Planetside 2

Planetside was the only MMO's back in the day that held my attention for longer than a month, I have fond memories of that game and had a lot of fun.  Now I'm ecstatic that Planetside 2 is now out, and FREE above all things, that's just awesome!

But things have changed.  The game is 10x better than the original, but I am a different gamer now.  I can't play twitch FPS games anymore, it just doesn't work, so being on the front lines for a while and failing to kick ass leads me to re-finding my niche in this game.  I started out wanting mouse + keyboard to work, but my right hand is useless, I can't use it to control the mouse or sitting on the keyboard, both are way to painful after a minute or two.

So I had to resort back to my trusty gamepad, but aiming is now out the window, I can only get in the way on the front lines.  But wait I can be an engineer and repair things!  Yay!  After a while I got the gist of it, and even being on the TR side the confusing HUD color scheme is starting to make sense.  I'm now right behind the front lines keeping MAXs, vehicles, turrets and generators repaired as much as possible, and I'm doing pretty decent at level 10 with lots of certs unlocked in the engineer track.  If I want to get into the fight then I look for the closest turret, either on a vehicle or in a base or my own (engineers can deploy their own machine gun turret).

Now I'm looking to expand my usage and become a pilot.  Even though PS2 supports controllers, their sensitivity is way off and doesn't feel right, all the good pilots out their use keyboard + mouse, controllers just don't work.  And I've confirmed this; I broke out my Attack 3 flightstick but it just doesn't work well, hard to control and hard to maneuver, there's just too many buttons and movements that you need that can't be binded on a single joystick.

After that I went back to my gamepad, and tried several different key schemes to try and get good controls and I think I may have finally found something decent.  I mapped my left analogue to yaw L/R, Pitch U/D and right analogue to Roll L/R, Pitch U/D.  This has turned out to be pretty good, I've managed to skim surfaces and make pretty decent close maneuvers without hitting anything and I even managed to get my first few kills on my first round with this setup.  Fire and Afterburn mapped to R1 and R2, and Ascend and Descend to L1 and L2.  I can only get better with this, so it will just take some practice.

When making quick turns and small short adjustments, a combination of movements to both analogue sticks gives me a wide range of control.  I can move both of them and fire afterburners to get out of dangerous situations, and move the left individually to make small adjustments while adjusting roll with the right to put me on target.  It's still not as accurate as mouse+keyboard, but it's got potential to be decent enough to be competitive.

Oh, snap!

At least for those of us who pre-purchased the game, Guild Wars 2 is out.   Wait.... Guild Wars 2 is OUT!  Oh snap! :)

Over the weekend I played my primary character, Human Elementalist Salena Carne.  I got 100% in Queensdale, the starter area, and there's still plenty of things left to do.  The dungeon in Beatletun needs explorin.. the Shadow beast in the swamp needs killin... and the Demongrub pits needs a puzzle... -in... completin... hah! :)

And this is just one character, one area, I have plans for 2 more characters in Sylvari and Asura.  Even though all the maps do connect with each other it generally takes 2-3 map areas before you start overlapping content with other race areas.

But still, 100% complete in Queensdale... but 4% total completion... L.O.L.  Hell yeah. :)

And then there's WvW...

And there's also crafting, which I'm trying my best to get as much done as possible, I want to try and make some money once the game goes official tomorrow, but that might not working considering issues with the auction house.

This game is just freaking awesome, I'm only level 14 but I've already had several "oh, snap!" moments when player skill becomes the catalyst instead of skills, levels, or weapons.  Here are a couple I've experienced:


Skills Coming Together:

I was in a bind as I lagged behind the main group, 5 centaur warriors chased me and started beating me up, I managed to get 3 of them down, but the final 2 were wearing out my health.  I had already used my "Panic Button" (Arcane blast + Arcane Shield) and my health skill and they were all recharging.  Just about to die Arcane Blast became active again, so I hit it and then hit a weapon skill which made me dodge backwards quickly but leave a trail of fire.  With 2 health left, they ran towards me running over the fire, Just as they were about to attack they died in the fire.  That was an adrenalin booster :)

Mammoth Monster:

Catching the end of "Secrets of the Swamp" I witnessed this massive shadow boss easily 3x larger than any starting boss, it took me a good minute in order to reach him, but everyone finished taking him down right before I got there.

I'm going to have to come back here to finish up this incredible Dynamic Event.

