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Beta First Impressions.Follow

#1 May 13 2004 at 8:50 PM Rating: Decent
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ive had the game for 2 days now. and here are a few things i found myself amazed about.

first two minutes of the game "Damn, wheres the book, how the hell do i -- oh.. WASD movement.. cool"

i got kinda used to the compact keyboard style for FFXI so to try and tell someone around me "hello" i hit the space bar.
"OMG you can jump!!!!!" i spent the next 5-10 min bunnyhopping around the city. =P

"hrm lets see, this guy has an ! over his head. *left click on him* oh, the help message came up *clicks on that* 'right click to activate quest' hey cool! easily marked quest NPCs."

"hrm, go kill these outside the town, got it."

"macro commands... macro commands... well, the spell list at the bottom of the screen has #s on em... *presses the 2 key and watches a fireball like spell fly from his fingertips* COOL!"

*30 seconds pass* OMG i dont have to hold down CTRL or ALT anymore to use a spell! YES!"

*kills the mobs requested and goes back to find the NPC that now has a ? over his head to show that i activated the quest from him*.

"ok, *clicks on complete quest* *hears a fanfare type sound indicating he gained a level* WHAT!?"

*reads the chat screen* "i... gained... experience points for completeing a... quest? and not killing a mob?" O_O

*goes back out to fight some monsters*
"hrm... the monster has a yellow backround behind the name, yet, that one has a red one... *walks up to the yellow one* whats different about yo-OOOUUUUUCCCHHH... oh... the red name means they agro to you -_- wish i knew that sooner."

*gains a craft skill* "lets see, ive played FFXI for 7 months now, and have never even crafted an ingot, or anything for that matter, yet, im crafting in WoW a day into playing."
"ok, got my skill, got my recipie, got my items. *clicks on the create item button* yay, skill rise. oh, cool, i can turn that into something else... just need to find some other stuff... *an hour later* "ive now got my skill up to 47, i have the best equipment i can find, and ive still got 15 silver and 75 bronze to spend. and thats not even selling stuff to players! thats just smashing them! to quote cartmen... ssssswwweeeeeeeeeeeetttt."

"k, so i got my skill up to 45+, i can make bags now, i need them badly, damn class, finish already so i can go make my bags!"
#2 May 13 2004 at 9:56 PM Rating: Good
How'd you get in on the game this late in?

I'd love to join, but I figured it would be months...
#3 May 13 2004 at 11:03 PM Rating: Excellent
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#4 May 13 2004 at 11:19 PM Rating: Decent
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Friends and Family of workers.

A fellow classmate of mine at my college works for blizzard. he signed me up for the F&F part about 2 months ago, but, they disabled it and put all of the people on the list on hold till now.

If i really wanted to, i could walk down to the California Blizzard home base and pound on the door till they give me a cd key ~_^.
#5 May 14 2004 at 2:44 AM Rating: Good
Cool. Well, enjoy.

Please let us all know what's new as you play.Smiley: smile
#6 May 15 2004 at 2:05 PM Rating: Decent
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Hehe, i actually reconfigured my hotkeys so that my screenshot button is closer to my movement keys =P once i figure out where they go, i hope to be bringing up a lotta info here.
#7 May 15 2004 at 3:57 PM Rating: Decent
and write some journals to ease are pain if you can.
#8 May 15 2004 at 7:26 PM Rating: Decent
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I have yet to find the button that lets me view previous quests. i dont think there is one. ill start making notes on current quests that i have to submit here.

As for a journal. Be more specific.
#9 May 15 2004 at 7:42 PM Rating: Decent
you know a journal about the things you do in WOW and make it interesting. like when you enter some instanced dungeons or when your grouping or doing quests and other stuffs. but make it seem cool and if you can show some pic's. pics add to the coolness factor.

Edited, Sat May 15 20:43:15 2004 by Saturos
#10 May 16 2004 at 6:49 PM Rating: Good
Will Fraps work in WoW?

I've been using it to take pictures in FFXI and it works great.

EDIT: It's good for making videos too, but you have to remember to turn it off, or your entire hard drive will become one large file.

