Rift Beta: First Impressions

I spent some time playing the Rift Beta last week. Specifically, I had the opportunity to participate in Rift Beta 5 from Tuesday through Friday. I chose to play a Defiant Warrior. In those four days I managed to reach level 19, completed a buttload of quests, helped close many rifts and joined in on some PvP action.

Below are my first impressions.

Probably the first thing I noticed when first starting the game was how polished it was, beginning with the game launcher and patcher. I had no problems getting the patches (about one every day during this beta) and the patcher even told me that I needed to update my video drivers, which turned out to be true. Only a couple of times did I have trouble connecting to the servers, but overall, the login experience was exemplary.

Second thing you'll notice is how similar Rift is to a World of Warcraft. Sure there are some bloggers and plenty of players in-game who get upset whenever the comparison is mentioned, but it's impossible to deny. It's not just similar, it's exactly the same in many regards. Many of the talent trees look to be ripped directly from WoW. The crafting is the same. The type of gear and loot is the same. Combat is the same... Now I'm not saying that using someone else's ideas is a bad thing, but I am saying that those who get upset at the comparisons are delusional. That being said, WoW hasn't ever been particularly innovative itself.

The biggest talking point of the game is, of course, the Rifts themselves, so let's talk a little bit about the Rift System. Basically, a Rift opens up in the zone and goes through various stages spawning different mobs until the Boss mod spawns and is killed. Anyone who comes along can help defeat the mobs at the various stages and get loot for success. If you played Warhammer Online, Rifts are basically transient Public Quests. Sometimes they are there, sometimes they are not. But the basic functionality is almost exactly the same.

Rifts can grow stronger if left alone for long enough and there is supposedly some way to enter the Rift itself to drive back the invaders, but I never saw any of that. Perhaps it's for the higher levels. Rifts were interesting and confusing at first, but quickly became kind of pedestrian after I helped close a dozen of them and realized that they were really just another grind for special 'Planar' currency. I'm hoping that they are at least tied to some sort of system that gauges the local player population, because otherwise, they will suffer the same fate and annoyance as the Warhammer PQs when the majority of the active playerbase out-levels the starting areas.

Another one of Rift's big talking points has been character customization via 'souls'. While I do like the system, it's not as groundbreaking as some folks seem to think. It's really just a more complex talent tree system. I guess the main difference between this and other games with talent trees is the number involved and the fact that you can switch out your trees. There are still limitations. It's not an open system. Being a Warrior, I can only choose talent trees that are part of the Warrior archetype. Sure I can be a Death Knight and a Paladin at the same time, but the functionality really doesn't change. And some of the abilities between the various souls are so similar to other abilities that one of them ends up being useless.

This system does make it easier on those players who like to try out every class as they only need four characters per faction to experience all the options. And it also allows for lots of character variations, though I imagine that balance issues will be common and frequent, particularly when PvP is involved.

Speaking of the interface, I want to give kudos to the Rift team for giving the players plenty of UI customization options straight out of the box. Every single part can be moved, hidden and re-sized. It's very nice to have this functionality available from the start without having to use an addon.

They also provide a variety of dyes you can buy. And every armor slot takes both a primary and secondary color. They look pretty good as well! At least I thought I looked spiffy.

Crafting is pretty much the same as Wow. Gather resources from static spots that respawn regularly. Grind out a bunch of items noone will ever use to increase your skill a few points. At least you can salvage the items you just made and hope to recover a couple of spare resources. To the game's credit, I was able to fashion a useful two-handed axe for myself at level 16. Unfortunately, that axe was replaced about half an hour later with the reward from a PvP quest. Looking at various quest rewards, faction merchants and such, it seems that the best gear comes from helping close the Rifts and PvP (I didn't get a chance to go into a dungeon so I can't speak for that). I don't see the Crafting side of Rift as being particularly engaging or interesting.

At level 19 I already have five different types of currency in my pack. And I'm not talking gold, silver, etc. This is actually five separate systems of currency! I have regular currency, I have Rift currency, I have crafting currency, I have PvP currency and I have faction currency! I'm sure there are many more types ahead. In fact I know there are because I saw vendors who wanted money of a type I hadn't seen before. I find this an overly complex and un-needed system, especially when the vendors that take these various currencies are scattered all over the land. It's basically just creating new carrots to grind for, but I guess that's what Themepark MMOs are really all about.

Combat is pretty standard MMO fare. Select target and mash buttons to hit them with various effects. I actually found myself a bit overwhelmed initially by all the action options I was given due to having various abilities from three Souls. By level 5 or 6 I had to expose two extra action bars on-screen just to keep all of my abilities visible!

The only PvP I saw during my few days in beta was in the Warfronts (aka Battlegrounds). Pretty standard. Ten players per side. Grab and hold the special crystal in the middle while killing the other team. Get some honor points at the end. Rinse and repeat ad infinitum until you can purchase the gear you want from the PvP vendors. I hear there are options for Open World PvP (I was on a server that was labeled as PvP), but I saw none of that during my excursions.

Overall, I found my time in the Rift Beta to be fun, but lacking in anything new, though Rift does take the bar for Themepark MMOs a notch higher. It adds Public Quests (Rifts), dyes and guild leveling from Warhammer, and the graphics and class selection of Vanguard. Does it have the upper level content to keep the gear junkies occupied? Hard to say as I only reached level 20. But there certainly seemed to be a lot of excitement about the game from other players in the starting zones.

I was a bit disappointed that Rift failed to improve in some seemingly obvious areas ('Gray' trash item drops? Quest items that take up inventory slots? Really? I thought we were beyond these annoyances...), and I could already feel the grind, even in the first 20 levels. But, I do think that Rift will be a fresh arena for a number of players who have grown tired of Azeroth and it's adjoining planes. Lack of innovation hasn't ever really held back many games, and I firmly believe that Rift's polish and stability will help to give it a solid launch.

Dawntide Beta: Various Thoughts

The Dawntide beta client has finally reached a point of stability for me where I can actually play the game! Below are a few thoughts cobbled together from notes I jotted down over the past few days (some I may have mentioned previously).

• You eat bread and water for some reason, though I see no visible change to my stats or messages telling me that I'm fatigued due to hunger/thirst


• Food is eaten automatically if you have some in your pack. Water is only consumed when you do it manually.


• You gain stats randomly as you use skills. Much like Ultima Online


• Inventory is weight-based rather than slot-based. You still have slots in your pack for organization, but if you start running out, extra slots appear as long as you can carry the load. Nice feature!


• There are issues selecting inventory slots when they overlap with the action bar at the bottom of the screen. Fortunately, you can move the windows around.


• You get no information at all about what a recipe requires or what exactly it makes (besides the name of the item) until the recipe is purchased and learned. Considering how expensive recipes can be, it would be nice to be able to get a little more info before I purchase it.


• The search feature doesn't work on the vendor menu.


• Crafting skills up very slowly


• Corpses have no visible indicator that they have been skinned. There should either be a visual clue, or when selected, the corpse should say something like (skinned) after the name if it has already been skinned. Doesn't make much sense that I couldn't tell just by looking at it.


• Cooking basic meat requires no tools or even a campfire. Apparently you just lay raw meat out in the sun for a while and call it a day.


• You use 'guts' to make bowstrings in-game. This is inaccurate. Sinew is used to make bowstrings. Guts are used to make sausage! Perhaps they were thinking of strings for musical instruments, which do use 'catgut' (not made from cats).


• Five minute spell buffs are a micro-management pain. The more skilled you are at the spell school for the buff, the longer it should last.


• There are no player-made campfires! This is a travesty! I'm starting a campfire petition!

Dawntide Open Beta Journal #1

Note: These experiences are from the weekend on July 2-5th, 2010.

For various reasons, it's been a while since I've checked in on the Dawntide beta. But now that the game has officially entered open beta, I thought it was time to pay it another visit.

After the expected patching and updating (which went very smoothly), I logged in to find my old characters had been deleted. No big deal. I quickly make a new character, choosing to start with skills in Lumberjacking, Carpentry and Fletching, as well as some basic combat experience.

I login to the familiar newbie town and immediately notice that every tree in town has been cut. Fair enough, I spy a few green-tops still standing across the bridge out of town, and head out to begin anew my career as an aspiring lumberjack.

As I wandered the landscape looking for more trees to harvest, I also took the time to practice my combat skills on the local rabbits and ducks.

Combat is the typical pick-target, push various attack buttons type. You do have the option of entering different stances (Balance, Force and something else). Each stance builds up specific stance points that can then be used to trigger other abilities. The combat animations seemed to be mostly nonexistent (they would occasionally fire off for special moves, but otherwise, combat was nothing to watch)

I tried harvesting a flower poking up from the ground, but after the casting timer wound down, the flower vanished and I received an error message telling me that my skill was insufficient to harvest this item. Would have been nice to get that message before the timer. It would also be nice to not deplete the resource.

Looking at the mini-map, I see a castle-type structure not far down the road. Perhaps it's another town? As it turns out, it was just an empty one-room keep, with a guard outside. But across the road was a camp full of vendors. Alas, none of them specialized in Fletching. I did however, find a general vendor who sold all sorts of random items and recipes at discounts. This vendor would also buy items!

