It's been a really quiet launch too, I almost forgot about this title.

I checked out their latest trailer to make sure the game was out.  Wow did that rub me the wrong way.  Some generic rock song to fit the mood of the Wizardry theme?  Hmm I guess I'm not the target audience or what.

Wizardry Online - Launch Trailer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kyixwzFfcM

If anyone is playing this, how did the launch go, and with all the fixes / modifications, is it worth downloading?  Is it still P2W?

Currently, I don't think anybody can actually log into the game. 

At least I've tried a dozen times since yesterday.

It seems for all it's promised difficulty, nobody can get past the "Connect Boss"

Servers are overloaded and they are in maintenance right now.

At least they are trying to fix it.

Given that the development team is in japan and there is no NA dev team only a localization and marketing arm, give the people some time to fix this shit.

From the beta I played:

Its a strong game if you can look past the aesthetic and presentation (if animu is not your cup of tea), a truly unique title with severe presentation problems (outdated graphics/controls).

It is very hardcore, its also very deep mechanically as well as gameplay and systems-wise.

Mechanically its essentially exactly like the old Wizardry games with the same systems in place, lots of really cool oldschool things in it.

Best FFA Full Loot PVP immentation I've seen in an MMO. Yes, far better than EVE.

On character creation you get a roll of a number which indicates how many points you will have available to icnrease your stats further.

The number can be between 1 and 70 (With 70 you can increase every stat by 10 which is the maximum amount you can increase per stat in the character creation) but it's hard to get it higher than 12 been trying for hours before server went down for maintenance and highest was 14.

You can redo it as much as you want and I'll try to get it over 20 before starting or give up and go with something more within my luck.

Originally posted by Ezhae
Interesting concept and hardcore mechanics. Terrible controls and not exactly the most responsive combat I've seen. I wanted to give the game ago but fighting camera angles and clunky controls is not really the kind of challenge I'm enjoying. 

This game is very bland.  Everything is shades of green and brown.  The video that promotes the game -- that is the entire color palette of the game.  The dungeons?  Yup, that's about all there is -- some dull brown corridors with boring mobs.

It's not just the color scheme.  The game feels very outdated in its mechanics.  It's like a clunkier, slower, and less intuitive combat engine than Demon Souls.  You might say, "Hey I really dug Demon Souls!"  OK it was kinda cool, but take away the cool atmosphere, decent graphics and story, and make the combat even more clunky and boring, and it will be more like Wizardry Online.  The mobs respawn at a ridiculous rate so you basically finish a battle and -poof- immediately another mob spawns next to you, forcing you to fight again.  You die more often from the fast respawns than anything else.  This can be alleviated a bit by teaming up with people, but you tend to lose your groupmates in the same-looking corridors that are repeated throughout dungeons.

The whole perma-death thing, you'd think it would add some intensity, but it's not true perma-death, since you can basically pay to ensure a 100% chance of recovery.  This killed the main draw of the game for me.

Having said that, I'm glad I tried it for myself, so if you've got the bandwidth to spare, I suppose you could argue it's worthwhile to know for yourself.  Knowing what I know now, however, I wouldn't bother downloading it.

I was somewhat enthralled with the open beta, but after the delay and launch troubles, I find myself largely disinterested now that I am able to log in again.  Main detractor for me is the cash shop items were available for purchase during beta using gold earned by playing the game, and now they are only available using station cash.

Significant advantages are gained by using those items, as well as paying for monthly subscription (basically P2W).  The PvP is griefers wet dream, high level criminals raping the noob dungeons and fleeing to safety of slums whenever they are threatened.

If you missed the beta and are currently bored, I would recommend you check the game out.  Give it a real try though, don't quit after 30 minutes.  Some of the systems are quite complex and take time to appreciate (skill inheritance/class change etc.).  The first dungeon I truly enjoyed was Chikor Castle (lvl 12ish) followed by Aria Resivoir, Temple of Oblivion, and Old Sewers.  Basically the dungeons get more difficult, dangerous, involved, and rewarding the further you progress.  

For me, I'm having trouble getting back into Wizardry as I'm not keen on supporting their f2p system.

Originally posted by Zooce

 Main detractor for me is the cash shop items were available for purchase during beta using gold earned by playing the game, and now they are only available using station cash.

But that was explained on the forums, webcast and fansites even before they put the royal store items into beta. They said it was gold for beta only to test certain things about the royal store.

Significant advantages are gained by using those items, as well as paying for monthly subscription (basically P2W).  The PvP is griefers wet dream, high level criminals raping the noob dungeons and fleeing to safety of slums whenever they are threatened.

I'm not sure that scenario played out in beta and we haven't seen it happen in release. Let's hope for the best.

Originally posted by Zooce

Significant advantages are gained by using those items, as well as paying for monthly subscription (basically P2W).  The PvP is griefers wet dream, high level criminals raping the noob dungeons and fleeing to safety of slums whenever they are threatened.

My experience as a criminal in beta:

Originally posted by AdamTM

Originally posted by Zooce

Significant advantages are gained by using those items, as well as paying for monthly subscription (basically P2W).  The PvP is griefers wet dream, high level criminals raping the noob dungeons and fleeing to safety of slums whenever they are threatened.

My experience as a criminal in beta:

I think the people that feel red have it easy and can 'escape' to the slum haven't tried being red yet.

