End of World of Warcraft Beta 64
Today the Beta servers will be shut down, and by next week when the game ships all character information will be wiped from the system. After over six months, the World of Warcraft Beta Test is coming to an end. The test's final days are not without problems. Shiptar writes "Seems that some of the World of Warcraft Forum Moderator accounts were hijacked, and some posts were made deriding the latest patch. There's a discussion on WoW Vault Boards. It's not clear if the Moderator accounts were compromised, or a vulnerability in the forum software was used. The WoW boards have been down since last night."
Bandwidth (Score:1, Interesting)
I sense danger... (Score:1)
*cough*sony*cough*
That kind of censorship never helps anyone.
I sense misdirection... (Score:1)
The original post has nothing to do with that anyway, it's someone editing posts by forum moderators to make THEM look very negative.
Plenty of beta players post very negative things, but only ones that break the rules (racism, foul language, etc.) are ever deleted.
And please, for the love of god, do not ever mention Blizzard as being anything like Sony.
>.>
Re:I sense danger... (Score:2)
Every dev is going to do that. However I think Sony has it correct with EQ2 they censor the boards but move all censored messages to a single board where you can read all of them, along with the reason they were censored.
My experience (Score:3, Insightful)
However, I was totally hooked and will be getting a copy as soon as i can. It should be noted, however, that although the game is great fun, it doesnt have the quite "finished" feel, if for no other reason that there is a lot of imbalance between the classes.
Paladins and Shamans seem to be considerably better than most other classes: some classes, like druid are pretty poor (I speak as a druid, and I love the druid abilities, but we do suck.)
Admittedly, most of the "discussion" on the forums seem to be bitching about other classes being too powerful, and requests to have things nerfed, but there IS a class imbalance. Its not even like Blizzard are trying to keep things balanced, they seem to be taking a more "fix the alliance map, fix this class, fix that class" rather than gradually improving everything.
Also, it takes forever to get anywhere. I nearly quit playing after my second day because i was so bored just walking from place to place; it can take 15 minutes, just walking, to get to certain areas. If you wanted to walk across the entire map, you could be talking about hours.
However, those small points aside, it is a beautiful game. I wish they would make movement slightly faster, but other than that i am in awe, and worship blizzard as gods.
I should also point out as well, i hated warcraft 3 (the skirmish mode, which was the reason i bought it, was insanely hard with no difficulty setting.) so its not like im a warcraft junkie.
Just wish Europe would get Warcraft earlier.
Re:My experience (Score:4, Insightful)
However, I was totally hooked and will be getting a copy as soon as i can.
Why do you think they do open betas? QA!?
It should be noted, however, that although the game is great fun, it doesnt have the quite "finished" feel, if for no other reason that there is a lot of imbalance between the classes.
Paladins and Shamans seem to be considerably better than most other classes: some classes, like druid are pretty poor (I speak as a druid, and I love the druid abilities, but we do suck.)
Admittedly, most of the "discussion" on the forums seem to be bitching about other classes being too powerful, and requests to have things nerfed, but there IS a class imbalance. Its not even like Blizzard are trying to keep things balanced, they seem to be taking a more "fix the alliance map, fix this class, fix that class" rather than gradually improving everything.
Welcome to the world of MMORPG's. This is always the case. If you don't believe me, visit the user boards for City of Heroes (where every class except the Blaster has people saying they love the class but consider it critically underpowered... and the Blasters whine about how easilly they get killed.)
Don't even get me started on the SQG Jedi.
Game balance is so close to impossible, it's best that you just never worry about it, and play the character type which you enjoy most. Who cares if the game comes easier to some people because the munchkin out on the "best" classes. Those are like people who keep Soul Calibur dialed down to the "Easy" setting, even after they've unlocked all the characters. Be proud that you are not like them.
Also, it takes forever to get anywhere. I nearly quit playing after my second day because i was so bored just walking from place to place; it can take 15 minutes, just walking, to get to certain areas. If you wanted to walk across the entire map, you could be talking about hours.
Also true of nearly every MMORPG. If it doesn't take forever to get anywhere, users complain that the world is too small. This often leads to game designers caving in to customer demand for widespread "teleporting" abilities of some sort or another. Maybe WoW will have this sort of thing hammered out by the time it becomes available in the EU.
Re:My experience (Score:3, Informative)
Re:My experience (Score:2)
Re:My experience (Score:2)
You should try City of Heroes. After level 15, getting around town is half the fun, particularly if you take Super Jump.
Re:My experience (Score:2)
Class balance is very difficult to maintain, but it's not impossible. EQ1 is a decent example of this.
Who cares if the game comes easier to some people because the munchkin out on the "best" classes?