Well, in theory anyway. As it turns out, everything I had was considered worthless. But the vendor did provide a couple of cheaper than normal recipes as well as an Icicle scroll. Magic! I had started the game with a single 5-minute buff spell, which I used every chance I could raising a couple of magic skills in tiny increments (and actually, you can just recast a spell over and over as long as you have mana, gaining skill the whole while, but that sort of mindless repetition bores me too quickly). But now I knew a real spell, one that would bring icy doom to my foes!

Heading back towards the main town, I scan the horizons, searching for something to practice my new Icicle spell on.

I do spy this monstrosity in the distance, but having a healthy respect for my newbie status and my general lack of knowledge about the game, I give the mushroom-headed beast a wide berth.

Continuing onwards, I see a small, wee bunny hopping in the grass nearby. Perfect! Target bunny, cast spell, and... er.. well, nothing. Did I miss? Did it not work? I have no idea as there was no animation or text report. Hmmm. Let's try that again. Still nothing. So I do things the old-fashioned way, beating the bunny to a pulp with my hatchet and left hook. So it wasn't a ghost bunny (another common bug with the game world), perhaps I was doing something wrong. In my next combat encounter, I try mashing the spell button during melee. It seems to cast the spell, and maybe my animal foe lost a larger chunk of health than normal, but it's difficult to tell without any sort of combat feedback (sometimes numbers will float up from the target, but this also seems to be inconsistent). I try again a few more times and surprisingly, during one encounter, I actually do see spikes of ice shoot up from the ground underneath my opponent! OK. So I guess it is working, again it was just the animation

Next objective: How to make money? In my previous foray into the world of Dawntide, I recalled making bows for money. But looking at the vendor prices this time around, I didn't have enough cash to purchase any bow recipes. Looking ta my options, the only one that seemed viable was selling lumber. So I started a new career as a Carpenter, cutting down trees and making them into boards to sell to the vendor. After doing this for a bit, I was able to purchase the hunting bow recipe and discovered I also needed to know how to craft a bowstring. Alas, that recipe was another 3 copper!

Luckily, the general vendor had some pre-crafted bowstrings for sale! Seeing that as a much quicker option (I had no idea what sort of materials might be requested of me in order to make a single bowstring on my own), I purchased 10 or so and set about to crafting. After a couple of sad failures I had success! A Hunting Bow of my very own! Using up all of the remaining bowstrings, I managed to create two extra bows to sell. Looks like I had finally reached a point of being profitable!

Having finally achieved one of my initial goals, I now needed some arrowheads to go with the many arrow shafts and feathers I had sitting in my pack. But on my way back to the vendor, I was suddenly disconnected from the server (an unfortunately common occurrence) and decided to save that journey for the next Journal.


I really haven't been keeping up with the development of this game, but from looking at their news page, they seem to be on a steady patching cycle, which is always a good sign. At the moment, the random disconnects and crashes are way too common for me to want to spend much time in-game. Hopefully these technical issues will be cleared up soon and I can venture back into the online world of Dawntide without the frustration of having to login again every 10 minutes.

Short Summary: Has potential, but still has many technical hurdles to overcome.

Dawntide Beta: Day One - I'm a Lumberjack...

After two frustrating weeks of not being able to login successfully, they finally patch the servers with a fix that works! For the first time ever, I am able to interact with the game world and do stuff!

My first goal in this game was to check out the crafting side of things and see if I could manage to craft a set of bow and arrows for myself!

So I created a new character and gave them as many crafting skills as I could. Ready to harvest, I began hacking at the nearest tree. Harvesting is done by simply right-clicking on the resource. Then you get a 5-second action timer while your character performs the animation. Moving or otherwise interrupting the timer will cause it to stop without any resources being gathered. And yes, this does get tedious pretty quickly. Though interestingly enough, I saw some comments from the developers recently asking players to identify what sort of actions they would be likely to macro in-game so that the devs can work on trying to make them less tedious! They'll have to walk a careful tightrope when balancing that sort of thing, but it's good to hear that they understand the root concept of why players macro in the first place and are interested in trying to fix it.

Anyway, I chopped some more trees, and then chopped them again. You can get several harvests from each tree, but once a tree is depleted, the model is replaced with a stump. After a while the trees will regenerate, but it is definitely possible to clearcut an area. The stumps in the screenshot below were all created by myself. I imagine several players trying to harvest at the same time would wreak havoc on the natural shade in the area! Different trees not only provide different types of wood, but they can also be harder to cut. For example, there was an oak tree nearby that I hacked at maybe two dozen times, never once successful. However, all of the other nearby juniper trees fell before my mighty ax with little trouble. A nice touch to the game world. I'm looking forward to seeing what sort of role the type of wood will play in crafting.



Now that I had an ample supply of wood, it was time to get crafting. I open up my crafting window and proceed to churn out hundreds of arrow shafts. I noticed while making arrow shafts that my skill in Fletching was steadily increasing, as was the displayed success rate for making the shafts. But my success rate for bows wasn't changing at all. So as an experiment, I attempted to craft a few bows. Sure enough, this increased my Fletching skill as well as the chance I had for success at crafting that particular bow. Very interesting. This takes crafting specialization to a new level.

Checking an offline, player-made map, I saw that there was a cave nearby where copper could be acquired. So I jogged over there, found some colored lumps in the back of the cave and clicked on them to harvest copper ore.

Bags full, I jogged back to town, found the local forge and turned all of my copper ore into beautiful, shiny ingots. Now I just had to figure out how to turn those ingots into sharp, pointy arrowheads! I checked all the vendors, I asked in chat, I checked the boards, but everyone said it was available from the blacksmith. I looked at the blacksmith list half a dozen times and couldn't find the arrowhead recipe. Finally I saw it, buried deep in the extensive list of items on the blacksmith vendor. For some strange reason I had just assumed that the simpler recipes would be near the top.

So now I have arrow shafts, and I have arrow heads, but I'm still missing one component... feathers. I guess it's time to go hunting...

A couple of random interesting notes:

• Characters have a Sanity rating


• Characters also have an appearance rating that changes as you equip and unequip items

To Be Continued...

Mortal Online Open Beta: Day Two

Day Two was a bit less exciting than Day One. Again I was only able to spend less than an hour in-game.

I logged into my character who was still standing by a tree near a respawn point. Initial load was extremely laggy, as before. With a plan in mind to craft a bow, I set about whacking at the tree. To chop a tree you have to be in combat mode with your axe in hand. Then, when you interact with the tree, a chopping animation plays and some wood may or may not be added to your pack. I found the animation a little unsettling. Due to the fact that you're locked into 1st person mode, I began to get a little motion-sick watching it. It's also kind of strange to not receive a system message letting you know whether or not your action was successful. Occasionally, I'll see a success message when harvesting, but that is a rare occurrence rather than the norm.

Anyway, I acquired 20 units of wood (which I hoped would be sufficient) and looked around for a town. I had read on the forums that crafting required a crafting table, which could be found in-town (and makes it impossible to bootstrap yourself up in the wilderness). Spying an impressive looking wall nearby, I headed off. However, once I got there, the doors were closed and I was unable to interact with them. I saw that the wall continued onwards, so I followed, hoping to find an open door. But the next entrance was the same, as was the one after that. I tried just running through the door and found I could make it partially in; far enough to see that the inside looked pretty barren. OK then. I guess I was trying to get into a point of interest that hadn't been completed yet. But since there was a road alongside the castle/town, surely it would lead somewhere. After a few minutes of running along the road I came to the end of the wall, which ran into a very tall and impressive-looking tower on the shore of an expansive lake. The tower was also closed.

This wasn't going how I had expected, but with that lush body of water beckoning to me, how could I resist. A quick jump from the cliff and I'll be swimm... er.. wait... I'm still falling.. straight through the water surface until I land on the floor of the lake. Hmmm. Can I swim up? No. Can I swim at all? Apparently not, as my avatar begins trekking on foot across the bottom of the lake. Behind me are sheer cliffs that I cant climb. Ahead I think I see a slope in the distance. So I start running. And running. And running some more. Hmmm. that slope doesn't seem any closer. I look behind and see the cliff I had recently jumped from. And though it's clearly in the distance, it's also astoundingly tall from my point of view. Clearly my target was much farther off than I thought it was. Time for a change of plan. Let's hit the suicide button. I wait the required 60 seconds and them I'm dead. And in ghost-form but still at the bottom of a lake! Crud. OK. However, now I have the option of a "Nearest Shrine" button. Another 60 seconds and I respawn. This time in a town! Hooray!

However, my wood was now lying on the bottom of some nameless fake lake in some unknown location. A quick trip to the edge of town and I harvest some more wood. After an extended run about town I finally find a place with a bow crafting bench (most of the buildings have no distinguishing marks of any kind). Excellent! I open up the interface, select a bow type, drop some wood in the slot and presto! I have a bow (though again no messages about success, skill gain, etc). Yay me! So I equip my new bow and draw on the string, which creates a circular reticule that narrows the longer I hold it (allowing for more precise shots I would assume), but alas, I have no arrows. I return to the crafting bench, and all the ones near it, but none give any options for arrow-making. I check my skill list. No help there. I ask aloud if anyone knows how to make arrows There are 3 other players in the vicinity, but none of them respond.

