2008-09-30, 01:28 | Link #41 |
Moving in circles
Join Date: Apr 2006
Location: Singapore
Age: 49
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Ha, you wouldn't happen to be from Home Point/House Paladin, would you? I seem to recall that name from those linkshells. My main character is Islien, although he's been retired for close to two years. I've turned one of my mules into my regular character instead. Because I felt like having a change — Elvaan females are the supermodels of Vana'diel.
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2008-09-30, 08:14 | Link #42 |
There will be no miracle
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Nope, although I do remember those linkshells from when I played before. I've been in Kupo since 2003 or so although I was inactive for a lot of that time. Elvaan females are indeed fabulous but they screwed up their attack animations and they could use a little slimming down too lol.
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2008-09-30, 09:55 | Link #43 |
Senior Member
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I think the arena in theory was a good idea...basically a skill based pvp system rather than one that was all about how much you could play in a given week. I reached rank 9 both as horde and alliance in the old system and it was frustrating that I couldn't beat people that hired other people to play or took shifts playing one character up. You could play 10 games a week and that was enough.
Like I noted, it was rock, scissors, paper. As a mage, I could nearly always beat a warrior or rogue, however a warlock or healer would nearly always defeat me. When I got my warlock high enough, I always crushed anyone but a warrior or a really good rogue, but sadly warrior/healer teams were in full swing by that point. It was frustrating because they never really did anything to help against your weak classes. I look at the new mage trees especially how much they improved low end arcane and think, I'd be really cool...but instead of wanting to come back, I know if something didn't work out, they'd let me suck until the next expansion, so I think I'd rather pass on the entire affair. I think how they did teams was bad...people would sell teams which was awful design. Worse yet, you'd see the teams leveling an alt team up, then "win swapping" with another team. Personally, I liked server battle grounds against battle group ones. It wasn't just because you met people on your team, it is because you fought the same people often. Yeah, it was inconvient when it wasn't running but I guess I felt like I knew my enemy about. My friends and I still talk about our stories...but they are all old ones. There was a hunter named Longshot that used to feign death off and confuse the most newbie of my friends, and another friend would always finish his kills for him...after the battle grounds were formed, then that stopped. Overall, WoW PvP was just an afterthought added on to the game and it shows. In Warhammer in contrast, you have brackets for instance PvP as well. First 1 is 11. If you aren't higher, your level is boosted to 8. You don't gain new powers but your existing ones scale, as does your gear. It is impossible to linger in a bracket because you gain experience from pvping, it is unavoidable. Also you gain loot, every kill yields coins and has the chance to drop greens, blues, and purples...yes, there's low level epics. So leveling through pvp is completely viable. There's also pvp vendors for every pvp rank...the very highest ones have orange quality items. And unlike the WoW grandmarshal gear, it is a set amount to reach them. It might be a very long road however, it is attainable. WoW had four battle grounds and the arena. Warhammer has three battle grounds for each level bracket--all have 15 minute maxium time limits, so you won't have day long AVs or mindnumbing WSGs. Also once you level out of a bracket, the previous ones close, though apparently you can que up for higher ones. In world pvp areas, first you are given a 10 second warning before you flag, if you want to avoid pvping. If you are out of a zone's level range, you turn into a "chicken" and are basically helpless. Thus it is possible for someone to fight at an advantage (say an 11 taking on a 1, but the 1 is still boosted to an 8). You no longer have to worry about an epic character farming newbies at least. Taking world keeps grants the zone decent advantages and higher pvp gear can only be bought once a keep is taken. You also have a pvp talent tree and passives to choose from with it as well. Collision is a great thing because it stops people from running through you. Tanks from ranks and lead the charge...they are the only class that gets shields and shields provide somewhere in the ballpark of 60 percent mitigation from all attacks, even spells. Oh, there's knock backs too...you can push people literally off cliffs or throw them away from you. The combats are longer but heavily focused on group pvp. If your team doesn't stay together and work together, you are unlikely to win. The game isn't balanced 1 vs 1, and in fact, they haven't imented dueling perhaps to stave off any compliants about 1 vs 1. On this same