Edited, Sun May 16 19:50:39 2004 by LadyOfHolyDarkness
#11 May 16 2004 at 9:08 PM Rating: Decent
i dont know. i dont play beta,wish i did though,but open beta should be here in a few months,hopefully.
#12 May 17 2004 at 10:12 PM Rating: Excellent
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Just making sure you realize there is a http://wow.allakhazam.com that has most of the lower level quests and items listed already.
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#13 May 19 2004 at 9:16 PM Rating: Decent
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FRAPS: dunno. there is a hot key that can remove the interface from the screen.

Im fully aware of the quests on the site already. i try my best to check and see if any quest i activate is here or not.
#14 May 20 2004 at 11:22 PM Rating: Decent
GREAT post. makes me want the game even more. it seems that WOW is fixing all the problems i have with FFXI... but i don't wanna start wanna those posts. i can smell the flaming starting already... Please post more impressions soon.
#15 May 21 2004 at 1:43 PM Rating: Decent
Here's a post I wrote up for some FFXI friends about my first impressions:

Overall Feel
WoW has even more of a "Warcraft" feel than FFXI has a "Final Fantasy" feel. Probably because it's a specific world it's based on and not a general theme. They've added in some new things and tweaked a few others (Tauren as well as Night Elves can be Druids, Dwarves can be Paladins, the Undead PCs are part of a rebel group that split off the undead Scourge from the WCIII game...)

Crafting
The crafting system is a very different approach. First of all there are two kinds of crafting skills, the first set are for gathering materials like herbs or skinning animals. Basically the harvesting functions in FFXI are their own skills in WoW. Then there are the actual item-making skills.

You elect to buy the trade skills with Skill Points that you get from gaining fight xp. For instance, maybe it costs 15 skill points and you get Tailoring (Clothcrafting) at the Apprentice level. (Prices vary, I think Herbalism was 5). You also start with 0 or maybe 1 point of actual Tailoring skill. With that, you get a couple basic recipees, something the equivalent of weaving a bolt of cotten cloth out of 3 cloth scraps. Kind of similar to our low-level synthing, really. You can use the starter recipee easily and you usually get a point in Tailoring with each use.

To actually make items, say a brown cotten shirt, you have to BUY a formula. You can't just experiment with ingredients you have to have added the formula to your crafting skill info, then if you have the ingredients you select it and make it. The formulas can't normally be purchased from a trainer if you can't use it, but you can get some formulas as treasure or quest rewards. They're color coded as so easy you can't get skill through really easy and you can maybe get a tradeskill point out of every 5 or so uses, to normal and likely to give a skill, tough but highly likely to give skill, to too hard to succeed. Pretty similar to synthing's maximum skill gains on recipees, but totally apparent.

The skills are extremely synergistic. I messed around with this stuff a lot. I got tailoring up to 40 on one character and then hit a formula that required light leather pieces (I'd been selling it). When I asked, I was told that light leather was something that a skinner could sometimes harvest from a dead animal, or a leather-worker could make it out of other material (leather scraps). So I ran to the other side of the area and bought skinning and then tried it on some dead animals lying around and since they weren't low-level it failed at first but I eventually got some skill up and harvested some. If I'd known what I needed to do at the beginning it would have helped, I wasted points on Herbalism and Alchemy and my party member is already doing Herbalism and Enchanting and blowing thru herbs like crazy. Also, my tailoring was lagging behind what we were finding as drops but at least one time I was able to make a new armor item that was clearly superior to what we had on one slot. I gave the equivalent of a linen robe, linen cuffs, and gaiters to some random person and he was "OMG THANK YOU SO MUCH!" so it clearly has its uses

On the other hand we tried some alternate characters and I bought skinning and leatherworking right away and I created leather "armor kits" which were expendable items that added +3 armor to a body, leg, hand, or foot wear item. Can you imagine that? Buffing your self with +3 def on a couple items and I did not buy anything, it was all harvested from skinning and synthed with leatherworking.

So on the one hand, I think it sucks you can't experiment, on the other, wow, nice....

BTW eventually you have to buy the next grade, Journeymen then Master. We're talking 150 Skill points and then some to move up to higher level synthing.

Quests
FFXI has missions. WoW has so many quests your eyes will bleed. Some of them are the boring "go kill bats and bring me 5 wings" types. But you get XP for them. And they all have little mini-storylines. There isn't the big overarching plot with cut scenes you get in FFXI but they did really draw me in. I would say that doing these various quests drove my levelling and while some were more challenging than others, they were very much keyed to my abilities. No Eco-warrior quest on day 1!

