Guild Wars 2 (Beta Impressions)

So I failed. My intention was to completely skip the Guild Wars 2 Beta even though I had already preordered the game. My original plan was to simply look at the character creation options available, but not play the game at all so it would be fresh and new when I started playing next month. Instead I ended up playing the game for about 6 hours, including the end-of-beta event. And as expected I very much liked what little I saw of the game.

During my time with the beta I created 6 different characters of various races and classes: a Human Elementalist, a Auran Thief, a Norn Engineer, a Sylvan Necromancer. and a Char Warrior. The highest level I got on any character was level 5. This was enough to see some of the basic mechanics of each class. It was enough to unlock several weapons, and to see the 'heart?' quests and dynamic quests in action.

I have to say that Guild Wars 2 could very easily be relabeled ADD Wars and with good reason. Maybe it's just the game front-loading the starter zone, but with the heart quests, dynamic quests, and world events going on it became very hard to stay focused on one task. Event were popping up left and right, making the world seem very active and packed with content. This was both good, and bad. Good in the sense that there was always something to do, and it was easy to just get caught up in it and lost in the world. But bad in the sense that it quickly became a bit overwhelming at times. And this was made worse considering the sheer numbers of people in the game doing the events, where there were often scores of people doing the same thing at the same time. Things often became confusing and hard to follow, and since the world doesn't wait around for you it can sometimes end up with you getting lost, or missing out on things because you couldn't keep up.

The chaotic nature of the game made my transition with the interface itself a bit problematic. My fingers are now used to Tera, which has an interface different than most MMOs. Guild Wars 2 has a slightly more traditional interface, but it was one I was having a hard time adjusting to. I don't think this will be a major problem for most people, but I did end up heavily modifying the default interface to get it to where I liked it. By the time I was done, and Hunger Royal started, the interface wasn't bothering me so much.

I never figured out how to gather (I guess you have to purchase items to enable this but I never got a chance to test it). I also didn't get to do any crafting at all, so I don't know how good or bad that system is or how good the gear is. I avoided doing story quests (except for the ones you have to do in the starter area). Instead I primary focused on heart quests and dynamic quests, and a bit of exploring. I did a couple of skill challenges, found several vistas (which are very Assassin's Creed-like). There will be a LOT of possible exploring in this game, which should really help with the longevity of the game.

Overall my first impressions with the game are is that it is very beautiful, very smooth, and it can clearly scale pretty well. Combat is very tight, and combines some of the best elements of WOW and Tera. It seems faster paced than either of those games, though, and the game does suffer from having so many effects on screen that it can be sometimes hard to stay up with the action. I'm also not quite convinced about the way skills are tied to weapons. From what I can tell it doesn't take very long to unlock things, so it's pretty obvious that you can unlock all of the abilities of your character very early on. Weapon swaps will certainly help, and I presume will be a cornerstone of the system when that ability unlocks.

I'm definitely excited to get a chance to play the game in late obvious. Perhaps more excited than I was before. In the meantime, I've still got Tera to play around with and that's what I'll be doing in the short term I think.

On another subject, I finally cancelled by subscription to Star Wars: The Old Republic. While it had it's problems and the game lost its luster long too soon I have to say that I really enjoyed the game and will remember it fondly. Too bad TOR's end game was so boring. I have about 20 days to log back in and do stuff before my last play period expires.

Tera Mystic (First Impressions)

After getting Priest to level 30 I've now manage to get a Mystic to level 25. This wasn't really my intent, but as my other friends have been playing now I decided to create another healer to run through Bastion of Lok, and leveling Mystic to 20 was pretty easy. While I'm no means a master of the class, I do have a few things to say about it at this point, though keep in mind my impressions are limited to the level 1-25 range.

And unfortunately my impressions of the class up to this point is that it is a poor man's priest, and no where near as interesting.

