Here’s my 3 minute version::

Since Ariwyn on WHA did a great write up on Day 1’s content, I’m going to try to restrict myself to things she didn’t touch on.

First:: Jeff & Paul’s Presentation…

was in the usual style: Loud, Fun, showing lots of stuff. Though Paul almost had to shank one of the chairs. If you were there, you know.

We’ve all heard about the Land of the Dead being like Darkness Falls from DAOC. If you don’t know what I’m talking about go listen to CoTcast 19.

There are 2 parts to the area, the massive outdoors zone which we got a brief unfinished look at. Very Egyptian, very cool. very open. Lots of Bananas, again if you were there… There is also an instance: the Tomb of the Vulture Lord which is supposed to be harder than the Lost Vale. GOGO GEAR CHECKS! Or class make up? The Dungeon, even from the rough pre-alpha stuff we saw looks like its going to be very cool and have a great feel to it visually. Honestly, I don’t PvE. It’s too predictable, which = boring for me. but I MIGHT for Land of the Dead. (The RvR dungeon)

LotD is going to have something I love.

Are you ready to know what?

It’s going to have PvE traps/hazards. Reactive environment traps. If you’ve been to Naxxramas and you know the part where the green blobs of death move across the path? swap out green blobs of death with SWORDS! And DHAR MAGIC BLASTS!!! In LotD, once you disarm the traps and get past them, you can go by safely. BUT, if the dungeon changes realm control and Destro comes in behind you (assuming you are Order) you can go to the trap activation panel and wait for Destro to get to the trap and then ACTIVATE IT ON THEIR FACES WHEN THEY ARE IN IT!! ZOMG. I cant wait for that. Am I too excited? Probably. But, I can’t help it, I LOVE environment interactions, especially something like that. Its something I had never dreamed of, and I spend a lot of time dreaming.

Next bit of exciting news. Forts/Keeps are going to get modified. They’re thinking about putting in TWO ramps up to the Keep Lords. There will also be a keep upgrade system, nothing physical will change, but buffs will be greater/lesser depending on .. something.

For Conqueror’s gear, there will be better drops as reported on WHA, since guards will also have a chance to drop them. Additionally, you can turn in Tokens earned from zone captures to get Conq Gear in the future.

The last amazing bits are these: 1- they showed an Ogre model holding a CANNON. Possibly a siege weapon??? Also they showed a Greenskin-esque ZEPPELIN. Will Floating Siege weapons be an option? How sweet would it be to build a zeppelin and load it up with 4 or 5 people then launch it towards a keep/Fort and have the melee jump out of it!! I cant wait… IF that’s how it goes.

The Tournament…

was crazy imba, it was about a 2 : 1 ratio of Order to Destro. Many more people registered but we had a ton of fun even though there’s a lot of pansies out there who didn’t show up I got to rock out on a pre-made engineer. Order won best 2 outta 3. Then I flipped and did a Zealot b/c Destro was the underdog. (I like the underdog, no matter who) and I won over there next time against a different Order force!! Beckon and Leela of Ungrim were awesome on a Chosen and DoK respectively in those rounds. Rauthy and Munahif of Sylvania also flipped for Round 2 and played Destro with me.

Other than WAR…

I saw things for DC Universe Online (DC like the comics) – a Super Hero PvE MMO was what they showed. Its bright and “pretty”, and looks like more fun than WoW, since you take on multiple enemies at once like a super hero should.

Roughly the same thing for Champions Online, another super hero MMO, though to be fair I spent about 15 seconds watching Champions stuff. I just didn’t take the time for it b/c i had bigger fish to fry.

Also!
Star Trek MMO :: only thing I really saw there in the movie is that there is some really great tools for character face customization if you wanna be a certain race, there are pre-mades, but you can hybridize just about every part of the face in their creator.

Everybody is a starship captain, so you’re a captain no matter what. BUT, you can choose what strengths/customizations your ship gets. i.e. to pursue a science facility or a weapon/assault ship, cargo bay or whatever.

The big part of their game (they say) is to re-create Star Trek and then wrap MMO around it instead of forcing Startrek into an MMO. There’s a lot of beaming around to different environments and doing different exciting things and mission lines should end with a big exciting conflict like episodes do. So yeah, if they successfully & faithfully execute this goal I think they’ll be doing pretty well.

At the MMO panel…

there wasn’t anything surprising that I remember hearing, so I’ll just rock the question that I asked.
“If you were in an alternate universe where neither YOUR game nor WoW existed, which of your competitor’s games would you play?”

4/6 of the devs pretended that they couldn’t pick a favorite, as though every MMO was their child and it would be wrong b/c there’s so much to learn from everything. 2 of those guys up there were men and sacked up. Jeff Hickman (WAR) called EQ2 and Chris Waldron (Fusionfall) picked DC Universe Online. Thank you to you guys for answering my question. Now… is it coincidence that only the people with live games answered? Maybe if you don’t have a game out you can’t afford to piss anybody off and it wasn’t fair of me to ask? I’m not sure.

Handy RvR Info!

Since VPs and zone control are near and dear to my heart, I’m going to mention a few things::

1- The # of Scenario VPs gained are determined by the margin between winner and loser.

2-The zone control system will be such that if you control ALL objectives and Keeps for X amount of time, you fill up a circle. fill up 5 circles = zone flip guaranteed. So at 2am its worth it to go ninja an objective b/c if anybody takes ANYTHING you lose all your circles you’ve filled.

3- Also, all PQ’s reward equally in VP regardless of difficulty level.

And that’s all just VP stuff!! Munahif of Sylvania has a TON more info about lots of things that he is going to release soon. I don’t want to steal his thunder so that’s all I’m gonna say.

Zone Domination

If your realm holds ALL BFO’s and both keeps for x amount of time, (lets say 30 minutes) you get a control bubble. If you get Five control bubbles = you control zone. BUT if you lose anything = reset all control bubbles.

A great way to get people out even if they’re being dominated b/c it gives incentive to ninja/take things.

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Random Questions that I forgot to ask (just in case any Devs read this)

:: Character Customization- obviously I like dwarves. ( I have a RP, Engineer and i plan on trying slayer. ) i think a lot of the character classes look good, but will we ever see body size/shape;/proportion modifications available to us?

Oh, and I really like the Dwarf Wrenches.

::PvE:: – As I said earlier I don’t do it because its too predictable. I did enough mindless dps or healbotting in WoW. What WOULD bring me into it is more of the traps and elements of randomness. Something where there might be random spawns of stalactites in a cave lair and if I shoot the right one it will fall and kill the next patrol or something like that where paying attention to the environment pays off. Will that ever happen? Or something like it? (I am REALLY excited about the traps btw)