My First 2 Hour Impression of WoW

[schild]

And starting at lvl 10 you get one talante point per level.

Can I get some salsa with that talante? Ho Ho Ho, I just couldn't help myself. ^_^

[HRose]

So, armor was severely nerfed in this last patch, which has slowed down levelling do the degree that you can't take on as many mobs as you used to before having to rest.

Blizzard never came out and officially said it was a bug, so I think they purposefully went to an extreme to see how far they could push the numbers, and I am guessing they will ease back again on the next Big Patch, which will make levelling faster again.

I suspect that there's a part of truth and a part of legend. It's something that exactly repeats with EACH patch.

From a side it's true that from March the experience is changed for the worst but not to the level of the rants. In particular with my warrior I really noticed little changes before and after this last patch. The bigger problem is about the elite mobs that are now doable only when they stop to give you experience. For the rest the nerf is nowhere near the complaints, at least in my case.

Still, even with the way it is now, WoW levelling seems far faster than CoH, and you get abilities at a much, much faster pace. In WoW I'm constantly readjusting my hotbars because I'm trying to juggle all the abilities I use, even at low levels.

I'm having big problems in fact. The tools I need as a simple tank are more than I can fit on the bar.

[geldonyetich]

What class are you playing? Remember Talants are only active for 4 classes right now. And starting at lvl 10 you get one talante point per level. These are equilivent to the diablo 2 skill points, just the skill trees are a bit smaller. This helps with not having many abilities.

That explains it.  I'm playing a Druid right now, and I know I've got zilch in the way of Talents, but three talent points kicking around doing nothing.

Looks like it's time for me to research which classes have talents and play one of them instead.

[HRose]

That explains it.  I'm playing a Druid right now, and I know I've got zilch in the way of Talents, but three talent points kicking around doing nothing.

Looks like it's time for me to research which classes have talents and play one of them instead.

Talents are a specialization mechanic. They *rarely* offer new gameplay.
For example on my warrior I've rised the damage/effects of styles, % to get a critical hit and only two level ago I got a spell that let me attack a target and double the damage to another one nearby.

But talents don't generally change the gameplay. I visit the trainer no more than once every three levels and most of the times I just get power ups of old styles. The rewards and hooks are mostly item-based and, luckily, I'm having a lot of fun in the game *despite* the hooks. I personally enjoy the game for what it is aside the treadmill. Yesterday I visited another instance with a group and it was a blast (before the server died).

And I even lost a /roll fron an awesome turtle armor... (dropped from a big turtle mob named Gameraah or something similar)

[Morfiend]

What class are you playing? Remember Talants are only active for 4 classes right now. And starting at lvl 10 you get one talante point per level. These are equilivent to the diablo 2 skill points, just the skill trees are a bit smaller. This helps with not having many abilities.

That explains it.  I'm playing a Druid right now, and I know I've got zilch in the way of Talents, but three talent points kicking around doing nothing.

Looks like it's time for me to research which classes have talents and play one of them instead.

I would recomend Rogue, if you like that style of class, they are VERY powerful right now. And for 7 days, you could have a good time.

Warriors are fun, I absolutly LOVE playing my warrior. He is my favorite character form any level baised MMOG. So much versatility. They ARE pretty plain untill around lvl 20, when you get duel wield, and some more skill points under your belt to learn 2h sword, 2h axe, and 2h mace. Charge is the best skill EVER given to a warrior class.

Priests are very good if you like healing, and you can spec your talants in a more offinsive line (shadow) with the high talents giving you abilities, like Shadow Form, where you turn in to a shadow, take 20% less damage, do 20% more damage with shadow spell, but cannot be healed. Priests are ALWAYS needed in groups. In PVP they can be very nasty with several feer spells, good damage spells. Holy Word Shield, and heals. Also a stamaina buff.

Mages are cool becasue they can make food and water, and never have to pay for it. Luss you never have downtime. Mages can also make portals to the main faction cities later on. They have big damage. There is a bug with the spirit  mana regeneration, so I culd think a low level mage with out a big mana pool could be very frustrating to play. Also, they suffered a HUGE nerf last patch. They are still very viable, but that tells you how overpowered they where last patch.