note, the pillar running in WoW doesn't work...once you have line of sight to start a spell, it goes off even if you are out of line of sight by the time it finishes. Likewise the universal action point mechanic, restores so quickly that mana drain type tactics are less effective. Lastly, there's tons of titles to be gained from PvP directly. If you die 10 times you get "The Green"...each class killing you gives you a different title as well, 100 kills gets you "The Mauler", and the list goes on. WoW had a single title after a huge (useless) faction grind. The titles are one way to make your character a tiny bit more original, especially if no one else has figured out how to get that particular title. So as I mentioned in my other post, I think Warhammer will challenge WoW directly for PvP. It could be a good situation for the players, because WoW will have to make its PvP better or lose player base. PvE wise, it really only appeals to casuals...it feels a bit more like a solo player game because the tome has short "journal" entries about the story in it, that you get for unlocking particular quests and such. Though most games don't have raid content at release, so I suppose time will tell. Anyway, those are my thoughts on why Warhammer might be a real threat to WoW. |
2008-09-30, 10:20 | Link #44 |
Procrastinator
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: United States
Age: 36
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my only gripes with the arena was, like you said the rock, paper, scissors. and the fact gear was a main factor. some noob playing a friends character could kill you simply because he has twice as much health as you and a bunch of resilience gear.
I was mainly a 2vs2 guy so the big issue was the warrior/hunter+druid unstoppable combos. me being a shadow priest was stuck with its only counter the Rogue+(s)priest. However, (s)priests are very susceptible to mana drains (ironic really) yet the druid has alot more mana regen and a +400% mana regen buff for 10 seconds. You'd have to do everything correctly in order to win against that combo, else, the druid would simpy outlast you. yet again, you make War sound very,very appealing heh. I feel jealous you are able to play it
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2008-09-30, 11:15 | Link #45 |
Senior Member
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I like resilience because it stopped high end PvE guilds from ruling pvp too. But like you said, gear became the decidng factor, which isn't desirable either. Warhammer might side set this if they keep Pve and Pvp gear relatively equal...I know thus far I never used all my pvp or pve rewards, it was always a mix.
I did two vs 2 as a mage...and it was just a lost cause. I worked with a shaman or shadow priest often. We got as high as 1700 only, with me having over 400 resilence. I'd run out of mana against a team with a halfway decent healer and that was that. While a rogue would effortless continue to dps until we lost or a lock would just own me with fear. If your circumstances change, you should look into a Zealot--basically a shadow priest that can heal at the same time they do damage--they also get the best buffs both stat and resist wise--oh each buff has a clicky effect usable one per minute. You get a harbringer that is a huge debuff to your damage type too. I really like my Zealot alt because they actually look like the npc ones...all your gear is tailored to your class...beyond dying and tropies. So after a few levels, you look like a member of your class. Finally, the Zealots three talent specs are basically direct, over time, and aoe...which boost your direct damage/direct heals, hots and dots, and group heals and aoe spells. So you can't be pinned down as a pure healer either...which was the bane of many priests existences in WoW. |
2008-09-30, 14:53 | Link #46 |
Procrastinator
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: United States
Age: 36
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Resilience was good and everything, but not everybody has it. Beginners found it very difficult, if not impossible fight in the arena for various reasons. the unrestricted ability for people in full S2-3 gear to fight in the lower brackets and the selling of arena points are good examples.
which is basically where I found myself in. I had to constantly fight an uphill battle to get my pvp gear; which only served to annoy the crap out of me, and to increase the amount of time to get it all. Before you know it, S4 is around the corner and you have to start all over; but this time, most of the gear has crazy rating restrictions. (not to mention very,very ugly ) I did manage to get pretty far though, so I am happy with that. Spoiler for if you are curious:
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2008-09-30, 15:15 | Link #47 |
Gamilas Falls
Join Date: Feb 2008
Location: Republic of California
Age: 46
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PVP never really mattered to me much. Aside from fighting around Halaa, and defending towns from raids (and sometimes taking part in retalitory raids), I didn't do all that much pvp. Ran each battlecground twice and that was it so far.
