WoW vs. Hz

[Eeyno]

I have been playing since the Open beta started. So here are my pros and cons of WoW

Pros:
Appears to have less lag. Only lag I've seen is when looting but they are already trying to fix that.
Quests. Quests. Quests. My gosh for once I'm excited to do a quest. Quests in HZ seems more like grind quests and have no story or brackground behind them.
Mounts. It's exciting to see that at level 40 you can have a mount. It's something to look forward to.
Spawn rate. Wow.. Mobs spawn fast.. and I mean fast. Even when 10-15 folks are doing the same exact quest as you and trying to kill the same mobs as you the mobs spawn fast enough. THis is not the case in HZ right now as many folks are very frustrated with the spawn rates. My son and wife has gotten bored with hunting :-(
Inventory system. I prefer their inventory system to be more slot based instead of bulk based. Yes it's not realistic but darn it we all know lag is caused by total number of items and not bulk.
The death system is different and has 3 different ways to come back from the dead. There is a bind stone option it just comes with REAL penalties. Bottom line don't die. HZ has no real penalty to death other than astat penalty. I'd prefer and xp and money penalty.
The NPC's are awesome and towns seem ALIVE. There appear to be many NPC's in this game which no real purpose other than to give the towns a look of being alive. HZ towns look like ghost towns. Just look at tazoon. Just a waste of space. In Wow in Stormwind I found a school mistress walking with children. The Children were actually taunting one another. Wow NPC's remind me of Neverwinternights and you get the feeling of real envrionment.
You can play as the enemy. That's sweet. I'd prefer to play as the good guys but it's nice to know on a PvP server your town can be raided by the undead as we all have wished for a year would happen at HZ.

ok enough pros.. let's do a few cons.

Graphics are not as beautitful as HZ but perhaps that's what kills my system.
The interface does not appear to be customizable. How do they know how I like my interface?
General chat tab. OMFG. It's the most annoying part of the game almost enough to drive me to format my hard drive. The game appeals to the younger crowd who seem to get a kick out of insulting everyone and making silly stupid comment. I keep my general chat tab off.
No multiclassing, switching classes. That's annoying.
only 2 primary crafting classes and as a crafter I find that annoying. Crafting is actually TOO easy. Again I think they are seeking a younger audience.
Only certain classes can be played by certain races. Why can't I be an Elven Mage or Paladin? And why can only Dwarves and Elves be hunters? That's annoying but I think I understand that they are trying to follow their Warcraft characters and storylines but still which I could change things up.

ok that's enough for now or I'll be typing for hours.

[Tigris]

Appears to have less lag. Only lag I've seen is when looting but they are already trying to fix that.

OMG what server are you on? It takes 10-15 seconds just to loot a corpse on WOW. Sorta like HZ actually...

General chat tab. OMFG. It's the most annoying part of the game almost enough to drive me to format my hard drive. The game appeals to the younger crowd who seem to get a kick out of insulting everyone and making silly stupid comment. I keep my general chat tab off.

*LOL* /agree

Only certain classes can be played by certain races. Why can't I be an Elven Mage or Paladin? And why can only Dwarves and Elves be hunters? That's annoying but I think I understand that they are trying to follow their Warcraft characters and storylines but still which I could change things up.

Bwuh??? I'm a Nightelf Hunter. Test 31 server.

[Brassandyn]

I've been playing WoW since the second stress test, have two characters at level 10 and one at 17 (no use going too far if they're gonna wipe), and the bottom line is this:

It's fun.

They have promised two dedicated RP servers for launch, along with a host of other additions. Player housing is planned. Blizzard is a highly successful and highly motivated company. I expect most, if not all, of the cons to be resolved at some point. I can't say that about Horizons after nearly a year of being live. And the sad thing is, WOW is still in BETA and is more polished than Horizons.

I can sit in a chair, I move my arms when I talk and, with emotes, I can actually say "Hello."

No one has mentioned the e-mail system. Want to sell something to someone halfway across the continent? Mail it to them C.O.D. Want to give some of your hard-earned cash to an alt. E-mail it. Want to leave a message for someone who's offline? Ditto.

I am a diehard Horizons fan, but it's becoming harder to stay in Istaria the way this game is calling to me.

Again. It's fun to play and there's is VERY LITTLE grinding of any kind.

[padishar]

I think that WoW is nice, but has so many problems.
I could barely log, even to the auth server.
Starting to attack can take almost 15secs after you pushed the button.
The lag was much worst to me there than when I played HZ beta, and I tried four servers.

Graphics are nice, but too cartoonish imo.
Interface sucks.

I liked all the lore, and the quests were nice. even if they were just a more advanced kill X quests.

