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BetaTester since early spring trying to answer questions
Consequence
Member UncommonPosts: 358
Ill try to report back ot this thread a few times a day and answer a few questions if anyone has any.
Ill start by saying that my impressions of WAR are very good. I had a lot of fun playing Beta. Multiple classes appealed to me. I played mostly on the destruction side, but I dabbled in order.
Some general opinion good and bad:
-the world is extrordinarily immersive. Everything in the game is based around order vs destruction. Even PvE quest theses are based around the war. You can never battle an opponent in PvP and still feel like your in a war.
-The graphics are good, not great. The screenshots and vids have been out and they dont lie. This is both good and bad news. Nobody is going to fall in love with the graphics despite the fact that they are well thought out and very complete and at times quite funny. Ive definately played games that impressed me more visually. That said, they made things this way for a reason. The game is about battles and war and they clearly made things this way to help avoid lag in large battles.
-The gameplay is very simple. This was my biggest knock on the game. Very simplistic button mashing, much like WOW. Luckily enough there are enough skills that you have mash the right button in the right situation and that makes it bearable. The devs team is very good and have some great innovations or expantions of ideas brought forth by other games. I wish the innovations had effected this area of the game more. You have a skill, you drag it so you skillbar, you press the corisponding number key to use the skill. Very simple, very old.
-the classes. I cannot express this enough. The classes are very fun and diverse. Many of the skills, while copied from other games in some cases, seem to be implemented better in this game. The way you play your toon early may be very different than the way you play him later levels. There are multiple ways to advance your character. In this way its a bit like LoTRO. People who race out of the gates to level quickly will suffer in other areas because your level is just 1 aspect of your characters overal strength. I played several classes and the descision on which class I was going to play at release was hard for me because I had so much fun with several class selections. Im still second guessing myself.
-The balance is good, though this early in a games life there will always be problems. In terms of realm vs realm, the balance is excellent for a game just out of beta. Where there are balance problems are usually within a certain class. For example 1 tree may perform much better than another in multiple ways and this may force a lot of players down 1 tree. I expect this may be fixed as the devs were pretty quick to pounce on this stuff, but there are problems within a few classes. I can give examples if needed. In terms of population, the balance between realms improved as beta went on, but it usually was 4 destruction for every 3 order(this is a guess.) However, make no mistake, this is NOT because order classes themselves are more broken or in some way gimp compared to destruction.
-If you are a fan of quests, you can play this game. If you are not a fan of quests you can also play this game but, I would implore that anyone on either side of this fence please at least try the public quests becase they are extremely fun. I myself have never been a quest guy, I find them tedious in most games. But I LOVED public quests and often found myself doing them for hours. There are a LOT of them too.
-Odly enough, ganking isnt a real problem in this game. Unlike other games with border zones, there really isnt much to do in the WAR border zones aside from RvR. You wont find yourself out hunting only to have a 13 yr old gankerjoe come by and kill you. There are a few exceptions and with the flag system you can certainly open the door for this, but its your descision to do so.
-tradeskills are not a big part of this game at all. If you cant play a game without trade skills, this isnt the game for you.
Comments
What classes offer the best DPS? do not want any healing hybrids. Im kind of a rogue type player and "warrior dps" class. What to pick?
WH uses a system where any class can perform a dpsrole. Pretty much every class has some type of dps build.
That said, the devs also used a hierarchy of dps in the class system. Assuming no crazy builds the system goes (from highest dps to lowest)
light armor DPS melee classes
Medium armor DPS classes
Ranged DPS
Tanks and Melee healers
Ranged healers.
When I 1st read this system from the devs I was extremely worried. But this system is not set in stone. For example a DPS specced tank will definately out DPS some of the classes above him if they are specced for other skills like knockbacks, stuns, etc. So while this rank system is a guideline, it isnt set this way.
But to answer you more specifucally, Witch Elves(destructions) and Witch Hunters(order) do the most damage if built for it (they are the 2 light armor melee dps classes.)
They are followed very closely by Marauders(destruction) and White Lions(Order) who are the medium armor melee dps classes.
*edit* i forgot to mention AOE. Obviously aoe is part of dps and the list above is purely single target dps. Most of the ranged dps classes have the best (but not the only) AOE dps. Tanks are also quite proficient in aoe to a degree but pretty much every class has aoe skills.
The thing with this though is that Engineers and Magus who are classified as ranged dps seem to do a good bit less dps than a Bright Wizard or Sorc. I don't know how much it just seemed like the highest range dps was Bright Wizard and Sorc, then the rangers and stationary pet classes. I only speak in terms of getting killed by them.
Is there an auction house? and do u have guild bank/own bank also how does the mail system work can u send item to other peeps or are they mostly bound on pick up?
