Suvega picked up two copies on Friday, and we spent the weekend leveling his assassin and my bear shaman.

These are my initial thoughts...

The Good
- The game does hybrid classes justice (i.e. heals+dps) -- the bear shaman class is one of the most enjoyable hybrids I've played. I really enjoy hybrid classes but hate having only one "workable" role in the endgame. Bear shamans are forced to melee in order to effectively heal, which I think is a great class mechanic.
- Quests are interesting -- while there are some collection quests they pretty much drop for everyone in the party. The quest icons on the maps is also a great touch.
- Combat system is somewhat difficult to pick up, but I like it that way. Too many games are "too easy" -- I love the combo system. However, I have to admit that not allowing you to 'queue up' your next swing properly and being quite finicky about the timing of your combo swings can be annoying - particularly in PvP
- Gathering professions can be learned by all - 1 crafting profession per character. This ensures an adequate supply of mats -- or just go collect them yourself.

The Bad
- UI definitely needs work. Sucks majorly, non-intuitive. I couldn't even FIND my spells until I was level 15 -- all I could see were my combos and I spent much time wiping due to not having many heals.
- Many quests/zones are bugged. Suvega has fallen through the world on more than 1 occasion. Several quests are unable to complete because of bugs. Suvega's character has bugged out and not been able to attack things for some time.
- Trade/auctionhouse is disabled due to bugs.
- Grouping UI sucks, as does the broken /follow and other various tidbits like "summon to instance" being bugged. You can't see what instance you're in. Party healthbars are teeny tiny in the corner of your screen. Party minimap dots are gray colored and hard to identify.
- Resources: the forums are either queued FOREVER or just bugged. They won't let me in. The few wiki's and non-official forums I found have little to no information. With the number of bugs, it would be nice to know of a "known issues" list so you can avoid the buggy areas. Skills (feats) and ability tooltips are vague, so it's hard to make correct decisions on what you should be using. The /petition report feature has a queue that spans for miles and is very hard to figure out how to use.
- Speaking of resources... The [OOC] chat is filled with what's worse than 14 year old barrens chatters -- they are now 18 year old foul mouthed college fratboys who relish in the fact that they can get away with telling you to suck their **** when you're asking for help. When they're not swearing, they're bragging about their graphics cards and having heated WoW vs AoC discussions.
- The level 35-40 zones are nonexistant. We talked to a couple level 80's and were told just to grind it out. We looked up a progression map online and found NO zones tailored for 35-40. While levels 1-35 are FULL of quests and quests and quests, you are literally dumped in the middle of nowhere with nothing to do at level 35.



As for "tits and wenches" -- there are boobs. And lots of them. IMO, the feel I get from the shirtless boob appearances is that it was thrown in as a "added bonus" to the horny male gamer crowd, and as an afterthought they tried to make sure that it was ALMOST tastefully done to appease the significant others and/or female gamers. I get a laugh out of it at the very least -- one of my quests for my female character was to sleep with a drunk (wasn't shown -- just a fade to black) and the dialogue between them afterwards was humorous. The character models can be tweaked to have a bigger/smaller bust size but even at the smallest size your character will end up looking like breast implant barbie.

Your character loses nothing nor gains anything stat-wise from being female -- for the lore, male NPCs will flirt with females (sometimes female NPCs too) and female NPCs will flirt with males. There's some random flashing of breasts in some quests, but in places where it would logically be due to lore (i.e. naked girls flee'ing from a harem, etc). You'll wonder why some of the NPCs don't topple over due to the weight of the two ginormous basketballs adhered to their chest, but if you have a sense of humor you'll realize the only reason why they're put there is to reel in the lonely male gamer crowd -- as a girl, get a good laugh at how obvious it is and, if it works, how pathetic the poor lonely male gamers are. I'm not poking fun at any of the guys here -- as long as you didn't buy the game specifically for digi-boobs. ;)



All in all, my impression is that is a VERY buggy game with big issues and could've used a much longer "polishing" phase. As a software tester myself, I'm abhorred at the vast number of in-game issues. If these issues were resolved or are resolved in a timely manner, then my opinion will improve. As of now, it's a intriguing combat system thrown into a rushed-to-production game that hasn't been tested properly. I may or may not stick with it (along with WoW) depending on how well they execute their fixes.

I realize WoW wasn't perfect at first release either, but it's the AMOUNT of bugs in the FIRST NEWBIE ZONE ALONE that astonished me, and the bugs haven't tapered off since leaving that zone either. There's literally bugs EVERYWHERE.


Suvega and I are on Tyranny server -- named Suvega and Vyndree respectively.