NOTE: I ordered the game via Steam and therefore did not have time to read the manual while on my throne. How’s that for opening a First Impression post? Some things may be revealed in the manual so understand that his post is based on just jumping right into the game.

EDIT: I will likely add to this as I remember items. I’ll do my best to make sure I note it’s an addition.

Character Creation

First I’ll start with what everyone starts with, creating a character.

The interface for this was quite intuitive and easy to use. That should be expected at this point in time, Bioware has done enough of these types of step by step character generators.

The complaint I do have is that they went with the same old races; Human, Dwarf and Elf. After seeing what they came up with in Mass Effect, I have to say I was disappointed with them choosing Dwarves and Elves. Yes, they’re the staple of most fantasy settings, but I was hoping for something different. Of course, if it was something different I’d likely have complained that it was a little too alien for my liking and I suspect a lot of fantasy loving types would pass on the game entirely. Still, only three race choices seems a little disappointing and I am talking solely about number of choices – they executed the look and feel of the races with excellence you expect from Bioware.

They did try to make up for the lack of races by having different ’status’ for the selections. You seem to have commoner, nobility and magi status options which presents some differences in your starting experience. I don’t really see a difference otherwise, which is a little disappointing.

The attributes are pretty simple, though a little alien in that you’re not really sure how the scale works. With a D&D based setting, most people know the stat ranges (or learn them quickly). The descriptions are pretty clear, it just feels different after playing D&D for so long. Several attributes appear to tie to advancing certain skills so you will want to take careful note of that when assigning points to attributes as you advance through levels.

The initial classes are, again, more of the same. You have your warrior, rogue and caster classes. It’s apparent that some other options open up later on in-game where you have to meet some requirements or unlock these extra classes some how. You will note Allistair, when you have access to him, does have access to the Templar class as well. Overall, it was a little disappointing to see these very basic classes but I do believe they’re hoping to add flavor options to the character by those locked classes.

The skills available to your character are fairly simple, which I like, though a little too general, vague or ambiguous. For example the social interaction skill (persuade, I think) is either based on Strength or Cunning which makes sense. I’m not really sure how these all work, I’ve mainly played a melee type so I had the combat training. I didn’t see any obvious bonus to this so I suspect a lot of the passive skills have under the hood type impact.

Actually customizing the look of your character goes beyond what we’ve seen from Bioware previously (aside from Mass Effect). You get a lot more control over the look of your character in this game, even down to the point of your portrait that is assigned to that character. That’s right, you can adjust the portrait of your character; move the camera for it up, down, left or right, change the background, change the facing of your character and even change the expression of your character’s portrait (pushing the slider all the way to the right is quite comical). They even included presets for all the races for people who don’t care and just want to jump right in.

Overall the character generation was positive aside from the feeling of not knowing how everything works and what each little choice could mean down the line. (As a powergamer or min/maxer type I really do enjoy systems and knowing how things work.)

Graphics

I’m going to lump camera views and animations in with ‘graphics’. My first thought of the graphics was based on the character generation, I thought the character models and options available were quite good and resulted in some good-looking characters… graphically speaking.

My second thought on the graphics wasn’t as positive and came when I started the game and was presented with the zoomed out mode to start. I didn’t like it. I found the zoomed out versions of the characters and area lacked a lot of detail and some of those bells and whistles that are common in newer games. It just didn’t look right to me.

Zoomed it? Ahhh… nice. Zoomed out? Meh.

It’s weird and my own personal feeling.

I also found the camera didn’t  automatically rotate to make things viewable and I often couldn’t see what was going on in certain angles. Rotating the camera manually helps but I’m still not keen on that. Now playing while zoomed in felt a lot like playing a MMO or a game like Mass Effect (some people might think it sort of a console view).

Bioware makes use of all the latest bells and whistles as far as the graphics go but I did find some of the textures sort of uninspiring. Nothing that really stood out, just some items that you might pan by as you’re running along.

Overall I like the animations I’ve seen so far. It doesn’t feel as plan and hack and slash as you’d expect. The abilities I’ve used so far have had good animations. When I Shield Bash, I see it happen and the target gets knocked over. When I Overpower, I see the three hits and the guy get squashed. When I decapitate an enemy… well, it’s really messy.

