My First Impressions - New as of R12

My first impressions - new player, longtime gamer.

This will be in list format as i come up with the impressions.

- didn't realize for the first couple minutes that you had to speak to the npc's as if you are chatting. while it can get a little cumbersome it is so awesome to have to do this again, like in zork, and ultima, where i honestly have my fondest gaming memories. - thanks!

- so i stole everything in the house that wasn't on fire, and up on the wall on that shelf. figured, that or the fire/hoard would get it. better if i do.

- the switch in the tutorial.. on the other side. hm... look! stairs! WEEE!

- the guy beat me past the bridge!? did he have a secret passage, cause i never opened the gate...shoulda stabbed 'em for that.

- went to the neat standing stone monolith thing. that scaled down Stonehenge. (love it). clicked it.

- then i got a bit confused. looked around and started figuring stuff out - let me take a second to thank you folks for not dumbing things down. us gamers are not idiots. we do not need an easy button. we play this type of game because we LIKE the complexities. we might moan and whine FOR an easy button sometimes..but a helpful slap on the wrist and a point in the right direction is all we really need in response. - well done!

- so i went afk for a bit just looking around at other stuff on the forums..to get acquainted.. all of a sudden people with cloaks started popping up.. friends of mine, it turned out. they took me on a really neat tour of the place.

- so I'm in kingsport. and i see what looks to be a stage with seating. the very FIRST thing i always do when i see these things out in the wild.. i try to sit. i actually went "OMGWTFBBQASDLFKJASDFLKJHASDFLKJASDF!!!!!" kazyn can attest to that, we were on team speak together and he couldn't stop laughing... every single MMO game I've ever played, I've always BEGGED for the ability to sit on darned near anything. seems so basic and innocuous..but for some reason that level of interactivity in the environment means a lot to me, as a gamer. *contented sigh* i think i may have found my home....

- so in front of the podium i see this neat little thing with vacuum tubes.. i double-click on it and to my amazement i hear the king of pop... a streaming in-game radio station...LIVE!? i take a few breaths before i forget..and realize something - sound isn't that great. see, i have a razer tiamat 7.1 surround sound headset and i hear only the rear left and rear right channels.. this was the very first point where i lost my immersion. - yes, it is new, yes it is player driven/created.. yes, this is awesome. and yes, it will be fixed. i SQUEEed.. a grown man shouldn't do that, but i will now bow my head in shame. i SQUEEed at this.

- next, i find myself in another town. long load times (4core i7, dual nvidia 680gtx, 16gb ram) - i had clicked on a ship. really cool place. if this is the length of the worst load times - I'd be OK with that... so i am wandering around, and i see these things on the sides of the buildings. they can only be power sources... i can double-click on them and turn them on and off. i figure they'll get fixed later to where only the owner can do so, or maybe on a quest line to turn off "security measures"

- but that got me thinking. looking up at the aqueducts, i started wondering if there will be things you can do on those, to sneak into places for intrigue purposes, kind of like the character Tavi does in Jim Butcher's fury series, using tools to sneak into the homes etc. - something to think about.

- so i find myself in an open area in the town. i see of all things the titan of love. - side-note: will she come to life at some point? *grin*

- i dual my buddy who's level 8ish.. i just have my sword and a rusty sword i got off the first mob i killed.. took him down to 75% health. not bad.. he hit me once and i died..i was expecting it. then i saw this.



OK, i realize that the glowing orb is...i guess you could consider it a soul.. but the neck/head should not have been there. there were a lot of npc's there, and they all had this. - i spoke to a guildie, and they said they too see floating swords, when they do pvp - i didn't see that as we were dueling in a pve area.

- that reminded me to look at my toon's head once i resurrected. i was wearing the neat top hat. but no wig underneath, as if i was as bald as the image above. - almost every game has this, even skyrim has it if you don't have the "wigs of skyrim" mod from nexusmods, to add the hair. just a pet peeve of mine, really..

- finally, back in kingsport.. and i take a look at that oracle thing with the eyeballs on the building. walking around it i look at the back wall, and see what looks to be textures from the neat-o face thing on the inside popping out. - haven't checked yet, if this is occurring at other installations of that building. here's another screenshot:



i had gone inside, and interacted with it moments before walking around it.

- and then i decided to post here..getting a touch late tonight.


my overall impressions being my first time in-game during R12.. VERY positive, and VERY happy to be here. - the whole time writing this, I've been listening to the soundtrack while in kingsport. enjoying it. will there be a way after release to purchase the digital soundtrack, maybe from amazon music, so i can keep it in my "cloud" there?

 

thanks for fixing the radio. knew you would! it sounds GREAT now.

 

and Thank you for posting your wonderful thoughts so far and just think this is only the beginning, so much more will be interactive each release.
We will get our gaming playground to rpg, craft, fish, kill or not, or just have a picnic under moonlight and the stars.