Well, the stress test ended Sunday at 18:00 Pacific and the servers should be wiped by now. I have to say that I am a bit mixed about things overall, though.

First off, let me give a shout out to a fellow poster that was known in-game as "Angard" and on the boards as "inexorable." He/she is a bit of the lurker type, but it was nice to find somebody from Blue's and Angard, a priest, really helped us on taking out the first sunken ghost ship in the wetlands.

Second, I do have to say that there is a somewhat bitter feeling or taste from the whole "closed beta" contest experience. I certainly was not going to kill myself to get into, but yeah, I was definitely interested in it. However, there were various issues and concerns over cheating and shady conduct. From day one, there were closed beta PCs that were going out of their way to help their friends through everything - some people had a leg up on knowing what to do, profession routes to take, and locations for all items. That was understandable, but then there was some definite cheating going on - reports of people being rested at all times (200% XP) and some people had the most bizarre level jumps. Things started getting worse and I just gave up on it - an even newer cheat had been found (100% protection) and there were level 50+ characters with mounts, too. Perhaps Matthew can comment on how stupidly ridiculous that is within a ten day period. As it stands, my character ended at level thirty.

I do not know if I would have ever won, but I know that I never had a chance to win - that is what irks me. Meanwhile, Blizzard really did not have anything to say other than a vague promise to look into things on the last day. Basically, a known problem that was not correct nor dealt with and only give a very basic promise to potentially look into things. This is not completely fair to Blizzard, it was just a stress and Blizzard does not care about it, but it really reminded me of dealing with SOE all over again.

Likewise, now that it is over, I was going to wait a day and make a fairly detailed post covering things ranging from my general playing to various bugs all the way to sweeping design decisions they should make. However, the stress test board, the only one stress testers could post to, was locked yesterday and has already been removed. Blizzard could not even wait a day before locking/closing the board? Talk about cutting off my communication and not caring at all about what people have to say. It just seems inane to not was a reflection of what people just played. Again, it made me feel like I was dealing with good 'ol SOE.

As for the game, it is both amazing and yet shockingly shallow. It is an amazing game to start playing and is, by far, the most accessible of any MMRPG out there. In a lot of ways, this is the casual gamers' MMRPG. Where it succeeds is by making an almost single-player RPG and placing it online. This is so simple, you would think this is the basic of any online RPG, but many games get caught up in the combat, the economy, guilds, or some other hook. In a way, this is like Gothic taken online, ableit with better graphics, tightened gameplay, more goal oriented quests, massive size, and significantly more polish.

If I do pick this game up, something I think will be very hard not to do, it will be for casual playing - maybe thirty to sixty minutes a night. At the same time, I am hesitant about doing it all over again. I realized the one thing that the game was truly lacking was any type of character development or growth. It is amazing what they have done, a gigantic world made around quests with tons of little touches everywhere, yet the game is all quests. As silly as it sounds, I will not be working for house, "living" in any area, having a real base of operations, gaining heroic status for my character, or anything else. Log in. See what missions you have. Try to do one.

That is it.

I will say that missions are a bit hit or miss. At the end, I had about eight elite quests, three bugged quests, and two yellow quests. Obviously, I could not finish the bugged quests. It is a little troubling that there were as many quests with blatant issues or that could only be completed after a server reboot, completing it quickly before the NPC or quest became stuck again.

As for the elite quests, that blackfathom deeps area is insane. Not only do they recycle it way too much, just in my small area of the world, I had like five or six quests for it. Even at the end of the game, with a group of five high-level PCs, we could not finish the green-colored elite quest due to the insane spawning issues. By the time we took out, say, two mobs, the mobs we had already killed were respawning. Mind you, we would stumble upon areas with six-plus mobs in one room that needed to be taken out one by one or in small groups. Lastly, this was all going in a fresh dungeon - once you had other PCs going through there, you had respawn timers going off at any one moment. It does seem like other instanced dungeons are not as insane, but I am basing this off of the one the night-elves had in the area and had the numerous quests for.

As for the remaining yellow-colored quests, they were anything but. I noticed this on more than a few missions. Sometimes, I could solo an orange mission. Other times, it might take me and another player to complete a yellow quest. For these last two I had, a full group of players was easily owned by the quest. Major imbalance issues.