At this point it was approaching 1am my time, so I logged out on the rooftop, ready to continue my search for ammunition next time around.

Mortal Online Open Beta: Day One

So the Open Beta for Mortal Online began yesterday. The client was available via torrent, but it seems today they simply have a direct download link.

Anyway, I had no technical issues with my setup. The download worked fine the first time around, installation was simply extracting the files from the zip, the updater ran, showed me the most recent patch notes and downloaded everything successfully (though there was a significant pause before the download actually started).

When I first tried to login at about 11pm PST last night, the servers were down. I checked back about an hour later and they were up, so I tried again, go in, and was soon making my first character.

The rough edges were immediately apparent. There were no mouseovers telling me what all the stats I could edit were for, there was no info about what differences there were between the races. I ended up just kind of speeding through the process, eager to see the world first-hand.

Waking up in the game world proved to be a laggy affair. My hard drive was given a thorough beating as the scenery and textures slowly popped into place. So the first thing I did was go and turn all the graphics options to the lowest settings. Some took effect immediately (such as turning off shadows), but something else I did (not sure what) said a client restart was required. But I was impatient, and once the trees had finished loading, the client seemed much more responsive.

There I was, in front of a nondescript wall in a forest with a bunch of other similar looking players, all with our starter axes. Of course, it was only moments before one of them came at me with murderous intentions. Luckily, being in combat stance causes you to move slower, so I was able to get some distance and give myself time to figure out how to wield my own axe! Once that was done, it was back into the fray! A few awkward blows were swung (combat feels very clunky), a few hits made, but no deaths that I saw. Quickly tiring of this, I instead turned my axe on some nearby trees, acquiring some wood. I noticed a small deer grazing nearby, so I decided to try my axe-wielding skills on the local fauna. But as I approached, the deer ran! It stopped a short distance off, so I tried again, and the same thing happened (though I did manage to get in one swing first)! It was a very cool moment to realize that this creature had some sense of self-preservation, and that I would probably need a bow to kill it.

Giving up on the slaughter for the moment, I scrolled through the very strange and confusing skill tree interface, trying to figure out if I had any crafting skills and how to use them. Alas, that quest was unsuccessful, but I did discover a Snooping skill! So off I went towards the nearest player who wasn't swinging their axe at me. Success! I could see in his pack, and it looked just like mine, empty except for a bit of lumber. Obviously this player either got some warning message about my actions (or he was just paranoid from all the axe-wielding maniacs in the vicinity), because he spun around and took a swing at my head. Departing the area quickly, I decided to just snoop as I was passing others, rather than standing around waiting for them to get angry. It was a mixed bag of failure and success, but it was interesting to notice how cautious everyone was. Noone attempted to run through you if they saw you coming and most people seemed to give other players a wide berth!

A short run down a nearby road and I found myself in a town. It had a number of buildings and seemed to be a decent size, but it felt oddly empty. The buildings were just lifeless husks, and all of the NPCs seemed to be gathered in a central market area, standing about in random spots (at least I saw no pattern in their placement). I checked a few of them, and all of the ones I saw seemed to be selling raw materials. Seeing some other players around, I again tried my hand at Snooping. Unfortunately, one of the players called for the guards, and I was quickly slain.

Now this was something new (in an old-school sort of way). Rather than being transported somewhere after death, I instead became a ghost. I couldn't see the nearby players or NPCs any longer, and the scenery gained a sort of washed out and smeared effect. I checked the in-game help to see how I could return to a more fleshy state, and found that I was supposed to look for the 'white lines' which would tell me where the priests were. I looked around and saw a number of white pillars of light extending into the sky. The brightness was supposed to tell you how close they were, but with the Death effect making everything blurry, it was difficult to get a good read on the markers. I made a brief stab and tracking what I thought was the brightest one, but when I climbed up to a second story and it appeared to be beyond a line of hills, I gave up and used the beta suicide option, which transported me to the closest priest. I expect that experience will help in the future when trying to locate a priest for resurrection, but they really should try and make it a bit clearer.

Once I was back in the land of the living, I made sure that I still had my newbie axe, and went to sleep next to a nearby tree. I was going to try and create another character before calling it a night, but the game crashed when I logged out.

====

In this short adventure, I could tell that the game is very unpolished and unfriendly to new players. There seems to be a severe lack of feedback given. A number of times I would try chopping a tree and receive no message about success or failure. My Snooping attempts never told me that I was being flagged as a criminal (which I assume is why I was guard-whacked in town). When first starting the game you're given a list of starting areas to choose from, but no information at all about what the differences between them might be. Melee combat is extremely crude. Supposedly they have a major combat patch on the way, but until it's implemented, I can only comment on what's actually in-game.

Despite all of this, I did feel engaged and I'm eager for another chance to dive into Mortal Online. Hopefully I'll be able to allot some more playtime this week and get a better idea of how the game works and what it's all about.

My next goals are to craft something and to learn a new skill! Oh, and maybe kill someone!

Fallen Earth Beta - Initial Impressions: Part II

Follow the link below for my further thoughts and experiences in the Fallen Earth beta.

My Kingdom for a Horse

So here I was, still at Embry Crossroads. I had completed a good portion of the quests in the area, but my main focus was on crafting, and that semi-confusing, overly-complex system had taken most of my time and all of my chips (which is the currency used in Fallen Earth). But it was time to move on, and there was no way I was going to cross the barren, scarred wasteland on foot. I needed one of them horses that it seemed everyone else already owned. But the various parts needed to 'craft' a horse, as well as acquire the necessary training manual, would cost me several of the larger size chips.

Well I didn't have much cash, but I did have a ton of crafting materials in my various bank vaults. I figured that I would just see what I could make, and then sell the resulting product to an NPC vendor for a nice profit. What proceeded from there was an odd little dance I had with myself and the various merchants. I would look for items I could craft where I already had most of the ingredients, purchasing the missing parts, then selling the resulting end-product. Sometimes I netted a few chips, other times I lost some. I didn't seem to be getting anywhere closer to acquiring a horse. So I opened up my vault with all my food-type resources and took everything out. With only a few minor purchases, I soon had a good dozen items queued up for cooking. As these foodstuffs were busy percolating in my pack, I poked around to see if I could secure some other parts I needed. Luck was with me that day, for I found a rusty car outside of town that yielded no less than eight scarp fasteners (which are used often and are also relatively expensive to purchase from the NPC vendors).

While on these excursions, I was also trying to fill out some gaps in my crafting knowledge, namely ammo for my revolver! I finally located the ballistics trainer, and also figured out what skill book I needed to purchase. Aha! It turned out that actually crafting the ammo was an easy task, using fairly common materials, so I soon had enough ammo to last me for a while, especially since I had begun using a sword as my main weapon.

After much brewing, grilling and preserving, I managed to sell enough cooked goods to gather the necessary cash to purchase the horse materials. I completed the horse-training recipe, and voila, there she was! I hopped on and took her out for a spin. It was a sweet ride, one that I wish I had gotten much earlier. And even better, the horse comes with its own pack slots! My mission completed, it was time to move on. I had a couple of quests directing me to Oilville, which was just a short jaunt to the north, and so to Oilville I went!


The Bustling Metropolis of Oilville

I thought that Embry Crossroads was a happening place, but Oilville was even more active. More players, more quests, and a token system for acquiring gear. A number of quests around town gave out special 'gears' as reward. These gears could then be turned into an NPC just outside of town for various armor and weapons. I took a glance at what was offered and realized that what I already had was equivalent or slightly better than what they offered. I guess all of that time spent on crafting had paid off after all!

So I begun the great quest project, cleaning out sandworms, assaulting raider camps, and various other odd jobs around town. Not far from town I ran across a few foes on the road, so I jumped off my horse and waded into the slaughter, patting myself on the back for a job well done. But then I turned around and witnessed a horrifying sight! My horse lay dead on the ground!! I'm not sure what happened, but a CoG (one of the enemy factions) was wandering around nearby, whistling innocently. My vengeance was both swift and deadly. I took a look at my preciously acquired horse, hoping that there was some way to revive it but I quickly realized that I had no veterinary skills. Luckily, by this time, I had more than enough chips from completing quests. So I hoofed it back into town and went over to the stables area to see what my options were and to train a new horse if need be. But I noticed that the stable master had an option for 'towing' my horse. It only cost a single chip, so I gave it a shot. It seemed to work as I then had the option of removing the horse from the stable. Would it be whole and healthy? Unforunately not. Instead I was suddenly presented with the corpse of my equine companion being tossed at my feet. Hmmm... that wasn't quite what I had expected. On to the trainer, where I picked up a vet book. Sure enough, the repair skill worked and my faithful mount was soon back in action!

So I booked around the Oilville area for a while, completing numerous quests and shooting up through levels 7 and 8 very quickly. Focusing on the quests also rewarded me with lots of money as well as the experience gains. I was well on my way to level 10 when the closed beta ended, having gained 2 & 1/2 levels with only a few hours of gameplay after leaving Embry Crossroads.