[Seikojin]

:o I played the second stress test for a few days and really was not impressed with WoW enough to keep going. The combat was ok, the quests although great arent what catches me as a customer. I didnt mind the dying, and I do like the email thing. I also do not like the limited classes and races, but like what was mentioned earlier its Warcraft, so it sticks to that line.

I knew the visuals were going to be like war3 from the getgo, and so it looked good, but nothing spectacular... Wish their spells looked more epic... Seeing as they dont have as much to worry about they could...

As for HZ... I love this game despite its many flaws... Flaws that are planned to be fixed, but as we all know, there is a cost that is just beyond their current budget for it.

I believe as long as the devs interact with us the customers and we all understand whats going on and where things are going, then we all could find that the game isnt going downhill, but that its going up a long windy hill...

I believe there should be consentual pvp in HZ... Ill say it till its added...

[Eeyno]

The other intresting features are the group loot options. The group leader can choose from multiple options. I normally just choose normal group loot. But you can choose "Need before greed", "Master Looter" and some others. Sometimes one person sees loot off a mob that his group member doesn't which is intresting. It helps my my son sees some linen cloth that I later need to make clothing.
Also when "rare" loot pops up it's available for all however you can roll for the loot. In fact it comes up automatically with a pair of dice or a pass sign. If you click pass you don't roll. If you roll and your roll is higher you win the loot. Nice system.

I think what will help blizzard is their financial backing. Blizzard has been known to hold off games for a very long time even with their fans demanding to release it already. I'm not saying their programs are bug free however they have few bugs than a lot of other things that get released.

I love horizons a lot and leaving it would cause me to miss many friends however the game is starting frustrating me.

[Tigris]

Ilove horizons a lot and leaving it would cause me to miss many friends however the game is starting frustrating me.

/agree
I love this game a lot. I have many friends here I will miss. I am notcancelling or leaving HZ, but I'm SOOO DANG frustrated at this game that WOw is looking very attractive right now. [^o)]

[Brassandyn]

[img]/Web/Themes/Generic/images/icon-quote.gif[/img]Eeyno wrote: Ilove horizons a lot and leaving it would cause me to miss many friends however the game is starting frustrating me.

/agree
I love this game a lot. I have many friends here I will miss. I am notcancelling or leaving HZ, but I'm SOOO DANG frustrated at this game that WOw is looking very attractive right now. [img]/Web//emoticons/emotion-40.gif[/img]

My sentiments exactly. I'd like to see Horizons live up to it's potential, but I've become concerned that I might not live that long or the game will die out before it has to chance to realize that potential.

Every time I run into a bug that was in the game on the day of launch and is still there I grit my teeth and sayto myself, 'Hey, I'm enjoying this.' But I'm not. It does start to get old and I have stopped looking foward to collecting 50,000 glowing essence for my next enchanter level.

Aldonza told Don Quixote to "take the blinders from your eyes" and I think a lot of fans of Horizons need to do that. What do you think WoW will look like and how much content will it offer 11 months after launch?

It's an environment you can role play and adventure in right now, without the need for massive fixes. That's why it's drawing me away from a game I once said I'd never leave.

[Tigris]

Aldonza told Don Quixote to "take the blinders from your eyes" and I think a lot of fans of Horizons need to do that. What do you think WoW will look like and how much content will it offer 11 months after launch?

It's an environment you can role play and adventure in right now, without the need for massive fixes. That's why it's drawing me away from a game I once said I'd never leave.

/agree
I'm starting to get the feeling that whatever spell Horizons had over me is gone. The bugs and the problems are riding pretty heavy right now. My desire to log in is nearly gone.

[Brassandyn]

[img]/Web/Themes/Generic/images/icon-quote.gif[/img]Brassandyn wrote: Aldonza told Don Quixote to "take the blinders from your eyes" and I think a lot of fans of Horizons need to do that. What do you think WoW will look like and how much content will it offer 11 months after launch?

It's an environment you can role play and adventure in right now, without the need for massive fixes. That's why it's drawing me away from a game I once said I'd never leave.

/agree
I'm starting to get the feeling that whatever spell Horizons had over me is gone. The bugs and the problems are riding pretty heavy right now. My desire to log in is nearly gone.

Their decision to add two role-playing enforced servers just about did it for me. My copy is on order. I'll still come back here, but I have cancelled 3 of my 4 accounts (some of this decision it due to a plot token snafu that saw customer service telling me they could find no evidence of the character having ever owned a plot).

[Amerelium]

...its in the tech section, under sound & music..[;)]

[img]/Web/Themes/default/images/icon-quote.gif[/img]Amerelium wrote: ...u should try my modified audio files then..