Let me know if you need any mre info.

this push I am a lvl 45 Undead Warrior. I just got my mount, and DAMN. It is so killer.

This might help put in perspective how much fun I have in this game, at all levels.

I am actually looking forward to the next character wipe, just so I have a chance to try out a new class. I could start a new charatcre, but I want to concentrate on one at a time. I do think at retail I will play a Undead Warrior though.

[schild]

And I even lost a /roll fron an awesome turtle armor... (dropped from a big turtle mob named Gameraah or something similar)

Gamera? Is Godzilla in the game as well? Fucking Blizzard.

[Merusk]

And I even lost a /roll fron an awesome turtle armor... (dropped from a big turtle mob named Gameraah or something similar)

Gamera? Is Godzilla in the game as well? Fucking Blizzard.

There's a ton of similar references out there. So many they spawned a 15-page thread I'd link to, but the bliz boards seem to be fuxored at the moment.

[scoobydoo]

I am playing CoH and what I don't understand is why our "guild leader", who downloaded the client for the stress test and has tried WoW - is not still playing.

He found little difference between EQ and WoW although the latter is "prettier" (albiet, how much play time has he really had to arrive at this conclusion).  For him, he is continuing with CoH.

When you level in WoW - I gather you do not assign any attribute points?

Can I have his stress test key, then, or anyone who doesn't like WOW for that matter?

[schild]

Can I have his stress test key, then, or anyone who doesn't like WOW for that matter?

Did you just register to ask someone for a cd key for a stress test? What are you thinking?

[scoobydoo]

If you don't want your stress test key, I really want to play, so email me at paulmccartney2008@yahoo.com

[Merusk]

Lay off those scooby snacks, there buddy.  I know the colors are pretty but you're about to be spanked very, very hard with that newspaper.

[scoobydoo]

You don't understand. I need World of Warcraft to live.

[scoobydoo]

See, if 2/3 of the world wants to play WOW then I have to, too.

http://www.imagedump.com/index.cgi?pick=setandget&tp=118831&poll_id=0&category_id=20&warned=y

[schild]

You don't understand. I need World of Warcraft to live.

Die.

[Morfiend]

See, if 2/3 of the world wants to play WOW then I have to, too.

http://www.imagedump.com/index.cgi?pick=setandget&tp=118831&poll_id=0&category_id=20&warned=y

Hey no fair. The stress testers get NAMED servers. Boo.

[schild]

See, if 2/3 of the world wants to play WOW then I have to, too.

http://www.imagedump.com/index.cgi?pick=setandget&tp=118831&poll_id=0&category_id=20&warned=y

Hey no fair. The stress testers get NAMED servers. Boo.

...

[Trippy]

See, if 2/3 of the world wants to play WOW then I have to, too.

http://www.imagedump.com/index.cgi?pick=setandget&tp=118831&poll_id=0&category_id=20&warned=y

Heh, that's a good one. Looks like there's a bug in the server count decrement code and it overflowed (wrapped around) an unsigned long int (2 ^ 32 = 4294967296).

[Ardent]

If you don't want your stress test key, I really want to play, so email me at paulmccartney2008@yahoo.com

Sheesh, I would think a former member of the Beatles would be able to pull enough strings to get his own Beta invite.

"And in the end,
The l33t you take
Is equal to the l33t you make..."

[Fabricated]

I haven't read anything in this thread yet, but I just got in about 3-4 hours of play in before the servers went down.

My impressions so far:

-The engine seems to be relatively solid performance wise. I cranked the res up to 1280x960 and maxed all the details (minus the water, which can't be turned up for some reason) and get a rock solid 50-60FPS regardless of how many people are on screen.

-Character creation kinda sucks. You get sex, race, facial type, facial hair, skin color...and that's about it I think. So every warrior is the same hulking muscle head.

-I'm level 7 now, and so far every single quest has been either FedEx-ing stuff or "Bop X monster". Blizzard also made sure to make the monsters that drop quest items rare as possible so everyone ends up camping their spawns.

-Players can kill NPCs from enemy factions. This proved annoying since there were a group of level 15+ orc players that kept running around in the newbie areas (level 6-10 area to be specific) slaughtering NPCs and anyone with PVP on.