At one point I had a number of fedex-type missions to a nearby town of Kingman, so I hopped on my trusty steed and rode over there, encountering a large camp of bandits who had taken over the main highway along the way, and spotting an imposing structure on a hill in the distance. As it turned out, this was the infamous Kingman Prison, and the local townspeople had plenty of killing that wanted me to take care of for them inside. Unfortunately, I didn't get to see much more beyond riding around the outside, but it is a very impressive structure that can be seen from miles away. I believe this is the first major instance/dungeon in the game and it's domination of the local skyline really drew my attention and fostered a desire to see what was inside.



Miscellaneous Thoughts

Horses are great! I like that they have a 'fuel' meter that needs to be replenished. But it seems to be a large enough pool that it wont be a constant maintenance chore. Their extra pack space is a nice addition, and the fact that they can be killed adds another point for realism (though it's absurdly easy to 'tow' and revive them afterwords). One side effect of the fuel meter for horses, is that players tend to park them in town rather than riding them everywhere, including inside buildings. This little touch of seeing several horses lined up outside of various buildings really helps to give Fallen Earth that feeling that it is something special. But of course, once the teeming masses hit the game, I suspect that people will be more than happy to ride their horses up and down the stairs rather than leaving them outside.

I am a little worried about buffs. It seems that there are quite a lot. Even with my newbie self I can eat, drink and take painkillers, all of which provide a 30-60 minute buff, and then on top of that, I have two mutation powers that provide more temporary buffs. I've heard that following a mutation path in character development will open up even more buff options. One player on the forums said that he generally has 17 buffs going at the same time! This is a bad trend for several reasons. 1) Reapplying multiple buffs is a pain, 2) When you start stacking buffs on buffs, at some point they become required in order to compete with other players, 3) its just confusing and hard to keep track of when you have a dozen little buff icons with various effects.

I've also heard rumor (though it should be taken with a grain of salt as I haven't experienced the clan or faction systems yet), that player clans have no faction restrictions. If true, this is a huge blow to the PvP potential of the game and kind of destroys the point of even having factions in the first place, especially if players can teach the faction-specific recipes to other players.

The game does have an auction house, but there was almost nothing for sale. But that's pretty typical for test/beta servers, so I not worried about the lack of auction activity. But given the crafting-oriented nature of the game it will be interesting to see how the economy develops once it goes live.

I never had a chance to experience any PvP in my time in the Fallen Earth world. At one point during my wanderings, I did have a message flash on my screen that I was entering a PvP area, but there was noone else around, and I wasn't even sure what it was that made this a PvP area, as there didn't seem to be anything interesting or useful in sight. But, from what I understand, there is no open PvP in the game. There are 'conflict' towns, but apparently not a whole lot of PvP actually happens there, though that might be due to the beta mentality. It sounds like this part of the game hasn't really been fleshed out. Hopefully that is something the devs will work on in the near future.


Summary

And that's pretty much it for my gametime in beta. Though I found the game difficult to get involved in initially, once I passed that first invisible hurdle, I began to enjoy it a lot more. I'm still undecided as to whether or not I'll make the purchase for launch. I have several other games awaiting my attention, including a Blood Bowl league and guild leadership in Warhammer Online.

I suspect that this is one of those games that will have a rocky launch and a lot of mediocre reviews, but given the chance, it has enough potential to develop into an engaging MMO with a unique niche. There does seem to be plenty to do in the starting zone, but those who prefer racing to the endgame will probably end up bitter and disappointed.

So, if you enjoy crafting and are willing to deal with various UI issues and a semi-clutzy combat system, then this is probably a game that you will enjoy. If you're a PvE-raider type, or someone looking for fun, meaningful PvP, then you probably won't find enough entertainment in Fallen Earth. If you're just looking for something different from the saturated fantasy market, then I recommend giving the beta a whirl to see if the game catches your attention, though I do suggest that you give it enough time to get out of the starter towns and into the wider world before passing judgment.

Fallen Earth Beta - Initial Impressions: Part I

I have been in the Fallen Earth beta for about a month. Unfortunately, due to other distractions, my time in game was relatively limited. However, I have written up my initial impressions about the game, which you can find below. This is Part I, which covers levels 1-7. I'll have a 2nd post about my time after that (levels 7 - almost 10), as well as a general summary that will go up within a day or so.

Click the link to see my commentary and thoughts.


I decided to approach this game as a complete newbie (aside from my 10 years of general MMO experience). I knew it was a sci-fi post-apocalyptic setting. I knew that it was supposed to have factions that affected gameplay as well as an extensive crafting system. Other than that, it was a blank slate for me. I hadn't read any forums or guides or previews. I had been playing Fallout 3, however, so I figured I was in the right mood for this sort of fare. Commentary and direct recountings of my experiences from levels 1 to 7 are below.


Initial Experience

Right off the bat I ran into lots of issues with logging in and the weird, confusing NDA acceptance scheme (which has hopefully been fixed. Finally, I was able to create a character and enter the world, but alas, my first experiences in-game were not positive ones.

First off, the User Interface is very clunky. I had hoped that we were past the days of static, graphic-fluff heavy UIs that take up lots of screenspace. But apparently not. It's nice that the inventory and crafting windows are movable, but oddly, some of the basic UI elements are not only stuck in place, but also can't be resized. *sigh* Please don't rely on third-party mods to make your UI malleable.

Moving past that, I then found the opening tutorial to be extremely uninteresting. So much so, that I basically had to force myself to play the game. I can't really pinpoint what it was about the tutorial that left me with such a feeling of ennui, but I suggest that the devs take a long hard look at revamping it, because if its the first thing that players encounter, you will likely lose a lot before they even taste what this game is about. Of course, this was several months ago. I don't know if the newbie tutorial experience has been changed at all since I went through it, but this is a vital part of the game experience. Especially if you want to attract more than a niche, experienced MMO veteran crowd.

So I let my beta account languish for a couple of weeks, and the next time I logged in, my character was gone. I assumed that there had been a server wipe and I quickly threw together a new character, opting out of the tuorial this time around. Instead I went straight to the starter town of Mumford. I was going to try my hand at crafting! So I wandered into town and found a few quests waiting for me, including a crafting quest! But I ran into a roadblock as I was trying to make the two Ragged Black T-shirts to fulfill the job requirements. I didn't have enough cotton! (at the time, I wasn't aware that there were fields of it scattered around the countryside). So I spent a lot of time scavenging through garbage, hoping to find that random bit of fabric that would help me craft the shirt.

Scavenging is an interesting skill. You can get almost any item from scavenging. And there seems to be all sorts of rubbish lying around just waiting for me to come along and comb through it. I even dug through the pockets of an unburied corpse in the much too tiny graveyard right outside of town. Noone seemed to mind.

Finally, as I was searching through yet another rubbish pile, what did I see? It was a Ragged Black t-shirt! Sure it may have had a few soup stains on it, but it was still usable. Glancing around to make sure no one saw me, I quickly dusted it off and placed it in my pack. Hopefully they wouldn't be able to tell that I had just picked this one up from the garbage rather than making it myself? Sure enough, they didn't.

While that was a fun adventure, the thrill of collecting wore off and I wasn't really learning much in the ways of crafting. And then one day, I ran up against a quest that I just couldn't seem to complete. A fellow on a rooftop wanted me to deliver a bottle of booze to someone. After I spent 10 minutes running around (several different times), unable to find the person in question (and yes, I did have quest tracking turned on for this quest), I just said screw it, and left the starter town to head out for parts unknown, figuring I could at least see some scenery before I put this game down for good. I wandered the countryside, gathering resources and avoiding mobs until I stumbled across the town of Embry Crossroads. Suddenly, the entire game changed for me. There were lots of quests, crafting trainers and suppliers of all kinds, abundant resources around the town, a bank, an auction house and other players! NOW, I feel like I'm in an MMO. This was the turning point for me. I suddenly became interested and enamored of the game. If I hadn't forced myself to play to this point, and then made a sudden decision to wander away from the starter town without prompting, I probably would have put this game away and never looked at it again.


Crafting

Anyway, finally out into the world, and feeling rejuvenated and more interested in the game overall, it was time for some serious work. I had wanted to focus on the crafting system first, and so I did. I made many trips around the outskirts of town, gathering anything and everything I could find. I picked up a couple of crafting quests from the locals, the first couple focusing on food preparation. I ended up learning the intricacies of grilling, stewing, preserving, as well as how to make butter and jars of grease. Armed with cheap booze and grilled chicken (prarie chicken that is), I set off for further adventures, finishing up a couple of nearby kill quests while pursuing scrap metals and fasteners (and I heard many a folk cursing about the lack of fasteners in global chat) so that I could make armor, knives, and eventually, my own zip gun.

I really like the detailed and complex crafting system, though it would definitely be nice to clean it up a bit. For one, why do we even have extra sections for additional tiers (IE Shoes 1, Shoes 2, Shoes 3). Can't we just put them all under one category: 'Shoes'? And then within the sections, the order that items are listed in makes little sense. Having the skill books clog up my Shoe list also detracts from the crafting experience.

I would suggest moving ALL the skill books into their own tab. That way if I want to create a skill book, I can go to the book section. If I want to craft an item, I can go to the appropriate section and not have it cluttered with books. It would also be nice to have subcategories of the same type merge together. So instead of having separate sections for Shoes 1, Shoes 2, Shoes 3, etc section, there would simply be Shoes, and as I learned more Shoe recipes, they would all fall under that same section, ordered by skill level (though a couple of different sort options would also be helpful). Makes for a much more streamlined, intuitive and easy-to-use system.