I've been slowly replacing some of Horizons music with more interesting tracks which are suited to the RPG genre - I'll talk about the results when I'm finished.

So, you've got a sound pack that provides better ambient sounds? Neat...but where can I get it?
Links? [img]/Web/emoticons/emotion-1.gif[/img]

[Tigris]

WHEEEEE! I Have a pet Zergling! [:P][:)][:D][;)]

[Brassandyn]

How can you have a pet anything? Open BETA has ended.

I'm hoping to get a kitty from the cat lady.

[Kalis]

I think tigris was implying that she got the WoW collectors edition and will have a pet zergling when servers come up for retail.

[IndyMan]

just like DAoC right ? [:P]

[Ilsefa]

Clarification on WoW "PvE" servers might be in order.

On all servers there are ways to get yourself flagged for PvP in normal xp zones. For instance, I saw a trio of orc guards fending off invading hordes of centaurs. After healing guards in Harro so many times I didn't think twice about casting a few heals on the guards. Flagged for PvP. Another time i was doing an escort quest with a small group. When mobs spawned to kill the escorted NPC I healed her up. Again, flagged for PvP. When you heal another person who is flagged you become flagged. You might need a group for a quest and find yourself grouped with PvP-flagged folks. It's not 100% PvP free on the normal servers, just somewhat more voluntary than on PvP servers.

There are duels but those are not the only way to get flagged and I'm not even sure you do get flagged. You don't suffer death penalties in duels at any rate.

[Tigris]

I think tigris was implying that she got the WoW collectors edition and will have a pet zergling when servers come up for retail.

* Gives Kalis a Six Slot Bag.

Yup. ;)

[Gorron]

I played WoW for a few days, both as an orc warrior/fisherman, and a human mage/miner/blacksmith. For anyone that cares, here is my review.

At first, it was a lot of fun. It is pretty quick and easy to get in the game. They start you off with lots of easy quests, and leveling comes quickly in the beginning. The quests and loot gives you decent equipment, and you can sell other stuff you don't need for cash. They did an excellent job on the begin game.

There are lots and lots of quests, and almost all of them give you experience, money, and a choice of special items. They also tell a story, either part of what appears to be a main plot, or a local subplot. Obviously they spent a lot of that 5+ years on developing content. Most of the quests ask you to find this person and talk to them for the next part of the quest, or give them an item, or kill X mobs and get Y items from them. There are a few that have you searching for special items in an area, usually protected by monsters. One of the orc quests I had made me swim underwater and search shipwrecks for little chests containing special gnome tools. There were these lobster looking humanoid type creautres I had to avoid or fight guarding the waters in and around the wrecked ships. You can swim and fight on the surface and under the water, pretty much as well as you can on land, though you will eventually drown if you stay under too long. Both the quests, and the swimming system, were done very well.

Combat is similar to Horizons. You engage an enemy, or they attack you, auto fight, and hit specials on your hot key bar. Best I can tell there are no repeater type spells as a mage, so you have to do a lot of button pushing and/or clicking every battle. Some of the warrior specials were pretty cool. There was a "charge" attack where you charge into battle from a small distance at like 150 mph, and stun your enemy for a couple seconds. I also had a bleed type of attack I liked, and was able to improve it as I leveled via "talent" points. These are similar to training points, and allow you to customize your characters powers and abilities. Death is very forgiving. You will appear as a ghost in a nearby graveyard, and run your ghost back to your corpse (kinda like UO). You can't be looted, and you get no death penalties at all.

On the technical side, I didn't crash once, even though it was still in beta. I have to say though I never crashed in Horizons either until a few months of patches. Anyway, there were no issues with crashing or frames per second at all. There were times when there was server lag however. Sometimes you couldn't engage an enemy, or loot correctly as a result. They claim they purposely abused us beta testers by having way too many on servers to stress test them, so theoretically there should be less of that when it goes live. The graphics are much simplier and cartoon/video game looking, as opposed to Horizons realistic approach. You can tell it is a simplier engine with far less polygons, and simpiler less detailed textures, which is probably why it performs so well.

The game as a whole is much less complex than Horizons. There are only a few classes to pick from, and you only have a limited way to customize your characters skills, very much like Diablos system. The storage is very simple and limited as well, also like Diablo's. You only have so many inventory slots you can put anything into, and most things don't stack beyond 20 items or so. You can purshase more bank space, or more sacks for your belt to carry more items with you. Being as simple as it is, you don't really need that much storage space anyway. There are no teched jewelry or cargo armor to store or swap, (no techs at all far as I could tell), no multi classes where you would need a change of armor or weapon, and only 1 or 2 tools you will need for crafting. You don't need formulas, as you can automatically buy abilities to make new items from your trainer as you get a high enough level. I did loot a couple things that looked very much like formulas however, so maybe you can learn how to make items not available on the trainer.

