Official MMO News And Information Thread of Etoilet Jacking Off Over Shitty GW2

[MrAngryFace]

We've been beaten over the head with the formula for years, the genre needs a break

[ManaByte]

Yup. People need to stop trying to copy the WoW formula (waits for a GW2 viral post about how it's not doing that).

TOR is just Pre- Lich King WoW with a Star Wars coat of paint. Every boss fight in that game is boring. The GW2 videos are looking the same way. It's like the devs of both games played WoW through the first expansion and decided they've played enough to make the next big MMO while ignoring any changes WoW's done to boss and raid strategy in the last five years.

I can jump on Raid Finder and do a Dragon Soul raid each week and enjoy it because every boss fight is a lot more in-depth than "tank spanks here, healer strafes damage, dps don't stand in bad shit". Spine of Deathwing is probably one of my favorite boss fights in any MMO ever.

[etiolate]

What tank n spank in their dungeon videos are you talking about?

[Phoenix Dark]

If there's one thing WoW gets right nearly 100%, it's raid fights. I was very impressed with the early Cata fights, even if I didn't like the raids overall. Although, a lot of my complaints boil down to general tiredness with the raiding process (getting ready, waiting on people, wipes, respawn trash, etc).

Two things that really freshened up the process to me were hard modes in Ulduar and the dynamic raid quests from ICC. I'd love to see that type of stuff added into raiding, so it's more than just killing bosses. If you're just doing the same boss over and over each week, it's going to get boring even if the boss fight is entertaining.

(I haven't watched that vid yet, will watch tonight)

[etiolate]

Well I got tired of the same song n dance over and over in boss fights. Add that to all the pain-in-the-ass elements of constructing, preparing and running a raid, and I just lost interest in it. I never raided in Rift because I knew they were using the same model.

I kind of want something more like a Zelda boss where there's read and react moments. The open world bosses in GW2 feel more like that than the dungeon bosses. In the yogcast video, theres a few bosses. The first is a basic boss with adds, but like most of the rest of the dungeon it plays out like a magical gunfight. There's stuff going off everywhere and it's a lot of getting out of the way, helping people up and firing at the target. The second boss stands on un reachable pillar in the middle of the room and you have to use rocks to knock him off it. The third boss they never passed, but it was the "twins/lovers" sort of boss fight where you have to separate the two bosses or they get too powerful. The difficulty was the lack of tanking meant you couldn't just have a tank aggro each one and pull them apart.(Running in was practically suicide) They had to pick up rocks and throw them and use knockback skills. They never succeeded and Xephos sounded frustrated in some comments he posted afterwards. His knockback skill wasn't working on the bosses and I think that may have been a bug, as design wise and according to the devs with them, it was supposed to work with player skills.

[MrAngryFace]

Ulduar Hard Mode was the pinnacle of raiding

[MyNameIsMethodis]

that fight where you have to seperate into two groups in ulduar

[ManaByte]

Ulduar Hard Mode was the pinnacle of raiding

Almost did a Ulduar mount run tonight. But I wanted to do a barrel roll on the giant dragon instead.

[Phoenix Dark]

I'm gonna resub soon to try out DS. And I want to see if the new raid finder can get me into a Ulduar group quickly lol.

Sucks I never beat Yogg tho. Now if I beat him and my guild mates see the achievement notification they'll be like "LOL what a noob." Fuckers I spent hours in there owning hard modes, it's not my fault our guild leader rarely had us do Yogg

[ManaByte]

Raid Finder is only for two DS raids; Wyrmrest Temple and Fall of Deathwing.

[Phoenix Dark]

The first couple boss fights seemed spammy, and the lovers fight was just just ridiculous. I'm not sure about the lack of roles if every player is going to be getting destroyed with hits that take 50% of their health. I'm sure that fight will be balanced eventually but I'm still rather worried about everyone getting rocked during fights.

Obviously if you're taking damage from the various traps that's your fault. But that mechanics plus bosses with no aggro table and limited dmg mitigation seems like it could get ugly very fast.

