|
Been playing 2 days now in OB.
Dabbled with a couple levels 1-4 with runepriest, warpriest, brightwiz, archmage. Being a healer or caster DPS is rough when your melee don't protect. I attribute this to being beta and a higher number of run around idiots.
Enjoying my lvl 8 ironbreaker the most. He really got interesting after lvl 5.
Interface:
Pretty standard, but like having all your favorite mods loaded.
Up to 4 rows of 12 hotkeys. You can load different sets of 4x tactics. Also a bar for up to 4 morales.
Mechanic:
Standard abilites working around the career/class mechanic. ie. IB accumulates grudge from being hit in increments of 5 up to 100. It slowly fades but not as quick as warrior rage in wow. Can use grudge to trigger some abilities or enhance others.
Other mechanic is oathing 1 group member who shares in your buffs and helps you accumulate grudge when they get hit. In my party of 6, I typically oath the healer or engineer.
IB dmg output is pretty good. I can kill an opponent 1v1, and can usually take down 1 guy with me if I'm getting a group beat down. It helps to have a healer, but most of the folks in OB are just healing themselves.
When I tried Runepriest I had no help and would get beat down as tanks ran around like idiots. The only help was from other healers who understood.
Quests
Very intuitive. They have the standard icons above their heads. Map is marked with red area detailing this quest here. There is also a quest in each "region" for the RvR which gives like 15k exp the 1st time
and 900 exp subsequent times.
RvR:
RvR starts with a gatehouse building with 3 flags. Just like WoW BG
as you hold ground near a flag it changes to your faction. First to 500 pts wins. Just like WoW BG it varies widely in how balanced it can be.
Usually one side crushes the other, haven't had any close matches.
You also accumulate decent exp for leveling in an RvR, along with realm points and faction to acquire gear.
Titles:
You constantly get achievement titles as you do things from killing X of Y, from quests, and anything you can think of. There is actually a title "Wasteful" from deleting crap out of your bag.
PQ: public quests
This is a really great feature. Basically as you progress across the zone map you cross area's or regions for PQ's. For example the first is an orc fort. They typically have 3 stages. The first stage is to kill X number of orc Y in like 10 min. After that stage 2 is to collect 10 barrels in 10 min. Then stage 3 spawns the boss with a few guards, killing him triggers the PQ reward. You get a loot sack which pops a screen of 10 items and you pick one. Top are typically gear upgrades, middle are tradeskill stuff, and last is always coin.
Anyone can participate in the PQ, you don't have to be grouped, but grouping allows buffing. At the end a random roller pops up and gives bonus roll points to higher contributors, but it is still
a random roll. It then ranks all the folks in the PQ who each loot the glowing chest. The rewards can be pretty good, and above drops in that area. If the timer runs out, the PQ resets to stage 1.
It's really cool to just wander into a region and join in. Grouped, or solo you can all do the requirements and get rewards. In the dwarven starting zone there are like 4 PQ's. Orc keep, orc hill, goblin mines, and engine 9. Keep in mind this is all from levels 1-8.
Gear:
Other than random drops, I couldn't buy my first gear upgrades until the warcamp on the other side of the starting zone after leaving the dwarven castle. Money wasn't an issue as selling junk got decent amounts of silver. The real gear upgrades come from RvR realm merchants who sell you gear based on RvR rank and class rank.
RvR points come very easily from doing the RvR instance. I think my IB is class level 8 and RvR rank 7. You can also die all your gear for a small fee. There are also the PQ rewards, and there are faction/rep rewards for each PQ region. As you kill you gain rep on the rep bar with 3 key pts. Each point as you pass it is a basic, better, best reward.
You only get to fill the bar once, so choose wisely. It basically amounts to getting 1 basic, 1 better, and 1 best item per PQ region. There is also the first flight master at the first warcap to other parts of the world. Most are locked, but I believe there was 1 area I could fly to.
Talents/RvR pts
You don't get access to talents until lvl 10, however it's worth explaining that while moving up one of the 3 talent scales to get new abilities, you also strengthen your core abilities. RvR points, I had like 6 pts
at RvR rank 7.
The first 20 pts are basic improve stats. I bought +3 str, +3 toughness, and +5% RvR exp. After 20 pts you go into the second section of RvR pts, and at 40 the third section. These help to specialize
your character.
The thing to remember is that you can start out in RvR, PQ's, literally at lvl 1. If your RvR instance has more higher level folks you will be artifically leveled up to match. However you will lack your higher level abilities
while they may have theirs. PQ's are damn fun, with folks in a region all working to get through the 3 stages.
I believe the class level cap is 40, but RvR rank goes all the way up to 80.
The vibe was kind of a like a WoW meets LOTR, but like a fully modified, and current version of the two. Chat is minimal as it starts off to the side, and I don't think most folks see it, or think to chat.
I did run across a few folks worth grouping with and they were mature.
Bugs:
I updated to the very latest nvidia driver 177.98 from http:www.laptopvideo2go.com and it fixed A LOT.
I no longer hang or have driver stop issues on screen changes. It runs quite well on my laptop.
I imagine really big RvR will be an issue, but the instance stuff with 2-3 groups is no problem. There are still some issues like mobs get stuck on evade due to positioning, PQ fail on stage III, Pathing resets, but nothing that stopped me from enjoying the game.
Definately worth checking out for at least levels 1-10, OB caps at 20.
Azzi
|
