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 - This game is NOT ready for prime time...As beautiful and innovative as this game is, its not ready for prime time, and you should save yourself a tremendous amount of heartburn by waiting a few months until it is. As of this writing (6/6/2008), these are the problems being experience by myself and the 80+ members of my guild on a regular bases. 1) People can't log into the game at all after the patch (a week ago). They try to play the game, and it just goes to a black screen. Some have used the Windows task manager as a work around to get logged in, but the game is unstable afterwards. FunCom has made no effort to provide a solution, they simply say they are monitoring the reports. There are people who have everything from the minimum configured PC, the the "uber" PCs. 2) Its an instancing game ... that is, x number of people play in a zone, when there's too many, a new instance of the zone is created and players are put there. This approach works only if players can change instances to meet up with friends. Right now, changing instances is broken. 3) For the PvP environments, there are absolutely zero mechanics to deter level 80's from hunting down and harassing level 20s. And because so much is broken at the moment, that's all the 80's have to fill their time with. 4) Zones/Instances just stop responding, and there's nothing you can do but exit the game. Before we could change instances, but since they don't allow that anymore, you have to quit the client. 5) Group mechanics are totally broken. Group members are randomly dropped, or players are not able to see they are in a group when in fact they are. Sometimes they is a simple log-out and back in. But sometimes you have to completely shut down your PC and do a cold boot. 6) The Guild City mechanics don't work, or are turned off by FunCom. The players don't know which because the Developers won't tell us. 7) The crafting system is broken. If you make a crafted item and fit it with a socket, it doesn't match the data structure used by the rest of the inventory system ... so every time you mouse over it, or anything that compares itself to it, the game crashes. 8) Harvesting of resources is broken. Resources are "tier" based and you are required to complete the gathering of one tier before moving to the other ... but the items needed don't spawn the in the game. 9) They have a volunteer GM corps that handles all the petitions for problems in the game. But this corps is under trained, over-worked, and pack a huge attitude towards the players. It can take days to get get a response from a GM to your petition. But the average seems to be between 12 and 16 hours. There are some GMs that are stellar, but the vast majority are rude, short, and usually can't help you with your problem because they don't have the privilages needed. But rather than escalating your petition, they clear it and you have to start all over. If you are offline when they get to your petition, too bad, they clear it anyway and send you a message saying, "Sorry we missed you." 10) This game takes you from level 1 to level 80 fairly rapidly. Even legitimately people can get to 80 in about 3 weeks. This is fine, because the game is about the "end game" not the level grind. The problem is, there's very little content for the 55+ range. What content there is, is so over camped its simply an exercise in frustration to try and get quests done. If their instancing system worked, that would be a partial solution, but it doesn't. There needs to be much more content in the 55+ levels. 11) Quests are broken. You can't complete them, or if you do them with a group, you have to reset the instance and do it over for every member of your party. 12) Bugs in buffs and debuffs that allow exploiters to just grief people while remaining immune. They either stack far beyond what they are supposed to, don't expire when they should ... allowing the player to add another. Or, in the case of a debuff, they won't expire when they are supposed to and you have to log out and back in to clear them. 13) The trading system (Auction House) does work, but its so 1970s by design the Developers should be ashamed. Its not really an auction house, its just a system where you post an item and set a price. It always breaks items you put up for sale ... because if they don't sell and you decide to vendor them instead ... they won't show up in your list of items to sell at at the vendor once they've been listed on the trader. 14) The vendor system that looks like it was a complete "after thought" ... we have a better vendor system in MMO's 12 years ago. Its simply a list of everything in your inventory (except equipped gear) presented in a list. If you accidentally sell the wrong thing, you can "undo". But once you close the vendor, the undo goes away, there is no "oh crap" and going back and getting it. Also, there's no what to flag an item as a "no sell" item, and they all use very common icons ... so you're constantly sorting through your inventory for what you want to sell and what you don't. 15) There is a bug where if a zone crashes, or you are apprenticed when you level ... the next level's (or even the current level's) total experience requirement doubles or triples. And there is currently no fix, and the GM's just tell you to gut it out, because again, they don't have the authority or privileges to fix it. In the two years that I've had this computer, I'd never seen a blue screen on it. Sure, I'd seen crashes, but I'd never seen a blue screen. I see at least one a day while playing this game. As does viturally everyone else in my guild. I, like many others, had great hopes for this game, and still do. But right at this moment in time (again 6/6/2008) the game is nothing more than a broken version of "Guild Wars" on steroids. And unfortunately, we