It sounds like a lot but the first of the Day One goals for the Seven Day Goal Perk is "Reach Character Level 20" so I guess it's not.
Since this isn't Steam, I can't say exactly how long I've played so far. I was having fun so I wasn't counting the minutes but I'd guess it's been something like two or three hours altogether.
Probably three. We'll say three.
 |
| By "Complete a craft" they mean "Choose one". It's a single click... |
I was a few hours late logging in after the test started yesterday. When I got there, I was faced with a choice: a drop-down menu offering the option of making a character on the NA Server Cluster, EU or a couple of others.
In the first Closed Beta, the UK defaulted to the North American servers but this time location trumped language and I was pointed towards Europe. I demurred. My preference is always to play on American servers whenever possible. It's a cultural thing. Also my ping to the East Coast is fine.
Tarisland isn't region locked, thankfully, so it was always going to be my decision, but there was another factor to consider. An indicator warned me how populated the servers were. The EU server was green; the NA server was amber.
Actually, I think. It might have even have been red. I should have taken a screenshot. Anyway, it was clear NA was a lot busier than EU so I decided, since it was only a beta, to go against my principles and stay local.
When I did, this is what I got:
 |
| Bait & Switch |
That's the EU server. You can see it selected, faintly, at the bottom of the shot.
Oh well. If I was going to have to wait, might as well wait for the server I actually wanted to be on. I cancelled and re-selected NA... and logged right in. No queue whatsoever.
Either I misread the population screen or the colors didn't mean what you'd think they'd mean or I should have submitted a bug report. One of those. Whatever. Didn't care. I was in.
Next hurdle; make a character.
I was perfectly happy with the Hunter Bard I played last time and I would have made her again, only I thought for the sake of the blog I probably ought to try one of the new classes. There was a bit of confusion when I thought the new ones were called "Phantom Necromancer" and "Shadow Swordsman" but I got that sorted out and picked the one I wanted.
 |
| You mean I have to carry this thing with me all the time? |
The one I wasn't interested in is indeed the Shadow Swordsman. The one I was after, the one with the lantern and the moths, the one I wrote about in a post a few days ago, when I did in fact refer to her as the "Phantom Necromancer", is actually the Phantom Priest.
She is a Necro, in that she summons undead, but she's also a healer. It's an interesting hybrid that reminds me a little of Vanguard's Bloodmage, although not a lot since, like all Tarisland's classes, it's nowhere near as original or unusual as that flattering comparison suggests.
Still, it's a decent class from what I've seen. The whole "Kills things with moths" thing that came up via the promo video turns out, sadly, not to be true. Well, it might be somewhere there in the visuals if you zoom in closely enough but moth-wrangling plays no substantive part in gameplay that I could see. The moth is a myth.
Tyler Edwards let drop the fascinating fact in the comments the other day that "purple emperor butterflies are attracted to corpses", something that turns out not just to be true but to be even weirder and more macabre than it sounds. Off the back of this startling revelation, I decided to call my new character Purple Empress.
 |
| Butterfly in the rain. |
I didn't expect to get that name and I didn't but only because it was too long. I thought again and with no more hope of success went for Butterfly. To my amazement, no-one had nabbed that yet, so Butterfly is who I am for the next two weeks.
Character creation didn't take long because there aren't all that many options. Once in game everything zipped along much the same as last time, at least from what I could remember, which was never going to be much when we're talking about something that happened four months ago.
By the simple expedient of not reading any quest text, I got through the Tutorial and the section of storyline that takes place in the main city in something like less than half the time it took me before. I found I could remember roughly how the plot went and it all seemed about the same to me but if there were any subtle changes, I would have missed them, going at that pace. Probably not really pulling my weight there as a beta tester but hey, I filled out that long-ass survey again, so don't judge me!
All of that got me to Level 16 in my first session. After lunch today I played for another hour or so and made it as far as Level 20. Again, thngs seemed much the same, although crafting looked to have been hugely fleshed out and there was a whole new thing about Inscribed Stones. I'll probably cover those seperately in another post. I definitely have something to say about the crafting.
 |
| When I hear the name "Gaia", somehow I imagine something very different... |
Once again, I was struck by just how slick the game is. It's very polished for a closed beta. Also very busy. I suspect this game is going to be quite popular. There were people everywhere. General chat was so crazy I had to tab out to Guild (I'm not in a guild so that was nice and quiet.)
It was apparent from the constant jabber on LFG and other channels that a lot of people aren't just goofing around in a silly beta for some game they'll never play again; they're setting themselves up for Live. Guilds weren't just recruiting, they were setting application criteria and touting their benefits, just like in a real game. The intention was clearly to build up a critical mass of members and hit the ground running whenever launch arrives.
When I filled out that survey, I made sure to tick every box that mentioned "casual" or "fun" or "explore" or "story". I get the strong feeling that Tarisland doesn't just want to look and feel like modern-day World of Warcraft, it wants to attract the same demographic so any effort I can make to mitigate against that happening seems like it would be worth it.
 |
| It's not the greatest story ever written but I'll take it over running dungeons any day. |
That's about as far as I've gotten up to now. I think I was either in the high 20s or low 30s when the last test ended so I have some way to go before I start seeing new content. I think I'd better slow down a tad and pace myself, not least so I can give myself a chance to notice if anything's changed.
Another reason to drop the pace is I have no real idea how to play this new class I've chosen. The Bard was much easier to come to grips with quickly. The Phantom Priest seems quite fiddly by comparison. I quite fancy joining LFG as a Healer but I'm going to have to read some tool-tips quite carefully before I try anything ambitious like that.
 |
| Meet here tomorrow and we'll carry on from where we left off. |
Luckily, the class can dual-spec as DPS. I think that might be safer at first. No-one cares what the DPS is doing, especially in a beta.
One thing that's definitely the same as last time is I'm having fun. It's a very enjoyable game, at least for a week or two. I can already say that having just the one starting area and funnelling every character through the same questline is going to make alting very annoying, so I'm not sure I'd find a lot of replayability in Tarisland, but for a single character it looks like a potential runner.
And now, I'm off to kill a few gnolls, make a few levels and see if I can't get a better mount than this clumsy, great rhino. It's always nice to have goals.
More as I discover it. Until then...
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment