f13.net

http://www.blizzard.com/wow/

or

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com

From the looks of the message board, not many people got the email. Im hoping it delayed a bit, as I would like to try it out.

Any of you guys get lucky?

::waves:: hi. Yeah, I'd be a lucky one.

with the beta release Alpha NDA has been lifted.

I've tried a few times this week to write up a review for you guys of WoW alpha and have failed. I can't be quite cynical and jaded enough about it to do any type of unbiased review.

So, I'll try for a few simple thoughts, and will keep it kind of short for now.

It's fun, I like it, and I don't feel I have to cat-ass to have fun. Levelling is much faster than EQ or DAoC. Content is fun starting at level 1. You'll hit your first dungeon around level 2 or 3.  For a reference point, my definition of fun: DAoC Battlegrounds and a few other bits of DAoC, old NWN PvP, a lot of AO (after stabilization, of course), not SWG, not TSO, not EQ.

Artwork and animation is fantastic, everything fits together beautifully. The cartoon-ish colors hurt my eyes the first few days. But now I enter DAoC and think it is so washed out. Heh.

It was a large alpha, typically ~800 testers on a night. Alpha has been good since the day it started -- more complete than some final betas I've been in.

Potential pains: competition for ore and herb resources (but I see this as a mixed blessing, these things aren't absolutely essential or astoundingly rare, and gives a low-grief way of people showing their true colors.)

That's all I can think of for now. Going home to go play ;) Perhaps I'll figure out something else to say about it if anyone has questions. Hope someone here gets in beta and can give a good critical review.

Yes, PvP.
My faked account didn't get accepted for now anyway.

Godammit, still waiting for my invite. :(

I didn't get an email and was disappointed at first.  Then I realized that it's just another mmorpg and I honestly don't give a shit anymore.

Kind of amazing how it just hits you all of a sudden.

tanandae,

Can you go into a bit of detail on what character customization was like in the alpha, and the max level attainable? I'm curious to hear reports of what the 'higher end' content was like, if at all present.

we're gonna want a review on it here, seems I didn't get in. Please contact me and joe if you're willing. Or if you got an invite and didn't like the game. Thanks.

Until they nerf experience gain because the powergamers are burning through content too quickly. And all other problems aside, this was a big problem with AC2. People just went through the content that was there too quickly. They're going to want to strike a balance and it usually falls a slight bit in favor of the catass when these games get released.

If any one gets in and would like to help me out. See, I got bitten by my cat (Long Story, maybe a different post) and its quite bad, so I probably wont be working for the next week, If some one doesnt like it, I would *really* like to try.

So would you, schild and a million other people. Chances are that you'll get into the beta at sometime, they are probably just starting out small for now.

Oh, heh, I should have clarified, I don't want to play, I just want a review with screenies up. Shit, I'd rather let Boog play at this point in 'beta.'

What about 24 hour game clock?  That was one of the few things I thought was asinine.  I really hope they change that.

That's one of my question. What those 800 players have done in these months? If I'm able to exp quickly in DAoC I have the RvR at the end. If I'm able to exp much faster in WoW what's at the end? What did the average player in the game.

I don't think everyone just leveled dozens of chars, so what they did during the test? Exp is boring, it's good if it's faster but where the interest is moved to?

Eh?  Are you saying day is 12 RL hours and night is 12 RL hours?  If so, yes, an insanely asinine idea.  

But hey, why stick to any of the other conventions from the days of text games and MUDs when you're tossing something as basic as calling a MOBile a MOB. Meh.

I've been pretty skeptical about WoW, but one thing I gotta say I am impressed with is a beta with no NDA!

Have they talked much about the end game?  Only thing I have seen is the 30 person raids mentioned - uggg.  

The zoned PvP they are going after seems a bit silly, but are there at least objectives and things to fight for in there? (ala Daoc)

How is the combat system?  Is it more group oriented or soloable?  Any twitch to it?  Which class(es) did you play?

How is the loot vs. crafting equipment coming out?  I know most people don't bother to try crafting in the beta, but I gotta ask anyway.

How is the death penalty?  Seemed very weak from what I read, but it'd help to get a first hand account.

Put me down for another "What's PvP like?"

Also character customization - lots of options?  Or models A, B and C only...  what about equipment options?  Varies?  Or is there only one flavour that's suitable per level/class?

No invite for me :(

For those that got in: what's playing a healing class like?  I've enjoyed playing a cleric in EQ for 5 years but I couldn't stand it in FFXI, AC and other games.  Is it just sitting and healing and buffing or do they throw in decent anti-undead spells or other offensive abilities to mix things up?

There's a thread over on shacknews (http://www.shacknews.com/ja.zz?id=9574664), it's got some interesting information. It looks like PvP wasn't even tested yet in the alpha.

Bah, unfortunately, no PvP yet. Not tested, and it's killing me. That's my favorite part of a good game.



Character customization: I'm a little bummed about not having a height selection or body size selection. The rest is very good though. You have a choice of several faces (a good range of ugly, pretty, plain, young, old). Skin colors (and changing the skin color changes the color of lips, eyes, etc, so it all matches nicely). And the typical hair styles and hair color choices (and some are very nicely shaded, not just one flat color.) Most all races have some sort of facial feature to customize too, males this is usually beards. Heh, except undead. Then you get to chose how decayed your jaw is. Women have choices of earings, tattoos, or facial decay. Overall, pretty good. Not as customized as SWG, but more customizable than DAoC or AO (even considering no body adjustments).

Max level in alpha started at 15, was raised bit by bit to 30 a month or two ago. So no, can't really comment on the upper upper end, though we could "run through," or fly over, the areas for those levels. They are there and populated, we just have no experience there.



(ugh, forgive me for making this look like a Sir Bruce post ::shudder::)

They actually have nerfed the exp curve once -- someone on the forums guessed at a 22% per level increase (and it is still much faster levelling than DAoC). The experience curve seems to fit with the quests a bit better now. I grumbled about the change at first, but eh, it really seemed reasonable afterwards. I like going along with the quests. So far, I've never NEVER killed something for experience. NEVER. Never sat at a "camp spot" and just pulled to get experience.

I have quested for experience, I've killed things for their scraps of cloth to tailor with, but I've never just killed for experience. (okay, so I've killed some extra harpies .. but that's because they pissed me off when I was young and I like watching them die.)

I've been passed up by the catasses quickly -- they are all sitting at level 30, and I have a max character of 18. I dawdle, I don't play for long hours, and I like trying out the lowbies of all the classes and exploring all the newbie areas. I'm not in a hurry. So I think Blizzard is aware of what the catasses can do at this point. Blizzard could nerf exp again, but I'd guess not.



It's still there. I hated it at first, now I just don't particularly like it. They've put sunset around 9pm PST, and full dark at about 10pm PST. This is NOT EQ-type dark, or even DAoC-type dark, though. You have the same visual range, everything is just shaded differently; a bit less saturation.



The alpha started with .. I dunno, about a hundred of us in late November. The alpha has been set in several stages (they've ended up being called "pushes") and has added testers along the way.  First push was humans, three classes, with a lvl 15 cap. Cap was raised to 20 I think, then there was the dwarf push. Dwarves started with the same three classes, we were locked from our old characters and only could play dwarves. Then only undead, with some added classes, then the Horde push with Tauren, Orcs and Trolls, and added classes. Then we came back to "all alliance" and did humans, dwarves, gnomes and nightelves.

So, in that time we've repeatedly gone over low level content. I've heard one comment on the boards that "I'm bored, I'm 30, and I have nothing to do." And that was during the longest push. Just one. Most of us just fiddled around with alts if we hit a cap.

What's at the end? I dunno. hope it's good. But we are gonna get there fast.



(ugh, OKAY, I'll write up a real report .. I'm typing much of it here anyway ;)

End game: y'all know as much as I do
PvP: ditto
Combat: ah, here we go, something I have a clue about.
Soloing: I picked my "main" as the hardest to solo class: a priest (of course they are hard to solo, they are a support class). I had NO problem soloing, as long as I did not try to do dungeon quests that were my level or above. Dungeons are designed for groups. I found I could get by on just the more soloable quests though. In other words, I was better in a group, but just fine solo.

I also played a Warlock. Loved. Warrior. Cool. Didn't like shaman or paladin, but that's because I've never liked hybrid classes. Mage, okay, but not my favorite; I've never liked any finger-waggler class though (until Warlock ;) Rogue, fun. Not easy. We haven't gotten to try hunter or druid yet.