Took a Wrong Turn:

I was walking along where a bunch of Treants were, I'd been here before they were all passive aggressive so I had no problem walking around.  Came across a big tree but as I was admiring it I noticed a treant doing something to the side of a nearby hill.  Curious I walked over.

Then all of a sudden a Dynamic Event popped up on my radar, and this unique Treant boss crawled out of the ground.  I was all alone and I wasnt even making a dent even with my most powerful attacks, and he was slow enough that I could dodge him and keep my distance while waiting for others to join.

Soon enough, another joined and then another, and we finally saw his life start to dwindle down.  The boss started using unique attacks that rooted our characters, we couldn't use our primary skill as he lumbered towards us to rain heavy attacks on us, but I was able to use my 2nd weapon skill to set the ground ablaze to kill the roots and get us free.

Took me and about 6 others about 10 minutes to down the boss, and I was greeted with some nice loot, as well as a stone that is supposed to bring a special reward in Lion's Keep.

Playstation Certified, doesn't mean you can play games

Guild Wars 2 BWE last weekend was awesome, only got disconnected once when they applied an update on Saturday.  Very smooth experience overall.  I didn't try out any PVP again, but I did hear about some issues with it during the weekend, but that they got it up and running by Sunday.  It should be pretty close to release, here's hoping for one more BWE to try out Sylvari and Asuran classes!

Diablo 3 is still pretty awesome, I've got 2 characters to Nightmare and the fun is only just beginning.  Starting to see unique and champion monsters with a wide variety of dangerous tactics and skills, its making adventuring dangerous!  Already died 6 times in Act 1. :)

I sold an old laptop that I wasn't using and used that money to finally buy a PSP 3000, I'm not sure why I waited so long, this is by far the best hand-held system I have ever used.  The DS was great, but it's tiny size was cumbersome and cramping.  The stylus mechanic only made my Carpal Tunnel worse so it was very hard to even play it.  The 3DS was pretty much the same, and the 3D gimmick made my eyes sore.  The PSP is awesome with many many games that I missed out and want to play!  Plus it serves extremely well as a multimedia device for music and movies for long trips!  Much better and bigger than my old Droid that the wife is now using.

Speaking of hand-helds, the Xperia PLAY is starting to get on my nerves.  More specifically the support for the device is non-existent and promises are being broken.  The hardware and the android experience are absolutely fine, I'm still amazed at the smoothness and responsiveness of the experience.  But if it weren't for the broken promises by Sony (bought Sony Ericsson) I could very well skip the next gen phones and be comfortable.

For one thing, the Playstation Suite/Shop does not exist in the US.  You can buy PS1 games everywhere else, except for US... this doesn't make ANY sense.  And they wonder why the phone isn't selling well?  Seriously?  So I bought an awesome gaming phone that can only play Android crap from the same company trying to market it as a Playstation Phone?  Not to mention the phone went free with 2 year contract a MONTH after I bought it...

So, the XP in the US is forced underground, doomed forever to live a life of ancient emulation.  Wait, what? Yes!!  Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Genesis, Master Drive, Playstation and even old MS-DOS games through 3rd party emulators.  Yeah this is aweseome!

But really, Sony, I was READY to throw money at you!  But you failed us.

My next phone will be a smartphone, I have a PSP and the XP will still be around, maybe on awesome custom firmwares by then.  Thinking of going to Samsung or HTC, I'm a little leary of Motorola since they were acquired by Google.  But I'm seriously looking at companies that have a good track record for updates and supporting phones, I will NEVER again buy a phone based on promises, if a phone doesn't currently have what I'm looking for, then I'm not interested.

Diablo 3 loves a Gamepad

Diablo 3 bought and installed!  And I must say it's an extremely well developed and polished game.  It's too bad network and server issues are still plaguing what is otherwise a fantastic game.  I've only been able to put in around 4-5 hours gametime, but I have been disconnected twice for server maintenance.  I'm not too concerned because I know things will get ironed out quickly.  But there is a small minority of people on the forums that haven't been able to play for more than 5 minutes, or not at all.  Unfortunately I believe these people to have network issues that made it impossible for Blizzard to be aware of.

I also believe that Diablo 3 uses an encrypted tunnel between the client and the server.  Any loss of packets will produce disconnections.  This helps prevent data mining and keeping the online environment pure, but considering that every person's network is just as unique as their computer, it was impossible for Blizzard to make sure that Diablo 3 would work on everything.  Of course, this is all speculation.

