Some of the most fun I ever had in SWG was being an anal retentive, methodical bounty hunter "Xanzu". I took down LOTs of Jedi. Hunting was a full time job :)

Kept a trophy collection--so there can be more to pvp than force wielders.

I definitely look for games to have utility spells. Matter of fact its one of the first things I examine a class's skill tree for. Its the little things that add flare, options and roleplaying possibilities to a game. The ability to summon common items, transformations, these are all great additions to any mmo. I loved the enchanter class in EQ1 and turning into a tree as a druid. Teleportation, speed, levitation, wolf form...love it all :)

You're certainly entitled to your opinion regarding IP based MMOs. However, I believe the solution is not to lower our expectations.

My biggest MMO wish and the reason I think so many MMOs fail is actually a change in the player base from the time of MMO inception. Namely, when MMOs first arrived ( Muds then EQ1 ), the players drawn to these games were table top roleplayers ( D&D, Shadowrun, etc etc ). These folks knew that what made the games fun was character development and roleplaying--not levels, skills, linear quests but an open game world where the creative player could create his own world. As time has moved on, it seems to me that today's players don't understand or aren't interested in the true "roleplaying" aspect of online games anymore. This is unfortunate, because it takes games to a higher level. The MMO makers have adapted to this lead em by the nose mentality and dumbed down the games. All that being said, my wish is for a new level of gaming awareness of the players. SWG was the last great MMO--genuine player communities, lives within a game made it great.

Assorted Observations

The UI is cumbersome and has responsiveness issues at times.

The Chat system needs love. You basically have a seperate chat Tab for every channel and cannot configure it in such as way as to have a single chat window with multiple channels.

The graphics are...ok. They've taken what I like to call an advance World of Warcraft approach. That is they don't have a large polygon count but try to make up for it in artistic detail. They do have an insane use of Shadows. EVERYTHING casts shadows and they seem to be constantly moving.

Everything is a skill--love this. Running, sprinting, crouch walking, casting with armor on, casting in general, etc etc.

You cannot drop objects in the game world - I don't like this.

Looting - You literally have to move one item at a time manually and any number of people can be looting the same corpse. I kinda like this I think. I refer to this process as Competitive Looting :) On the plus side, whatever items you see a creature using, it actually has for looting--this is good.

Mob AI - I think its better than most MMOs. To give an example, if you engage a goblin, he won't wait till he's nearly dead to run back for his friends assistance. They also can hear and spot you quite a ways off, if they do, they'll likely draw bows and get just within range and start pelting you with arrows. So far, there's no standing just 20 feet away and "pulling" a single mob..rinse repeat.

Crafting is a little disappointing for me. I don't like the idea that you have to go to a city and use "workbenches" to process raw goods. I'd hoped for the ability to live in the woods and carve out my own niche. There is a tremendous number of items characters can craft -- this is a good thing.

The world is dangerous -- this is a good thing. I like the realism of it.

Mobs in the world -- Presently you could walk for 5 - 10 minutes in real time and not encounter a creature of any kind. This needs to be rectified.

Harvesting in the world -- Nodes are plentiful.

Stealth -- There may be actual stealth, I've not seen it. What I do know is that people and objects don't have "floaty names", this means that holding still near objects in nature is a realistic form of camoflage--this is good. Crouch walking is quieter than walking. You can sneak up on things.

In summary, I'm still not sure what my overall opinion is. I'm still playing and hoping a little polish will be forthcoming in the next couple weeks.

Darkfall, Earthrise and Fallen Earth are all on my radar.

Out of desperation for a decent game I may even have to play WotLK. Go figure :p

I've only been playing WAR a couple weeks now. I've not progressed beyond T2. Typically this has been because I got bored. I'm a roleplayer, like the idea of open RvR so I joined the only OpenRvR/RP server. It had a medium to low pop seemed a wise choice. WRONG!

Advice

My first piece of advice, join a HIGH population server. It makes all the difference between feeling like there's no RvR, scenarios or people running PQ's.

