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NobleNick · 07-11-2005, 06:02 PM

SpiritWarrior,

It is as T-D-C said, and the link he gave you is an excellent one. Let me add a bit:

Does it come to a point where all one does is PVP and if so doesn't that become boring? Or do they have a large amount of pvp-specific content to cater for this?

I don't know. My experience is similar to T-D-C's: I have put in about 50 hours of gameplay over the last 6 weeks that I have owned the game. I have one character to LVL 16, another to LVL 9 and a third to LVL 7. I am planning my fourth character. All are PvE. PvE is a blast! At $50 for the game, it has already paid for itself, and there is SOOOOO much left to do! My most senior character is about 1/2 way through the missions (not to mention quests), and has seen maybe 1/4 of the map; so I estimate that I have at least another 150 hours of play before I am even tempted to step into a PvP arena.

Does one still level up while PVPing also?

No. A PvP is instanced as a LVL 20 character, which is the max level. Your PvP character gets runes and goodies by winning battles. Goodies can also be unlocked *FOR* your PvP character *BY* your PvE character(s). I believe a PvE character can be a full PvP participant; but I have not even thought of trying it yet.

What is the whole 'point'? Same ole level grind or end-game pvp rewards?

Whatever the answer, it is NOT level grinding: the game was specifically designed to make power-leveling and, to a lesser extent farming, obsolete. That is why all PvPs start at the max level = 20. You get modest points for killing hard critters and no points for killing easy (relative to your character's level). You get moderate to huge experience for doing missions and quests. The quickest and easiest way to level PvE (other than getting rushed) is to follow the storyline, doing missions and quests.

For instance, at level 15 it might take me about 10,000 points to get to level 16. I might get 12 points as my share of expo for my team taking out a average monster. Yes, that is only 12 points, and these monsters are typically no pushover. I would expect 200 to 400 points for completing a modest quest (say 10 minutes of play time.) The missions I have been on lately give 1,000 points plus another 1,000 if the bonus (typically harder) is also clompleted. Then there is the quest I just completed a few weeks ago, that took 4 tries and a total game time of 2 hours, but netted a quest reward of 4,000 PLUS the points for the many sub-quests along the way. This is why you might see teams RUNNING past monsters instead of seeking them out: the big money (expo) is in finishing the quests.

It appears that PvP might be the ultimate reward (I do not know what the PvE end-game is like); but if you go PvE, it is a long, delicious road getting there.

I play with 2 systems, one used by my other half and the other by me. I know my 6800 gt would burn thru it but would the geforce ti 4600 be able to cope with it, and properly I mean to the point where it is playable?

I have my doubts about the 4600, my 9600xt hiccups every once and a great while. However, the graphics demand is manually scalable via an options menu. (By the way, the 3-D graphics, with fully controllable camera, auto-fading obstructions, and PERSONALIZED cutscenes {YOUR party and YOUR character interact with NPCs in the cutscenes}, are beyond AWESOME.)

The thing that I did not get from the FAQs, reviews and etc., that I think are important, is the explanation of gameplay: The best way I can think of to explain it is to use Diablo 2 as the starting point. Gameplay, initially, sort of APPEARS to be like Diablo 2 (which I enjoyed). But there are major differences.

1. GRAPHICS: Fully 3-D, with controllable camera; instead of D2's 2-D with fixed camera. Terrain and 3-D world remind me of some of the outdoor Halo scenes. Did I mention that GW's graphics leave D2 in the dust, and are definitely on par with Halo, or even beyond?

2.) WORLD: The adventuring area is HUGE, certainly well beyond Halo or D2.

3.) GAMEPLAY (CLASSES, SPECIALTIES (attributes) and SKILLS) (O.K., so I degressed in 1 and 2.): Each class has advantages and weaknesses. Think of it as rock-paper-scissors on a grand scale. There are 6 classes, but your character can have a primary and a secondary class. This means that there are 30 class combinations available. Each class has literally scores of skills available. Because of the constraints (which I won't go into) each and every class combo can specialize in any of a number of different skill sets and specialties. Your character can not change classes. He (or she) can change specialties (called attributes in GW) slowly. He can change skills instantly. But no matter how good you are at your specialty, and what skills you have, there exists at least one other specialist that can easily do you in.

4.) GAMEPLAY (STRATEGY): Your available skills (which you acquire via quests for the most part) can be arranged on an 8-icon skill bar. You can change skills all you want and may have any mix of skills you want; but you can only change the arrangement in the safe haven of town, so think ahead.

5.) GAMEPLAY (TACTICS): The game is designed to present you with a wide variety of tactically challenging encounters. You and/or your team will face a plethora of combinations of enemy types, enemy numbers, terrain, and time constraints. Starting fairly early in the game, if you just do the Diablo-thing and just wade in swinging ---> you are dead; and you can easily get your team killed, too. In the mid-game (and the late game, I presume) you will find teams talking to each other about tactics and searching for that right class with the right skill set to fill out the party. MOST of the missions (which advance you to new areas of the game) and quests take team play. And the harder missions and quests (and there are LOTS of them!) take COORDINATED and THOUGHT OUT team play. This *IS* fun!!