One thing that I'm testing if it's really the computer or the network that has issues playing the game.  I've installed the game on two computers now; my main computer; i7 Xeon 2.53 quad core / NVidia GTX 460, and my wife's computer; Core 2 Quad Q6600 / ATI 5770 and both computers work flawlessly.  The final test I have tonight is getting the game to work on an old laptop; Core 2 Duo T2700 2.16 / ATI FireGL V5200.  The video card is on the unsupported list but it should still be capable of running the game on everything low.

If the game works on all three machines with this variety of hardware, then the theory that the issues revolve around networks (Computers to ISP to Battle.net) instead of computer hardware seem to be valid.  I'll update when I've tested the old laptop.

But anyways, Diablo 3 loves a Gamepad.  Using the same script I used for Torchlight and binding the left stick to the dedicated move key in Diablo 3 works extremely well.  The only issue I had is that the dedicated move key overrides SHIFT to root your character.  I resolved this by having the L1 (SHIFT) button open a different set in XPadder where the left stick is unbound to any key, but the script still manages the ranged portion very well.

This whole setup makes maneuvering, combat, positioning, everything work so fluid that it's a wonder Blizzard didn't implement official gamepad support.  It's amazing how well this works.  It does take a little getting used to but not very long.  By the end of the beta content I was extremely content with the layout and functionality.

The whole point of getting it to work on the old laptop is to play on by 37" TV and surround sound from the comfort of my couch!

I'm only level 14 Wizard right now but the available skills already make it complex enough to make it a considerable decision about which skills / runes to use.  I died once, but it was because I got overconfident and the skill layout I chose was not the best for the impending situation.  Combat is getting fast and frenetic and it's just so much fun even exploring.  Maps and dungeons are regenerated every login, unlike D2 single-player.  But it makes sense considering not only dungeons and mobs are randomly generated but also certain events, like finding the black mushroom in the Cathedral level 1.

Anyways, loving the game, my only complaint is that I wish I could play it more :)

Setting up the Gamepad

Setting up the game pad for games like Guild Wars or Tera or even Mass Effect using XPadder was inherently easy, just took some time to make sure I had all the buttons necessary to use all mapped out.  But how does one setup a game pad for a game like Diablo 3 or Torchlight?  There are no mechanics to control your character via the keyboard, these are mouse driven games.

Well, with a little thinking outside the box and some help from some simple AutoIT script programming, I actually got it to work.  I tested this with Torchlight last night and I was able to level a Destroyer to level 10 and even continue leveling my 29 Rogue all with just the game pad, and NO hand cramps!

Here's the gist of the coding behind my AutoIT script:

1. Place mouse cursor at the center of your character (different from every game, but is offset of Y from the center of your screen, different for each resolution)
1. I call this the center of gravity, because your cursor always gravitates towards this center and you use the left stick to force the cursor away from the center of gravity.
2. Force of gravity determines how far away you can move your cursor away from center when the stick is pushed to the edge
3. Going to try and build some code to detect resolution and the game you are playing to auto-adjust values for the center of gravity.
2. Detect left stick movement beyond the dead zone, which is defined by raw values of stick movement and center.
1. Using a series of If/Then statements detect stick's X/Y as +/- from center (65536 / 2)
3. Define Force to gravity; essentially take the raw data from the stick movement and divide by a certain amount to keep the cursor within 100 points of center.
1. In order to account for ranged attacks I added a modifier that if SHIFT (button mapped by XPadder) is held down, the range increases (force decreases) to about 500 points from center allowing easier targeting and aiming at a distance.
2. Using SHIFT also keeps your character still so you automatically try to attack using ranged or use area skills when you press this modifier.
4. When the stick movement is detected and placed on the screen, the left mouse button is pressed every .2 seconds (done with XPadder)

The only issue I had while playing Torchlight is that I would pick up EVERYTHING that was dropped very easily by just moving around.  But this is an issue with Torchlight, the left mouse button controls movement and ALL interaction.  This is also an issue while in town as I would talk with people constantly, and sometimes would trigger going up a dungeon level just after I went down it because the mouse clicks are so fast.  The range trigger helped with these issues once I implemented it, but I had to remember to use it.

