Will there be a WoW section made for Graffe's ?
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Will there be a WoW section made for Graffe's ?
Here are more pics of the great gnomes, which originally I thought were going to be very gooberish, but eventually came to love. They make the best sounds, especially the females in combat.
http://chuma.cas.usf.edu/~dking3/Jingles1.jpg
Naughty dances those tiny gnomes have:
http://chuma.cas.usf.edu/~dking3/Jin...gles_Dance.jpg
Well, even after classes settle down into a final state, I expect there to be new techniques discovered for months and years to come. Look at how the theoretically simple Diablo II supports a host of different strategies, even so many years on. The same eye to balance is being applied here.Quote:
Originally Posted by cys
In addition, there's a great deal of replayability, just given the seperation between Alliance and Horde. Let's say on my dwarf I do 100 percent of all Alliance quests (which would be a LOT of quests -- more than likely, I'd specialize in mostly dwarf quests with others that interest me and save the other paths for alts). That's roughly 40 percent of the content in the game. And while I'm at it, I do all the neutral content (goblins and such), which again, is a LOT of content. Let's generously say that's 20 percent (it's less than that, so far). That means 40 percent of the game -- the Horde-only content -- is still untouched. Even if I again create a character who does ALL of my faction's quests, that's a lot of additional playtime.
i'm really pleased that the cs seems on top of things, that was my main concern-the game being ruined by cheating.
Folks did it in alpha, and it was pretty easy. Some of the tools they used (REALLY customizable UIs) will probably have to be toned down a bit for final release, but it's doable.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nadiar
Having said that, you don't have classes that do as little as classes in EQ might. Your warrior is not going to hit Melee Attack and that's all -- there's a host of special attacks to make, and if you're not making them, the fight's a lot longer and harder.
On my 30 dwarf paladin, I helped Pedi through some quests on her dwarf rogue, who was 10+ levels behind me. It's possible, but most of the tools that we're used to in EQ (huge damage shields, AoE stuns, memblur) aren't available. You'd have to come up with new techniques, although I'm sure people will figure them out well before retail.Quote:
To what extent can you powerlevel in WoW? (i.e. twinking, buffing, etc.) I'm probably one of the few people that consider the ability to power-level a good thing.
I think it's five levels for grouping, but I'm not 100 percent sure, honestly. Pedi and I tried to keep our mains relatively close in level.Quote:
How far is the XP level range (mainly asking this because I have a friend that will play 80+ hours per week, so he usually outlevels me fairly fast)?
AFAIK, you can group up at any levels, such as for help with kill quests or whatever, but I believe you'll only get experience from monsters that are within 5 levels of the highest level party member.
Well, there ARE zones, but they're instaload for the most part, so you have to be using a slow machine or be going into an area with unusually high lag to notice it. (On my dwarf, I ran up to the undead newbie lands, which were apparently undergoing some tweaking when no one was there, and instantly noticed a hit when I crossed the border.)Quote:
Originally Posted by Goladus
I need a little more RAM at the moment, so I always have a momentary hang the first time I go into an indoors environment after logging on (all buildings are seperate zones from the outdoors, so you don't have bears and such reaching in to kill you through walls, although they might run in the front door if they see you inside). Likewise, when I run in through the Stormwind gates, I notice a momentary hitch as SW is currently the big population center for player trading, and I'm going from a newbie zone with 20 something players to one with 50 something in much closer proximity to one another.
Having said that, it's worth noting that graphics are not yet optimized, and I expect this to get a lot better. When graphics were optimized in the Warcraft III beta, things changed noticeably.
The human province of Duskwood is the WoW version of Ravenloft, and may be the best Ravenloft CRPG to date. The music's like something out of a slasher film, and the villains range from a little campy to very creepy. (Vash got his shoulders after we killed a cannibal who had been buried alive by her husband -- we had to dig out his living heart out of her chest. It's complicated. :p)Quote:
Originally Posted by Galamar
The undead lands have a different tone to them -- post-apocalyptic fantasy, if that's a genre that makes sense -- and are creepy in another way. Even the living survivors of the Scourge don't seem to have much hope, more just pure stubborness. It's really depressing in a way -- the Alliance quests in the area feel like trying to hold back the ocean, and the NPCs even regard them as such.
Now, not all of the game feels like this, but it tends to be just as strong in whatever tone they're going for.
Indeed, I loved how stark & rough the desert lands of the proud, strong orcs was, and also how green and vibrant the lands were of the earth-loving Taurens. The game music helps reinforce the moods, too, when you travel to different areas. ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by Whizbang Dustyboots
Thank you Pedi and Vash for replying. I LOVE the gnome size!!!! God. I gotta stop reading this thread. I am getting bummed all over again.
