Cataclysm so far
Now between being busy IRL and taking the time to finish up the SC2 campaign I haven't spent a lot of time playing the Cataclysm beta thus far, but here are my impressions so far:
Warrior: So far I've only had time to play as Fury. I was going to go Prot right away and bang out some instances, but the dungeon finder on the test realms does not work. Bummer, but not surprising.
Anyhow, I went into beta thinking I was going to really be disappointed in the new warrior changes, but oh how wrong I was. Fury is a hell of a lot more fun now than it's ever been. I'm not sure there's ever a time you're not pushing buttons, unlike the current 3 button rotation. The introduction of Raging Blow (I think that's what it's called) and changing Cleave and HS to no longer be on-next-hit attacks makes fury a much more active spec to play.
However, the devs are still holding rage nerfs over the warriors head. Maybe it's deserved, as there have been very few times I haven't been able to HS the shit out of every mob in my way. But it's certainly making me shy away from playing a warrior come release.
Paladin: Paladin is just broken as it stands right now. Half of the spells and abilities I'm supposed to have are nowhere to be found in my spellbook. Even abilities gotten through talents are missing, so it makes it really hard to judge where the paladin is so far. I will say that the holy power mechanic is interesting.
Death Knight: Another instance of missing key abilities, but for another reason. I can see them on the class trainer, but due to a bug I'd have to drop my professions to be able to train them. So I'll just be waiting for the next build to really test out my DK.
Mage: I haven't played a mage since vanilla, so I wasn't really sure what to expect with this class, but I'm really loving the fire spec so far (only one I've tried). The mobility the class has is just incredible. Having scortch cost no mana, and being able to cast it while moving is just insane. Combine that with dragons breath, a targetable blast wave, and insta-cast pyroblasts and you've got some serious kiting ability and firepower.
I'm enjoying playing this character so much that as of right now, I've decided I'm going to roll a mage at cata release to experience all the new zone content.
Shaman: It's really hard to tell where enhancement shaman is without recount. There are just too many numbers flying everywhere to get a good idea. But the synergy between searing totem and lava lash really has potential for some serious numbers. There were 2 things I really didn't like however, fire nova not working with searing totem, and primal strike being on the same cooldown as storm strike.
New starting areas: I won't go into a whole lot of detail, there are videos available for that, but I will say this: While the Goblin area is pretty cool, the Worgen area blows it out of the water. I really want to like the Goblin starting zone, but it's all just a little too silly, and the story just isn't interesting at all compared to the Worgen's.
I'll post more as I play.
A testament to my awesomeness
And geekiness. I'm just so good people think I cheat. Here I am on my new warrior, Fartbox, tanking the Stockades. As you can see, this random hunter is incredulous at the sight of me completely carrying the group.
This is a common occurrence. I'm used to it by now. But I thought since I haven't updated this thing in a while I might as well pat myself on the back a bit.
I was wrong
Well, not so much wrong, because I was definitely right, they just fixed what I was bitching about. I'm speaking of Global Agenda, the game I recommended a bunch of people avoid due to various issues making it simply not fun. Turns out all of those issues have been addressed, or removed from the game completely.
I fired up my beta client over the weekend out of boredom, and had a hell of a time playing again. There's a ton of new content in the game now compared to when I last played, to include PvE, AvA, and several new PvP maps and game types.
The PvE starts off relatively simple. In the lowest security level you run through a mine/factory/base killing low level robots until you reach a boss character at the end, who is actually very deadly. In the next security level missions, the missions are much longer, you encounter a ton more low level robots, and also encounter 4 - 5 mobs who were the previous security level missions boss. The boss itself on medium is much more challenging. I hear the trend continues for each higher security level, but I only did low and medium myself.
PvP isn't the grenade spamming melee fest it used to be. There is actual strategy to be deployed, and teams suffer greatly when they don't use it. It is especially evident when stupid ass recon agent think their job is to be Mr. Uber Assassin instead of doing their job, harassing and destroying enemy robos and structures. My teams never have this problem, because I'm the greatest recon to ever sniff a fart.
So yea, I preordered, and am planning on doing the subscription membership for access to AvA.
Star Trek Online – Second Impressions
So now that I've finally been able to play the game for a bit, I can give you all a little better review!
