Associate
- Joined
- 24 Feb 2004
- Posts
- 1,083
- Location
- Leeds/Cyprus
Played for all of 3 hours before the servers closed, got to the mighty heights of lvl 7... 
Overall, seemed like a pretty standard MMO, though I thought the combo system was pretty interesting. I only got 2 rudimentary 2-step combos by that point, but I gather they become branching combo sequences later, right? What sort of bonus effects can following a combo line give you?
Did anyone get high enough that they could do the cross-class Stigma thing? What's it like? Is it fairly easy to string together cross-class abilities for sick combined effects? Do yoiu get to use other classes combos, or just individual skills? Are there combos which use skills from different classes?
How about the PvP? Anyone done any? Impressions?
One thing that really puts me off, I have to say, is the slow movement speed. The pace of the combat is ok (in fact _just_ right - I particularly like the fact that it doesn't have a universal cooldown for skills!), but it just feels like it takes ages to walk/run anywhere: I seemed to be wandering through massive forests populated by random critters (most of whom don't attack unless hit first, which was a bit of a refreshing change actually). I guess if I had a few more hours I'd have gotten my wings and cut the travel time a lot (saw the occasional higher-level player zooming past me at a frankly ridiculous speed a few times and was well impressed!) but the slow walk/run movement and massive distances seem designed to stretch out the levelling process.
Another mild complaint is that it's slightly more cartoony in style than I was led to expect from screenshots. I had a particularly gloomy reaction when I saw that no amount of fiddling in the character editor could give my character realistic ears - it was either long and pointy or big and round. At least I found a hairstyle that covered them! I guess part of the "culturalisation" process was to make it look slightly more like WoW, because the screenshots I saw had characters which were much more statuesque and less "cutesy" than anything I was able to create. I did laugh in delight when I saw someone who only came up to my knee though - it's ridiculous that you can make characters that small - bet they'll be hard to spot in pvp!
BTW I know there's a special beta thread, but the last few pages of it seemed to have been taken over by people asking for technical advice, and, since the beta's now over, I thought it's best to start a separate impressions thread where people can say what they liked and what they didn't.
Overall, seemed like a pretty standard MMO, though I thought the combo system was pretty interesting. I only got 2 rudimentary 2-step combos by that point, but I gather they become branching combo sequences later, right? What sort of bonus effects can following a combo line give you?Did anyone get high enough that they could do the cross-class Stigma thing? What's it like? Is it fairly easy to string together cross-class abilities for sick combined effects? Do yoiu get to use other classes combos, or just individual skills? Are there combos which use skills from different classes?
How about the PvP? Anyone done any? Impressions?
One thing that really puts me off, I have to say, is the slow movement speed. The pace of the combat is ok (in fact _just_ right - I particularly like the fact that it doesn't have a universal cooldown for skills!), but it just feels like it takes ages to walk/run anywhere: I seemed to be wandering through massive forests populated by random critters (most of whom don't attack unless hit first, which was a bit of a refreshing change actually). I guess if I had a few more hours I'd have gotten my wings and cut the travel time a lot (saw the occasional higher-level player zooming past me at a frankly ridiculous speed a few times and was well impressed!) but the slow walk/run movement and massive distances seem designed to stretch out the levelling process.
Another mild complaint is that it's slightly more cartoony in style than I was led to expect from screenshots. I had a particularly gloomy reaction when I saw that no amount of fiddling in the character editor could give my character realistic ears - it was either long and pointy or big and round. At least I found a hairstyle that covered them! I guess part of the "culturalisation" process was to make it look slightly more like WoW, because the screenshots I saw had characters which were much more statuesque and less "cutesy" than anything I was able to create. I did laugh in delight when I saw someone who only came up to my knee though - it's ridiculous that you can make characters that small - bet they'll be hard to spot in pvp!
BTW I know there's a special beta thread, but the last few pages of it seemed to have been taken over by people asking for technical advice, and, since the beta's now over, I thought it's best to start a separate impressions thread where people can say what they liked and what they didn't.