DashZero reviews WoW

[DashZero]

World of Warcraft – Beta Stress Test – Review

Install – mine went flawlessly after a 2-½ day download of the 2.5 Gig Client from FilePlanet. The login screen is a bit weird. It won’t remember your account name, so you have to reenter both account name and password every time you get to the login screen. And some buttons don’t work (Options for one). There is a handshake with the server, and you are sent to the character selection screen. I never had a client side update, so I am not sure when that happens, but I would guess updates are sent right after the handshake and connection.

Server selection – This screen lets you select the server you want and then make and select a character on that server. This screen is kind of confusing in that you sometimes get popup windows that you can click and dismiss, and other popups on the screen will kick you back to the login screen. (Popup windows that say things like “Retrieving characters”. If I want to switch servers should I cancel or not?) Anyway, you get 10 characters per server! That allowed me to create a character of every race and class on one server (there are 8 races and 9 classes).

Music – the soundtrack is orchestral. This adds – I dunno – “majesty” to the game. Most places it is well done and doesn’t get in the way. On the login screen there is a fairly small loop of music with a drum crescendo that gets annoying pretty quickly.

Graphics – slightly cartoonish. I am pretty sure it is simply an extension of the normal Warcraft graphics that have gone before. I like it – it feels like a fantasy setting, or a dream, and yet something real enough to be immersive. Once you buy in to the graphics style, it makes it easy to accept crabs whose pinchers barely connect to their body or any other imperfect wireframes – hey, it’s a dream cartoon fantasy! Still nicely detailed, varied by realm, etc.

The zeppelin dock:

Controls – left hand QWEASD movement keys. Mouse right click and hold to twist camera. Left click to select objects or right click to activate/attack/talk. Pretty straight forward. Easy to remap keys if you want to change the binding. Downside is that if you change one, it tells you AFTER making a change that you unbound some other key. (I bound the R key to run, and once done it told me I had overwritten /reply for chat.)

Chat – complex enough that it is a barrier to conversation. This is pretty true for all MMO games. There is no /tell command, which is confusing. To contact another player you use /w (whisper). There are no overhead bubbles displaying locally spoken text – all chat happens in a chat window, color-coded by channel. It is very easy to miss local text and even personal “tells” sent directly to you. There is no audio cue that you have received a message. Another communication method appears to be mail. There are mailboxes scattered around, but I haven’t tried using them. I assume you can send mail to other players. I saw some guy say he mailed a few of his items to another one of his own characters – that would be handy!

Character creation – pretty nicely designed. Check box for Race that then sets the appropriate classes (each race has a different, limited set of classes it can choose). A randomize button for looks – randomly picks from the 5 or so features. (Skin color, Hair color, Hair style, Face, Facial Hair) If you want to pick the features yourself, you use arrows to rotate through all the possibilities. This is kind of annoying in that it would be nicer to have a palette of all the choices displayed at once to select from. Still a minor issue as there are only 5 or 6 choices per feature. Yeah there is a chance you will look exactly like another player out there, but I never saw any character that was a match for any of the 10 characters I made – besides it’s no big deal. You then select a name – no spaces allowed, but no other real filters. (For example, I saw HeySupDood and LETSHAVESEX running around.)

Races – Human, Orc, Troll, Undead, Gnome, Night Elf, Dwarf, Tauren (bovine humanoids). Some races have special bonuses. Humans get extra skill points, Undead have underwater breathing, etc. All in all, I think the differences are not enough to select one race over the other. Size is an issue though. I found the Male Taurens to be so big that you can’t see the monster that you are fighting. To see them, you have to tilt the camera up to an almost directly overhead view – then once the battle is over, you can’t see anything around you – reposition camera. So, for easiest view of everything, small is best – Gnomes are by far the smallest, Dwarves second.

Graphical detail of a guard in Ironforge:

Racial settings – races all have a look and feel that differs. The Undead start in a creepy graveyard setting. The Night Elves are basically regular elves – forest setting, oneness with nature, etc. Humans have the basic King Arthur fantasy feel. Trolls have a sort of Jamaican look and the NPCs speak in a broken style.

