Gaming Thread

[daft alchemist]

I'm only just starting to get into WoW pvp. Oh man, Arathi Basin is so much more fun than dumb Warsong Gulch ctf though. I love the whole capturing/holding points thing, especialy since it reminds me more of WC3 than, say, UT2k4.

Edit: Okay, that whole layering thing I had mentioned about the LotR MMO. I've just experienced it, and it works fine. It's more like Guild Wars than how it sounded originally. Literally. I did a little "mission" type of thing on my own, and the town I had started in (Archet) was burned and had rubble and refugees all over, very similar to pre and post-searing in GW. You even have the option to "leave now" or "leave later" and it has the whole "if you leave now, you can't come back" warning as well. So it works out perfect. I don't know if those sorts of missions can ever be multi-player in any way since I've only just been through one, but yeah. That's all I have to report.

Also, the magic is beautifully done in that there really is none. Seriously. My "lore-master" throws burning embers as a magic attack, and as far as her "summons" goes, it's just a pet raven that follows me around. Once I'm high enough level I'll be able to get a bear-lore skill that'll let me summon a pet bear too. Lore-masters can learn a healing-type skill that's called "leech usage" or something like that. Gross, especially since the icon is of a leech.

[Cobra5]

Cool enough sounding.

If the "layered worlds" works out like guild wars, like there's "nub land" and "post-apocalyptic trade-spam land" then that'd be cool. I thought they worked out great.

I just thought the idea of me walking with my buddy, who's done a few quests in the region but I haven't, and we come across this town and I see like this pleasant village and he sees smoldering ruins... Or, man, imagine standing in the town with all the mixed people... it would kinda break up the experience.

[Tassatul]

The striking difference between WoW and Guild Wars was the instancing. In warcraft, you could be wandering around and stumble upon a random person to help you and play together. In Guild Wars, you had to already have a pre-made group to go to an instance. I prefer the former, so I'd hope LoTR is not like GW.

[Cobra5]

No, I mean just the whole "layered world" things. With pre- and post-searing ascalon.

Of course, anything you have to pay a monthly fee for should never be instanced like guild wars.

Huxley is instanced, but its going to be an MMOFPS... so I guess its different. Man I hope that game turns out good.

[daft alchemist]

Oh man. Me in an instanced FPS. Some other player shows up in front of me. BLAM! "Damnit! What the hell?!" "Sorry. You startled me..."

[Cobra5]

Huh? I'm not following you...


Anyway, they are releasing only very little information about the game at this point, its still in development and the hype machine hasn't been started up. But apparently, there will be a central town for each of the factions. This is not instanced. There is instanced player housing, however, where you can keep extra equipment and decorate or something, and there has been talk of instanced guild halls, but that hasn't been confirmed. Within the city there is also an instanced pvp arena, from which your characters gain no experience, points, equipment, nothing. Its only for fun and challenges.

Then you can party up and move out to PvE instances, in which you do missions. They haven't released much information other then that in some instances, it may spawn a party of players from each faction and they can mess up eachother's objectives as they go. The enemy's are mutants, they are similar to zerg. You have to pay to go to instances, unless you buy a vehicle of your own.

And when you gain a few levels, you can go for harder instances, also, you can go to battlefields. These are going to be apparently the meat of the game. These are big objective-based maps built for around 250 players IIRC.

There are two kinds of experience points in the game, you earn one kind for PvE, and the other kind for participating in PvP battlefields. One kind of experience will unlock new things for your character (like double jump or the ability to pilot vehicles were examples), while the other will let you use higher level equipment (Grenade launchers-> rocket launchers, or jeeps -> tanks for example).

There are some gameplay trailers out. The gameplay looks somewhere between the tactical "Rainbow six" or "Counter strike" style and the arcade "Unreal Tournament" style, but there hasn't been enough to really tell yet. Its based on the Unreal III engine so I'm guessing they'll fall closer to that style. We'll have to wait and see and I think this is the most important part that will determine if the game fails or succeeds. If its arcade or tactical it has to really work to hold this game together.

It was also detailed how communication will work (Imagine VoIP or the chat box over a team with 100 people...). There will be platoon leaders, who can provide regeneration to people in their squad near them. People in a squad can only talk to eachother and their leader, and the leaders can all talk to eachother. I'm sure there's a global chat of sorts as well, so all the 9 year olds can spam curse words at eachother.

There are three classes, a fast heavy-armor type who uses short range guns like shotguns and grenade launchers, and middle-class that has mid-range guns and armor, and a light sniper class that will one way or another be able to turn invisible (If they can shoot while invisible they better have tracers. I freaking hate snipers enough as it is... )

It was also said in PvP battlefields you do respawn when you die with no penalties other then the spawn point may be a ways off from the actual action. You don't have to buy ammo and you spawn with full clips etc. I'm pretty sure also if your vehicle blows up, you don't actually permanently lose it (I hope that's the case, if this game works out well, I want to be a tankhead).