Offensively Mystic works very much like a Priest (except with fewer spells). Mystics have a standard ranged attack (just like Priest, and Sorcerer), a short ranged cone-based AOE (like Priest), and a short ranged high damage strike (just like Priest). This combination is very effective at low level, just like priest, and I have to admit I was MUCH faster soloing this time around. But this isn't because Mystic is faster or harder hitting (quite the opposite I think), it's because my soloing tactics have changed due to experience.

While I leveled this range as Priest I stayed at long range, plinking and jumping to stay at range. This is a mistake, in fact. At low levels (up to 25), it's much more effective to pull packs of mobs, stay at close range, and chain your AOEs at close range while circling your opponent to avoid most hits. While before I was taking on 1 mob at a time, I'm doing 4+ as a mystic. And with packs of small mobs I'm pulling 3-4 packs at a time, and AOEing them. Priest could do the same thing, but I just didn't even think about it at the time.

Mystics do get an effective lock-on poison effect that is very effective and has the advantage of being castable in motion. This is a cool spell, which can stack up to 3 times on a target, but is hampered by a 10 second duration, which means that you will be casting this a LOT. Too bad, because with this spell, and other DPS spells, the Mystic would be much more effective, but as it is it can actually be somewhat annoying to keep 100% of the time this up while healing.

As a healer Mystics just don't have the options that a Priest does. Mystics can drop healing orbs, which are very nice. And they have an effective lock-on heal. They also have a lock-on cleanse...and a very expensive healing fairy that stays up only for a few seconds. That's it. Priest definitely feels more versatile.

Of course Mystics DO get summons, but in practice I've not been enthused with them. Besides the tanking summon, most of the summons don't last very long (10-20 seconds), have a high MP cost, and aren't  that affective anyway. The tanking pet, for example, holds aggro 'ok', but on average is hitting for about 28 damage and gets knocked down a LOT. The Thrall of Vengeance, a ranged attacker, lasts for less than 20 seconds, and does just about 180 damage a hit (about the same as the primary nuke at this stage), and uses a lot of mana so you can't just leave it up even if you wanted to.

In fact even with using my main nuke, with the DPS pet, and the poison debuff at 3 stacks I feel like I'm doing...less damage than any other class than perhaps priest (at range anyway). And this is simply not sustainable for very long even under the best of circumstances.

And unlike Priests, Mystics seem to have a mana issue. While Priests can easily get mana back pretty easily Mystics only have Circle of Corruption at this level and this is a low damage AOE that's short range and returns a relatively small amount of damage (though on the plus side it provides mana to everyone in range). From experience the spell is not that useful solo, and is harder to use in a party where there is a lot of movement and AOE. That's not to say it's worthless, but the spell would be much better with a slightly larger radius, or a reduced channeling time.

As for evasion the Mystic class gets Teleport (just like the sorcerer), which is a pretty cool spell by itself. But priests get two evasion skills, one with a damage component, so even in that regard Priest seems more versatile. Fighting BAMs solo, I definitely preferred the two jumping skills that Priests get over Mystics single (if cooler) teleport.

At 25 I think I have enough information to say that while the class is not broken, it may not be the one for me. It's features mimic those of other classes too closely and it's distinctive abilities (such as its summons) are just not that cool. They need to last longer, and be more effective than they are right now (it would also be useful if you could heal them). Party Auras are much more useful (at this point I've only got the party speed buff), but burn mana which is already a scarce resource.

The two Bastion of Lok runs I did with the Mystic showed me that unlike Priest, who can still DPS in a fight, as a Mystic mana was too much of a precious resource to burn. Every time I tried to heal and DPS, I ended up having to stop for fear of running out of mana. And Circle of Corruption was completely worthless in a boss fight--it wasn't worth the risk of getting that close and staying in one place long enough for it to be effective. At least 50% of the time I tried, I'd get knocked down, and loose the channel anyway.

So at this point I'm not likely to take my Mystic much farther. I might do a few more BOL runs, or possibly SM?, but I'm much happier with Priest at this point and am looking forward with the rest of my group catching up to 30.