I do appreciate that part of the reason for all the crafting complexity is to force people to specialize. In my time focused on crafting I learned the arts of harvesting copper, plants, animals and mutants, crafting melee weapons (knives, tools, etc), ballistics (including guns, gun parts and ammo), armor (shoes, shirts, pants, hats, boots, jackets and more!), scientific items (acids, dyes and gunpowder), medical supplies (bandages and anti-venoms), food and drink, and finally, horse-taming. And within each of those categories, are six+ sub-categories (that I've learned. No telling how many more there are overall), each with 3-10 items. It's enough to make anyone's head spin! And I quickly discovered that it is nearly impossible to try and focus on that many crafting skills all alone (perhaps with a guild pooling their resources), so I haven't followed the Medical or Mutation paths, and have given up on cooking as well, except to make use of all the various food components I find as loot.

I like the fact that your crafting times can be decreased by standing in an appropriate workshop, and I love that you are still considered to be actively crafting while offline. Combine the two for easy crafting while you sleep! But you can also just go wander around and do whatever else you want in the game, and your crafting counter will still be ticking away.

Everytime I login I see someone complaining about having to wait in real-time for crafting to complete. But please ignore these folks. The real-time aspect is an important part of a functioning economy, and the fact that your crafting timer is ALWAYS counting down, even while you're adventuring, standing around or offline more than makes up for the inconvenience experienced when you feel that you need that new item RIGHT NOW (which has the added bonus of forcing players to think ahead!) The components for an item will sometimes be made by a different specialty, which helps to keep the economic system flowing while making it useful (though not required) for crafters to work together.

My main disappointment with crafting in Fallen Earth is that it's recipe-based rather than component based. So FE crafting falls a bit short of what I would consider the ultimate MMO crafting system. However, there are a plethora of different items, many of which seem to have functionally similar stats, leaving it up to the player to decide which one they want based on personal preferences or item appearance, which is simply wonderful.

I find it very awkward that I can't tell what I will learn from purchasing or creating a new skill book. This has led to some guesswork and a few wrong choices, which can be expensive. If I'm writing a book for myself to learn new patterns, you would think I would know what those patterns are ahead of time!


Combat

Coming straight off of playing Fallout 3, I was hoping for a similar sort of combat experience (without the VATS system of course), though I wasn't sure how well it would work in an MMO. It mostly works, but combat does feel a little clunky. Especially going in and out of combat mode. Sometimes I'll hit tab, and see my guy hunker down as if he's ready for combat, but I wont have a targeting reticule.

I also find it very difficult to hit a moving mob, particularly in 3rd person mode, which forces me to 1st person mode when shooting (though this can still be difficult due to mobs tendency to make sudden, jerky movements). This would be fine and dandy except that I have lots of issues trying to engage in melee combat while in 1st person (my secondary swing attack just doesnt seem to work at all in 1st person mode). So, combat becomes the following multi-step dance. Move within range of my target, switch to 1st person, switch to attack mode, pull out my gun, make sure its reloaded, fire 2-4 shots at my target who rushes at me with the first hit, pull out a melee weapon, switch back to 3rd person mode, swing until my target is dead. Whew! And then, I have to tab out of combat so I can loot my kill. Rinse and repeat for the next victim!

This has resulted in a switch in focus to melee weapons. Perhaps things will change at later levels, but at the moment, I mainly have a sidearm just for show (and also because I made it myself). I've gotten better at the weapon-switching dance, but it's still a pain in the butt and kind of awkward. I find it much easier to just wade in with the sword and chop my opponents up. I don't really have any suggestions here, but having your combat feel fluid is an important design element.


Miscellaneous Thoughts

I like that items tell you in their mouseover text when they're used for tradeskills, but I don't understand why we still have 'useless' items around. Why on earth is the ballistics merchant buying gooey chitinous legs from me?! Can't we just remove this crap from the game entirely?

We can sit! And crouch! And lay down! This may seem like a very minor feature for many players, but for roleplayers and those who enjoy being immersed into the game world, this sort of 'fluff' is invaluable!

A better explanation of combat skills and mutations is definitely needed early on. These seem to be the standard attacks, buff and debuff type skills that you find in any other MMO, but it feels a little strange in Fallen Earth since the combat aspect is quite different from the standard WoW model. I still haven't really looked into these skills yet.


Summary

Overall, I've found Fallen Earth to be different and interesting enough to keep my attention so far, though it came VERY close to losing me entirely in the beginning. Perhaps my expectations were set too high after playing Fallout 3 right before being accepted into the beta?

This post ends with my character at level 7. I have a sword and a set of clothes that I created myself. I have a revolver with no ammo and two vaults full of various resources of all kinds. It's time to see some more of the world, so I plan to gather enough chips to buy a horse and head out on the open range!

Warhammer Online: Preview Weekend Thoughts

Played some over this weekend, though I tried out a lot of different classes using my newly patented Smash 'Em leveling technique (queue for scenarios constantly as soon as you log in, doing quests while waiting in line. I hit level 5 and renown rank 5 in under an hour using this technique).

Here are some random thoughts and comments in no particular order.


I noticed that a lot more low-level items come with slots these days. I assume this is to give the as-yet-unreleased Talisman Making profession a use from the start. I just wish they would patch it in so we can see how it works.

It seemed to be very popular to level up to 11 (the max for the Tier one scenarios) and queue for scenarios. That way players could feel powerful by tearing through the lower-ranked opponents. But, since PvP gives experience gains (and pretty significant ones at that), at least these putzes will eventually level out of that Tier, which is a godsend in my opinion. None of that perma-twink BS that is the bane of low-level WoW battlegrounds.

I took some time to stop in one place and just look around, taking in the action that was going on. Even though WAR is a themepark MMO, they do an excellent job of making it feel alive, with NPCs fighting it out, reinforcements running around the camps, explosions and artillery combat happening at a steady pace. It would add some flavor to the game if these bombardments actually caused some damage (not a lot, just something to keep you on your toes).

Every class plays differently. I haven't played them all, but I've spent at least a few levels with Shaman, Squig Herders, Ironbreakers, Engineers, Bright Wizards, Marauders, and of course, lots of time with the Black Orcs, and they all have different mechanics or styles of play. Add this on top of the ability to PvP right out of the starting gate, and replayability becomes a huge draw for WAR (at least in the early levels. The grind might get more tedious as you get to Tiers 3 and 4).

Scavenging is a very useful money-maker. Butchering not so much, since animals are less common than humanoids.

Still no functioning banks, guild or otherwise. Same with the auction house.

The polish is definitely in progress. A lot of people seem to be complaining about the clunky feel of combat, but for those who have been in beta previously, the new system is much improved (though it can still use more improvement). The low-level game just seems a lot slicker and tighter than it did a month ago.

I haven't played all of the starting areas, but the Greenskin area seems to be a lot more compact. I felt like I was running around a lot more in the Dwarf, Empire and Chaos starting areas.

Warhammer Online: Guild Beta Impressions - Part III

Phase 3.3 saw the opening of the Tier 4 zones, along with character wipes and the ability to make level 31, templated characters.

Seeing the Tier 4 zones and getting a chance to try and push the zone control so that your side can assault new zones was interesting, but it also revealed some flaws with the system.


For example, its possible for your side to gain control of all the objectives and keeps in an area, but still lose control of the zone. I know that PvE and Scenarios also have an effect on the zone control, it just feels kind of weird to have physical control of a zone, but the magic meter tells you something different.

Keep combat is very one-dimensional. Attack the front gate, run in, attack the keep lord. The only difference with the higher tier keeps is that they require you to bust down two doors. The keeps look fancy, but 90% of the area is never used. It's also odd that there are no NPCs on the walls. You would think they could stick in some static archers.

Tier 4 areas have a bit of an interesting setup. In the middle there is a zone that is 80% RvR, flanked on either side by two PvE zones that feed into the middle zone for control purposes.

Thunder Mountain is the central Tier 4 area for the Greenskin/Dwarf pairing. It is a badlands type area, with a volcano in the center. Very cool atmosphere, very crappy for actually getting anywhere. Due to large chasms dominating the landscape, you often have to take a very roundabout route to get to where you need to go (note: this is for the RvR area. The PvE areas of the zone don't have this issue), resulting in a lot of running around. This is especially annoying because it is the RvR area. I don't want to spend more time running back to the combat than I do actually fighting.

The Empire vs Chaos area of Praag on the other hand, is a great RvR setup. Almost the entire zone is encompassed by the town, which each side having a warcamp on the outskirts to give them easy access to the interior. Objectives are on a general line through the middle of town, with one keep at each end. This is much more fun than running around on windy paths in Thunder Mountain. It also gives more of a feeling of an actual war, since you're fighting in a city instead of out in the middle of nowhere at some random spot.

I really think that Mythic will have to revisit the RvR zones for the other two pairings to make them as interesting. Currently, 90% of the outdoor PvP action happens in the Empire vs Chaos areas.

