Ok so this thing is gold. I remember Mark mentioning that it was still quite buggy and they were releasing it too soon. With the WWIIO launch this might not surprise anyone but my question is how close is this to being ready? Also, is it any good?

-- Xaroc

I played some of the beta 4 saturday and sunday. It's still *way* the hell to buggy for release.

That said, it's not as bad as everquest was on first release, and I'll probably buy it. The reasons:

Healing and Nano (mana) are quite cheap to recharge outside of battle with items, so there's virtually *no* "sitting on your ass for half your gameplay time."

They also have pregenerated missions with random maps you can take, instead of fighting wandering mobs; it's a pretty effective solution to get around spawn camping.

I can actually play the damned game without spending half my time reading a book, so I'm pretty happy about that. Not that it should be *that* hard to design a MMORPG with these problems fixed, but you wouldn't know that be talking to either the very nice people at Turbine or the ruling fascist junta over at Sony.

Interesting. I played EQ from the outset and other than some bandwidth issues I didn't find it that bad from a technical standpoint. I found it fun from a gameplay standpoint for over 10 months.

Less downtime and random maps sounds enticing. How easy is it to solo from what you can see? My biggest problem with EQ was not being able to hop on for an hour and get anything done at higher levels. It was 4 hour time block or nothing and 30 minutes or more of that was yelling for a group. I like being in a good group but sometimes just smacking around a few baddies mono e mono fits the bill.

-- Xaroc

I didn't group at all over the weekend, so it appears doable - you'll have to ask someone with an actual high level character for a useful answer, though.

I don't think I'm going to bother playing it again before release, as I'd rather not bother developing a character that's just going to be wiped.

Anyone want my serial number for the beta? I've got the ~600 meg zip file, too, if you need it.

Sure I wouldn't mind taking a look.

--- Alan

I would love to take a look! I just sent an email also. I am willing to share with Alan if he wants a look as well. :)

-- Xaroc

Alan Dunkin...now there's a name I haven't heard in a LONG time. Where you been hiding, Alan?

Under a rock :)

--- Alan