get little from FunCom except the acknowledgement that there are problems in two sentences, and then paragraphs of what they are going to do for us in the future. So my recommendation to my friends here; Wait for the future before you buy this game. Stay in touch with someone in the game who you can trust, and when they say its actually ready, get it it. If it weren't so broken, it is definately worth playing. Rating:  - Entertaining game but still feels like you're playing a Beta versionI've had this game for a couple weeks now and I've played it fairly regularly during that time (70+ hrs. accrued), so here are my thoughts on it: The Pros: This game is very entertaining. The graphics are very good. Engrossing storyline. The Cons: 1. Still very much a work in progress with system issues. At the time of this writing, there are still major problems with the game. (Ex. Gemcutter profession causing crashing to the desktop.) While FunCom is working to address these, these should've been handled prior to release. When you first install, expect to spend literally hours or days (depending on your connection speed) to download the updates to fix them. 2. Playability issues - I've only had experience with the Necromancer class, so I can only report on that (as well as general issues): A. Resource Gathering - At level 20, you become able to gather resources, but if it comes from anything other than fallen enemies, it comes from a resource node. These nodes have terrible recharge rates (ex. I went to mine Silver and needed to wait for the node to recharge. I waited an entire 45 minutes and the node was at less than 30% capacity after that). Expect to spend tons of time waiting for resources. B. Boss/Quest Item spawning - Like resource nodes, these have terrible spawn rates. Also, be wary of other players present, because if you need to kill X, the game only recognizes the first player (unless you are in a group) as to damage X as the "killer" of X. Ex. People A & B need to kill monster Y. B hits first for 1% and then gets slain by Y. A finishes it off. B gets the credits (and spoils) where A gets nothing and will need to wait for Y to spawn again. C. Unreasonable targetting - As a Necromancer, one gets to summon undead minions to help you (obviously). Well, once you send your minions to attack, the adversary immediately tracks and attacks you, and ignores your minions. Why? I don't understand this aspect. I've sent various minions to attack at extreme range, and then I go around a corner to hide, and yet, I am still targetted. Why? The monsters have no way of seeing me or detecting me. (There are skills that reduce the auto-targetting, but these generally are worthless (1% reduction of being attacked automatically = useless in my book).) I guess I'm expecting more of a realistic approach (like in Guild Wars), where one's minions are treated as valid targets for attack just like everyone else. 3. Very poor documentation - A lot of aspects of this game are not covered or are just plain wrong in the manual. Ex. "Spells can be acquired from merchants" - no, they are acquired by levelling up or spending points for feats which grant spells. There are no skill/spell merchants (as in Guild Wars). Ex. Item distribution in groups. If an item is acquired by a group a window pops up showing the item with buttons of "Need" and "Greed". Nowhere in the manual is this discussed. So, one is often left wondering what the heck to do. (Yes, you can go online and check various forums to get the necessary info., but documentation should cover basics and be accurate). 4. Ambiguous quests - This is mainly the resource tree quests. You will be given quests like "Gather Tin". Unfortunately, it doesn't tell you where to get tin. Only through trial and error (or looking at the online forums) you find out that it comes from a copper resource node, and hope that while you're collecting copper, you'll get a tin drop. General Overall feeling: This game is neat and the storyline is intriguing, but feels like that I'm playing a beta version of the game. While I fully believe that FunCom will address all the issues (system and playability alike), these shouldn't have even arisen in a "live" version. (Especially with a subscription-based model.) The various extras that came with the Collector's edition are nice; I especially liked the soundtrack. Rating:  - Amazon has these in stock.!!!I ordered this 4 days ago hoping maybe they had them, and the next thing i know i get a shipped notice from amazon. W00t!! Great game and a great collectors edition. Rating: - Great gameThis is the most awesome game I have ever seen in a long time. I have played many MMO's from Ultima Online, Everquest, to World of Warcraft. This is the BEST. The graphics are rich, the gameplay is awesome and for a new game it is just awesome. I am disappointed with the level of service I received from Amazon.com though. I never got the early play key, when i received the game I was never able to get the early purchase bonus item "the amazon bow". I even received an e-mail from amazon.com that they would not be able to fill my order as they did not have enough in stock. When I complained, "A miracle" I got a copy. Hmmm..fishy. Rating:  - Amazon, you're full of it!I preordered this in January. When May came around it was kicked out because they failed to send me any warning that it was out of stock. I was able to get on the early access and was happy as could be until Amazon screwed everything up and failed to get me the collector's edition. Now its in stock after I had to shell out some cash to Gamestop for the regular version of the game. You're unbelievable Amazon! How many emails did you send me, all of which said your not getting any copies. WTF! Well I learned my lesson. I'll never preorder or trust Amazon again.
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