Though you can tell some pvpers are bored when one lone S3-S4 decked out Tauran warrior spends an hour or two killing everything in Southshore. Seriously. I logged on and saw that Southshore was under attack spam across my screen for an hour while I was questing and later selling stuff on the AH. I finally decided to go check it out and that was all that was there aside from a half dozen 30s - 40s Alliance that were standing around (slightly ticked) hoping to finish a quest before he killed the quest giver again. Being the first 70 on scene I didn't help all that much (being a non-epic pve warlock). Eventually a second 70 arrived and thw two of us with a 40 killed the guy a few times, then more 70s arrived and we hit Tauren Mill to draw the guy off. When more Horde 70s came they killed us. We were about to fall back when some Alliance Raid group rode in and wiped the hell out of the Horde. We then raided Brill once and called it a nght. Well after we took the zepplin tower and rode it to the wrong destination (arrived in Stranglethorn by mistake and then had to fight out way back to the zepplin after the goblin guards knocked us off the tower) Then we hit Brill instead of a capital city. We only had 20 or so people. This was on a PVE server a few months ago. Arygos
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2008-10-01, 04:56 | Link #48 |
Senior Member
Join Date: Jan 2006
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I took part in a raid against horde last night. We had about 30 people. First we waltzed into Orgrimmar and made our last stand in the auction house. We lasted about 5-10 minutes. :P Then we attacked the Undercity, got a promising start on killing Sylvanas but then someone aggroed some of the warmasters etc. and we wiped. After you wipe in the throne room and the corpsecampers arrive there's just not much hope to continue, so we called it there.
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2008-10-01, 05:59 | Link #49 |
Did someone call a doctor
Join Date: Apr 2007
Age: 40
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We did a Guild ninja run of the UC once back before TBC, we somehow managed to sneak like 30 people into the throne room w/o killing more then 6 or so guards. Unfortunately someone must have blown our cover, or decided to investigate the 6 or so World Defense alerts, we had Sylv down to about 40% before the Horde started to roll in for defense, didn't kill her though. We did kill Carne Bloodhoof as well, that was pretty epic by the end, had a group of people set aside to defending the rest of the raid, tossed so many people off the side of TB with Mind Control.
Heh, that brings back memories of early wow where city raids were common and Ogrimmar/Ironforge were under constant attack by the opposing faction. I remember the Alliance forcing their way into the area outside the bank and AH, only to die horribly and be pushed back. Likewise for IF, although attacking IF had the unpleasant side effect that if the Horde somehow made it *anywhere* near the King, or attacked during peak the server would crash. IFs automated Latency Activated Grid shield was clearly superior to anything the Horde could muster. Anyone else remember the AV games that would last a week? I remember participating in one that lasted 5 days, got in there like 3 or 4 times over the five days.
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Last edited by Mr Hat and Clogs; 2008-10-01 at 06:59. |
2008-10-01, 19:36 | Link #50 |
Procrastinator
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: United States
Age: 36
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I remember doing some raiding way back in the day like a few months after game launch when their were only a few handfuls of 60's. we raided Orgrimmar and crashed the freaken server! lol then after the server came back up we hit The Undercity and crashed the server again
Oh man, we must of had 60-80 people with us. Only later did we learn that it was pretty much pointless to raid cities so we never made any attempts like that again. oh man those were pretty good times. I had more fun with the early game when Blue items were still the best gear to have than I ever did with the mature game when level 60's dominated the server populations and everything turned into raiding and grinding for faction and gear. LOL you should have seen us in MC with all of us decked out in T0...oh man that was sad! We wiped over and over on the first pull inside MC....but this was way back in the day when nobody had killed a boss in MC yet.
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2008-10-03, 14:45 | Link #53 |
Senior Member
Join Date: Feb 2008
Location: England
Age: 34
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Dying out? To me the game was dead when it was first released. I took two steps on the game and almost fell asleep. I adore RPG's but this was just so repetitive and boring. But the main reason I did not like it was because it contained a battle system in which I hate with passion.