Eventually a massive group of newbies would chase them down and overwhelm them, but they'd just respawn and come right back.

[SirBruce]

That's something that bugs me.  They have "Kill X things" quests, where X is the number of stuff you need to kill.  Okay, good.

But they also have "Collect Y drops" quests, where Y drops of a specific mob or group of mobs.  But the actual drop rate is som rate Z.  So you have to kill Y*Z mobs, but it's RANDOM, so sometimes you have to kill more and sometimes you have to kill less.  And that's highly annoying.  I had to kill like 50 dragon whelps to get 6 underbelly scales; whereas other people only have to kill 15 or so.  Why not just make the quest "kill 30 dragon whelps" and if you want to make the character bring back scales for the sake of story, just make it drop every time?

Seems like you are needlessly frustrating the player.

Bruce

[HRose]

But they also have "Collect Y drops" quests, where Y drops of a specific mob or group of mobs.  But the actual drop rate is som rate Z.  So you have to kill Y*Z mobs, but it's RANDOM, so sometimes you have to kill more and sometimes you have to kill less.  And that's highly annoying.  I had to kill like 50 dragon whelps to get 6 underbelly scales; whereas other people only have to kill 15 or so.  Why not just make the quest "kill 30 dragon whelps" and if you want to make the character bring back scales for the sake of story, just make it drop every time?

This is a big problem, not only for what you write but also because it's a mechanic that stongly discourage grouping.

I hope they'll fix at least the group part and allow the item to be shared between the players in a group. It will improve the situation a lot.

[geldonyetich]

Often the quest items will reproduce for groups.  I don't know if this works for something like Spiderweb Silk, being a quest unique drop that randomly drops and you need to collect multiples of.   However, I do know that this works for singular items such as a journal that's needed to be recovered that drops 100% of the time off a dead named mob.   That journal will preproduce for each member of the group that searches it.

However, I have noticed that kill tasks are not shared across a group very well.    First thing I did when going into WoW was team up with a friend of mine.  We took a quest hat involved killing two kinds of newbie mobs, attacked those newbie mobs with a passion, but *the counter wouldn't go up*.   Soloing, however, it worked fine.   Either we were targetting similar named, but different mobs than the quest required, or it simply doesn't share kills across the group for kill counter quests.

[Trippy]

-Players can kill NPCs from enemy factions. This proved annoying since there were a group of level 15+ orc players that kept running around in the newbie areas (level 6-10 area to be specific) slaughtering NPCs and anyone with PVP on.

Eventually a massive group of newbies would chase them down and overwhelm them, but they'd just respawn and come right back.

This is the aspect of WoW that's probably going to ruin the game for me. Griefing bothers me to no end. And I intensely dislike PvP that's all about gear/levels, numbers, and some sort of arbitary rock/scissor/paper class matchup so saying "well you can just fight back" just doesn't cut it for me.

Blizzard has said that this sort of conflict is going to be part of the "PvE" servers which to me is stupid. While they have in many ways improved upon what EQ has done, in this area they've taken a huge step backwards. It's clear that there are people who enjoy griefing and will do so given any opportunity. This crap about "greatly punish"ing killing important NPCs like quest givers and transportation merchants isn't going to do squat to deter the hard-core griefers.

As an example of how Blizzard hasn't learned from EQ, think back to when SoL was released (for those of you who played back then). The shard "giver-outers" that allowed you to teleport to Luclin were, when originally released, killable NPCs. As you can imagine, they were being ganked on a regular basis making it difficult to get to Luclin and SOE quickly had to patch the game to make them invulnerable. Now in WoW they are going to allow people to kill the gryphon and bat rider trainers which means they are rarely going to be up in the border cities once griefers have leveled high enough to be able to kill them on a regular basis. And don't even get me started on allowing people to kill quest NPCs. Argh!

[geldonyetich]

They should really patch it up so that the deeper you go into hostile territory, the tougher NPC opposition you're going to run across.  In fact, I bet that this eventually will happen.   However, in the meanwhile, I've noticed that the guards hanging around the newbie area seem to vary widely in level.   The guards in the Dwarven starting area are level 75.  The guards in the Night Elf starting area are level 15-20.   Which is probably why orcs are running rampant there.

