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Kodylan · 05-01-2008, 10:36 AM

Mmm... NDA lifted for me, time to actually admit that I'm playing the game finally so people don't think I'm talking out of my ass or that my only experience is preview events.

I'm trying to get clarification on just how much I can say though; I'm guessing the "NDA" I had to abide by was for the recent beta invite I got primarily. EDIT: Talked with Funcom's PR rep and the NDA is for media only -- General Beta still has the NDA.

Anyway...

Rangers are still beasts in the game in terms of PvP for sure; the PvP weekend "bow bug" didn't really stop anything. With appropriate bows for their levels (ran into a level 15 ranger that nearly 2 shot me at 17) they still tear a new asshole in casters. Sound familiar? Yeah happens with WoW hunters too; not surprising.

As many who are in the beta in this thread have said, the first 20 levels are probably comparable with anything you can do in World of Warcraft in terms of quality. I never really hit a wall where I decided I was bored and not having fun. Granted I'm leveling a Demonologist primarily at the moment, so if I grow tired of leveling I can entertain myself by going and killing groups of players at a time due to how powerful their AE spells are in comparison to single target stuff. Brings back memories of the glory days of DAoC Andred when we rolled around with a bunch of lurikeen enchanters leveling guilds with PBAE.

I've mentioned this in private to a few people on the boards (and elsewhere); the graphics are stunning on max settings. I really do feel it's the best-looking MMO out there and quite possibly the best-looking MMO currently in development (that we've seen... I'm sure Bioware's title will look pretty sexy). The graphics were tweaked again shortly after I got my invite and the old "high" was at that point set to "medium." I cranked it up to the proper high settings and subsequently... I guess I should stay at least quasi-professional and not say what I was about to. Anyway, the graphics in the game are an absolute beast. Only problem I see is I can definitely see absolute-max settings wanting 3-4GB of ram to perform flawlessly rather than the recommended 2. It uses a *ton* of memory with all the stuff maxed, and if you're on Vista that will no doubt cause issues because of Vista's inherent high memory usage as well.

My major concerns at this point (as is standard for everyone, I'm sure) are: 1) Sieges/City Building and 2) Endgame PvE content -- neither of which we've seen anything resembling existence other than what I saw in January. What I saw in January was cool but it wasn't what players will actually want in the game (it was still a work in progress at that point).

It also weirded me out that the level cap in Open Beta is 13; I'd think they would want to make it 19 so people can experience the entirety of Tortage. The story is fairly solid in the Destiny quests leading out of Tortage, so it'd definitely be a good publicity hook for people. The initial content in Khemi/Khopschef Province seems fairly solidly polished as well (I'm up to 22 right now on the PvP server), so it wouldn't hurt anything to let them get out of the jungle and see their native locales too.

At any rate, I'm going to be writing something more coherent soon for Curse.com but I'm just excited that I can actually talk about the game more at this point. I've actually been in beta for a while now and I've seen the game through many iterations, so it's not like I'm unfamiliar with how much it's changed. I actually disliked it quite a bit in October, but I was respectful of my NDA agreements at that point and didn't post as much -- so it's nice the game has changed enough that I actually enjoy the initial segment of it.

05-01-2008, 10:36 AM	#1521 (permalink)
Kodylan Registered User Join Date: Mar 2002 Posts: 2,089 +2 Internets	Mmm... NDA lifted for me, time to actually admit that I'm playing the game finally so people don't think I'm talking out of my ass or that my only experience is preview events. I'm trying to get clarification on just how much I can say though; I'm guessing the "NDA" I had to abide by was for the recent beta invite I got primarily. EDIT: Talked with Funcom's PR rep and the NDA is for media only -- General Beta still has the NDA. Anyway... Rangers are still beasts in the game in terms of PvP for sure; the PvP weekend "bow bug" didn't really stop anything. With appropriate bows for their levels (ran into a level 15 ranger that nearly 2 shot me at 17) they still tear a new asshole in casters. Sound familiar? Yeah happens with WoW hunters too; not surprising. As many who are in the beta in this thread have said, the first 20 levels are probably comparable with anything you can do in World of Warcraft in terms of quality. I never really hit a wall where I decided I was bored and not having fun. Granted I'm leveling a Demonologist primarily at the moment, so if I grow tired of leveling I can entertain myself by going and killing groups of players at a time due to how powerful their AE spells are in comparison to single target stuff. Brings back memories of the glory days of DAoC Andred when we rolled around with a bunch of lurikeen enchanters leveling guilds with PBAE. I've mentioned this in private to a few people on the boards (and elsewhere); the graphics are stunning on max settings. I really do feel it's the best-looking MMO out there and quite possibly the best-looking MMO currently in development (that we've seen... I'm sure Bioware's title will look pretty sexy). The graphics were tweaked again shortly after I got my invite and the old "high" was at that point set to "medium." I cranked it up to the proper high settings and subsequently... I guess I should stay at least quasi-professional and not say what I was about to. Anyway, the graphics in the game are an absolute beast. Only problem I see is I can definitely see absolute-max settings wanting 3-4GB of ram to perform flawlessly rather than the recommended 2. It uses a ton of memory with all the stuff maxed, and if you're on Vista that will no doubt cause issues because of Vista's inherent high memory usage as well. My major concerns at this point (as is standard for everyone, I'm sure) are: 1) Sieges/City Building and 2) Endgame PvE content -- neither of which we've seen anything resembling existence other than what I saw in January. What I saw in January was cool but it wasn't what players will actually want in the game (it was still a work in progress at that point). It also weirded me out that the level cap in Open Beta is 13; I'd think they would want to make it 19 so people can experience the entirety of Tortage. The story is fairly solid in the Destiny quests leading out of Tortage, so it'd definitely be a good publicity hook for people. The initial content in Khemi/Khopschef Province seems fairly solidly polished as well (I'm up to 22 right now on the PvP server), so it wouldn't hurt anything to let them get out of the jungle and see their native locales too. At any rate, I'm going to be writing something more coherent soon for Curse.com but I'm just excited that I can actually talk about the game more at this point. I've actually been in beta for a while now and I've seen the game through many iterations, so it's not like I'm unfamiliar with how much it's changed. I actually disliked it quite a bit in October, but I was respectful of my NDA agreements at that point and didn't post as much -- so it's nice the game has changed enough that I actually enjoy the initial segment of it. Last edited by Kodylan : 05-01-2008 at 10:41 AM.