Grouping: My husband is also in game, and we often duo. In DAoC hubby and I felt we needed a bot to "duo" (stop with the jokes right. there.). We were fine as a hero and a druid, until it came time to move. Then we felt we deperately needed a bard. So we had a third acct bard. We know botting.

For the alpha we could log on to our account twice (this feature is not longer a possibility though.) We could've botted very easily if we felt the need. We even tried to figure out what a bot would do. Most classes are limited to one or two buffs, and almost all classes have some sort of buff they can give groups or other PCs. However, we never did it. It wasn't worth the effort to make a bot in WoW like it was in DAoC.

Also, as an aside, as a duo we were an "insta group" ... people would join us all the time as pick ups. The quests tend to last a short time (let's say, anything from a couple minutes to maybe an hour for the "worst" ones, but averaging somewhere between 15 and 20 minutes). People tend to be in an area specifically for a certain quest or two (because people are there for quests, not random exp pulling). In DAoC we go out of our way to avoid pick ups, because then we have to be nice and stuff, for hours. Buy them dinner and make sure they get a ride home. In Wow it is more of a friendly "one night stand" atmosphere. Pick up a person, do the quest, say thanks, and everyone moves on. No commitment. If they suck, you are rid of them soon. If they're great, you might hang on to them for another round on the next quest.

Crafting: the uber sword will be dropped, the uber boots are crafted, the uber bracers will be bought, the uber chest peice will be a quest reward. Seriously -- depending on the level, you will have something of everything on you. Quested, dropped, crafted and bought. People craft.

Ah, just thought of another point. Oddly enough, about the time folks on Waterthread started talking about mini games and tradeskills -- WoW introduced fishing. It's a mini game. You have to click the bobber when it splashes (visual and audio). It's a bit tricky, but not too hard. Hah, minigame.

Twitch? Not twitch at all, but definitely timing. You have to know the timing of your spells, or your swings to be good at what you do. You can't "stack" manuevers or spells like you can in DAoC. You have to know when what you are doing will end so you can start the next thing. As a priest, I have to know how long my absorbtion bubbles will last.

Death Penalty: a very small hassle. Low low penalty. A run to your corpse (say, 1 to 5 minutes, and you are immune and invisible to most mobs), or a small experience penalty (equivalent of killing about, I dunno, 5 mobs). I love this. I like the phrase "I will DIE and DIE WELL!" The low death penalty will annoy the catasses. Hopefully they will play through and leave the green to me ;)

For those looking for an account this guy (http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3085935645&category=4596) wants to hook you up...


Who didn't see that comming?

$300 to beta a mmorpg? Blizzard should be paying me that much...

I've tossed up some screenshots real quick here:
http://www.lananfrank.net/lana/wow/


I think it is more like 8 hours of night. It is still odd.


Statistical customization or visual? Stat and skill customization is not as tedious as AO, not as lock-step as DAoC. A little bit of this and a little bit of that works well in stats. For skills, you will have all of the spells / melee styles etc that your class can have. You may have to wait a level to gather the money for a spell or two, but that's rare. Lots of statistical options, but I do forsee some "main" builds (for example, warriors are strongly encouraged to a "tank" / defensive build instead of a damage-dealer / offensive build). Visual, insanely customizable. Somewhere around level 5 you can have distinctly different looks from the next level 5 of your class. A good selection of weapons that all look different and have different stats.


I can't comment much on the healing classes of shaman and paladin, but priests have as much offense as support. They have a HoT, small heal, big heal, stamina buff and absorbtion buff as support (at my level). They have DoT, regular blast, super-agro blast, and sleep for offense. Oh, and a staff or mace .. get in there and bust a move. We do DAMAGE with good weapons. (I typically am meleeing part of the fight when in a two or three person group. At four and five I'm juggling support spells mostly, with sleep and DoTs.)

It's up to 1k+ now, sweet jebus.

I came across a link to a well written write up from a WoW alpha tester that I thought you all might enjoy reading.  It is rather lengthy, but a good read; don't let the title of the thread get to you.

[WoW] I Was a Teenage Alpha Tester  (http://www.graffe.com/forums/showthread.php?t=15526)

-Liquidator

It's ok to say you found it at Corpnews if that's the case. I saw it there too. Either way, if you give a shit about WoW, it's worth reading.

20 million, funny. Isnt Ebay legaly binding?

Somehow I'm guessing that's not a legitimate bid... hell, I HOPE it's not a legitimate bid...

EDIT: The damn pirate stole my post :(

I've read it's very limited but good.
Where you have DAoC with all the changes all nearly identic, in WoW there's much more personalization. Still a few premade choices but at least very different from one to another.

What DAoC has and in WoW is missing completely are the different heights. Having the models all at the same height isn't a great choice, imho.



There are torches or a light effect bound to a key?



This is starting to become the main concern everywhere...

Now other questions:
What about the netcode? Lag? Hiccups? When there are hundred of players on screen? Have you watched how much upload/download it uses on average?
And also the client performance in the same situation (crowded cities, raids ..)

When did you start thinking so hard about your posts?

No mail for me either =(

I can't wait to hear the reports on pvp and whether PC undead are affected by certain spells that might target NPC undead. I plan on playing an undead priest when WoW goes commercial and look forward to battle with paladins and other holy sorts.


Damn, I need to put "WoW Fanboi" in my sig now.

My roommate just got a beta invite for the second phase. I guess they are informing people now even if they are getting in a later phase. So, no email, seem like we are shit out of luck for the entire beta.

I have some questions about the Priest.

Can you spec for damage and be viable?

If you are undead, do you get different spells than the ones that say are for fighting undead?

Katricia Said somewhere else that only phases 1 and 2 were sent, I don't want to do too much digging on the Blizzard WOW boards though. Here's a post (http://www.battle.net/forums/wow/thread.aspx?FN=wow-general&T=1457615&P=1&ReplyCount=6#post1457615) from my 2 seconds of search which reinforces the idea though.

I think what your trying to say, is that my email is simply caught up in the system and Ill be receiveing it any minute now.

Theres a pretty extensive writeup about the alpha on

http://www.graffe.com/forums/showthread.php?t=15526

A lost out on the draw again, BLARG.

Why is it I only get into betas when I can't play them, like the time I got my DAOC beta right before four weeks of killer 2nd-midterms and finals?

I got in via the fansite program but I already gave away my key. I know several people who were in the Friends & Family Alpha and their comments on leveling ranged from "3 Weeks till lvl30 if you play 10 hours a day" to "level 40 is a lonnnng time to wait considering the pace of WoW leveling".

--dyvvu

From the reviews, it sounds like WoW might actually be fun. *sniff* Almost makes me feel less cynical. If WoW is fun out of the gate and stays interesting, Blizzard might as well be given a license to print money.

Yeah, being a fan of MMOs enough that I almost always have a sub to one game or another running I find myself getting swept into the hype.  Dangerous, for that way lies madness.  I keep having to remind myself that the leveling pace will get nerfed at some point, or content will run out, or the blizzard fanbois will make it a lousy experience, or any of the other problems we've hashed out just to keep from convincing myself I might want to try it at release.

Damn that lenghty description of warriors, though.  Melee is my game and they make it sound fun again.

Woke up, still nothing and phase 2 went out as well too.... not much hope!! :( Godammit, UT2k4 better start owning my soul.

No email either.  Looks like i'll be catassing in FFXI for a bit longer.

Neph...come back, the dark side is calling you back!

Amazing, great reviews while still in alpha. Could Blizzard have figured it out? Could this be the one that doesn't break our hearts? At least not right away? (And damn, no beta email for me.)

Well, apparently we're not missing out on anything yet.  A friend of mine got in and the estimated download time was 351 hours.  (That's 14.65 days)   However, it's Bit Torrent tech and the download is estimated now, 12 hours later, to have 32 hours remaining.

Is your friend behind a firewall? The guy that did the review on the graffe site mentioned having to open some ports he didn't have opened, and it sped his download up considerably.  It was still 8 hours, but not the days it was telling him before.

I think you need to make sure you have TCP ports 6881 - 6889 open so that other BitTorrent users can connect to you. BitTorrent does a tit-for-tat thing where you're rewarded for uploading to others as you yourself are downloading.

Also, you need to make sure you're not on a college campus. Many campuses block BitTorrent upload traffic, and the protocol ties your download speed to your upload speed, effectively choking BitTorrent out.

This is a great write up. I agree with just about everything in this post. However, he puts in some speculation about where PvP will go, but I think he's a little off. Neither of us really know though.