Lack reward for taking down lower level players should stem grief play a bit.   However, it's still annoying.

Yet, these kind of shinanigans are probably the lead thing that would make WoW's otherwise humdrum quest repetition and poor group support interesting in the long run.

[plangent]

The guards in the Night Elf starting area are level 15-20. Which is probably why orcs are running rampant there.

I was with a raid last night from the Barrens on Tichondrius into the southern NE territory. The guards' levels were listed as ?? and there were a lot of them.  They managed to decimate a group of @30 horde raiders in no time.  Bypassing the towns isn't much better because the mobs are all agro in the southern NE territories.

For the moment it seems like (at least as far as large scale invasions go) the difficulty in invading other factions' homelands is reasonably high.  I don't know if that will hold when the mean level of raiders is 50 instead of 15 though.  But for now, having the lion's share of the defensive capabilities on the borders of an area seems a pretty effective deterrent to large scale griefing while still allowing individuals and small parties of PvP'ers to have some fun.

[El Gallo]

That's something that bugs me.  They have "Kill X things" quests, where X is the number of stuff you need to kill.  Okay, good.

But they also have "Collect Y drops" quests, where Y drops of a specific mob or group of mobs.  But the actual drop rate is som rate Z.  So you have to kill Y*Z mobs, but it's RANDOM, so sometimes you have to kill more and sometimes you have to kill less.  And that's highly annoying.  I had to kill like 50 dragon whelps to get 6 underbelly scales; whereas other people only have to kill 15 or so.  Why not just make the quest "kill 30 dragon whelps" and if you want to make the character bring back scales for the sake of story, just make it drop every time?

Seems like you are needlessly frustrating the player.

Bruce

Lets say a casino has two slot machines.

Machine A is the standard slot machine we all know and love.  Over time, it has a 96% payout.  Sometimes you lose a lot quickly, and other times you win a lot quickly.  But, over time and many thousands of users, it pays back 96 cents for every dollar put in.

Machine B is a machine where every single time you put a dollar in, it spits back out 96 cents.

Funny how there are a lot of A's and no B's in actual casinos.  Almost enough to make you think that people prefer the first.

[Ardent]

I have to admit, there is something perversely satisfying in FINALLY getting that last Foozle Toenail after slaughtering 37 foozles in a row, hoping after each one that maybe THIS will be the Foozle that will drop that magical toenail that will finally let me get that better [insert quest reward here].

I have a disease.

[schild]

I have a disease.

Luckily it's not contagious.

[AOFanboi]

Machine A is the standard slot machine we all know and love.  Over time, it has a 96% payout.  Sometimes you lose a lot quickly, and other times you win a lot quickly.  But, over time and many thousands of users, it pays back 96 cents for every dollar put in.

Ah, but this is different, so your analogy doesn't hold. The loot-dropping mob "slot machine" averages 10 cents (1/10 drop rate to be nice) for every "dollar" (mob defeat). And it either pays you one dollar or zilch every time you play. And you probably aren't playing the slot machines in order to win 20 bucks for some other dude.

Plus, the real currency going in (time, stamina, ammo, charges, whatever) is different from the currency going out (quest loot). So it's a steady stream of dollars you get from somewhere, but what you might get from the slot machine is an Euro. Or whatever.

Next analogy?

[Morfiend]

They should really patch it up so that the deeper you go into hostile territory, the tougher NPC opposition you're going to run across.  

Generally this holds pretty true already. Main cities have lvl 90 guards, and newbie zones have lvl 75 guards, and the farther away you get from your homeland the guards in the outposts get low and lower level. The guards in the outposts for my level (lvl 45) are usually around lvl 30 now.

The thing is, the guards spawn as soon at the move from their spawn point. So you can invade an outpost, but HOLDING one, takes some real work.

[Nebu]

Actually, the analogy isn't all that far off.

The payoff is the quest reward and not actually the foozle tail though there is a direct link between the two.  Ultimately, it's about time.  Blizzard wants to consume your time while you attempt to obtain said foozle tail such that they can continue to extort cash from you.  If you obtain quest items too easily, this will a) devalue the quest reward and b) allow you to complete the quest too quickly.  Remember, this is a ultimately a business we're talking about where the bottom line is a razor thin line between keeping them too long at a task vs. making the tasks too easy.