But really, I had such a blast playing Torchlight last night, I honestly feel that this should have been a viable control scheme integrated by the designer.  But even games like Diablo 3 which are cutting edge action RPGs completely ignore game pad integration!  It's mind boggling how well this works and how easily it was implemented (still needs some tweaking though).

Even better, is that Diablo 3 has a dedicated move key.  When pressed it will automatically move you towards your cursor without interacting with anything.  This is awesome because I can modify XPadder to use that key instead of mouse click and all my small issues with Torchlight will disappear!  D3 begs to have official controller support like this!

Twiddling my thumbs...

This year, 2012, Diablo 3 and Guild Wars 2.  Two games that, to me, are going to be an evolution of epic proportions.  Not revolution, though, and that's a good thing.

Diablo 3 sets out to bring about the next evolution of the aRPG genre, doing away with skill trees and trying to remove the ability of creating a "broken" character.

I played Diablo 2 and it's expansion since it was released, but I only leveled ONE character past 90, EVER.  I re-created more characters than I can possibly count simply because I came to a point during the came (sometime during act 2 or act 3) in which the skills I had leveled were no longer working and I kept dying.  Playing a game like Diablo 2 and having to build your character a certain way (read: not MY way) in order to play the late-game is not fun.

Diablo 3 changes this, in that it makes ALL skills viable throughout the entire game.  The damage of your skills are based on the weapon you are carrying.  So, if I am a wizard carrying a two-handed greatsword, my skills will do a lot of damage but with slow attack rate, and I won't be able to use an off-hand orb.  Or I can have a knife and be a fast caster with an off-hand orb, or I can find (or craft) an awesome wand and just devastate everything.  I'm not limited to only using wands and staves!

Also, attributes are auto-assigned when you level.  This has caused quite a stir in the community, but again this prevents players from creating broken characters.  Plus, anyone can modify these stats by using gear that adds to them, and using gems in crafting to beef up certain stats.

Blizzard seems to have done an amazing job making sure that everyone who plays will have a viable base character with which to customize via skill-set, gear, crafting, gems and anything else we haven't seen yet.  Plus every class gets more than 100 skills that all work with your character and wont get obsolete in late game, and you can outfit your character with the skills that work well with your play style, up to 6 skills assigned at any given time.

So, if I get my wizard to level 30 and I find that my current skills and tactics aren't working on mobs anymore do I need to re-roll?  NO!  Just search through the myriad of skills for other working combinations, find better gear, and upgrade the artisans for better crafted gear!

Guild Wars 2 sets to bring about the next evolution of MMO's, doing away with the standard quest structure, "skill cancer" bars, and in general players competing against players for EVERYTHING.  Need to go and "kill 10 rats" but that other player doing the same quest killed the last one in the area and now you have to wait for another rat to spawn?  No, not fun.  Player competition should only be in PVP, PVE should be player cooperation!

I think the only time that I had to talk to an NPC quest give was during the tutorial area, since then I just roamed around and events would pop up in my hud and I would stop by and help out!

I also like how there is very little hand holding when it comes to events:  I remember my first event in the human starter world, it was on a farm and I could help the farmer by doing many things:

-Water crops
-Weed out worms
-Feed cattle

To weed out worms you had to find their burrows and stomp on them to get them to come out, defeat them and move on.  To water crops you had to FIND buckets of water and pour them on the crops.  To feed the cattle you had to FIND some feed and bring it to the cattle.

All this was done WITHOUT hand-holding markers on maps, exclamation points over objects, or tooltips in the event description or hud.  Seriously it actually took me several minutes to find the crops to water with the bucket I was carrying!  I like that kind of difficulty, the kind that actually rewards players for thinking it through or discovering it for yourself.  Also, this is when I noticed that there aren't any enemy dots on the map with easy to read aggro circles.  When you target an enemy; if an enemy is orange he is docile, if an enemy is red he will aggro you if you get too close, but you don't really know how close is too close.

After helping the farmer for a while, the mother worm shows up and she's huge!  That's when the dynamic event popped up and everyone around joined the battle to take down the worm without having to group up, everyone got experience and loot. When we all finally felled the beast the event was cleared.  And just when I was thinking "where do I go now?", I walk down the road a bit and another event pops up in my hud, a different challenge with different goals.

This has encouraged me to discover, to walk off the beaten path, and explore the map even beyond what the map obviously shows.  Explorers are rewarded in this game, and it's so much fun!  If you walk the beaten path you still get events, but there's just so much more if you just take the time to explore off the road.

