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Expansion first impressions...
Nihilanth
Member Posts: 1,357
for me, all i can say is that Desert of Flames has surpasssed all my expectations so far. i have been absolutely blown away by everything.
Look: the new zones seem much more alive than the original ones did. the world just feels more immersive in general. its also nice to look at. it may seem like staring at a desert would be boring, but it actually looks really cool. ill put some screenshots ive taken so far at the bottom.
Combat Revamp: despite what many people thought, the combat revamp seems to have gone very smoothly. out of all the people ive talked to, ive heard VERY few gripes, and even then its rarely anything big, usually just minor tweaks on one or two spells. in fact ive only heard one person who was unhappy in general with the revamp, but he's been opposed to it since the second he heard there was gonna be one so thats no surprise.
imo and everyone ive talked to they did a great job of balancing the classes. they did what they said they would do, con DOES mean more than it used to, but because of that i actually had more fun fighting in groups today than i ever did before, mostly because of the increased challenge.
me im extremely pleased with what they did to paladins. they nerfed out dps a lot while we're tanking (which we do MUCH better now) but when we have our offensive stance on we still do pretty good dps.
Dueling: the pvp is just awsome. near the docks to the Sinking Sands there were hordes of people just dueling again and again. the pvp seems pretty balanced so far, i havent come across too many classes that has a SERIOUS advantage over everyone else or were seriously gimped. in fact i only found 2, and its because of something with their stances that would be fairly easy to change. it depends on how you lay out your skills and when you use them.
here's an example:
my friend is a templar and im a paladin. the first time we fought he won because of his superior heals and the fact that i ran out of mana before he did. the second time i found out that if i stifled him while he was healing i would be able to slowly work him down. i won the second round. the round after that he found a way to make me think he was casting a heal when he wasnt so i wasted my stun.
that goes to show that a lot of times you do have to think about what ur doing and time some things in pvp rather than just spamming buttons.
Arenas: the arenas are just awesome. i cant make it any simpler than that. i spent 2 hours in the arenas today and i had to be pried out. i havent had that much fun in ages which really surprised me since ive never been a big fan of pvp before.
the arenas were just an allout war. it was complete and utter mayhem with spells and arrows and swords flying everywhere all the time (at least in the gametype i fought in). the arena also shows that the pvp is pretty balanced, because it takes a good amount of time to kill someone usually and its never completely clear who's going to win. several times i thought i was about to kill someone and then the tables completelty turned and i ended up with my face on the ground (and the other way around).
Stability: one thing everyone was worried about was the server stability. after such a large patch soe usually has problems the whole first day and the first day of a major update usually ends up almost unplayable (luckily though they usually iron out 99% of the main problems the first day). fortunately, that didnt happen today. the launch went extremely smoothly and all day ive only seen one zone crash, and that was because it was overloaded with people. (to give you an idea of how many people there were, there were 5 instances of the pillars of flame at one point).
thats all im gonna take the time to say for now. id go into more detail but i want to get back to playing lol. 
Here's some SSs ive taken so far:
here's me on a flying carpet coming up to Maj'Dul:
here's me inside Maj'Dul:
here's me in the pvp arena:
here's just a bunch of people gathered in front of the sinking sands docks:
EDIT: please ignore grmatical errors, im typing this while tired and wanting to get back to the game. 
Schutzbar - Human Warrior - Windrunner Alliance - World of Warcraft
Nihilanth - Kerra Paladin - Blackburrow - EverQuest II
XBL Gamertag - Eagle15GT
Comments
OMg, Awesome screenies Nihi! Yeah I'm pretty excited about it too, however im not going to be buying it until I'm lvl 45. But it's almost unbearable... Anyone own a shop in the city yet?
You obviously aren't a healer/Inquisitor.
They screwed us:
I played for a few hours and I could barely keep ONE person alive in our group. Where before I could rotate 4 heals, now I have 2 heals that aren't on the same timer and I have to keep waiting for the timers.
Before I could alternate reactives, now I only have one because the others won't take effect.
So, down to 2 heals from four, and down to 1 reactives from 2.
Oh.. did I mention my debuffs do NOT stack anymore either?
This new patch got rid of 2 Debuffs, 2 heals, 1 group buff and 1 reactive for Inquisitors.
It's always something...
Hmm
Im a healer
lvl 50 Templar and loving it. Healing spells are POTENT. I was little shocked over how powerful my heal spells were now
People who have to create conspiracy and hate threads to further a cause lacks in intellectual comprehension of diversity.
I'm playing a lvl 34 Fury and I'm LOVING it. The fury is just what is "says" it should be now.
I nuke just as hard as a wizard, just not nearly as fast or as often as they can. Here's an example: Before the patch my main DD nuke had 3sec casting time, 6 second recast for about 260dmg. After the patch my DD now has a 7sec casting time, with a 10 second recast for 700 dmg. Same goes for my AOE spell now too. BOOOOM!
My heals suck but they are still managable. I just can't really heal and nuke at the same time now. I have to pay a lot more attention to player's health if i am primary healer...which really isn't all that cool to have a Fury as primary anymore, which is a good thing (I hate being primary healer).
I'm stoked.
Joined 2004 - I can't believe I've been a MMORPG.com member for 20 years! Get off my lawn!
Started last night with 4 missing characters. At midnight, still missing one character. All characters have missing items, mostly armor-related. Anyone know if they removed certain items from the gameworld?
OOC'd and described this in-game and got a chorus of folks who were having the same trouble.
Combat changes/skills. No comment. Doesn't feel terribly different for my Paladin, really. Haven't logged in as my warden or assassin or ranger yet, so no comments.
Creature Cons: weird having a creature eight levels below my current level con green to me now, when it was very grey before.
A positive: the game ran very, very smoothly last night, which is impressive given the scope and size of the changes and the addition of the expansion. Now, if someone would please put back my missing character and the missing items...
Well, I (and an insanely huge number of others) still cant log in to play. Our chars are lost in space due to the not being able to zone bug that has infected about 6 servers. You zone, it loses you, you exit and log back in, char cannot be found on server.... still! They say they are still sorting it out. oh well...
Anyway, being a conjurer of 27 levels, when I did log in the first time, I saw most of my high cost adept spells fer replaced with new app 1 spell substitutes. Never got a chance to try em out, zoned and am still lost. and cant be found. The one thing that irked me, was that a lot of spells that affected my group, are now single target only. I also noticed that many pet buffs won't stack anymore, and some of the spells that came automatically upon level before, are now in a list that you have to choose 1 of!
So far I am not liking my experience at all....... but of course I haven't been able to PLAY the freakin game for 2 days now......
Joined 2004 - I can't believe I've been a MMORPG.com member for 20 years! Get off my lawn!
I ran a full file scan as well, didn't change a thing.
Finally got in this morning, zoned a couple times ok, got stuck the 3rd zone attempt, waitied it out, made breakfast, checked mail, took a little walk, came back and I had zoned finally! While I was marvelling at this, server went down.
Time to step away from the computer before it ruins this beautiful Ozark Mountain day......