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OMG! OK, i expect to be showered with flowers, guys! :DQuote:
Flowers are equipable. As far as I know, there is one quest in the human lands that result in a lovely bouqet of roses for your off hand (no stats). There's a flower shop in Stormwind where you can get wildflower, roses, or even black roses for your gal.
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Originally Posted by luxum
/em cringes as he is beaten to a pulp by a bunch of roses.
Well, I get the fact that there is an internal Blizzard non-alpha server set. However, I do not think they have even built the high end stuff yet.Quote:
They didn't say 31+ isn't made, they said its not done yet.
They also don't have Hunters and Druids in the game yet, but that doesn't mean they don't exist.
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.
Still, even with them only reaching half their power, they get lots of neat tricks. The basics first, though. You get spells every 2 levels, except for first, when you start out with a couple. You get quests for your pets, starting at 5th level for your Imp pet (who can nuke fireballs but runs like a chicken when the baddies come after him, screaming), 10th for your Voidwalker (a tanking pet which can taunt), 20th for your Succubus (a rogue type pet which can de-taunt, making the monster attack others, and can do a backstab style attack from behind, and later can do a single-target mez), and presumably 30th for your Felhound (not in yet). Each quest gets progressively harder, and it's pretty cool how each race & culture has their own spin on the quests.
The Voidwalker and Succubus (and presumably later pets which aren't in yet), use Soul Shards; these are also used by other spells such as a spell that converts one to a quick heal of a certain amount, or a Soulstone (see below). Soul Shards are gathered with the spell you get at level 10 called "Drain Soul," which is generally cast near the end of the fight. It does a bit of DOT damage, but more importantly, if it's still on the monster while it dies, you get a Soul Shard, draining its essence for fuel, basically. There are higher level versions which do more DOT damage, also. These items are Soulbound, so you can't trade them off, but the other creations you make with them (healing bloodstone, or soulstone for a sel-rez) can be traded to others. It takes a shard to Summon another person to your position too, as well as the help of others in the spell (see below). It takes 2 shards to make a Soulstone for a self-rez, so pack a lot of them when you can harvest them. Each pet can also be trained at later levels for other abilities, such as a +Stamina buff from the Imp for the whole party, or the "Seduction" power of the Succubus (single-target mez). You visit the Demon Pet Trainer for those, who is generally in the same area as your trainers are in the capital cities (except for Ironforge, for some reason, so gnomes have to train their pets in Stormwind, the human city).
More basics: They use Fire Magic, Shadow Magic, Curses & Demon Mastery spells. What that means is that they can use a Fire DOT with a DD component and also use Wands that are based on fire (which I like to do when I run across creatures that are highly resistant to Shadow magic). Shadow Magic covers their DD Shadow Bolts (very cool looking), their Corruption line of DOTs, and their Fear spells (I think). Curses have a few varieties, including one that weakens the foe's physical attacks, one that actually raises their attacks but prevents them from fleeing (good in dungeons and crowded areas), one that does another DOT, and one that forces the caster foe to speak in Demon Tongue, thus reducing their casting time by 100%.
You can only have one curse on at a time, but for the fire and shadow magics, a higher level of one will overwrite the lower one.
Their other tricks include: they can summon a non-aggro "Eye" to scout ahead (level 28 I think), an AE Rain of Fire (level 20 I think, fun to drop one in town and watch newbies freak out), a summoned Nightmare mount so you don't have to buy a horse or other mount (not in game yet), Detect Invisibility, Demon Breath (waterbreathing), Summon people to your location from anywhere (needs the help of 2 other people, who right click the portal to help you concentrate on it), Siphon Mana (as well as Siphon Health, which is earlier), convert Health to Mana, Sense Demons (show up on the mini-map in the top right), Command Demons (effectively giving you a new Demon pet, by taking over control of the one that was just running at you), they can make Bloodstones to heal and can create Soulstones (which can be given out, and let a player resurrect on the spot rather than having to do a time-consuming corpse run as a ghost), they can "Banish" also (freezes a single target for a short time, but makes it immune to any damage until the spell wears off; good to stop a quick add), they can do a last-chance "Hellfire" spell, which does a PBAE fire damage around them, but also damages themselves. They can do even more, but some of those things aren't in the game yet, so I can't comment. I'll look to see what they are the next time I visit my trainer to see what I forgot.
