ArcheAge Beta Thoughts and Impressions

I have been on again/off again interested in ArcheAge since it first reared its head in Korea.  When I first heard of it, it really piqued my interest.  A huge world, pirates, house building, castle sieges?  What’s not to like about that?  But, as time drew on, my interest waned considerably.  First, there was no telling when, if ever, it would hit the North American market.  Secondly, I dreaded the “asian” aspects of the game.  Not really game design, although that is part of it, but the art style really doesn’t appeal to me and never has.

When it was announced that Trion had acquired the rights to publish ArcheAge here in the U.S., my interest went up again.  Trion is a fantastic company and if anyone could do the game justice here in the U.S., its Trion.  I thought heavily about investing in one of the Founder’s Pack but decided it was simply too much to spend on a game at that time.  After that, my interest waned again as I started looking into ESO and Wildstar.

Last week I happened to surf over to MMORPG.COM and happened to see that they were giving away beta keys.  The stars aligned and I not only got a key but I was off from work for the next four days!  What better way to spend it than trying out a new game?

The following impressions are based on the last four days.  I have leveled one character to 14 and a couple of others up to 10-12.  I have tried both factions (East and West) and tried every race as well.  Although I am certainly no expert on the game, I have been able to get a pretty good idea of the game play.  Read on for my thoughts!

Goodbye for now AMD.

I have always built my own PCs. For one, I like to know what parts are in my PC and, for another, I enjoy doing it.  I like doing the research and picking out the parts.  I like prepping everything for install and seeing it come together into a build.  Its fun, educational and I always come away with a better PC than I would have if I walked into a store and paid the same money or ordered online.

For many reasons, AMD has always been my go-to processor.  Matter of fact, my last five or six PC builds have contained AMD processors and AMD video cards.  I am an AMD fan and have been for a long time.  For one, I love AMD status as an underdog.  They are a big reason why Intel’s processor prices have come down so drastically and I respect that.  I also have always thought that AMD gave the most bang for the buck.  They might not have the fastest proccessor on the market at any given time but price per performance always put them close to the top if not at the top.

My current build is an AMD FX 8150 processor and an AMD 6890 video card.  Its not a bad build, by any means, but its certainly not top of the line.  I can run almost any game I care to run at pretty much the highest settings without any trouble at all.  I have played WoW, Tera, Elder Scrolls Online, Guild Wars 2 and Rift with this PC and all without any problems at all.  On occasion, I have had to dial the graphics back slightly but nothing too terrible.  Its run everything like a charm.

Then I ran smack dab into Wildstar.

Stormtalon’s Lair: This ain’t WoW.

I finally took part in one of the first two dungeon instances in Wildstar.  Matter of fact, I have run Stormtalon’s Lair 5 times now though I have yet to do the other starter dungeon, The Ruins of Kel Vorteth.   I am assuming that theRuins dungeon is much more difficult or not as fun because I have always queue’d for both but only Stormtalon’s has popped.  Regardless, I have run Stormtalon five times now.  The first time as a DPS engineer, because I wanted to get a feel for the dungeon, and the rest as a tank engineer.  All runs were with PUGs, though I did have a single run in which a friend of mine ran as DPS.

Let me say up front, that this dungeon is a lot more difficult than any dungeon I can think of in modern WoW.  Some of this is because it is a new game and people still do not understand the mechanics completely.  Hell, I have had to explain how interrupt armor works countless times already.  But much of it is also simply because the game is difficult.  The mechanics of each boss fight is fairly straightforward but actually pulling off the fights is another matter entirely.

Starting off with the trash, you will find even the basic trash is fairly difficult.  They hit hard, they heal each other and there is tons of AoE or splash damage for your healer to worry about.  One of the first sets of trash mobs you run into are a Thundercall Shaman and Sentinel.  The Sentinel hits pretty hard and has a nasty charge attack, which is easily avoidable because he has no interrupt armor, so you can simply stun him every time he starts charging it up.  The problem, however, is the Shaman.  The shaman heals and has to be focused down quickly because of it.  He has two interrupt armor, so you need to interrupt him three times in order to land one and stop the healing cast.

The other trash mob that will give you problems is the Stormweaver.  He has a nasty stacking DoT that applies on multiple group members that needs to be healed through and a channel spell that stuns and does continuous massive damage.  This needs to be interrupted or will result in the certain death of the player.