Opinion - Order vs Destruction and their Classes

To all of you who are debating whether or not to play WAR, I've mixed feelings personally. I will say there is definitely an imbalance. Most folks want to play destruction and with good reason. While I don't really like any of the classes all that much, destructions animations, weapon choices and their abilities are all cooler than their Order counterpart. Example, would you rather be the cool bad ass looking Magus floating on your glowing disk  summon demons or a dwarven engineer with a wrench and a tripod turret? Would you rather be a "tank" class who has some attack which bypass enemies armor in a breastplate and skirt or a hulking warrior of chaos with wicked looking armor and capable of "twisting" your auras ( eq1 bard anyone? ) to sap the strength from your enemies.

Opinion - Classes as a Whole and their Lack of Diversity

This is not 100% true, but nearly. In order to make specific classes easy to identify on the battlefield, Mythic restricted most classes to a single weapon type. Most armor upgrades look identical to their predecessor ( destruction has a smidge more diversity ). Basically you are going to look like everyone else of your same class. Everyone in your class is going to wield the same weaponry. Classes and races are tied together. Other than the small handful of "mastery" abilities, you are going to have exactly the same abilities as everyone else in your class. Frankly, I find all this highly disappointing. There are no "fun/utility" spells ( ie. levitate, polymorph, walk on water, summon food, summon water, teleport, fast movement. Utility spells are part of what makes for roleplaying.  Oh, on the positive side you can dye stuff ( most stuff ) from starting out.

Opinion - Crafting

An absolute joke. There are only two manufacturing level tradeskills ( potion making & talismans which you add to your gear ).  The others crafting skills are gathering. Frankly, I normally enjoy crafting but I find it too irritating to bother. Isn't worth the trouble.

Community

Well, mixed bag here. Frankly, people are people. I've not had any negative encounters. Mostly I've played in absolute silence. Not by choice just lack of people in the same area ( until I played on a high pop server ). On the high pop server, there have been lots of folks who help each other but rarely communicate. In a sense I'm let down by the tools available to players for communication. In an RvR world the ability to communicate and assimilate seem crucial.

Game Play

Its unfortunately my opinion that if you don't possess the ability to heal you are gimped. I hate that expression but to give you some idea of why I say it. On the PvE side, as a nonhealing class there is no way I'd ever be able to take out any "Champion" level mobs. As a healing class I've been able to do it relatively consistently and easily. ( If you're gonna be order, you can be a dorking looking hammer welding warrior priest, an archmage, or a runepriest -- those are you healing options. Course on destruction side there is the Disciple of Khaine...an infinitely cooler looking duel sword wielding elf, the goblin shaman, or the wicked looking zealot ).

Why am I writing this

Who knows. Its late I'm bored and considering my future with WAR.

Addendum

The game has some serious memory leaks or something and craps out once ever couple hours. I've a nice box -- take my word on it.

Everyone else has a definition so I'll add mine.

A sandbox style game is one in which you are given as many options as the creators of the game want and then tell you nothing about what you should do with those options.

They create a world. You do whatever you want within it. You're in a sandbox--build castles, dig tunnels, toss sand in the air, eat it, move it from one place to another. Largely sandbox's content is player driven. The creators may setup a story but where you take it is up to you. You create your own meaning.

Battleskar - I did try Ryzom a long time ago when it had a free trial. You couldn't leave the "newbie" area and could only achieve level 10 as I recall. I might have liked it more had I gotten to see more of the world. I might give it another go. Thanks for the suggestion.

I did think of another small rant. Consider it an addendum to my former post:

End Game Content: This is a nonissue for me. I play games to enjoy levels 1 - N. If I can't have fun until level N then the game sucks in my opinion. At level N, this is when sandbox's shine IMHO. The game can continue to be a social world. Run a shop. Run a city. Run a guild. Form a school ( some games classes and diversity are extensive enough that you can put your own twist on a class and teach it to other -- Yeah Teras Kasi ).

I'll shut up now :)

I've heard others use this expression and after trying it out I think it sums it up best.

"The combat is less ganky".

Yes its slower, you won't ever find yourself sitting on a rock and along comes another player who stun locks you and succeeds in dispatching you before you can even register the attack. Depending on your point of view this might be a good thing. I feel compelled to point out that this game does have collision, which adds a level of reality not found in any other game I've played MMO wise. Basically means that as a caster you can stand to the rear and if a line of "tanks" is between you and your opponent they will actually server as a wall. A nice addition.

