Right then here goes... Bearing in mind that I've notched up nearly 10 hours in this game now I think I can at least give my first impressions. Please bear in mind that this MAY include some very MINOR spoilers and also this may duplicate
some of what Tetsuo has already said but
to you...
I decided to play as a Dwarf, picking the class of Guardian, and my origins from the White Mountains. The origin is the beginnings of what looks to be a very fun part of the game: Titles. Titles are a way of showing other players your achievements, by appending to your name a particular title that you have earned. You always start with one title that you can use. In my case that was "of the White Mountains", basically meaning that what I see and what the other players see when I show this title is "Graelin of the White Mountains". Fun! Already, even though I am level 9, I have earned 3-4 more titles. The main way to do this is through the completion of Deeds. Deeds are a more general and global kind of quest, which you discover when you first complete an action that progresses that Deed towards completion. For instance, one that I got to start with was to complete quests within Ered Luin (my starting area) which when completed granted me the use of the title "Guardian of Ered Luin".
Quests really work how you would expect, you pick them up, you complete the quest and then you return to the quest-giver or the person specified. You can have a maximum of 40 quests in your log, not sure yet if this is a good thing or a bad thing... The other thing to note with quests is the WoW-like quest tracker, which shows much more detailed information on the quests you have in it. For example, for a quest that requires you to kill 2 particular types of a Lynx, when I have killed the required number of one type, that disappears from my quest tracker, only showing what I need to complete. Once they are all dead, it tells me who to go and talk to, not just that it is complete. The other thing to note is that the log is very descriptive, and once you have had the initial conversation with a quest-giver the quest then appears in your log in the past-tense, which I feel is a nice little touch.
The really good thing I like about the quests is the fact that the game-world seems to have a bit of common-sense. Remember in WoW all those times you spent needing 10 Bats Eyes, and you had to kill about 40 of them just to get 10? Well in my experience so far not only are all items for quests such as this 100% drop rate, they also drop from ANY mob of that type in ANY PART of the area. For instance, I got a quest that required me to collect 8 Cave Crawler meat. It suggested that I go to a place to the west of Thorin's Hall (the main starting city where I am atm) and I could find some there, but to get there I would have had to fight through a load of goblins and I couldn't be bothered. Now I knew there were some alot closer in the East and also much closer, so I tried my luck and hey presto! The lowest form of the cave crawler (Juvenile cave crawler I believe) not only dropped these items 100% of the time, but also not in the specified are either!!! Did you also hate how differently named mobs (like, for instance, "Young Panther, Panther, Panther Elder") did not seem to count as the same "type" of enemy even though it seemed that they should? Well no more!!! No matter what type of cave crawler I killed they all dropped Leg Meat. Which was what I wanted. And because all cave crawlers have legs. Doesn't that make sense???
Graphically I think the game achieves the LOTR look very well, so far I have seen very large dwarven fortesses built into mountians that are covered in snow, a massive river flowing from one end of Ered Luin to the other and into the main city in the area, snow, forests, and a number of different creatures. There is an "optimize graphics settings" button within the menu, I used it and most things are set to high (which is nice considering my system is getting old) but that is only the third of 5 possible settings (out of low, medium, high, very high and ultra high). During installation there is an option to install some very high-res textures, I put them on my system though I can't view them on my system. But on the preset settings the game runs fine and looks gorgeous. A little choppy in places, especially in my case when cinematics are playing, but other than that very good!!!
There are cinematics that not only present an intro but also detail parts of the storyline in-game as they happen, and they look pretty good although regarding the note below I cannot view them properly myself
(side note: I am, however, experiencing MAJOR difficulty viewing the cinematic scenes, however. They keep skipping like a bad CD )
Professions: These work in a very good way I think in this game. You have 10 professions and 7 vocations. The way crafting works is that you select a Vocation from the 7 available. This vocation then provides you with THREE of the 10 professions, which you can train up through the usual kind of gathering materials to build stuff then buying new recipes as your skill increases method.
Social: I have only just encountered the need to group up and do some quests as part of a Fellowship, (that's party to you WoW players) so I haven't actually experienced this aspect yet.
Abilities: Instead of telling you that your ability cannot be used because it is recharging, the game queues up abilities in a very intuitive way. It is a little difficult to explain how it works exactly but if you click a skill and it is recharging then it gets a yellow box round it and it will be used as soon as the timer runs out. If, however, before that skill is used you click on one that IS available that one gets wiped and the new one happens. It may seem a little strange at first but I'm used to it already and when you realise how it works you will find it (in my opinion) much better than WoW's system of "if it aint available, you can't use it".
Items: Well there are various different ranks of item, and each has their own merits... pretty much standard fare here, although you start with 5 bags that have 15 slots each and a Vault (bank) that has 30 slots. I'm not sure if that can be expanded but atm I haven't needed more than 2 of them.
Selling items is now much easier. You can now sell ANY items that are worth anything at ANY vendor, and repair at ANY vendor too... which is nice. With regards to selling there is a method in there of "locking" items so that they cannot be sold, so if you come across, for instance, a nice little gem while mining you can lock it and then simply press the "sell all" button. You can then sell ALL items that aren't locked with 1 button push (well 2 actually as u get a popup to make sure).
Getting new skills works by talking to a class trainer... You simply buy the new skill from them. From what I can gather, you get a new ability every even level and a new passive ability every odd level. which is nice
You also have "Traits" which are ways of customising your character further and from my experience so far are earned from the completion of deeds. You have to see a special trainer (A Bard) to actually equip and use these, and eventually you will have many more traits than you have slots for, hence the further customisation.
You have the usual array of character stats in-game, though mostly under different names to what you may be used to (HP = Morale, MP = Power).
When I started out as my little Dwarf, Graelin, you follow a series of quests right at the start called an "introduction" quest chain. Basically this is a major storyline chain which gave me the impression, once complete, that my actions had actually had an effect on the world as I saw it, by relocating a load of NPCs after completing it. You are warned before completing the final one (which was an instance, more on that in a sec) that you wil not be able to return to how it was and that any other quests you had at that time should be completed first.
So the final quest in that chain was an Instance, where I was running around in a mine after a Dwarf chasing another Dwarf, trying to stop him from performing a particular ceremony. I must say the game gave me the impression that It was rushed very well, which was good! Instances are once-only encounters, although you can re-visit them to aid Fellowship members when you need to, although the rewards will only be earned for copmleting it for the first time.
Although there is alot of group play available it seems to me that if I don't want to engage in the group play I do not have to, which, for me at least, is a good thing. I don't like having to rely on others to be there at a particular time, I prefer spur of the moment things.
Right then... that's ALOT of info there... And its only the tip of the iceberg. there is ALOT more to be discovered, especially for the RPers out there!!! (Like character Bios - you can create a family tree!!!)
My character: Graelin
Realm/Server: Evernight [EN]
Origin: White Mountains
Current level at time of posting: 9/50
Class: Guardian (the Tank class)
I have added the text colours just to make it a little easier on the eyes, as that is ALOT fo text (sorry).
Overall: At the moment, I can see myself playing this game for a LONG time. You may initially think that it is a WoW clone, but tbh, WoW set the standard so alot of the features that make WoW a great game are also present in this game, together with some fresh ideas that really make it different! I don't think that copying the mechanics of a great game so that your own game is also great is a bad thing, as long as you implement your own ideas on top. And that certainly seems to have happened in this case