Speaking of imbalance, I do have to say that the combat is out of whack from head to toe. Why, as a high level warrior with 1600+ armor, was I taking as much damage as the lower level rogue with 400+ armor? At that point, I should be invincible or take such relatively minor damage. Likewise, I found it incredibly frustrating to be forced to build up rage (with each hit) to perform actions while others classes could enter combat with full mana or action points. Likewise, the spellcasters would heal mana over time whereas my rage will subside over time.

There are issues with combat. The single worst experience that I can recall was missing fourteeen straight times against a level twenty bear when I was a level twenty-two warrior. I would love to see any type of explanation from Blizzard for that. Considering I really cannot do much until I even make a hit, it is so completely frustrating and irritating. There were some moments like this where I just...hated this game with a passion. I will note that there is a command to give up a chunk of health for rage, but I do not feel that I should need to do that, especially not given the insane miss/hit situation.

Now, this may not actually be the combat, but indicative of other issues. Geometry is a huge issue with the game. You will see random "MobXXX: Too many stuck in geometry errors - removing self from game" messages, but there are many times where this is not recognized. What drives you crazy is when this happens to a quest NPC. This leads back to the "You can only finish the quests right after the server is reset - run to the mob before it gets bugged again" situation. Once a NPC gets caught, you cannot attack it and it usually cannot attack you. In combat, I noticed that moving does sometimes help with the "You just missed five million times" issue that arises. I do not really care what the issue is, I just know that it has a negative experience on the game and make me really hate the game when I have to deal with it. Likewise, though a bit rare, you can get weird circumstances where the server is showing the mob in one location, is registering the hits from another location, and you cannot return attack until the server sorts the two. Vertical space can be an issue as well, tough it is rare to have overlapping areas in the game. Still, nothing like being on the top deck of the ghost ship and being hit from the mob two levels down.

After everything, I do have to give the game credit for its art design. The textures are low resolution, the game looked fugly the first time I played it :o, but there are a lot of them and I cannot stress the amount of attention and love that went into crafting the levels. Though the textures are low resolution, they are very "clean" in appearance. Likewise, I think many people will find this game runs quite well for them. I had no problems running at 1280x1024 with maximum options. In a completely packed area, I was pulling down 35 FPS. In general, I was between 45FPS and 60FPS. These are not just big, empty maps you are on - there are specifically placed texture, trees, structures, dungeons, paths, etc. That last part is scary considering I only saw maybe a true tenth of the world; lots of love was given by the art department and the art direction is superb.

Likewise, the entire world is connected with near-seamless loads. The gryphon is blatantly slow, nothing like spending ten minutes (literally) flying from one continent to the other, but you will see the entire land as you go.

I could go on and on, but this is already way too much. Removing skill points is stupid - you go from working for knowledge and being able to make a uniquely-skilled character to just purchasing the two fields of experience you wish - and I view it as a "cheat" on Blizzard's part. Where was the XP from being logged out? Why is the character creation so blatantly limited?

Blah blah blah.........

I do think the game will be a real blast for anybody that has not played it, especially casual gamers or first time MMRPG playrs, but it does take a bit of a warming up period. My only true concern is about the overall depth. Withou cheating and with scaling my playing back due to the players, I still hit level thirty in ten days. Mind you, the game is supposed to be capped at, what, level sixty? Likewise, what do complete in the game? Just quest after quest? Besides being a bit boring at points, the whole difficulty scaling is out of whack. The "easy" way to hold back players is to decrease XP, but then that means I am pointlessly killing even more mobs. As it stands, I must have killed a few thousand mobs already and it is one of the most mind-numbing experience. Why is the night-elf area so freaking boring or even small in comparison with the other areas? After all that time in our homeland tree, we finally get to Darkshore and.....crap, it is more forest. Meanwhile, Stormwind is too big for its own good and Ironforge is on such a different scale than anything a night-elf has. Darnassus is a bit bigger, but talk about a dead city. Why is the map so bad? Some places are just an image, some places are an image that gets updated with names and locations, and some places have a zoomed in, detailed map.

Blah blah blah...I would love to talk about all this on Blizzard's board, but my comments are unwelcomed, apparently.

I am still irked over this "contest." I never had a chance to ever try to win, the fair players were ignored, and the cheaters or exploiters will be rewarded.

It is a good game, but it could be so much more. Any RPG fan, casual gamer, or new MMO gamer should give it a whirl.

Wondering if anybody at Blizzard wants to move RaymArden to the closed beta :D,
Ray

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