Blood and gore, but mostly blood. They make liberal use of blood in this game. Apparently we’re all just walking bags of blood waiting to rupture and splatter everywhere. It is a little over the top in several  places but I do admit, coming out of a fight with blood splatter is likely truer to form. Still, lots of it.

I wish there was a /wipeface command or something because all the characters seem unphased by the blood. That is a little weird because there is a part where a sergeant is talking about the Darkspawn and telling people not to touch its blood. They also go on about how the hounds that bite the Darkspawn end up… wrong if they bite them too much. Yet here I am, covered in blood.

And the finishing attacks on key enemies is admittedly quite cool… if not bloody.

User Interface

The design is pretty simple, if you’ve ever played a MMO or CRPG before you will quickly know what is what.In the top left you have the character portrait and statuses. Each portrait is wrapped by the health and fatigue or mana of the character. To the right of that portrait you can see what action that character is performing.

Below that is the hotbar which also includes your XP bar. Moving abilities around is simple enough, as is triggering some of the abilities.I could see casters running out on bar spaces so I suspect there is a way to add more.

Overall it is responsive, though I have had occasions where none of my abilities were on cooldown but they were all darkened – I’m not sure why that was. Clicking on the portraits selects that character (I suspect F1-F{whatever} selects the characters by portrait) and focus quickly switches over to that character’s view and abilities.

In the upper middle you have your menu bar which contains all the typical buttons needed for navigating through the game aspects; Inventory, Character, Journal, Quests and Options (there are more).

The journal, or codex, has an interesting system of tracking the bits of lore. Given all the pages and numbered entries, there looks like there will be a lot of lore, information and tips to sort out.

Dialog options are about the same as all previous Bioware games. You hear what is said and have an opportunity to respond. Unlike some of their other games (like Mass Effect) you don’t hear yourself speak which I find a little jarring.

The controls seem to make sense, though I’m not keen on how some of the combat abilities work in that they seem to require some extra clicks for targeting when you’re not already attacking something. I will have to look into these some more.

I couldn’t figure out how to rotate the camera at first, but eventually found it and it does make some sense and after a short while of play (zoomed in) I was used to it. I thought it would have use the numeric keypad or the Insert/Page keys, but I was wrong. The default seems to be using the arrow keys or the A and D keys. Alternatively, you can right-click to mouse look – that might be limited to zoomed in mode.

The inventory is much as you’ve already seen, but it is a bit different in that it appears to be a shared inventory. No more rooting around looking for that item one of your characters had in a bag. All inventory appears to be lumped together and there is a lot of room. You can expand this further by purchasing bags. I worry about this a little because it seems you could make it possible for everyone to dip into the same resources. I remember previous AIs being somewhat wasteful…

EDIT: One of the fellows in my D&D group was talking about the radial menu last night. I had completely forgotten about this bit of UI.

Why?

Because I avoid it as much as possible. DA:O has a context sensitive radial menu that can be used for examining, things, destroying or using items. I’m sure there are other uses for it but I haven’t ventured far enough into the game to discover them.

I’m not a big fan of radial menus and prefer they work off of clicking rather than completely off of mouse hover. Mouse hover is prone to slipping and sometimes unintentionally closing the menu. It’s a little frustrating, especially at first. Most PC users are used to clicking to get what they want where as a console gamer might be better equiped to navigate radial menus because when they invoke it, the context of their input is on that radial menu. On a PC… not so much.

In my opinion, you should click to bring up the radial, then click on the next item to invoke it or set it as an anchor if it has subitems. The menu should not disappear unless a selection is made or another click is made to change focus. This closer mimics what a console gamer might experience as opposed to mouse moving out of the radial bounds causing the radial menu to close.

Coming back to working with items, I found using items a little different. The catch for using items is that for some you need to exit the inventory for the use to actually happen.

An example would be some of the pre-order books. I got two books; one book adds three attribute points as a bonus and the other adds a skill as a bonus. I used both from the inventory and closed the inventory to discover only the last one took effect. I had to go back into the inventory and use the first one again.

I’m not too keen on this. In some cases (like drinking a potion) it makes sense, but in other cases, not so much.

Mechanics

Combat plays sort of like the way Knights of the Old Republic did, third person over the shoulder type view where you can target enemies and start attacking. You’ll automatically path to them or you can manually control where you go – I tend to do this and it almost feels like I’m playing in a MMO.

