AoC First Impressions

[Thanory]

OK, my wife and I have rolled through 17 levels on Demonologist and Dark Templar. All the quest NPC's make you run through dialog so there is no click click quest accepted. Its more like click click click click click quest accepted. You also have a separate bag section for quest items. There is also one for resources which I assume is for gathering crafting mats. Have not gotten that far yet.

My wife is playing the Demonologist and so far spells are fairly simple. She does have a demon but unlike WoW the demon holds 0 aggro. Mobs know the demon is yours so its your butt they come after. She does have an electrical spell that roots the mobs. That has worked out very nice. Spell casting is awesome looking so far.

I have been digging this Dark Templar. Right now it seems the class is best suited for pulling multiple mobs instead of single pulls. I can hit a combo that leeches a percentage of health back to me from the damage I do. After that I can start sweeping attacks with my different combo's. Also I have a self buff that has a chance to inflict damage to anyone attacking me. That damage does also help my health leeching.

From what I have seen from the melee classes they all use the same basic combo system. So to use Sweep 1 you have to click Sweep then Upper Right attack. So far from my experience they are just press ability the attack modifier. I am sure more advanced combos are to come were you could have any number of abilities and modifiers to click. Also adjusting your attacks or what abilities you are going to use because of the mobs shield abilities is cool. You can actually tell were a mob is more vulnerable or heavily defended. That defiantly keeps you out of the mindset of clicking 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and so on to just go through your skills.

Casters will have combos to deal with as well from what I have read. There is a really cool video Funcom released called Spell Weaving. It is a pre-fight buff that will probably only be used for boss fights or raid situations. It was a 4 minute cast (Give or Take) were the caster was having to click several different buttons to keep the spell going. I will have to find the video later since our web filters block everything. But they made a statement that if the caster messes up he may die and have to start the spell over.

Here is something I found useful and cool. The Trader, an NPC who is the Bank, AH, and Mailbox all in one. That's right, no more running back and forth. You place your items in Store, right click if you want to sell, select the search tab to browse the auctions or run over to the Post tab to mail items around.

Well that's really all I have right now. As we all new graphics are a far stretch better then WoW. The combat system is allot more fun. And I am only level 17 so really, how much do you want from me?

Justïn Smïth
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[[AK]Bojan]

I figured I would add that the "Night" mode is pretty interesting.

Basically you talk to a few select quest givers, one of which is your class trainer who give you the option to continue certain quest at night.

When you go into night mode alot of the normal NPC's are not around and there are no other player characters about.

When go to your quest zones... yes that is another thing there are zones and lots of them, its not a bad thing but something you will have to get used to, i feel it makes travel faster since your not sitting on a grif for 10 minutes you look at a loading screen for 5-20 seconds and bam your where your boat or what ever took you...

Anyway when I was in the single player quest mode it was like being in your own wow instance. The mobs lvls match your current lvl and with finess can be solo'd with little to no deaths. I played a healer and died alot, played a Barbarian and slaughtered all infront of me.

So you basically have a long quest chain in single player mode with tailor made isntances to match your lvl and class to complete. I enjoyed them. On the other side you still have a large quest pool on the outside which you can complete with friends. I noticed the quest log keeps track of daytime quest and night time quest seperatley.

i also noticed at this point money isnt really an issue I have been able to purchase top of the line armor and weapons from the smiths without denting my coin, altho the Traders as Thanory mentioned before have been down while I played.

Anyway got a call and got to run will post more later.