Dwarves and Gnomes start in a snow-covered mountain realm where your character leaves footprints in the snow as they run around. Taurens have the full blown American Indian theme going – plains, teepees, totem poles. Orcs are sort of Neanderthals I guess, although their main city is quite impressive.

Scene from the Dwarven realm:

Classes – (Mage/Shaman/Warlock/Priest/Druid/Warrior/Rogue/Hunter/Paladin) they are all pretty cool. I have played them all up to around level 5 or so. Everyone has 2 life bars – one is health, and the other is action/mana/rage. So, as you take damage the health bar goes down, and as you use “specials” it decreases the other bar. For Mage/Shaman/Warlock/Priest/Druid/Hunter/Paladin your spells use mana. For Warrior it is a bit tricky. The warrior special bar defaults to empty instead of full. It is “Warrior Rage”. As you fight, the bar fills up – so after hitting something a few times the bar is full enough that you can execute a special move (which then empties the bar some). Or fight a bit longer and the bar is full enough to execute a better move. The Rogue also works differently – he gets combo moves. His bar starts full and as he does some moves, a mark is displayed on the monster’s icon. Using a second move cashes in all the marks you have applied and converts them to damage.

There seems to be a jump in class power at level 6. Most classes get new specials at 6th level and you start to be a bit tougher. The addition of a power or 2 to your character allows you to start using some strategy on which to choose when in a battle.

Here two Rogue attacks (the red dots) have marked the monster:

Factions – There are two factions: the Horde (Orc, Troll, Tauren, Undead) and the Alliance (Human, Dwarf, Gnome, Night Elf). When these groups see each other they can attack. So, there is faction PvP.

Servers - There are non-PvP and PvP servers. I never logged into the PvP servers but I assume on those everyone can attack everyone else, even faction allies.

Map – There are 6 starting locations. The Trolls start at the Orc training grounds and the Gnomes start at the Dwarf starting point. You have a small radar and you can pull up a full screen map. Both can be zoomed in and out a little – the radar is for your immediate surroundings (and has pointers to close towns, quest targets or your corpse) the map is for the realm/continent/world. You can travel around on foot, at higher level get a mount, or make use of the public zeppelins (and boats?) to travel from continent to continent (the zeppelins connect the Orc capital and the Undead capital). There is also a capital to capital public flight system, I used it to take a gryphon from the Orc capital to the Tauren one. While the zeppelins are free, the gryphon ride cost 50 copper.

Main map of Dwarf lands:

Continued...Money System next!

Edited September 13, 2004 by DashZero

[DashZero]

Money system – is a Gold, Silver, Copper system. I was wondering why they thought they needed 3 coin types, but after using it a while, it is fine. 100 copper = 1 silver and 100 silver = 1 gold. So it is pretty easy to know how much you have. (If you see a sword that costs 1gp 33sp 50cp it is pretty easy to convert that mentally to 13350cp.) If you gather over 100 copper the system automatically converts you to having a silver. All purchases and sales are done automatically – if you have enough money you can right click on a vendor’s item and it will be placed in your pack.

Basic Gameplay – you can hunt on your own or take quests. Both will likely entail killing stuff. Monsters are “level appropriate” for the area you are in. (In the noobie area the closest monsters are 1st and 2nd level, a bit further out they are 3rd and 4th level…)

Quests – I think these are pretty good. In your noobie backpack you get an item that starts your first quest. It tells you to go to see your class trainer and gives some very basic direction. On arrival you get a few XPs. Many NPCs offer quests, and they will have an exclamation point above their heads if they have one available. Click and accept a quest and off you go – they can be anything from ‘gather scorpion tails’ to ‘bring me the head of a rival Chief’ to ‘pick mushrooms for a poison antidote’. The neat thing is that items you seek on quests are not dropped unless you have the quest. So you can kill as many tigers as you want, but unless you have the tiger quest, it will never drop pelts (tiger pelts happen to be one quest item). Quest items can also be “static” items in the environment. Let’s say there are cactus all over and some have red “cactus apples”. These cacti will be static elements in the environment unless you are on a cactus apple quest, then the cacti become clickable and once you harvest they fade away (to spawn again later). Both monster loot drops and static items return to their non-quest state once you get your quota. There are other quests including timed delivery quests and kill X number of monster quests.

