Wow at Gen Con

I suspect WoW is gonna be much better than i thought at first:

<from some guy who was at gen con>

Let me give you some advice: never look at a screen shot of WoW again. This game looked absolutely amazing in person. This is game is graphically perfect in my opinion. Screenshots do not give this game justice one bit.

I leveled up a Human Pally to level 6 (all by questing) and messed around with a level 20 undead warlock for about an hour and half. The warlock was badazz. Never had so much fun. John Meyer was telling me about the ritual summon that was just put in for warlock. The warlock intiates the spell, and two other group memebers (any class) channels their energy and they can summon a player to anywhere on the map. Also, reign of fire is the most badazz spell I've ever seen. It has a huge AOE radius and does massive damage--unreal. I also noticed, the Undead get under water breathing...but I think we knew that already. This is just a guess, but methinks that it will pretty tough to solo in high levels in this game. The aggro is pretty crazy, and level 14+ mobs were whooping me pretty bad at times. But we'll see.

Their higher level Pally wasn't working at the time, so I created a new one. Right off the bat, I already had a quest..then another quest...then boom I'm level two. The first 5 levels I gained, I never ONCE had to sit down and rest. It was all fast paced. While the Paladin can use Swords and other weapons, he can Specialize (use his talent points) to raise his 2H Hammer or Mace skill or his spell damage or his damage to Undead or beasts. This game will own the MMO industry for many years.

I really don't understand why this game isn't released yet. I could of sworn I was playing a final product. Anarchy Online, right now, is not as smooth as WoW in this so called Alpha version. Of course the were being extra ambiguous and wouldn't even give a guess for the release date! I'm for sure going back tomorrow afternoon and I'll definetely try more of the classes out.

Oh one more thing...Gnomes get FROST resistance as racial trait.

Forgot to add, I saw the demo of Middle Earth Online right after I was done at the WoW booth....it was pretty pathetic. I really have no other words to describe THAT horrid experience. They couldn't even answer half my questions--pathetic.

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day 2

Engineering
Two words..EXPLODING SHEEP. Yeah I said it, exploding focking sheep are the game. You have to build them the engineering trade skill. Craziest thing I ever saw, after you've built your robot sheep, you click on the icon in your inventory and sheep appears on screen. It becomes your guardian. Once it sees the first hostile creature, it will waddle on over (it was a covert waddle ) and it will explode and and cause extreme damage to the target. Then I witnessed 10 exploding sheep (at the same time) wipe out an entire area. These suckers are relentless,it was like seek and destroy. Awesome. You can also build a mini robot Harvest Golem. This guy was buff, he could handle some business. I can see engineering being a VERY popular trade school.

Gnomes!
Gnomes were working! Trolls were too, but they weren't allowed to show us due to a problem with their hair . Gnomes are sooooooooooo badazz and cute in a sick twisted kinda way. Their VOICE emotes were pretty entertaining. Each race can emote voices that the rest of the world can hear..like help, oom, heal, cheer, roar etc. Chick NE sound like phone sex operators, not that I would know of and still see EVERYTHING in the radius of the sight totem (ambush anyone?). They also have a serpent totem (looks like a snake, which attacks), healing totems and many others. Of course they buffs, dots and all that good stuff as well.

Rogue
Rogues have the coolest named abilities in teh game imo. Finishing moves like "kidney shot", "cheap shot"..thats what I'm talking about. Furor from FOH told you about the bubbles right? Well the rougue performs abilities that add bubbles to your bubble counter (5 total, right next to your face icon) for example, the ability "rip and tear" will add one bubble to the counter if it is landed. Then when you get enough bubbles, you can use finishing moves like "kidney shot"..cool stuff. Rogues CAN DUEL WEILD..though Warriors and Hunters CAN NOT duel weild (don't yell at me..this is what I told Don't know if this will hold true. I speak no more on the matter). Also, Rogues can make poison. And you can add this to weapons..heres the cool thing. You can TRADE for services. Say, John the Warrior wants poison effect for his sword. Dave the Rougue wants boots and ten gold. You open the trade menu between them and John puts in the boots, gold AND sword...the Rougue can automatically upgrade the weapon once the trade accept button is hit. And the warrior will automatically get back his new upgraded sword and the Rougue will get his boots and gold. Oh and the poison effect WAS cool..everytime you hit a beast a green cloud with skulls inside pop up and poison the beast. Rogues ALSO get SPRINT ability to make a fast get away. They also get special skills like "street fighting" and "Acrobatics", not quite sure what each does..but I think they add extra damage..

Hunter
Remember the ORANGE bar in screenshots? Well this is the Hunter's FOCUS. It makes their ranged attack more accurate.

Warrior
The warrior gets KICK, the animation is badazz, the warrior ACTUALLY does a kick animation!!!! Imagine...Gnome Warrior + jump + Kick

Druid
They get this cool underwater mount. It looks like a polar bear/panther/dunnowtf...it looks crazy

Priest
Dominate was in the game..but the max level was only 25 so it couldn't be cast. At least I tried

Cows are in the game...they weren't allowed to reveal the exact location on them though. But the cow looked badazz. They also summoned a couple Dread Lords and Fel Fiends (I think they might of been called something else). They also said the biggest mob in the game was a Kodo beast...then one of the reps said they SEEN a Dragon though....

This game looks AMAZING. I saw MANY different zones and every one was extremely detailed and diverse. No more of that dull everything looks the same crap. Even the instanced dungeon was detailed to the BONE. The one I saw, Shadow Fang Keep, the farther you went inside the more detailed it became..crazy. And the boss mob droped this WICKED mace, which looked like a Cobra Snake...badazz.

Humans get extra points for tradeskills as a racial trait. Dwarves get: natural mining, treasure finding (senses treasure on map) and frost resistance. Night elves get shadowmeld (kinda like stealth, so it might be tweaked) and nature resistance. Undead get immunity to charm and fear spells.

Theres also alot more I forgot to write, but my brain is on overload right now as I'm writing all of this off the top of my head. Ask questions if you want. course...Oh, I saw the Battle Ram mounts, they look badazz and I think Gnomes will use them like the Dwarves, this is what I was told. Gnomes have HUGE hands, heheh I was watching a Gnome mage throw fireballs..it looked amazing. As for Mages, they get this awesome frost nova shield (name might be wrong) but when a mob HITS you they become SLOWED...this give the mage time to create space and cast more spells. Mages will be the king of kiting.

PALADIN!!
Oh yes, this will be my main for sure. At level 20, DIVINE SHIELD grants immunity from ALL attacks for TEN seconds--I know calm down. Who said Pally's can't tank?? Holy light + Divine Shield + lay on hands( still 60 min cooldown) looks like a pretty badazz tank to me. Paladins will be undead killing MACHINES, this applies to PCs and MOBS. Paladins get spells like: Turn undead, sense undead, Exorcism, (direct dmg or dot I forgot)judgement(not sure what it does) and a few others. Wow.

Shaman
Shaman's can shapeshift into a timber wolf..just like SOW from Everquest, just a speed buff. Shamans are not tanks. Shamans use TOTEMS..kinda hard to explain, for example they have a sight totem. You cast the sight totem and its placed on the ground. Now the shaman can run over the hill to the west

[edit added day 2]

Sounds fantastic