Flibby & Misterjingo - what are your impressions of the game?
My initial impressions when I joined beta was that it was very good. The game feels quite solid even though there are some gaping bugs, doesn't feel like there is a massive thing missing. The classes I've played are well designed, although some of them have their flaws and I'm expecting them to get looked at. The graphics are mediocre but we are all fixed on "low" settings and there is no AA or AF. The game is actually quite funny too - it likes to crack jokes and humour the player in other ways, such as my Empire Bright Wizard shouts "********!" when she gets hit. The humour side I find quite unique and it makes the game more enjoyable and you do get a few smiles out of it even if the jokes are cheesy.
RvR is very good. I've never played DaoC so I cannot compare but overall it's a lot of fun. I do have my faults with it though which I'm hoping at looked into. Such as when you are defending a keep - the ranged can just about hit the front of the gate with their spells, but everyone else standing about 10 foot from the gate basically never get hit. The ballstic weapons also never realy do a lot of damage. The hellblasters that you can attach to the keep to fire do about 500 - 800 damage to one single target with a reload time of about 8 - 10 seconds which is crap.
There are several "mini-games" in the game too which are great fun. Such as there is one for the battering ram when you are trying to bust into a keep. 4 players operating the ram enter into a small mini game which is simple and it's just like a random number generator trying to get 100 but it is good fun. There is another when operating a ballistic weapon near a keep or warcamp. When you click on it, you can enter sniper mode and then look through the vision of the weapon and can shoot players. Basically like trying to sniper people from distance with a weapon - it's fun, even if they don't do a lot of damage.
The zone design is good, they have laid everything out very well. Basically all zones have a segment of RvR and PvE in them so you can do either no matter which zone you go into. The bad thing is that you have to cross PvP areas to get to other PvE areas which I don't like - it means that people who HATE PvP are still going to have to flag themselves and gauntlet over a PvP area to reach the PvE bit. Another bad thing is, you don't need to PvP/RvR to build up your renown ranks. Every 2 level of renown ranks you receive Tier armour which is like a full set of class armour. In the first tier zones (1 - 11) you can buy this armour without setting foot in a RvR area. However Tier 2 to Tier 4 zones (12 - 40) require you to venture into a RvR area and visit a keep your faction owns to buy it which sucks again for PvE people.
PvE I never tried, however there are about 8 PvE high end zones for people to visit so it's not a purely PvP game. There is one in Altdorf for example, and speaking of that there is also a Public Quest in Altdorf - you have to kill a Rank 40 Lord and it's some big fat thing that looks like that thing from Blade that was in the archives and they killed it with UV light
Public Quests are definitely my most fun thing in the game. There are loads of them, and you can actually solo and still end up getting loot at the end of it. Or you can group up and co-ordinate and go from there. Each PQ (Public Quest) is split into sections. The first section does not have a time limit and is generally "kill X of these" and "find x of these". When you do that and complete it the PQ movies into the 2nd stage which is time based, and it involves Champions (think of elite mobs from WoW) and sometimes a Hero (like a boss). When you gank all of them, the PQ either ends or it'll advance to stage 3 it depends which PQ is it. When it goes to stage 3 it's always Hero's, and sometimes there a few of them. When you finish though, you receive a rating from 0 to 400 on how much you contributed. This is your base score. When everyone gets a base score, the game automatically rolls 1 - 1000 for everyone and adds it to their base score. This is good and not good at the same time.
1000 is quite high, and it really means that if a group was the only ones doing a PQ and they were battling HARD and finally got down to the last Hero in stage 3 and some random guy came along and hit the Hero twice he'd be entered into the rankings but he'd have a low score. Now imagine the whole group that had been there all the time all got sub 550 rolls, and random guy got a high 900's roll - well he'd win the best loot, and he's only been there for 5 seconds. You may think this would be very rare, but I've seen it happen 3 times so far and it's quite annoying - basically 1000 roll is too high.
Overall the game is good, it has it's flaws which would smack you straight in the face as soon as you made a character if you joined beta right now, but they are hopefully going to be resolve and the game does have potential.
