Overall impressions so far?

[Bakerton]

How is:

Interface?


Play Control?


Graphics?


Character Development?


Leveling?


Is it easy to figure out or do you need a 26 volume instruction manual?


Is the PvP active at all yet?



I must admit I am skeptical about as it did not have much PvP planned from the looks of it. I like the looks of Lineage 2 but I believe that is mouse click based movement which I do not care for much. Anyways I just wanted to get some impressions on those things from you alpha guys hehe...also any time frame on beta sign ups?

[QuackMD]

Interface:

Ownij, easy to follow menus, easy to equip shizzle

Play Control:

OMG...so after playing for a while, I went back to DAoC for a night...the controls seem so cumbersome and clunky...

Graphics:

Incredible, even with large numbers of people casting, no real lag
so far so good there.

Character Development:

The character screen where u actually plan what u want your char to look like...It's not bad..I wish they'd employ a system more like SWG which had the most complete char creation process i've ever seen. (Fat Twei'leks are too funny)

Leveling:

Not bad at, the quests are fun and progressive and give great experience while your actually doing them. The questing engine is somewhat similar to AC2...but better storylines.
Grinding in general isn't that bad as items drop with decent frequency and can help your toon via auctions or guildmates as needed for crafting materials

Ease of use:
So simple. In alpha, you don't get an instruction manual, you just have to go for it. It was really easy to figure out movement and the interface.

PVP:
It's not really in the game yet, however dueling is quite fun.

One thing to remember kittay is that PvP enabled areas are going to cover roughly 10% of the world. Now while that doesn't sound like much...the world as it stands right now...in terms of finished playable areas for the current push, is larger than SI + frontiers....and it's like 2% of the total world area, so that 10% pvp area will prolly be areas equivalent to 5-10x the current RVR area in DAoC...mebee more

All in all, incredible freakin game, great graphics, awesome gameplay, right now it crashes a lot, but the current push has been rather unstable, hopefully that will get resolved next push...

I've said it since I saw that video like a year and a half ago...

This will be the greatest game ever made.

[Twystyd]

My opinions are very much like Quacks for the most part.

Interface?

pop up menu use. all are straight forward and utalize click and drag for the most part. very simple and neat. B+


Play Control?

Again very clean. The game plays similar to DAoC but like Quack said it is much neater and they were able to capatalize on Mythics mistakes. It uses hot bars + mouse. Much better panning, pet controls etc. B+

Graphics?

New industry standard as predicted. Same spirit as Warcraft (cartoon like). Insane depth on emotes. The only thing they did wrong were cloak and emblems do not show. Gryph rides are a real treat. The game is completely seamless and the terrain pop can be shut off if you like. Also the terrain in the back ground IS ACTUAL not lanscaped (first game I know of that does this). Texture detail is insane. I expected it to be great and it was better then I expected A

Character Development?

Very simple. No starting specs...just racial advantages and stat lines. You apply points into abilities as you level (ie. level 2 gives you 10 points and you can increase resists, spec lines, mana regen etc.) Skills on the other hand level with use (i.e. dagger goes up when you attack, fire dmg goes up when you cast fire spells. They cap at 5xlevel. C- for content (not enough) and a B+ for format (very clean and to the point)

Leveling?

We cap at level 25 so I can not tell you the full story here. 1-10 about the same as DAoC for time. After it is a bit quicker (think kill tasks in reference to leveling speed). They are going to try to hammer PL. You gain 0 xp if someone is 6 levels higher then you and most of the leveling is done through questing. Much more fun but going to supply challenges for guilds like BWC that need to level 40 to0ns or so. It will cut down on the Tingtongs of the world or PBAoE accelerated
leveling groups. No Grade Yet

Is it easy to figure out or do you need a 26 volume instruction manual?

I'd give it a 12+ year old age cap. If you cant figure this game out, stick to Mario Cart Double Dash. No SC templates to create etc.

Is the PvP active at all yet?

Some in the form of arena fighting but it's exclusive to devs and close friends. We are chking class and group balance by fighting in arenas. They know it will work like DAoC (PvP zones) but are still trying to implement it into the maps. PvP at this time is still suspect at best IMHO. 5 man groups, very simple concepts on the classes etc.