Thanks
There is an Auction House but it isn't fully implemented yet. It is in the main cities. It is supposed to be in at launch. There are dropped items that can be traded and are for different classes, but most of the best gear is earned through RvR/PvP/Quests and is just for your character so there won't be an insane economy like most MMORPG's. To some this may be a bummer, but to me it is exactly what is needed with the way gold sellers are these days. There is very little need to ever buy gold or stuff from these foreign farmers as everything is earned by playing the game. In a time when I can't log into an MMO without getting spammed by gold sellers this is a welcome system for me. I hope that from now on devs can figure out ways to deal with RMT, but until then having a system where items are earned through play and not bought by bought gold or isk or gil or whatever it is in whatever game is being played.
Oh and there are mailboxes in pretty much every outpost/town/village etc.
the mail system is pretty similar to every system thats been in recent games.
The auction system wasnt really working in beta and isnt that big a part of the game, or hasnt been in beta just because there werent tons of people to create demand. If you found a magic item that was designed for a certain class, you walked up to 1 near u and gave it to him/her or u gave it to a friend. This may all change upon release.
The way items work is a bit different in this game. A few are bound. But as an example 1 common way to find a good item is while hunting a mob may drop a green "broken sword" which you bring to a merchant who repairs it for a fee and it will be a green magic sword that designed for a certain class. This is simplified version of typical drops.
How much dungeon crawling is there?
I played alot of WoW, DAoC and SB.
In WoW i loved to dungeon crawl 5 man instances with my irl friends. I allso like the occasional raid, however i like to pvp (RvR like DAoC or just good fights like in SB or AoC(while leveling)).
For me a great MMO has to have both, so are there enough dungeons to go to, where you can allso get some loot or money wich you will actually want to grind dungeons for?
OK nice reply for the dps class. Now what about the performence, not bugs whatsoever but the frames per second performence there is. How well does it perform, If u can compare to some other games.
Its not really a dungeon crawl game that Ive seen. There are some things meant for large groups and there are tons of hard public quests which you and your guild can go do. But I think, and im only guessing here, that the devs took to heart the recent "anti-raid crawls" sentiment that is growing in the MMO industry.
Like I said there are plenty of functions for guild and lots of high lvl large group content, I just dont categorize it as dungeons.
uuh uh i can answer that
I played a little bit of BETA, like 2hours, first got acess to a beta acc yesterday.
I was in several RvR battles with 15-20 ppl on each side. I didnt experience any FPS lag at all.
I played with everything on highest settings and 1440x900
Compared to AoC this game requires MUCh less from your comp (better coded?)
My comp specs are:
Intel Dual Core e2180 clokced at 3.2ghz
6 GB DDR2 CL4 RAM
8800GT 512MB
Vista 64bit
samsung t166 HD
Its hard for me to answer this with specifics honestly. I ll gladly admit that I didnt pay attention to my FPS because, quite honestly, I never even had a sniff of a problem with it. Early in beta there was significant lag problems on the server side which they readily fixed.
Towards the end of CB they tried to get us concentrated in RVR fights and there were at times issues there with performance, but for me at least, it was never my fps. Any issues I noticed were server side it seemed. The servers performance in beta was good overall, especially considering it was beta servers.
I would mention that CB didnt have as many people as there will be this weekend or come live. So this will be the real test.
From what i've read about the game dungeon crawls will happen later on in higher levels but for lower levels like Consequence has said there are plenty of "large group" stuff to do and those are definitely very fun.
This is not a game.
Its hard for me to answer this with specifics honestly. I ll gladly admit that I didnt pay attention to my FPS because, quite honestly, I never even had a sniff of a problem with it. Early in beta there was significant lag problems on the server side which they readily fixed.
Towards the end of CB they tried to get us concentrated in RVR fights and there were at times issues there with performance, but for me at least, it was never my fps. Any issues I noticed were server side it seemed. The servers performance in beta was good overall, especially considering it was beta servers.
I would mention that CB didnt have as many people as there will be this weekend or come live. So this will be the real test.
I can elaborate on this a little. I just built a new comp and never had any issues (of course the computer shouldn't have any issues). AMD Phenom 9850 OC 3.1 GHz, 8 GB ram, Nvidia GTX 280 1 GB graphics mem. Memory timing are dropped and GPU is OCed as well.
Now we upgraded my gf comp a little with better mem (not more, just faster clock speeds) and an ATI Radeon 4850. Besides that, her comp is just over the required specs. Every now and then in heavily congested areas she got a little bit of stutter. It was enough to notice, but not enough to detract from her enjoyment of the game.
I think the majority of stutters/lag (which really wasn't much, not enough to detract from the game at least) were server side. They have a debugger running in the background which records a ton of stuff. That is definitely eating up both CPU cycles and memory.
Edit: gf's comp has 2 GB mem, AMD Athlon 3400 (I think, been a while since I looked)
Tried: LotR, CoH, AoC, WAR, Jumpgate Classic
Played: SWG, Guild Wars, WoW
Playing: Eve Online, Counter-strike
Loved: Star Wars Galaxies
Waiting for: Earthrise, Guild Wars 2, anything sandbox.
President of The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club