Torches are actually part of the Survival tradeskill. Very few folks feel the need to carry a torch, but a rare few do. I think think it's mainly for the cool fire effects.
Netcode? I'm not sure what that is, not a techie type, and I haven't paid much attention to transfer rate. But for reference, I'm on cable, shared by three people, and we don't have any trouble with transfer rates.

Lag / Hiccups: there are some in some areas. The most populated cities sometimes have a "jerkiness" to them, but that seemed to be the city art more than the character art most often. We could gather a hundred people at the crossroads for a dance (rather common at the end of pushes) and the lag would be there, but not horribly. The characters appear to have a very low poly count to me, and load quickly. A lot of detail on the skins, but not so much in the mesh. The environment tends to have a lot more polys.


Damage spec is very viable for a priest. And fun.
Undead spells are the same as the alliance priest spells. There was some feedback from alpha testers on this saying that they should be different.



In addition to Merusk and Arydon's recommendations -- make sure they are using the SLOWEST possible setting. They want MODEM speed. The slower the setting, the more limitted the upload rate. This will free up bandwidth for download.

EH?  Whats this about spec-ing?   I thought the character advancement was more EQ-style than DAoC spec-style.  Or by "spec" do you simply mean:  A priest that tends to attack more than defend?

Sorry, you're right, Mesozoic. I'm stuck in DAoC-speak.

You get your spells much like EQ. So you have access to everything you should have at your level (unlike DAoC speccing). You have a choice of where to put ... oh, hell, they're not called skill points, but something like that. These points can do any of the following: stat improvement (where most spend the majority of their points), melee and spell attack improvement, armor improvement, resists, and stuff like better evades. I've gone many levels without spending these points, because I didn't want to think about it at the time. Saved 'm up for later. They are not essential, but improve certain areas slightly. Gravy.

So you can have an extra little "boost" for an attack priest by spending points on your preferred weapon, some points in your "shadow" or "holy" line of spells. Or you could add on some extra skill at undead or beast slaying.

So, I finally read that '[WoW] I Was a Teenage Alpha Tester' article and I have to say I found it rather entertaining.
What differentiates WoW from EQ/DAoC is the mapping class name <-> class abilities and the available races. What defines a 'true MMORPG' is that 'You do not level to 30 in an afternoon'. Nothing less from an EQ class site's boards...

Also, this quote I found particularly disturbing:

Correct me if I'm wrong but I detect some strong sexual innuendo here.

--dyvvu

Comcast user who didn't get an email invite?  Don't give up hope just yet.  Apparently Comcast filtered all of the beta invites as spam and Blizzard is working on some way to resend those emails.

So, if you're a Comcast user you still have that miniscule chance to win the mmog lotto.

The only way to win is not to play.

If you go to the comcast.net site and go to account management, then use the webbased email client, you can check your "Screened Mail" folder. It deletes email every 2-3 days so don't put off checking too long.

Well, apparently Comcast bounced this stuff, so it never even got far enough in to be placed into a Screened folder.

The aftermath of an official Blizzard Rep (Kat) making a thread about this is hilarious.  Now everyone with XName@joeblow.com email addresses think that since they did not personally receive a beta invite that their mail service must have blocked it.

If you are kind of hoping to get in Beta then just go spend a little bit of time over at the battle.net forums.  You might change your mind.

BTW, I have no 'Screened Mail' folder.

That's all I needed to know. Look at the innovative product ma! Thay gate 'content' with 'levels' just like, well....

all the rest of the mmog's...

damn.

Oh well.

Aside from the quest system, and the poster's repeated assertions that WoW is absolutely nothing like EQ without presenting any evidence to the contrary, that writeup really doesn't make WoW seem to be anything other than Yet Another MMORPG: prettier graphics by some standards and marginal improvements to a game model that most of us became sick of years ago. Judgment still has to be reserved until its played (and as close to finished as an MMORPG will ever manage to be), but it came across as more of a me-too game than the end-product of a Blizzard Does MMORPGs Right design philosophy.

My concerns at this point:

- PvP part
- Endgame (on the long distance of the game)
- No spec path, bringing everyone to be the same

The last could really be an issue. WoW has a very limited number of classes and still, without a deep development of characters, seems to offer little to no difference in how the class could be tweaked to be slightly original.

I think reading that was the point where I went from "vaguely aware of WoW" to "eagerly anticipating WoW". Looking forward to an MMORPG is an odd thing... it's like looking forward to a blind date hyped up by a friend. Sure, she'll probably be as bad as the last few, but you can still hope. Here's hoping Blizzard got it right.

Why don't you all just stop dwelling on MMOGs cause it's pretty clear you don't even like the fucking genre. You've been bitching for years on end and it still hasn't changed. Stop being bitter fucks and give it up already.

I think they had me when I read that line in one of the links. The Blizzard humor lives...

If people are still sticking with the genre, it's because it still has a huge amount of potential, and most likely will reach the stage where it will create products to our satisfaction. Unfortunately, there's probably going to be a long evolutionary process between now and then; either that or the bottom will have to fall out of the MMORPG market for developers to stop making profitable but uncompelling variations on a theme. If WoW's interesting quest system pans out, that will most likely be its contribution to future MMORPGs, as everything else seems run-of-the-mill.

MMOG's as an industry are at that toddler stage. They know they have to go to the potty to shit or else get shit all over themselves, they are just reluctant to do so, or too forgetful to remember not to shit on themselves. We few who bitch at them and don't buy them are the parents trying to teach the toddler that shitting on oneself does not make one popular with other toddlers or parents.

We still hope they'll grow up to be at least non-stinky kids, and don't quite want to leave them to wallow in their shit alone.

Well, I have been looking for the negative aspects of the game since we all know that these games have them.  For me, by looking at the failings of a game, I can often tell if I will like the good stuff about it better than by just hearing a glowing non-critical review (that one from the EQ boards gave a good overview of the game but was 90% BS).

Big things that I see
- Only info out on levels 1-30.  In reality, this is a small fraction of the game - it will probably take you as long to go from 59-60 as it did to level from 1-30.
- All the content seems very segregated, by the time you look at which quests apply to your faction, race, class - you'll see that only about 30% of the content applies to you.  This will make it very tough for them to keep up with the game at the high levels when their big selling point is the content.  The "end game" might just be rerolling as a different faction/race to go through other content.
- PvP seems very low on their priority list
- No mention of an end game except for EQ-like raids.
- The rigid class based system - there really are not that many classes to choose from and it will be tough to differentiate your skills from someone else of the same class.
- Economy stuff - this is always a big deal for me, and I have a feeling the tradeskills in this game will be so dumbed down that the economy will be rather stale.

Heres a thread on comcast response. comcast is saying that no filtering of blizzard mail occured.

http://www.battle.net/forums/wow/thread.aspx?FN=wow-general&T=1467919&P=1&ReplyCount=22#post1467919

Or you're like jealous little kids who don't have their own MMOGs to play with so you whine and snipe at those who do.  Bitter fucks indeed.

That's a really lame analogy, Haemish.

Baaaaaah. Baaaaaah.

Better?

Do we really have to wait a full two weeks?

From where I sit, I think the core aspects of MMOGs are pretty much set. Grind XP, Get Loot, Some kind of endgame like PVP and/or Raiding. I don't think thats going to change. They will get refined, but essentially if you don't like XP grinding with friends or strangers and spending lots of your time online, this is not the genre for you.

CoH might be a good game of innovation on the core components of MMOGs, but at the end of the day even CoH has the basic tanker, nuker, healer group dynamic. Peoples mileage will vary on what they find fun in terms of combat, but overall if you don't like tanking, nuking, and healing I don't think MMOGs are every going to surprise or appeal to you.

Whizbang's Graffe thread is th ebest I have seen but http://hem.bredband.net/b153747/wow/preview.htm
is worthwhile

and there are a few decent threads on
http://fohguild.org/forums/forumdisplay.php?s=e5adf71b8a238802da22346815cba4fe&forumid=11

for those of us who didn't get in :(

blah blah blah, mmorpgs suck, wow sounds great, blah blah i'm in phase 2 and will keep everyone posted

Finally, a real review I can relate to.

If this is true, it could be a problem for them as it was for Mythic, who discovered to their dismay that the majority of DAOC players stuck to their home realms, and thus only ever saw 33% of the content that was in the game (and complained bitterly of the lack).

I'd say the problem is in how DAoC is designed. I did perhaps 6-7 quests at max on a single character (and I hate them all). And I still have to see a few zones even in Albion, where I play.