Pulls can also be problematic.  There are a few patrols near some of the pulls and accidentally getting one of them while attempting to pull others will result in an almost certain wipe for a PuG.  The fact that there is no long term CC makes this even worse.  You can’t use a hunter trap or sleep or even a sap, to take a mob out of the picture while you deal with the others.  Mobs must be tanked or kited and killed one at a time.  This puts a lot of pressure on the tank and healer to absorb the massive damage coming from the mobs.

The trash can be tough.  The bosses can be nightmares.  Strangely, the bosses go in descending order of difficulty, in my opinion.  The first boss, Blade-Wind the Invoker, is the toughest boss in the instance.  He is capable of causing much frustration, especially to a pick up group.  Dodging telegraphs, and burst damage/healing are all very important with this boss and messing up on one aspect will cause certain wipes.

Still playing Wildstar. Still enjoying Wildstar.

Wildstar has been out for a few weeks now and I am still playing.  I am only level 22 currently, as I spent all of last week at my daughter’s Air Force basic training graduation, but I am still enjoying the game.  There are still a few bugs and aggravations here and there but its still an incredibly well-made game and Carbine has done a lot more right than wrong.

My main remains an Engineer and I still love the class.  There was a period in the mid to late teens where I was getting incredibly frustrated with the class, however.   I was cruising along until around level 16 or so and then it seemed that my time to kill increased and my survivability seemed to take a nose dive.  It was incredibly frustrating.  I powered through a couple more levels and was on the verge of rerolling to another class but decided to change up my LAS/AMP spec.  The difference was amazing.  Things started dying quickly and I was able to kill 3-4 mobs easily where before I was having trouble with just one mob, much less multiple mobs.

I found it interesting that the change I made was to completely remove Pulse Blast from my bar and replace it with Bio Shell.  I had not even thought of doing that because Pulse Blast is the primary builder of Volatility for the Engineer.  I figured removing it would make it difficult to generate volatility but that is not the case.  Bio Shell coupled with Energy Auger and the AMP Volatility Rising (While between 30 and 70 Volatility gain 7 Volatility every 1.5s) seems to generate plenty of volatility and packs plenty of punch.

My rotation before the change was Energy Auger followed by spamming Pulse Blast until I had enough Volatility for Electrocute spam.  Pulse Blast generates volatility but is incredibly as far as damage is concerned.  Its basically an auto-attack equivalent as it has no cooldown.  Now, my rotation is to open with Energy Auger.  Use my Brusier Bot to gather up the mobs in one spot and then use Bio Shell followed by Electrocute.  I also have Quick Burst (usable after a critical hit) for added DPS, Artillery Bot for even more DPS and Urgent Withdrawal when I need to get out of a tough situation quickly.

All in all, this change made leveling my engineer a much more pleasant experience.  I am now tearing through levels….well….as quickly as one can in Wildstar.  Its still a considerably tougher game than most MMOs out there currently.  It is difficult enough to pose a challenge when fighting some mobs but not so difficult as to become frustrating.

Speaking of tough, I have not yet done a dungeon in the live game but I did get to do an adventure, something I did not get to do in beta.  The first adventure on Dominion side is called Riot in the Void and takes place at a Dominion prison where the Exiled are attempting to escape.  Adventures are like five man dungeons with a ‘choose-your-own-adventure’ feature built in to them.  At various points during the adventure, you will be given a list of choices that determine how the rest of the dungeon plays out.  Each player will make their choice and the choice with the most votes wins.

 

I had decided to tank my first adventure because I figured the queue would be faster and I have heard the engineer was a great tank.  This was true in both cases.  Queueing as DPS had me waiting for over 15 minutes, while queueing as a tank gave me a queue time of less than 25 seconds!  Seems like the old problem of tanks being a rarity continues in Wildstar, not that I am surprised.

Tanking is also incredibly fun in Wildstar.  My engineer really feels like a tank and has the novelty of being ranged as well.  The difficulty of the adventure was high but not frustratingly so, even with a pick up group.  The first ‘boss’ we faced (a warrior named Jarak) was tough and required me to tank him and a bunch of adds that came periodically.  He has a couple of mean telegraphs that have to be dodged out of or you will take a ton of damage.  It was a fun, if not overly complex fight.   The rest of the adventure was entertaining and fairly difficult if everyone is not on their toes.

