Elerion
11-18-04, 11:04 AM
For those who care, here are my experiences and thoughts about WoW.
Graphics: The game looks great. People complain about cartoony graphics, but I love them. It's a matter of personal taste, but I never thought EQ's models looked even remotely "natural", so I am very happy with the cartoony style. When you are looking at a moving creature that you have never seen in real life, it's a lot harder to notice faults and silly animation. Until that part gets significantly better, I'm rooting for WoW/Fable style graphics in my RPGs.
Sound: Sounds are decent. The music is all around good, but the battle sounds aren't that much better than old EQ. Not much more you can do about it though, a clang is a clang no matter how many times you sample it.
Gameplay: The gameplay is extremely reminiscent of EQ, but the quests make it far less tedious, and it's a lot easier (easy as in all classes can solo, the actual gameplay is relatively complex, with a lot more activated actions than EQ). It reminds me a lot of Fable as well. Grouping at low-mid levels is a total disaster though. It's mainly just a zergfest or 3-4 people soloing next to eachother. The one time I did an instance it helped though, mostly because I got a healer that knew how to heal, and I did the tanking, so it was hard to screw up. Higher levels will hopefully (and from reports, it does) solve this.
Newbie friendliness: The game is very newbie friendly. An EQ player will feel completely on top of the controls within an hour, and even someone new to MMOs should feel comfortable very soon. There's not a lot of tedious searching, at least not at first, and the newbie quests are great for teaching you new parts of the game, in edible portions. Cute little tip windows appear at appropriate times, but they don't come up as pop-ups like in current EQ, they just show a little icon notifying you that you have a new tip. They are also very nice and short.
Overall: The game isn't perfect by any means yet, but it's far more polished than any MMO I've played at release. It has also hooked me in a way no game has done since EQ back in 2000. From I got home to a downloaded beta client on monday at 6pm, and to this morning (wed night/thursday morning) at 7am, I have logged 28 hours in-game, getting a shaman to level 18 and a priest to level 4. In addition, I've probably spent 10 hours scouring the web for forums and discussions. I have ignored friends, turned down my boss when he asked me to come in for extra time, and slept 4 hours a night. With exams coming up next few weeks, I'm hella glad this beta just ended. Will I play this game for 4 years like I did EQ? Probably not. I don't think it's different enough from EQ to keep my interest that long, and it may suffer from the somewhat easy gameplay. I doubt this will become as good a raid game as EQ was. But I sure will have fun for a while.
Will I buy it? Yes. I have a good wait before that though, seeing as we have to wait for the european release. Then I expect to be playing it for half a year before calling it quits.
Should you buy it? Probably, yes. Even if you quit after the first month, you are almost sure to get more hours of fun out of this than most single player games you can buy. After 28 hours I'm begging for more.
EDIT: Oh, if you plan on playing at release, there are two options. Either, play hardcore for the first day or two to get ahead of the curve, or wait 4-5 days before buying it. Newbie zones are not instanced, so they will be ridiculously full. When doing a 100'ish person war last night, it was quite obvious that the beta servers can't handle that many people actively fighting in a small area. Unless they upgrade servers heavily, launch day will be a total nightmare.
Graphics: The game looks great. People complain about cartoony graphics, but I love them. It's a matter of personal taste, but I never thought EQ's models looked even remotely "natural", so I am very happy with the cartoony style. When you are looking at a moving creature that you have never seen in real life, it's a lot harder to notice faults and silly animation. Until that part gets significantly better, I'm rooting for WoW/Fable style graphics in my RPGs.
Sound: Sounds are decent. The music is all around good, but the battle sounds aren't that much better than old EQ. Not much more you can do about it though, a clang is a clang no matter how many times you sample it.
Gameplay: The gameplay is extremely reminiscent of EQ, but the quests make it far less tedious, and it's a lot easier (easy as in all classes can solo, the actual gameplay is relatively complex, with a lot more activated actions than EQ). It reminds me a lot of Fable as well. Grouping at low-mid levels is a total disaster though. It's mainly just a zergfest or 3-4 people soloing next to eachother. The one time I did an instance it helped though, mostly because I got a healer that knew how to heal, and I did the tanking, so it was hard to screw up. Higher levels will hopefully (and from reports, it does) solve this.
Newbie friendliness: The game is very newbie friendly. An EQ player will feel completely on top of the controls within an hour, and even someone new to MMOs should feel comfortable very soon. There's not a lot of tedious searching, at least not at first, and the newbie quests are great for teaching you new parts of the game, in edible portions. Cute little tip windows appear at appropriate times, but they don't come up as pop-ups like in current EQ, they just show a little icon notifying you that you have a new tip. They are also very nice and short.
Overall: The game isn't perfect by any means yet, but it's far more polished than any MMO I've played at release. It has also hooked me in a way no game has done since EQ back in 2000. From I got home to a downloaded beta client on monday at 6pm, and to this morning (wed night/thursday morning) at 7am, I have logged 28 hours in-game, getting a shaman to level 18 and a priest to level 4. In addition, I've probably spent 10 hours scouring the web for forums and discussions. I have ignored friends, turned down my boss when he asked me to come in for extra time, and slept 4 hours a night. With exams coming up next few weeks, I'm hella glad this beta just ended. Will I play this game for 4 years like I did EQ? Probably not. I don't think it's different enough from EQ to keep my interest that long, and it may suffer from the somewhat easy gameplay. I doubt this will become as good a raid game as EQ was. But I sure will have fun for a while.
Will I buy it? Yes. I have a good wait before that though, seeing as we have to wait for the european release. Then I expect to be playing it for half a year before calling it quits.
Should you buy it? Probably, yes. Even if you quit after the first month, you are almost sure to get more hours of fun out of this than most single player games you can buy. After 28 hours I'm begging for more.
EDIT: Oh, if you plan on playing at release, there are two options. Either, play hardcore for the first day or two to get ahead of the curve, or wait 4-5 days before buying it. Newbie zones are not instanced, so they will be ridiculously full. When doing a 100'ish person war last night, it was quite obvious that the beta servers can't handle that many people actively fighting in a small area. Unless they upgrade servers heavily, launch day will be a total nightmare.