WAR NDA officially lifted. Post pics and info!

[Lost Ranger]

Originally Posted by Ninajrr

Player collision.

lol

[Kais[]]

Has to be asked unfortunately. How will this game play on mediocre to shitty pcs/laptops.

[Qhue]

Public Quests are an amazingly natural evolution of online RPG gaming. In fact they are so nifty and seemingly simple that you have to smack yourself for not coming up with the concept first or at least seeing the potential.

Mythic was damn smart in trademarking / copywriting the term.

For those who are in the dark the Public Quest is essentially a repeating quasi-dynamic world event in three stages. The first stage has no fixed duration and ends when a certain threshhold has been reached with respect to enemies killed, items collected etc. The second and third stages are timed and follow after the first (and second in the case of the third stage) and ramp up the difficulty.

Anyone who enters into an area that bounds the Public Quest is made a participant in the quest and can contribute to the overall collective goal by killing mobs, collecting items etc. Doing so earns you reputation points for whatever particular Chapter the Public Quest takes place in and these reputation points earn you some pretty decent loot items. In addition your collective contribution to the goal is tracked and when (if) the final objective is completed the game automatically rolls for looting rights among the participants weighted with a bonus factor depending on how much they contributed to the goal. The loot is in the form of "Loot Bags" which can be opened and the player gets to select one of many possible rewards that include a nice class-specific item, tradeskill components, cash, etc. So even if you've participated in a given PQ before you can always get some nice reward for your efforts if you end up winning the roll. In addition you get bonus exp and reputation for the first time you go through each stage of a given PQ and so its worthwhile going through each one at least once in a given chapter.

The best part is that because it is a cooperative event you end up meeting people and being social without really trying. I've actually run into people during PQs and grouped up (you dont have to) and then after we ran it a couple times gone off and done other stuff as a group. It really is the perfect 'mixer' opportunity for people who might otherwise be complete antisocial bastards.

Truly these are an amazing concept and one which I can only hope that others emulate / copy.

[Daezuel]

Originally Posted by Itzena

So what's in place to stop the zerg winning all the time in world PvP?

There are just too many objectives for a zerg to cover them all...just impossible. In any tier of pvp there are a minimum of 3 zones...tier 2 zones have 6 objectives each. Winning scenarios (#'s capped) and finishing PQ's also contribute to zone control.

Just in tier 2 that makes 18 points to control over 3 zones. That'd be one impressive zerg!

[Jait]

Originally Posted by Lonin

Can anyone explain the Vengeance mechanic I see on my Shadow Warrior? A lot of my abilities do extra stuff if I'm vengeful, but I've never seen that mechanic.

It's a buff. You hit it (refresh is 90seconds iirc) and certain abilities morph into better ones. Sword Masters used to rely on Taunt to increase many of their abilities, but this was removed earlier in beta. Many classes still have their own mechanics beyond normal Morale, like Witch Hunters build up (fuck name escapes me, it's like Inquisitor points or something), which they can then release with an ability for massive damage.

This is seperate from morale abilities (Think: Limit Breaks from Final Fantasy)

[Itzena]

Re: Public quests - So we can expect Blizzard to steal the idea PDQ then?

[Jait]

Originally Posted by Itzena

Re: Public quests - So we can expect Blizzard to steal the idea PDQ then?

Everyone should steal it. There's nothing wrong with stealing good ideas when it can improve your own game and make it more fun. It's the only way they'll think of ways to evolve. Every MMO is built upon the last ones best ideas, with some news ones thrown in. No one can really cry "Thief!", they're all guilty. It's like Fantasy novels. I think Gandalf has been cloned 9732 times by now.

[Tirinal]

Minor question, but is there a hide helm/cloak option a la WoW?

[Qhue]

Yeah, you can click on a box on yer equipment screen to hide cloaks / guild emblem / hats

[Genjiro]

Game looks pretty, all I heard was how shitty it looked. Witch hunter sounds interesting, or maybe ironbreaker.

[Lost Ranger]

Originally Posted by Daezuel

There are just too many objectives for a zerg to cover them all...just impossible. In any tier of pvp there are a minimum of 3 zones...tier 2 zones have 6 objectives each. Winning scenarios (#'s capped) and finishing PQ's also contribute to zone control.

Just in tier 2 that makes 18 points to control over 3 zones. That'd be one impressive zerg!

This is pretty much exactly what you will see in live as well. It happened in DAoC just like this. If Albion was busy zerg rushing Hibernia or something, we as Midgard would head to albion land and roflstomp a keep or two. The zerg rarely breaks apart because of that whole "safety in numbers" thing so any defense that did return to fight was managable.

In WAR if one side has brought 3:1 odds to your door step then change locations and take something of theirs. Only idiots will throw themselves at a mammoth army unless the numbers are fairly close. It is impossible to have great defense world wide if that realm is zerging. Kinda the double edged sword of being the zerg realm. Mostly unstoppable offense... embarrassing defense

[Ninajrr]

So, any information about instanced/noninstanced dungeon crawls? Linear? Lots of them? Long? Short? Hard? Campable? What other MMO's dungeon's would you compare them to and how common are they throughout the leveling spectrum?

[Mist]

Shadow Warrior is the coolest class I've played out of all of them. It's basically the first time I've seen a *good* archer class that didn't revolve around having a pet or horrible archery mechanics. On the flip side, however, Shadow Warriors suffer the worst from the casting bar/animation problems, which really shapes my opinion of the game.

[Menion]

This is what PVP looks like from the Destruction point of view. Stupid Bright Wizards!

[Daezuel]

^^ sorry that was me... :P