A lot of people care. Actually this is probably the single most devastating thing that can happen to an MMORPG player(short of account deletion). Spending 3 years with a character, grinding away and getting to know its play-factors in every detail, only to have a de
Re:My experience (Score:2)
Fortunately, Blizzard realized that people hate to just sit there and grind out experience. Having played during the open beta that was the one thing that leaped out. There is no grinding. I always had more quests on my todo list. Between trade skills and quests quite a few of the quests were turning green on me before I got to them. Turning green indicates that they are below your level.
There was n
Re:My experience (Score:2)
Dwarft Subway. Quick transport.
Gryphons. Quicker Transport.
Teleport at highest levels. Instant Transport.
You have a hearthstone, for town recall. Instant Transport. "freebie once and hour"
There are so many different way to get around this game, but it still fells large. At level 25 I did not find it at all a pain to get from place to place for a few silver.
Re:My experience (Score:2)
Yeah I agree. They did a very good job of "scaling" transportation with territory.
Re:My experience (Score:2)
Don't even play FFXI, the world is freaking HUGE. In the time it took me to get from Dolonaar to Darnassus to Auderpine (WoW), about 10-15 minutes, I would have gotten through two areas in FFXI (leaving Bastok, South Gustburg, a
What!? (Score:3, Funny)
had a great time (Score:3, Interesting)
This weekend will be one of withdrawal and suffering, before the solvent rush of renewed addiction.
Re:had a great time (Score:1)
Re:had a great time (Score:3, Insightful)
Heretic. How dare you compare MUDs to Diablo. You'll have people believing you don't know the difference between persistent and instanced worlds.
WoW is sharp. As long as I don't get tired of questing, I can see about a year's worth of playing working through various character classes, with just the current content. They're going to have to work to keep my interest for 3 years like AC did.
My problems with WoW have to do
Merely Excellent (Score:5, Insightful)
They have done beautiful job with the game, nothing ground breaking its basically the same ol' stuff presented on a silver platter.
The classes do not seem to be completely balanced but all of the classes are fun to play. I have played every single class and I enjoyed them all, For example a druid has a bunch of spells, but also has the ability to tank by changing into bear form which is great!
Problems with the game right now... There have been times of extreme lag. Ofcourse the fanboi's will say that it is a stress test so thats why there was lag. But in my honest opinion that lag is going to exist when the game comes live. There very rarely is a miracle build and I doubt blizzard have one either.
No graphical glitches, no quest glitches (The quests are a lot of fun and a nice alternative to killing 5432 Kobolds to get a level), No crashes
The game is easy but it is fun! Methinks I am going to buy this game....
Re:Merely Excellent (Score:5, Interesting)
You did the impossible Blizzard. You finally shut me up about Starcraft 2.
Re:Merely Excellent (Score:2)
Yeah. Now I want World of Starcraft when I get tired of World of Warcraft, "Wing Commander Privateer" style.
That should be 2 or 3 years, plenty of time for them to get it done.
Re:Merely Excellent (Score:2)
Yes I agree completely. I always thought the guy who did the music/sounds in Diablo(1996) was a genius. I can only assume they rehired him to do WoW. Here's a quote I dug up from a review of Diablo:
"The music is clear and crisp, adding to the gaming experience without becoming a nuisance. There are a variety of music tracks, all redbook audio, and all intuitively designed. With each new
Re:Merely Excellent (Score:2)
--Jeremy
Re:Merely Excellent (Score:3, Interesting)
It should be noted that this was lag within the game server itself, and not between the server and the clients. It's not that there were too many people hogging the internet bandwidth, but rather that
Re:Merely Excellent (Score:2)
Re:Merely Excellent (Score:1)
It took a while before the real depth of the gameplay was uncovered.
Horde vs. Alliance war on the last day (Score:3, Interesting)
The alliance resorted to hit-and-run tactics, which whittled us down bit by bit untill we were at a size where their main force was finally assembled and steamrolled over us. Now that they had a sizeable army they figured it was a good time to attack our town (the crossroads) while we were down for the count.
Which in turn sparked another rally to regroup another force to counterattack (in additon to the two raid parties). It was bloodshed and meyhem, dead bodies everywhere!
I love this game, but first thing's first: need to upgrade my video card. All those players online really brought my old video card to it's knees..
Re:Horde vs. Alliance war on the last day (Score:2)
Hella fun, and contrary to the comments I've seen, I was having silky smooth framerates at 1280x960 rez with a hundred or so toons on the screen at times.
Geforce FX5900 256mb that I picked up for $175 in an open box sale a while back.