I'll start out by saying that the game still seems to be very rough, even for an open beta. From the moment you start the game up you begin to see bugs, or just unpolished content all around you. Much more so on the Klingon side than the Federation side.
The game itself is a bit like EVE I suppose, but really only so much as it's set in space. The space combat itself is much more engaging than EVE's "set orbit, set weapons to autofire" combat system. You have to manually pilot your ship, position yourself so that you get the maximum number of weapons firing at once, or so that you're taking damage on the strongest part of your shields. And if you're shields start weakening on one side, you can divert power from areas you aren't taking damage on to the weakened area. Just like in the show!
Probably the most important part of combat, and something I've seen very few people other than myself use, is the "Stance" system. I call it that because I have no idea what it's actually called. But basically theres 4 combat settings you can use for your ship. Attack, defense, speed and balanced. Now it seems pretty obvious to me that if you're going on the offensive, you want to be in attack mode, and if you're being fired upon by multiple enemies, you want to be in defensive mode. But like I said, I'm the only person I've seen use these settings so far. I've been trying to spread the word when people ask how I live through so many things targeting me, but word hasn't spread quickly. Oh well.
In addition to space combat you are also sent on ground missions, which are more like traditional MMOs. You beam down to a planet, or onto another ship with your away team, and either kill a bunch of people, or gather information. The missions themselves are pretty mundane, but the combat is fairly original. I personally wish there were more ground missions, but maybe I just haven't gotten to the bulk of them yet.
The number of ships in the game seems to be fairly large. And the customization you can do to each ship is pretty impressive, both in function and visually.
Anyhow, I've forgotten what else I wanted to say. Oh well. So far I'm enjoying the game, even with all the problems it has. I think they should push the release date back to fix a lot of the issues, but what do I know.
If you're bored, and don't mind dropping the cash to get into the beta, I suggest giving it a try. My global in game is @Oekss
I’ve fallen off the wagon
It's not my fault, really! I blame the lack of interesting MMOs out at the moment.
I don't want to say CO and Aion are bad games, because they aren't. They just either don't hold my attention (Aion), or are lacking content (CO). Both have a lot of potential to be great games, but this can also be said of AoC and WAR. Unlike those 2 games however, I really do have faith that Cryptic can make CO into a truly great game. Their community involvement is simply outstanding, and the turn-around on patches and fixes is the fastest I've seen. It's just the high level content isn't there yet.
As far as Aion goes, well, we'll see. PvP is great, but the road to get there isn't enjoyable to me.
So yea, I'm back on Bloodhoof playing my shaman, Oekss. And yes, I fully expect to be ridiculed for this.
The Secret World
Seems like it could be an interesting game, assuming Funcom doesn't fuck it up.
CO Headstart begins today!
I really, really should have taken the day off today. I'm sitting here at work, thinking about nothing but what I'm going to do in game when I get home tonight. Apparently there is another event taking place as well. I guess the Qularr, the insect like aliens, are invading the low level zones, and are supposed to drop items and grant perks that are unique to people in the head start!
Anyhow, here's a couple characters I created in the open beta. It shows a bit of how flexible the character creator is.
Champions Online open beta day 2
Ok, so after the damning review of the patching process and over all mess that the Cryptic team made of the first day, the second day was completely different. Now take this for what it's worth, but after a night of playing, I'm completely infatuated with this game. It's just a blast to play.
The game makes you feel like a hero the second you load it up. The effort they put into making it feel like you're actually playing in a comic book universe is impressive. Everything from the music to the art style screams super hero comics. I mean, I wasn't really into comics that much growing up, and I just love the feel of the game.
Getting Started - The first thing you'll do in CO is create your champion. The character creation in CO is just staggering, but coming from Cryptic (the makers of CoH/V) it really comes as no surprise. They took what was great about the CoH character creator and built on it. It seems like it has at least three times the options CoH has. You can easily spend hours just making your character.
Choosing your powers in CO is not like other games at all. There are predefined powerset themes you can choose from, but there are no true classes in this game. If you choose to build a custom character, and you should, you can pick and choose powers from any pool in the game.
After you choose your powers, you be able to choose what stats you'd like to start off with. Stats define what role your character will fill more than powers do. When choosing, read what each stat does very carefully. Like powers, there are a lot of stats, so it can get a little confusing.
Biff wants YOU!
