The talk of no end game content is discouraging. I think I'll probably go back to playing M.Europa until GL update with more content.
Out of this MMO, no. Every other MMO I played though, there was tons to do at level cap. I'm playing less and less each day. Can't receive a single email response to any of my questions.
Hey, why not make a new character? Usually it's a different experience through another character. Plus I think there's different quests if you change your faction?
Well yeah, and most MMO's have been around long enough to make end game the REAL game (read: WoW, FFXI, Aion, etc). I really do hope that Gameloft doesn't royally screw this one up - SOOO much potential here.
An Administrator on the official gameloft forums have said this, however no 'official announcements were made'
It does get a bit boring. I have not bought anything on the auction house for my lvl 31 frost mage because nothing is really worth buying -- quest items are generally better than green drops, blue drops are better for a couple of levels, nothing exciting. People that craft have yet to report anything worth crafting. There is never a need to take more than 1 helper on any quest, and any class will do. There is 0 need for a true tank or true healer. Someone claimed that they saw a purple item on the auction house, but I have never seen one listed. The lack of a summoning skill makes assembling a group of guildies a hassle, and your most likely just going to grab whoever is around. Groups generally dont even talk to each other, just do the quest and disband. The lack of difficult quests and instances means there just isnt much reason to talk. Respecs cost 10 gold, which you wont earn till around level 18-20. At 31, I have 30 gold, and thats with using all the tricks and the AH. So respecs are prohibitively expensive at low levels. Right now, 5-10% of quests are essentially bugged because of the absurdly slow respawn rate. In the level 20-30 zone, I was forced to abandon three quests. Go to house, wait outside, join group so that when he comes out you have a chance to grab him, jump up and down for 5 minutes, notice there are 10 people waiting and only 4 in your group so you have a 40% chance of getting him . . . and give up. Then there are the annoying pure gold sinks. and the necessary work-arounds. Death costs an increasing amount of gold with every death, and there is no bank, so if you want to accumulate gold your forced to mail it to an alt so it doesnt get taken by the death penalty. There are only two cities with trainers, both in the very first zone, designed to force you to pay the teleporting fees, work around being mailing the skill books from your alt. To state the obvious, useful stuff you buy should be more expensive, and these gold sinks eliminated, so it feels like you are actually getting something for your money, which it doesnt feel like right now. Skill books are a fairly trivial cost, food is a fairly trivial cost, and buying potions is optional. Notwithstanding all of the above, its amazing how well the world works and looks, and the diversity of scenery and enemies. It really does feel like a true MMO, at least for a while. In looks and basic mechanic, you could just as easily be playing WOW.
Nice writeup ArtNJ. As a longtime WoW player (5 years) and currently playing Rift, this was exactly what I wanted to hear. So the potential is there. But they gotta iron out the kinks. The biggest glaring issue right now is a game setup with the holy trinity (DPS/Tank/Healer) with no real way to use them. At least not in the way they are supposed to be used. They gotta crank up the difficulty level somehow. Taking one team-mate with you to steamroll every quest is a snorefest. They need instanced dungeons badly. With desired gear drops to go after. I'm a little shocked that there's no real endgame on launch. And "throwing an instance together" isn't going to be an small undertaking.
@ArtNJ Many of your criticisms are spot on, but you say there's no need for teaming or healers and you also complain about the death penalty. I am a healer and I've never felt the need to unload my gold to an alt. Maybe if you played with a healer you wouldn't either Well if you can't tell us where your information comes from, how should anyone believe that? I mean this isn't watergate/deeepthroat here. Just tell us how you know that.
..? He mentioned updates and new quests coming soon That post says nothing of this sort. There's already someone on the Gameloft official forums posing as a GL employee spreading misinformation and being called out on it. Doesn't need to spread to here as well. Unless GL themselves announce these things, then they're just rumors and get people's hopes up. Nothing but propaganda so far until announcements are made.
To be honest, that's not really a substantial criticism. If you could design an RPG where you just needed a social group to complete more difficult tasks but didn't need tank/AOE/healer, you might not win over the hardcore WoW crowd, but you'd still be light years ahead of WoW in social design for the rest of humanity. It's great that there are people who enjoy healing, but cleric was the bitch job nobody wanted when I was in junior high and playing PnP D&D, and I haven't seen any evidence that it's still not the case nearly 30 years later. The you *need* a healer, you *need* a tank is a weakness of the game design unless you're going to do something like GW did and introduce the notion of competent, configurable AI teammates. Then 3 or 4 human friends can form a group playing what they enjoy and then fill in tactical spaces with AI heroes that are never going to complain about their role - win win for everyone. Forcing human players into adopting specific roles appeals to certain niche of your player base, but is a big turn off to a lot of players. It's why I quit WoW - hit a wall where you had to have structured groups to get by and I frankly didn't have the patience to do it once I had kids, sure not going to start up doing that again.
It does mention UPDATES though, and I assumed the Administrators on the Order and Chaos forum would be gameloft employees, and if I am mistaken on that I apologise. No need to get Butthurt.
The forum's features are all mostly taken from wow. I'm not sure if EVERY class should have a pet though? And if we just put it on the archer than that might end up op. If I'm not mistaken the archer (or hunter) is balanced with the other classes already. I wouldn't mind if they nerfed the archer SLIGHTLY. We're not talking useless, but so that the pet isn't making it op. And I would actually put a pet in the archer talent tree so only they can obtain it and not a rogue/pet combo.
