I thought that might be the case. Unfortunately I occasionally suffer from extreme bouts of alt-itis, and having such similar abilities low level has a tendency to make things worse 
I’ll be getting the game and play for a while, at least until SWTOR comes out. My favorite character so far is a Paladin/Beastmaster/Warlord. For me, being able to always have a pet, no matter my class, and then combining that with a soul that has some gameplay I like (powers triggered by blocking, for example) is a huge draw for me.
My biggest complaint is that the characters all look the same, more or less. They really need to improve the customization options.
Personally, I like the system. It means I need only four characters. 
But I think there’s no need to worry about characters of a class all being the same. Every soul plays differently. Some of the differences are minor, but there’s big differences between others. And since, as you say, the function within a group will be more or less the same, how they perform that function will be distinct. And mostly a matter of the playstyle the player prefers.
It’s a class feature of Rogues that they can seamlessly switch from ranged to melee.
This annoys me too. But I think it’s supposed to be a feature, not a bug. They want the game to feel more like an FPS. :rolleyes:
I haven’t played any games with autoface before. WoW certainly doesn’t have it and they do just fine. Seems kinda silly to be honest, like the game is playing itself.
In terms of game design, it’s a question of the player’s skills versus the character’s skills. In an FPS, player skills are preeminent; outcomes are determined by what the player can do. In an RPG, character skills are preeminent; outcomes are determined by what the character can do.
For me, I don’t mind having to worry about facing if powers affect whatever is in front of me. But if a game requires me to select a target, then it should do the facing for me. Why should I have to both? Either I control where the character points and it hits whatever I’m looking at, or I tell the character what to attack and it does what it takes to do that.
CoH as autofacing, and it’s very helpful when fighting a large number of badguys at once. Which happens regularly, even in solo play.
That’s not the case, however. You just try to walk into a battleground in WoW without knowing what you can do and how to use it. You’ll be demolished - and facing can be extremely important. There are whole realms of tricks using instant abilities or attacks, including kiting, and it’s legitimate to ask players to learn how to use them. If the game did what you asked, it would actually end a huge portion of strategy - knowing the right timing of how and when to move, and how many classes use movement to screw with people using their movement, and so on.
Basically, you seem to be thinking of the game being an artillery duel, when it’s more of a dance.
I went with your advice and started a new character in WoW instead of buying Rift. I think this will entertain me just fine. It was quite nostalgic logging in with my 6 year old character. I wasn’t on for more than 2 minutes when someone whispered, “Wow, you look like you just logged on for the first time in 5 years”. I guess it’s not often you see a lvl 60 shaman rocking a full Earth Fury set these days.
Game is now live, right?
How was launch?
Is the game buggy?
I don’t like PvP. Is the game not for me?
Launch was very smooth from my perspective, I got in during headstart. Some popular servers had long queues, but they opened new servers very quickly–so you’re really only in a queue if you choose to be on a server that’s full.
I haven’t run into too much of a problem with bugs. My game crashed once in a week of playing a few hours a day, there have been a few patches, and I do think a couple of servers have been rebooted due to some sort of issue. But nothing like my memories of early WoW “loot lag” and such.
With the disclaimer that I’ve only made it to 20 and don’t know how things are in higher zones, on PvE servers, it’s similar to what I remember of early WoW, PvP wise. You can flag yourself if you want (and there’s an option to turn off auto-flag, so you don’t flag yourself if you try to heal someone flagged), and there are Warfronts, which are just battleground type instances–the level 10-19 one is essentially a capture-the-flag type.
No real penalty for not participating that I can see, other than not getting the gear that costs PvP points, but that gear is probably more PvP-oriented anyway.
I did see someone mention somewhere that the rift/invasion mechanics in some way give a PvP feel to PvE, in that when a rift opens where you are or a major invasion happens in the zone, you generally pretty much stop and deal with the invasion until it’s done, then you go back to questing
The launch was very smooth. The only problem was too many players trying to get through the front door at the same time. I started on a second-wave server (Estrael) and had no problems with queues.
I’ve reported two bugs so far. First, pets lose their buffs whenever you exit the game. Easy to work around, by still annoying. Second, when a rifts closes, I sometimes get disconnected.
PvP is completely consensual. You can even toggle off auto-flagging, so that you cannot accidentally attack someone or heal someone that would flag you.
The rift/invasion system is really fun. Rifts are locations where you can temporarily join a public raid to do little “dungeon” encounter. Waves of trash mobs, building up to taking down a boss. Some random loot can drop, but the main reward is a special currency you can use to buy nice gear, once you’ve saved enough. There are also minor rifts that can be solo’d for minimal rewards.
Invasions are basically squads of NPCs that rove around ganking players (and enemy monsters, too!). It gives that PvP feel of having to watch your back without the annoyance of a real person hassling you.
You don’t have to fight against rifts/invasions. Sometimes I do, sometimes I just want to finish some quests.
Of course, I’m only level 16 and haven’t left the initial (non-tutorial) zone. It is rather large, I haven’t even explored it all.
I’m having a lot of fun so far. Feel free to ask more questions here. I’m sure there’ll be a bunch of reviews coming out in the next week or so, too.
I’m playing it, and so far it’s keeping me really entertained. I tried to get into WOW about a year ago and it just didn’t do anything for me.
(I probably should read the manual, however… I just figured out last night where evrybody got those weird turtle mounts!)
Ok. Thanks, everybody!
I bought the game last night, got two toons up to level 8 or so. There seems to be a few mechanics that are very similar to WoW. Press “L” key to open quest log. Rogues build combo points to use in finishing moves.
Graphics are more detailed. I got on a low pop server, experienced no lag or crashes.
Doesn’t look like crafting becomes available this early though. I saw a couple trainers (outfitter, mining), but not armorsmithing, weaponcrafting.
A Rift event seems kinda fun, except when your alone in the area. Then you get ganked badly.
The quests seem rather generic so far, but the backstory seems like it might have some depth to it.
UI has small font. Is this adjustable?
For skills (you get three), the gathering skills are available early out of the tutorial zones. You have to get to a larger city to find the actual crafting skills. They seem useful, if you can gather enough materials to keep them up to date. They each have a “disenchant” power to break down gear into components. And the recipes to craft things have a slot you can use to customize the stats of the item.
The UI is adjustable, but not always easily. There’s an over scale factor you can use to adjust the size of everything. And some windows you can adjust manually. Placement of windows has a nice anchoring system. You’ll just have to play around with it to get it right for you. But once you’ve got it, you can import the UI settings into another character from your character with the UI you like.
There is an interesting backstory, but it’s mostly in the text of the quests. There are special “story” quests that are supposed to be more important.
Of course, speaking of runebreaking and bugs, they have just disabled runebreaking because there was some sort of exploit.