Tera Priest (Impressions)

I decided to try the Priest as my main in Tera. This is not my normal choice—as this blog suggests, I prefer mage/wizards (the Sorcerer seems to be the Tera equivalent for the play style). I chose priest mostly because as a Priest I’d have an easier time getting into instances and seeing other content, which is especially important if I’m doing this just by myself. And I’ve gotten used to healing from my time in The Old Republic, so why not give it a shot?

At first you don’t really get a good feeling for the mechanics at first. This is very true of most MMOs, but it is especially true of a game like Tera which relies on skill chaining ability sets to distinguish the classes from one another. I didn’t really start getting a ‘feel’ for the class until around level 16 or so, and I suspect that this is true for all classes in Tera (and why the prologue provided starts at 20).

As a solo class, Priest is slow and steady with no downtime but taking some time to kill stuff. They are adequate solo, and effective but I’m sure other classes are better (or at least faster).

(And you’ll have to forgive me in advance. This is an impression post, and I do not remember the names of the abilities I’m describing here).

Priests have two main ranged nukes—a low-damage bolt with no cool down; and a higher damage bolt that you can fire in groups of 3 before hitting short  cool down. Both of these bolts chain into other abilities. Some of these are auto created for you, while others you get to set up and customize. This is one of the reasons why Tera’s combat is so interesting, and figuring out how to do this takes some real time and experimentation. 

For example, my main low-damage nuke chains into a short range cone-based AOE (useful for close mobs), which in turns chains into a staff-strike which does considerable damage to any enemy directly in front. The triple-strike bolt also chains directly into staff strike, so if you time it right you can hit them with that, and then immediately fire off a hit with the staff for high damage. Priests also get a short range ball of lightning that does considerable damage—and chains directly into the staff strike. That last example is a particularly heavy hitting damage, even though it’s short range.

As for moving and positioning the Priest has two key abilities:  a jump back, and a jump back-with-fire which does the same thing, but also does a little damage to everything close by. But you often have to do a lot of running, and these abilities are more useful for getting out of the way instead of kiting. This may change at higher levels, but I doubt it. Priests, from what I’ve read, are one of the least mobile classes in the game.

Priests have two abilities that give them a considerable amount of sustainability. They have a short-cast self-heal that heals for a considerable amount of damage (about 25% of the character’s health at this level), and a channeled mana regen that can be used in combat, and while moving, which can restore up to 800 mana in one channel. Both of these abilities mean that Priests can heal themselves, and keep doing so for an effectively indefinite amount of time. If a priest or someone in the group falls, it is normally due to the priest either being out of position, or simply overwhelmed by the amount of damage being thrown around.

As for healing the experience is a bit different than in other MMOs. Since you don’t really target people, healing is most definitely NOT whack-a-mole. Instead Priests heal primarily through lock-on abilities (which have to be targeted), and AOE abilities which affect an area of the ground (and this changes based on the ability in question).

Lock on heals are interesting in that when you use them you target them. You hit the ability, then have to lock on to them by aiming at them, and then you trigger the ability again to cast it. Priests have a lock-on heal that affects 2 targets (and up to 3 with a glyph). It’s a cool mechanic, actually, and it’s affected by line-of-sight which is frustrating, but again speaks to the fact that positioning is critical.

AOE heals vary a bit more (and I’ve not seen all of them by any means). Priests get a potent HOT with a relatively short targeting circle; and a much smaller HOT with a much larger radius. They also have a cleansing AOE, which cleanses friendlies within the range of the circle. This creates a different healing play style, since healing involves using the right heals, and then targeting them in the right location. It’s even more important since some of these abilities have fixed ranges/areas, so targeting them involves moving into the right position to cast.  

Other heals show up later, including a group shield and various hot-like effects. But the basics seem very straight forward, and they do a good job of showing just how Tera plays different than most MMOs. And while the classes damage options are relatively limited, they are effective enough and the class doesn’t lag far behind when it comes to soloing performance—if it lags at all. At this point, I’m not sure that it does.

