Alot of stuff was talked about some openly some... not so openly
SPOILERS FOLLOW
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!I played as orcs n gobbo's, there was the option to play dwarfs if you could sprint to a pc fast enough but they didnt really intrest me in all honesty. Before I continue I would like to emphasise that this is ALPHA stage and nothing is confirmed.
Sprinting: This is done by a speed boost buff that is on a 45s reuse time and uses a large chunk of action points, both the shaman and the orc warrior had this ability, I would assume this will be a universal ability. Essentially its like sprinting only your "end" in this case AP (action points) regens v fast.
Falling Damage. There was none however I think this was just because its only the alpha, alot of stuff wasnt included such as the water wasnt finished and looked nothing like the daoc water, also the figures looked unshaded / finised compaired to daoc DR figures, either this is to keep specs down or because it is still in its developemental stages.
Balance issues?
well the orcs had a hard time killing vultures, the shaman had no problems however, looks like for now at least spell casters are still v strong.
A note on this, In the world of warhammer there is a risk that casters will make misscastes, essentially a borked spell caste resulting in somthing going wrong in the process, while rare they are possible and usually quite spectacular. To represent this my little shaman gobblin was taking damage whenever it was casting spells
I dont know if this would result in death should you be on low enough hp <i never died nor got close i think this was however down to low npc level etc>As this is just alpha alot can change so dont hold me to any of this:
So, I started in a little orc village, I am informed by the mythic chaps that players can come here from any of the other realms however you are safe <think /pvp off> also you apparently will be unable to turn this feature off, however it does mean that you cannot be ganked in the safe zones, there are however pvp enabled battle fields and zones where you are a free target. You can get to the first of these by making a 10 to 15min walk north, here you will be able to take pvp quests to kill players and stop trade routes etc. You will recieve items in both pvp and pve so you dont have to do pve if you dont want to nor pvp, at least this is mythics intention.
At first I ran my orc warrior arround to see the area, look at the shinies, I found some vultures, some wounded dwarfs who were easy pickings. Moving up the riverbank i jumped in hoping to swim only to just follow the lay of the land and keep on walking, Xalin informs me thats just because the water isnt ready yet, I nod and wander off once more looking for more shinies
heading north west I found some squigs who were bouncing around innocently so i slaughterd one, great fun. Moving out of the squig pens I found the massive saw mill with the moving buzz blade as seen in some of the video's online, this thing was massive, Much taller than a level 10 keep. The size of things in this is going to be totally over the top as it should be Heading further out I found some boar / wolf's who were neutral in some woods. I carried on going and found some dogs of war humans <eurgh> tho they did look very shiney. Xalin informed me they were hired by the dwarfs to help keep the orcs inline, i didnt fancy my chances so skirted around the edge of the camp up a hill where I had a final view out over the land glimpsing some strucutres in the distant north where the battle ground was before some squigs started to mug me. My time was up however <a meer 10mins of looking at the shinies and chatting to xalin> so I stepped away and let the squigs chew on the orc a little. Some goa server type took over and I was swooshed out and handed my freebie t-shirt .I then proceeded to pester the Mythic and goa staff for as much info as possible as any crazed fan would before ambling off to look at the rest of the games day with murmourings of a later invasion after pursuading our lovely gm's to participate in a grp photo
<see gms.JPG>okies so I came back and my inquisition began however my attempt to gain laberinth info was deftly swatted aside by the zelous Xalin with nothing more than a "I couldnt possibly comment on the new minotaur race or classes..." however the grin on his face was horrifying to say the least, Im thinking these things are going to be v hard
further inquisition results will follow after:My goblin shaman exploits
<Many many thanks to a certain you know who and should that person read this /hugs!!!>Ahahaha, small, evil, sharp teeth, a staff attack and a dot - eheheh. My first quest was to kill some vultures, easy peasy took them out in seconds much faster than the orc next to me, I moved on to rummaging though buildings for quest items and generally having great fun poisoning stuff and then twatting it royally with my staff
yea my shaman took some damage when I heald but that was about it, on the plus side the more I was in combat the bigger my "wargh" bar as I call it gets, allowing me to unleash a grp based buff dependant on the amount of wargh I have, every class and every race gets this, its easy enough to get to level 1 on the bar for the first ability, a small damage increase etc, the higher tears require longer fighting and in the case of the final level 4 skill I am informed you will need to be in a big group fighting. The bar slowly unfills when you are not fighting.The shaman was fun and the spell efects where somwhere between daoc and wow, closer to daoc in shineyness tho but closer to wow in "feel" Still the bubbling of poison was reassuring as that is what I am used to from my dots in daoc
So back to pestering the lovely Mythic chaps <all american / canadian I believe> who were very helpful and went to the lenth of suggesting that EA was "very interesting in looking at the consol market for a mmorpg release" Don't get me wrong, this is definatly going to come out on the pc we wont have another halo on our hands <at least we damn well shouldnt> but it does open up the opportunity to other gamers for the 360 etc
Other items of intrest included the potential to kill a mob 1000 times to become a "slayer" in the case of dwarfs and get a "moheakan" just like the dwarf slayers. Every thing you do is recorded a bit like the title storage in daoc but this records everything from player kills to amount of squigs killed to giants slayed etc. Also the more you kill a type of creature the better you get at understanding it. The example I was given was if for example you find a deamon then the deamon page of the grimgorre will become availible and a brief foot note, kill one and you get a bigger note and perhaps a drawing of one, kill 10 and you will be able to identify different types of deamon and their levels, kill 50 or more and you will be able to tell what class they are just from looking at them, I am assuming the same will be so for pvp which will be nice for target picking however I have no basis on which to found this other than the fact that they were very proud of this new system and claimed that it recorded "everything you kill!"
the character select menu looks much like daoc as does the character gen. but i was told that was unfinnished so you never know. Black background red icons etc.
there were other things I probably shouldnt share so I wont
Finally I got a pic of the lovely mythic monkies that can be seen below <right> with their warhammer swag
Left photo:
From left to right: Requiel, Xalin and Taryx.
but I imagine yes as most games do have it as standard now or there is a mod which enables you to assist... but again, I wasnt grped with anyone and didnt have long so 