In DAoC the content is widely unused. This due to design. You can add tons of new zones, dungeons and quests without adding ANYTHING to the game.

I still have to see 80% of ToA simply because I don't have a zerg to move around as I log in.

With the fairly quick, quest based level scheme, the concern over end-game material, the worry over class skills and variation, WoW is looking to be a lot like AC2. However, they will prolong the leveling, if only to keep the catasses from ripping through the end-game content faster than they can make it to keep up. The classes will be tweaked and will have additions to them and someone will figure out either a buffbot trick or a "holy trinity" combo that will throw the game out of whack. Oh, and I see dead people, too.

Found a pretty decent PVP FAQ, don't know how reliable it is but there's some intresting stuff in there, if it's true.

http://pub162.ezboard.com/fworldofwarcraftoldschoolpvpforumfrm9.showMessage?topicID=28.topic

Sigh... pvp seems absolutely no issue for blizzard -as in "we dont  give a f$ck" about it .  

 But the rests seems inspiring  -I have a nostalgia over AC1 ( a beatifull world with rich content) sometimes and maybe it will carry my subscr over the free month if -after all playing a stable ,quality game could be a nice break from unstable/buggy/contentless/broken MMORPGs trend :)

Have any of you seen this classic troll:
http://www.battle.net/forums/wow/thread.aspx?FN=wow-general&T=1468982&P=1

And everyone went for it... wow... honestly looks more naive than the SWG crew was. Sometimes that's not always a bad thing though.

http://wow.warcraftstrategy.com/forum/showthread.php?s=9cfd4c107b317f6bbdcf3ae03b6157de&threadid=2917

That's a pretty good (short) write up done by a fansite moderator. It's actually the least un-biased piece I've seen so far.

I've found this on my DAoC guild forum, I don't know where they took it from:

----------------------------
PvP class vs class balance:
----------------------------

There is none, whatsoever.

Some may say it's similar like in DAoC , but it seems like WoW has a lot to change in basic combat systems to even come close to the unbalanced state of DAoC now

----------------
Crowd Control:
----------------

First day of WoW beta, people already found out it's uber. Uber as in "DAoC CC in the first 3 months":

- You can chain-mezz (sleep). You can even "sleep" (mezz) an opponent "forever", he/she won't be even able to log off, outside of crashing the game manually, or pulling the modem cable out

- You can chain-fear people (not fun, heh)

- You can chain-stun people (ok, we all know what it does, no further description necessary )

- You can stack unbreakable snares on people, and kite them endlessly

- You can chain-root people

- You can chain-interrupt people - no, casters aren't so suspect to interrupt like in DAoC, but the difference isn't too big either.


No, there aren't any immunity timers, there's no Purge, there even are no diminishing returns like halving the CC time on remezzing/rerooting/restunning the mobs like in DAoC.


Hmm... Are people designing the PvP combat in new MMORPGS completely ignorant to the history of mistakes their competitors already did?

----------------
Rogues
----------------

At the moment, WoW rogues would eat DAoC Infiltrators and High RR Nightshades for lunch

It's a general consensus that they deal WAY too much damage, thus a nerf is to be expected.

People over at WoW boards are even fearing all the Infiltrators and NSs will come to WoW and roll the uber FOTM Rogues

Which will the proceed to pwn everything and anything in the first few monts, till all the whines reach a certain level, and Blizzard overnerfs them. Sounds familiar

----------------------------------------------
/Assist trains vs primary healers and casters
----------------------------------------------

Yes, WoW has /assist. And, healing types and mages (Priest, Shaman, etc) generally wear light armor.

Priest, the primary healer is the cross of DAoC Sorcerer (Cloth armor, DD spells), Healer (primary healing and mezz) and Cleric (Smite line).

Mezz is chainable (no immunity or similar) but only single target, so there's no way you can stop an /assist train from reaching your support or casters.

No, there's no collision detection.

Casters and healing types are interruptable with CC, DD spells, melee combat...

Combine this with /assist, and I guess the same problem with gank groups and /assist trains will arise in WoW too, only the healing types will go down much fasters, without insta heals and wearing cloth armor.

***

All in all, it seems WoW does not bring a lot of progress (if any) on the MMORPG PvP field. It even seems they didn't learn from all the mistakes Mythic made in the first months (or years), balancing PvP combat, classes and large(r) scale PvP tactics.

It also looks like WoW will put PvP in certain Battleground-like zones and arenas, a bit like SWG or AO (before the expansions). More duel-like, for 1-on-1, group-on-group like arena fights.


Aye, I know, I know, disclaimers:

- "It's a beta! They even limited the leveling to 30, noone has seen the high-level content! It all can change till release".

Yes. However, DAoC beta did the same. I seriously doubt there are some miraculous, brand-new combat systems awaiting players at levels beyond 30.


- "They didn't show all of the PvP areas yet!"

True. Then again, they have already stated what general kinds of PvP areas will be available in numerous interviews - PvP level-limited zones (aka, Battlegrounds in DAoC vocabulary, or maybe a bit like SWG), Arenas (SWG/AO like), and duels. That's about it.

They may come up with some secret, new, never-seen-before revolutionary PvP system, but I honestly doubt it.

***
When the DAoC combat system (styles, spells) and RvR system is compared with WoW system-to-be, it does seem like they're targeting the completely different crowd, basically trying the same thing like SWG, to attract all the people who never played a MMORPG before, and less the DAoC RvR-addict types

Thats amazing info Hrose espically considering NO ONE KNOWS ANYTHING ABOUT PVP. Unless your guild has a time machine and has traveled into the future in which case I stand corrected. How about you and your douche bag friends bitch about things that have been tested before you tackle the things that arn't in the game yet.

You didn't get it.
They took the classes, skills and spells and tried to see how they are able to work on a PvP arena. You can already fight 1 on 1 and it's easy to have an idea of how it should go in a group battle.

It's not about the setting in which you'll go PvP, it's about how bad could perform a combat system designed around PvE applied to PvP. I don't think your skills and spells are going to work in a different way when you enter a PvP zone.

Why not? EQ did it. Spells affected PCs differently in certain aspects.  Most games have shown you can have spells work in PVE different than in PVP (usually scaled down in magnitude to correct glaring imbalances or to slow down pvp).

Really, do you think they'll leave retarded PVP balances in indefinately? Errr... don't answer that.

Deleted now - what was it?  I think my favourite troll on the SWG beta boards was "PETITION TO ENABLE SAME-SEX IN-GAME MARRIAGES" - and that was before anybody had ever heard of Gavin Newsome.

Tanandae:

Two very important questions I need to have answered:

1) Do you have the option to be completely bald, and

2) Is pink/fuscia an available color for the guild tabbards.

And yes, I'm actually asking. For real.

One of the WoW devs said they weren't balancing PVP for 1 on 1. Its going to be balanced for teams and be like BF1942, which I suppose means you have to capture 4-5 bases in an instanced battlefield.

It doesn't mean that there won't be plenty of changes to spells and such, but I wouldn't get to concerned about how uber you are in 1 on 1 since Blizzard has indicated they don't care.

It's the better choice, but that will just mean more whining. PVP is either balanced for one on one or it's not balanced. Because any group vs. group encounter is always lost because the other side zerged or there was lag or they used radar or the dog at their mezzer or something. Nobody ever respects group vs. group balanced because it's hard to quantify.

If anyone is interested, some braindead writer at  Gamespot (http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/worldofwarcraft/preview_6091787.html) has posted a brief, completely non-revelatory WoW preview.

Comparing 1v1 balance and trying to use those results to make conclusions about group battles is beyond stupid. My cleric in DAOC could kill a fucking rabbit by himself does that mean he was forever gimped? Of course not. I'm not going to say there wont be balance problems of course there will be. Hell they couldn't even balance Diablo 2 for over a year after release. But starting to bitch about pvp balance now is jumping the gun.

As for the information released I'm not suprised. Blizzard never really pretended they were making anything other than a EQ clone. If you were expecting anything else you shouldn't be here. I just want it to be a fun EQ clone.

Ugh.  Balance the classes for PvE and leave it at that.  People seem to have decided that PvP must be a major element of the game design, apparently just because they want it to be.  It isn't.  At least, the fact that they haven't really talked about PvP and that it hasn't even been tested in the Alpha/closed Beta would seem to indicate that its not a big deal to them.

People here worry about Blizzard fanbois - I'm worried about old DAoCers barging in and demanding their way with everything.

