All Posts by ianubisi

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Originally posted by Kiamde

It takes 4-6 minutes to log in [from clicking on the shortcut to playing the game] and 20 seconds load times per teleport.

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Load times is something they are actively working on, so says David Bowman.  And they have definitely improved in the past week.  I load in a lot faster to start the game than I did a week ago.  Aso for teleports...that's somewhat true, but then this game doesn't have zones.  You can move from one part of the world to another without ever seeing a loading screen if you want to work it that way.

Hopefully the load times will improve some more, but I think it'll never be close to instant.

This is SOP (standard operating procedure) for Blizzard.  Let's all hope it really means a better game in the long run.  3D games have a tricky way of looking worse as the months roll on.

MOB is a MUD term, and I believe it stands for Mobile Object.

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Originally posted by Kiamde

1. The account creation is almost immpossible unless you get it right on the first try and don't realize how frusterating it is.

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That was really only a problem that first week, I'm sure.  Even so, I got it done and so did many others.  I don't think this is an issue any more.

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Originally posted by Kiamde

2.The servers go down on weekends and weekends only. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm how many people like to play on weekends? EVERYONE!

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While they work on stability, etc..., the servers are going down pretty much every day.  They stagger them one at a time, so you can still play...maybe just not on the character you'd like.  Heck, the downtime lasts about 5 minutes sometimes...I don't see this as a problem, especially compared to the 6+ hour "all server" windows EQ would have.

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Originally posted by Kiamde

3. Customer Service. You have to call them to get a somewhat immediate response and it is a crappy recording that gets you nowhere. If you send them an email it will never get responded to, and if you open a case it gets answered in 3-7 days. THAT is a LONG time to have to deal with your problem.

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Haven't had to bother with this, but that sure sounds bad.

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Originally posted by Kiamde

4. Account deletion. You have to call them to cancel your account and you have to tell them your CC number for security. Hmmmm very secure. You can go to Ibill.com to cancel but you need to put in all of your information like CC #, name on card, veri. # to get close to the swift death of your account.

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They can probably streamline this, but I doubt it's high on their priority list.  Hehe.

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Originally posted by Kiamde

5. Getting billed for the 1st month. Yes. You get bill for your "free" month. You get it refunded the next month but it still appears on the credit card.

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Didn't happen to me.  I got a statement with $0.00 due, just like it should be.  Sounds like something went wrong with your account creation process and they credited you for an overcharge.  If you ask me, that's good customer service.

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Originally posted by Kiamde

Not trying to flame, in fact HZ is a fun and fresh game but it get olds quick and it is not even worht the hassle.

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You're entitled to your opinion.  It is a fresh game, and it has a bad rap for being unoriginal.  Sounds like you had some bad experiences and it soured you...shame, really.  You seemed to be a fan of the game.

If by mops you mean mobs then I can assure you there are more than 2 in the game.

Diablo 2 is about as good as you can want.  With the new 1.10 upgrade there are all kinds of new character builds to explore.

Dungeon Siege was decent.

There are a few others out there that people might recommend.  But D2 is a staple that belongs in anyone's gaming diet.

Horizons is turning out to be a lot more interesting than I would have thought.  On the surface, it seems like a very simple fantasy-based MMOG:  pick a race/class combo, kill some things to level up, and craft some gear along the way.  I won't bother telling you about the crafting system...it is, as everyone reports, superb.  So leaving that off the table, here's some more of what I've been able to observe in the last week or so.

The class system has some really interesting facets.  There really is no such thing as a multiclass in Horizons, contrary to some popular beliefs.  You are always one type of Adventure class and one type of Craft class.  Where things become unique is how you decide to advance in Adventure classes and how that affects the abilities that that grants you.

Let's take for example the idea of being a Warrior/Cleric combination.  You choose which one to advance in one at a time.  As you gain XP that XP will be devoted to that class.  While leveling up in a class you gain abilities related to that class.  For a warrior, you will get Power Strike, Rend Armor, Negate Attack, etc...  When I switch over to Cleric, however, many of those abilities will not be available to me.  At level 4 Warrior, which would include the abilities mentioned, only Power Strike will remain when I switch to Cleric.  Thus, a level 5 Warrior/(cleric) is not the same as a level 5 Cleric/(warrior), even those the levels of each of the schools is the same.  This is how Horizons keeps someone from being every class at once.

