My WoW experience

So, over the past week or so, I've been playing a WoW trial. It was interesting, and I might as well give my impressions here.

So, first off, the best mechanical aspect of the game, and the thing that I hope other programmers learn from the most, is the crafting/gathering system. I've seen other games with crafting systems, but few that actually remain useful throughout the game. Either you only get things that are useful until you find something better off an enemy (which doesn't take long), or you can't craft anything until you've got money to spend on expensive materials. On WoW, I took mining and blacksmithing, and if I had focused on it a bit more I could have made equipment on par with what I found from random monsters. However, I didn't because I couldn't get on the auction house on the trial, and there were things I needed for crafting that I couldn't get on my own, such as leather. Most of my gear on my paladin was stuff I'd found, but the stuff I could have made with the proper items would have probably been better. From what I can tell, the absolute best stuff is stuff you find at high levels, but it looked like there was pretty good shit to be made as well, taking a peek at the higher level items. The only other system I've played on that even came close was Lineage II's. That system failed in that it made entire classes who's primary feature was crafting, leaving them gimped in combat relative to other classes (and therefore a nightmare to level). Here, my crafting abilities complemented my combat abilities. Same with my mage's alchemy, but we'll get to that in a second.

The game is beautiful, there's no doubt about that. It was stylized too. There were a few things that bothered me (a few who played with me might recall me ranting about how a human male's forearms are as big/bigger than the rest of their arms, and holy shit at their hands!) but for the most part everything was just pretty. And on this old computer, that's pretty impressive. Still, I think Blizzard went a bit too far to show it off. Having to walk for twenty minutes to get to a quest destination does a lot to show off the scale of the game, but it also interrupts the gameplay, and that's no fun. I think that's something about Guild Wars I prefer; you can step out and usually start doing any quests you're given in a minute or less. Having to fly everywhere was majestic and all that, but it also took up time I'd have rather used killing bandits and such. That bothered me.

The most important thing, of course, was the combat. I went all out with the classes. My end total was five characters. Easiest was the hunter, but the most fun was the paladin. If I ever actually get the game, I'll probably make him my main character. With three different, "Oh, shit!" buttons to help survive as well as 60+ damage per strike (110+ on criticals) and decent armor, I rarely needed to spend time between battles healing up, and if I did, I had a spell for that.

The other one I played long enough to really make a judgement with was the mage. And goddamn, I hate playing the mage alone. He was hella fun in the instance, but when alone, it was basically kill one enemy, drink for about 20 seconds, kill another enemy, drink for about 20 seconds, attack another enemy and get killed by a stray critical. People keep telling me that this is because I specced fire, but when I look at the talents available for frost at that level... It just looks like I'd be doing less damage. There was nothing there that would have boosted my survivability that much. I understand that it's a class that doesn't really come around until level 40 (according to several other opinions) but that's just bad design. The classes should be viable throughout the game. Hell, my paladin was doing more damage than the mage, and he had better health and armor to boot! At that point, there are some serious problems that need to be addressed in the system. Maybe I was just doing it wrong, I dunno. Either way, didn't like leveling the mage.

I would like to play it. I don't think the game is anywhere near as good as the hype makes it out to be, but it was fun and I'd like to be able to play with friends. Unfortunately, I have no computer, so that's not likely to happen. Even if I get a computer, I noticed that I didn't get much done during that time. Fortunately, there wasn't much that NEEDED to be done this time, but if there were, it might have been bad. I dunno, and for now I'm not gonna think that hard on it--I need a computer first.