Whizbang has turned me into a believer....a true believer....VILE EVIL EQ and Solsuck RO. Vash im coming for ya buddy!
Not really. You can't do 99.9 percent of the quests twice, and resources gathered for tradeskills drop randomly off any creature of the right type and level. (Light hide can be skinned off of any low teens beast-class monster, for instance.)Quote:
Originally Posted by Dmitry the Wizzy
You pretty much know what we do at this point.Quote:
Have they begun to disclose anything about PvP?
Have they disclosed anything about endgame content?
There are both. The Royal Library in the palace in Stormwind has four or five books you can read, and you get a number of books for various quests, 99.9 percent of which can be read, along with various documents obtained in quests. The Valley of Heroes outside Stormwind's gates also has a series of statues of the heroes of Beyond the Dark Portal and the statues have placques (sp?) at their bases. One of the books in the Royal Library also talks about them. (The human heroes in question were mostly from Azeroth, as I recall, and not other nations of the Alliance.)Quote:
Whiz! No comments about the lore? How much is there? Are there books you can read? Or NPCs that just talk to you about background stuff?
Instanced dungeons are HUGE. I'd expected limited dungeons of just randomized passages like LDoN. Nope. They're hand-crafted (VERY hand-crafted) and huge, with multiple quests that point inside them. The first time I crawled the Wailing Caverns in the Barrens on my troll, I kept thinking that SURELY we'd seen all of it, and there kept being more wings and more stuff to do. I think it took us over four hours to finally clear it, and we had unfinished quests at that point that could have occupied at least one more four hour session.Quote:
Dungeons? What about Dungeons!? Have you tried em? Are they like instanced adventures? Is there loot in em?
Randomly dropped loot off of spawns can be either randomized loots ("bard's boots of stamina," etc.) or, more rarely, can be certain non-random items ("forester's axe").Quote:
Speaking of Loot... how does loot work? Randomized like in Diablo? Certain monsters drop certain loot? Nameds drop better loot? You probably only care if you are on a quest since that is the best loot?
Quests aren't always the best loot, although some of it certainly is (especially from elite quests). In dwarf push, I got an amazing breastplate for my paladin off a random monster we were fighting on a quest, and it was better than the quest reward. On the other hand, I currently have an outstanding quest for a helmet (waiting on the level cap to be raised, since I don't want to blow the mammoth XP reward for completing the quest) that's far better than I could smith and better than any helmet I've seen dropping in the game.
At the moment, it's like a pre-Bazaar EQ, with Stormwind substituting for East Commonlands for the Alliance. But we're told more things are coming.Quote:
How is the economy? How is the player ecomonomy supported? Auction channel? Are there any player vendors?
Weeeell, there are post-30 quests done. We can see the silver exclamation points for level 31-35 quests, and there's plenty of them around. (I know, because I go run up to those NPCs every time I level, seeing if the quests are NOW unlocked.) In addition, many of the high 20s quests ain't gonna get completed by most folks until the high 30s. (The dwarven lifequest one that sends you into the undead lands looks incredibly scary and hard, for instance.)Quote:
Here is a big one: I just reread this thread. The game really does not seem to be very close to done. Correct me if I am wrong please but, um... in no place are levels 31-60 made. No quests for them - no skill balancing - no items. No end game at all. BAH! Fricking game is not close at all.... gonna be at least another six months!!!
They're also hiring yet more quest designers (or may just have done so), all of whom are presumably going to be fleshing out 31-60 first.
I don't think beta's going to be a one or two month affair, though. Although I can't say with any real certainty, six months wouldn't personally surprise me.
And given the high quality of what we've seen so far -- quests as good as the Coldain ring quests for newbies, for crying out loud -- I'm willing to wait.
I married one of them, in fact. :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Rombus
But we both see that priests and druids are VERY different from their EQ incarnations at this point. Based on the druid NPCs I fought while on my Horde characters, I expect WoW druids to actually appeal to EQ ranger players more than druid players, to be frank.
My answer is the same as a lot of folks', I think: My first griffon ride. Truly a jaw-dropper moment.Quote:
Originally Posted by Galamar
Well, I think everyone who's played an MMORPG knows the feeling of fighting your way to a spawn, only to see people there before you, and feel your heart sort of sink. Time after time after time in WoW, someone goes "how many in your group" and invites you, since you all share in the quest reward that way. I'm sure there will be WoW-specific frustrations in the years to come, but having a lot of the stupid head-butting crap that PoP has made me so exhausted with GONE for the most part is just a wonderful relief.Quote:
What certain experience really set the game apart from others?