I better stop now, I could go on forever.  2012 is a year for evolution, the game mechanics of ye' old are dead, it's the start of a new era where fun and cooperation without needless mechanics to get in the way are here!

Guild Wars 2 - A single player game with a bunch of other people

Guild Wars 2... wow, where do I start?  First off, this is an AMAZING game, second, it's not quite without faults, but most of them are due to beta status and should hopefully be resolved before launch (whenever that is).

Issues during beta:

-Hundreds of thousands of players joined up and server/login issues were abound during the first 8 or so hours, and there were some errors that even prevented people from playing the game at all during the beta weekend.
-Lots of people in the starting areas created a lot of queues into the area, but the overflow worked so no one was stuck not being able to play.  But it did create issues with people trying to play together and group up.
-Along with game server issues, the forums went down several times throughout the weekend but was generally working well and was a good source for people with issues.

I leveled a human Elementalist to level 13 throughout the beta and I was able to enjoy many of the events and story quests.  Towards the end I was able to craft some awesome new armors for my character and even visit other starter areas (Norn and Char) to do their events as well.  The reason why I joined up with other starter areas was that the content for my level was pretty difficult because there wasn't that many people in those areas, but more on that later, here are my views on the main points of Guild Wars 2 so far:

- Combat

Bottom line: Deep and enjoyable.  I never got tired leveling all my weapon's skills, nor which skill set I should use for the coming battle.  All skills have their purpose in combat and I used all of them pretty frequently.

In addition to all the weapon skills (5 possible skills) there were 1+4+1 class skill slots that unlocked as I leveled (1 slot for your healing skill (already unlocked), 4 for other skills, and 1 for your elite skill).  I got 2 slots and you use skill points to unlock the skills and you get skill points by doing the skill point challenges scattered across the map.  By the time I was done I unlocked 3 skills and a new healing skill.  There are also skill combos that I have yet to figure out how to use.

Movement is paramount in GW2, I found myself circle strafing foes, dodging, jumping over obstacles to get out of the way of any attacks.  Most enemies have a large cone of attack so even if you think you are out of the way, you still get hit (maybe caused by lag).  Using skills that hindered or slowed enemies added strategy to the mix along with aoe skills and luring enemies into the aoe field worked well.

- Controls

Bottom Line: Keyboard/Mouse movement and combat works great for Right handed people.  Since I am left handed and can't really use my right hand I had to find an alternative.  Gamepad works well for me, and using XPadder it was actually and advantageous setup.

Using a PS2 gamepad: left stick to arrow keys, right stick to camera direction, buttons to skills and looting, combat and journeying became a blast and extremely comfortable.  With combat, skill 1 is always auto-attack, and if you press it it will immediately attack your closest foe within range.  This made targeting extremely easy and I very rarely had issues with needing to target single foes like bosses.

I was able to map the right to camera movements by using the push-right-stick button map to toggle right-click on/off.  And by leaving the mouse cursor about an inch above my character's head before activating it, this made AoE targeting skills easy to target via using the camera stick.

Gamepad works extremely well, at least AS WELL as keyboard/mouse for combat so long as you set it up right and have a Playstation controller. Can't really say about Xbox controllers or anything else.  I am looking forward to setting up my projector and sitting back on the couch playing GW2 in the future :)

- Questing

Bottom line: FUN!

Every character does have a main quest that's designed around the choices you made during character creation and this quest line can be done at any time but does have a level recommendation next next to the quest before you go.

You get to those levels by doing events (group area missions), these events are familiar to anyone who's played Warhammer, but there are a LOT more of them and are a LOT more fun to play!  Some of them even get complex; for example you start off feeding some cows and watering plants, but by the end you wind up fighting a giant worm boss.  You get quest rewards and a medallion (bronze, silver, gold) based on your overall involvement within the event.  There's also points of interest and waypoints scattered across the map that you gain experience from if you find them.

A few issues:

-It got a little confusing as sometimes two events might be close enough to be triggered simultaneously but you might not know which one you are doing.
-Sometimes you might get a reward for the event, but he event is not over, there could be more sections to the event.
-When venturing into obviously more difficult events, I would immediately get killed and then leave to find something else only to get quest rewards (sometimes gold-level) several minutes later when I'm no where near it.

- Crafting

Bottom line: FUN!

