Givin Wetwillies wrote:
They did.
They now work for NCSoft fixing their fuckups.
What he said. Roper is still a god. Go look at everyone who had their hands in this dirty little pie. I have zero insider information here, other than someone who worked down the street from them and he and others at their gaming company were in rockstar awe of Roper. Which tells me jack and shit about where the clusterfuck was. I don't know whether it was lack of money, a too fast push onto the street, too many chiefs, a salvage project...what.
It has a lot of great elements to it that hint at 'might have beens'.
Here I'll write out a longer experience of my beta. So I get the invite, because I did not buy this game. I'm a game whore and I'll play it for free because I'm curious and because it will give me something to write about maybe.
I then proceed to download what might just be the largest beta files ever. I'm not sure if Vanguard had more files or not, but this was pretty fucking big. So then I log in. As the title leads one to guess, it takes place in London England. And no, that's not the Tardis on the character screen, one could only wish. (Though there's references in the very beginning to 'The Doctor'...it's not really 'The Doctor' just a subtle cocktease, sort of like finding out the hot chick is really a pre-op trannie).
I pick evoker because it's essentially a spell caster and leap right in. Literally. The tutorial is a pre-level which basically tells you how to use your shit, they're pretty stock, and this one does well. No complaints. Except...where the fuck am I, why is London completely destroyed, who the fuck are these religious whackos fighting...demons and zombies you say?
You're thrust into this interesting and dynamic world with absolutely no fucking information on it. And those that follow in speaking to you...tell you jack shit all. I am not a moron, and here's what I pieced together. This is either an alternate reality London, or London of the future. Apparently someone broke the fourth wall to hell, and now we have demons. And what battles demons is religion I guess because these fuckers call themselves by religious-y names. Except that you can play a summoner, who brings demons into this world under your control. You'd think that would get you tied to a stake and lit up like Lindsey Lohan at a bar...but no. It's okay that you summon demons because...well it is.
You met a rotten little kid who has you running quests who renames himself Wart after King Arthur. Yay. And an old man who doesn't tell you much but has shit for you to do too. You are rewarded with crappy armor and no real information. Yay. Then you do more shit to open a portal so you can advance to the next level of crappy sameness. Oh and you're in a tube station. How very British!
You can modify the crap out of your armor. Gem slotting? Ha! That shit is so 20th century. No you can actually pay money to upgrade your gear and get bonuses put on them. Then you can use materials and upgrade your gear as well. So once you find some nice gear with a really overpowered bonus...say close to 10% bonus to all pet damage (SO FUCKING OP) then you simply upgrade the shit out of it...and it remains better than legendary gear which drops. Unbalancing? Well...yes.
Grouping consists of avoiding like hell these random party portals that open where people attempt to shangi-hai you into their party. At least I think that's what it was.
Because you see, I could never get the chat function to work. Ever. Never. Hopefully it's working at launch. I didn't really regard this as too problematic though because looking around at the people playing and their chosen names...I didn't want to talk to them. I had enough battle.net to last a lifetime.
I tried out the classes as mentioned above. Not much to add. I was extremely disappointed at the demonic world sameness given that was kinda implied to be the fucking point of the game. I ended up ultimately at the end of a long quest chain being transported to some being's ...library and told cryptic shit about the plot which apparently involved 'wait and see'.
Oh, and when you didn't have quests with NPCs sometimes (if they ever talked to you at some time they would have this) they'd have " above them. Quote marks. You'd click on it and it would give you character information about them.
This was terrible because it basically told you everything about the character...all the flavor and details...that one NORMALLY WOULD PICK UP IN CONVERSATION. Do you really need to outright fucking tell me that the whackjob religious dude is a whackjob religious dude? Apparently so. Additionally the NPCs would overstate (and repeat) the obvious in horrible cliches.
Example: In the tutorial, you get a data thingy off this dying dude. And you take it to the scary religious/military dude. Then he explains to you that you have to find this 'Doctor'...and pretty much implies it's THE most important fucking thing. Ever.
And he's sending you...because...
well then he goes into this rambling, disjointed, horribly written monologue about how he's taking a chance on you rookie...and you better prove him right or it's his ass...but of course he believes in you or he wouldn't send you...but it's unfair he's sending you and he knows it...but life isn't fair and you need to pony up cowboy...
0_o
This would be amusing if it were intentional. If you got the feeling that this guy was simply a walking rambling movie quotes guy. Unfortunately he sounds like all the other quest NPCs so it's about as amusing as a mentally ill person peeing themselves as they bat away the invisible voices. Awkward and horrible.
This game sucked so much I didn't even want to play it for free. I thought, "I could be doing daily quests in World of Warcraft and making gold if I wanted to do something tedious".
So I logged out forever. The End.
I'll post some screenshots, they are pretty.