From what I’m hearing from my friend who is playing the XBox360 version (I’m playing the PC version), he hasn’t found a way to zoom out or pause yet but it is definitely an option of play for the PC. You can zoom out for a 3d isometric, top down type view you had in NWN (Neverwinter Nights) or Baldur’s Gate (which is the correct spelling…). This sort of mode is great if you like the top down, micromanaging of your party type play.

Personally, I haven’t used it a lot, but I might get it a shot once they shiny new game smell fades. I don’t really like the look of things while zoomed out, so that is a hurdle I’ll have to get over some how. I could see some people using a hybrid of moving or exploring with the zoomed in mode then switching to zoomed out mode to handle combat. I could also see someone exploring while zoomed out and fighting while zoomed it.

Whatever suits you best.

They’ve gone and made life a little easier for players to manage their character or companions by adding “tactics” you can define for each of the characters. They’ve also tied this to an attribute (Cunning) and some skills that add more slots. In each slot you can specify a condition and what that character will do when that condition is triggered. Conditions include things like; “your health < 25%”, “enemy’s health < 25%”, “attacked by ranged” and things like that.

People who have played Final Fantasy XII might recognize this as being similar to the “gambit” system they introduced, although, FF12 did not make all the conditions available immediately, you had to learn them or purchase them and then you could use them.

Traps can become involved in combat, either as part of the set up (such as an ambush) or as something that gets in the way. Unfortunately, I wasn’t micromanaging the Rogue companion so I didn’t really make use of this. However, I did trip over one that was particularly nasty (videos may have shown this wonderful puddle of grease/oil lit up by an enemy’s flaming arrow. It hurt, a lot.

Your character can also make use of this by making their own traps, assuming you pick up the trap making skill, and finding/using materials you come across (loot, chests/bags, herbs or merchant items). I have yet to get into this.

There are also skills for creating potions from various components or herbs. This sort of thing appears to be one option of staying alive. Using poultices appears to be an instant action, almost like taking a potion. This is pretty important to know and think about while in combat and likely something that you should spread around. Magi classes also seem to be able to learn Healing type spells which are definitely useful.

The character’s natural resources are (effectively) Health, Mana and Fatigue.

Health is a measurement of your condition, if it is expended you are ‘dead’. It regenerates pretty quickly while out of combat so it’s a good idea to sometimes wait it out instead of burning healing resources outside of combat.

Casting uses a mana system, so as you cast spells it consumes mana. I didn’t play my Magi enough to note how the Mana regeneration works, I’m pretty sure there is some, but it didn’t appear to go as fast as Health regeneration does.

Fatigue is an interesting system I haven’t entirely figured out yet. I believe it is a pool you draw from for special melee attacks and it can have it’s ceiling lowered based on gear you have. For example, naked you’d have 100 but wearing a full suit of chain mail you might only have 80. I might be wrong, as noted way up top, I  have yet to read the manual but this is what I observed. I did not appear to run out of fatigue.

You appear to only ever have Mana or Fatigue, not both.

I mentioned above that when you lose all your Health you are ‘dead’, note the quotes. You’re actually disabled and once the combat is over, you will pop back up. I’m not sure if there is a catch to this because I only had one guy drop one time. He popped back up when I moved close to where his body was so I suspect there is a degree of recovery involved.

Unfortunately, I did not play a Rogue or ranged combatant type yet so I have no idea how any of their abilities work, I did observe there are abilities available for those types. There is a (short) skill tree for dual weapons, ranged weapons, weapon and shield as well as two-handers. As mentioned there are skills for traps and potions but others include making poisons and thievery (I’m not sure if that covers skulking about).

I intend to try out these two other aspects of the game as soon as I can.

Storyline and Environment

I don’t want to talk too much about the story so I don’t ruin anything for people, but so far it has been interesting and set out really well. A lot of the world factions, beliefs and superstitions have some reflection on our own but they’re all presented in a manner that makes you feel part of the world. A lot of that has to do with the voice acting and script – it is far more involving to hear someone say something than to read about someone saying something.

I’ve been really impressed with the environments I’ve seen and been involved with so far; the keep (noble human), the tower (magi), the ruins in the south, the surrounding wilderness and the tower on that site as well. The ruins area definitely has an epic feel to it, they did an excellent job there. The tower is excellent as well – I recommend, despite feeling rushed, that people stop every now and then and look around, including up.

