And, just as quickly, the stress test ends. I got up to level 11 with my little undead warrior, and though I checked frequently I never ran into Cadamis (Tage) or Kalisse (Prometheus). If you want my final appraisal of the game, here it is:
The game is not as big of a leap forward as I was expecting; it refines the classic elements of the MMORPG genre but doesn't really change any of them. We've already discussed this one.
The look, feel, and flavor of the game are incredible, especially if you, like me, really dig the Warcraft world to begin with. I didn't fully appreciate this until I accidentally stumbled onto an airship, just to see what it was, and found myself being carried away from the undead ruins of Lordaeron (which are strikingly dark and moody) to the funky desert empire of Durotar (which was bright, orky, and absolutely perfect). That a single game could not only contain two such disparate areas but pull them both off and meld them seamlessly together is very impressive. From that point on I virtually stopped "playing" and spent my time exploring through a variety of cool and different areas. I was duly impressed. (I explored so much, by the way, that I ended up trapped in a huge, flat section of the world that hadn't been built yet. It made me think of TRON for some reason. I took some pictures, I'll try to get them posted.)
The quest system, once you get past the boring crap ("Our lands have been plagued by wolves! Slay four Lesser Baby Wolves and bring me their paws!"), is very flavorful and really complements the visual look of the world. It's the first MMORPG I've played that really made me feel like there was a vast untold story behind almost every location and NPC. The structure of the quests is often very cool despite some seemingly silly premises--at one point I was asked to steal ten pumpkins from a human farm, made difficult by the fact that the humans were a lot tougher than I was and tended to group together. The only way to steal pumpkins was to skirt the edges of the farm and pick off the stragglers, and then charge in when it looked like the coast was clear and try to make it back out before another farmer wandered by. Like I said: it's a silly premise, but it was very exciting, very fun, and very different.
Combat is not nearly as entertaining as that of CoH, and I think I've thought it through enough to pin it down on two reasons: First, the combat in WoW is close but still not true real time--when you trigger a power you have to wait until it's your turn to hit again before it goes off. That's hardly debilitating, and it's still a great improvement over most MMOGs, but it irked me like a pesky mosquito. Second, the enemies in WoW mostly travel alone, whereas the enemies in CoH move (or loiter) in huge packs. Combat in WoW, at least at the low levels I experienced, is a series of many small skirmishes; combat in CoH, as early as level 2, is a collection of big battles involving long odds and swarms of people. Even though you probably end up killing the same amount of people, fighting them all at once makes you feel tougher, and makes each battle a bigger challenge.
Maybe the travel system in WoW wasn't fully implemented yet, but it didn't impress me. You get most of your experience from quests rather than from hunting, which is an awesome idea, but it means that I had to spend way more time running to and from the NPCs instead of exploring new locations and ruthlessly gutting whoever I found inside. On the plus side, the game gives you experience for each new area you find, so it encourages exploration and helped make the experience a lot more fun.
The PvP seemed more like what I wanted out of DAoC--a realm vs. realm system where the realms were closely connected, and where the battles actually took place in the same world as everything else (instead of in some nebulous "frontier" zone or battleground). I never participated, so who knows if it's balanced or even fun, but I like the idea behind it.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: any game that offers the undead as a playable race earns ridiculous amounts of points from me right out of the blocks. To my great delight I found that WoW not only has undead but did them right--they look, move, talk and live exactly as I would like them to. Kudos to Blizzard.
In conclusion: I liked the game a lot more than I initially expected to, mostly due to the great look and flavor. I look forward to more playtesting in (I hope) the next wave of closed betas, and the promised open beta.