The graphics engine handles far more without going into shock than DAoC did -- and I used to fight in fairly epic battles with hundreds there.
I'm really looking for the PvP to be fleshed out on the stan
Re:Horde vs. Alliance war on the last day (Score:1)
But I felt that it did highlight one of the flaws of WoW, which is that the targetting system really fails when you have lots of people on-screen. I had almost no way of telling who my target was at any one time, to the point that I'd have to fire off a lightning bolt just to find out where my enemy was. They really should have a big white or blue arrow over the head of your target, kind of like the hunter ability.
not perfect, but best out there (Score:5, Informative)
I have subscribed to a lot of MMOGs and have spent a lot of time playing them. While there have been MMOGs with flashier graphics or more original gameplay ideas, this is by far the most complete and polished of them all.
The simple fact that you can level from 1 to 60 just by doing quests and never do the same quest twice (you can't repeat any of the quests) is a HUGE deal maker for me. Yes, there's a lot of running around involved, but as long as the areas are aesthetically pleasing (they are) and they're not empty (most MMOGs seem to have these vast expanses of land that is completely barren except for a small amount of vegetation), then I'm happy to run to and fro.
Ooops, I wasn't going to run on and on about this.
This was a great vacation from other MMORPGS (Score:5, Informative)
Honestly, even with the beta flaws, the game was great.
The negative:
No PvP reward system.
Massive lag
Game occasinally crashed while in PvP
Class imbalances, mage types appeared to have a major advantage over all other classes
bugged quests, abilities, etc..
Whiny kids asking for everbody in general chat to guide them through every single quest regardless of whether the quest log told them exactly what to do. Mind you that when the lag occured they were the first to type, "OMG!!!!11111 LAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGG"
The positive:
Good graphics
PvP reward system should be in at retail
Massive world to explore
PvP was fun for the first couple of days till it became apparent that it simply detracted from questing and xping (I had alot of fun with it regardless).
Lots of interesting quests, this is the best way to lv your character. Also, it I found it best to always find quests that took place in the same general area, so you didn't have to run back and forth as much. An example area is duskwood where you had to trek to Raven's hill many many times ( a 15+ minute walk from Duskwood).
Casual feel makes the game fun, instead of like work.
Lots of humerous little things such as Gubber Blump, a sort of dunce, who is WoW's equivalent to Forest Gump.
In any case, I find it a shame that all our characters are being deleted. I expected it, but there was a rumor going around that Blizzard was going to let us keep our characters for retail.
Many people, including myself fear that all the "nooby" areas upon release will have massive amounts of players attemping to quest and xp. Choking the areas, and creating a sort of frustration. Hopefully it won't be as bad as I fear.
I also hope they get the lag problems solved. Many people said that it was mainly part of the stress test, but who knows. Blizzard isn't infallable and while they're doing a good job, really they are in uncharted waters.
Negatives? (Score:2)
I don't get this. I started a mage and it wasn't that easy. I switched to a hunter and it's much easier. You can tank (not as well as a warrior) and you get a great pet at level 10 along with excellent ranged attacks. I could have mobs my own level down to 2/3 before they got to me... With the mage, you pretty much had to blast them down to nothing before they got to you because you couldn't take a hit, which is
Re:Negatives? (Score:2)
Re:This was a great vacation from other MMORPGS (Score:2)
The first 14 hours will be horrible (they always are). I recommend not expecting much xp during that time.
After work the second day things should be back down to playable.
Re:This was a great vacation from other MMORPGS (Score:2)
The root of the problem was the 12,500 players per server average of the open beta. 500,000 people is a shitload of users, and because it's a free open beta, most of them were playing at any given time.
City of Heroes only had 170k active accounts, and even if WoW has twice that number, they won't all be signed on a
bleh (Score:1)
took me a week to download the thing over the POS cable modem. Took forever becausei share that 3 down/256 up with 3 other guys.
so what? now i finally have the installer and i hear they are killing the beta...
SUCKS TO BE ME!
Re:bleh (Score:1)
WoW OB impressions (Score:3, Interesting)
WoW is very clean for a release title - the only bugs were with lag and database writes when they were at the height of the stress test - just a few days before that it was flawless.
It's a more casual game. Although you can kill kobolds for a level its faster (and more fun) to do quests, some of which make you kill kobolds.
I played the warrior, paladin, rogue, warlock, and mage for a few days each. The thing I didnt like was Blizzard was starting to get into the nerf things mode yet locking you into decisions you had already made (like CoH before they added respec missions).
I think they are going to try to cater a little to the power crowd of EQ, but not to the extent that EQ1 has. There was just a massive amount of content in the first 20 levels...more than any other game that has come out. Massive - like I ran probably 200-300 unique quests - not the script generated crap of CoH and AO.