Another thing that really bothers me is zone control resetting periodically? I find this feature a bit odd. Apparently, you are under a time limit in regards to gaining control of zones. Otherwise, the zone resets entirely. Pretty lame design, IMO, but I guess it goes along with the theme park style of gaming. After several posts about this issue, I finally got some details from a Mythic employee. Once you start a keep assault, you have 60 minutes to win before it resets (though I'm not sure what exactly causes the timer to start. Hitting the front door? Destroying the front door? Attacking the keep lord?). Also, once one of the final fortresses is taken, you have 36 hours to take one of the other two, which will then open up the capitol for attack. If you don't beat the time deadline, the Tier for which the fortress was taken resets back to its default values. All objectives in that zone become neutral and the keeps revert to initial ownership. I find this to be a pretty lame mechanic. Maybe if they had an NPC spawn that retook the keep, that would be interesting. But as it is, it just suddenly pops back and you have to start all over from the bottom. My preference would be to leave it in the hands of the players to retake the keeps. Make the players actually fight for what is theirs rather than just resetting the pins for another round. But, I guess that goes along with the themepark MMO.

Leveling is definitely slower post 30. But its still not too bad. Definitely much quicker leveling than any of the other fantasy MMOs on the market.

I continue to be impressed with the whole open party concept. It works very well, with most successful open Warbands being formed around a small core of guild players. There are a few issues. The main one that bothers me is that I cant always see where everyone in my warband is on the map. But, this is a bug that affects all warbands, not just open ones.

Talisman making is still not in game yet, but drops for it have begun to appear. Some items have enhancement slots, so I am assuming that Talisman making will create items for these slots, kind of like Jewelcrafting in WoW.

Got a chance to play with some of the dye options. The colors seem to be a lot more apparent on the higher-level gear. And it does make your avatar stand out. Unfortunately, there are only a dozen or so color options, and some of them are priced differently. I've seen some hints in-game that they plan on letting Apothecaries create their own dyes, but it seems that this feature isn't fully implemented as noone has managed to actually make any.

The game has improved quite a bit over the last month. Things generally seem a lot smoother, particularly client-side. I still get occasional graphics lag, but it is vastly improved.

And before I finish up this post, I suppose I should talk a bit about the guild system. Forming a guild in WAR requires a full party of 6 players to gather at the guild registrar in Inevitable City. You then pay a fee, pick a guild name and you're all set. The guild window has several tabs, including one for managing alliances. The UI has a few issues, but all-in-all, its well laid out and fairly comprehensive. One of the more unique aspects of WAR is its Living Guild system, whereby your guild gains levels. Each level opens up something new, from standards, to special access to the guild area in the capitol, to designing your own, personal heraldry (which has quite a number of options to choose from). This system seems to work pretty naturally, and quickly as well. We had to remake our guild several times during the beta, but we were always able to gain back the early levels rather easily. The highest level our guild achieved was 9, so I cant comment too much on the details above that, but it definitely was a source of pride for us to see our guild growing as a result of our efforts to bash in some stuntie heads!

Warhammer Online: Guild Beta Impressions - Part II

Here is the second of my beta impressions from the Guild Beta. This post is kind of short, since this phase only lasted a week. This was labeled Beta 3.2 and opened up the Tier 3 zones. My random thoughts are below in no particular order.

Note: This was written in mid to late July.


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In addition to continuing to play my Black Orc, I also played a bit in the starting zones for the Empire and Dark Elves as well as playing a Squig Herder up to level 10.

I noticed that the Tier one objectives for Empire/Chaos were a hotbed of activity. Likely due to the fact that they are all of 10 seconds outside of the camps, and sit smack in the middle of both sides. On the other hand, the objectives for the first two Greenskin/Dwarf zones are tucked away in a corner of the map that noone ever goes to. So those objectives usually switch hands with no conflict whatsoever. Of course, it was mostly a mindless zerg (if you played WoW before they implemented battlegrounds, this is akin to the mass Hillsbrad/Southshore fights that used to happen on a daily basis).

Beta 3.2 saw the opening of Tier 3 zones, but they seemed strangely empty. It also seemed that the racial pairings aren't as in your face as they were in the other zones. The only times I saw any enemies in the two Greenksin/Dwarf Tier 3 zones was when they were riding by to go to the Gunbad dungeon.

Speaking of dungeons, I believe this is the first dungeon available for Destruction players. It's called Mount Gunbad and is designed for mid-20s players. It involves delving down into a cave to take on some goblins that are breeding super squigs. Though you have to go through a portal to get inside, the dungeon itself is open, which means that everyone is in the same instance. I think it's divided by faction, since I didn't see any enemy players inside, and all of the quest givers were goblins. There is no party-size limit, so you can take as many players as you want. Unfortunately, I crashed soon after entering and was unable to get back to my non-Guild group due to respawns, so I didn't get to see much of the place.

Some of the scenarios are pretty lame. For example, there is one King of the Hill scenario that is actually on a hill. Unfortunately, a number of classes get a knockback ability, which they will use to knock you off the top of the hill, forcing you to run back up. Another scenario requires you to grab and hold an artifact. The usual result is that one side gets it first, then camps below their spawn with it. Sometimes I have fun, sometimes I don't, usually revolving around how well my side is doing. If you enjoyed WoW's battlegrounds, you'll probably enjoy WAR's scenarios. Though sometimes you might end up waiting a while to get into a scenario, one good thing is that once the scenario is done, you're returned to the exact spot you were in before you entered. Makes it easy to continue on with questing or activities while waiting in line.

This phase also saw the push of the Realm War 'leader boards' which are pretty dumb at the moment. For one, they don't update and still have info from two weeks ago. For two, they're really not that interesting. For three, I don't see any info about the actual war. That is what I want to know! Which keeps are controlled by who, where has the fighting been going on for the past couple of hours. What objectives are available for attack. How close are we to pushing the gates of our opponents' city? This is the sort of info I expect to see. I could really care less about who spent the past 24 hours grinding renown points. But, I'm assuming they have plans to make it more interesting.

Next Up: Part III, which includes info from some time we were given in the Tier 4 zones with templated characters.

Warhammer Online: Guild Beta Impressions - Part I

Note: These are my initial impressions from the Guild Beta and were written a month ago. A lot has changed in the game since then. More recent thoughts will follow over the next couple of days.

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I'm not going to be able to post this before the NDA is lifted, but I wanted to gather my thoughts together from Day one onwards. This initial writeup was made from my experiences playing exclusively as a Black Orc with an established guild (Shadowclan) for the first 10 days of Guild Beta (July 15th - 24th).


First things first. The ambiance of the Greenskin starting area was good. You start out in a fungus-lined cave and emerge to beat on some dwarfs as your first quest. Initial leveling is quick and painless (I was 30% through level one before even fighting anyone). Since I logged in on the initial day of Guild beta, the starting area was quite crowded. I didn't really have issues with completing quests because of the crowd, it just resulted in a lot of extra lag.

The User Interface is very customizable, though they still have some work to do. You are given the option to go into layout mode and move, hide and resize all of the various parts of the UI. Unfortunately, you don't have control over text attached to the various panes, so resizing sometimes makes the text unreadable. But, all in all, having this functionality straight out of the box earns lots of bonus points from me.

Public quests are awesome! Though the roll for loot is more random than you might expect (and generally leads to initial shock and griping after you finish 1st in contribution but then get a bad roll and no loot), it seems to work out in the long run. It really works best if you have a group that will run through the same public quest a couple of times. Public Quests are centered around the various Chapters on quest progression and participating in them gives you influence points for that chapter. Each chapter seems to have three or so public quests associated with it. Oftentimes the one closest to the camp is the busiest while those further away are mostly empty. Some public quests are also labeled as difficult, but in exchange, the rewards are better.

While on the subject of public quests, I should probably also talk about grouping. In particular, WAR's open group system. By default, all new groups are open, meaning with a couple of mouse-clicks, anyone nearby can join. By far, this is the best grouping system I have ever seen. I've joined open groups for everything; from Public Quests, to assaulting Keeps.

It also helps that no quests (at least as far as I have encountered in the first two Tiers) are hindered by being in a raid/warband. I can complete quest objectives no matter how many players are in my group. In fact, many of the public quests encourage large groups (some of them require killing 100 mobs to advance to the next stage). Being able to complete all quests in a warband (WAR's version of a raid which allows up to 24 players), also negates the pressure many players feel to only allow certain classes to join. It just really doesn't matter that much. This might be different in the high-end content, but that sort of stuff will likely be organized ahead of time anyway.

It's kind of interesting to think about the ramifications of this open group concept. WoW received a lot of praise for its solo-friendly content. WAR takes that a step farther, but in a kind of sideways manner. Most of the standard quests are easily done solo (and in under 10 minutes), but it is so simple to join a group, that you tend to find yourself grouped for pretty much everything else. You're still solo in a sense, in that you're not with a specific group, but you're also being social by grouping. Hard to get my point across in words, but trust me, its a beautiful concept that works extremely well, especially in this sort of RvR environment.

Joining an open group is as simple as two clicks. One click opens the group window displaying the list of open groups in the nearby area, how far away they are, who the leader is, how many players are in the group and what the group is involved in (PvE, RvR). You click the join button and voila! You're in the group! So it manages to meld the soloist into group play in a very smooth manner. The only issue is getting the word around about this feature and how to use it. It's very common to be involved in bashing something and have someone come up and ask for an invite when your group is already open and they can just join whenever they want to.