Online Site

You can use your Bioware Community profile to log into the game (and the community site) which will allow you to purchase some extra downloadable content (I had access to all of it because I pre-ordered the deluxe version of the release).

It also allows for some neat automatic features as well. This includes automatic screenshots of certain parts of the game that get uploaded to your profile under Dragon Age: Origins, tracking of your achievements as well as game progress (quests completed and which ones you’re on). If you upload your character you (and others) can view the character’s stats, abilities, skills and gear. You can also use that character’s portrait for your online profile. Which is really cool!

The community also has other built in features like being able to create groups with a forum, organizing projects, creating your own albums (20mb of space) and keeping a list of friends.

I don’t really feel the need for yet another online community, but I definitely like how it tracks achievements and takes automatic screenshots.

The Bottom Line

Most of my complaints so far are ridiculously minor compared to the positives I couldn’t possibly claim to not like the game so far. I am pleased with my purchase and I would recommend the game to people who like CRPGs.

I would submit that the game is closer to NWN2 than BG, but I’ve heard people argue the other way. Either way, it’s pretty damn good game!

If you’re looking for a hack and slash game, this probably isn’t for you but if you’re the type that likes rich environments and great story elements, you should love this game.

Apparently I broke it twice before I even had the game. How’d I do that? Well, let me tell you… I broke the story and NPC interactions.

Wot?

That’s right. I broke a lot of the NPC interactions and dialog.

How?

First off, I made a Human Noble Warrior. In that starting line you’re the youngest noble son of some nobles. White nobles. I made my warrior black. I’m literally the black sheep in the family. Everyone else is white… mom, dad, bro… everyone.

Maybe mom ran off to Dragon Age’s equivalent of Jamaica to… well, you know what rich older white ladies like to do there… and maybe she came back with me. Dad didn’t notice, sort of like in Jim Carey in Me, Myself and Irene. Or maybe he snapped?

Minor oops there. If you’re going to be allowing some one to adjust their skin color, you might want to make sure mom and dad are similiar or throw in some sort of adoption which covers all the grounds, even if it is a little cliche.

There was another thing that threw me off in that storyline; you dismiss the absence of your brother from where you’re getting to. Now maybe I missed something, but I didn’t see him and it seems I don’t care.

He was only my step-brother anyway.

Second break was my Mage/Wizard/Caster character I created. I always imagine my wizards being sort of old and wise. I blame you Gandalf. So I made an elderly human magi… and the dialog implied that I was found at a young age to be quite gifted in magic. I moved through the apprenticeship quite quickly and now I was to face my test.

Wait a second. I started young, moved quickly through the lessons and I’m ready for testing at the ripe old age of about 60? I could be wrong, but this guy isn’t  a spring chicken anymore… he’s an old fart. What do you mean I’m young?

I couldn’t help feeling fail. Here I was, 60 years old… I probably spent 45 years in apprenticeship, but apparently that was fast.

I really did make those characters and noticed those discrepencies in the story but otherwise, I really like what I’ve seen so far. Obviously, they’re not serious issues.

One issue I did have was with their community site, which is apparently still beta. I pre-ordered the deluxe version off Steam so when I created the character I had the bonus ring you get from ordering from Steam. I was also supposed to have two adventure/setting addons, another ring or two, some armor, some books and a staff (I think – I have to double check). In order to enable this I needed to redeem my codes (I had three).

Finding the ‘redeem’ code button was easy enough, it was under the “Downloadable Content” from the game’s main menu. I click on it. Sure enough, I saw the ring and it got downloaded. I saw the two extra content pieces  but they weren’t downloading.

I hit “Redeem” and popped the codes I had from Steam in there where I got mixed messages.

It said the code wasn’t recognized AND the code was entered.

Wot?

I popped back into the game and looked at the downloadable content. It still required Bioware points. I entered the codes again. This time, no positive message, just red text saying the code could not be entered.

Now, that site is beta… but that really begs the question; Why are you using a beta site for something as important as registering the game and unlocking extras that you paid extra for?

I said screw it and played for a bit before I had to run off and pick up my boys from school.

When I got back, I fiddled around some more trying to figure out why I wasn’t getting my extras. Someone on the Steam forum noted that they logged out of the game (it has a log in – I’ll talk about that later) and then logged back in. Once they did that, all the downloadable content was available.