[geldonyetich]

Risk versus Reward is probably what he was trying to establish there.  In WoW's case, however, all that is at risk is your time.   You're ultimately in for a reward, but the time invested towards that reward varies wildly.

I don't consider this as big of an issue as WoW's neigh utter lack of social interaction intercentive, however.    WoW would be a lot more interesting of a game if I actually had some longstanding parties.    Unfortunatel, the way that the quest progression works, people tend to party up only for as long as it takes to complete a quest (usually a matter of a half hour or less, especially with a party's firepower to back them up).

Within three months after release, I can see WoW as having an extremely underpopulated lower level environment, with a highly dissatisfied player base lingering at the upper levels wondering why they're wasting their time, due to the utter lack of social hook involved in this game.   Actually, that sounds pretty familiar.  

At least WoW has a PvP end game which may keep people entertained an additional month or two.

[MrHat]

Risk versus Reward is probably what he was trying to establish there.  In WoW's case, however, all that is at risk is your time.   You're ultimately in for a reward, but the time invested towards that reward varies wildly.

I don't consider this as big of an issue as WoW's neigh utter lack of social interaction intercentive, however.    WoW would be a lot more interesting of a game if I actually had some longstanding parties.    Unfortunatel, the way that the quest progression works, people tend to party up only for as long as it takes to complete a quest (usually a matter of a half hour or less, especially with a party's firepower to back them up).

Within three months after release, I can see WoW as having an extremely underpopulated lower level environment, with a highly dissatisfied player base lingering at the upper levels wondering why they're wasting their time, due to the utter lack of social hook involved in this game.   Actually, that sounds pretty familiar.  

At least WoW has a PvP end game which may keep people entertained an additional month or two.

As sad as it is, I've acutally made 3 friends that I party whenever I'm on for this stress test.  My orc rogue (L13) has been partying w/ the same 3 people since about L7.  I get on, check my friends list, see what they're up to, invite, then we meet somewhere, share what quests we can, do the shared ones, then complete them, and so on.

But I have had plenty of 'single-serving groups' to shamelessly plug Fight Club.  Personally, I like this style more, but I can understand the pain when I drag 3 of my RL friends into this and we all have different quests to do.  I don't mind helping out friends on quests, because the exp is always good and it gives me a chance to mine/pluck while I'm out and about.  But I guess it comes down to personal preference, like all else.

What I have a hard time with is outside of 2-3 RL friends, I can't see the point of a Grandeous Guild consisting of more than a dozen people.  However, I never played EQ so I may not understand the sheer stupidity of 300 person raids.

Edit: Talking about CoH, I just figured out how the rest system works.  It's basically the inverse of CoH's death penalty.  Remember how if you died, you would get a period of leveling where your exp would come in slower?  There was that little bar that would show you how much you had to go till you get max exp again?  Well in WoW, that bar is back.  But as you log out and go to inns, this bar 'ticks' up.  Now when you log back in, that bar is moved forward and your exp bar turns light blue.  When you kill stuff, you get bonus exp up to that bar.  Actually feels like a bonus too.

[El Gallo]

The point was just that people like a little bit of unpredictability.  People don't want every quest to be a precise "punch the clock" exercise.  Slot machines are powerful reinforcers because of the random nature of the reward for the same regular and repetitive task.  The core mechanic of these kinds of quests is exactly the same as the core mechanic of slot machines.  Bruce wants all regular and repetitive tasks to have regular and repetitive rewards.  That is not a good behavior reinforcer.

Geldon is 100% right re: the biggest threat to WoW is turning into another CoH.  The raid content and PvP content is the answer Blizzard has been giving to this, but we have yet to see if they can deliver.

[MrHat]

The point was just that people like a little bit of unpredictability.  People don't want every quest to be a precise "punch the clock" exercise.  Slot machines are powerful reinforcers because of the random nature of the reward for the same regular and repetitive task.  The core mechanic of these kinds of quests is exactly the same as the core mechanic of slot machines.  

Diablo 2?