There are options for kicking troublesome players and banning them from joining your group, but I have never seen that used in beta. Even if a player just goes AFK to leech, it usually doesn't really matter than much (and its a rare sight in my experience). Instead of walking into a mob area and seeing several players doing their own thing, you walk into a mob area and see several players fighting together. Even if they're not working directly together (IE, everyone is beating on a different mob), they're all working towards a common goal.

Its also nice that quest drops happen automatically. You often don't even have to loot. You can just kill the required mob and immediately get a notification about completing a quest objective. I've even finished a number of quests without realizing it due to groupmates completing the required steps while I was nearby.

Mythic has definitely raised the bar on ease of access with public quests and public grouping.

One of WAR's taglines has been War is Everywhere. And I have to say, that is pretty much true so far. Not only are a lot of the quests in the first 4 zones of the Greenskin area based around smashing stunties (Hoowah dat!), but the scenery evokes the feel of a WAR in progress and a number of public quests are shared by both sides, though working at opposite goals. While these are technically PvE areas, they often result in heavy PvP fights when both sides show up. And in these sorts of PQs, there are usually NPCs fighting it out even when no players are involved!

Collision detection does indeed play a role in PvP, especially when you have narrow stairs or other choke points. And there have been a couple of times where I've managed to hinder someone's escape by blocking their path. It seems that slipping around someone blocking you isn't too difficult, but it can delay and confuse players enough to make a difference. I haven't yet had a chance to really coordinate on forming a wall, but I guess that it is possible.


Now for the low points.

First off, I'm curious as to how Mythic defines polish. They have said for a while that they were in the polish phase, but yet there are lots of major bugs and missing features. While major things such as combat, movement, creating guilds, are in place, other things aren't; banks for example!

Secondly, the much-lauded Living Cities, the system who is at fault for loss of four out of six capitol cities.. In current beta, the two existing cities are supposed to be at their peak level, and to be honest, I really see nothing special that I haven't already seen in every other MMO. They have vendors, they have trainers, they have a banker (not working), auctioneer (not working), a mostly-empty guild hall, a couple of quests and a dungeon or two inside the city. Whats so special about all of this? This is what I EXPECT from a capitol city. If a lower-level capitol doesn't have these basics, then its not much of a capitol at all. And why cant they shove this stuff into four other cities? Maybe there is more secret features that aren't in-game yet, but currently, I am thoroughly unimpressed. The graphics are very pretty, but I was expecting something different and special with the Living Cities system.

Crafting, well, at the moment, all we have are the gathering skills and apothecary. And really there's not that much new about either. Apothecary is very much a grind to gain skill, despite the claims in the crafting videos. You still have hard skill limits on everything, so you end up standing near a vendor, making the same potions over and over again to increase your skill so you can use the higher level components which have skill requirements. They should really just remove the hard skill limits on raw materials and allow players to use everything from skill level 1. The user is presented with a success meter showing their chances of making the potion. If they want to use up their higher-level materials on low-chance mixes, that should be their prerogative!

Single-race viability certainly seems possible, though I don't think there is enough faction-specific symmetry to preclude a guild from taking the best classes from 3 races and combining them into a force that could easily dominate any equal-sized single-race group. But, if you're not worried about dominating and just want to have fun, you can certainly do everything, including PvE and RvR, as a single-race guild.

RvR seems too isolated from the rest of the world. The RvR areas in the first two Tiers are rather large, but there is nothing there besides the battlefield objectives and keeps. So, what generally ends up happening is that one side runs through and captures the points, then everyone leaves because its boring in the RvR when no opponents are around. Then an our later, the other side comes through and does the same thing. Rinse and repeat over and over. And this rut certainly isn't helped by the fact that the announcements about objectives/keeps being attacked are either non-existent or way too short. For example, the objectives give the previous owners three minutes to respond when they're taken by the other side. However, it takes a good minute (or more) to run there from the nearest flightpath. Add by the time you get to a flight master, fly down there and hopefully join an RvR warband, you're already too late. Keeps don't send out any defense warnings until the keep lord is under attack.

This all basically makes RvR a round-robin game of taking turns on capturing objectives. I can only hope that there are more points of interest or things to do in the RvR areas in the higher Tiers.

I upgraded my CPU over the weekend (from an Athon 3500 to an Athlon X 64 5200) and the difference was just astounding. I went from having low graphic settings at 1024x768 and still getting lots of graphics lag when too many models were on the screen, to running at 1440x900, high graphics mode and only occasional slight stutters when loading new graphics content.


Next up! Some looks at the game from a different faction's perspective and hopefully insight into missing features and higher-level tiers (Mythic willing).

AoC Beta Impressions: Part II

I had expected to get a few days to play around in the AoC beta after the boost to level 20, but, apparently, this was a one-day only event (thanks for letting us know ahead of time Funcom!).

So here are some various extra observation snippets to go along with my Initial Beta Impressions post.

Open PvP - Funcom has some serious design flaws if they really plan on having open PvP as it was on Saturday. In addition to the numerous zone-in campers (which is easy to do since there is so much instancing), and the res-point camping (which is also easy to do since you get a friggen loading screen everytime you res, even if you died only 3 feet away!), there is also the oh-so-fun, kill you while you're in a cut-scene dialog with an NPC! Not only can you be attacked while you're forced into this meaningless multi-stage conversation (while you are given lots of conversation options, it ultimately all boils down to either accepting or rejecting the quest. None of the other options matter one bit.), but because it is a pseudo cut-scene, you cant even tell that you're being attacked until you finish the conversation and find yourself dead. Very poorly planned.

PvP is fast and furious. Most of my PvP experience involved dealing with the zone campers. Luckily, I had maxed out my hiding skill so as long as they were attacking someone else when I zoned in, I could quickly hide and move away. I jumped in and helped to fight the bastards when I could, but I still died every time, even when I managed to kill someone, resulting in a net experience gain of 0. As with my experiences in the battlegrounds, I felt like I had very little control over the result of the combats. Of course, this was all involving level 20-24 characters, so the ability options were limited, and I didn't get much time to practice, so my player skills were sadly lacking as well.

The best method of leveling seems to be by doing quests that involve killing NPCs or venturing into areas with hostile NPCs. A lot of the in-town, go talk to so-and-so quests didn't give much, if any experience. They do have quest hooks that send players to the various main towns for each race.

Traveling between the three major towns is as easy as finding the appropriate NPC and asking for a ride. There was no time limit or cost that I saw. The first secondary town in Stygia also had an instant transport from the main city. I didn't see anything similar in Cimmeria.

I ran into numerous terrain and graphic bugs. From seeing my avatar sink halfway into the ground to jumping into a river expecting a swim, only to find myself walking along the river bottom. And then I had to recall out of the river because the terrain was too steep for me to climb out. At times, my screen would suddenly become a mishmash of screwed up textures making the game completely unplayable. Luckily, I could alt-tab out and back in to fix the problem, but it could have easily resulted in my death if I had been in a fight or someone/something had wandered along and decided to attack me. This happened to me several times in Stygia.

I will give Funcom credit for allowing me to alt-tab out and back into AoC with no problems. Something a lot of other games don't handle very well (TF2 locks up my machine if I try alt-tabbing).

As of Saturday, my client was still throwing errors everytime I hit the esc key. Graphics lag and loading times were still about the same for me.

AoC either has some serious memory leaks or does an extremely poor job of offloading unused textures and graphics. Framerate and responsiveness start to seriously deteriorate after a while. Seems to be especially noticeable after changing zones a few times.

Res points seem to be few and far between, which makes for lots and lots of annoying running. At times, I was reminded of the old WoW days when there was no graveyard in the southern half of the Barrens.

Skills UI. I had numerous lines in my skill list that had no text, but allowed me to put skill points into them. Were these actual skills or just a bug?

I see there being a problem with competition over quest objectives in the early days after release. Not only did I have trouble finding the right types of mobs to kill at times, but I had one quest in town where I was supposed to climb a tower and steal a jewel. After suffering through the awkward, figure-out-the-one-spot-near-the-wall-where-you-can-climb mini-game, I got to the top of the tower to see that the jewel was gone and another player was also already there waiting for it to respawn. I sat around for a minute or so before logging off. When I logged back in later, the jewel was there, so I grabbed it and moved on, but when you have hundreds of players trying to do the same quest after release, its going to be a nightmare.

Didn't get to see any part of crafting aside from finding a couple of pieces of leather on critters I had slain.

I found no method for returning to the character selection screen without going back to the main login screen. And getting to the main login requires the user to hit escape, select exit game, then wait 30 seconds. What year are we in again? How such a simple and expected feature could be missing from a top-end game is beyond me.


In summary, AoC has potential, but it looks like it is being released too early (something that no MMO, including WoW, has really managed to avoid in my experience). And nothing about the game or gameplay made a strong impression on me. I haven't pre-ordered and I don't feel any special need to play at launch. I may pick up a copy later in the month, or I may wait a while to see how they do with the patches and updates, or I may not even play at all. Only time will tell.