[cool breeze]

this is looking pretty great

[ManaByte]

Come back to WoW and you get a free Level 80, free Cataclysm, and 7 days free (just need someone to give you a scroll of resurrection):

Once your friend accepts your scroll and pays for at least 30 days of game, you unlock your choice of the following rewards:
A Free Spectral Gryphon for an Alliance character
Or a Free Spectral Wind Rider for a Horde character

And, to enable you and your friend to play together in Cataclysm's newest content, any friend who accepts your Scroll will also receive the following epic benefits:
A single character immediately boosted all the way to level 80 -- DING!
A FREE upgrade to Cataclysm -- regardless of your friend's original box level
An optional FREE character move -- to your realm and faction so you can play together
7 FREE days of game time -- available immediately
A few other prerequisites apply -- such as a free upgrade to a Battle.net account for players who haven't played since 2009 or earlier -- so be sure to check out the FAQ below for full eligibility details.

[Phoenix Dark]

Ah so I wouldn't be eligible I guess. I'll resub soon

Interesting offer though. I wonder how the subscription numbers will look over the next few months

[ManaByte]

Why aren't you eligible?

[Phoenix Dark]

Oh I'm assuming I'm not, haven't been to the site. My account was active a couple months ago

[ManaByte]

Oh I'm assuming I'm not, haven't been to the site. My account was active a couple months ago

To be eligible to receive a Scroll of Resurrection, your friend must have previously subscribed to World of Warcraft for at least 30 days and their account must have become inactive on or before March 4th, 2012.

If you want a scroll I can send you one.

[ManaByte]

I can send I think 2 per day. Just need your character name and realm.

[ManaByte]

I can do it via email address too

[Phoenix Dark]

Can I get one next week perhaps? Got business this week/weekend

[Cerveza mas fina]

Once again we will have to wait for blizz an Titan to play something new it seems.

Unless SOE makes Everquest 3...

[ManaByte]

EQ3 is in development. Uses the PlanetSide 2 engine.

[etiolate]

Once again we will have to wait for blizz an Titan to play something new it seems.

Unless SOE makes Everquest 3...

You'll all be playing Guild Wars 2

[Cerveza mas fina]

Really? Cool.

In retrospect i think eq2 was pretty good, just got dwarfed by wow but it had a lot of nice stuff in it. this sll judging from the starting areas that i played when it came out.

[ManaByte]

Whoever wants a WoW scroll pm me your email. Seems to be issues with sending to a character name.

[etiolate]

This was too awesome not to post. TB does a look at underwater combat and areas in the beta. You see some cool underwater architecture early on, but at about 4:30 in he goes to a secret underwater castle area with traps and a boss. Apparently this environmental mini-dungeon was under a partial NDA, but he was allowed to show some of it. Inside the castle, there's an environmental weapon you can pick up. It's a sword with underwater skills, including summoning a shark. Yes, a shark. Plus piranhas.

[Phoenix Dark]

Hm, someone sent me a scroll that I don't recognize. gotta ask around on facebook, just in case this is spam

[ManaByte]

I sent you one.

[Phoenix Dark]

Ah ok, thanks man I appreciate it. Initially I was like fffffuuuuu

[Phoenix Dark]

Finally finished the new instances. The last one is pretty cool, although it's kind of long due to scripted events. I really like all the snow/ice themed instances and raids in the game, from Nexus to the ICC stuff

[Phoenix Dark]

If Mana is out I'll send you mine yo. I'm guessing all accounts have one or something?

[ManaByte]

Sent a scroll to Green Man.

[ManaByte]

PD needs to do some Dragon Soul raids. Spine of Deathwing is just so awesome. He doesn't DO A BARREL ROLL in Raid Finder though, so do some RF to build up your gear then do it for real and you'll be loving it.