Pedi's walking out the door, but she says there's a LOT of gnome love in WoW, including a scripted gnomish experiment in Dun Morogh as the result of completing a gnome-centric quest, and you can actually bet on a drag race in a higher level area where the gnomes are racing against their arch-rival goblins. (And when we say bet on it, we mean buy tickets and turn them in after you see who's won -- wasn't fully completed in alpha, but it's like half-done currently and very neat. Also a good area for quests.)
Thanks for the post Whizband you've effectively forced me to take a week off of work to enjoy the game when ever it's release or if I get into beta.
Eriik
If you'll go back and read the post as a whole, rather than as a biased EQ-player, you'll see that there is an entire section called "What WoW is NOT." In that section, there is an entire list of things that he contrasts.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dephton
Many of the MMORPG's that have come out in the last few years HAVE been like EQ to a certian extent. FFXI is the perfect example... if you were writing a review about FFXI, a comment: "This is NOT EQ" should not be in a prominant position in the article. FFXI is different from EQ, but in many ways it is very similar, to the point where it could credibly be called an EQ clone. A very good one imo, but a clone nonetheless. DAoC is the exact same way. When Lords of Everquest came out, people quickly denounced it as Warcraft III with less fun. That a new game is simply a carbon copy of what's currently on the market is ALWAYS a legitamite concern. Companies are always trying to foist regurgitated garbage on you, and it's often helpful when a reviewer assures you that, for this product, it's refreshingly different. And, seperating the good reviewers from the bad, are the ones who actually take the time to explain what's different and why they think it's good or bad.
Taking a look at the paragraph in question, what does Whiz write? That it;s...
NOT Generic Fantasy D&D and not EQ (sheesh the comment about EQ wasn't even the primary part of the sentence)
NOT High Elves, Dark Elves. No Wood Elves though night elves are somewhat like them. This is not a comparison against EQ. This is a comparison against Generic High Fantasy, and to a certian extent previous Warcraft lore.
NOT Arcanum, though there is a well-integrated steampunk factor. (Steampunk is, generically speaking, 'high' technology in a fantasy world. Final Fantasy 7 has a lot of "steampunk")
NOT D&D or EQ Classes
NOT DAoC - PvP etc.
NOT Diablo - If you've read any boards outside this one, and indeed even if you look at the reactions to this thread, you'll note that one of the concerns (imo one of the most significant concerns) about World of Warcraft is that it is going to be too much like Diablo in terms of fast levelling and ability to solo.
NOT Warcraft RTS - Again, a legitimate curiosity. Many people really don't know what to expect from the game, and only know that it has WARCRAFT in the title and that WARCRAFT is a series of Real Time Strategy games. It wouldn't have been at all surprising if Warcraft had been little more than Warcraft 3 stretched over a MMORPG frame.
Well, in case you hadn't noticed, this is an EQ board. While it seems like the (rather massive) review was tailored towards a varied audience, it was posted at Graffe's which is a primarily EQ-veteran audience. A good writer knows what his audience understands, which allows a more nuanced review.Quote:
Hopefully the next writeup will be a bit less about EQ and a bit more about WoW. Thanks for the effort though.
Hopefully the next time you read it, you'll read the whole thing and not just the first couple of topic sentences of the first few paragraphs.
Hi, I was linked to this post by a friend. I was not able to get into the beta, to my great disappointment. Thus, I was inordinately pleased to have such a well-written overview of WoW to console me. It's not quite the same as being in the beta, obviously, but I think much of the magic was conveyed... and boy, I can't wait to play. Thank you very much for writing such a great and in-depth description Whizbang, as well as all the other Graffe alpha-goers who added on (particularly ye olde succubus summoner).
I have one question: was there any mention of the Lich King or any of that storyline during alpha, from NPCs or such? Can WC3 heroes be seen wandering about? Two questions. Nobody expects the spanish inquisition!
AFAIK, they're still mailing out emails for this first round of the beta. There are more phases of the beta to come, with more people added to each. Keep your chin up!Quote:
Originally Posted by Tenarius
Lich King references, definitely. Tons of references, especially in the Undead characters, who are free of demonic control, and actively fight both those who are still mindlessly evil slaves (regular undead monsters) and those who would persecute them for being touched by the Scourge, even though they are now independent.Quote:
I have one question: was there any mention of the Lich King or any of that storyline during alpha, from NPCs or such?
Any chance we can get a screenshot or five of the undead? :)