sectors. I did extremely enjoy that you can't just climb up any steep mountain like in SWG. Passages are limited and thus make mountains, hills or even stumps strategical places. Falling or jumping down does hurt and may eventually kill you. However it's a great way to escape ... *grins*. Spent the recent two days in constant massively player warfare (pvp under raid conditions) and won't ever forget those situations where we were routed and regrouped on hilltops defending them against horde players storming up. I also had the impression that at least lower levels are not used to foreign territories giving the defenders an advantage, i.e. orcs and taurens having grown up on the vast steppe of The Barrens did not very well against the elves in the deep forest of Ashenvale.


Which leads directly to PvP which apparently is possible on large scale even on normal or RP-servers. Impressive experience, especially because orcs and taurens are scaringly huge compared to slim humans and elves respectively tiny dwarfs and gnomes. Of course it was lagging like hell when armies clashed and I wouldn't have wanted to play a melee class desperately trying to reach a target in the chaos (hunters rather serve as snipers here, hunt down fleeing enemies by sending their pets after them or mark and weaken targets for the group).

However I think I am going to play on a PvP-server for two main reasons. On one hand it's disturbing to see horde players wander around alliance territory even when they won't be able to enter larger settlements due to NPC uberguards, on the other raids can be exploited by advancing behind the enemy lines before switching to PvP. We often had horde players conning blue among us who obviously spied and we couldn't do anything against it.


Travelling by other means than feet or mount is another great feature. Passages by ship are usually free (yet not very thrilling), the subway between Ironforge and Stormwind, occasionally even griffon rides. Else they are a nice money sink for lower levels yet absolutely worth it! Whenever possible the griffons carry you as close to the ground as possible and you you can watch what is happening down there at that very time (i.e. player actions). I once took the wrong boat to Kalimdor, ended up in Theramore and later used it as a destination for a flight crossing large parts of the continent. Great stuff! *Winks* ... make sure you got plenty of space on your harddisk because screenshots are 3mb each. Another way to travel is to bind oneself at a town's inn and recall there with the help of your hearthstone (once an hour).

Infact you have to travel larger distances a lot if you want to make the best out of your character. Be it you are after a certain resource, item, trainer or species, trying to solve an extended quest, in need to access a bank (only available at few settlements) or auction house.


On the other hand there is an excellent mailing system allowing you to even send items (including an option for cash on delivery!) respectively receive them at public mailboxes. Great for providing fellow players with resources, items or money they need while being far away. For instance wool (occasional drop from humanoid monsters) is hard to aquire for low levels yet the very resource to craft larger bags which then enhance the capacities of your backpack or bank account.


The interface can (and should!) be enhanced with free UI scripts. I myself used Cosmos which can be found at www.cosmosui.org. You also have an option to create your very own macros.


Enough now. Still much to say while I have caught only a glimpse of WoW. In general it's a lot less diversified than SWG wether in character creation or bringing it up. Which in my opinion leaves you more time to individualize a character through his/her actions. What I disliked most about SWG was the need for my friends to sit in their houses and craft like mad while my lone ranger roamed the planets' surfaces as well as to be forced to either become an excellent crafter and a bad fighter or vice versa. In WoW you can become a master crafter and a valuable fighter. You can solo quite comfortably anything within a range of 2-3 levels above yet will soon realize that two or three even lower opponents are tough to beat. The only penalty for death seems to be a little decay of your equipment which you can repair with the help of many NPC traders or crafters.

A salty tear in this fountain of toonish joy: So far Blizzard seems not have implanted any measures against cheating. I have been told packet sniffing was possible and that even the simplest speedhacks work. Saw a speedhacker myself which passed me that fast I couldn't even get his name. That might be a reason to rethink joining a server dedicated to PvP.

[Karma]

*Chuckles* ... I knew I'd draw your attention with the topic. Just wanted to mention that I really had a deja vu in the port town of Menethil (Wetlands) when first the innkeeper welcomed me in the Deepwater Tavern and only a little later I ran into an NPC hanging around the docks named Don Pompa! Missed to bugreport the little misspelling, though.

[Krag]

Thanks for the report Karma, I'll be pre-ordering it for sure.
--
Krag
whu det da ugre admun da foroms?

[paragrim]

Blizzard Entertainment® today announced the launch plans in Europe for World of Warcraft®, its highly anticipated massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG). Blizzard also confirmed that the game will release in Europe in early 2005. Pre-orders for World of Warcraft will be available at retail on November 26, 2004.

Blizzard will use localised servers to ensure that US/Canadians and Aussies will be able to play first hand on the US servers, As a european that played US beta and dont want to give blizzard US incorrect billing info i got very dissapointed in several ways .

I never thought blizzard would miss the christmas with the euro wow , even as blizzard will include a beta kit on the copies you pre order and stated that you are to be able to play from the date of 26 november those chars will be wiped still at retail...