I gave that a try and it worked.

Why do you have to log into the game?

Well, I don’t believe you need to, but if you do it ties to your profile at that Bioware Community site. It should update achievements and upload some screenshots the game seems to automatically take as you progress through it.

Just what I need… another community.

So what about the game?

I’m too tired to answer that now, besides, I’ve played it less than a Eurogamer reviewer does. All jokes aside, I did only play it for three hours. I will put a first impressions post up as soon as I get some more coffee into me and collect my thoughts on it – which are all positive aside from the ones in this thread.

I made the mistake of hopping on there after raiding (around midnight) and thought, “I’ll just start my magi character and see what it’s like…” I got to bed at 2am, that should tell you how good the game is.

I need my third and fourth cup…

EDIT: For my internet stalkers… err… fans… okay, the select few that read this  blog, here is my DA:O profile. Oddly enough, it doesn’t have the data from my late night (or early morning) adventures. Aedan is actually a much higher level now and I’ve unlocked several more achievements. Odder (is that a word?) still, my Magi character doesn’t show up there but my Elf Rogue (who I haven’t played yet) does show up.

I need to make a Dwarf Two-Hander specialist…

Microsoft, if you’re listening, can you please allow ‘grouping’ of shortcuts on the taskbar. Sort of like how you hide inactive icons in the systray.

Allow a user to group them as they see fit or heck, steal something from MMO UIs or addons that let you CTRL+ScrollUp/Down to toggle through options.

That would be sweet.

My current whine is about the task bar because I have several work related shortcuts, several family (browsers, Photoshop Elements, etc.) related shortcuts and several game related icons on the task bar. To get them all to fit I have to use small icons.

Yes, I know I can increase the height the task bar, but I’d rather not. I’d much rather have some organization or even modes I can scroll through.

Just a suggestion.

EDIT: In the words of Gregory House, “You’re an idiot.” Hey, it’s been re-runs the last two weeks and I miss it… it’s also applicable.

I realized shortly after posting this that I can just create folders full of short cuts and add them as ‘toolbars’ to the task bar giving me just about what I wanted. I now have (crunched up) Games, Work and Misc toolbars which point to a {user documents}\Toolbars\{ToolbarNameHere} folders that conain shortcuts to the apps I want.

On the task bar, these appear as the folder names and little flyout double arrows which, when you click on them, pop up a list of all the contained shortcuts.

I apologize if this was obvious to someone else, I’ve never really needed to do this before and it isn’t as immediately obvious as it could be if Microsoft wanted this to be more user friendly.

I have 28 shortcuts combining what I usually have for work stuff (there are a few more for working from home use), games and miscellaneous crap.

I am so smrt.

… so far.

I took a peak at the combat videos for the Jedi and Sith, both look neat and, more importantly, fun. The Sith’s leap attack is too cool and the combo the Jedi does is more than your typical MMO animation.

It looks cool.

The jury remains out until it’s in my hands… assuming I try it and I’m going to do my best to try to avoid it.

Which probably means it’ll end up on pre-order.

I don’t usually pimp products like that, but I have to admit I’m really excited for this one. I pre-ordered the collector’s edition from Steam last week so I’ll kick off the download tomorrow morning (assuming it is available) and give it a bit of a whirl before I get into raiding.

Yes, I am choosing raiding over playing Dragon Age. I figure I could always take Wednesday off to play Dragon Age.

Using the preview character generator that was a free download, I created a couple of characters. The first on is a melee type, I believe he was a common rather than a noble, but I might be wrong. The second was more of a Rogue type, I went Elf commoner with that one. The last one I created was a caster type which was neat.

I’m going to have to try them all… though I’m pretty sure I’ll go through as one type and then just sort of pick at it.

WoW talk incoming.

I scored the Death’s Verdict trinket from 25 man Coliseum Trial of the Crusader! Granted, it’s not as awesome as the Heroic 25 man version, but it’s still one of the best (if not the best) trinket available to me.

I did miss out on two other pieces of Hunter gear (bracers and leggings) that were upgrades but rolling 100 for that trinket made up for it! And I was happy to see it spread out (unlike last time) to my guild leader (scored the leggings) and a PUG hunter (who did a good job) scored the bracer.