I had a few CTD problems but few actual in game problems. It humors me that fanbois think a magic version is in the box - its the same client as was in beta just a week behind because of when it went to press.
I think this game really caters to people who don't want to play 10 hours a day like FFXI or EQ1. I played every night and had fun, some people who are in the Gov;t cheese line were ahead of me in level - but I was progressing at a reasonable pace and having fun.
I think there is a big round of class balancing that will happen a month or so after retail goes live. I also think the battle.net crowd is going whine like crazy about PvP imbalances...but its a good game, good company...price is too much at 14.99 a month...but at least you can make lots of characters and play 2 sides, pve, pvp, etc.
I will see you in Azeroth on day one. All of my other game accounts are cancelled already. WoW is good stuff - everyone I talked to in the beta liked the game. I think its going to be a big hit and be a major player for a long time.
Twi
This is Diablo cross bred with Warcraft (Score:1)
This game has all of the cool item systems, sets, classes, but is slightly less of a click fest.
They have the regeneration timing down perfectly! Very little waiting around to regen health and mana. Groups work well, looting sytle choices. The best social interface I have seen.
Tons of fun quests, and INCREDIBLE amount of content, and from what I hear I have hardly seen a
Re:WoW OB impressions (Score:2)
Talk to your class trainer in a capital city.
They'll let you respec for 1g the first time, and I believe it's 10g each additional time.
Re:WoW OB impressions (Score:2)
They'll let you respec for 1g the first time, and I believe it's 10g each additional time.
That was for beta only, so that people would have the time to test multiple specs. Instead of wanting the limited playbase to test out one spec with each character, they intended, for instance, for level 40+ priests to test both the Holy and Shadow specs on one character. In order to respec your talents, you'll have to go through a high-level respec quest that is intended
Re:WoW OB impressions (Score:1)
At any time you can drop professions. Just highlight it on your skills list, and an icon comes up that lets you drop the profession.
So, really, no way to gimp your character.
Re:WoW OB impressions (Score:2)
Yes, IN BETA. I'm trying to tell you that in retail, it will not work this way at all. So yes, there's a way to gimp your character, at least until you get toward the endgame and get to respec your character.
At any time you can drop professions. Just highlight it on your skills list, and an icon comes up that lets you drop the profession.
From the co
Re:WoW OB impressions (Score:1, Flamebait)
In retail it will cost 1g for the first respec. The cost then increases after the first respec.
Re:WoW OB impressions (Score:1)
It's a dog, let me finish. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It's a dog, let me finish. (Score:1)
Re:It's a dog, let me finish. (Score:1)
Very pretty, but a rehash (Score:4, Insightful)
A truly worthwhile "quest system" should come close to what people expect from a pen-and-paper RPG. True adventures with adventure hooks, clues, the thrill of the chase, and a real reward at the end. After all, in my pen-and-paper days, I don't remember a DM ever telling me that such-and-such NPC needed 8 wolf meats, and that other guy wanted me to deliver someone's beer for 7 coppers. Even my most-hard-up D&D character would never stoop to being someone's barmaid.
Re:Very pretty, but a rehash (Score:2)
You're right of course, and most players would agree with you. Except that what you're asking for is presently impossible. Game makers are doing everything they can with the tools at thier disposal, which include the limitations of your PC. As far as PnP gaming. The kind of spontaneity, flexibility, and wonder that you're looking for can only be conjured in the imagination...or the matrix.
Even my most-
Re:Very pretty, but a rehash (Score:1)
Re:Very pretty, but a rehash (Score:2, Insightful)
They receive a quest that says "Walk five paces directly south to coordinate 102, 41 and talk to the bright pink guy with the huge yellow question mark over his head."
Immediately, they go to the General chat channel and say "Where's the bright pink guy?", followed by "What color is he?, and if this is a level 20 or higher quest "How do I talk to him?"
They aren't interested in having fun or playing the game tha
Re:Very pretty, but a rehash (Score:1)
When you know where everything is, it's easy to fall into the position of assuming everyone should know the map as well as you.
And yes, I do know there are people who sometimes ignore the quest directions completely, a
Re:Very pretty, but a rehash (Score:1, Offtopic)
Re:Very pretty, but a rehash (Score:2)
I think that you either didn't play t
MMO Help!!! (Score:1)
End of World?? (Score:1)
phew... note to self: remember to double check the section I am in !
Ending early? (Score:1)
I thought the Blizzard news post said the open beta would last until the games realease, and its only the 19th. That's a bit ahead of the game, which is released the 23rd. Or did I misread?