[Phoenix Dark]

Just finished a DS raid. Couldn't get into my guild's run, so I found a nice group that was half pug and half of one of the better guilds on the server (Etiolet's old guild). We went 5/8 pretty fast, but folks had to leave after a few wipes on the battleship boss

It was pretty fun! Reminded me of Ulduar in terms of having a nice mixture of interesting boss fights in an epic environment. I tanked with no knowledge of any of the fights yet we cruised through The Siege of Wyrmrest Temple with just one wipe (after I fucked up on Warlord Zon'ozz).

Had an ugly wipe on Ultraxion due to me not understanding the fight, and not having my extra addon bar enabled. We beat him on the second try but I was still messing up; I'll have to look that fight up, whereas everything else was straight forward.

The battleship isn't quite the lootship from ICC lmao; it seems challenging enough. Our dps wasn't getting the dragons down in time, then folks bailed.

I definitely like this raid more than the other Cata raids, which were good but just felt a bit stale aesthetically. I'm kind of tired of dungeon settings, lava pits, etc. Wyrmrest was one of my fave areas of the Wrath expansion, I love snow zones...so yea, right up my alley.


edit: I also got to 372 gear rating pretty fast due to the new instances, plus valor points. Jeez, it's so easy to get valor. Remember when you'd only get them for doing the daily or special instance once a day? You can get them by doing each of the 3 DS instances, plus one random Cata dungeon lol.

[Phoenix Dark]

*sees thank you email from ArenaNet*
 
*opens to reveal it's just a thank you letter, with an exclusive video*
 :'( :'( :'( :'(

[etiolate]

luckily I knew what it was before seeing the email

some people were really pissed off by it

I tried some more F2Ps recently.

Brawl Busters - like a Powerstone Online. Had a fun few hours.
Realm of the Mad God - Uhh mindless shooting? I don't understand the cash shop. Everything is pretty basic. I don't feel much character progression. Self described as a bullet-hell shooter MMO. You just wander around shooting mobs. Has an instant grouping sort of effect that works pretty well. You find a mob of other players and then follow them around, lawnmowering through shit.
Pandora Saga: Weapons of Balance - Instanced grindy f2p total ass gameplay

[etiolate]

Lye said NCsoft hopes the free access to the beta weekends of Guild Wars 2, which is included as a pre-order bonus for the game, will help take advantage of Twitter, Facebook and other social media.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/johngaudiosi/2012/03/13/ncsoft-aims-to-break-the-static-online-game-mold-with-arenanets-guild-wars-2/

So beta access for pre-order confirmed. Also a picture of the collecters edition box and goodies at the Forbes article.

Oh, store website up.

https://buy.guildwars2.com/

April 10th to start pre-purchases. Three editions of the game.  First set of min system requirements released.

[Phoenix Dark]

First waves of beta keys go out at end of March apparently

[Dickie Dee]

So is this still the new hotness? Been loving what I've seen so far.

Also, can someone sort of explain the model. I (think) it's not a full fledged MMO world, yet it seems much more than just working the Diabo model about group dungeon crawling.

[pilonv1]

Free weekend for SWTOR already

[etiolate]

Do you mean the world setup?

It's a full fledged MMO world. You log in, you're in the world. There are portals and you can hop/travel by waypoints that you've found.



There's a zoomed out map of the world. In the bottom right corner, you'll see three squares that represent the three levels. It is assumed this stands for upper Tyria, middle Tyria (basic land areas) and lower Tyria which is the underwater and cave areas. Noone is sure what upper Tyria is.

The instancing exists only in your personal home/story area, in organized PVP and in dungeons. There are zones, but they are rather large in area. You travel through a gate between zones. The game is separated by servers called worlds and this is the basis for WvWvW. In PVE, you can hop between servers/worlds through an ingame menu. There is no fee to do this. You still have a home server/world which is the one on which you made your character.There are also overflow servers for playing in while waiting for a spot to open on your world. (In case of heavy traffic.) You retain all progress from the overflow server when hopping back into your world.

So you can just log in and go exploring. There will be hundreds or thousands of people going around the world.