Welcome to Millennium City! - After you create your character, you'll find yourself in Millennium city, which is currently under attack by some sort of insect aliens or something. I didn't pay much attention, but they're cool looking, and that's really all I cared about. No snakes or rats here folks!
The first thing the game teaches you is how to interact with everything. Your 'Z' key is going to get worn out, because you'll use it to do just about everything. The best part about this in game less is messing up what you want to interact with. The first time I tried to talk to someone, I accidentally picked up a car the guy was standing next to. That's right! You can interact with the environment!
I was giddy the first time I ripped a telephone and beat some aliens to death with it! I yelped in glee as I tossed an armored car on to a group of bug men harassing a civilian! I frowned when I found a tank that was too heavy for my character to lift. But as time goes on, and my strength goes up (lifting is based on your characters STR value, obviously), I've eventually be able to toss tanks around at will.
Combat - Combat is very fast paced. If you've played MMOs in the past, you'll have to adjust your play style for this game. The biggest change for people is going to be the fact that you never have to stand still, ever. Also, you generally mow through stuff without having to stop. Mobs usually drop either health, energy, damage or defense power-ups when they die, allowing you to fight almost nonstop.
You're skills boil down to these different types (and this is a very basic explanation) , energy building attacks that you basically toggle on or off, charged skills where you hold down the key and the effectivness of the ability is based on how long you've charged, maintained skill that are effectively the opposite of charged where the use more energy the longer you use them, and tapped skill that most MMO players are accustomed to.
The is also an active blocking system in the game, and any character can block. You'll know when to block, because different indicators will show above a bosses head when he's about to unleash a devastating attack. There are several different indicators that can show, and they all mean something different. I won't go into that here.
Myself and Defender attack Black Talon
Missions - So far I've encountered a couple different types of missions. You have your normal world quests that are found in most every MMO. Solo instanced quests where you crawl through a "dungeon" by yourself, and maybe with the help of an NPC ally. And public quests such as those found in WAR.
Quest NPCs and areas are all marked on your map, so you won't spend hours wandering around looking for X. Quests so far have included the "Kill X", "Get X", "Save X" and "Talk to X" types so far. Pretty standard stuff, however they are well done. Especially the public quests, which are actually tied into the story line instead of being just a random event happening in the world, like they were in WAR.
I could keep going, but most of what makes game fun really needs to be experienced, and not read about. Plus I actually have work to do today, so I'll stop here.
Do yourself a favor, and spend the $5 for an open beta key. You'll enjoy yourself.
Champions Online open beta day 1
Well, I wish I could give you a rundown on the game play, character creation, combat system or anything else you'd be interested in. However, yesterday was filled with large quantities of suck on the part of Cryptic, Atari, and the CO patcher.
Now if there's one thing that can be learned from past MMOs, it's that people like to test drive games before release. And make no mistake, open beta is a test drive. Sure, Cryptic apologists will spout the usual "It's still beta!" horse shit, but they're delusional. This is not a beta, it's a paid demo, and that's how customers will treat it. That sound you hear? That's the sound of people rushing to cancel their orders, because of the patching issues.
Last night Cryptic put their ineptitude on display with their attempts at solutions to the patching issues. The first was to re-download the original client from FilePlanet, which luckily I chose not to do, putting thousands of people back in the waiting list for something they already had.
The next was to manually move some random ass files around in the game folders, which did absolutely nothing. Following that they went into their IRC channel, and actually started asking their customers for solutions. Now, I get that nobody knows everything, and it's good to get new eyes on a problem, but this is just pathetic. It screams "Hey guys, we don't know what the fuck we're doing, have you found a hack to get this to work yet?".
Finally, they realized they pushed a flawed file to FilePlanet to begin with, and the patcher was looking for files in places they didn't belong. As a developer myself, this blows my fucking mind. An error like this makes it blindingly obvious that they did no internal testing on the installer before releasing it. If they had even run through the install from scratch once, this issue would have been caught. Completely amateurish.
Their biggest mistake however, is going with the outdated patcher model they're using. For fuck sakes people, it's called Bit Torrent. Use that shit to your advantage!
With all that said, I'll still be going back for more. I want to give the game a shot before passing judgment on it as a whole, though this is a pretty big black eye to start things off. If I actually manage to get in game tonight, I'll post my impressions in the morning. If it's more of the same from last night, I'll bitch some more.