From what i know a lot of the people at Blue Hole are former NC employees that develped L3, wheter any sorce code was stolen or not i haven't been able to find any info on. Seems like it's nothing solid, just accusations.

Here's my question;

All the rumors regarding dumbing down the game for a US release, or "westernized" version, have they been seen?

My main interest was the idea that you had to actually aim, no projectiles were 'homing' projectiles. If you missed, you missed. Is this still the case, or have they made it so all you have to do is aim at the monster and you'll hit them regardless if they move?

Also, any idea if they changed the healer from ground based heals to direct-to-player skills? (That was also one)

I can tell you for sure later today after i've had first hadn experience but from what i've seen you have to aim, yes. If I were to hazard a guess I'd say the "westernization" is probably more about reducing grind and mucking up the story/quest content.

As far as I know no changes has been made regarding skills. I follow this game since its korean beta.

Classes like archer and sorcerer have some lock-on abilities, where you press the key, "paint" your targets ( a la afterburner) then press again to release. Those skills are fire-and-forget.
Damage and Healings spells are divided into direct "aimed", "painted" and "area". All ranged skills have a limited range of 18 meters, and that's almost half the usual mmo range.
To compensate casters' range, every melee I tried had some kind of short cooldown gap closer, and most ranged moves require you to stand still for a moment.
DPS i VERY bursty. You can literally kill a clothie in a combo with a high damage melee like berserker or slayer, if you can catch them.

That's interesting. So how about the overall fighting speed, is it clunky/slow to compensate for controller use?

I suppose i could capture some video from the beta and upload if you want?

It really depends on the class you choose.

For example the warrior ( dual wielding swords) has very fast attacks and combos. He actually runs faster than other classses too.
On the other side you have the berserker who uses very slow attacks with HUGE 2handed axes.

Regarding melee, you have classes that can block and other who can roll/evade. evading ones require more camera movements during fights, and that's where gamepads show their limits the most imo.

Keep in mind that my actual experience with the game is very limited.



Next beta I'll try casters mechanics more in depth.

EDIT: Do not expect Ninja Gaiden-like speed of combat. Overall, we are closer to something like Dark Soul.

Wee, can start the client now but the server isn't responding yet.

I'm so setting myself up for disappointment with this :P

Alright, i managed to get in and play for about 2 hours now so here are some quick impressions.

First off, for a MMO the graphics are really nice and it runs smootly as well. I suppose this really doesn't come as much of a shock though, it's always looked nice. I played as a Slayer, supposedly a agile melee class with big damage output. To me it was pretty slow though, you really had to think about each swing because you were locked down for so long every time you start a swing, i suppose the agillity thing is supposed to come from the dodge move. Doding works greath though. I used it frequently to jump over enemies, dodging their attacks, and hit them in the back. I imagine some of the other classes are a bit faster but even with this slow ass class i felt lke i was in controll all the time, and it flowed well. At the moment i can't really see the advantage of the Slayer class (all other classes seem beter to me right now), but maybe it get's better later on. I only ever got to Lv 6 so perhaps later skills are more useful.

I tried me some PvP as well. It was kinda meh. I just quared off against another Slayer type character and w just ran around in circles, waiting for the other guy to either attack or fuck up to get a reprisal. When i saw Angry Joe play as the class wih 2 swords against a lancer, he totally raped the lancer. I don't know, just seems like there might be a little gap between classes, especially in PvP :P

The interface is alright, not fantastic but easy enough to get around and it works. I had no problem moving around with WASD either, don't see why you need a extra peripheral or anything to do well in this game. KBM works fine. I kinda wish the minimap was a bit better though, so i could turn the big map off.

The one thing that kinda worries me though is that all the enemies have these HUGE tells before they attack. I mean, there is no way they are going to hit you unless you are completely braindead. This doesn't seem to change too much with level either, the strongest enemies i went up against still had these huge and obvious arm flailings before trying to get a hit in so i could at Lv6 easily beat enemies at level 11. I mean, it wasn't even challenging.

All in all i have to say i'm excited to play the full game, there seems to be potential here and the action gameplay for f**king once actually feels like an action game. Age of Conan can suck it.

I was in till now as well.

I kind of agree with everything you said. Anyway around lvl 20 and the amount of keybindings started to be a little too much to press while moving WASD.
Also I found pvp to be a total blast (I played slayer too)
I found later mobs to have less "declared" patterns of attack. Actually, when you leave the starting island (around lvl 10) things change quite a bit.


Only fear I have right now is that its korean roots will show in endgame. I already saw some enchanting guide, and we're almost at the same insane level of money/time sink of Aion/Lineage.


And yes, the action feeling is remarkably accomplished. At last.

Shit I need to get into the beta.

Record some vids!

Will grab some video either today or tomorrow then.

There's this option in preorder page where you pay sometning like 5€ and have access to all beta phases. When the game will launch you will be able to upgrade to retail.

A glorified payed demo maybe, but interesting.

Their next beta phase isn't until the 9th of this month correct? If so, I'll probably wait until then to see if I want to fork over the money for a beta... Just sounds so dirty to me.

The next beta phase is...today! 3PM CET.

I pre-ordered, for free, here: http://ww.webhallen.com Swedish store, unfortunately :P

I'll be on the new pvp server "west-something". Gonna try to lvl a priest, so If you need a heal /tell Nakano :)

Too bad there aren't more gamersyders in the beta, or we could have a little GSY group :)

Yes would be fun.

By the way, what does a PvP server mean? I know it's player vs player but how does it impact the game? Is it just the duels or what?

On PVP servers when you get to lvl 11 you can turn "outlaw". That means you can attack everyone and can be attacked by everyone. They are still judging if some kind of consequences should be added.
Other than that, only on PVP servers a guild can declare war to another, becaming able to attack everyopne from that guild.

I'm all for pvp ruleset because I hope it will bring back a bit of old ULTIMA times, but expect a lot of griefing.

In the US? I've scoured their forums and the only info I've come up with says its every other weekend.

No, you are right. It's open in europe this weekend, so i guess it's US next week? I wish they'd just keep the servers opened all the time, i don't see the point in farting around with this weekend bullcrap :P

Also i tried playing it with a controller yesterday. Not good, the game is barely playable without the keyboard and mouse. UI is barely useable, camera turn speed means you lose almost all advantage if you jump over a mob and pos button config :(

Damn, healing in this game is a nightmare.

Agreed playing with a gamepad is the best way in my opinion although somewhat convoluted when anything menu driven comes up.

Nostromo is not very good for sofa based gaming though.

Overall I found this beta to be lacking, I have higher hopes for GW2.

I found it almost unplayable with pad. But yeah, after spending a bunch of hours with teh beta the novelty kinda wore thin. I should have seen it coming, but the enemies only get harder with stats. Their tells are not less subtle or require better timing or anything, they just take more punishment and deal more damage so i found myself breezing through enemies over 10 levels higher than me. Took a while to beat them but only because of the abysmal damage i dealt. So i might actually cancel my preorder...gonna give it another go next weekend and see if i like it any better, since i didn't really explore much after leaving the beginner island.