Loot drops – are varied, and for the most part, monster appropriate. For example, Plains Boars drop Tough Jerky Meat and Ruined Hides. But all monsters also drop some treasure type items. Weapons and armor, potions and scrolls, raw materials for crafting, etc. All NPC vendors will buy the loot items at the same price. (A Butcher and a Weaponsmith will both pay the same for Boar Meat.) Humanoid opponents will drop coins as well. And if you have a quest, the target monsters will also drop quest items. There seems to be a random treasure drop mechanic – sometimes you will get nothing, sometimes 2 of the same thing, sometimes a bunch of different things and sometimes a cool item that is better than you can buy.

Leveling – every enemy defeated gives XP. Completing quests gives XP. The second you get enough XP to level, you “ding” and are adjusted up. Higher levels mean more stat points. (Yes, characters have stats like Strength, Intellegence, etc.) Stats have secondary effects – like higher Int means more mana. You also get a higher cap on your known abilities. (A first level Warrior has a max of 5 Sword ability. For each level you get 5 points added to the cap, so at 2nd your cap is 10, at 5th 25, etc.) So, gaining levels adds the potential to move abilities up to the cap. Every time you use an ability, you will gain a point toward the cap. (So, imagine a 10th level character that has never fought Unarmed. They will have a 1/50 in Unarmed. If that character starts fighting unarmed and they hit 3 times, they will be up to 3/50. If that levels them up to 11th level they will be 3/55.)

Your character sheet:

Training – each class has class trainers that can train you in spells/special abilities. Spells or special moves have both a level requirement and cost money. (I can’t remember exactly, but the fireball spell may require a mage to be 8th level and pay the trainer 2 silver to learn.)

Skill points – characters also receive skill points. (** NOTE: THIS SYSTEM IS SUPPOSEDLY BEING REMOVED. ALL “PURCHASES” USING SKILL POINTS WILL SIMPLY REQUIRE MONEY INSTEAD. **) The skill points come slowly – not sure what triggers them to be awarded. They are always awarded after defeating a monster. Skill points can be used to gain a new skill area. (For example, for 50 skill points Warlocks can gain the Sword fighting ability. For 1000 skill points Undead can learn Skeletal Horse riding.)

Here is the character skill tab:

Trade skills – there are a bunch. Herbology, Fishing, Mining, etc. You can buy the novice level of these with skill points. (Ten skill points will get you beginning herbology or beginning leatherworking, etc.) I thought this would be a separate grind, and I guess it could be but it is better integrated than other crafting grinds. I took Beginning Skinning and Beginning Leatherworking on a whim. As I ran around and killed animals, I found many were skinnable. After defeating a monster, you right click to loot them, once you loot, you right click again and skin! So, I hardly noticed the additional clicks it took to skin a creature. Once I had a few pieces of leather, I click the Leatherworking icon to see what I could make. It gave me 6 or so starting “recipes” for different items I could make. (You can buy more recipes from the trainer as you level up, or get a “recipe scroll” dropped in loot.) I found that one of the items I could make was an armor reinforcement tool. Cool! I was able to upgrade a bunch of my armor and make it stronger with my own crafted armor patches. I also made a cape, and the item is “stamped” with the maker’s name. Crafted items can be sold to NPC merchants or put up for auction at an auction house. The leather skills were taken by my Shaman – that worked well as Shamans can only wear leather armor. My Orc Warrior took Herbology. So, now after slaying a few scorpions he stops and picks flowers!

Travel by Gryphon sure speeds things up!

Grouping – left clicking on another player creates a target icon on your screen. Right clicking that brings up a menu that includes “invite”. Selecting it invites the player to join your group. Grouped players have a chat channel accessed by /p (for Party). One of the main reasons to group is that when grouped, if you all have the same quest – ‘steal the witches broom’ for example – and the group kills the witch, EVERYONE gets a broomstick. This helps decrease the problem of players camping a spawn. If 5 players are standing around waiting for a specific monster, it pays for them all to group. They group, they have an easier time defeating the monster, and everyone gets the quest reward.

Water – the best handling of water in any MMORPG game I have seen so far. You can swim and dive below the surface. Underwater you have a Breath gauge – stay under too long and you die. There are monsters underwater and you can fight them with your breath held. Yeah all the magic seems to work there (I could throw fireballs at lobsters while submerged) but it is still cool!