Humans can be completely bald, I can't remember for the other races. There's both a light pink and a bright fuschia type pink for tabards. Both were used by guilds in the Horde push -- most notably the light pink for the "Carebears" guild. Yes, a heart emblem, of course.

A variation on the carebear theme, but with the fuschia color:
http://www.blizzard.com/wow/images/screens/valentines/ss02.jpg

FIFY

I said a year ago, six months ago, and a month ago that they were focusing on getting the wrong playerbase by looking to clone EQ. They've seriously misjudged the average person excited about the game and what theiy're interested in. On board after board, people want information about PvP, to talk about PvP, and speculate about PvP. No one gives a fuck about raids. No one wants to hear about raids. The people who are going to be playing this game, in general, are not going to enjoy or involve themselves in raids.

The very absolute last thing this genre needs is another reskinned EQ clone comming out in FY2004. If people bitching and clamoring for PvP can get them to rethink the focus of the endgame, I'm all for it. And as far as balancing for RvR, it would be way easier for a two sided fight with the exact same classes available to each side than it is for a three sided fight with a billion different niche classes.

Quite honestly, I expect thet they'll have to put as much focus on PvP as they currently are on raids and other EQ-style crap or have a very unhappy playerbase with a pretty short retention period based on the number of their intended customers wanting PvP.

And thank you for answering my questions Tanandae

EQ can't even balance the classes they do have in a pure PVE game, class balance doesn't exist.  Anyhow, Quite simply I'm not going to play WoW unless there's some form of PvP to look forward to as an end game.  There's others who feel the same way.  My 10 bucks is just as good as the next guys, it's up to the various game companys to appeal to me enough to give it to them.  No PvP, no appeal.  Thus far it ain't looking good.

And yah, there's a reason ex-DAOC'ers are trying to shape WoW into the game they want.  Pain in the ass item-centric TOA has been freshly burned in their memories.  Epic PVE is boring.

Let me introduce you to this gentleman (http://www.fohguild.org/), and his many, many friends (http://fohguild.org/forums/).  You and I might care about PvP, and we might be seeing all the clamoring for PvP info -- but it's precisely because we ourselves are looking for PvP info.



I really, really hope that you're right, but I'm pretty sure that this won't happen, sadly.

Another question for you, Tanandae:
Do items decay?

This bugs me a lot. It's a part of DAoC I fervently hate. While I love how items are designed in FFXI.

Really, I’m just looking for as much info as I can, I’m not really looking for PvP info. Other than the bald/pink issue, I’m wholly indifferent to just about everything, thought the ability to solo is very important to me due to my work schedule (2 days on, 2 days off, 7:00pm to 7:00am).  There’s just a flat-out ton of people asking about, wanting, or expecting PvP. Another fairly common sentiment is the lack of excitement about grinding. It’s not that I’m looking for material about it, it’s that there’s so much of it you can’t avoid it. Uber-guild crap like raids on the other hand, is limited pretty much to uber-guild boards. I’m not saying that guilds like FoH aren’t involved, but lets face it – they’re statisticly insignificant and don’t fall anywhere in the neighborhood of an average player. I mean, read the board – they’ve got b*ttf*ckers there saying that in order to level past 40 it should take at least a month per level and require large groups and membership in a big guild in order to make leveling an “accomplishment” for a “skilled” player. Can they cater to that attitude? Sure. Can they cater to that attitude and keep players? Absolutely not. People don’t want that shit anymore. EQ players don’t even seem to want that anymore. The genre isn’t new new and interesting enough anymore, and there are too many alternatives for people to stay and put up with crap they find frustrating, pointless, or boring. The attitudes and desires of players like FoH members/fanbois are so far from the main that it would be disastrous for Blizzard to cater to them. I have a pretty strong feeling that the next crop of grind-games is going to in for a shock and that most players simply aren’t going to be satisfied with grinding to level in order to go on “raids”.

Blizzard is very, very good at making fun games that sell huge numbers of units. From all accounts, they've been responsive to player feedback. If out of every 100 people, 60 are saying the game is fun but they want more PvP, 35 aren't saying a word, and 5 are saying that leveling is too easy and you should need 30 people to kill a single monster after level 40, who do you think is ultimately going to get listenened too?

What game are you talking about?  Aside from saying they'll have raids, and the fact that they have a race/class system, there seems to be very little in common to EQ iteself, or it's original vision.

Relatively fast leveling, ac2-ish quest system, zoneless world, compass, map, no singular specific purpose for each class, some importance placed on pvp, and so on and so on.

It might be a generic mmorpg, but it's not trying to be an eq clone.

The only reason I hope more WT.O people make the beta is to cry and whine about PvP and it's appeal to more than just us 'hardcore' people.  And by cry and whine I mean present in an intelligent and organized manner. For some reason (naiveté), I feel that if an organized post made it into the beta forums, we might find a way into someone's mind in Blizzard.

I have heard and also assume that PvP will be almost identical to the 'Defense of the Ancients" (DotA) or "Tides of Blood" custom maps designed for Warcraft 3 and The Frozen Throne. Basically it's you and your party and maybe some other people spawning in your 'town'.  A bunch of NPC's spawn and you fight your way up to the opposing town and try and siege it.  If you happen to overcome the defenders and defending NPC's you get rewarded w/ more than just experience for killing NPC's.

This is just how I've imagined it.

If you have Warcraft 3 still sitting in a jewel case somewhere, fire it up and give these custom maps a go.  They're very well done and the balancing on Tides of Blood is excellent. ToB at least has quite a following www.tidesofblood.com

Many?  What does that mean?  12?  A million?  Now would be the time to unleash your ravenous PvP hordes upon the game design people at Blizzard, BTW.    

Are there suddenly not enough PvEers out there to make a successful MMOG?  Or did you pick WoW out of a hat as the game upon which to issue demands?

   

In this case it’s used in place of “a fairly clear majority”. I’m not even going to try to pull a number out of my ass or go through boards and tally up –pro,–anti, and –indifferent posts to give you an exact number. The simple gift of vision and the ability to read should allow you to go to fair sampling of boards and get a rough, average breakdown for yourself. So far, people want PvP. The two main subjects are 1) What’s the leveling rate like, and 2) PvP. It’s not hard to understand why given the company releasing the game, the source material, and even the division between the Alliance and The Horde.

As far as unleashing "ravenous hordes", that's about what's happening. Except they're not ravenous, they're simply and clearly making their desires known. But I suspect you've already seen that considering how much you're rubbing your ouchy vagina over the subject.



For about the nine-millionth last time, PvP and PvE are not mutually exclusive, any more than a game needs to force grouping to the point of making casual or solo players unable to play it. If either of those is the case in a game, it’s flat-out because of poor, lazy design and the developers have failed as game creators. Nobody is frothing at the mouth and demanding open, unlimited PvP or the ability to gank n00bs in town. If you don't want to PvP, don't go to the PvP areas. There you go. You get to PvE as much as you want, and the people who want to PvP can hang out in the PvP areas as much as they want. Everyone gets what they wants and no one is denied their prefered playstyle. People appear to want a good RvR system and given the way they’ve decided to separate the two factions it wouldn’t be terribly hard to implement. Even the way they’re doing the classes ensures balancing on that front.

You can be as angry and pissy as you want to be about it, but it’s not going to change the fact that the people interested in playing WoW for the most part want a good PvP system to be a larger part of the game, and with the exception of eXtreme catass losers they don’t give a f*ck about l33t uber raids. Deal with it or not, but the game will change because it’s what their customers seem to want. Ignoring what people trying to give you money want is not the way to get that money, and Blizzard is a big enough and professional enough company to realize that.

I'll never understand PvP advocates. Not that I can't understand why some people enjoy PvP, for I enjoy it myself, but the wringing of hands and righteous rants of "Why won't someone think of the PvPers?" makes no sense to me. If you want to PvP you can play Shadowbane, Planetside, DAoC, AO, SW:G, or on Darktide, Felluca, or one of the Zeks. The claim that the market is nothing but raid centered EQ clones and that PvPers are ignored is simply manifestly false.

Perhaps you think all of the aforementioned games suck. Perhaps that is because they all have one thing in common. Perhaps you can figure out what it is. And perhaps Blizzard already has.

