The AoC Gamespot PvP beta started yesterday, and as of this afternoon, apparently the NDA has come down…. Which means I can spout off all I want about the game until it goes back up tomorrow. Don’t ask me how that works.
During the tech test, I only managed to make it as far as the first city, and level 5 or 6. In the PvP beta, which my wife managed to get us a key for, you can do the beginning area all the way up to the point where you would enter the area before the first city, and then you get teleported elsewhere, boosted to level 20, and given a stack of gear. You’re stuck there, with nothing to do but look around, and of course, join PvP games.
For initial observations with PvE, I’m going to have to say that I like it. Even though I start out without a bow, and was unable to get one (You start out with a broken oar), combat seems to flow easily enough, and it’s not very complex. Once I hit level 5, I was able to dump skill points into categories – Bandage, Climb, and Hide – and got my first class specific abilities. It might be different classes, but I really don’t know, as I haven’t played anything else.
PvP, however, is a completely different story. So far, it’s battlegrounds only, and there are two types – CTF, with three maps; Team Deathmatch, with one map. The fortunate thing is that everyone is stuck with equivalent gear, so it’s a level playing field gear-wise, unlike WoW. Skill and class balance are really the only factor here….  And class balance is borked. I haven’t really had much time to play, since we’re essentially sharing the account, but so far, there are a few classes that stand out as being overpowered. Rangers are apparently hugely overpowered, as evidenced by this video from Keen and Graev:
Also, it doesn’t seem to flow quite as smoothly as PvE combat did, or even the way PvP did in WoW. The one CTF map that I played was laid out more like a map out of Unreal Tournament or Quake than anything that I’ve previously experienced in RPG’s. But, as I’ve said, I haven’t been able to play much, so we’ll see.
Did I make a wrong turn somewhere on my way back from Florida? I feel like I’ve been playing Alliance when it comes to battlegrounds on my druid lately. Horde is making all the mistakes that Alliance normally would, and as a result, only luck has gotten us the occasional win. I haven’t taken Arvelen to any BG’s at all, and my paladin seems to only have half luck – 2 AV wins back to back, but only after joining an AB where Horde started with 2, Alliance with 9, which slowly grew to a 6 on 15 fight.
I haven’t felt like playing Arv much at all lately, save to go to Gnomeregon once in a half-hearted attempt to obtain some [Petrospill Leggings] for Drekoran, and to go to Stratholme. My attempts to solo there were quickly squashed, even with me dual boxing with the paladin. I was able to solo up to Cannon Master Willy with 4-5 deaths, but there it ended. Stratholme is vastly different from all the other old world instances that I’ve been through as of yet. The undead come in so great numbers that it’s impossible to sneak by them, or run through them and feign death. I eventually ended up doing a full clear of the area that I was travelling through, with some quick trapping. Wyvern sting was worthless as well, at least until I got to the area filled with Scarlet Crusade, which became a whole different juggling act.
Needless to say, I won’t be trying for Scholomance either, even if I was able to put a key together.
Yesterday’s daily BG was for Warsong Gulch, and the beginning of Warsong Weekend, so it’s only natural that I played at least one match… Which ended up being more enjoyable than any other time I’ve been in the Gulch recently.
The first match ended up being the “least stressful WSG evar” for me, due to the fact that once I got into the match, I quickly discovered two things. One, the Alliance flag was gone. Two, this match had been going on for ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY MINUTES.   Now, I’ve experienced this particular bug before, and usually all it takes is 20 tickets being opened (Ok, maybe not that many.) and a GM shows up and resets the flag. So, tickets are opened, and we proceed to farm honor kills after getting everyone to understand that there’s no flag to cap. By this point, Vree is long dead, taken out by a stupid warlock, but I don’t feel like rezzing her, figuring I’ll die soon anyway. Half an hour later, a GM shows up to reset the flags, and I spend all but the last 10 minutes of the match petless… But still rocking everyone’s world.Â
Next up, Rintara, my wife’s new shaman, needs a [Scout's Tabard], so I hop on Drekoran so we can do the required Arathi Basin and Warsong Gulch matches, and holy crap melee is different. I’ve never played melee in WoW PvP before – none of my characters made it far enough – and PvE as melee is simple, you just sit there and beat on them. Not so with this, unless you’re facing off against a hunter that doesn’t know any better. I eventually came to the conclusion, despite winning both matches, that I need better gear if I’m going to continue PvPing. Rintara, on the other hand, has everything she wants, and will be fast-tracking it to Outland with her new guide. She’ll probably hit 40 by the end of the weekend, knowing her.
Later on we started putting together a premade, and started using Ventrilo. I’ll say this for voice comms – it makes coordinating and calling targets a lot easier. The first match, with only 5, went well enough, and the next match, running with a full group of 10 was awesome. Another hunter and myself held down their flag room for the first cap before being wiped out by a warrior/rogue combo. After that, I was mostly on defense, calling out incoming targets and stopping people in their tracks as they came up the ramp, usually one at a time. I’m sure I pissed quite a few melee people off with my Wyvern Sting -> Rocket Launcher -> Aimed Shot -> Scorpid Sting (to cleanse Wyvern Sting) -> Freeze Trap -> Aimed Shot -> Scatter Shot -> Dead combo, as I started getting singled out… But as long as their flag carrier was dead, I didn’t care.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t meant to last, as the next match found us 3 people short, who got replaced by someone from another server, and pitting us against a premade from Farstriders, so we lost, and people started heading to bed.
Overall, though I’m definitely liking my new spec for sheer stopping power. While I can’t neccessarily kill people faster until I start critting, they can’t do much when they’re immobilized.