Death – When you die, your body falls to the ground and your ghost appears at the closest graveyard. There is a spectre in every graveyard that will raise you from the dead for a small amount of XPs, or you can run back to your body and you will be raised for free. You seem to get all your stuff back either way, although some items you have gained as rewards for completing quests are specified as “soulbound”. I am assuming that if some other death scenario allows players to take your stuff, the soulbound stuff will stay with you. (PvP maybe?)

Giant Spider Pet!

Pets – Warlocks get familiars. Hunters can train pets. Druids can shapeshift into animals. And I even saw a Warrior with a non-combat pet! He had a pretty cool looking bird flying above his head when I happened across him. All races can ride mounts (except Taurens). I believe you have to be 40th level and pay for riding skill. Warlock Familiars and Hunter animals will help fight monsters. The player gets a small, additional control menu for the pet. As Warlocks and Hunters gain levels they can summon or tame higher level pets.

My Dwarf and his pet boar fight a monster.

Continued...Random Notes and Summary

Edited September 13, 2004 by DashZero

[DashZero]

Random Notes:

• The running speed is pretty slow. (After one WoW server crash I logged into CoH and was amazed at the running speed difference!) Took me a while to figure out that numlock = autorun. That helps a little (to avoid carpal tunnel anyway). You also can’t cast spells while moving.
  
• Monster spawns are generally single animals. This is ok, but allows you to gauge what you can defeat pretty easily. You will get into some trouble in areas where the spawns are close enough together that multiple animals may aggro you at once.
  
• Some spells take time to cast, some are instant, and some last up to 30 minutes. Once you start casting a spell, if an enemy hits you, you get interrupted and automatically restart casting. This can be problematic if you cast a spell that takes 2 seconds to activate – especially if more than one enemy is attacking you. They could hit you frequently enough that you will never complete the spell, and until it is complete you cannot start another attack.
  
• I like that all classes have specials (spells, attacks, etc.). This makes being a warrior less of a sacrifice – in terms of variety – than other games. The fact that warriors have all these specials and are a strong fighting class makes them one of my favorite classes. Mage is a least favorite (although I may have given up on the class too early). If you could wear armor and cast “specials” like Charge and Headsplitter as a Warrior why would you want similar powers (Fireball, Ice Bolt) and not be allowed any armor as a Mage?
  
• Missle weapons include guns! No ranged weapons can be used point blank. So, you generally get into missle range and fire a few shots before switching from bow to sword, gun to axe, etc.
  
• A lot of players seem to be kids. There is a constant spam of messages on the broadcast channel. Often asking where quest objectives are, begging for things, swearing so they feel adult, and SPEAKING IN CAPS!!! I don’t know any way around this, you get used to it, and the hundredth request asking “Where’s Sarkoth? I can’t find him.” starts to become comical.
  

Night Elf (in biker shorts) and Woodland Guardian (in Purple):

Overall design critique – there are nice graphics and an orchestral sound track, but gameplay is pretty familiar. The old “kill, loot, level, woot” rhyme is totally applicable. The quests are a welcome enhancement and there are enough of them that the grind is pretty well disguised. (At least below level 10 you never seem to run out of quests before you level. Once you level, other quests open up to you.) There are many goals to strive for – levels, new special attacks, additional skills, exploration of other areas on the map, PvP and guilds come to mind. It is a game with lots of interesting activities, but nothing is particularly innovative.

Thinking further on the economy, monsters drop very little money. I don’t think I ever had a drop of more than 15 copper off a monster and maybe 30 in a treasure chest. The prices of goods charged by NPCs vendors skyrockets dramatically. The only way to be able to upgrade equipment in any timely fashion is to do quests. (I have had quests that paid 7 silver!) This may change as a full economy of crafters enter the game and start undercutting the NPCs. But for the moment, quests are the way to go.

BOTTOM LINE: Simple interface, wonderful zone variation (in a seamless world), reasonable class balance, enjoyable PvP, well designed quests, minor lag issues, slow running speed, simple death mechanics, somewhat awkward chat system, good “kill stealing” and “camping” solutions, annoying level of immature players, minimal bugs and graceful crash code. I will buy it. I think it has many hours of interesting gameplay already set up. There is not a lot of variation or replay value in each zone (starting a second character in the same zone will mean doing the same quests the first character did), but if you get bored with starter Orc quests you can always run and do the Tauren ones.

End of Stress Test Beta – yeah it had to end. There were many end of the world events scheduled. Night Elves jumping from the tops of trees to their death, dance parties designed to honor Blizzard, and last minute frenzied questing. I took my Undead Rogue and trained him in Herbology and Alchemy. There was a delicious irony as I waited for the world to end, listening to some ghostly choir music wafting from the graveyard and watching my skeleton man picking flowers.

An Undead Rogue ponders the end…

Edited September 13, 2004 by DashZero

[Soke]

A pretty fair review.

I don't know if this game is the one for me. There's nothing revolutionary (altho I must admit I both hated and loved their solution to killstealing...frustrating when you don't get in the first shot, and good when you do) about it. It's a solid game, and I thought it was very pretty looking, even though it's "behind" other games graphically.

I just wasn't that entertained by it. I mean, yeah, some things were alright, but pound for pound, I like CoH so much more. Some of the Kill X until Y drops missions were incredibly annoying as the drop rates were 1 every 20 or more. Most weren't that bad, but every once in a while there was one quest that was just a ###### to complete. For one quest it was "get 20 bear tongues and 1 spider ichor". The bear tongues I got on a nearly 1 for 1 basis: ie, I killed a bear and got a tongue for it. The spider ichor on the other hand...I kill well over a hundred spiders (leveled while doing it, had over 10K to go for level, each spider was giving me 100 exp so...yeah, at least over a hundred) before I got the damn thing. I was so frustrated towards the end I was almost crying.

A friend that I grouped with a lot (OmeN) had the same problem with a hardened tumor for a vile fin quest. I was lucky and got mine on the 3rd try, without even really trying (they aggroed me). I helped OmeN to get his, by helping him kill them more efficiently, and we killed a LOT. I don't mean "Oh, we cleared one spawn point"...I mean we went to several spawn poitns over and over and over again for at least an hour, with no breaks to rest, and didn't get it.

Instanced "dungeons" I was psyched about....until I found out it was only "special" dungeons and all of them "elite". Elite means things suck, bascially. Think archvillains in CoH. Can you solo them? Hell no. It's hard to solo even one "elite" mob that's four or five levels below you...but it gives you exp as if it WERE four or five levels below you. It's supposed to encourage grouping, but what it did was encourage us to die multiple times to get a damn book from Pyrewood village by running in there and dying. Then, one person rezzing and getting the mobs attention while the other one gets the book. Then rinse and repeat for the other person.

The Elite quests are INSANELY hard. Some people might like a challenge. In this case, I didn't. I got the mission at level 17, and was finishing up other quests so I didn' get around to it til I was level 19. At that level, I teamed up with a group of people to do the quest. 2 were 20, 1 was 21 and 1 was 23. WE tried and tried, but we couldn't complete it. I was told later we didn't even get *halfway* through it, though we thought we were doing pretty good.

Insanely hard.

Now, I was hoping ALL dungeons would be instanced, but they're not. CoH may have spoiled me, but it was incredibly annoying to have one spot camped for a particular mob over and over again because of over-crowding problems. Hence, if I do buy this game, it won't be until at least a few weeks later to avoid bottlenecking with every other person who starts the day it comes out.

Maps are useless unless you've been to the area, then it shows up on the map. However, the time when you'll need the map is when you haven't been to the area. You do get a *little* bit of experience for exploring though, so that's nice.

I did like the crafting system; no crit failures. You CAN fail on gathering herbs and ore and stuff, but not on crafting. I played an architect on SWG and man was it painful to crit fail on a large house. Enchanting was useful, except that to get magical components you need to disenchant magical items. Sometimes you can buy them at the vendor, but that's rare. So, if you're a soloer, it won't make you blink to disenchant a piece of equipment you can't use. But if you're in a guild and share stuff, then it might be hard to get components. Herbalism didn't seem to have a problem finding herbs, and I'm assuming the same for Mining.

Overall, it's ok. It's nothing special but it didn't suck either. Graphics were smooth if cartoony (but I liked the cartoony look), gameplay was smooth (autorun button is 4th button on mouse, btw, very handy...so much so I had to switch over autorun on CoH to work like that) even though it was a stress test. Chat system was easy if a touch awkward (if you use guild chat, you stay in guild chat til you go to another channel, like party or broadcast, so it's ripe for mistelling if you forget to use /p or /1 or whatever). I did have fun dueling Grulg, but I wish I could have had my warlock duel someone. Didn't feel like getting messages like "I pwned u!" or the like, so I didn't try it with anyone else. Talent systems weren't in for warlocks, but I did get a mage up to 12 just messing around (which is anothe rbeef of mine...mages can conjure their own food and water, so wtf do they need to carry around regular food and water for? At level 12 she was conjuring a full stack of water on one spell. just...wrong. However, although people say that mages don't have any downtime, that' sfalse. They have 20 sec of downtime to eat their damn magic food and water after every fight. Warlocks have no downtime. Get in fight, cast DoT's, let pet fight it, loot, find next target, Use Life Tap to get mana back, cast DoT's, heal pet with siphon life, use a healthstone if you need to...I literally could ahve gone hours doing that without breaking stride, so I guess warlocks have something over the mages...however, mages kill so much faster than warlocks it probably goes back to the mages favor)

....where was I? Oh, yeah, talents. So, saw the talent tree for mages and not impressed. For a limited amount of points you don't get very much to "customize" your character. All reports I've seen say that they don't make a difference. I didn' thave a chance to test it thoroughly tho, so I'm not an expert.

There are TOO FEW character classes. My first MMORPG was really DAOC, and each realm had it's own particular classes. Yes, some were very alike, but only on the surface most times. Example, Skalds and Minstrels. Both mez, both have DD shouts, both have pulsing "spells" but there are some crucial differences. Skalds start as warriors, and continue to get good health and can use heavy armor. They do not use an instrument. Minstrels start as Thieves and got less health but more mana. They could stealth (stealth mezzing minstrels...ah, god, I hated them! By the time you heard the song you were already mezzed) and they could chain mez as fast as they could provided they had the mana and the fast fingers to click where skalds had to wait for theirs to come up again. So...even though those classes were alike, they were still different. Minstrels also had to use an instrument.

Each class in this is EXACTLY alike. Well, I didn't take "underwatering breathing" or whtaever spell it was for my undead warlock. Undead don't breath and wtf should she care about anyone else? She didn't leave the undead lands, heh. But the point is, they are the same for each side. If you see a mage, you'll know what spells he has, ditto for a hunter, or a warlock or whatever. Only exception that paladins are alliance only and shamans are horde only. It's not enough diversification. Yes, balance issues might come up, but if you've played a class, then you've seen all that class has to offer. You can't "respec" lines of spells (like you could spec in DAOC, you could have a nuking runemaster or the pulsing bladeturning runemaster or a mix of the two, or...) and you can't pick up additional ones either (via CoH and their power pools). After a week straight (and I mean straight) of playing this...everything seemed...the same. Yes, it was pretty, yes some of the quests were neat, but overall there wasn't anything that felt REALLY new to me.

I think the classes thing is my biggest grief with it. There just wasn't enough variety to keep my interest. I know in CoH if I get bored, I can make a gravity controller, or a dark defender (which are very fun, btw) or a mace tanker or...well, they have lots of combinations of stuff. Not that I'm bored with my characters, mind, but sometimes it's fun to see a build and think "Hey, that looks cool, I think I"ll try that".

Now, granted, WoW is only in beta, so I expect it to go through a few more changes (like putting in the damn talents for warlocks!) before it's released, but it's getting close enough that it's not going to be enough to hold my interest for very long, I do not believe. I will have to hold final judgement until it's out and see how they tweak it.

BTW, I think the getting rid of skill points thing is a v. bad idea. You can really powerlevel crafters then provided you have money. I woulda had a crapload of money if I wasn't crafting, so it would be easy for a guild to geting top fo the line crafters relatively quickly, which seems inherently wrong somehow.