Crafting was very simple, and quite boring. I tried fishing with my orc. You buy a fishing pole, stand by some water, and cast. When you see your float move, you click it. You either get something, which you then have to click to loot it, like on a corpse, or you get nothing. Your skill goes up as you fish. I caught some fish, and some little boxes with stuff in them for me to sell, like cloth. It was a lot of clicking. Click to cast, click to reel it in, click to loot, and if it was a box, click to open the box, and click one more time to loot the item. Mining was similar. Click on a bronze node, then click to loot the ore and/or stone from the corpse looking box that pops up (even has skull and cross bones on it like a corpse), and repeat a few times until the node is gone. There is no "take all" button, so if you get stone and ore on a swing, you're clicking twice to loot them. There are no fields of resources, only a few scattered around over vast distances. I ran around for a couple hours trying to find enough ore to fill my pack, and all of it is in dangerous areas. Almost everywhere outside town is dangerous as a matter of fact. There were 3 mines in the area I was, but all of them were more like dungeons, with lots of mob spawns inside, and no bronze nodes. Once I had the ore, I could turn it into bars with one click at a smelter, though I had to watch each one being created, one at a time. Then I made items as a blacksmith, once again one click, but have to watch them created 1 by 1. There are far fewer crafting schools, far less items per school, and you are only allowed 2 crafting schools. Crafting in WoW is a far cry from Horizons. Very simple, click-happy, and boring.

Besides the crafting system, my biggest complaint was the amount of time you have to spend running around. The quests typically have you running all over, and you have to go back to town to repair your items. You can't just hunt for a few hours or your stuff will become useless. This wasn't too big a problem as a mage, as I didn't have to worry about my weapon wearing out (armor though), but it was becomming very annoying as a warrior. I had to run out to the area to hunt, then run all the way back to town for repairs. The town that was closest to the level mobs I was fighting, and that I was bound to, didn't have anyone that repaired items, so I had to hoof it all the way back to the town before, which didn't have a way of binding to it, and all the way back. You have very little storage caapacity, so you can't haul too many items back to town to sell either. There are no portals to get around, and you can only recall once an hour. There is no sprint, gift of speed, swift feet, speed techs, road bonuses, or anything to help ease the pain either. There are mounts, but only at level 40, and only at great expense (think Veilo prices).

Also, the game doesn't really play like a MMORPG to me, but more like a huge single player RP game. I grouped a few times, but there wasn't usually a real reason to do so. While you could share the quests with others in your group, they were really designed to be for your level, and more people just ment less xp and less loot. With the exception of pvp possiblly, (something I am not interested in personally), I don't see a real need for a guild either. You can get decent items as drops or per quests, and there are really very few items you need anyway. The npcs have anything you're missing for sale. All the special items, and many of the not-so-special items you use or even sometimes just loot are "soulbound" to you, so you can't sell or trade them to other players. The transportation is so time consuming, getting together with a guildmate for a joint hunt would be a chore. You can only group with, or even add to your friends list, players that are the same faction as you, either hoard or alliance. I was unable to play with Xenia (a guildmate in Horizons), as she was a dark elf, and I was an orc. Then she made an undead character, so we were able to put each other on friends list at least, and group, but only orcs and trolls were in my area, and I have no idea where the undead started, so we really had no way of getting to each other anyway. We were probably separated by higher level areas, and couldn't hope to meet until we were higher levels.

In a nutshell, the game is fun in its own way, but I don't see a lot of staying power there. You can't customize your character much at all, can't multiclass, crafting system is not fun, it lends itself more to soloing than grouping or guilding, and the further I got in the game, the more my time was spent running around. After I get to 100 orc warrior (or whatever the limit is, assuming there is one), and did all the quests, then what? Create another character and do it all again? Not like I can then work on another class, or save up for a plot or do work on it (there are no plots). Not like I'm going to spend hours making items that the npcs sell already, or are inferior to drop items anyway. Only way to sell items is to yell in trade channel, as there are no consigners like Horizons, or player owned vendors like UO. The player economy is pretty much not there at all, nor is there any incentive for being social; there is no community. The game was already getting old for me a few days into the beta, and I will not by picking up the retail.

[Tigris]

Actually you can have as many secondary crafting schools as you like. But Crafting there is pretty dull anyway, not sure why you'd bother. In my opinion, if you like crafting, stick with HZ. If you like combat and PVP, you'll like WOW.

[Gorron]

I wasn't aware of that. Is there anydifference between the primary and secondary crafting school(s)? I have no idea if mining or blacksmith was my primary, or if there is a difference.