And if you want to play exclusively PvE you can play DAoC as it is after ToA, AO in 90% of the zones, SWG in 99% of the “content”, Tramell, every AC server but Darktide, and every EQ server but the Zeks, or any of the PvE centered games about to be released. Saying that a person wants PvP they should go play on one server of a five year old game is simply a bad argument. Why not take it a step further and say “If you want to fight people go play Warcraft 3, f#g!”. Oh, wait…



When did anyone here make that argument? Though the claim that market is nothing but raid centered EQ clones and that PvPers are marginalized is manifestly true. The one mainstream RvR game there was added “raid” content with ToA and for all purposes wrecked their unique draw doing it. Eh to Shadowbane and Planetside isn’t really a valid example of the genre.



So in the first part of your post you say that it’s manifestly false the market is dominated by grind-happy raidfests and  PvP is “ignored”, and then you try to strengthen your position by pointing out that the largest common denominator of these games is that they’re grind-happy raidfests with marginalized PvP, and that Blizzard’s realized it and pandering to it. The thing is though, when it comes to the people interested in WoW, more people are interested in PvP than aren’t and less people seem to want to raid than do. So you tell me, what’s that say about what direction the game will evolve to. There simply is not enough people wanting to pointlessy catass for the three nearly identical games coming out, and Blizzard has “ravenous hordes” of pro-PvP people wanting to play a game with good PvP and no interest in raids. What do you think they’re going to do? Tell the vocal (apparent) majority of potential customers to pound salt and raid whether they like it or not, especially when most of the balance issues involved in RvR seem to be worked out already with core game design?

I'll give my rundown on your list:

Shadowbane = Technically crap, unplayable.  Let me add that point and click movement is ass too.
Planetside = FPS, guns and robots, etc....
DAoC = Best of the bunch in my view, playing right now, but ToA has really borked RvR.  Mordred still works okay, although relic / porting situations need serious tweaking from the vanilla servers there.
AO & SW:G = Futuristic crap, I like my sword and sorcery.
AC = never played, but KoC & Blood & Gear sort of made it & make it unappealing.
Felluca = was good, most recently AoS / insurance screwed it.  PBD's and all that fast cast junk even mucked up Siege.
Zeks = Never played EQ, no desire to.  
Lineage II = Stupid flagging system, levelling grind both character and guildwise to participate in PvP end-game. - I consider this one a write-off.

The PvE vs PvP holy grail debates are sorta pointless. I like PvP and wish that it was done better, or simply returned to the niche periods I actually enjoyed in either UO or DAOC above.  The other factor is that believe it or not PvP folks have social circles too.  A lot of their old buddies from old games are all excited about game "Next Best Thing".  The shiny effects them too and it's fun to be able to play along with a large vibrant community.  The older games featuring PVP are dead not so much becuase OMG PvP sucks, it's because newer games have come out and the old games have also increased their landmass so actually finding people to get it on with is harder.  Don't read the stupid sheep and wolves thing in here.  I actually do like an even, or outnumbered fight, and want to play in a world that's not barren and devoid of life (Read that as opportunties for interaction, not ganking targets.)

As far as the "why project these dirty PvP thoughts on to WoW?"  Well, for me it's a highly individual thing.  I played along with Shadowclan for a few years, maybe you've heard of them, maybe not.  I'm not trying to do a Syndicate / FOH / UDL / Afterlife namedrop here, just trying to emphasis why I am so hung up on PvP in WoW.  Anyways, Shadowclan roleplayed Orcs in UO.  We put on orc helms, and defended the Yew Orc fort.  It was fun, there was PvP, there was a social community, it was great.  Now, along comes WoW.  Arguably half of the UO Shadowclan orc culture came from Warcraft roots, the other half (3/4?) Tolkien fiction.  Anyways here finally is an opportunity to actually "BE" orcs as player characters.  The only previous game I can think of was Drasnik (Crappy poorly produced UO-Clone).  Darkfall is promising orc PC's, but their doing their own engine, and the last PvP centric, didn't have a game to their credit devs gave us Crap-bane, so not much hope that'll do anything.  Anyhow, the option to "BE" an orc is here and I want to roleplay a territorial little orc defending his fort / hovel / whatever alongside of 200 of my closest friends.  Personally, I actually want a Free for all PvP server so we can actually kill nim-wit orc PC's that are part of the horde team instead of having to put up with trash talkers hiding behind a flag / invulnerability system / PVP switch.   DAOC's lockstep realm system works well enough for causual meta-plot oriented PvP, but guild level PvP is much more rewarding.

Shadowclan orcs, I also played on catskills.  My guild, NOB, used to go and fight with you guys all the time.  That was a lot of fun(Best fun I ever had actually).  Of course, when the antiPVP patch, came out it really ruined it for the orcs.  I agree though, PVP has its place in every game and it should be done and used correctly.  To many games are just messing it up nowdays though.

No item decay. A rare few items that are bound to your character. I think I've encountered two of these so far. I expect a few more once we hit higher level quests, but still a small minority.

You mean they stick on your character even without the corpse run?

It is exactly this sort of characterization that I disagree with. Where you see marginalization, I see choice. PvP has been a valid choice since the very beginning of graphical MUDs; from M59's full PvP, through EQ's alternate rules servers, right up to the forthcoming release of L2. The only problem has been that it has proved to be an unpopular choice.

This is why I am unswayed by the vocal segment of board posters you cite. The history of MMOGs tells us that they are not the majority. And, flankly, if the postings of WoW fanbois were to dictate what the game should be, then it would be retarded.

Lets take a look at Blizzard's last 5 games (I'd also include WC1, but I know nothing about it):

Warcraft 2 - Multiplayer based soley around PvP.
Diablo - PVP+ multiplayer environment.
Starcraft - Multiplayer based soley around PvP.
Diablo 2 - PVP+ multiplayer environment.
Warcraft 3 - Multiplayer based soley around PvP.

They are possible reasons why Blizzard might want at least some PvP in their game.

Me? I'd be happy with a PvP switch that can only be put on and taken off in "safe" areas that allows PvP with anyone else also flagged this way, clan wars, and/or factions of some kind. I've never been a fan of PvP+ in games, and I'll never refuse a mmog without PvP if it's good enough without, but I love being able to PvP if I want to.

First off, I'd like to hear which games you don't cosider grind/raidfests with PvP tacked on as an afterthought. The only two that don't unquestionably qualify are UO, which went haywire years ago, and DAoC, which started off as a grindfest with PvP as the focus, but is now focused on rediculous epic raid shit.

In the instances where PvP has been unpopular, it was unpopular because it’s been a shitty implementation. M59 I can’t speak to, but I’d imagine it’s popular enough or it wouldn’t still be around as long as it’s been. UO’s original implementation was crap that pretty much soured a whole generation of players to the concept of PvP, though it was fixed for a short while before they went o to break the game in general. Last reports I had the game was a ghost world. You’ve got to be kidding if you act surprised why EQ or AC’s PvP servers are unpopular. In the same vein, DAoC’s open PvP servers are/were unpopular, but the entirely RvR concept behind DAoC was popular until they irreparably broke it with ToA. Lineage and L2 are insanely popular, though they aren’t/won’t be here because of the games are monotonous grinds and we aren’t nerve-stapled inhabitants of The Human Hive. If you don’t consider one or two token servers with a statement that there won’t be any GM support on them to be marginalization, what is it?

With the exception of DAoC, the only implementations of PvP have been Shadowbane (which drove scads of people away at launch with technical issues) and the rest have simply been a server with everyone’s PvP flag turned on. Why the fuck would anyone want to play that? DAoC, a stable game engine designed wholly around player conflict is/was incredibly popular and fun. And for those who wanted to play it as a strictly PvE game, that’s a viable option too.

But pointing to the Zeks or Darktide using them as an example of PvP being unpopular is like taking a loaf of bread, mashing it up into a ring, and then using it to prove that  doughnuts are unpopular because no one wants to eat it.

Really, the issue is people wanting good PvP in a Blizzard game. As Calantus pointed out in the post above, PvP is the entire portfolio of Blizzard. Why are people surprised or pissy when people bring up PvP in a game made by people famous for their online PvP games? Like I said before, they misjudged the market for this game, and they’re really going to have to cater to what their player base is actually going to be. Of course you’re welcome to say they don’t, but even The Vision was changed to meet demand.

All items stick to you when you die. You either rez at your respawn point, and take an exp loss, or you do a "ghost run" to pick up your ghost. While you are a ghost, you can't access your items, but you don't need to as you are pretty much immune to and invisible to everything. Either way, no chance of item loss.

When I said bound to your character, I just meant it can't be traded to another character.