I must admit I am skeptical about as it did not have much PvP planned from the looks of it. I like the looks of Lineage 2 but I believe that is mouse click based movement which I do not care for much. Anyways I just wanted to get some impressions on those things from you alpha guys hehe...also any time frame on beta sign ups?

I have Warcat already on the list but no hard date yet. We will deffinatly have our ears to the ground for a date and will inform you ~

[Candide]

Law, two things you said cause major concern to me...

"Leveling?

We cap at level 25 so I can not tell you the full story here. 1-10 about the same as DAoC for time. After it is a bit quicker (think kill tasks in reference to leveling speed). They are going to try to hammer PL. You gain 0 xp if someone is 6 levels higher then you and most of the leveling is done through questing. Much more fun but going to supply challenges for guilds like BWC that need to level 40 to0ns or so. It will cut down on the Tingtongs of the world or PBAoE accelerated
leveling groups. No Grade Yet "

Sigh, i can not stand this. Who the hell cares. This type of dumbass rule has hurt me in games since UO and AC, as my group has very different rates of play time. We had the hard core players (myself, mosthula, hyla later on, etc) and the part timers. In DAoC, after a while the part timers started to feel like they couldn't contribue at all to the group, and that they only made matters more difficult for everyone. This was true, but they are friends so who cares, we have fun playing together. DAoC promised prerelease that you would always be able to group with friends and that they would be able to catchup quickly. That lasted exactly 1.5 months post release before they went back and had every reference on VN boards removed to that fact and took it out. That single change alone cost them a dozen accounts from my group.

You also said something about 5 man groups? Is that the cap on groups??? Man I was hoping that SWG would finally pave the way to get rid of this stupid ass limitation as well. Realize that the SWG 20 person groups caused some issues with just the jaxers sometimes (only once or twice, but we still had a lot who weren't playing).

I understand one side of the coin for both of these issues. I just think the negatives far outweigh the positives. People will find ways to get around any type of crap they code in, it just makes it more difficult. Just like we did multigroup xp in daoc, we will do it in WoW. What happens if I have 6 friends log in? Two group sof 3? Do we tell one "go solo bitch"?

It is funny how quickly I just went from being excited about a game to not even caring about it.

[Bulor]

Interface?
Great internetface(maps and mini maps) also will have the option to edit the GUI to comfort the player.


Play Control?
SICK control.. very easy.. constantly paning the cam becuase it's so damn easy


Graphics?
smooth..


Character Development?
eh.. zero.. you basiclly pick skin hair face... thats about it. you put points into stats as you level.(you pick and choose)

Leveling?
cake. you would get for example, collect 10 worg hearts.. so you go kill off some worgs, some will drop, some will not.. after you have your heart.. you never have to kill a worg again, head to the npc that gave you quest, and he slaps like1000 xp on you.. also quest items and normal items don't overlap.. so if you just killed a mob in your group, and the loot belongs to the other player, you can still loot your quest item, aswell can your buddy.


Is it easy to figure out or do you need a 26 volume instruction manual?
cake

Is the PvP active at all yet?
yes but not for the public.. it's still internal.

the game.. is solid.

[Bulor]

INTERFACE CUSTUMIZATION CHUMPY:

World of Warcraft Interface Customization Guide

The interface of World of Warcraft is built from XML files which describe the look and layout, and lua files which contain scripting functionality. This document is a short introduction into modifying these files to customize your interface. Customizing the interface is a very technical endeavor, and you should not attempt it unless you have a good working knowledge of XML and Lua.

There is no official support for modifying the WoW interface. If you break it, you get to keep both pieces.

You can download the current set of interface files from:
https://12.129.233.207/interface-download.aspx

To start fresh, unpack Interface.zip in your World of Warcraft folder. This will create a new directory called "Interface", which will override any built-in user interface. To remove all customized UI, just remove the Interface directory. Be sure that you never remove the Interface directory in Data\, only remove the toplevel Interface directory you created when you unpacked Interface.zip.

