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Hasselhoff with laser eye beams
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Sun Jul 08, 2007 7:20 pm :: silex
Posts: 873 • Guild: Pirate Ghost Cows • Class: Zealot • Joined: 17 Feb 2006
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After a year and a half of following WAR, I finally got to play in Ohio this weekend. Here's the obligatory write-up:
Short version -
It was awesome.
Long version -
6 people from our guild rolled down to Columbus for the event. After walking around the convention center for a half hour and dodging the scarier LARPers, we finally found the WAR booth, which consisted of 8 Alienware laptops, a giant TV playing the podcast videos on loop, and 3 EA Mythic employees.
Sadly, no RvR. The Mythic employees asked several times if people wanted to load up an RvR scenario, but there was always someone that vetoed it. I watched for a bit and then took over on someone's level 1 Bright Wizard. My brother logged in a newbie Warrior Priest and we grouped up to kill stuff. Throughout the time we were there, I played a Magus, a Runepriest, a Choppa, and tons on a Zealot.
Skills were divided into four types: Abilities, Morale Abilities, Tactics, and Skills. I already knew what the first 3 tabs were all about, but the fourth tab "Skills" just said "Under Development". I asked if this was going to be similar to Realm Abilities from DAOC and I got a kind of hesitant "It's under discussion." 
/duel -
Is in, but not working. The interface is exactly like DAOC. "/duel challenge", "/duel accept", "/duel reject", "/duel surrender". You can start a duel, but it does not let you attack each other yet.
/follow -
Not recognized by the interface as a command.
/stick -
Not recognized by the interface as a command.
/dance -
Spits out the emote "Silex refuses to dance."
Killing the low level mobs while solo gave about 50 XP. Killing the same mobs while grouped barely gave much less at all. I think we were earning 40 XP per kill still while grouped, but I'm not 100% positive on that. My memory is a bit fuzzy. Seems they really do want to promote grouping though.
We earned about 500 XP from completing most of the quests. Some experience gain was modified by +5% or +10%. I asked about this, and I was told this was due to my side currently controlling the zone I was in.
I'll admit I had my doubts when they said "you won't have to ALT+TAB out to walkthrough sites to do our quests", but wow - they weren't kidding. You receive a quest, open up the map, and there's a big fat red circle over the area you need to go to for the next step of the quest. Incredibly easy. Probably debatable that it was too easy. The circle is viewable on your mini-map as well.
Speaking of the mini-map, it didn't appear that group members were veiwable on it yet.
As we all saw in the May podcast about questing, you indeed do not have to start a quest before you can start working on it. My brother and I just went around killing stuff in the countryside for a bit. When we returned to town, we saw 2-3 NPCs with the completed-quest icon over their heads. Free rewards! Hooray!
I finally learned how the Zealot harbinger system works as well. You begin by casting a Ritual. When you activate the skill, it attaches a huge ground target reticle that follows your cursor around. When you click, you begin casting the ritual (2 second cast time or so) and a huge mark is engraved into the ground at the selected spot. The ritual circle is HUGE. You can then summon the Harbinger (another 2 second cast time or so). Any enemy inside the ritual circle when the Harbinger is summoned is then debuffed by the effect of that ritual and your group is empowered accordingly. It looked like the Summon Harbinger skill could be used several times... not 100% sure if the effects can stack on the same enemies over and over or not... The ritual circle lasts for 60 seconds before fading away. Overall, it looks like a great set of skills for large-scale battles.
I'm one of those freaks that needs flawless framerates in games. Outside of towns, I didn't notice a single stuttered frame - it was crystal smooth. Inside towns, there was a fair bit of video lag. Annoying, but not unplayable. I'm not 100% sure how powerful those laptops were, but they were Alienware. As always - remember the usual disclaimers of "it's still only early Beta" and "they have a lot of optimizing to do still", so don't freak out yet.
At one point, while I was watching someone play a Runepriest, a woman, who I will call the Bouyant-Inflatable-Transcendentalist-Cattle-Herder, came up to me and said "You need to move, you are blocking my booth!".
I looked back and saw that there was no one looking at her booth at the moment. I said, "But I'm just watchin-".
"MOVE". She went back to her empty booth. I turned back to the WAR booth and caught an EA Mythic employee shoot her a  while her back was turned. I laughed.
At 3:30PM, they did the beta drawing. A huge mob of people gathered around and I heard the Bouyant-Inflatable-Transcendentalist-Cattle-Herder yell out, "Oh what the hell. What are they doing now?" Armed with the nastiest scowl I've ever seen, she forced the mob to move away from her booth so that she could continue telling absolutely no one about her product.
They then started drawing names (only 12 winners per day). I nearly crapped myself when my name was first out of the hat. They called out 5 other names, but none were present (must be present to win). Then one of the guys in my guild won the second invite. And another won the third invite. Karma was rewarding us for the long drive to Ohio - or maybe they just didn't shuffle up the names very well...
