WoW open beta came to a close yesterday. I had several screenshots I wanted to show(including this really nice one of an Infernal lunging at my little gnome), but I needed some hdd space so I uninstalled WoW, foolishly, along with the screenshots. :P Well, too bad I guess. Final moments before the servers came down, the GMs (gamemasters) spawned several huge mobs that rampaged the city of Stormwind and other major cities, killing many folks and turning several others into chickens. One of these mobs was a Dreadlord and his fucking cool, massive Infernal.
Let's just say, the beta experience was good. I haven't played Everquest 2 so I can't compare the two. But I think I will enjoy WoW for 3 months at least, given the fact that I haven't experienced the higher levels' content and it usually takes about 3 months to get to those content. I won't elaborate on what is good with the game since everyone already know most of it. Maybe I'll just summarize the goodness with one word- Quests. :) Also had a ball of a time being part of this raid with some 30 folks on the final day. Our alliance raid-group tried to invade the goblin town of Ratchet. Kinda brought back memories of ol' DAoC's RvR action. However, like the problem with DAoC, there's a visible lack of incentive to PvP and PvP content in general in WoW. (We won't see the much touted Honor system and Battlegrounds, both important PvP content, in the release) DAoC's RvR didn't really do it for me the last time either. I prefer small, concentrated skirmishes to messy large-scale battles so I hope WoW will provide venues for small skirmishes in future.
The first and only 'Instance' raid I joined a couple days ago was pretty fun too. It was known as the VanCleef raid. Had to pass thru meandering caves/mines/mini-bosses to finally arrive at a pirate ship. We weren't a full group (there were 4 of us- 2 warlocks, a lvl30 paladin and me, a rogue) but we eventually beat the instance. Took about 3 to 4 hours. It was pretty tough and intense, and we were in fact beaten on several occasions. But warlocks have the ability to create these Soulstones (which enable a person to self-resurrect) every 30mins. Our more experienced paladin was amply supplied with these and coupled with his personal ability to heal and resurrect, we managed to pull through.
Anyway, 5 days till release. Pretty much at a loss on how I should spend my evenings till then. Half-life 2, anyone? Hyak hyak.
A Different Opinion
Beta Writeup: World of Warcraft [2:Margalis]
This one offered a rather critical preview/write-up of WoW, from the pov of Margalis on
Waterthread.
This is like the cumulation of all the main faults with WoW. I'll like to add another- that is the lack of PvP content. You know, like when you just started out in DAoC, you had a vague idea what RvR is about, but somehow you felt there's something missing from the whole idea (esp. after you'd gone on the first Keep Raid, like there's a lack of incentive to RvR in the whole thing... ), there is a similar 'something' missing from WoW's PvP. But nothing that a good PvP patch can't fix, except that they better not let us wait too long for the patch, like the trillion years it took for the Daoc Frontier patch to occur.
I didn't agree with everything in the writeup. If, after reading this, you still find the game to be sufficiently fun (like I do), then go ahead, buy and try out the game. /plug
