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Beta 4: Impressions
About me
First a little something about myself so you may know if we are into similar games or not. I am 35 years old, and I spend a lot of time working. I have always loved MMORPGs – so much so that I can hardly play single player games any more. EQ was one of my first online games, followed by AO which became my favorite pass time for nearly 4 years. Of all the theme parks I like WOW the best simply because it has the longest cooking time of most in the genre. However, there are certain sandbox elements that I have craved for for so long, but that I haven’t really found a game for yet. I don’t really like PVP, and I don’t really like games that stress me since I get enough stress from my work. I love healing, and I love the holy trinity. You can have your GW2, and I will take my trinity any day of the week.
I have dabbled in most MMORPGs over the years – among them FFXI. Unfortunately, the game didn’t hold me at launch in west, and when I came back a few years later some of the shine had left it. It became increasingly hard to find groups, and yet grouping was pretty much the only way to level up. I became pretty ambivalent about that aspect; I love grouping, and despise solo mmo’s, but forced grouping made me leave the game cause it became too hard for me to find groups.
Starting out
So with my background out of the way – what about the game? Well, I think it’s relevant to tell you that I only played it on Friday and on Sunday since I had other plans for Saturday. I am a 1.0 player, although I think it’s more fair to say I’m a 1.0 non-player seeing that I bought the game, logged in, and left after 2 hours never looking back. I didn’t participate in any of the previous betas.
I wanted to make a white mage, and had to search around for why I couldn’t make one to start with *grin* Finding more about classes and jobs I went ahead and made a conjurer. Loved the cut-scenes the first time around, I found them quite annoying when making an alt later on. I had to keep on pressing my mouse to skip the texts.
At this point I want to point out the game is obviously beautifully made, the animations are gorgeous, and the UI is responsive. All the UI elements can be moved around as you please (and since I’m playing on 3 screens on a gtx690 in surround mode that came in handy). The music is alright, and I found myself humming along to it a lot (its that kind of music that sneaks into your mind and stays there, though, so beware!).
I went ahead and did the various quests in the city, and just had a really great time. The game oozes with atmosphere! Like when you go into a crowd of people you hear the busy noise of a lot of people. The landscape in and out of town is oh so lush. Crafting actually makes you pull out some tools and stuff, and it looks cool. I think what I struggled most with was finding my way around town since it is divided into several zones. Also in regards to quick travel by aetherites (spelling) I prefer GW2 way of doing it (graphically) instead of having travel points only spelled out in text (how do I know where Jorgen’s Honey Pot is anyway?). I got used to it, and I found that the game seem to have struck a nice balance between efficient travel and too easy travel. Even though I teleported a lot in the city, I also had to run around a bunch.
Combat
I must admit I felt that combat started a bit late. I would have loved for it to have started a bit sooner. However, when everybody had said hello and given me the background and history of their guilds and such, I was finally on my way out in the starting areas outside town. The place was crowded with people trying to grab a mob to advanced their quests, and I got this “shiny, new mmorpg on release day” feeling – you know what I mean? 
I didn’t have much trouble finding mobs to kill though, so it wasn’t a problem. It was fun seeing so much activity going on!
As most of us have gathered so far, combat is quite fluid now. Sure it isn’t action combat style, but feels more like wow combat in the sense that they seem to have implemented some sort of latency protection. I could click the next attack b4 my previous one was done, and it would que up. The animations were nice, and the dynamics between me and my foes were engaging (aka not booring). At level 11 I noticed an area where a few dead players were lying about and was thinking “oh I wish I had my rezz spell” (which I got at level 12).
Guilds (harvesting and crafting)
At level 10 I wanted to try out harvesting and crafting, but needed to do my “class quest”. As far as I know what my class quest is isn’t immediately apparent, and it took a little while for me to figure out exactly what was needed to join other guilds. Further more, joining the botanist guild became a little bizarre as I had to confirm and confirm that I really honest to god wanted to join them – for sure! First I clicked “yes I want to join”, then he wanted me to grab his quest to confirm that I wanted to join, then he wanted to me confirm by text box and then he sent me to the guild leader for my final confirmation. All this confirmation made me unsure if joining the botanist guild was really such a clever thing to do…
However, after finally joining them I was sent out in to the wild (in my boxer shorts no less) to chop wood. It was an interesting mechanic: You put a buff on that makes you see what trees are harvestable. You run up to them and start the harvesting process. You can get a few different resources from each swing, and you have to pick one each time. Trees in different parts of the world can give you different special harvests, so you have to probably travel a lot to get them all. I kinda wish there was a way for me to macro the various harvests on my keyboard instead of using the mouse, though.
Final Thoughts
So my conjurer made it to 14 or so, and my carpenter made it to level 9 before the beta came to an end. I final thoughts at this stage are:
YES! Finally! An updated game for us old timers who think solo mmo are the worst thing ever, and think holy trinity should remain holy I wanted to play more, and that means that the game succeeded in hooking me. The game feels lush, rich and diverse. It feels like a road where you can’t see what’s around the next bend, but *something* is probably there. Beta 4 leaves me with a sweet taste wanting for more, and knowing what a pile of trash 1.0 were, Yoshi and his gang just blew my socks off!
Comments
You made me spit out my coffee laughing. Yes, with so many confirmations I was also starting to wonder if perhaps I made decision a bit too easy? Perhaps I should have put more thought into it:P.
LOL Exactly!