I played this last Beta Event and very much enjoyed the game. I look forward to playing, and have to say I am getting a bit antsy in anticipation. Ten more days isn’t long, but feels long enough.
Anyway, who else is playing and what will you be playing? Thinking of doing a Warrior/Necromancer combo, but haven’t made up my mind completely.
I must admit the reason I don’t play most MMORPGs is because of the monthly fee. I loved Diablo II, but it got old pretty quick, played EQ and Horizons but paying a monthly fee I felt compelled to play as much as possible. This game has no monthly fees which I think is awesome!
I can’t even figure out what it is like to play! The official website has nothing at all and I can’t find much in thwe way of interviews and such. Please tell!
I’ve heard it’s quite different from the Everquest model, which I would appreciate. EQII is nice and all, but I’m not sure if I want topony up the dough for it.
Yeah, the official website stinks. Try instead GWvault.
The game is set up very much like every other MMORPG there is, in regards to the GUI. The game itself has elements of Diablo II, which is no surprise, as the developers are who assisted in putting this one together.
The game starts off with you being able to pick a class. There are no races, which would seem to be limiting, but you can alter the appearance, so it isn’t like Diablo in that regard. The classes are:
Anyhow, you can dual class with no experience penalty. However, when you level you get ability points you can spend into skill categories (blood magic, Prayers, etc) Each class seems to have about 5 different skill categories, with hundreds of skills. As you spend more points into a skill category, the skills or spells increase in damage, range or duration.
The nice thing about this game, other than it being free, is that you don’t have to worry about people camping spawns like you did in EQ and other MMORPGs. When a party, or a solitary player, goes into a mission or a map other than a town or arena, it creates a map just for that party or player. No worry about getting your kill stolen from you, or people training you, or getting the mission done before you. You can also hire Mercs to help you, very similar to Diablo, but I think in this case you can only hire them for certain misisons. Also, similar to Diablo there are “Waypoints” in that when you reach a city, you can always teleport there by opening your map and double clicking on the city. Very nice, IMO.
There is more, such as crafting and such, but I am not entirely certain myself how well they work, as I spent most of my time playing around with the different skill combinations.
Oh, when you spend points into an ability to specialize say in Fire magic, and you go into a mission where most of the monsters are immune to fire, you can change your specialization. Every level you get so many alterations to your skill point distribution. So if you spend unwisely, you can always change it. I like that too.
It is much better than Diablo in that you don’t have One world that you have to go through three times, but a whole world comprising of 4 continents. The world on release, AFAIK is only a portion of a continent, so I wager that this game will have quite a few expansion packs, rivaling EQ in that regard. Oh well, the game is free month to month, so I can expect that.
I have to try any game that lets you play as a monk. I first tried that character class with the “Hellfire” expansion pack for the original Diablo, and it was about the most bad-ass character I’ve ever had in a video game. (Apart from God of War, I suppose).
Epimetheus’s post is the first I’ve ever heard of what the game is actually like, but there’s been a lot of buzz around it. (The most I’d ever heard is “Kind of like a really nice-looking Diablo 2, but an MMORPG with all-instanced battles.”) I’m definitely going to to check it out.
I just thought of something. I always said that companies should just make the game outright free (or just very cheap, enough that stores would want to carry it). The charges for monthly fees amount to far more money, anyway, and if you bring in more people for a few months, all the better.
No other fees. I do believe, however, that there will be quite a few expansion packs that you will have the option to buy.
I figure spending out 30-40 dollars every 6 months for an expansion pack is better than shelling out 14 dollars a month, and still shelling out 30-40 dollars once a year for an expansion pack.
I getting a little bored with WOW. I was on a PVP server and I tried to keep up with the power levelers, but I kept falling behind my other guild mates who were college students. It became harder and harder to find people to finish my elite quests. Then there were a bunch of level 60 who were fighting boredom by ganking lower levels.
So I reroll on a PVE server, and now it sound like this Honor System has turned even PVE servers into warzones where it’s very difficult to level.
Guild Wars sounds good on paper. The skill tree sounds deep enough that a good newbie character can beat a long time player if he chooses the right skill combo for the right situation. The problem is that those sorts of systems are tough to play balance. It might end up that months in that a monk/mesmer character is overpowered and everyone is play that character, and everyone else screaming “Nerf monk/mesmers!!!”
I’m also not clear on how big a role elite equipment will play.
You’re pretty awesome, but those screenshots are better. After reading a preview on GameSpot, I’m going to change my answer from above – the monks are just clerics, apparently, instead of fighting monks. And I’m definitely checking out this game.
The bit I overlooked from Epimetheus’ description is that you can dual-class, which sounds like it can give the whole thing a Final Fantasy Tactics layer, and is therefore most awesome. From the previews, it doesn’t look as if the character classes were designed to be as mix-and-matchable as Tactics’ were, but the only way to test that is to actually play it.
I dabbled in a few of the Beta Weekend Events, but I didn’t really spend a whole lot of time playing, so I’m no expert.
As has been said, you pay for the game and it has no monthly fees. There are no other hidden charges. There will be optional expansion packs for sale in the future, but the way they are doing it is cool. If you don’t buy future expansion packs your account doesn’t become obsolete. The people with and without the expansion packs can still interact and do battle in the base game realms.
After reading some more on this game, I am not so certian. I will play of course, but it seems it is not like most MMORPGs which have high levels and such. According to several interviews and innuendo from message boards on the topic, seems that the Level cap will be 20 initially. There will be other ways of furthering your character, but the developers feel that they don’t want huge level gaps to make PVP for high level people only. Which tends to happen in most MMORPGs. The developers intend to make it worth playing, obviously, but want it to rely more on personal skill than number of levels.
I sort of see this as a good thing, but I am a bit wary too. I hope they do something to make PVE worthwhile, but what if there is a level cap and they are worried about over powered characters? I am worried, but excited at the same time, to see their solution.
Oh well, time will tell. Maybe I will see you all on sometime, eh?