They are also all games without a persistent world and no monthly fee (and thus little to no customer support).  Those two aspects vastly change things -- namely, it becomes possible for someone to negatively affect your in game experience, an experience that you're paying for.  Whether it's "griefing" or just someone coming around and picking a fight, I think this is essentially what scares off companies (and to some degree, non-PvP players).  To them, the risk of not including PvP and instead focusing on PvE content is a much smaller risk than including full PvP -- they'll piss off less players, and less forcefully than the pissed-off-ness potential PvP has.  If someone who's playing Diablo 2 or Warcraft 3 gets pissed off and stops playing, Blizzard doesn't lose any money; they actually save money in bandwidth costs.  If someone gets pissed off in WoW and cancels, they lose revenue.



I would love for WoW to have either full PvP, or even alliance vs. horde PvP, assuming there was something for them to fight over (PS style lattice/base system comes to mind, for taking over the world).  Even better yet would be a set of PvP+ or faction PvP servers (more than 1, i.e. not throwing a token SZ out there and saying "woo, PvP!"), to try to placate both camps.

But please, no PvP switch.  It's a horrid non-solution; the people you really want to PK for asstardery will invariably never have the switch on, unless there are some very very inticing reasons to leave it on.

I dont know, maby im not the norm, but i never played any Blizzard games online. Oh i tried at some point with Diablo 2, at the time i had a horrible connection which pretty much made it unplayable. Also tried with Starcraft, got smacked down so hard i went limping back to the single player.

You could argue that all Blizzard games are PvE games with optional Pvp tacked on the side. Which is exactly what WoW will be.

My reason for liking a pvp switch (one that you can turn on and off) is that sometimes you feel like a little quick pvp with no real consequence. Basically I could engage in pvp without having to join a guild/faction, without taking part in some dueling system, and without having to go to a specific place.

All I'd have to do is change my pvp status, wait a while in the safe zone (to prevent abuse), then go do whatever I'd normally be doing. It's better than a dueling system (all these "better than" examples are for casual pvp) because then you're not spamming "Duel?" all the time and being ignored by those happily playing the PvE game. It's better than going to a place because I am not forced into doing something I might not otherwise be doing. In UO for example, if I want pvp, but I want to go to Doom (pvp-) then I'm SoL because I can only pvp in Feluccia. It's also better than a guild/faction system because I don't have to put up with all the BS that goes with that (not that I don't like that, but if I just want a quick pvp fix, I don't want the extra hassles).

The switch is just a way of either upping the risk in what you're doing, or advertising for pvp without having to sit your ass down somewhere and spam requests, people just know you want some pvp (it also acts as its own request, someone could see the flag and say "hey, if you stick around I'll flag up and we can fight, okay?", or they could just request a duel knowing you're more likely to accept than an unflagged player).

I think it's a good tool for a PvE game to include PvP, the carebears can go STFU because it doesn't affect them (although they will still bitch, they live off bitching about PvP), and anybody else can PvP without too much trouble. Of course it depends on how it's done, and how it's advertised. The old EQ way of perma-switching a character is just wrong. The switch (IMO) should only be used to promote quick and easy PvP without ruining the PvE parade, not segmenting the player-base and/or gimping char slots.

PvP: What are you making?
PvE: Soup.
PvP: Can I shit in it?
PvE: What?  No.
PvP: Seriously, no one will eat this soup without the shit.  It will still be soup after I sqeeze a few logs into it.  Just eat around it, the soups still there.



Yes Timmy, yes they are.  Because one fucks up the other.  Theres no reason that one person's PvE catassery should give him an advantage over another in PvP.  And theres no reason that classes and abilities that work fine in PvE should be nerfed and rebalanced based on PvP results.

PvPers just keep trying to mix these two very different games, keep trying to put this square peg in this round hole.  Devs keep trying to appease them, the result always sucks, and the PvPers always blame the implementation and run off to the next new game.  Meanwhile the rest of us stand around staring into our soup, with its big floating PvP shitlogs.

Its ridiculous to call an online RTS "PvP."

Starcraft duels are the #1 spectator sport in Korea. Also, do check the War3/TFT ladders and/or boards and you'll find that the only thing that's being discussed is PvP balance and that a lot of people play competitively.

The point is that the multiplayer components to Blizzard's last 5 games have either been soley based around player conflict, or have a system where player conflict can be forced. Blizzard built its name around games where the multiplayer pits (or potentially pits) you against other players.

The Warcraft RTS's cannot be used as an example of Blizzard's view of player conflict in RPGs.  You're essentially trying to discern their attitude towards PvP by noting that their RTS's can be played online.  Thats stupid, because no one would release an online-capable RTS without allowing players to play against each other.  Diablo is a better indicator of Blizzard's attitude towards PvP, but even that is strained due to reasons listed above (lack of monthly fee, for example).  

By all appearances, Bliz really just wanted a MMOG set in Warcraft as opposed to Diablo.  Once that decision was made, some PvP was going to be needed just to keep with the backstory.  (Ironically, the dark and brooding world of Diablo would have been a more likely setting for 100% PvE. Diablo raid, anyone?)  Bliz seems to be dropping just enough PvP into the game to use the Warcraft world without totally breaking fiction, but otherwise they spend their man hours on quests, raids, and PvE content in general.  Its apparent in the interviews, in the material addressed in the website, and in the progression of the alpha/beta (no PvP tested yet).

found this in the pvp-faq-

"- The arena will attract crowds and Blizzard will allow players to purchase tickets to watch these spectacles.

- These events will be organized via a broadcast system in the game and other players in the world will be able to purchase tickets for game currency to watch these epic battles.

- No ticket no spectating."

has this been implemented in other games before? if not, i think bringing a gladiator-sort arena with audiences may add to the pvp/dueling experience. blizz is going for the "spectator-sports-effect" inherent in their rts games? i remember playing this mud that allows u to spectate from a first-person-view of a duel between heroes- in effect a FPS in a mud. that is the 'end-game' for this particular mud and it's viable end-game coz it's simply 'fun-to-spectate'.

It's not entirely unreasonable to assume that a company which has been producing the most competitive PvP environments in existence might add a strong PvP component to their games independent of genre, is it?

Not that it really matters but when WoW was first announced that train of thought was what got me interested in it. However, as you have pointed out it has become apparent that Blizzard doesn't really care about the PvP aspect of WoW so my interest has waned.

--dyvvu

The one mainstream RvR game there was just added "raid" content and is now doing better than it has ever done before, and has finally passed up that vanguard of real man's PvP, UO, in subscribers with said expansion.  Oh shit, nobody PvPs in UO anymore, 99% of the people are crammed into the carebear lands.  They must be living under some false consciousness because everybody knows they really want to be PvPing...

PvP in persistent, Western, pay to play worlds is, has been, and always will be a niche product at best and a toilet down which money is flushed at worst.  Nobody who makes mainstream games to make money is going to make PvP a focus.  Nice games, yes.  A "SB done right" could do quite well, but it won't challenge the industry leaders.  The only game that was ever a major player was UO, and that was because there was no where else to go.  

I thought SWG -- where you need to go PvP+ to get access to any real Star Wars content at all and people still don't go PvP+ in great numbers -- would end this debate.  But when you are dealing with religious fanatics, facts are irrelevant.

Someone from Something Awful made a "I don't remember ever signing up for the beta but I got an invite, does anyone want it" post, and there were page after page of people begging and throwing money at him.  He then said he would give it to the person who wrote the best story to be judged by his 5 year old son, and they wrote stories.  I LOLed.

It's like teasing the kids with Down's Syndrome at the Special Olympics ---  the kind that never will get that it was a joke.

Given the apparent intelligence of the userbase and the fact that it's going to be large, WOW is really a game that cries out for some kind of "roleplaying" server or some way to up the IQ a few points.

Everything I've heard about the game, sans the pvpers, much to my surprise, is positive. But looking at the boards and screenshots, I can't get too excited.

I don't see any "carebear" bitching about PVP in games anymore, not since early UO. The complainers are the PVP crowd who don't know what they want, despite a wide variety of choices. You name a PVP system, and you can find a MMOG with it.

I think the big thing people, particularly those who remember UO, pine for is really unwilling victims, trapped by a lack of choices into playing a PVP game when they aren't interested in PVP.

Whether it's because they're griefers or they want to play the heros protecting the sheep, unwilling victims are the holy grail of PVP.

And they are never ever ever coming back.

Ah yes. I've also come to that same conclusion several times, I included it in my analysis of UO and UO journals. Wolves and Sheep are integral for meaningful PVP, and by meaningful I mean something that doesn't boil down into a deathmatch.