But the trick of it all is that you do retain *some* of the abilities of each school you train in.  So my level 10 Warrior that got to level 4 as a cleric will retain the Instant Heal I ability, which is damned nice.  Also, my Warrior will be able to cast *some* spells from the Life skill, which is the primary casting skill of a Cleric.  A level 10 Cleric will be able to cast better spells than my level 10 warrior (with level 4 Cleric school), and so on.  I'm sure you see how this works out.  It's perfectly possible to have abilities in each school (level 4 is the base level where you retain some kind of ability from your school, even if it's not your active school).

It gets a tiny bit more complicated.  Because you can be all kinds of different levels, depending on which your active school is, you don't really have a level for your character.  Instead, you have a "Rating".  The rating is an aggregate of your various schools of Adventure (you also have a Craft rating, but that's not important here).  My level 10war/4clr has a rating of 11.  My level 9sprt/4clr/4mag has a rating of 12.  I'm not sure how the math adds up, people seem to think it's in measures of 10, but I think there are more weights involved.  The point is that your rating versus mob rating is what determines the XP value of the combat.  So if you attack an equal-rating mob you will get, let's say, 200xp, whereas a mob 2 ratings below you will probably yield about 100xp, etc...  When you switch schools, your rating will change dependant on the aggregate and the current school.  My 10war/4clr will change to a rating of 6 when I go from Warrior to Cleric.  This really affects how you level up as it's not exactly trivial for a level 4 cleric to kill mobs that have a rating of 6, and not that many of my Warrior abilities stayed with the transfer of schools.  This is really tricky for my Battlemage character I'm working on now since I can't wear *any* of the Bronze armor my warrior had when I switch over to Mage in order to increase that skillbase.

In theory, this kind of system should mean that there are endless possibilities for players to devise their perfect character...probably more so than UO had, and many times more variety than EQ ever had.  When you see a Cleric Rating 22 player, you never really know what other kinds of abilities and spells they may possess.  It's also what makes character development rather interesting, as you really have to consider what you want to work on and work toward...if you gain too many levels in a school you'll never use it will definitely affect your rating, and that'll make your character advancement more tedious.

Then there is the whole world of Prestige schools.  I cannot, for example, use Bronze armor when I'm working on my Mage side of my Warrior/Mage skills.  But when I finally qualify for Battlemage (200 flame, 150 one-hand-slash skills...meaning appx level 20 mage and level 15 warrior) I will be able to wear armor as well as cast spells and wield swords.  Some of the names of the prestige schools include:  Battlemage, Berserker, Spearman, Shaman, Crossbowman, Reaver, and so on.  I haven't reached one yet, focusing more of my attention on what kind of class combinations I really like and already deleting 4 characters that I didn't care for (the 5 character limit sucks, really, really sucks).  I'm actively working on 3 characters:  a Fiend that will become a Bloodmage, a Human that will be either a Paladin, Reaver, or Berserker; and a Gnome who will become a Battlemage...my current favorite combination.

Once I figured out how the overlap of school abilities worked, I got pretty excited about the game.  There are so many possibilities to explore, it really opens up a lot of imagination.  At least, that's how it seems so far...hopefully that will stand up to a few months of play.

It's a title worthy of being excited about.  The fact that blizzard is doing it is exciting too, for all the reasons suggested.  But Blizzard isn't perfect (*cough* SOJs *cough*) and they will make mistakes.  MMOGs are tremendous undertakings.  The level of expectation some people have of WoW is so high that it can only disappoint.  I'd hate to see that happen.

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Originally posted by Kiamde
Probably not gonna get much better till the expansions...

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I think that's really true of most MMOGs.  By the first expansion they've gotten a handle on class balance and the basic play issues that are a problem in the beginning of a game.  The first expansion usually brings in all the major content that people yell the loudest about.

Probably not the way it should work in a perfect world, but it sure seems how it works for MMOG.

All the more reason I feel PvP should either be completely on or completely off in MMOGs.  Whenever there is a mixture of PvP and PvM, where PvM players are protected from PvP, the result is a lot of compromise and very few happy people on the PvP side.

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Originally posted by doobster

 

I don't trust the big companies either with the exception of Blizzard.  They make great games and dont have that major corporation "How can we shaft our customers today" frame of mind.  If thiers one company that i trust the most is Blizzard.  I refuse to play UXO because of EA, and EQ Becuase of Sony.