Originally posted by Loktofeit

Originally posted by Zooce

 Main detractor for me is the cash shop items were available for purchase during beta using gold earned by playing the game, and now they are only available using station cash.

But that was explained on the forums, webcast and fansites even before they put the royal store items into beta. They said it was gold for beta only to test certain things about the royal store.

Significant advantages are gained by using those items, as well as paying for monthly subscription (basically P2W).  The PvP is griefers wet dream, high level criminals raping the noob dungeons and fleeing to safety of slums whenever they are threatened.

I'm not sure that scenario played out in beta and we haven't seen it happen in release. Let's hope for the best.

I was well aware of the items being sold as gold for testing only.  My comments were based on first playing without usage of the royal store, then taking advantage of it and noticing the huge difference in effectiveness of my characters.

Items I became accustomed to:

Healing Incense (+20 condition huge stat bonus above 180)

Security Token (7-day item theft protection)

High Camp (basically full hp/mp during boss fights for group)

Forge Guard (item doesn't break while enchanting)

Extra stash tabs (+50 shared storage)

The thought of playing release in a gimped state due to lacking the above items is just unappealing.  The gold prices in beta were cheap, but I think they are making a mistake not following the GW2 cash shop for instance, in allowing in-game currency to translate into cash shop purchases.

As to high lvl PK's running through terrorizing the lower dungeons- it happened in open beta.  Seemed easily avoidable if one stays out of ch1 for the most part. One day I was running Temple of Oblivion in a full group +1 (5 of us total) trying to get them caught up to the final encounter and we got jumped by a lone fighter PK about halfway through the dungeon (near the guardian statue after lantern NPC).  We were able to trap him against a corner in one of those narrow halls and with three of us wailing on him nonstop for a good minute he died.  We felt great until 10 minutes later he came back with his high level mage buddy and they were able to shut down our progress for the next 2 hours.  It's pretty easy to see which channel a group of 5 moves into when there are 30 empty ch and one with a larger population bar than the others.  The union leader lost his belt to the mage, but I looted it back (and turned yellow for a good while) so I felt good about that.  I know he and his wife were a little discouraged at having our group fall apart, but what do you expect when high level pk's are allowed to run free through the lower dungeons.  Hopefully the case is different with the seemingly massive population increase the game has recieved, paired with no more character wipes (so players more likely not to experiment with crime).

ps. I like the features on your site, especially the 'encounters'.

I dunno why everybody hates on the graphics, i thought they were beautiful for an F2P game.

You shouldnt be comparing it to games like DCUO, LOTRO, or Tera because these all started as subscription based games. 

Originally posted by Iceman8235
This game has absolutely nothing to offer that you can't find a better version of elsewhere.

I'm intrigued.

Please name the MMO that has FFA Full Loot PVP, perma death and non tab-target action combat, I'd like to play it.

Originally posted by Zooce

Originally posted by Loktofeit

Originally posted by Zooce

 Main detractor for me is the cash shop items were available for purchase during beta using gold earned by playing the game, and now they are only available using station cash.

But that was explained on the forums, webcast and fansites even before they put the royal store items into beta. They said it was gold for beta only to test certain things about the royal store.

Significant advantages are gained by using those items, as well as paying for monthly subscription (basically P2W).  The PvP is griefers wet dream, high level criminals raping the noob dungeons and fleeing to safety of slums whenever they are threatened.

I'm not sure that scenario played out in beta and we haven't seen it happen in release. Let's hope for the best.

I was well aware of the items being sold as gold for testing only.  My comments were based on first playing without usage of the royal store, then taking advantage of it and noticing the huge difference in effectiveness of my characters.

Items I became accustomed to:

Healing Incense (+20 condition huge stat bonus above 180)

Security Token (7-day item theft protection)

High Camp (basically full hp/mp during boss fights for group)

Forge Guard (item doesn't break while enchanting)

Extra stash tabs (+50 shared storage)

The thought of playing release in a gimped state due to lacking the above items is just unappealing.  The gold prices in beta were cheap, but I think they are making a mistake not following the GW2 cash shop for instance, in allowing in-game currency to translate into cash shop purchases.

As to high lvl PK's running through terrorizing the lower dungeons- it happened in open beta.  Seemed easily avoidable if one stays out of ch1 for the most part. One day I was running Temple of Oblivion in a full group +1 (5 of us total) trying to get them caught up to the final encounter and we got jumped by a lone fighter PK about halfway through the dungeon (near the guardian statue after lantern NPC).  We were able to trap him against a corner in one of those narrow halls and with three of us wailing on him nonstop for a good minute he died.  We felt great until 10 minutes later he came back with his high level mage buddy and they were able to shut down our progress for the next 2 hours.  It's pretty easy to see which channel a group of 5 moves into when there are 30 empty ch and one with a larger population bar than the others.  The union leader lost his belt to the mage, but I looted it back (and turned yellow for a good while) so I felt good about that.  I know he and his wife were a little discouraged at having our group fall apart, but what do you expect when high level pk's are allowed to run free through the lower dungeons.  Hopefully the case is different with the seemingly massive population increase the game has recieved, paired with no more character wipes (so players more likely not to experiment with crime).

 

ps. I like the features on your site, especially the 'encounters'.

Yeah, I can see if you got used to playing one way and then the access to that method of playing (gold to cash) changes it can be frustrating.

Oh, and glad you like the site! Currently searching for the next player or union to interview.