When the game is updated, your customized files will not be modified, which means that you'll need to get an updated version of Interface.zip and apply your changes to the new files.

Before you report a bug in the interface, move your custom interface directory out of the way, to make sure the bug occurs in the unmodified game.

XML Layout

The files containing the layout for the game user interface can be found in Interface\FrameXML
The file "FrameXML.toc" contains a list of XML files to load when you enter the game. The files listed are loaded in order. Any errors that occur when loading the files are written to FrameXML.log in the toplevel directory.

Each XML file typically describes one element of UI on the screen. To get a feeling for the syntax, take a look at the files provided. The XML files strictly adhere to the XML 1.0 standard. For those lucky enough to have access to a syntax checker, the file UI.xsd contains the schema used by the WoW interface.

Lua Scripting

All of the functionality in the interface is provided through Lua scripting.
The manual for Lua 5.0 is available online at:
http://www.lua.org/manual/5.0/

The best way to become familiar with the way Lua is used to script the interface is to look at the scripts in the XML files, denoted by the <script> tag, and to browse the lua files. The lua files typically contain functions which are used by the corresponding XML files.

Getting Started

A good place to start getting familiar with the interface is the file BasicControls.xml

At the top of this file is a script block which contains the function _ERRORMESSAGE(), which is called whenever an error occurs in your script. This function pops up a window with the error message. Another function is defined there, message(), which just pops up the error window with the argument to the function.

Further on on the file a few textures are defined in XML. They have the "virtual" attribute, which means that they are not actually created, only stored definitions to be inherited later. After that a frame, or widget, called "DialogBoxFrame" is defined. This frame is also virtual, and contains an anchor which defines how it's positioned relative to its parent, a background, and a child button which just hides the dialog when it's clicked.

Each frame consists of a number of layers, each of which can contain any number of textures and fontstrings. Each texture and fontstring must be anchored and sized so they are visible. The numbers used for anchor offsets and sizes are values in pixels.

At the end of the file we define an actual frame called "ScriptErrors" which inherits the dialog box we defined previously. This is the frame which is shown in the message function at the top of the file.

How Does It Work?

The very first frame that is created is the WorldFrame. This frame is required, and is where the game world renders. The next frame that is created is the UIParent frame. This frame manages all the rest of the user interface, and allows it to be hidden separately from the world. This is how we get screenshots without the interface visible.

Whenever a frame, texture or fontstring is defined in XML, its initial attributes are defined and it is added to the lua namespace as an object of the appropriate type. Each type of object has member functions that modify that object. This is how we show the error dialog frame from script.

Each frame has a set of script handlers which are called under certain conditions. For example, UIParent has OnLoad, which is called immediately after the frame is loaded, OnEvent, which we'll get to later, OnUpdate, which is called every time the world is updated, and OnShow, which is called whenever the frame is shown.

The OnEvent handler is special. This is the handler that allows the game to communicate with the interface. World of Warcraft is designed so that it needs to know very little about the interface. Instead of calling directly into the interface, whenever something interesting happens, it generates an event. Each frame registers for events that it is interested in, and when those events happen, the OnEvent handler is called for that frame.

Having the UI respond to events wouldn't be very useful if the interface couldn't affect the game in return. The game provides a wide array of functions to query information and change game state. Examples of using these functions are throughout the provided lua files.

Tips and Tricks

World of Warcraft supports dynamically reloading the user interface. At any time you can modify the XML and Lua files and then reload them by bringing down the console (pressing ~) and typing "reloadUI". If there were syntax errors in loading, you can just edit, fix, and reload.

If you're not sure what's happening in the script, use the message() function to print a message and view variables. Once the dialog is shown, your script keeps on executing, but no other message() calls will show anything until you click the button to dismiss the dialog.

Feel free to experiment. If you break something, starting fresh is really easy. If you have questions, look on the forums to see if other people have already figured out the answers. Occasionally, Blizzard staff will be available to answer scripting questions - we value your feedback!

Conclusion

The interface files are provided for your enjoyment, and are not supported in any way. That said, we hope that World of Warcraft provides a robust and flexible system for custom interfaces.