At this point I’ve only scratched the surface of the class, and of Tera itself. Priest is fun with a variety of options on how to play. Its only downside is its lack of options when it comes to DPS—the abilities it has are fine, it just doesn’t have a LOT of them (at least through level 20 or so). If anything, I’ve heard people say that leveling Priest is easy-mode, which may or may not be true.

Either way I’m going to stick with the class until at least 30 before moving on to try some other things for a bit. As I go I may continue to post my impressions of the whole thing and if I do I’ll continue to post them here.  I’m definitely wanting to spend more time with Sorcerer, and Lancer, both of them look like fun, useful classes that will be worth checking out.

True Blood (Season 5)

So, am I the only person out there that thinks that True Blood Season 5 is much improved over last year’s disappointing season? I remember liking a lot of the individual episodes in Season 4, but taken as a whole, the season was a major disappointment.

And on the surface, Season 5 seems to have some of the same problems.

• Too many characters I don’t care about.
• Too many plot lines to keep track of taking up air time.
• Too many characters doing stupid things in service to the plot.
• Sookie
• Tara 

Yet, none of these things have bothered me so much this year. Even though so far Season 5 has spent way too much of its time with THE AUTHORITY, and vampire politics that have always bogged the show down. I’m not sure why this is, honestly…has my tolerance for the show simply gone up since last summer? Or is it that I find the character interactions much more interesting this year.

Whatever the reason, I’m finding that I’m much more interested in what’s happening on screen this year. I like the interactions between the characters more even if the plot is moving at a pretty glacial pace and Russell (presumably the main villain of the season) hasn’t even been fully seen yet.  I just have the vague impression that the whole thing is leading to some form of Vampire/Faery showdown, though at this point the season could veer off in virtually any direction at this point.

I just hope that the show does a better job including all of the main characters in the story as a whole, like it did in Season 1 and Season 2.  

Tera First Impressions

So I’m pretty much done with Star Wars: The Old Republic. And I’m pretty much committed to playing Guild Wars 2 in September. And while I’ll still be playing TOR for another month or so, mostly doing 4-mans with friends once a week, I really have no interest in trying to level another character to 50, or even doing more on the Imperial side. To make things worse, I don’t really have any new single-player games to play right now. So, I went ahead and downloaded the Tera trial and installed it.

Tera is a fairly straight forward fantasy-based MMO. I’m told it is a Korean MMO, though I haven’t done ANY research on the game. It came out earlier this year (May, I believe), and what little I know about it has been its combat system which has been mostly praised from everything I’ve read. The game definitely has a distinctive Asian theme to it, that’s both pretty and colorful, and the game itself is gorgeous.

The reviews I read indicated two things: first, the game’s combat system is very good. And second, the game’s leveling system is about as generic as you can get. And now that I’ve spent some time in the game (I have a Priest at level 26) I can say both of those statements are very accurate.

As First Impressions go, Tera is a little bit of a mixed bag. Like every MMO I’ve ever played, you pick a server, and create a character. You have a good variety of characters you can make, and you can customize the characters more than most MMO’s I’ve played. And you can make some very cool looking characters in the system—it’s better than SWTORS by far, while offering considerable flexibility. And it gives you a chance during creation to view the character under multiple different types of gear which in itself is useful to people who care a lot about the look of their characters.

Character classes seem fairly varied. You have tanks (Lancer, Warrior…though apparently there is some debate about the effectiveness of Warrior tanks); Slayer and Beserker for melee DD, Sorcerer and Archer for Ranged DD, and Priest and Mystic for Healing. This is actually one of the areas where the game really shines: because of the way in which the combat system works, there are a lot of new ways that a class can distinguish itself compared to a lot of other MMOs.

The game starts with some ‘epic’ cut scenes, and a rather bewildering ‘Prologue’ which also serves as a form of tutorial. I’m not sure if this was just for the 7 day free-trial, but the Prologue makes your character level 20, with a full set of abilities, and then shows you some of the basic mechanics. I did this as a priest, and I was a bit frustrated by it mostly because in the end you fight a boss as a healer, but actual healing didn’t seem to work. In hindsight, I think I understand why…you can’t heal NPCs not in your party…but it never TELLS you that.