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You may need to rethink your opinion here.  Consider a few facts:

• Vivendi Universal owns Blizzard. 
• Vivendi Universal allowed the core Diablo team to walk, a move probably monumentally detrimental to the Diablo franchase, and thus a massive cash cow for Blizzard.
• The Vivendi Universal sale of their gaming assets has been undetermined as of yet.  They may sell, but so far they have declined to do so.  We, therefore, have no idea what will happen to Blizzard in the near future (mind you, nobody will scrap it, it's too successful).

Now, my experiences with Blizzard products have been very good.  They have been able to do great things with great games, and seem to really care for the gamer experience.  That seems to mean it should translate to a good MMOG.  But they've never done a RPG, let alone a MMOG.  This will be their first venture into a very different market space.  So don't simply expect that their past performance automatically translates into future performance.  Things look good, yes, but we just don't know what WoW will be until we can take a peek under the hood.

As for distributors...you can't judge a game solely on the distributor.  THey are important, yes, but they are not the critical factor in game design.  Hell, Vivendi Universal has put out such total drek over the years that by the same logic you use to slight EQ and UXO (because of Sony and EA) I would expect WoW would be on your major crap-list.  Put the weight of judgement on the developer, not the distributor...though I'm not suggesting the distributor can't screw things up.

Very similar, yes.

Read the fansites for it.  http://hz.stratics.com  http://hz.warcry.com  etc...  Lots of info about how the game plays.

Let's not put the cart before the horse.  Let the game come to release, or at least open beta, so that people can start to formulate opinions based upon facts and not speculation.

Remember, we know nothing about the game beyond the promises made. 

When the server your char is on is down, you may not notice it.  You simply notice your chars aren't there.  It happened to me, exactly what you're describing, this last weekend.  I thought the same thing:  "my character has been deleted".  But it returned when the maintenance was done and the server back up.

I don't contest you can find it if you seek it enough, but I have a feeling there are plenty of players out there that aren't going to have that kind of patience...and their initial reaction to not finding a quality upgrade they expect will be disappointment.

Given a short period of time, when people really get the hang of things and set up their own systems, these things will be less an issue.  The economy will be established, items will be readily available, and expert crafters will gain some reknown for their wares and abilities.

The point I wanted to express was not that the system was flawed...just that it is very new, and still gaining its roots.  Once it does, I think there will be more for those that want to hit the ground running without any forced crafting action.  Mind you, for me this is almost paradise as I'd rather do it all myself anyway.

Is Shadowbane really so crappy that it isn't even mentioned?  I don't like PvP, so I never tried it.

Great game.  No combat.  Some of the most unique and interesting systems in MMOG today.  Excellent developer staff (both of them...seriously).  Superb community.

Not for everyone.  Download and try it.

Kiamde, calm down a bit.  I'm not saying there aren't any crafters out there.  What I'm saying is that there are plenty of things that the Consigner doesn't have.  Didn't have my Bronze Rune Stylus.  Didn't have my Spiritist spells.  Etc...

In other words, if you expect everything the be there, I suggest waiting for a month or so while people start stocking the Consigner up with the less-common goods that wll still fetch a price.

I don't understand people complaining about the graphics in that game.  FunCom made a beautiful game.  Some of the vistas in Rubi-Ka (especially the Shadowlands) are spectacular.  Just remember:  Omni-Tek and Clan have >VERY< different looks to them. 

As for the complexity, this is true.  To play the game at optimal ability, you really need to understand how Implants, Buffs, and Quality Levels work.  I recommend these sites for maximum help:

http://http://aovault.ign.com/

http://www.anarchyarcanum.com/

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Originally posted by neschria

What if WoW turns out to merely be a good game? Are people going to be able to even see that it is a good game through their disappointment that it isn't The Best Game That Will Ever Be? I am posing this as a hypothetical question. I am neutral on the WoW issue, but I do think that too much hype for any game is a bad thing.

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Fanboyism would prevail for a while, but eventually it would die down.  There would be some die-hard supporters that would scream heresy by even suggesting Blizzard could do anything less than exceptional.

It would put a massive chink in the armor of a company that takes very few risks and produces very few products.  I think they'll do well, but again this is a beast that is much bigger and nastier than they've encountered before.