Areas
The zone I started in was really big and it was divided into a lot of mini-zones each with their own location name. Lots of roads, but the map was hard to follow. You're exploring blind "going south until you reach the blahlbah hills" a fair amount of the time if it's not a town location right on a road. I guess it would be comparable to say that their equivalent of a Region is one continuous mega-zone. That was a lot smoother then our constant zoning during travel. I would say the starting area would be equivalent to the entire Sarubata area, including all of Giddeus and possibly most of Tahrongi Canyon to boot.

Graphics
Kind of cartoony. Really really similar to WCIII. I'm getting used to them but I really think I prefer FFXI's style.


Soloing vs Party
Soloing seems more achievable. There isn't the "after x level too weaks can still kick your butt" thing, at least so far. Party XP seems similar to FFXI. My friend played a bit without me and had several levels at start. Stuff I could solo for 150xp I was getting 85 for when we paired up, or less. (We partied to keep track of each other and do /p chat; I could have still soloed slowly and I was playing a Priest). Oh, and I got Raise at level 10. @_@

Death
Almost painless. Find it hard to believe actually. If you die, you have 5 minutes to be raised or you can release your soul and become a ghost and spawn at the nearest graveyard. If you want your body brought to you and to revive there, it costs you XP. If you're ok with running back to your body tho, then you can run at an accelerated rate on the ghostly plane (you see nothing but other ghosts and only the monsters that are near your bod when you get back to it) back to your body. About 5 minutes to run at the most so far. You don't have to revive right AT your death spot, you just need to get close and thus can hide behind a tree from the aggro mob that killed you.
#16 May 22 2004 at 11:08 PM Rating: Good
There's not looting of the dead in this game is there?
#17 May 23 2004 at 8:18 PM Rating: Decent
what dead do you mean? people palyers of monsters? im assumming(more like hopeing) you mean people players,anyway not you cant loot people,hell you cant even kill them,until the faction pvp server comes out.
#18 May 24 2004 at 11:27 PM Rating: Good
I was talking about stealing equipment off the bodies of dead PCs.

ThanksSmiley: smile

I'm glad to know that it doesn't happen.
#19 May 25 2004 at 3:32 AM Rating: Decent
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It sounds more readily accessible than FFXI...but also less rewarding.

The more difficult something is to do, the more reward it is when you finally do it. WoW makes things sound too easy to me. The good thing about that is it's very rewarding to play initially...but it doesn't retain the hook that is CRUCIAL to an MMO. It's why in games like EQ or FFXI money is so hard to get, you need things to take a long time to do.

I'm particularly disappointed about hearing about the craft system, and that it takes point you get from levelling to do. I much prefer crafting over anything else in MMOs, but now it seems like an easy side thing to do for people as they level. Which kind of defeats that ability to say "I'm a crafter". Nobody can be just a crafter anymore, which is a shame.
#20 May 25 2004 at 10:22 AM Rating: Default
getting money in FFXI is to damn hard. also theres only one healer class,how gay is that? not to mention most of the classes are melees and there dmg output mainly depends on acc and dex,so those prices are jacked up so high and if you are a melee you got to be ready to stand in some spot for hours just to find a party and after lv20(or 15 depends) soloings suks and isnt worth it. then theres the fact you can barly group with people a few lvs higher or lower then you.

Quote:
I'm particularly disappointed about hearing about the craft system, and that it takes point you get from levelling to do.
you dont get skill points from lving,you get them the xp you get from killing mobs,i think it was 600xp per skill point. once you get to around lv 20+ geting skill points is a breeze. unless all you do is quest to gain lvs since,you dont get skill points from quest xp:(

Edited, Tue May 25 11:25:19 2004 by Saturos
#21 May 25 2004 at 1:11 PM Rating: Good
This is sounding more like my type of game than FFXI. FFXI is too much of a timesink for me to play properly. It's fun...but I don't have the time.

WoW seems geared towards letting you accomplish small goals very quickly. Hopefully they'll also have some more elite quests for those people that have the time to do them.
#22 May 25 2004 at 9:07 PM Rating: Decent
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Red Mages are very capable healers as well, they just don't get the -na spells that White Mage do...