Warlocks wear cloth armor and start off knowing the Dagger skill, but they can elect to spend 2 Skill Points to learn Staves (you generally get 1 SP per level, except Humans who get a bonus skill point every 5 levels, which are used for some weapons or for tradeskills). I am doing both weapons with this most recent Warlock, good stuff.
Stamina is important for a Warlock. Spirit is good to help you regain both mana and health, and Intellect is good to give you more mana, and Strength is good to help you do more melee damage, but Stamina is very important. After all, you get a spell line that converts health to mana, and also after you get your Succubus pet, you'll find that you will have her casting her spell to make the monster attack another target, which usually means you, bub. She does her best work while being behind the mob anyway, so she can do her backstab-style Lash of Pain. So, it's vital to be able to survive the hits the mobs dish out until your spells, your melee and her melee, and your DOTs kill it.
In a group scenario, the Warlock is pretty versatile. Besides the Summons or the Soulstones to self-rez or the Bloodstones to heal they can hand out, they have several pets to choose from, depending on the situation. The Imp can stand back and nuke, generating little aggro, and gives the party a Stamina boost. The Voidwalker runs in and helps dish out tanking damage; you can elect to "turn off" his taunt ability, too, if you just want him to bash but not taunt off the main tank. The Succubus can dish out a lot of damage with her backstab style attack, and can mez a single add for a short time. The Warlock has to be careful with his DD Shadow Bolts not to do too much damage too quickly, as the monsters don't like that and will turn on foolish casters, but 2 of the 3 DOTs don't do damage at first when they land, so they can be thrown on the monster with relative impunity. They can weaken a mob, or cast the Curse which prevents them from running away and potentially aggro'ing other mobs, siphon off some of the mob's health or mana for their own, and when the need really arises, they have their AE rain of fire or Hellfire. Don't overlook their melee abilities, either. They generally do decent damage, but don't often do more than the tank, so they can aid by poking or bashing the monster, also.
EDIT: Forgot to mention the Pet healing line of spells, which let you channel some of your hitpoints to your pet. ;) Also, forgot to mention that if you change your mind later, you can get your Skill Points back by unlearning the Staves skill, or any tradeskill you might have been working on, so you're not stuck with a staff skill you never use or a tradeskill you ended up hating.
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Originally Posted by Vashanti
GREAT STUFF VASH!!! Wow! Just an incredibly interesting class! AND POINY HATS!!!! GOOD LORD!!!!
We got the point that it wasn't EQ the first 20 times you said it. I can't wait until this game is released and the same people now that constantly complain about how unfair EQ is find that the same people that ended up with better shit than them in EQ will repeat the same in WoW.
Hopefully the next writeup will be a bit less about EQ and a bit more about WoW. Thanks for the effort though.
When you're talking to EQ players about a new MMO- you need to emphasis (over and over) that it is different from EQ and, most importantly, that it is not EQ. Do you know how many people have said "I'm not going to play a Priest or Druid in WoW because I hated them in EQ!" ? A lot.
Nice writeup, Whiz. ;)
Since this site is like, you know, ~directly related to EQ~ it is perfectly reasonable and welcome for him to compare and contrast the two games. It's good to know that many things we enjoyed about EQ are also present in WoW, and that those things we hated have been dealt with.
Wow, you managed to get a sticky on the blizzard forums too, nice read whiz, very excited now about the game.
How has the cs been in alpha so far? As far as answers to petitions, bug fixes, exploits taken care of etc. How quick are they?
Awesome write up Whiz.. I didn't get a Beta email.. :(
A very good write-up. Thank you for taking the time.
