[WoW] I Was a Teenage Alpha Tester

Very nice stuff Whiz! I have my own questions to through out there for you Beta ppls...

1) Can you enter the instanced dungeons solo? or is it like LDoN where you need 4+ people? If you can enter them solo, can you handle the fighting solo?

2) Are they working on controls beyond mouse/keyboard? One thing that I truly loved about my brief visit to FFXI was that you could grab a USB controller and handle almost everything by just assigning macro's to buttons (my carpal tunnel loved that.) A lot of the slash commands look identical to EQ, I assume the transition from EQ to WoW is pretty seamless because of it?

3) Do they have anything monkly? Can you choose to be a warrior that fights unarmed? I don't see much to indicate ANY unarmed combat yet.

Rather than go on an on w/ questions, I'll just shut up... but if anyone has answers to the above then that would be dandy. BTW... I'm high lvl in EQ, so please bow to me when addressing me.

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Originally Posted by Vashanti

Warlocks have a lot of variety in what they can do, but currently in beta the level cap is 30, whereas in final it's thought to be up to 60.

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Based on the hugely variety of spells, and the pets, I can say with a reasonable amount of certainty that in WoW, I'm a Warlock. (c: (Mind you, I'm waiting on Hunter info... those are the two classes that I will be playing though... maybe a Druid... not sure yet.) Thanks for the scoop Vash.

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Originally Posted by Gryphon09

How does 1 gold in WoW compare to currency in EQ? Cause i see people posting about how you need 10 gold to do this and that.

How do skills and spells work? Is it like in WC3 and D2 where you gain skill points and just level up a skill/spell, or more like EQ where you train it, then it goes up?

About the quests, say a quest asks you to kill qwerty, are you going to have to compete against other people to kill him? Can other people not doing the quest gank him from you?

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100 copper = 1 silver
100 silver = 1 gold

When you level up, your skills will go up if you work on them. You still have to buy your abilities and spells from your class trainer (every two levels). Just go up to your trainer and purchase the ability/spell and you are instantly "trained" in it. No "memorization" of a scroll necessary or anything.

This is what it looks like when you are trained in tradeskills or spells or abilities. You salute the NPC as gold light shoots up around you.

http://mywebpage.netscape.com/svanaf...ha/trained.jpg

If you need to kill Qwerty and you see other people needing to kill him for the same quest, the most common thing to do is to combine the groups. Most people openly say, "You guys after Qwerty, too? Do you want to combine groups? How many do you have?" Right now, there can only be five people in a group. Sometimes that leaves out one or two extra people that were there, but I have seen people stay for the next pop to help the last two people get their kill. It's usually a pleasant environment because people know they don't have to "compete" when being in the same group allows everyone to get the kill and they all can loot the same drop ("Qwerty's head"). (The longest I've waited on a named repop was fifteen minutes.)

Sadly, yes, other people not doing the quest can still gank Qwerty from you if they felt like being assholes. In some situations I lost a mob because the other person honestly did not see me there and other situations the other person was just a KSing ass who didn't care. Just like people cut you off on the freeway -- what can you really do about it? Just remember who they are and their reputations will follow them into the higher levels and their gaming life will get harder as their past begins to catch up to them. ;)

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Originally Posted by Blind

I was wondering if anyone could tell me about how ranged weapons work with non Ranger classes and how throwing weapons compare to bows and guns. I was thinking about making a Gnome gun-using warrior or rouge/engineer since they can't be Hunters, I don't like mages and I already have an idea for a warlock but I'm not sure how effective that would be or if I could even do it.

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Rogues can train in throwing at level 4. You just need to find a vendor that sells daggers or axes that can be thrown (the only difference is cosmetic -- daggers and axes of the same level have the same damage output). In low level lands, I only had access to low level throwing weapons, but as I progressed I would find vendors with better axes and daggers to throw. I don't know if people can smith throwing weapons -- I never looked into it since I used daggers for pulling purposes or to kill a fleeing mob while I was rooted. My rogue was able to train in guns at level 20 and I did have to start again from a skill of 0, which meant I missed A LOT. Some guns have better damage output, but longer casting time or vice versa. You can even add scopes to guns for more damage (engineering thing). Guns are loud and I eventually decided that while holding a gun was fun, it wasn't really roguish like a quiet dagger being thrown. When you get a gun, you have to use a bullet bag to hold your bullets (or a quiver for arrows if you go the bow/arrow route). That means one less bag space to hold your items. With throwing daggers/axes, I could buy them in stacks of 100 and just toss them in any of my bags.