All in all, I am still having loads of fun with Wildstar.  I will be writing more tomorrow about some of the zones I have seen, as well as my experience with the rest of the game.

 

Wildstar Launch

Well, despite my initial poor impressions of Wildstar, I went ahead and picked it up after my second go went a lot better.  Having a few friends to play with also influenced the decision but, all in all, I am very glad I picked it up.  It’s not perfect, far from it, but it is fun.  Its also incredibly well developed and that is something you have to admit, whether you like the game or not.

You can tell that many of the original WoW devs had a hand in this game.  You can really tell.  Not just the graphic style, though that is certainly part of it, not just the quest hub style of game play, though that is certainly part of it too but also in just how well crafted it is.   The game just feels really well put together.  Its also chock full of things to do.  Completionists are going to have a heart attack with this game.  Tons of quests, lots of stuff to do with your Path, books and artifacts all over the place and tons of challenges.  Every zone has an amazing number of things to do.

I initially rolled on Pergo (PvP) for the headstart but quickly found a gigantic queue waiting for me there so we moved over to Bloodsworn.  Bloodsworn still has a queue at times but not near as bad as Pergo.  The initial hours of the game went about like one would expect from a MMO release.  Scheduled to go live for headstart at 2AM, we didn’t get into the game until 2:30AM.  There were rumors of a DDOS attack on Wildstars servers and that is certainly a possibility.

Once you got in game, it was smooth.  About as smooth of a launch as I have seen.  A bit of lag here, some frame rate issues there but overall very solid.  Matter of fact, the queues are about the only problem I have seen with launch.  There are a few bugs here and there and some frame rate issues but nothing out of the ordinary and nothing as bad as the huge bugs and botting problem that Elder Scrolls is having.  Right now, I would put their launch equal to or maybe even better than Rift’s and that is saying something.

Help my family see my daughter graduate from Boot Camp.

My daughter will be graduating from Air Force boot camp in mid-June.  Our family would love to see her graduate but funds are tight.  Not only would we need to pay for a room for 4 days, food and travel expenses but I just started a new job and have no vacation time to help cover my time away from work.

With this in mind, we have started a Go Fund Me account in the hopes that we can raise the money to go.  Any money that we make will be going straight to the trip and to supplies that my daughter will need as you leaves for Tech School in the Air Force.  My wife is a fantastic artist and she will be doing art work for anyone who donates, including commission work for the highest donations.

If you can and are willing to make a donation, please go to the site below and donate.  If you can not, I completely understand but please share the page so that we can hit our goal.

I thank each and everyone of you, whether you donate or not!

 

Here is the site that you can donate at!

 

CC: The bane of MMO PvP everywhere

If you have played MMO PvP at all over the years then you know how big of a problem CC has been to developers.  There is nothing worse than losing control of your character.  It makes you feel completely helpless and is one of the most frustrating things about PvP.  How many of us have yelled in frustration as a rogue stun-locked us to death in WoW?  How about getting feared and DPS’d down by a warlock?  Or how about ‘sheeped’ by a mage while your healer was killed?

And that’s just WoW.  If you played DAoC, you will never forget the mez and stun bombs.  Not every CC is in the form of a stun, sleep or fear.  In Warhammer my Ironbreaker had 3-4 knockbacks.  Its not a normal type of CC but it is a CC and could be incredibly frustrating.  I could keep players away from the healers at will, just by knocking them back constantly and God help them if there was a cliff or lava nearby because they would immediately be knocked over the cliff or into the lava.  Warhammer also had the Magus, who could pull multiple characters into the center, where they could all be AoE’d down by a coordinated group.

Wildstar: Are they missing the point?

I don’t think that you can argue that Wildstar is aimed straight for WoW players in general and ex-WoW players in particular.  They are really trying to amp up the nostalgia with their implementation of 40 man raiding at the endgame.  Check out this Devspeak video about raiding:

Hardcore!

40 man raids.  Attunement quests.  Its all there and its all straight from Vanilla WoW.

I can appreciate this.  There are thousands of players who long for a return to the old days of World of Warcraft.  Look at any MMO forum and you will find them.  Hell, I am one of them.  I loved Vanilla WoW.  I think WoW has lost something in its search for the casual player.