I admit that this is purely just my own personal opinion.. |
2008-10-04, 03:50 | Link #54 | |
Sawa-Chan <3 <3 <3
Join Date: Dec 2004
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Maybe try Illidan and black rock *_*. Some realms have no player, but some other ones you have to wait ( some times) for an hour or so to get in. All depends on where you go. Now the better question is , is WOW as popular as it was few yeas ago? and the answer is no . Regardless it is still one of the most played games.
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2008-10-04, 21:47 | Link #55 |
Super Member
Join Date: Feb 2004
Location: California
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The next expac scares me. It's calling to me but I must resist.
I've wasted two years of my life playing WoW. I haven't played in over a year. If I buy the Litch King I can see myself dropping out of college and then going date less for several months. I stopped playing WoW because it got too frustrating getting the gear I wanted. I didn't have the patience for raiding and I was left with running 5-mans trying to get a Dungeon set. It was simply not worth it spending hours trying to get an item that has a measly 10% drop rate. I also hate the fact that if you don't raid, the story is kept from you. I never killed Ragnaros, never set foot in BWL, AQ or Naxx, Tempest Keep or the Black Temple. If the game was single player, I would have been able to do all those thigns. It sucks knowing that if I buy the next expansion, I will never get to fight the last boss. It makes the whole experince feel cheep. The perfect game for me would be an offline WoW, where you have 3-4 bots helping you. I love everything about WoW except for the MMO part. It's funny that the closest thing to an offline WoW is Final Fantasy XII, which was an amazing game. But the two are obviously different. |
2008-10-04, 22:03 | Link #56 | |
Osana-Najimi Shipper
Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: Mt. Ordeals
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And with you saying that the game is not intended for the PvE crowd, and that it's not for people who like to raid, more and more, WaR sounds to be my kind of game. Again, I hate you with a passion for making me go buy the game first thing tomorrow. Good bye, my free time. T_T
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2008-10-05, 05:03 | Link #57 |
Senior Member
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I don't know much about the Archmage except they mirror the shaman. Their mechanic is when they cast a heal, their next damage spell has a reduced casting time by 1/5 or if it is instant does 5 percent more damage...you can stack this up to 5 times...or you can reverse it by casting heals to buff your damage. I know Archmages get some sorta of cool eye beam effect and a knockback, which hurls their enemies across the battlefield. Oh, and they get a career tactic (basically like a stance for fighting it) that gives them 25 percent more damage in exchange for 20 percent less healing effectiveness...basically a solo mode.
Overworld pvp is a big deal. There's scenarios for pvp much like the WoW battle grounds; I was wrong before, tier 1 (1-11) and tier 2 (12-21) each have 3 battle grounds...tier 3 has 6 by itself. Each one is a little different...there can be bases or a flag involved in each. I've noticed compaired to say WoW there's fewer bases, no more than 3 often merely 2. The zones often have hazardous events happening...you can be knocked into lava for example in one, which makes it interesting, since lava will 2-3 shot anyone. World PvP is a big deal. There's ballista you can take control of and shot other players and you can buy oil to drop on attackers of keeps or battering rams to break the doors down. Controling the keeps grants bonuses to the entire zone, also pvp vendors are only available past a certain level if you control the keeps. You get loot for taking a keep--it's not a solo activity though, right now usually 4 groups of 6 are needed...oh in this game groups are "public"--meaning anyone can join, unless you set yours to private specifically. So often random people will show up if word gets out that you are going to storm a keep. At least on my server (Vortex), world pvp is pretty active at peak times, with keeps changing hands. The flight paths (which you get automatically) are instant (with just a cut scene for zoning), so groups will often storm several keeps. I've heard in the final tier, there's a set number of battle fields...all are locked except one at a time. If one side reaches a certain number of kills/quests done/etc, I've been told the battle will shift closer to the enemy capital, if your side loses enough of those battles, the enemy will siege the capital. This is pretty much a several wide event. If the siege succeeds, then the enemy will unlock instances for the keep lords. I am sketchy about how hard they are, but I am guessing they are 4 group encounters because that's the biggest raid size. World PvP is a big deal since that's the only way to get certain loot...but anyone can help siege the enemy. I don't know anything more than that about it...certaining rankings of guilds gain access to a command room to