I know it is still a distance away from completion, but has Blizzard leaned towards a minimum requirement for computers? I am positive my one box would be able to handle the push, but figured I should ask just in case .
Again, thanks.
>>>>>Axlrose - ...<<<<<
There was only a /bug and a /suggest command. If you were seriously hindered in your testing abilities by being stuck on the geometry or something, you could use the /stuck command which would take you to your bind point after about a 5 minute time period. The 5 minutes is there to stop people from exploiting it, which happened during the first human push.Quote:
Originally Posted by Flintnilf
Many times, there were devs or GM's online and if they were, you simply had to ask in the general chat if they could help you. There really was no full Customer Support during the Alpha stages. You mainly relied on your own smarts, the forums, and other players. This isn't a fault in the game, it's an alpha.
As far as getting rid of bugs and exploits, they are very much so on top of it. I can only remember one instance (during the horde push) when the level cap was raised from 25 to 30 and warriors found a way to level very quickly. The person that found the exploit reported it as soon as he / she found it, however they continued to play with that character and hit level 30 very, very quickly. The only reason this exploit wasn't taken care of faster was simply because it was right after a patch that was implemented late on a Friday night, leaving a good portion of the weekend for people to abuse it.
Now that beta has officially started, they have implemented a true CS. It is in it's infancy so I'm sure they may have some bumps in the road. However, in my opinion, Blizzard has done everything right so far.. so I doubt those bumps will be that big.
Thanks Dmitry. :) I don't want to turn you off from the Mage class, though, as they have a really fun playstyle also. Seriously, Arcane Missiles rock! Zap Zap Zap ;) A bit more like an EQ Wizard, imho, with the fire or ice damage or arcane magical damage, and self-teleports at later levels. I just don't have enough experience with them yet to write up anything meaningful. And who knows? Maybe they'll get pointy hats in the future too. :D
Another thing about CS in the alpha: if you were SOL, you could always also email them, and they'd get back to you. I think I only had to do that once, though.
There are no zones in WoW unless you enter an instanced dungeon or go to Kalimdor from Azeroth on the other side of the world (both continents are on different servers, seperate from instanced dungeons). Zoning has never taken longer than ten seconds when entering a dungeon. But other than that, you can run anywhere you wish without zoning -- I can run from the dwarven newbie lands all the way over to the undead newbie lands without zoning. Might get killed pretty badly in the process, but I still wouldn't zone. ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by Goladus
And regardless of that, whenever the server crashed (as is expected in any alpha), it was never a painful process to log back on the game. I was impressed with the load time (a fraction of the time it takes to log on to EQ).
Pedi - sorry we lost touch :( I honestly didn't like mage and still don't like it currently. To me it's not versatile enough compared to a lot of the classes. I don't find it a necessity or even add in member for a group really atm but that's just me. I'm really hoping they give the class some more umph. I LOVED polymorph but do understand why they took it out but think it could possibly still be added without being overpowered. When Chains of Ice and Poly were live it was almost unstoppable.
Vash's write up on Warlock is right on and the best description i've seen posted about that class. I LOVE them and I think it's one of the more involved classes to play in the game. You won't stand still playing one of these. The succubus pet slaps her arse :) and blows kisses at mobs. Can't beat that.
Guilds were easy to form by typing /guildcreate but not sure what their system will be like or if that’s staying the same. The tabards cost 10g and at everytime we’d start a new push we’d have guildmembers auctioning like mad to get money up and we’d all pool together to get one. One member will go buy a tabard for 10g and design it. They have different colors and symbols that you can put on your tabard. Once a tabard is created then the other members can go buy their tabards for 1g.Quote:
Talk to me about guilds!! How hard are they to form/get tabards for!?
The only real camping I’ve seen maybe is doing instanced dungeons over and over which do not affect others due to being an instance. There are a few spots that do have items that were dropping regularly such as a neck and head slot (highly sought after) during Horde push and we did camp those a bit but they have since changed that area.Quote:
Is there any sense of "camping" By that I mean just sort of repeatedly doing the same thing ad naseum?