The difference between bullets and daggers are this -- when you run out of a stack of daggers, you get a message that you need a thrown item equipped, even though you have three more stacks in your bags. It does not automatically use the other stacks. You have to specifically put your daggers in your ranged slot. With guns or bows, since you are already using a gun/bow in your ranged slot, it takes the ammo from the gun/quiver bag. If you use up a stack of bullets, it automatically uses the next stack and keeps going until you literally have no ammo left.

As a warrior, I appreciated the value of carrying a gun because that was my primary way to pull. With a rogue, I didn't really feel the need to have a gun or bow because I already had throwing.

Why hello there.

First of all, many many thanks to you alpha and beta guys and all the effort you put into this, and answering all theese questions. Gives a pretty nice idea of what the game could be like, seriously, you guys rock.

I came here through a link from a german fan site, which is in fact THE german fansite with 15.000 registered forum users (so be proud, dammit! ;) ).

Got three questions for you:

1) How does unlearning a skill work? Do you have to gain experience to decrease the skill, compareable to Asherons Call 2, or do you unlearn it immediately? Do you loose the skill points and all, by unlearning the skill?

2) Be honest, a game can't be perfect. Let's hear some more bad facts, what drove you mad, what did you not like at all?

3) I'm a WoW-guild leader, founder of the "KlosterOrden" which would be "MonasteryOrder" 1:1 translated. Actually we are the first german WoW guild, concentrating on WoW's economy... without even knowing anything about it *heh*. So, do you think a guild, concentrating on crafting and selling the goods, does stand a chance? Our main idea is, to split up into gatheres and crafter, so we have some expert-miner working together with some expert-smith, selling the products and make a living of it. Too "StarWars:Galaxy"ish or just right?

Thanks in advance, hope you understood my perfect german english *grin*

- Kain.K

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Originally Posted by Hilldweller

Which race's females have the "Facial Hair" customizable? Could you tell which have what, and maybe post screenshots?

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As of this moment:

Human females - Facial piercings. Here are a few examples of the combinations they can have. (The third one has a nose ring if you can't tell.)

http://mywebpage.netscape.com/svanaf...nfpiercing.jpg

Night elf females - They have facial wodes. The color of the wodes are based on the color of the hair. Here are a few examples of how they work. (There are more wode designs available than shown.)

http://mywebpage.netscape.com/svanaf...r/nefwodes.jpg

Undead females - The undead females have the greatest amount of customizations available. I used the *same* face for all of the images below so you can see how dramatically it changes in each picture.

http://mywebpage.netscape.com/svanaf...deadffaces.jpg

Orc females - Facial piercings. Again, here are a few combinations that can be used.

http://mywebpage.netscape.com/svanaf...cfpiercing.jpg

Tauren females - The horns are the facial customizations. In addition to selecting the horn styles, you can also change colors of the horns.

http://mywebpage.netscape.com/svanaf...urenfhorns.jpg

Troll females - tusks are customizable. They are nowhere near done with the troll female so there is not much to look at.

Gnome females - none.

Dwarf females - none.

Tauren females are cute in a weird sorta way

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About the guild system.. Is guild banking in the game?

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I don't think this feature has been implemented yet. I could be wrong.

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Could you post screenshots that have Guild thingies in them?

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I don't understand this question. You want to see what tabards look like on players or you want to see the system for creating a tabard?

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What about the inventory and the thing in which you can see what armor you are wearing.

