Unfortunately due to having an actual real job, I have yet to get into WoW to experience the newness that is Cataclysm. I am a bit torn on what to do first on the things I REALLY want to do. I want to make a Worgen toon (or two). I am debating on a few classes right now, 2 being a Mage and a Priest. I am not a huge healer class guy but the group of people who I usually play with, are all going with new Worgen and no one has a healer yet. So they asked me to be a healer, and I honestly don’t know if I want to do a druid with a worgen b/c the whole idea behind it is that a worgen is a were-wolf and druids are generally shape shifted. Well the good thing about being a druid healer would be for the whole tree form as well and well as a healer and a druid worgen primarily in combat I would be in worgen form anyway (cept for the small tree times), so honestly it’s not entirely out of the question… well and easier to solo level too! Or I could just stick to the other plan as straight Priest healer.. I have some time to decide. The other thing I wanted to do is go with the Mage, mainly b/c it’s one of the classes I don’t have a toon in on my main server and I think the extra run boost (racial ab) could greatly help with some early survivability for the mage.

The other things I am really looking forward to is the newer levels of professions and the addition of archaeology. I am well aware the new proff is just another way blizz is trying to trick us into playing longer or keeping our experience elongated so we don’t realize that the next expansion is 2 1/2 years away (at best) but I don’t care it just seems pretty fun. This could always change after doing it for a few hours but hey only time will tell. It couldn’t be too much worse then the leveling and dailies of Cooking and Fishing and I do those on my main too. So at very worse case scenario I bet I will be just maxing out Archaeology on my main and possibly 1 other toon. I want to level my 2 main’s and thus get some new mats for leveling my Inscription and Alchemy and make some serious gold too. See? So much to do and sooooo long till I get to do it. I prolly won’t get to play until friday evening due to work and some other family commitments but hopefully I can get the files updated and get into game tonight some.

The main things I wanted to give my thoughts on are the info out there on the Beta’s for RIFT and DCUO. The NDA’s might be still on but hey I am not in any BETA’s and only have opinions on what I have read on the net so I am not under any NDA’s anyway.

Ok First RIFT.  There is not a whole lot of info out there outside of what the Dev’s have let out about the 1st round of closed beta. Some of the things they noticed were they didn’t have nearly enough server space initially which I am sure they fixed pretty quick, and they wanted to see the response time to some bugs and such. Things like re-spawn of mob times are easy fixes I am sure and I bet they are also balancing a ton of things out there, so I am not too worried about that really. They also mentioned the whole RIFT system, which they said needed a tweak b/c of the amount of people in the areas and the rifts didn’t stand a chance. Well like some commenters and forum trolls have mentioned they should have been well aware of this type of thing when they made the game and the areas, and if the 1st close dbeta was only for 1st 20 levels or so, well obviously there would be an ass ton of players in those places and rifts wouldn’t likely have a way to get a foothold there.

All of those and even the last one don’t really bother me much. Being in early closed beta and a game that seems to be worked on this well I think it will get ironed out a bit. My concern is more-so for 5-6 months after release. How will the rifts in the 1st 20 level area’s be then? Ok let me give you my parallel example. Back when Warhammer Online first came out IMO the best and most fun aspect of the game were the great (and quite original) public quests. These were so damn fun to do. They brought the population together to do them, they were inviting and challenging, and they had a good combo of results based loot rewards and luck. They were good rewards but not game breaking and if you did a PQ a few times you almost certainly got SOMETHING for your efforts which was good too. OK, now fast forward about 6 months after the game released. What you get now is a thinning of the herd so to speak with the majority of the people who will play staying and those who don’t like it gone. Well then you get them basically already are leveled above the 1st 20 or so level areas and thus the PQ areas were EMPTY. Sure they could still be done after some changes here and there but this really killed the PQ experience for the new player. I am thinking this is entirely possible to happen to RIFT. The first days of the game people will be looking for these rifts and wanting to take them out and have a great time doing it. What happens when the population is thinned out? Well the newb areas will constantly be under attack by larger and larger rifts. This is likely to be balanced a bit with periodic NPC killing machines “clearing” them out to reset them but it could hamper the real experience a bit. I really hope I am wrong b/c as always I am wanting this game to be fun and succeed. So I’ll keep looking for more reports and wait for this NDA to be lifted.

Ok on to DCUO which the NDA HAS been lifted and thus we get a ton more info out there, and the developers are more then happy to release more themselves. I saw a videoDCUO source posted from gamespot (I will embed below) that shows some great stuff. The character creation, while not as deep as some others is still AMAZING. It looks great and I personally like the whole “inspired by” thing they do with the iconic DC characters. I think the idea of changing some colors and maybe even using the powers different then the original hero, is just a great idea. Some people just want to make a completely random and crazy hero/villain, and some of the creation is there it’s just not as much as some other superhero MMO’s but it’s still deep so I’m fine with that.

The video then goes into some of the starting zone. It’s a fairly basic zone where you learn how do do the basic moves. Some attacks, bigger/better attacks, travel powers etc. It still looks real crisp but also still looks like something you wold see on a console with some of the +5 hits! things popping up. It kinda looks like you are playing some actiony game of Marvel Alliance for the PS3 or somthing but eh again I’ll wait and see. The tutorial pop ups do make it look real good, as if the controls using the keyboard when it boils down will be better for the player then just a ps3 controller.

The on the fly customization and the power trees add alot of good MMOness to it all as well. It’s coming along real nice and I hope they can keep the good stuff coming I want to see some more in game, gameplay videos like this one which really helps to sell it. The creators and people can say all they want about the game but nothing is as good as SHOWING us why the game will be good. We want to see as much as this as we can so PLEASE more in game movies with comentary, especially other locales and higher level stuff, where we can REALLY get a feel for what loot will mean when we get it and how we can relate to iconic characters. Good stuff now but MORE MORE MORE…..

When I get some good hours in on Cataclysm I will give you some hands on but for now I leave you with the gameplay video from gamespot for DCUO.

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