discuss tactics. Oh, guilds can tax your income too and I've seen people with guild banners going into battle. (You also get a title for killing guild leaders!) I've heard the lowest instance is in the 20's...with only 40 levels in the game, that's pretty late...I tried one with an interesting group of 2 tanks, 2 healers, and 2 dps, since there's no crowd control. The real grind in the game is there's 80 pvp ranks...there's green sets, blue sets, purple ones, and orange ones...unlike the out of the box WoW pvp gear, the non competitive nature of the pvp levels, means anyone can attain them with time. After you would get all that gear, there's still again the keep stuff or just title/tropy/bragging rights to unlock...and they are all kinds of things you can earn titles for...fighting with no gear, falling to your death, being killed by a certain class or killing a certain class, clicking on your character, high scoring on public quests, doing certain quests, trade skilling, and about everything else you could imagine. I can't say there won't be any pve stuff eventually, WoW had very little in the beginning, but at the moment the focus is definitely pvp and they do a pretty darn good job at it. It is certainly a time sink to level the ranks but they are attainable and rewards are set with each level, so it isn't nearly as tedious as WoW and the system doesn't seem as easily exploitable as the Arena. All that being said, the game is heavily based on group play. A single dps (though not all of them have their healing debuffs yet), at my level cannot kill a healer if the heal detaunts (1/2 damage if they don't attack) and just heals themself. In practice, I've never had my healer kill anyone though because even sneaking damage in there between detaunts more people always assist. Basically you need your tanks to go in and engage their tanks and protect your back line of healers/ranged dps, your melee dps to flank their clothies...while your healers and ranged support your offensive. It's tough to accomplish with a pug often. It all about team work...you never see a class able to solo more than one person almost. I think the team focus will set it apart from WoW and steal away the pvp crowd with all likelyhood. PvP was never an intended part of WoW and they did a good job at tacking it on at the end. This had the intention from the design level and it really shines. |
2008-10-05, 23:42 | Link #58 |
Senior Member
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WoW is going through the same exact things that Everquest went through... and they continue to repeat history. With pressure for "end game" dungeons and loot, the devs completely ignore the new subscribers/mid-level players in favor for the end game elitist that want better gear which results in the community shifting farther and farther away.
EQ learned all their mistakes with EQ2 and offered hundreds of methods for low level/mid level players to "catch up" or play with with higher level players, plus all their end game zones so weren't so far away, so you could still have that sense of community, and be wow'd at what you could some day achieve. While Warhammer took it a step further with Public Quests, and instant PVP raiding where regardless of your level if you're below the average, they'll bump you up to that so you don't get murdered. And PQs allow you to instantly group with everyone in that area and share in the loot you get. Warhammer's greatest flaw though is that its an in-house EA game and therefore will never reach the potential or the be the "WoW killer" everyone was execpting it to be. |
2008-10-06, 00:35 | Link #59 | |
Osana-Najimi Shipper
Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: Mt. Ordeals
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Whew... good thing I did some research before buying the game. The Archmage isn't as advertised...
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Probably the closest one I've seen is the WoW Shockadin, which I had plenty of fun doing while I played WoW. Maybe I'll revisit it when the expansion comes out...
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2008-10-06, 00:55 | Link #60 |
Gamilas Falls
Join Date: Feb 2008
Location: Republic of California
Age: 46
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Considering that the paladin is one os the classes getting a large revamp to make them rather good, you might have fun with that. (I've never heard of a "Shockadin", I'd assume that was some build of the Paladin, but the "Shock" reminds me more of the Shaman...so eh).
I've decided to delete my level 18 undead warrior and recast him as a Death Knight at some point. However I've not decided if I want him as an Undead or Human yet. The race equals side makes all the difference. For balance I'd cast him as Undead...but and Undead Death Knight is kind of like the guy got the shaft twice from the Lich King...first dying to become a Scourge...the breaking free only to "die" again to enter the Lich King's services agian. I'm seriously thinking of making him human just because of that. But that won't be for a little while. I'd rather mess around leveling my warlock first, then go back and work on alts.
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