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You can rotate your character in your inventory to see what you look like.

http://mywebpage.netscape.com/svanaf.../inventory.jpg

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And finally.. When you die, the ghost you become, and how the world looks from their eyes.
Hope I'm not asking too much.. :)

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Remember that they're still tinkering with the death system to find what works. This is how the system is set right now. When you die and are not expecting a rez, you release yourself from your body and appear at the nearest spirit healer. You can either click on the healer and accept the XP loss or run back to your body and ressurect with low health and no XP loss. You travel in ghost form -- only your group members can see you. You have increased invisibility and speed to get your body back faster. When you see corpses lying around with a blue aura around it, it means the person is currently on a CR. Corspes with no blue glow are just old corpses.

http://mywebpage.netscape.com/svanaf...lpha/death.jpg

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Originally Posted by Yiktiki

1) Can you enter the instanced dungeons solo? or is it like LDoN where you need 4+ people? If you can enter them solo, can you handle the fighting solo?

2) Are they working on controls beyond mouse/keyboard? One thing that I truly loved about my brief visit to FFXI was that you could grab a USB controller and handle almost everything by just assigning macro's to buttons (my carpal tunnel loved that.) A lot of the slash commands look identical to EQ, I assume the transition from EQ to WoW is pretty seamless because of it?

3) Do they have anything monkly? Can you choose to be a warrior that fights unarmed? I don't see much to indicate ANY unarmed combat yet.

Rather than go on an on w/ questions, I'll just shut up... but if anyone has answers to the above then that would be dandy. BTW... I'm high lvl in EQ, so please bow to me when addressing me.

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1. Yes, you can enter alone. If you've got insane equipment for your level or you're significantly higher level than the mobs, you might have a chance at soloing. Pretty risky though.

2. I have absolutely no idea. :)

3. Not that I'm aware of. You can raise your unarmed skill and put talent points in evading blows and increasing AC so you absorb less damage, but I have not seen a class that's specifically designed for that type of combat. Keep in mind that druids and hunters have not been tested yet. Druids are a leather class that leans towards the melee side. They *might* be the closest thing to playing a monk, but I can't say for sure.

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Originally Posted by HappyBunny

Thanks for all the great info so far! Couple questions:

5) This is a big one... You've now leveled 1-30 several times. What is the replayability like? Since you said that most of the time you are doing quests, does it get boring to do the same series of quests again on a different character? What about when you hit the top end and run out of quests? All the quests sound like something that would be a lot of fun for a while, but then might cause people to lose interest when they run out of hand-crafted content

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Yes, it does get boring if I hunt in the same lands again with a similiar character. I personally need a lot of time to go by before I hunt in these lands again or I need to start in a new starting town. But I do have a lot of options. If my main was a dwarf and I made a gnome, not really interested in playing the same areas all over again, I can find a way to travel to the human lands or even the night elf newbie lands and just level up there instead. Sometimes I will spend a lot of time in other lands that when I return to my homeland, I will have missed the local quests and the local area and wonder how I was away for so long.

My troll got well into her teens before even exploring the non-newbie level content because it was very time-consuming to try to do all the troll/orc/tauren newbie quests all at once. You don't have to do all of them, but it definitely keeps you busy if you're that ambitious.

I have never run out of quests yet. (I have had a level or two where I was low on quests and couldn't get a new one until the next level. Those seemed slow, but Blizzard responded by adding more quests in those levels based on feedback.) I have hit the level cap (30) with a bunch of quests left to do, but lost the interest in playing the character because I didn't want to blow the XP I could be getting from those quests. I didn't want to get the quests out of the way in case they raised the level cap again and I'd literally be faced with grinding instead of questing my way up.

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Originally Posted by Kain Kath'ranis

Why hello there.

First of all, many many thanks to you alpha and beta guys and all the effort you put into this, and answering all theese questions. Gives a pretty nice idea of what the game could be like, seriously, you guys rock.

I came here through a link from a german fan site, which is in fact THE german fansite with 15.000 registered forum users (so be proud, dammit! ;) ).

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Wow, I think poor Graffe is going to kill us with all the bandwidth. LOL.