I'm going with the karma.
We weren't as lucky on invites 4 through 12, though.
We then took off and started the long drive back. I entered the beta code as soon as I got home and have resumed my usual ritual of spamming F5 on the beta center window. |
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Conjoined Fetus Hasselhoff
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Mon Jul 09, 2007 1:28 pm :: Hornblower
Posts: 11 • Guild: Anxiety • • Joined: 29 Jun 2007
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Nice post Silex, Gratz on the Beta Invites.
Ps, Did Anyone burn that BitZZ booth down?
Also what was she trying to sell? Ill make sure I dont buy it.
Gratz again. |
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Conjoined Fetus Hasselhoff
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Mon Jul 09, 2007 3:54 pm :: elden
Posts: 13 • • • Joined: 17 Mar 2006
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Cool. Grats on the invite. What kind of people didn't want to RvR though? I can't imagine that.
How was the RunePriest? I've been wanting more information on them. Did you get to play with the different types of runes and whatnot? |
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Firebreathing Hasselhoff
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Tue Jul 10, 2007 1:32 am :: Gerth
Posts: 117 • Guild: Anxiety • Class: Warrior-Priest • Joined: 02 Jul 2007
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| I like the quote on the Baltimore GamesDay, "If you don't like to RVR then don't get the game!" |
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Hasselhoff with laser eye beams
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Tue Jul 10, 2007 2:04 am :: silex
Posts: 873 • Guild: Pirate Ghost Cows • Class: Zealot • Joined: 17 Feb 2006
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| elden wrote: | Cool. Grats on the invite. What kind of people didn't want to RvR though? I can't imagine that.
How was the RunePriest? I've been wanting more information on them. Did you get to play with the different types of runes and whatnot? |
Think I only got the RunePriest to level 2, so didn't really get to see the full array of skills. I had one buff that I believe was a rune, but I couldn't figure out how to "break" it for the immediate effect... if there even was one for that rune. I was pretty amazed at how well they could nuke. It wasn't negligible damage at all. Same with the Zealot. They weren't as powerful as the Bright Wizard and Magus nukes, but they weren't too far off.
My brother played the Runepriest for a bit longer. He had a nice little strategy going where he would cast a HOT on himself, run into a group of 2 or 3 squigs, and then use an AE attack to kill them all off at once. He seemed to be rolling in the XP from that technique. |
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Last edited by silex on Tue Jul 10, 2007 2:06 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Hasselhoff with laser eye beams
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Tue Jul 10, 2007 2:05 am :: silex
Posts: 873 • Guild: Pirate Ghost Cows • Class: Zealot • Joined: 17 Feb 2006
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| Gerth wrote: | | I like the quote on the Baltimore GamesDay, "If you don't like to RVR then don't get the game!" |
Heh, no kidding. From someone else's writeup on WHA, it sounds like they finally got a scenario going shorly after I left. Booooo. |
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Hasselhoff with laser eye beams
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Thu Jul 19, 2007 9:24 am :: phantom
Posts: 586 • Guild: Dominion • Class: Marauder • Joined: 12 Jul 2007
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| Quote: | | Killing the low level mobs while solo gave about 50 XP. Killing the same mobs while grouped barely gave much less at all. I think we were earning 40 XP per kill still while grouped, but I'm not 100% positive on that. My memory is a bit fuzzy. Seems they really do want to promote grouping though. |
Just want to point out how great this is  I hope this is the case throughout the whole game to justify and promote grouping. Barely less exp while grouped (duoing) is excellent...speed should be able to make up for that small difference. I often duo alot when my wife and I are able to play together. |
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Hasselhoff with laser eye beams
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Thu Jul 19, 2007 11:52 am :: silex
Posts: 873 • Guild: Pirate Ghost Cows • Class: Zealot • Joined: 17 Feb 2006
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| phantom wrote: | | Quote: | | Killing the low level mobs while solo gave about 50 XP. Killing the same mobs while grouped barely gave much less at all. I think we were earning 40 XP per kill still while grouped, but I'm not 100% positive on that. My memory is a bit fuzzy. Seems they really do want to promote grouping though. |
Just want to point out how great this is I hope this is the case throughout the whole game to justify and promote grouping. Barely less exp while grouped (duoing) is excellent...speed should be able to make up for that small difference. I often duo alot when my wife and I are able to play together. |
Yea, that's a big plus for me too. I didn't do very good testing on that though... just something I kind of recalled after the fact. We'll have to test it out in Chicago  |
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Hasselhoff with laser eye beams
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Thu Jul 19, 2007 12:22 pm :: phantom
Posts: 586 • Guild: Dominion • Class: Marauder • Joined: 12 Jul 2007
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| You know I'm down for that haha. |
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