We first started the allied 25 man run on Thursday but stalled on Faction Champions because we started losing people and it was really a bad draw; resto druid, resto shaman, holy priest, rogue, hunter, ret pally, dk, warrior and shadow priest. I was almost sure it was going to be a wipe to start because someone triggered the Faction Champions before we were completely set, but people executed and we brought down healer after healer then switched over to some annoying DPS types.

In the end, we won it.

We shared our strat for the two angels after that fight (okay, they’re not really angels) with the allied guild (Excitium – good folks!) and the first crack at it was a wipe. Next time through it was a piece of cake. I even hit second in DPS with an unbelievable 8.8k DPS!

Yeah, there are some gimmicks in that fight which you can take advantage of, getting buffed up because of collecting bubbles of the right color helps a lot.

In the end, I ranked second for overall damage done right behind a Mage who is our DPS advisor. The three Hunters in the 25 man raid accounted for 20% of the damage done. My DPS overall DPS was 4.3k which is definitely an improvement.

What changed?

I got some new boots and I switched my spec to Marksman to give it a try. Man was it sweet seeing Chimera Shot crit for 8k even while I was in Aspect of the Viper! And I think I figured out the mana issues a bit. You need to be more liberal with Rapid Fire since that’s one way of getting mana back. Readiness helps you keep Rapid Fire available and Readiness really helps for burst DPS. Don’t be too hesitant to use it in raids for an extra burst, it works best there. With a three minute cooldown timer, it’s pretty sweet. Pop it somewhat early so it will be up later, time when it will be up because you do want it for that last stretch; Kill Shot, Chimera Shot+Silencing Shot, Aimed Shot, Arcane Shot, maybe Kill Shot again if it’s up, Readiness and repeat cycle for a nice burst. That’s three Kill Shot casts in under 13 seconds.

Oh, I think I elevated other DPS types as well with the addition of my Improved Hunter’s Mark which effectively adds 650 Attack Power on the Marked mob and top that off with Trueshot Aura which grants people a bonus 10% of their Attack Power if they’re within 45 yards of me.

Our guild leader (plays a hunter) broke 5k DPS overall last night. I don’t want to steal his thunder because he’s using in the high 4k, but I like to think the two things I added in helped out a little.

I lubs me da huntar.

I understand that when you have more and more people put together you, effectively, get the sum of all their issues and hope the sum of all their benefits outweigh that in order to create a stable and positive community.

Guilds are no different really.

Neither are MMOs.

With WoW’s popularity, you’re bound to get some crazies in the game, on your server, in your guild or in your group.

Why does it seem they’ve congregated on Rexxar?

In the previous guild we had no shortage of drama from, apparently, chemically imbalanced people. In Ninefold Dragons, I’ve been shielded from a lot of the drama (thank you leadership folks!) but sometimes people are just so off center that it can’t be contained.

Recently there was a really good player who was the cause of various issues – I don’t know all of them, but I observed what I observed. He clearly was either chemically imbalanced, bipolar or share accounts with the following types of people; nice/helpful guy, lootwhore, asshole and paranoid attention whore.

Sometimes the guy was a complete asset to the guild and raid, helping out certain people that were new 80s and might need some tips on their class. Other times it was like he thought people were ganging up on him or something. And other times still he was whining about something; loot or raid times or his hero who runs another guild. Other times still he seemed to get verbally abusive – was he stoned? Drunk?

I don’t know. I don’t care. It’s a shame he couldn’t always be the easy going, likable and helpful guy instead of only being that sometimes. Really, it was a shame.

The other type of crazy we’ve had are people who cannot take advice, suggestions or criticisms.

You’re in a raid. You have a role to perform. You’re not performing it as well as you should. You should be wondering why and looking into it. When people offer you advice or suggestions, try them out and see if they work. Someone is taking their time to help you out and improve how you could play the game. Be happy they are willing to do that rather than just boot you out on your ass with a, “L2Play nub” comment.

Don’t swear at them, get all defensive and rage quit from the guild.

Crazy people.

In WoW’s (reported) population of 11 million players, there is bound to be a few thousand of them, if not more…

It seems they’re taking the foam part off the Nerfbat and just whipping Paladins with the tube underneath that foam.

A couple of changes coming are:

Sacred Shield (has a 30 second duration) now only procs once every 30 seconds. They’ve added a two-point talent to drop this back down to procing once every 6 seconds.