6.) GAMEPLAY (SKILL SYNERGY): Many, many, MANY skills and weapons can be combined to be much more effective than twice the dosage of either. For instance, the Necromancer's skill Raise Bone Horror creates undead soldiers which eventually die. There is another skill, "Well of Blood," thatheals all team members in an area around a corpse. This skill is meant to give team members more health; but the Necro can leverage it to IN ADDITION, keep his minions alive to fight. Thus the combo is more powerful than using either skill singly This is just one example of literally hundreds (thousands?) of combinations.

7.) GAMEPLAY (TEAM SKILL SYNERGY): Teams rule in GW. This is because well designed characters are excellent at contributing in at least several ways; but will have AT LEAST one area in which they are weak. Team members complement each other, just like a well designed D&D team, to compensate for each others' weaknesses.

For instance: A Warrior can dish out TONS of damage, but isn't nearly as effective if he has to keep healing himself. The healing Monk, on the other hand, can dish out lots of healing, but can not defend himself well. As a team, with the Monk healing full-time and the Warrior killing full time, the pair can dish out more damage, and survive much longer in trying circumstances, than could a pair of Warriors or a pair of Monks.

Another: The "Pin down" Ranger skill complements the Warrior very well, since the Ranger can keep the enemy from retreating from the Warrior, increasing the effectiveness of the latter greatly.

Finally: A Monk a Ranger and aWarrior, with the right skills loaded could easily outfight 3 Warriors or 3 Monks; but would likely be in big trouble against a group with a Warrior and a Mesmer and a Necro. And the Wa-Me-Ne team would likely not fair well against the 3 Warrior team. Rock-paper-scissors; but at a TEAM level. When you start thinking about how your skills can complement your team members' skills (and many of the quests will have you doing just that), and loading your skill bar accordingly, you will be enjoying something that no other game can quite match.

8.) GAMEPLAY (LOOT): Non-money loot from fallen enemies is automatically assigned to a team member when it drops: No one else can pick it up. Money may be picked up by anyone, but is automatically divided amongst the team.

9.) GAMEPLAY (Silly adolescent stuff): Another thing I enjoy. The game has a profanity filter; and those who try to get around it by slightly misspelling foul words get ALL their accounts blocked. Heh, heh, heh. Nice. And evidently they have been effectively enforcing the rule. Yes, you CAN make characters from certain classes do provocative dances in their underwear; but the frequency and blatancy of crudity are both much, much lower than on other on-line games I've played.

[ 07-11-2005, 06:15 PM: Message edited by: NobleNick ]