One of the coolest things I’ve seen in the game was at the start of undead push, and the beginning intro. There are no cut scenes in the game itself but there is some awesome scripts and quest dialogues. In one of the quests the ghost will come back from their past and when turning in the needed item you will see the npc talk and the ghost appear in front of them. They will carry on some dialogue between them, then the ghost fades away.Quote:
Do they do cut scenes like in FFXI?
The instanced dungeons are awesome!! And yes have great loot. Some loot is off creeps that you need to kill for quests. Other is just random off mobs within the instance. There are named in there that also drop items. Some of the dungeons currently out are: Shadowfang in the Undead area, Deadmines in the Humans area, Stockade in Humans area, Razorfen Kraul in the Horde area and I know I’m forgetting something.Quote:
Dungeons? What about Dungeons!? Have you tried em? Are they like instanced adventures? Is there loot in em?
We had chat channels for general and trade so if a player wanted to sell something they would just start an auction in the trade channel. They are going to work in a better system and everyone seems to love the idea of player vendors / consignment type of set up so we’ll see. The spam for alpha wasn’t that bad but can’t imagine the spam from live. I’d let someone go more into the economy since I really hate selling and gave more of my stuff to guildmates.Quote:
How is the economy? How is the player ecomonomy supported? Auction channel? Are there any player vendors?
So there's a few answers I guess and more can add onto it :)
There are several zones which have higher level monsters and content, in the 40s or higher, which we tried out even though we were eaten alive often. ;) But you're right, some areas are still closed off, especially higher level areas, which they're still working on.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dmitry the Wizzy
Pretty fun! If you play in the alliance, you will get a kick out of Duskwood. The cemeteries are overrun with ghouls and skeletons and werewolves. It's like Spooky Hollow. There's one quest that seems harmless at first, but you actually unwittingly end up creating an abomination that slays everything in its path, hellbent on ravaging the town of Darkshire. Town criers will shout out to the area status reports such as the monster overtaking this or that watchpost. You will see miles of corpses of players who want a "go" at taking the abomination down. Tons of fun.Quote:
Originally Posted by Galamar
In the undead lands, all this seems normal and a way of life for them. There are still towns full of human NPCs to slay and the fun thing is that the town turns into werewolves at night.
Cool!
Oh, and what was your favorite moment in Alpha? What certain experience really set the game apart from others?
They are very small, I kid you not. Dwarves tower over them! See picture for height comparison.Quote:
Gnomes are how big?
http://mywebpage.netscape.com/svanaf...nomeheight.jpg
Like Savanna said, not sure how hard it will be to form a guild in retail. We were able to create a guild instantly because there were so few of us. It did cost ten gold to *set* a tabard design (only guild leader can do this), but if you wanted to wear a tabard, you needed to cough up a gold and buy a regular tabard from a vendor. The tabard will be blank (pure white) if you are not in a guild or your guild leader didn't set a design. In every major city (human, dwarf, etc), the tabard NPCs are located in the visitor center.Quote:
Talk to me about guilds!! How hard are they to form/get tabards for!?
http://mywebpage.netscape.com/svanaf...pha/tabard.jpg
No, not at all. The only thing that comes close are when players need tradeskill drops. Animals naturally drop leather and certain NPCs drop linen/wool for tailoring. I would go to certain areas and kill mobs to farm the drops, but it was never really "camping." People are good about staying out of your way if you're there to complete a quest and they will leave certain mobs alone. But even so, they improved tradeskill drops to reduce the need to farm, IMO. They just added in "skinning" so you can skin your kill and get more leather that way. People now just wait for you to finish killing an animal before skinning your corpse. (I don't mean they are right there while you're killing it -- they will run up to it after you've looted the corpse and left because you might be doing your own skinning for all they know.)Quote:
Is there any sense of "camping" By that I mean just sort of repeatedly doing the same thing ad naseum?