The problem I have with needing XP to get skill points is that you can't settle down and just level your crafting, it forces you to go out and kill things too, which is by far my least favourite part of MMOs. I hate killing things and levelling, it's so tedious :\. I'd much rather be able to kill a little and get some starting capital, then just level my craft up (Mostly what I do in FFXI)
#23 May 26 2004 at 10:18 AM Rating: Default
Quote:
The problem I have with needing XP to get skill points is that you can't settle down and just level your crafting, it forces you to go out and kill things too, which is by far my least favourite part of MMOs
the only thing you need skill points for is to be able to use the craft skill and raise its rank,like from advance to exspert,to master and ect. you dont need skill points to just be able to craft items and each time you succecfully craft the item your skill will raise,like in FFXI,but if your to lazy to go kill mobs for skill points then your so out of luck. not to mention your stats will be very very lacking.
#24 May 27 2004 at 10:36 PM Rating: Decent
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Saturos wrote:
[quote] not to mention your stats will be very very lacking.


I recently just found out that your Primary Stats, like strength, Spirit, Stamina, and the like dont go up during your level like your dagger skill or some other weapon/spell/craft skill does. You do actually use your skill points for these. I upgraded some of mine, but, not anywhere near enough to where i should have. im trying to save all my skill points because i capped my Tailoring skill off, and i want to be able to get higher on it. But yea. should be interesting once i do start actually putting points into my stats.
#25 May 27 2004 at 11:26 PM Rating: Decent
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I wouldn't terribly care if my stats sucked, I hate levelling. I never left Windurst til my Cloth skill was over 20 in FFXI :P...

So, making sure I don't misunderstand this, you need skill points to get certain ranks in crafts? IE, X skill points to give you 'Recruit' or whatever level that lets you get from 1-25, then X points for 'Novice' level etc? That's still a bit restrictive, but a bit better I suppose
#26 May 28 2004 at 1:20 AM Rating: Good
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In order to craft something, you need the materials and the know-how to do it. In order to have the know-how, you need to have a skill level high enough to learn how to make the item. In order to have a skill level high enough to learn, you need to practice, but you also need to be able to advance when you practice.

Ah, the glorious journeyman system! Other skills are capped at your level * 5. Tradeskills are not. When you first learn a tradeskill, at a cost of 5 or 10 skill points, you are capped at 75. To get beyond that point, you have to spend an additional 50 or 75 points to raise it to 150. Finally you can spend 200 or 300 points to raise it to 225. At present this is the ceiling, although it is expected to rise. (The two sets of numbers are different if the skill is a "production" skill or a "gathering" skill...oddly, the gathering skills are the higher numbers.)

Where do skill points come from? They are created from directly earning experience from killing. Let's say some creature is worth 75 exp. After killing 4 of them, you'll get a point. (It's every 300.) It doesn't matter what rest state you are in for this. So yes, that's right, in order to become a better alchemist, you need to go bash stuff with swords. To become a better miner, you need to cast some big nuke spells.

What else are skill points good for? Not a whole lot. Every level, you will gain the ability to add to your main attributes of strength, stamina, agility, intelligence, and spirit. You will maybe be able to add 1 to each skill, and at higher levels occasionally 2. Skills unimportant to your class (like intelligence for rogues) do not always get the cap raised when you level. But, you can spend a few skill points to raise it if you want. The cost increases based on your pre-existing stat, roughly 1/10 of the skill, plus a penalty if it's an unimportant stat. But even going from level 38 to 39, I only spent about 30 skill points. Contrast this with the 300 I had to save to become an expert herbalist -- I was saving points for 14 levels after reaching cap.

Oh, skill points are also used for learning select skills that your class has access to, but doesn't start with. Priests can not use a dagger or staff at the start of the game - they are limited to one-hand maces, but you can teach your priest to have a skill at daggers or staves. You can not, however, learn to use swords, axes, or guns as a priest. The two priest weapon skills cost 50 to learn, but other classes' vary.

Tradeskills aside, you will have enough skill points for what you need. They are basically a big FU to anyone who wants to be a crafter rather than getting on the leveling treadmill. Never mind that there are no recipes in the game with all store-bought components. Blizzard basically just decided they didn't want a level 1 character to sit in an inn and knit all day and tell tales to people as they bring her the wool that they find so she can make them a nice robe.

Edited, Fri May 28 02:19:08 2004 by Azuarc
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