07-11-2005, 06:02 PM	#10
NobleNick Quintesson Join Date: February 5, 2002 Location: Huntsville, AL, USA Age: 65 Posts: 1,045	SpiritWarrior, It is as T-D-C said, and the link he gave you is an excellent one. Let me add a bit: Does it come to a point where all one does is PVP and if so doesn't that become boring? Or do they have a large amount of pvp-specific content to cater for this? I don't know. My experience is similar to T-D-C's: I have put in about 50 hours of gameplay over the last 6 weeks that I have owned the game. I have one character to LVL 16, another to LVL 9 and a third to LVL 7. I am planning my fourth character. All are PvE. PvE is a blast! At $50 for the game, it has already paid for itself, and there is SOOOOO much left to do! My most senior character is about 1/2 way through the missions (not to mention quests), and has seen maybe 1/4 of the map; so I estimate that I have at least another 150 hours of play before I am even tempted to step into a PvP arena. Does one still level up while PVPing also? No. A PvP is instanced as a LVL 20 character, which is the max level. Your PvP character gets runes and goodies by winning battles. Goodies can also be unlocked FOR your PvP character BY your PvE character(s). I believe a PvE character can be a full PvP participant; but I have not even thought of trying it yet. What is the whole 'point'? Same ole level grind or end-game pvp rewards? Whatever the answer, it is NOT level grinding: the game was specifically designed to make power-leveling and, to a lesser extent farming, obsolete. That is why all PvPs start at the max level = 20. You get modest points for killing hard critters and no points for killing easy (relative to your character's level). You get moderate to huge experience for doing missions and quests. The quickest and easiest way to level PvE (other than getting rushed) is to follow the storyline, doing missions and quests. For instance, at level 15 it might take me about 10,000 points to get to level 16. I might get 12 points as my share of expo for my team taking out a average monster. Yes, that is only 12 points, and these monsters are typically no pushover. I would expect 200 to 400 points for completing a modest quest (say 10 minutes of play time.) The missions I have been on lately give 1,000 points plus another 1,000 if the bonus (typically harder) is also clompleted. Then there is the quest I just completed a few weeks ago, that took 4 tries and a total game time of 2 hours, but netted a quest reward of 4,000 PLUS the points for the many sub-quests along the way. This is why you might see teams RUNNING past monsters instead of seeking them out: the big money (expo) is in finishing the quests. It appears that PvP might be the ultimate reward (I do not know what the PvE end-game is like); but if you go PvE, it is a long, delicious road getting there. I play with 2 systems, one used by my other half and the other by me. I know my 6800 gt would burn thru it but would the geforce ti 4600 be able to cope with it, and properly I mean to the point where it is playable? I have my doubts about the 4600, my 9600xt hiccups every once and a great while. However, the graphics demand is manually scalable via an options menu. (By the way, the 3-D graphics, with fully controllable camera, auto-fading obstructions, and PERSONALIZED cutscenes {YOUR party and YOUR character interact with NPCs in the cutscenes}, are beyond AWESOME.) The thing that I did not get from the FAQs, reviews and etc., that I think are important, is the explanation of gameplay: The best way I can think of to explain it is to use Diablo 2 as the starting point. Gameplay, initially, sort of APPEARS to be like Diablo 2 (which I enjoyed). But there are major differences. 1. GRAPHICS: Fully 3-D, with controllable camera; instead of D2's 2-D with fixed camera. Terrain and 3-D world remind me of some of the outdoor Halo scenes. Did I mention that GW's graphics leave D2 in the dust, and are definitely on par with Halo, or even beyond? 2.) WORLD: The adventuring area is HUGE, certainly well beyond Halo or D2. 3.) GAMEPLAY (CLASSES, SPECIALTIES (attributes) and SKILLS) (O.K., so I degressed in 1 and 2.): Each class has advantages and weaknesses. Think of it as rock-paper-scissors on a grand scale. There are 6 classes, but your character can have a primary and a secondary class. This means that there are 30 class combinations available. Each class has literally scores of skills available. Because of the constraints (which I won't go into) each and every class combo can specialize in any of a number of different skill sets and specialties. Your character can not change classes. He (or she) can change specialties (called attributes in GW) slowly. He can change skills instantly. But no matter how good you are at your specialty, and what skills you have, there exists at least one other specialist that can easily do you in. 4.) GAMEPLAY (STRATEGY): Your available skills (which you acquire via quests for the most part) can be arranged on an 8-icon skill bar. You can change skills all you want and may have any mix of skills you want; but you can only change the arrangement in the safe haven of town, so think ahead. 5.) GAMEPLAY (TACTICS): The game is designed to present you with a wide variety of tactically challenging encounters. You and/or your team will face a plethora of combinations of enemy types, enemy numbers, terrain, and time constraints. Starting fairly early in the game, if you just do the Diablo-thing and just wade in swinging ---> you are dead; and you can easily get your team killed, too. In the mid-game (and the late game, I presume) you will find teams talking to each other about tactics and searching for that right class with the right skill set to fill out the party. MOST of the missions (which advance you to new areas of the game) and quests take team play. And the harder missions and quests (and there are LOTS of them!) take COORDINATED and THOUGHT OUT team play. This IS fun!! 6.) GAMEPLAY (SKILL SYNERGY): Many, many, MANY skills and weapons can be combined to be much more effective than twice the dosage of either. For instance, the Necromancer's skill Raise Bone Horror creates undead soldiers which eventually die. There is another skill, "Well of Blood," thatheals all team members in an area around a corpse. This skill is meant to give team members more health; but the Necro can leverage it to IN ADDITION, keep his minions alive to fight. Thus the combo is more powerful than using either skill singly This is just one example of literally hundreds (thousands?) of combinations. 7.) GAMEPLAY (TEAM SKILL SYNERGY): Teams rule in GW. This is because well designed characters are excellent at contributing in at least several ways; but will have AT LEAST one area in which they are weak. Team members complement each other, just like a well designed D&D team, to compensate for each others' weaknesses. For instance: A Warrior can dish out TONS of damage, but isn't nearly as effective if he has to keep healing himself. The healing Monk, on the other hand, can dish out lots of healing, but can not defend himself well. As a team, with the Monk healing full-time and the Warrior killing full time, the pair can dish out more damage, and survive much longer in trying circumstances, than could a pair of Warriors or a pair of Monks. Another: The "Pin down" Ranger skill complements the Warrior very well, since the Ranger can keep the enemy from retreating from the Warrior, increasing the effectiveness of the latter greatly. Finally: A Monk a Ranger and aWarrior, with the right skills loaded could easily outfight 3 Warriors or 3 Monks; but would likely be in big trouble against a group with a Warrior and a Mesmer and a Necro. And the Wa-Me-Ne team would likely not fair well against the 3 Warrior team. Rock-paper-scissors; but at a TEAM level. When you start thinking about how your skills can complement your team members' skills (and many of the quests will have you doing just that), and loading your skill bar accordingly, you will be enjoying something that no other game can quite match. 8.) GAMEPLAY (LOOT): Non-money loot from fallen enemies is automatically assigned to a team member when it drops: No one else can pick it up. Money may be picked up by anyone, but is automatically divided amongst the team. 9.) GAMEPLAY (Silly adolescent stuff): Another thing I enjoy. The game has a profanity filter; and those who try to get around it by slightly misspelling foul words get ALL their accounts blocked. Heh, heh, heh. Nice. And evidently they have been effectively enforcing the rule. Yes, you CAN make characters from certain classes do provocative dances in their underwear; but the frequency and blatancy of crudity are both much, much lower than on other on-line games I've played. [ 07-11-2005, 06:15 PM: Message edited by: NobleNick ]