Open Beta Impressions: Open Letter to Sigil

[Orionus]

Dear Sigil,

Congratulations on getting your game to open beta. I can't imagine how much work went into this project.

The audience you have right now consists largely of "paying customers" like me. We ordered the game in order to get the pre-order box, and some of us joined File Planet in order to download and play open beta. We come to your game in hope that it will save us from the sometime drudgery of WOW, or in hope that it will recreate the epic adventure feeling we had on exploring the world of EQ1 for the first time. In short, we come with open minds and the hope that your game will live up to its promise.

We had so much optimism and hope that we stuck with the download that lasted in some cases two days (even though I had the preorder box). However, once the game loaded, we have suffered great dissapointment at promise unfulfilled and potential unrealized.

The disappointment starts at character creation. Yes, there are some great customization options, but it doesn't really help us make a unique character, because so few of the options look "good." Don't get me started on the hair.

This is probably related to the character models in general. As I slogged through the first few levels of the game, my 7-year-old daughter watched and asked "is this a game about robots?" She is used to the fluid animations she sees when I play other games (including WOW). The character models do look robotic. Every Raki looks like an NPC, because they all look alike. My upper torso doesn't move right as I walk, my face is a mask. And all NPCs stand stock straight and don't do anything. D&D Online characters looked better, and that is tough to say. Sure, they might be placeholders, but they aren't even that good a start!

Talking of starts, my character was just kind of dumped into the game. I followed the crowd to the only quest giving NPC (really, there should be multiple starting threads, more on that later) in the area and got a quest to pick some grass. But I didn't feel welcome. I felt no connection to my race or class. Instead, I was just there. There was certainly no feeling of starting an Epic quest or adventure! It feels like a game. In fact, it feels like a game older than EQ1.

On phase two of the "purify the well" quest, my Wood Elf Ranger was actually forced to CAMP the lowlevel dryads we had to kill. I swear... it was a camp. Why? Because there aren't enough of them, but also because there was NOTHING else for the low levels to do. You need multiple starting quests to spread out the noob population. Maybe base them on class to create that welcome and tie the character to the the world. Sheesh. And don't tempt us to interact with water (the well) if the water isn't going to react to us walking through it, or if my character animation doesn't even kneel when filling a vial.

The only good quest chain so far was the Diplomacy starter chain. Diplomacy is a neat system and actually involves some lore and introduces folks to the game world. Too bad the adventuring so far doesn't. But on the latest leg of Diplomacy I was supposted to talk to four citizens on my way through the city. Only to find that there really aren't any citizens. The city is dead. Nothing is happening. The guards walks stiffly through and the vendors stand stock still, but there is no illusion of life. I have yet to find a "citizen" to talk to. The city itself might be pretty or it might be ugly. I can't decide.

So far, I have seen nothing revolutionary except maybe the Diplomacy game. Everything else is the same as it ever was. Combat so far is push button and looks horrid. I'm hoping it improves, but I'm not sure I can give this game so much time to find out.

Performance is pretty poor. I was being disconnected back to character creation constantly, and I had to turn down the graphics. And in this game, without good graphics so far this isn't really another reason there to be there.

I'm sorry it turned out like this so far. Maybe with another year of work and polish this game can fulfil the potential that I feel beneath the surface, or the promise that was touted by Sigil. But if it releases at anywhere close to this state everyone involved with this game will have lost the substatial credibility they once had.

Worse, all the early-adopters who rushed to the game with such enthusiasm will be left waiting for the next MMORPG that promises to bring back the adventure.

Orionus

[Etrigan]

Eh- the noob zones are like this in WoW too upon release of a new server or the release of the game. It's not going to get any better for the noob zone mobs now or anytime in the future with the huge influx of people coming into the game.

Some races are going to be much more popular than others, Wood Elves/Raki being one of them.

Besides, this game is far from quest-centric. The noob zones offer quests as a fast-track to 10, yes. But overall the game gets into a grind.

Performance: I LOL'd at you. Performance in Open Beta is lightyears ahead of where it was in closed beta. And closed beta had a lot fewer people. Sigil is doing a good job stabalizing their hardware in a lot of cases and seem to be doing a lot of tweaks. Plus it is BETA. Hardware performance will improve once they shift everything to SOEs hosting.

[Pirotess]

One of todays patches listed increased spawn rate in the newbie zones to address the camping problem. Clearly we're in an extremely irregular time right now with thousands of new players coming in all at once. For reference I think we barely got over 2k people on the server before open beta. Now we're seeing upwards of 6k people so clearly the servers are much more heavily loaded than they ever have been before.

As for your comments about the Vanguard needing a hook, I agree and thankfully the devs do as well as they have mentioned in several posts on the OVF that they intend to work on that very problem.