The story itself is rather bland and doesn’t really explain things very well. Basically there are two sleeping titans, who formed the continents (or, I think ARE the continents), and now some new island has formed. And the combined nations see this as a threat of some form, though I have no idea why. An expedition was sent, yet everyone died. So, now you are part of a second expedition of level 1 characters who will have to succeed where all of the established veterans failed. And while you are there you are to find out what happened to the leader of the first expedition that was with you in the prologue.

This is where Tera certainly missteps. The graphics are pretty, and the art style is great. Yet the story and presentation is lacking in every way. Most of the quests in the prologue involve you being sent from person to person to person, not really doing anything but running back and forth and reading quest text. And this definitely follows with the ‘and the questing is as generic as it gets’ point above.

Tera is a quest-based leveling game that is definitely very WOW like in regards to leveling and execution. You go to an area. You receive a group of quests to kill/collect something with genetic quest text that you can fully ignore, and then you run in a circuit doing everything the quests ask you to do. Then you turn everything in and move on to the next area. There is actually LESS variation from what I’ve seen than WOW…WOW had the benefit with Cataclysm of revamping the questing system and using new scripting tech to increase the types of quests they could present. Tera shows little of that. It’s ‘kill 10 things, or ‘collect 5 things’, or ‘kill things till you get ‘x’ drops’.  It’s simple, and mindless, and deliberately designed to flow easily. But even at its best it’s as generic as it gets.

On the plus side questing help is very useful and things are easy to track. Hyperlinks in quest descriptions allow you to identify objectives, and follow things; and you can easily arrange the orders of quest in your screen however you want. And the quests are definitely designed to flow together—though they are generic and boring, they are designed to be inoffensive as possible. So when combined with the combat system the game actually flows pretty well.

And speaking of the combat system, Tera’s is good. I’ve seen several classes now and the game rewards being actively engaged with one’s target and situation far more than most MMOs. And skill very much reflects on how well you do rather than gear and mindless stats. Gear lets you do things faster, but not necessarily ‘better’. This is because positioning, avoidance, and maneuvering is more important in the game—you avoid damage by NOT BEING HIT. And a lot of the game’s mechanics involve maneuvering into positions to attack (say from a flanking position or from behind), all while avoiding being hit yourself. Combat therefore takes a bit more time in Tera, but it’s more engaging and more fun, and feels much more mindless.

Then there are the BAMS, or ‘Big Assed Monsters’—their name not mine. These are larger mobs designed to be taken by a party. They are basically like mini-bosses (though some of the lower level BAMS I’ve encountered actually have more mechanics that saw an old Molten Core boss in WOW. I’ve killed some of these solo—but this can take 10 to 15 minutes to kill and I’m not sure that the rewards are worth it. The risk involved is relatively high, but it’s also good practice and I suspect this is fairly indicative of the game as a whole.

At this point I’ve gotten at least one class to Level 26 (Priest) and I’ve played several other classes past the starter area (Lancer, and Sorcerer). Each of these classes plays different from the other, and in ways that I like. The start zone itself doesn’t change though. And I suspect that the level grind pretty much has the same problem SW:TOR had—it seems very likely that you will have to follow the same level path through the game, with only a little variation to keep things moving.

Despite these minor problems and nick picks the game has proven to be very fun and I’ve had a blast playing it. It may be generic question, but the combat and new scenery makes the experience as a whole anything but boring. And now seems to be a good time to be playing it. The server I’m on seems active and lively, and there is plenty of content to see that is new. I’m looking forward to checking out some instances as a healer (healing in this game as a Priest is definitely more involved), and I’m interested in seeing if some of the higher level content shakes things up a bit.

I don’t know how long I’ll be playing this. Certainly up to the time of Guild Wars 2. But, who knows, I may end up keeping up with the game past GW2 if the end game is interesting and accessible enough. It certainly seems like the game will keep my attention at least to the level cap at 60.