Anyway....I just always have to play devil's advocate. Most people are treating this game like it's the second coming of Christ, and I just have to disagree. It's not BAD, but it's not Jebus either.

[Shimensin]

Love your view Soke. Haven't read such an informative post in months, thanks a lot!

And nice review Dash, there are news for me in it, just that Soke really caught me =]

[Vexica]

Thank you Dash and Soke! I still can not wait for this to come out. But I do hope that a few things are fixed and yes CoH has got us spoiled to some degree. It sounds more Like EQ in the classes. Not a bad thing but yes a little boring.

[Elathiel]

Very nice write-up. After getting the 'ok' from Dash, it has also been posted up on GamerGod: http://www.gamergod.com/article_display.cfm?article_id=74

Thank you Dash!

In response to your question in the article about Soulbound items: When you equip a Soulbound item, the special effects are locked on to you. If you remove the item and give it to a friend or sell it, the special effects will not be there. So, be sure its an item you will use before trying it on

[Martok]

Nice reviews!

[Soke]

Love your view Soke. Haven't read such an informative post in months, thanks a lot!

And nice review Dash, there are news for me in it, just that Soke really caught me =]

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

LOL, that was unintentional for me to turn it into an actual review. I just started typing and voila! Thanks tho. Tried to be honest. It was a fair game, and yeah, I did enjoy getting loot again, though they really need to set aside magic items a bit more somehow.

Some of the robes that warlocks & mages wore were PIMPIN' too. Looked very cool.

To address some of Dash's points; it sounds like he stuck to mostly warrriors but tried some of the other classes? Warriors...well, I loved grouping with OmeN (who was a warrior) because he could taunt as my pet could taunt, so i could sit back and cast spells without fear of being interrupted. As I said before, we had an insanely fast killing time between us. However, I do suggest giving all classes a try until about tenth or so in level before deciding "for sure". I wasn't gonna try a mage or a shaman, but I ended up liking them both very much, maybe even more than being a warlock. (and yes, warlocks are gimped...yes, they get a pet, but....oh...don't get me started about the mages conjuring food again. grr)

The second point that I wanted to address was that monsters do end up dropping more money, especially the "elite" mobs. BTW, mages ALSO get a spell called "Detect Magic" which they can cast on a lootable corpse and possibly get an additional magic item when they loot. How freakin' cheesy is that??? Anyway, yes, they do drop money satisfactorily. If I wasn't a crafter, I'd have been rich, way over six or more gold, as I spent a LOT Of money on crafting stuff, trying it out. I still ended up with over a gold and a half with my 21 warlock.

Also suggestion for an early enchanter, make lesser magic wands, as many as you can as fast as you can and sell them in the second newbie zone to mages and warlocks for 5 silver a piece. You'll make a killing.

Anyway, I'm glad people found my ascerbic comments useful. Like I said, mostly I was trying to play "Devil's Advocate".

[DashZero]

I got a Dwarf Hunter to 12th level, an Orc Warrior to 9th, a Tauren Shaman to 8th and an Undead Rogue to 7th. All other races and classes I played to around 5th or 6th.

So I didn't get to try play above 12th level, and I was soloing most of the time, really only grouping for quest objectives. Sounds like teaming, and getting to know your friends power sets is fun.

It seems that monster vs player balance was done somewhat like in CoH - they took a naked player character and made their fighting strength equal to the monsters of the same level. But once you add good armor and protection spells, then the even con monsters become too easy.

Warlock was fun, really need to get to 10th level to get the better pet. Mage disappointed me in that I had Fire and Ice spells, but couldn't see any difference between the 2. (Yeah different graphics, but it felt like 2 duplicate lines of spells. I know I didn't play a Mage high enough to really give it a chance though.) My Mage was a Troll, and even though I like their "Jamaican" flavor, somehow Trolls didn't thrill me to play. Strange, huh?

I really liked my Dwarf Hunter - I picked Hunter to try the pet and because starting equipment looked to be an axe. (Iwanted an axe-weilding Dwarf.) So that was cool and on top of that as a 1st level character I was surprised to see I got a GUN to begin with!!

I got my Shaman just high enough to see spirits - I thought that was a cool idea. Have different classes be able to see or interact with different things in the environment. I want to explore that class further.

Good stuff!