[FEDS-91]

Not sure you've spent much time in a beta before. If you have you should be well aware that regardless of it being an 'open' beta now, there are still a ton of things that may not have been implemented yet. (i.e; hair & things of that sort) I've been in about 6 different betas now. You'd be astounded at the amount of things that can get fixed, adjusted or put in in the last few weeks of a beta. I saw the Star Wars Galaxies: Jump To Lightspeed Beta go from slow looking flight, horribly laggy, broken & buggy to being an excellent expansion by the time it was released. Most of the changes/fixes were made in the last 2 weeks of beta.

I just think people should sit back, get /bugging like crazy to ACTUALLY HELP BETA TEST, not simply 'play' the game. And if it goes live like this, then worry about it. Til then? People need to settle.

[Etrigan]

Originally Posted by FEDS-91

Not sure you've spent much time in a beta before. If you have you should be well aware that regardless of it being an 'open' beta now, there are still a ton of things that may not have been implemented yet. (i.e; hair & things of that sort) I've been in about 6 different betas now. You'd be astounded at the amount of things that can get fixed, adjusted or put in in the last few weeks of a beta. I saw the Star Wars Galaxies: Jump To Lightspeed Beta go from slow looking flight, horribly laggy, broken & buggy to being an excellent expansion by the time it was released. Most of the changes/fixes were made in the last 2 weeks of beta.

I just think people should sit back, get /bugging like crazy to ACTUALLY HELP BETA TEST, not simply 'play' the game. And if it goes live like this, then worry about it. Til then? People need to settle.

I agree with you. I've /bugged a lot of stuff and did some quest feedback (which i think is really important, actually I would say people who are crying about polish who don't give quest feedback should be punched in the face. Yes, stuff needs polish, but without FEEDBACK they won't know exactly what exactly should be looked at!)

[Raolinx Aeromancer]

I'm sorry that you jump in and start picking things apart.

The character creation has actually been tweeked down. Its not even close to What will be there for release, Raki have only been in a few weeks and do not have final animations in. That actually goes for a lot of races.

I'm sorry you feel dumped into the game. I do wish there was a little more too it. However did you read the pop up that came up apon first log in or did you quickly turn it off and check the do not show me this again? If so you just lost alot of info.

As said camping areas in early level zones is like that right now due to the 3k new people in the game right now. And that you chose a popular zone.

Diplomacy is where you will start to receive most of your lore. Don't expect it from quest NPCs as there tired of the continual level one toons asking them for something to do. I do have to agree some of the cities look empty of NPC's. But Player characters should fill this out as well as more diplomacy NPC are added.

Connectivity is an issue because with open beta comes the server stress issues and figuring out how to best control the influx of new characters. Believe me it's much better than it was. And I am suprised it has been as stable as it is with so many new toons.

If you don't like it fine. Leave for now. Come back after it goes live. Or even just wait it out. You will see improvments with every weekly patch.

Rao

[Etrigan]

weekly patch? ;p

Patches been daily these last couple of days, heheh.

[Kethra]

Yes, it's great to see the improvement right before our eyes, eh? Or when something you notice and /bug ( though you probably aren't the only one, still feels good) is fixed (like the group loot option bug from 1/6).

[tehgeek]

Originally Posted by Etrigan

weekly patch? ;p

Patches been daily these last couple of days, heheh.

I've only been in beta since open but seems to be some days with multiple updates. Does show they are working on it. I can't imagine how much more work must go into a good MMO then any "regular" game. I have to say that personally it's not at the level I expected, but I'm rolling with it and hope to see more polish and a sweet game by launch.

[slowheal]

My "first day in impressions" were different. I aggree with all that you said. Those are things they will work on and continue to work on and none of it is abnormal in a game development enviornment. A reminder, Wow at launch was a "game shell" launch. Scholo wasn't even in the game yet. We grinded to 60 in two mo's and sat there waiting for content to be added, slowly over the next year and a half. When MC and BWL were finely added what guilds didn't complain about the horrible lag inside them? Matter of fact what guild still doesn't complain about lag inside bwl and there is no one else but 40 inside? Perfection in a game is unachievable, best you can do is get as close as you can. I don't fault your honesty here at all. What you said was all true. But behind all this I saw a system as you did in diplo that was refreshingly natural and intuitive. Newbie zone quests, the ones that worked haha, that will get you a set of armor and a weap and that will gently intruduce you to what is down the road. Standard fare for this genre of game.
Most players, I feel, are not looking for the greatest graphics ever in this genre, the most challanging and difficult quests ever written, nor a crafting system so complex you have to dedicate a one to one ratio in time of "tasks".
Eg. I don't really want to do everything and spend all the time it really takes to hand forge a sword.
I like the balance and hype... well few things ever achieve the prehype "visions of suger plums dancing in our heads" Darn PR folks!
I also trust this, Mr M has his professional dreams and desires and goals on the line here. He owns this title. He'll continue to steadily work it untill it's smooth, and then buy that " Mansion in Bel Aire" when he is done do the math haha @ $15/mo even if he only drew half of WoW's 6 mil subscrition base = 45 mil a mo minus expenses, Holy clam dig, Batman!
I'll be playing Vanguard at opening day, lord willing.
Peace