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Got three questions for you:

1) How does unlearning a skill work? Do you have to gain experience to decrease the skill, compareable to Asherons Call 2, or do you unlearn it immediately? Do you loose the skill points and all, by unlearning the skill?

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You can unlearn it immediately. There is an icon next to your tradeskill that gives you the option to unlearn it. It will ask you if you are absolutely sure you want to unlearn the skill. Once you click yes, you lose all the points you've put into it. Doesn't matter if you're at apprentence or expert in the skill, you are reset to 0. But you now have all those points available to you to train in something else instead.

http://mywebpage.netscape.com/svanaf...ha/unlearn.jpg

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2) Be honest, a game can't be perfect. Let's hear some more bad facts, what drove you mad, what did you not like at all?

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I'm not super thrilled with the travel system. I understand why it's set up the way it is and I'm trying not to be spoiled about getting to my destination faster. The way it's set up is that there's one main region with the main city (Stormwind, for example). There are mini-towns or areas in that region. If I'm in town F and a quest requires I travel to town G, which isn't really that far from town F, I can't just hop on a griffon from town G and fly to F directly. The only flight path I have in any town is to go back to the main city (Stormwind) and then from there, fly to any town I want. It's like riding the bus -- you have to change buses to get to where you want. There was an inside joke in my guild. The first few times you fly on a griffon, it's a wonderous journey. After that, it's just an excuse to go to the bathroom or grab a soda because you have time to kill.

I don't like the trade channels. I don't like the auctions and having to barter with people to buy something. I would prefer a bazaar in which I can put my items on a vendor and people can buy from there without talking to me at all. I just don't enjoy haggling and would rather buy vendor items than player items. This is a personality thing rather than a game thing. And I don't think Blizzard has decided how trade is actually going to work. It doesn't sound like something they've decided on yet because they've created a temporary trade channel for us to use during the beta instead.

I don't like people knowing when I log on the game. If they have me on their friends list, they will get a message that I've logged on or logged off. I usually need ten minutes to unwind, look over my quest logs, and so on before I'm ready to deal with other people. It's kind of a pain to get bombed with tells right off the bat. That is no one's fault, of course.

I am hoping they will add an /anon feature in the game so I can conceal my level/class. I got random tells often on my priest, asking me to join their groups, especially since they knew I wasn't grouped up. There's a feature that indiciates whether or not I'm currently in a group and that information is used to their advantage. That's perfectly fine -- I just hope I will have the ability to be anon when I want to be left alone.

I'm pretty satisified with the game overall. If anything bothers me, they are mostly minor issues.

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3) I'm a WoW-guild leader, founder of the "KlosterOrden" which would be "MonasteryOrder" 1:1 translated. Actually we are the first german WoW guild, concentrating on WoW's economy... without even knowing anything about it *heh*. So, do you think a guild, concentrating on crafting and selling the goods, does stand a chance? Our main idea is, to split up into gatheres and crafter, so we have some expert-miner working together with some expert-smith, selling the products and make a living of it. Too "StarWars:Galaxy"ish or just right?

Thanks in advance, hope you understood my perfect german english *grin*

- Kain.K

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You cannot grow in your skills without gaining levels. You get one skill point per level. Most tradeskills require a large amount of skills if you wish to graduate to the next level of expertise. And some of the components you need to gather such as herbs or animal leather can only be found on mobs of a specific level. (Medium leather drops from 16+ animals and I think heavy leather drops from 28+ animals.) Some of the herbs can only be found in areas that are surrounded by high level mobs. You will need to be able to take them down. Some herbs need a specific skill level before you can gather them.

Tradeskilling goes hand in hand with leveling. You cannot be level 5 and be an expert in your profession.

Also you only get so many skill points that you are forced to specialize in one or two tradeskills to expert level or you will be a jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none if you try to do them all.

So if your guild plans on leveling up and playing the game, your guild will do very well in tradeskills if you divide up the responsibilities (such as one person does all the engineering and one person does all the enchanting, etc). If your guild would rather just focus on tradeskilling more than playing the game, maybe EQ2 or another MMORPG would be better suited to your needs.