Lineage 2 actually offers this to some extent, anyone can be pk'd at any time. The big wrinkle over UO is , that PKs are outcasts and basically can't play the game anymore. Yes its harsh, and its certainly not like it was in UO, but nevertheless you can do it. But in a way even Lineage 2 conveys a sense of being consentual PVP because you know going into the game what the system is like. With UO it was different, clearly PVP wasn't meant to be the playstyle it turned out to be.

But you are right, UO pvp will never happen again. If that is what the PVPers are holding out for they are going to be disappointed everytime a new MMOG comes out.

I've played and done excesive research on Lineage 2 for some time now, and it seems the Lineage 2 system is really great, yet to see how it turns out in the western world thou. This is how it worked in Lineage 1. Loads of people was red even if it meant penalties. Being red is a terrible thing if you're alone, everybody will try to kill you, and eventually people will most likely kill you. Which means you will be dropping goodies all over the place.

However, imagine a group of organized fairly high people being red. They run around in the woods, and people either decide to flee, or give them a shot for the chance of goodies. How much of chance do you think unorganized people will stand? I wouldn't bet they would have any. Now a bunch of white guilds form to kill this red group, but how will they find this group? The only thing they have to go on is where they last killed a guy, and that is if that guy they killed was able to pass the information over to the white guys. And there's no way to communicate with the whole world (shout did indeed reach very far before, but as of Chronicle 1, the patch which arrives at p2p in US, it only reaches 1/4 of what it did before).

This makes for some very very intresting PVP, which very much was the case in Lineage 1, according to those who have played it. There's a whole Order vs Chaos war going on.

Sure this is a bit off topic, but I really think the PVP in Lineage 2 will be great. The only bad part is the pretty harsh XP loss involved in non guild wars/sieges.

The truly ironic thing is, in all the debates and flames between the PvPers and the Carebears back when UO was the only choice, one of the PvP+ crowd's main arguments was, it's built into the game, so deal with it. Now there's other alternatives where having to play sheep for others amusement isn't built in, dealing with it is the last thing on their minds.

I really don't think there's much hope that many large companies are going to design a game for the crowd who used to keep score by how many people they caused to quit the game. I think their best hope is going to be some smaller company, like the guys that did ATiTD, and hopefully one who won't get the basics so screwed up that game is unplayable like Wolfpack did.

Are the North Americans going to be playing on the same servers as the Tiawanese? One of the big advantages they have is playing in PC Bangs, where lack of world wide communication isnt going to hinder them much at all, as they can just talk to the people around them in the cafe. If North American servers are going to be seperate, the reds will probably organise via IRC or ICQ, just as they did in UO. As UO proved fairly well, it's always the reds who manage to be the best organised, because of the huge advantage it gives them in coordinating attacks with out of band communication. The lack of long range communication will always hamper the antis, to use the UO term, far more than the pks.

In Lineage 2 NA will get their own servers, and europeans have officially been allowed to play on them.

Then you don't follow UO, there's still debate about PvP with Tramelites being pissed that 1/4th of the world is PvP+. Though some of that has died down with power scrolls now being really cheap.

That doesn't matter though, the only reason that people aren't bitching about pvp is because there is no game that forces it anymore (other than shadowbane, and you know what you're getting with that one). My point was that a flag enables pvp without the bitching you'd get with a full pvp+ environment (and honestly, I don't think a MMOG can be successful on a large scale as a PvE game with PvP+ environment, it's just not workable).

Plus I think it's stupid to make a large MMOG without pv of some form, if only to sucker the pvp crowd into paying for the box and at least a month before they realise the pvp is token at best. Hell, if you're lucky you could have them subscribe for a few months before they get sick of it, or develop a long-lasting niche of pvp players. It's just extra money if the PvE isn't affected.

Lineage 2, whatever you think of its other merits or faults, has implemented what you say is not workable and IMHO made it work. I just don't see where examples about the failure of UO's idiotic implementation of PvP have any relevance anymore.

I have nothing against PVP. From an ideological standpoint I actually like UO's pre trammel world the best, in fact I don't even consider Old School UO a PVP game anymore than I consider it a cooking simulation or a mongbat taming video. For awhile, UO was everything that MMOGs were suppose to be despite its warts.

I don't follow the UO forums, but I'm sure there are UO carebears who might bitch about being PK'd in Felucca, but my point was that for the most part if a game offers consentual PVP (safe zones, factional pvp), you won't see a meaningful number of people complaining about it.

I've found recently that the complaints are mostly from the PVP advocates. Games have too much PVE or the PVP they offer isn't "good". There really aren't many variations of PVP left to try. WoW is going to flesh out the instanced zones and after that I don't know what system you could implement next that hasn't already been done.

Damn koreans... I'll be interested once it makes it in the US, I'll care when they get a Aus server. It's a self-centered statement, but I was basically thinking of the Western market when I said the above about pvp.

I suppose what pvpers are looking for is combat that isn't broken. To me, UO pvp is pretty shite, and while it has been better in the past, it was never what you'd call ideal. Frankly I'm not even sure why I like it, there's just something about mmog pvp that appelas to me in some way (and I don't pk, so the whole victim thing isn't it... I've killed 2 miners, and quickly decided it was boring). AC pvp was broken by power descrepencies (apparently it was alright in the behginning, but I didn't play it for a while), and EQ pvp was never balanced in any way, shape or form. I haven't played anything else, but I've heard bad things about all of them (buggy SB, unbalanced this, unbalanced that).

So I guess the holy grail is yet to be found, and pvpers look to each new game to contain what they crave. Sure there's FPS and RTS games to compete against other players, but mmogs definately have something that makes pvp unique and yearned for... just every iteration is teh suk at the moment.

i don't know but i think, for all we know, pvp/duelling in an arena with spectators will be the 'end-game'/mainstay for WoW. especially if they tag a ranking system ala wc3 ladder-ranking to the duels. the arenas will be the places everyone flocks to when they want to pvp, everyone will pvp to rise in the ranks. forget about the 'frontier-daoc' battlegrounds- unless there's some real incentive to pvp there- it's been proven in daoc that it's a boring affair to have to run for half an hour to look for someone to fight with.

i think blizzard Is thinking about pvp and pvp-balance. that is why they've limited the number of classes to only 9, when they could've included lots more- it's easier to balance with only 9 classes.  

pardon my english.

I disagree, and I think you're wrong :)

I don't like this type of switch for two reasons:
1. I don't like having 2 characters with different sets of rules applied to them standing in the same location. If nothing else, it can be really confusing and annoying. It will also, most likely, result in a number of bugs.
2. The only thing that really annoyed me as a crafter in uo was the people who were having guild or chaos/order wars in town - they were in my way and they were spamming and lagging me like crazy.

However, I have to admit I can think of a way to implement the type of switch you want where the two above points would not be an issue. But it would only be a partial solution, and it might have to be in a particular setting for people to accept it and not hate it. So maybe it isn't any good anyway... Oh well :)

I also don't see the need for pvp in every game. Why slap a crappy pvp implementation onto a perfectly good pve game? It's just stupid; you'll just end up annoying everybody. To have a fair chance of making a good pvp game it should be in the design from the start - to take it into consideration while balancing the pve part, if nothing else.

If this premise is correct, then yes this genre is not for me.  Fortunately, I think UO didn't really fit this meta-archetype so I'll continue to hold out hope. Further, this genre is capable of so much more than the above that, well, what a horribly shallow and unfortunate such an eulogy it would make if your prediction proved accurate.

Actually alliance v Hoarde would be a lot of fun, as long as there was a reasonable expectation that characters are of relevantly equal stature in terms of power, instead of artificially segregated by extreme power differentials induced by the 'necessary grinding mechanic' that some people find entertaining.

And since the latter is essentially guaranteed I see no reason to waste my time or cash on something I know that *I* will find annoying as hell.

*shrug*

UO had grinding, probably more than any other game because of the repetitive clicking for everything. Although ability to macro got around actually partipating in the grind. UO had an end game too which was basically socializing and pvp. UO also was about loot, collecting, hording, and creating.

According to a Blizzard employee who made a post in this thread here (http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?FN=wow-general&T=6729&P=1&ReplyCount=16#post6729), the World of Warcraft beta will last for at least another 5+ months.  I'm not sure what I'm going to be playing now in my free time for the next five months.  Perhaps I'll check out City of Heroes via the pre-order beta and see what that is like.

I suppose it's all for the best anyway.  I would like as nice a release as possible, and I'm sure Blizzard doesn't want to mess up their nice and shiny track record of smooth releases.

-Liquidator