I'm not a fanboi of diddly squat. I am a long time gamer with a liking for PvP in a hardcore setting. I want to love WAR. These are some the things that trouble me:

The classes are 80% identical in abilities. Yes they are called different things and may look different when performed. This is not true of WoW. Wow's classes are relatively diverse.

High Elf models are aweful. They appear to have an extra joint in their neck and the area surround their eyes is poorly done.

From the best I can tell whatever class you choose DICTATES your weaponry. Lack of customization here.

Character creation: lack of options. I'd say its "slightly" better than WoW.

Lack of what I call fun spells, movement enhancement, polymorph, levitation, shapeshifting, special sight ( seeing through pets or other players eyes ), Illusions, summoning food, waterbreathing, walk on water, invisibility.

I'm personally sick and tired of quest driven MMOs. Do this go to point A. Point A tells you to do these 5 things, go to point B.

Lack of diversity. The branching system is weak in my opinion. WoW's is superior. EQ2's is superior.

The world feels larger and more open in WAR, this is a good thing.

PVP scenarios have been worked into Quests. This is a good thing.

The game feels as if there is nothing to buy or do other than PvP or Quest. To be fair they have included some secret areas/items which enrich the lore. I enjoy games which reward adventure.

Mechanically, the game is reasonibly sound. Better than many MMOs. As far as the game content I'm regretfully disappointed. I want to love this game.

I like a game that presents players possibilities. Not a game that dictates your play. Yes I'm one of those "Uncle Owens" from SWG. I liked setting up a house in the midst of no where. Visiting my neighbors. Going our with my community to hunt or in search of some whatever. I loved hunting Jedi. I was quite good at it. I loved massive PvP battles between the Empire and Rebellion. The closer a game can come to allowing me as a player to develop a character as I see fit and allowing me to play in a diverse number of ways...the happier I am.

I pray that these mindless games for tots will end and an old fashioned sandbox of high quality will emerge.

WAR probably isn't for me, I'm sure many will like it.

That was much longer than intended. My apologies.

1. It has about as much depth as pac-man--a 5 year could play it.
2. It REQUIRES group play early on.

That is all.

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Originally posted by salvaje At this point the battle lines are clearly drawn and both sides are in the trenches. Here is the furthest I am willing to compromise: If SOE: 1. Fires Smed 2. Fires Cao and any other senior managers who were part of the NGE decision in 2005 3. Starts a discussion with the community about HOW they are going to bring back the NGE, be it by publishing the old system into the current game, or by a new revamp of the core that essentially brings it back 4. Opens classic servers in the meantime If they do that, I will then consider them to have not only apologized, but taken appropriate measures to make good on that apology. Until then, they will continue to bleed, not just from SWG, but from the -5000 industry faction they have acquired. This is like World War II for me and many others. Nothing short of unconditional surrender and the end of the regime responsible for starting this mess will do. Until then, scorched earth. I like our chances to eventually get a better game that isn't SOE a lot more than I like SOE's chances to survive with their reputation and without our money.

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Amen

I also am disappointed. The swashbuckling --- horrid. The ship combat is simplistic. Not only simple, but completely unrealistic in some ways. The biggest one that turns me off to the game is the fact that you can absolutely decimate the enemies sails and masts. In theory this should render them damn near immobile. Oh no! Somehow they can still turn their vessel quickly enough to protect a side. You can kill their crew down to 1 man yet they remain fully capable of navigation, cannon reloading & firing. Frankly..I hate that I don't love it.

I don't know why but that really cracked me up. No she doesn't seem to like it at all.

CoH has amazing character customization as far as appearances go. Frankly thats my favorite part of the game.

Skills/Abilities "Powers" are cool as well.

Roleplay - Nearly nonexistent

Gameplay - Very smooth, looks crisp. However, the game is highly repetitive and not conducive to solo play if thats your thing. Beyond the early levels you must have a group.

In a nutshell, it'll prolly keep you entertained for a few weeks.

Frankly are nuts. My PC isn't top notch but damn...

AMD Athlon 64 3800+
2GB RAM
(2) GeForce 7600GS running SLI 256mb each

Now that I've whined...

The "Low End Graphics" are so aweful I'd suggest they remove em and just lose that segment of the population. They desperately need a middle tier at the least. As it stands I uninstalled completely and probably won't give the game another thought. Don't bother flaming cause I won't be reading.