And your english was perfect. :)

http://mywebpage.netscape.com/svanaf...herworking.jpg

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Originally Posted by Pedi Dustyboots

I am hoping they will add an /anon feature in the game so I can conceal my level/class. I got random tells often on my priest, asking me to join their groups, especially since they knew I wasn't grouped up. There's a feature that indiciates whether or not I'm currently in a group and that information is used to their advantage. That's perfectly fine -- I just hope I will have the ability to be anon when I want to be left alone.

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you ignored me just fine in EQ!

I agree wit you pedi, I would like to see a bazaar type system like Horizons uses. You basically put your sellables on a vendor, the vendor takes 10% of your asking price as a fee. When someone buys your item you receive a little message and are credited the silver. I hate haggling.

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Originally Posted by Milaru

you ignored me just fine in EQ!

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LOL, stfu. For someone who can email me everyday and send PMs, you don't have room to be picky! <3 :D

owned! :(

Are rituals currently in the game? If they are could you guys give a general overview of what they are and what they do.

Thanks :)

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100 copper = 1 silver
100 silver = 1 gold

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But how does 1 wow gold compare to eq plat?

Is WoW a game where the tradeskilled items are better than mob dropped items?

How are the elemental type nukes in WoW? Are they more like EQ nukes where it just does damage, or is it like D2/WC3 (to some extent) where ice nukes slow, fire nukes dot (burn)?

Hey guys, I happend to stumble upon this Forum in my frantic and overjoyed readings of everything I can about WoW.

Unfortunately I missed out on applying for the Beta, because of my passion for Final Fantasy XI. Though once I got my Elvaan Samurai up to 60 in all full AF, I became very discourage with the game, for many reasons. On top of that my friends all were interested in WoW, so I started reading up on it, and became very addicted to it.

I was reading about Warlock--which I'm overly enamoured by!--in the Bilzz forum; when I found the link to the Warlock write up here, and eventually this thread! [Though, before I go on, I do want to apologize, since this is actually my first time posting to any forum. On top of that, I hope this isn't a private forum or anything, I do apologize if it is!]

I wanted to ask this burning question somewhere, and this feels like the place to ask it.
Right now, as I've said I'm enamoured by the Warlock class, but I'm stuck on what race to be!
I know it's kinda early to be worrying about it, but I'd like some info if you have the time, and don't mind.

I was thinking of Warlock-Undead, but I prefer playing the "good-guy" roles, and when I have the chance I always play Elves!
Though the Elves on WoW can't choose to be Warlock, and I'm kinda iffy about being Undead, since I like to have many friends online to Party with!

Well, I guess that's about all I really wanted to ask!

I feel kinda weird posting, but what the heck, why not!? :)

Xeldaris

P.S. Oh, One thing I wanted to mention is that you all seem like very cool, great people! You all seem very nice and have a lot of great info! Are you all EQ friends?
Are you all going to make a WoW Guild? =D

Thanks for the great post. love all the info.
still crossing my fingers for a beta email at some point :)

Oh and a request :) post the succubus video !

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Oh and a request post the succubus video !

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Thats the one thing they cant do :(

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Originally Posted by Xeldaris

On top of that, I hope this isn't a private forum or anything, I do apologize if it is!

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No, not private at all. :) Welcome to the discussion!

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I was thinking of Warlock-Undead, but I prefer playing the "good-guy" roles...

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Well, the Undead are definitely the baddest of the bad, in terms of "evil." The Horde faction, though, is not really all that evil -- in their eyes, many things that the Alliance does is very evil, such as how the Taurens abhor how the Dwarves dig up the earth. A Tauren, though, with their love of nature and life, would likely have a nervous breakdown if they saw the torturous, vile experiments going on in the Undercity of the Undead. ;)

I think what you meant, though, is that you would prefer to play a Warlock, and that you like the idea of playing an Elf. The closest you could come to this scenario would be to make a Warlock who is of the same faction as the Night Elves -- an Alliance faction Warlock. That gives you 2 options: Human or Gnome. Both are a ton of fun in their own cultural way. :)