Open Beta impressions – the major gripes
Hi all, Oneputt here. Just in case you’ve been living under a rock, Open Beta is in full swing. If you aren’t in it, then you are missing out! There is something “special” knowing that whatever toon you create is going to be wiped in a few days; it lets you try out any and all classes without the “fear” of losing your time invested or choices made in an already created toon! Me likey.
This last weekend and week has been some great play. I have a few toons up to lvl 7-9 on both Order and Destruction. Mostly playing ranged casters such as bright wizard, magus, shadow warrior and squig herder. The days have been filled with plenty of killing badies, asshole enemy players in scenario and open world RvR, and exploring zones, Altdorf and the Inevitable City.
WAR is great. Hands down. Time will tell if it lives up to WoW standards but immediately, and as Flea said, I feel like I’m already at end game even at lvl 1. Jumping in to RvR or even PvE, it always feels epic. Great touch by the designers.
But I do have some major gripes and some minor:
Travel - seriously? As Flea pointed out, the Order travel is so friggin gay. It’s really lame to be puttering off in this little chopper and it is obvious the same animation used when you are riding a mount. So even though I’m strapped into a helicopter and I’m not actually even sitting on anything, I look like I’m straddling an invisible dildo. And the Destruction travel is lame but not as lame. Instead you just fly off on a magic carpet ride. That’s right, you ride a magus disc.
I appreciate it doesn’t take 8 mins to fly to a destination (like in WoW) but I am disappointed that I don’t really travel. This really is the issue of not having a truly “open” world like in WoW. Yes in WAR, you can go from 1 zone to the other without a load screen, but when you switch tiers, it must be an instanced server which means a load screen. This creates a closed world, one that is linear and can’t be fully explored. I feel like I can only travel in similar sized rectangles (tiers).
Now I understand the design reasons for this setup, but I am still disappointed. WoW does win with this aspect. It really is f’ing amazing when you think about the scale and not having to load except for true instances or the large bodies of land.
Crafting – sucks royal ass. I’m very disappointed in the crafting so far. I appreciate Mark Jacobs wanting to create a robust crafting system that lets you work outside the “recipe box,” but honestly, why do I need 5 fucking items, from at a min 2 different gathering professions to make a talisman? And the fact that I can only have 1 gathering profession means I must go buy the shit I can’t gather, get from guildies or have an alt to gather the other stuff. And when I’m only lvl 4 and have dick for money, it just ins’t fun. I lose interest completely. It should be easier and I should be given basic recipes to make some low level items that are beneficial. Otherwise, it takes all the fun out of it.
Second, what the fuck?! Why does it have to be so damn complicated to make an item. I need 5 items to make a talisman? 4 items to make a healing potion with apothocary? Stack on top of the fact you don’t have recipes, it makes me not want to use any items because I don’t want to waste items if it is going to be a shit potion. And not knowing recipes doesn’t matter. People will post the recipes all over the net. So why fight it? They should make a tab on the side that records what I make. That way I can still “discover” items and can refer back to them later in the game
Chickening - This isn’t so much a gripe, but I did see even on the Core server, you can be chickened if you are flagged for RvR and come to a lower tier. This makes sense but it still disappointed knowing I can’t come back, even on a PvE server, and do the RvR lakes without that penalty. Time will tell if this plan will be played out. I will say, it was very funny to see a chicken running around, who looked at me and then said, “don’t laugh”. Of course, I lol’ed at his lame ass.
Overall, this game is very well designed, great content and gameplay with very few bugs. It is very stable. I’m very impressed and it is fun as hell. Time will tell though as we get further in. Can’t wait for launch!