While getting all the skills in my final weapon of the beta (staff), I farmed for ingredients for my crafting class (cloth), and I was able to get new customized armor for my toon.  Crafting is simple, fun and rewards testing.

I could have crafting the basic tunic that it gave me but after getting the required elements I went to the discovery pane, put in both parts of the tunic, and an insignia (there's also an additional optional slot for something else) and the game let me know that there is definitely a recipe behind this combination of elements and the difficulty of crafting it, pressed the craft button and viola!  I had a new (and very useful) tunic with armor art that was NOT found anywhere else either buying or looting!  Plus it saved the recipe that I discovered in my main recipe list for easy crafting next time if I wanted to.

There is a little bit of hand holding, but overall it's very enjoyable and rewarding after quite a bit of farming for a day.

- Conclusion

Guild Wars 2 is awesome.  Guild Wars 2 is AWESOME!

I can definitely see myself playing this game for years just like GW1, and with no subscription fee that's just icing on the cake.  They could have easily applied a subscription fee and it still would have become immensely popular than anything else.  And working extremely well with a gamepad is a huge plus.  This game is everything I needed and wanted it to be and more.  And it's just the BETA!

Next beta weekend, I am going to only level one class, and I think it will be a Mesmer, hopefully Asuran or Sylvari.

Tera and Diablo 3 beta update

While I was able to get my gamepad working great in Tera, there are a few problems I have with the game and it will definitely not be a purchase for me, but I might play when it goes F2P.

1.  Magical and Archery classes are boring, it's just a spam fest, same skills over and over again.  I know I only experienced early content, but through 13 levels as a sorcerer I never had to change my tactics.

2.  Items and loot are boring, through 8 playthroughs of the first 10 levels content I never found anything new, the same boring ring of only one kind, the same weapons with extremely minor and bland differences, even 3 names for weapons found in different locations but no statistical differences at all, same with armor.

3.  Dual wielding classes are partly fun for me when I get to mix and match different blades with different statistical properties in each hand, not so here.  Weapons for the dual wielding class come in pairs and are just as bland as identical as the next piece you will find, so no mix and matching.

On the positive, combat is still fun but only if I play the close combat classes, especially the dual wielding class. But when it comes to Tera, fun combat is the ONLY good point on the game, everything else is as bland and boring as possible.

The Diablo 3 servers were finally up for a good deal of time on Sunday, and it enabled me to really get through a lot of the beta content.  I played 4 of the 5 classes and I found something to enjoy out of all of them, the wizard being my favorite.  Plowing through enemies, even at the lower levels were a blast.

Blizzard certainly hasn't disappointed with looting, it's always fun to keep searching for better gear, and with the new artisans it's much more fun to upgrade him and get better equipment made.

Couple of things to mention:

1.  No easily visible damage stats.  They included even a detail list box that shows all of your attributes from magic find to poison defense, but no damage stats.  It was very difficult as a wizard to try and determine the best skills.

But after a while I sort of got used to not really knowing, Blizzard has designed this game to NOT be about designing the max of the maxes possible maximum stats, but rather about kills per second.  If you find yourself not being able to plow through large groups of enemies, then your not using the right skills, or better yet you aren't using the right skill rune.

Very few skills in the game work by themselves, but combinations of skills work wonderfully.  And there is no right or wrong combination, it's all about your personal style.

2.  Attacks are class specific, not weapon specific.  So if you are a wizard, your basic attack will be shooting arcane bolts... even if you have a sword, or bow or anything else equipped.  The only thing I've found that is taken from the weapon you carry is attack speed.  Once discovering this it was easy to pretty much just equip the most powerful weapon I could find; whether it be a magic dagger or a crossbow and I would still keep the same attacks but with better damage.

I was on the fence for this for a while, but after playing through it I found out that Blizzard designed it very well and it WORKS.  For some classes if you wait for the appropriate weapon, you could be making the game exponentially more difficult.  I found this out during my first play-through as a wizard, I kept trying to find a wand because the enemies were getting harder but then I succumb to a pretty powerful dagger only to find that I didn't get replace my primary attack but rather enhanced it completely.  And with all classes' primary attack being MP free, it felt too easy.

But I found out quickly that it's NOT too easy.  Movement and utilizing a good variety of skills is way more important here than it is in D3.  By the time the beta content was done I had to primary skills to Mouse 1 and Mouse 2 as well as 2 secondary skill slots (2 more will open up later in the game) and I was using them a lot.  I can see a great deal of tactics later in the game needed to find the right combination of skills and runes for your play style.