[Tassatul]

Damn. That does sound sweet. The only thing I worry about is the actual combat. Ever since CS, when I play other FPS's I feel let down because the targeting feels easier or less important. In CS, headshots are king, and the rest is filler, while other games just feel like "oh something moved over there, I'll spray in that general direction. *killing blow*"

[daft alchemist]

That's so weird, because when Will played CS for a while, he said he had to keep reminding himself to act like a n00b just to stay alive.

[Cobra5]

Haha, no. I was joking about. I was trying to play the game as if it was rainbow six, but I was going so slow and being so cautious I missed most of the fighting, and the enemies usually got behind me because they had gotten through the whole map already and went around. I had to unlearn everything I had learned in Rainbow Six, hence, "Play like a noob".

I wasn't saying CS takes less skill or anything. Certainly, aiming is less important when you can spray minigun bullets everywhere and the enemy has tons of health. I can appreciate both styles of FPS, they have their merits, but at heart I am a tactical guy (I grew up on Delta Force and Rainbow Six)

And tass, how you feel about it is exactly how I feel about it. It sounds damn sweet, but, it ALL depends on how combat turns out, you know? They had a live demo running at the last E3, but it was a while ago and an early alpha, and there wasn't much to it.

Oh one other thing. People on the PC version can play against people who have the XBox360 version of the game (The XBox 360 one isn't an actual MMO. Its multiplayer but its closer to Guild Wars). The Xbox360 players are allied with the mutants from the PvE sections, and there are certian battlefield where the PC players can play against the XBox 360 owners. But never on even terms, because of the differences in Controller/Mouse+Keyboard. The example they gave was that the PC players would have to storm a fort, held by XBox 360 players, who had many manable turrets to defend their fort.

[Cobra5]

And my last comment on the game, here's the gameplay trailers (the newer ones from November '06)

media.pc.ign.com/media/738/738456/vids_1.html

The game seems firmly within the fast-paced bounds of Unreal Tournament, but, people seem to go down with a good burst of rifle fire. Either way its no CS, but its really no UT either...

And I hope, really really hard, the jets don't run people over in the full game like that.

[zoner]

instancing is the best thing to happen for an online MMORPG to me. Noone getting all the experience from your kill because they swooped in and hit once and then an exchanging of "OMFf00kinG N00BLET BURN IN THE UNDERFOOKINWORLD"

[daft alchemist]

Kill-steals are the most obnoxious thing ever. Almost as annoying as ganking, but most certainly not more annoying. Which is another beauty of the LotR mmo. There's no ganking because you can only play as the free peoples of middle-earth. I like it best that way though.

I ran into Strider at the Prancing Pony today! I wasn't high enough level for his quest yet, but I got so excited that I took a screenshot. It seems like the story is going with the books so far. I mean, one of the first things you see as a hobbit character is a hobbit bounder (wandering guard type of thing) telling a Black Rider that there are no Baggins nearby, and that's something I can appreciate to the fullest. It's funny though because I'm reading FotR again, and I'm at the part in the book where the Hobbits are making their way towards Bree and all that, and all of the places that the book is mentioning at the moment are all the places my character is visiting at the moment.

[Cobra5]

Ok.

But how's the game?

[daft alchemist]

Considering I keep saying good stuff, I'd say it's good. There are some minor irritations, of course, but nothing serious. The biggest problem I seem to have is keeping my raven summoned. It gets stuck sometimes in weird places, like it's not allowed to follow me somewhere. And he'll dissapear and I'll have to re-summon him, which isn't a problem, but it'd just be nice if he would stick around always. I've achieved the title "Spider-Foe" from killing so many spiders. I also have the title "the Wary", which you get for reaching lvl 5 without dying in battle, but I stopped using it once I got Spider-Foe. Guild recruitment is the wierdest thing I've ever seen. See, not only do you advertise over the chat, but you also play an instrument to get attention and have an NPC holding a banner standing next to you called a "herald of war" or something. Very strange indeed.

[Cobra5]

I've always loved the idea of "titles". Back when Soul Saber was young, one of the little bits of of universe I never bothered bringing up (there was a lot of stupid little bits of information I just never bothered mentioning) was that people from the west had no last names, they just had titles. And they could have many titles, which would be given to them by other people, people that they knew. You weren't supposed to make your own, but some people would do that and then lie about it.

When they announced that for Guild Wars I was like "Copycats!" but actually I loved the idea and I was glad they did it Never played the expansions though, I lost interest in that game.