Age of Conan Initial Beta Impressions

Here are my initial impressions of Age of Conan, assembled after playing in the 'Open Beta'* . I started as a barbarian, read nothing about how to play, instead realying on the in-game help and my personal gaming experience. My barbarian has hit the level cap of 13, completed her destiny quest as far as she can in this beta and has participated in a half dozen PvP matches.

*Funcom's concept of Open Beta is quite a bit different. Basically, everyone only gets access to the newbie island, and has a max level of 13. As you might imagine, this means that a significant portion of the gameplay is not even visible to the Open Beta Testers.

Continue reading to see my comments on my experiences so far.


Graphics and System Requirements:

First off, I should talk a bit about graphics and game lag. There has been a lot of press about how crappy the AoC client is, and while I experience significant graphics lag, the game never crashes while I'm actually playing, though I do get booted back to the login screen every half hour or so, and the game also crashes everytime I quit, but at least it does so in a nice way, allowing me to continue using my machine without a reboot.

My system is a bit below par. I just last week bought a GeForce 9600 video card, but my CPU is a couple of years old; single-core AMD 3500+. I started playing the game at 1440x900 with effects turned off or low, but the graphics stutter and loading times were just too much. Switched to a lower resolution and still get occasional stuttering, but its definitely playable.

The game does look very nice. The water is beautiful, and the swimming animations are very graceful. I had my first moment of awe at the graphics when I stepped into the Archerion Ruins and stood on the edge of a cliff, looking out over the mountainside at the impressive ruins in the near distance. And this with all of my graphics settings on low! I imagine it looks even more spectacular with some bells and whistles blowing.


World Enviroment and Instancing:

AoC has a LOT of instancing. Not as much as Pirates of the Burning Sea, but more than I like dealing with. Do we really need an entire instance for the main inn in Tortage? There are a total of 6 or 7 NPCs inside, and I rarely see other players there. What is gained by forcing players to zone in and out to talk with their trainers besides extra loading screens?

Annoyingly, I find myself getting hung up on objects pretty often, ranging from rocks to the edges of ramps, to random terrain bumps.

The starting island seems to be a railroaded experience. Sure I can wander off down the beach instead of following the path, but I can't choose to walk up that hill next to the road. There are lots of barriers to free-form roaming. Hopefully this sort of rails-driven outdoor experience will be less obvious in the higher-level areas.

And that brings me to climbing. Climbing is a bit disappointing. I'm not even sure why you have to put points into this skill. You can only climb in very specific areas (which has been certain ladders during the solo quest as far as I've seen). I also found it very difficult to see where I was supposed to climb for some missions. The help topic on climbing stated that 'higlighted' areas, but the highlighting is so minimal as to be nonexistent. The flickering light from torches seemed more like highlighting than the actual highlighting! And then, once I did find the right place to climb, I often had to move around a bit before I could find that sweet spot that would force the game to recognize that I wanted to climb! It really seems to add nothing to the game.



User Interface:

The User Interface is pretty standard, with a few extras thrown in such as target of target, the ability hide your helm (I dont know why they just dont make the helms less obstructive to begin with) and various other minor tweaks. The main action bar is paged, allowing you to set up numerous variations if you so desire. It also has what they call a 'special action bar' that is also part of the main bar, but accessed by holding down the alt key.

However, there is an unfortunate lack of customization available. I can move the two extra action bars on the right side, but I cant move the main bar, the map window, the health bars, etc etc. A lot of the popup windows are movable, which is nice, but I really don't understand why MMOs are reluctant to let advanced users move the basic parts of the interface. You can only setup hotkeys for the main bar and the special action bar. I found no way to hotkey the extra action bars. This, coupled with a lack of support for macros makes me unhappy.

I was also unable to resize any of the UI elements and found the icons in AoC complex and dark-toned, so that they didnt really stand out. I had to look at the mousover text to tell which abilities were which. I would much prefer the default icons be simple, with a nice contrast of colors, and then, give the advanced users the option to change their icons to the fancier ones if they so desire.

On nice feature that AoC has is the option of being able to setup an alternate weapon set that you can switch to at a click of a button (not sure if you can hotkey it or not). This makes switching between ranged and melee weapons easy, as well as just having an alternate loadout for specialized situations (though I would guess that the ability to switch weapons at the drop of a hat and then hit weapon-specific abilities before switching back will be a ripe area for abuse and exploits).


Combat:

Combat is interesting. Its very heavy on the button-mashing, which is both good and bad as it requires more player interaction, but it might end up being a pain later on. PvE was mostly a button-mashing experience for me. But once I started trying out some PvP, I started putting some more thought and effort into the timing of my swings and the usage of my abilities.

The shielding concept is intriguing on paper, but doesn't seem to translate well into actual gameplay. I'm not able to easily tell which way my enemies are swinging, oftentimes the differences in swings are very subtle. And its so simple, easy and quick to swing your weapon from a different direction (I tend to use all three types of directional attacks constantly when I'm fighting), that trying to respond equally quickly with shielding AND match up to what your opponent is doing seems impossible. Switching shielded sides is also a little slow. I found the ability to alter my shielding useless, and just left it on the default setting. I suppose if I was familiar with certain classes and knew that XX class has mostly right-attack combos, then switching shielding to that side might help. But that leads to another complaint I have about AoC combat...

There seems to be a lack of visceral feedback during combat. I felt like I had no idea what my opponent might be getting ready to do. I supposed this might change a bit with experience, but I found combat to be mostly just flinging about my abilities. I stealth up to someone, make an attack and see a message about 'attacking from stealth', but then my character waits to swing, and when I do, I dont seem to do extra damage. Am I doing something wrong? I really have no idea.

There seems to be a lack of escape options once you enter combat (at least for me). I felt like once combat started, whether I was going to win or lose was already decided, mostly being determined by how many extra mobs had run over.

I also occasionally had issues with various plants/ferns making it impossible to see what was going on during the fight (this happened while fighting evil plants, so I couldn't draw them out of the foliage). Kind of a pain, but I was able to just mash attack buttons until it died.

The various combat movement actions (activated by hitting a movement direction key twice in quick succession) are an interesting addition. I wasn't ever able to make much use of the sidejump (it doesn't give any visible bonus and takes a couple of seconds to activate), but I did use the jumpback option to get a defense buff and the momentum option (moving forward twice) to get another buff that gives me a chance to stun my target whenever I hit. Both buffs are short, and it seems they have some sort of cooldown timer, but I didn't see anywhere that told me what that timer was.


PvP:

The only PvP we get to experience in this demo are the arena matches. You sign up for a PvP match by opening the social window, going to the PvP tab and then choosing which type of match you want to participate in. It then puts you into the queue and reports on how many people are trying to join a PvP match, and how many are waiting for the same arena that you are, which is a very nice feature. I initially signed up for a Capture the Flag match, then saw there were 20 people in line and only 1 other waiting for the same match. SO I switched to the more popular Deathmatch and soon found myself inside (more on PvP later in this article). The annoying thing about this interface is the fact that you cant minimize it. I would like to be able to walk around and do things while waiting for a PvP match without having a large, intrusive window getting in the way.

PvP is where I started thinking about how to actually use my abilities and the combat system. Fighting NPCs is mostly a button mash, but when you're taking on player characters that are running around, stunning, rooting, etc, then the game steps up to a different level. I still have the issues with combat mentioned above, mainly that I cant really tell what is going on. Hopefully that will improve with experience.

It still seems to be fairly standard tactics-wise, go after the person standing in back casting spells. Kiting seems to be viable for certain classes, rangers in particular. As a barbarian, I had no crowd control options and no way to easily close with someone who is running away. In reports from the PvP weekend, I heard comments that most melee characters have a charge ability, but it wasnt available at level 13.

I'm a little concerned about how melee will be able to fare in long-term PvP. They are always the most susceptible to crowd control, and given the twitch nature of AoC combat, it might be even more difficult to get in hits. And, of course, there aren't any options for dodging spells. All of the healers I tried to attack seemed to have a several second stun which they didn't hesitate to use.

I've also run into a couple of bugs. Once, when zoning into the start of a match, I was stuck in the brazier next to the resurrection totem and couldnt get out. I had to wait until the other team came along and killed me. Also, there was another instance where a player from the other team was invincible.

I noticed in the end-match summary for the PvP arenas that each player was given a score. This score was entirely based on killing blows! Hopefully, this score doesnt really mean anything, but if it somehow plays a part in the experience you get or otherwise is important in any way, then it needs to be modified.

You accumulate PvP experience separately from regular experience. What this is good for, I have no idea.


Summary:

Overall, its really hard to make judgments on actual gameplay with such a small preview snippet. Given that AoC has 80 levels, there are obviously a significant amount of character abilities and customization that we don't see. And we don't even get a glimpse at battle keeps, player cities, crafting, open world PvP, mounts, other cities, etc etc. This 'open beta' is really more of a marketing push. It reminds me of Ryzom, which had an unlimited free trial, but you could only adventure in the newbie area. And thats basically what Funcom is giving us at the moment, just a taste to whet our appetites. Unfortunately, that taste has been... well... slightly different, but not overly flavorful. But since I've only taken a little nibble, I'll give it a chance and take a few more bites to see if I can acquire the taste.

Look for a followup post in the near future. I plan on trying some more PvP as well as investigating other classes and maybe a bit of additional exploration on the newbie island.