Yes, the first playable area in D3 was, overall, pretty easy, but let's face it, when the beta of D2 came out, it was also pretty easy and people were QQing all over the place of how easy D2 will be.  Well, D2 turned out not to be such a pushover (after the initial content) afterall, and I'm sure Blizzard has some nice surprises up it's sleeve for D3 that we haven't the faintest clue about.

It's official, D3 is day-one purchase for me!

Wonderful weekend of gaming here, Tera Beta AND Diablo 3 beta!!!

After getting XPadder and creating a template for Tera, I got into the beta and saw that Tera's controller config AND XPadder's config were vying for the same buttons.  It took several hours, but I found a way to disable Tera's controller and it is working wonderfully with XPadder!!  Tera really is a joy to play with a controller, at least the warrior is.  Going to try magic/bow characters soon as that will require actual aiming, but the controller works extremely well and very enjoyable.  Only issue is accepting/turning in quests, I have to move the mouse cursor with the right stick over the dialog box buttons in order to click them, but it's a minor annoyance as everything else works better than expected.

Diablo 3 beta, FINALLY.  Only through 6 levels so far in the beta content as a Wizard and I'm enjoying every minute of it.  I don't enjoy rpg games where you can use ALL of your skills in several layers of skill bars, I love the tactical feeling of many skills but having to choose a few between them like Guild Wars.

Couple things I am not liking though;

1.  No stat assigning, can't assign the stats you get every level yourself.
2.  Could not find a way to determine magic damage in my skills, I know you can turn it on but not sure where.
3.  Skills and runes unlock automatically as you level up, takes the joy out of hunting for your needed runes, even though there are only 5.  I would have liked to see more runes and runes specific to each character, and then having to hunt for them in the wild.

Tera beta impressions and Guild Wars 2

Guild Wars 2 Pre-purchase became available today, with the way Guild Wars 1 is GW2 is an instant purchase for me.  Not sure when the next beta weekend is, but I can only hope it's not too far away!

I managed to sneak away a few hours last weekend to play the Tera US beta and I was overall slightly impressed.  Unfortunately they didn't really innovate important mechanics; questing, travelling, skills, talking, running, jumping, it all feels strangely familiar and boring.

However, it's Tera's combat that really shines.  There is no targeting, basically you swing your weapon and if an enemy is within the your hit box, the enemy gets hit.  It really was a joy to romp through large groups of enemies swinging, slicing and dicing my dual-sword-wielding warrior.  I do believe that this is the first mmo where non-magical classes are more enjoyable to play for me.

During the beta I rolled a Warrior (dual-wielder tank), Slayer (BAS tank), Sorceress, and a Priest.  The Sorceress and Priest felt very limited at first as I was just spamming the same spell over and over again for the first several levels, however the Warrior classes were immediately fun and engaging.

The game is very pretty, all the character toons are hawt, with armors for both sexes that really dont make any sense as far as protection is concerned, but rather designed specifically to please the visual senses.  This doesn't really matter to me, I enjoy looking at a fine female character during my travels in an mmo, that's just me.  And, to be honest, that's a pretty big part of an mmo's enjoy ability for me.

Howevery, all of Tera's other mechanics feel very stripped, basic and boring.  I leveled up my Warrior the farthest to level 13 and while I learned many skills I only learned 2 new skills, all the other skills were updating my already learned skills to the next level.  Questing is very primitive, go here kill that, and even some delivering or receiving quests felt very thrown together as a great many of them were delivering and receiving merely a few feet away from the quest character right next to him, really?  If it weren't for Tera's great combat, I would have turned it off way before the beta weekend was up.

What will make or break Tera for me, is the controls.  The game mechanics scream for a gamepad, and the game works extremely well with an Xbox controller, however that's the ONLY controller that works with Tera.  My PS2 controller hooked up via USB was instantly recognized by Tera and a helpful UI popped up with a button layout and what skill each button was mapped to, however the buttons were all switched around, the right stick for camera controls was switched as well (Y axis controlled X, and vice versa), and the left stick didn't work so I couldn't even move around.

I will be visiting this game every beta weekend I can get to to see how things have changed, but this will definitely NOT be a purchase unless it goes cheap or F2P much later after release.  Time will tell.