February 2007

Diplomacy and Crafting

stargrace February 7, 2007 1Comment

Tashia, level 3 wood elf Shaman

I decided to try another class last night. There’s certainly no shortage of choices. Tashia, my level 3 shaman was fun to play. The starting area was absolutely beautiful, a glade of sorts. After two fast quests they send you in further towards a city, right away. Where as my necromancer was level 5 and still hadn’t seen any cities, the shaman wandered right into it.

Diplomacy. The concept sounds like a lot of fun. I even managed to get a title by doing some of the quests, I’m now “Devotee Tashia of the Wind” (whether that’s due to her ability to blow a lot of hot air around, or some other reason has yet to be proven). It makes me feel like I’m playing Yugioh or some other card game. I know there are tactics to it, and rules, but I basically just go with my instinct and play whatever card I think will work. I haven’t figured out how to tell what card set up to go in there with yet. I typically try a few, if they don’t seem to be the right combination, I switch them out. I have 12 cards to my deck now, and can only use 5 (or is it 6?), so it’s always fun to decide which ones to play. After I got the title (and gloves that give +1 inspiration!) I decided to wander around, I had a quest for crafting.

Crafting was.. interesting. It’s complicated. Not to mention the fact that you keep seperate sets of clothing depending on what you’re doing. So not only do you have an adventuring set that allows you to kill foes, but you have a diplomacy set, and a crafting set. Each set gives you attributes for the skills you’re going to be using in that field. Ran around and got my tool belt and tools and decided to go with the one that lets you make boats and what not. Boats? I had to take a second look at that, it certainly seems fun.

Made a piece of wood! I win at life.

Basically you start the crafting process, and you’re allocated points. Each skill you need to use takes up a certain amount of points. You need to go through the entire crafting process and not run out of points before you hit the end. The more points you spend on skills (and still hit the end) the better quality the item you make is. I haven’t started harvesting yet, I’ll attempt that another time.

Still lots of bugs. At one point my screen depending on where I stood was just a mesh of black lines. When the crafting tips came up they blurred and mushed together so I couldn’t read them any more. Less lag, but shesh still a lot of bugs.

Laying Down the Law

stargrace February 6, 2007 2Comments

My little necromancer, Misako, laying down the law

Since today is Tuesday and it was the weekly 8+ hour down time for WoW, I decided to play on Vanguard for a little bit (WoW has been attempting to do live patches, every second week or so it seems, which are very nice, when they take place at least. They’ve been having Tuesday patching for as long as I can remember now). Anyhow.

I decided to make a necromancer. According to the manual they sounded pretty fun. I like pet classes typically. So, Misako was created. Nothing’s changed in the character models, they’re still horribly ugly. Just. Yeah. It does grow on you after a while I admit, but it’s still just… ugh.

So I did the beginning quests again, the same ones I’d done on my blood mage — low and behold, there were updates, seems a patch took place.

The first thing I noticed, that I complained about yesterday, was the spells being cast. Yesterday as I played, I’d cast a spell, watch the cast timer go – it would land and then I’d see the graphic (albeit small) go off. So my character basically looked as though she was spending 90% of her time in combat just standing around. Today, that’s changed. The graphic for the spell goes off as you cast the spell and watch the casting bar do it’s thing. A huge upgrade for me, I like this much better, even if the spell graphics are simplistic. I don’t need big complicated lag-inducing spell graphics. I just wanted something going off as I cast it, rather then afterwards.

Played on balance with little issues at all. Doors still lag me horribly. Love the way I actually have to turn on my torch at night or else I can’t see more then a few paces in front of me. In Eq2 there are torches that give off light, but you never ever had to use them.

Ran around the Dallerjuba Village and completed various quests. I always take the time to read through them the first time, they were not too bad. They were your typical MMO type quests. Go investigate such and such a place, go slaughter such and such a beast, go find such and such a missing article. Along the way I got some small gear upgrades and coin, and the little necromancer hit level 5.

So the game is not utterly hopeless, I just wish it was a little more refined. I’m sure it will come in time, they do seem to be making progress.

I did notice that the man mounted on a dragon at the beginning of the game did not disappear from my screen like he did yesterday every time I approached him, however every time I walked up to a particular beast and ordered my pet to attack it, it slipped under the world from my view.

Speaking of which, pets are.. interesting. To say the least. I haven’t found a way to hotkey the pet attack key yet, I’m sure I can find a key binding for it though. I hate having to mouse click for my pet to attack. Your pet (necromancer pets at least) are also equipped with a skill called “sneer” which is basically their taunt, and you have to physically click it in order to set it off.

The pet comes with the same basic stances that every pet gets. Protect you, protect themselves, follow, stay, guard. Those sorts of things. I assumed they could be toggled some how, but hitting them didn’t change the graphics or what my pet did it seemed. I ordered it to protect me and instead he stood by staring while I got slaughtered. There’s also two slots for “grafting”. I assume this means I can graft other parts or something onto my pet.. some how. Nothing at all was explained to me about it, so I really don’t have even the faintest ideas of how this works. I figure I’ll work it out as I go.

All in all, the game has potential, like I already mentioned.

First impressions of Vanguard

stargrace February 5, 2007 5Comments

My first human

So. Even though I know Vanguard has issues, I’ve heard about them almost none stop for months now, I decided to give it a shot. It’s part of my station access deal which I actually like. $24.99 a month and I have both Vanguard and EQ2 on there. Gives me some extra characters as well, and for EQ2 it means the adventure packs are free of charge. I’m expecting this price to go up over time though.

The game is pretty. I can run it very well on balanced settings, and if I go one higher I can still play but get a little lag. I have a brand new video card though, before I got it the game was barely moving at all. The world is pretty, but I found it lacking any sort of opening story. I sort of felt like I was plunked down “here you go, we need you to kill scorpions and collect weeds” right away. Only one of the ‘starter’ places seemed to have a story line where you work and beat some soldiers and then betray the emperor and get stranded naked in the next little area. I wish every starting character had something like that.

The games UI is exactly like WoW. Makes me wonder if they had to pay royalties it looks so much alike. In fact, a lot of it is the same. You hit escape to bring up the menu much like WoW.

I don’t like the fact that as you cast a spell, there is no graphic at all. It looks like you’re standing still until .05 seconds before the spell lands. So for half of my battles I look like I’m just glancing off into the distance.

The characters themselves.. well. They’re horribly ugly. Try typing the /sit command, and see what I mean. Who on earth actually sits like that? With their arms jutted out at 90 degree angles. In an mmo world, looks matter a great deal. Not that we’re all shallow and selfish people, but you want to play something that looks good, lets face it. Even if your view of what looks good verses someone else’ view is completely different.

I only played for ten minutes or so before I decided to give it a break. My eyes were starting to hurt from looking at the screen. Is there a mini map? Mine seemed to be missing the whole time, maybe we don’t get one and I just never noticed. It’s frustraiting to remember where my quests came from. Telling the level of some things was annoying too as I tried more then once to take on something one or two levels higher and they squished me soundly. I like both EQ2’s and WoW’s method of displaying mob level.

Anyhow, we’ll see how it goes. For now I’m on 30 days free before they start charging for it. It has potential, everyone I know says that. But who wants to wait 6 months for a game that’s already released to finally get some where.