So, the very first Closed Beta phase for Snail Game's Age of Wulin started at 2pm (GMT+8) earlier in the afternoon. Being the very first batch of public gamers flooding the server, we are always bound to be the guinea pigs, and it came true with a less than enjoyable start. Players were disconnecting, stuck in one of the area with no NPC and more. It didn't help that Snail Game was still selling tons of CBT keys over at the event area. Well, enough of ranting, let's get started!
Character creation in Age of Wulin is pretty standard. Starting out, players will have to choose from 6 different storyline. Each will have different quests, outcomes and story paths for the players. Only the first is available for CBT1. The customizations are pretty self-explanatory, but it is the naming part which intrigued me. There are 100 surnames for players to choose from, after that players will type in the given name (Chinese only, no English). I am wondering how will they do it for the English and other foreign servers.
As there is no character level system in the game, characters' stats come into the focus. There are a few special stats, for example Stamina and Hunger. When using life skills, Stamina points are consumed. The higher the Hunger stats via consuming food, the faster Stamina regenerates. The other new stats are about defense against fighting stances, defense against critical damage etc. Additional stats can be found on some of the costumes as well.
Next will be entering the newbie town. As you can see, there are simply too many players, with quest NPCs doing the disappearing act as well. Taking a walk to the wilderness nearby, I actually fell to my death... Just a reminder, Age of Wulin looks much better in-game, I have no idea why the video quality is lowered once uploaded onto YouTube...
Since entering one of the quest room is out of question as a bug and the latency caused the NPC to be spirited away, I decided to take a footage of the town. It is a middle-sized town, neither too big nor small. You would have realized by now, there is actually no auto-path in Age of Wulin, something I am definitely used to in Chinese MMOs. Clicking on the NPC names at the quest bar will only open up the map and show you their locations, which I ain't really comfortable with.
If you noticed, NPCs have a semi-circle meter when mousing over them. Running into them will cause them to startle and move back, followed by some harsh words. This will be the basis of the NPC interaction system, where high affinity with them will lead players to exclusive quests and rewards. Random mobs will also spawn in the town, with alerts telling players and asking everyone to hunt them down.
With the main quest line getting stuck and no combat quests, I decided to go learn one of the 15 life skills available - accessory making. The interesting part is that players may challenge the Accessory Trainer to a game of Bejeweled... Which I won after a shaky start. I am guessing each Life Skill trainer will probably have a mini-game for players to challenge.
Once again, due to the main quest getting bugged, it is hard for almost all the players to progress and choose 1 of the 4 open clans (Shaolin, Wudang, Er Mei and Tang Clan) to enter. I guess I will stop here for today. Tomorrow, I hope I the quest is fixed and I can touch more on life/ gathering skills (there is something which will piss players off) and of course, combat.
7 comments:
hope that u get well in playing and bring us good news.
Very nice cinderboy, I guess Snail have lots to do now. By looking at it, I think there will be a lot more bugs(busy week for the snails). Now I get why Snail have a CBT this long. BTW, I like not having auto walk in AoW, lets say we just click on a NPC name and we took the time to shut our eyes or get some water while our char is running, we will miss some stunning visuals. Besides, from what I know about AoW, we might encounter something unusual on the road(like a miracle quest).
same thing that karnex said ,better without that generic auto path system
Well it looks pretty decent though we haven't seen the combat as of yet. I think having no levels in the game is pretty interesting. Also I like that they try to make crafting entertaining. I don't know why we have to click a few buttons, just to watch a bar fill up, that's not a game -3-
What's also interesting is the minigame isn't just plain bejeweled, it's an exact copy of the Puzzle Quest DS games with the coloured mana, skulls and spells. So the game will probably have some depth to it. (Actually Puzzle Quest tends to be really BS... Not going to be accessory making I can tell you that =/)
About auto-paths, I think they should be included as an option, especially if there are a lot of fetch quests. Walking is boring, it's as simple as that. It's not like you have to leave your keyboard when you auto-walk and even if you do, it should be a choice the player makes. Basically you shouldn't force things on a player regardless if you want them to look at the scenery or not. Missing out on a random quest or being killed by random monsters? The player will have to deal with it for being AFK.
Wow, thanks a lot for your ingame footage :D
"Clicking on the NPC names at the quest bar will only open up the map and show you their locations, which I ain't really comfortable with." ---- Have to agree, that's quiet uncommon for chinese games and I really hope it will be an option läter at relaese.
Yup, no auto-walk is better. One thing that bothers me about Chinese MMOs is that everything is so automatic. Click this and you get taken to the next quest. Click again and you get taken to the quest goal. Hit buttons repeatedly to defeat the baddie, then click something else and you are taken back to collect your reward. It feels like playing a slot machine with a mouse instead of a lever: lots of repetitive action with only intermittent excitement.
It looks like Age of Wulin is a serious attempt to remedy this problem. I hope it can deliver on what it promises!
auto walk is boring because i can get a drink of water you know and come back and i got jumped. but the slow jogging is boring there should be a light foot technique or the more you run you get faster and start passing human limits like if you press w 2 times its faster and becomes faster than the last if and you do a great distance the higher your spiritual level is or what ever and the same should be about combat to like a sort of strafe dash or not you know
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