Minor ouch. From what I heard, a lot of Holy Paladins have a lot of talent points left over to play with so this will give them something worth investing in and it will make the Holy Paladin’s Sacred Shield better than a Ret or Prot Paladin’s Sacred Shield. Adds a little more punch to the Holy spec, IMO.

Aura Mastery (which had a 10 second duration) has been dropped down to 6 second duration.

Aura Mastery is supposed to double the effects of all Paladin auras running (or so I’m told) for a duration. It’s an instant cast ability. I guess it could be used for increasing heal effects (for those with the applicable talents), Ret aura damage, resistances and armor increases. At 10 seconds I kind of feel meh about it.

At 6 seconds?

Bleh.

Lay of Hands can no longer be used on yourself.

They’ve just taken that foamless Nerfbat and rammed it up your ass, Paladins.

This is huge.

It will reduce the survivability of all Paladins in PVP, a lot, and it will impact some of their survivability as tanks. I know when I was playing a Paladin, I liked having the Lay on Hands as a “oh shit” button if it seemed like the heals were going to be late or something.

As a Ret Paladin in PVE, I mainly used it to allow the healer to focus on the tank or to help keep someone up. The only loss here is that I can’t use it to keep myself up when the healer is having a rough time keeping others up.

There goes your safety blanket.

This is a bit of a surprise given the cooldown on it but I guess the intent is for it to be used on others, putting the Paladin more into the support role than for it to be a survival mechanism.

I can already see this getting called for much like an Envervate.

I had my first completely fail PUG last night. I’ve had several come close, usually with someone freaking out and dropping from group in a fit. We replaced them and prevailed.

Not this time.

It just wasn’t going to happen.

We had three first timers to Halls of Lightning (Heroic); the healer (holy pally) and two DPS (one a druid the other a hunter). The tank was a Warrior who seemed okay but tended to rush a bit given that the healer seemed to be playing using a Novation CAT. The druid wandered into adds and fun things like that.

But I’ll give them credit, they stuck it out and would have kept trying until I pulled the plug.

I don’t like the kind of people that drop groups because they’re getting no where, but it was really damn clear it just wasn’t going to happen.

Why?

The tank was fine.
My DPS was way above par for the group (3k DPS).
The other hunter was pulling under 900 DPS.
The druid was a little weak on group abilities, I suspect he/she was  a new 80 – I don’t mind that, really, I don’t.
The healadin was healing her/himself and the tank leaving the DPS out to dry.

Needless to say, the DPS died then the healer died, then the tank died.

All four attempts on Loken.

I’m not even talking about the deaths on the way to Loken – which the Druid clearly had the record for by dying on almost every fight, even some trash fights.

Again, I give them credit for trying and we made little jokes – okay, I made little jokes – but coming away with a win wasn’t going to happen.

There you go, this is the first time I’ve walked away from a Heroic Daily without scoring the quest item – I love dungeons, even the ones most people don’t want to do! (Except maybe Oculus, but even that one is sort of fun.)

It’s also the first time I’ve initiated bailing on a group because it was just not working.

I believe I did it nicely, I was polite, I apologized, wished them good luck and went on my way.

You’re really mean, H00ligan. Really. Evil. You can stay.

Or maybe it is scaling the design? It’s something a lot of gamers see but take for granted because the game designer did it right so the player is having good fun.

I’ll fire off some examples – heavy bias leaning towards Bioware games because I’m thinking along the lines of CRPGs.

Baldur’s Gate.

You start as a student or townsfolk in Candlesomething Keep. The beginning play revolves around establishing that Keep and the people in it. It’s used as a place to break ground for how the game will work, establish the environment or setting and foreshadowing what is going to come. Once you’re done there you’re cast out into the wilderness to explore and figure out what’s going on.

Neverwinter Nights.

You can tell their designers learned a lot from previous games because they made it even better. Again, they start small (the Academy), grow into something bigger (City of Neverwinter) and then grow it even more.

It’s quite brilliant (and I realize it’s not unique to Bioware) and draws you into the game more.

You never start off small and stay small. You never start off big and get small. You grow outwards because the players have a lot to digest initially, and eventually they grow comfortable with what you’ve given them and need to view bigger things.

If you really want to suck them into the game, you go that route.