07.28.06
First Night: Two Characters
First off, the patch process lasted another good ten minutes after my last entry. Apparently there were five or so megabytes that they just couldn’t bear tacking on to the “get up to date from a fresh install” package that was already 455 MB by itself. And naturally the patcher refused to actually download the patch. So, had to wade through FileFront to get the patch. Not happy.
In any event, I logged in (finally!) and was prompted to select a server. Based on my suggestions of “no PvP”, the system suggested Anvilmar. Who am I to argue with the system? Actually, the other reason I chose Anvilmar was because it was the only one I could see that had a population listing of “new” as opposed to “Low” or “High”. There were others, sure, but I’m not up enough on the world lore to start RP nor am I smart enough to PvP. Anvilmar it was, then.
My first character is Ceilai, a Night Elf Hunter. She (yes, I chose a female Night Elf on purpose– I’m going to get SOME bloody enjoyment out of this game) did pretty well on her first outing; I advanced to Level 4 within the span of about forty-five minutes. However, most of that was doing really, really simple “kill x” quests. I hate those kinds of quests. I was under the impression that there would be at least a brief bit of something interesting before the game said “go grind”, but no. Right off the god damned bat I got the one type of quest I hate. “Go talk to Nerga Yabbababa”, I can handle. “Take such and such an item to so and so and tell him he’s smelly”, I welcome. “Kill X of monster A and Y of Monster B”– kill it with fire. After a while I got an ability that put the names of monsters and their locations on the minimap, so that helped– but it was too little, too late. The ironic part is, once I figured out the combat system, I briefly thought I was playing my empathy Defender from CoH.
There were some things I liked. For example, you can’t use a bow to shoot something ten inches away. That’s a nice touch. The loot system works… all right. Character customization is very nice in terms of the stuff you wear appearing on your character; and no, I will not take off all my clothes. Perverts. Actually within about two minutes of entering the game, a nasty spike of global lag prevented me from completing a quest. But once that cleared up, I was approached by a male Night Elf who was under the impression that I was a girl. When I reminded him of the fact that there are no girls playing World of Warcraft at 9pm EDT on a Thursday Night, or at any other time for that matter, he didn’t get the hint. In short, it was exactly eight minutes into the game before I was hit on. Someone else was begging for a girlfriend in the shout channel.
My God, there are six million of these people?
Ahem. After five or six quests, I decided it was time to take a look at life on the other side. I logged out and created a Tauren Shaman named Shalalah. It should be noted that I used the random name generator to get inspiration for the names, then altered them so that I felt like I had actually been creative. It should ALSO be noted that if nothing else comes of this whole fiasco, I really really REALLY like how the Taurens look. Nothing like the furious avenger of ‘ten billion served’ charging across the plains, staff in hand and magic at the ready. It’s just an awe-inspiring sight. The problem is that it’s only awe-inspiring when you’re on the receiving end. As might be inferred, Taurens move about as well as Victor Ireland used to guess release dates. They’re just as slow as they look when they’re not being all bad-ass.
Yeah, the first quests were more or less the same here, too. Change the NPC trainer name and the types and amounts of items, and it all adds up to more SUPER HAPPY FUN GRINDING!!11! However, I was exposed to a couple very odd elements of the game as a Tauren. First, someone randomly walked up to me and opened a trade window; he put something in the “enchant or unlock slot” and just stared at me. No text, no explanation, no nothing. I suppose he assumed I would enchant his whatever it was, but two things hindered this: first, he didn’t even bloody ask me first, and secondly, as I had no idea of the purpose of the “no trade slot”, nor did I actually realize that enchanting other items was a primary function of Shamans, I could not reasonably be expected to cast such a buff at Level 2. The other thing, which turned out rather well, was a duel that I was challenged to– again, without preamble and without warning. I decided “What the hell, I’ve got nothing to lose, right?” and accepted the duel, issued by a fellow Shaman. I lost. Horribly. Well, I did get a couple good hits in. But he kept spamming his lightning spell, which is what I was trying to do but I still didn’t have the hang of the keys.
I have a few gripes about the interface, though. Whose bright idea was it to prevent you from moving the UI windows? Why the hell is right-click the “activate” button, and why is there no prompt before you sell an item? I realize money is supposed to be scarce, but why do some dropped equipment items only sell for one or two copper? Furthermore, why are there no more specific error messages than “you cannot equip this item”? What in the name of all that is holy does “there is no equipment slot for this item” even mean? It’s a god damned chestplate! I’m wearing a different, inferior chestplate that you clearly acknowledge the existence of because you pop up the little comparison window! I want to remove the chestplate I’m wearing and buy the new one! It’s not hard, people! Lastly, it would be really nice if the mini-map showed me the location of completed-quest NPCs before I was right on top of them.
Some of these issues are gripes about the UI and will probably just take some getting used to. Others like the all-pervasiveness of the fetch quest will likely just serve to piss me off. Oh, and while the Rest system hasn’t yet come into play, it’s likely to be useless as the description says “one bubble of double XP for each 8 hours spent logged off”, but a “bubble” of experience (5% of the total needed to level) is just shy of two monsters right now.
There is native support for the Logitech G15 Keyboard and its LCD screen. About a year back a few people had been beaten with the banhammer for using the keyboard; its use has also been mentioned as ‘abusable’ in terms of CoH. However, I’m glad to see that Blizzard– and Cryptic/NCSoft, as well– gives players the benefit of the doubt that they won’t just become a bot. I still have to fiddle with the keybinds and my Nostromo loadout, but for the most part I’m digging the controls.
Session Time: Two hours. Levelled from 1-4, 1-3.
The Good Things: Very nice graphics and cinematics. Difficulty is not too tough, but monsters put up a fight. Tooltips and help prompts for everything. Quest kill counters appear on screen. Native support for the Logitech G15 keyboard.
The Bad Things: UI is unintuitive/counterintuitive. Audio is 2 steps shy of obnoxious; voice acting is copied directly from Warcraft III. Quests are uninteresting and not compelling. Areas are very hard to move around in due to sameness all over; lack of nav compass/waypoint system adds to this. Yeah, the noob zone is populated by morons; reserving judgement on people in general until later. Tooltips and prompts for everything; “helpfulness” borders on obsequiousness.
Opinion Change? Slightly for the better. It plays a lot better than I had thought, but the hiccups and grinding turn me off from the thought of seriously extended play.