But I am not sure what they have lost is something Wildstar has found.

Wildstar the Second Shot

In a strange reversal of fortune, I am trying Wildstar out.  This is particularly strange when you consider Pitrelli just reversed himself and decided to give Elder Scrolls Online a go and drop Wildstar.  Now I need to explain; I did not pick it up again of my own free will.  I have a friend who is begging me to play it.  He got further than I did and seems to love it and he really wants me to play with him.  Me, being the great friend I am, decided to give it another go.  What follows is an updated impression.

First of all, many of my problems in my earlier impression post still stand.  Though I have gotten used to the telegraphs and have even come to understand what they are trying to do, it still makes the game to damn bright at times.  There is entirely too much flashing going off on the screen constantly.  I really do not recommend this game if you are prone to seizures because there is no doubt this game will give you one.

Not only that but the background environment is entirely too busy, especially the tutorial zone.  Every square inch is covered with whirling doodads, laser scanners, surveillance droids complete with flash bulbs and a myriad of other things.  I am reminded of when George Lucas discovered CGI and reissued the Star Wars movies.  He wasn’t content to just update Jabba the Hutt, he also had to throw new CGI into every single frame.  There is really no need for this.  The tutorial is so jammed packed with stuff that its distracting.  There is simply no need for so much stuff jam packed into everywhere.

I decided to make a Chua Spellslinger named Gizzbro this time.  I will say the Chua are one of the greatest races in any game.  They are basically cute Gremlins that are insanely smart at making weapons.  I really like everything about them, which is good because I don’t like most of the other races.  I really dislike the human walking animations, the mechari aren’t appealing and the beast race has some strange animations as well.  But, the Chua make up for it.

Combat-wise Wildstar is solid.  Perhaps better than I thought initially.  The combat is fast and frantic and there is a pretty good skill curve involved here.  I can certainly see arena and rated battlegrounds being a big thing here.  I am still not sure the telegraphs add or detract from the skill needed to play it but its fun regardless.

Elder Scrolls Release Week

Elder Scrolls Online finally released officially last Friday.  I had preordered the Imperial Edition so I was able to start playing last Sunday morning.  Of course, Sunday was the start of my long week at work so I was unable to log in and play until Wednesday night.  I was able to jump in as soon as the servers opened and reserve characters names, so that’s a plus.  Other than that, I was forced to read about others playing and watch videos.

All in all, I would say that ESO’s release was pretty smooth as far as MMO releases are concerned.  It had some hiccups here and there.  Still seeing a few quests bugs that are slowly getting squashed.  They had a slight problem with accounts that caused players to randomly log into another players account, but that was fixed quickly.  Other than that and a few other minor bugs and lag, the release went pretty darn smoothly.  I would say it was up there with Rift in terms of quality of release and thats a good thing.  After the disasters of AoC and a few other major MMOs, its nice to see a few companies getting it closer to perfect.

When I was finally able to play myself, I found myself stuck on what class to play.  This is a normal conundrum when going into a new MMO but its made worse with ESO.  All of the classes can do so much and there are so many different builds and choices to be made that it gets downright confusing at times.  For once, all of the different races and classes look pretty appealing.

I normally rule out sorceror/mage types right off the bat in MMOs because I simply hate running around in a robe but in ESO sorcerors can wear a robe, or leather or even heavy armor.  I normally rule out elves in any MMO because, well, elves are stupid.  But in ESO wood elves are actually pretty cool.  They are cannibals for god’s sake, that has to make them pretty interesting, right?

So, I am stuck.  I have leveled three characters up to 10 so far and I still have no idea which I want to play.  And its not that they are not fun because every one of them is fun to play, I just can’t decide.  I am normally not this indecisive but this game has stumped me.  I am off again after tonight so I am going to make a decision and stick with it.

Finally, Zenimax released the long awaited information on Craglorn today.  It came in the form of a video and I have to say, it looks pretty darn cool.  An entire zone tuned for a group of four sounds fantastic and brings back memories of working through the elite areas in WoW back in the day.  I love that.  Throw in a few dungeons and a raid and I am all set as far as endgame PvE is concerned.  You can take a look at the video below, its pretty nive.

I am going to make a post later about what things I would like to see in the future with ESO.  The game is great so far but there is certainly room for improvement and things that I would like to see.