[ManaByte]

Free weekend for SWTOR already

Subs are static. They announced 1.7 million in February and they didn't gain any in a month. People are going back to WoW already.

[Phoenix Dark]

Blizz's customer support is pretty awesome, they'll get your shit fixed soon

[etiolate]

Free weekend for SWTOR already

Subs are static. They announced 1.7 million in February and they didn't gain any in a month. People are going back to WoW already.

I know people have stopped playing, but I think TOR's base is made up of people who don't play WoW.

[Cerveza mas fina]

Oh my god diablo 3 is so good. The new changes have been AAA.

[ManaByte]

Sent a new scroll to Green Man.

[pilonv1]

Not only are they giving a free weekend, I got a 7 day pass to SWTOR in my email for being a "dedicated member".

Guessing they had a bunch of people who registered but never bought the game.

[etiolate]

How are they even doing the free weekend without a pre-load?

[Phoenix Dark]

Anyone running into old pals on WoW anymore? For the most part my friends list is completely gone; I see one or two people I know online. Every now and then I run across someone I've played with since vanilla/TBC and we talk, at which point they're like "well I played Rift, came back to WoW. Played Aion, came back. etc." Lots of Guild War 2 talk though

I'm sure folks will be back for Pandera though, the question is "for how long"

[etiolate]

Well last week, I checked some of my friends characters on the armory and it said no updates since like september or novermber at the latest. Of course, that could mean just no new achieves or gear, but I suspect a lot of them may be dormant.

[ManaByte]

Anyone running into old pals on WoW anymore? For the most part my friends list is completely gone; I see one or two people I know online. Every now and then I run across someone I've played with since vanilla/TBC and we talk, at which point they're like "well I played Rift, came back to WoW. Played Aion, came back. etc." Lots of Guild War 2 talk though

I'm sure folks will be back for Pandera though, the question is "for how long"

Funny enough a large number of people in my guild who bailed to TOR came back to WoW this week. It's been barren for a while but people are coming back. Most of them say the story in TOR was cool but the MMO under it wasn't.

[Phoenix Dark]

bunch of MoP videos
http://www.youtube.com/user/noobclubru

Also, heroic versions of SM and Scholo are gonna be in the game

[etiolate]

gw2 beta invites going out

nothing so far >|

Watched the MoP videos. Reminds me of Factions, but that makes sense. I think they did a good job with the flaura, but when there's no flaura you see the same ground textures from all over. The mountains are the same mountains from back in BC, too. I think the monkey mobs look good and the pandas animate well.

[Phoenix Dark]

nothing so far  :'(

Beautiful zones although obviously there are lots of recycled textures. It reminds me of Nagrand in many ways

I love the fact that flying is prohibited in the early zones until you reach the level limit. Cata felt surprisingly small and boring when you could just fly from quest to quest without appreciating the changes. I'm also looking forward to how instances are handled. Cata's early instances were quite strong, and challenging.

So yea, I hope we get a lot of content and some engaging raids.

[ManaByte]

So PD you going to resub?

[etiolate]

I think they should just remove flying from the Panda island. They should also add more mist to cover up those Nagrand mountains. It's a shame to make an intricate new area that will get looked over in a couple months. The areas look smaller and denser as well, so maybe it wouldn't be a problem to remove flying. Parts of Cata were pretty large and I wouldn't do them without flying.

[Phoenix Dark]

So PD you going to resub?

Yup I resubbed for a month. I definitely want to play around some more, get my alt to 85 finally, and continue DS which is fun.

edit: do you get any account perks due to me resubbing?

[ManaByte]

So PD you going to resub?

Yup I resubbed for a month. I definitely want to play around some more, get my alt to 85 finally, and continue DS which is fun.

edit: do you get any account perks due to me resubbing?

Yup! Got the spectral Griffon! Thanks dude!

[ManaByte]

[Phoenix Dark]

Oh sweet I saw a lot of those in SW, didn't know where people got them