Game Guides Archive

Don't listen to this guy, he's ignorant.

Anyway, now combat is based on tatics rather than just special spamming. Get all of your offensive and defensive specials up on your toolbar first.

If you're melee, make sure to keep CoB up at all times. Try to get a KD then hit with your best special when they're down. Make sure you also group all of your state recovery specials close together and easy to get to. You just need to think and plan out a strategy, rather than just spam. You'll get the hang of it.

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A week in my thoughts:

To successfully CURB it you now have to be in a specific class set. I started with my prior skills of Master scout/ranger with Creature handler /pistol on the side. It was useless. Many non fighting classes such as ranger, scout, and medic which have NO application in combat now cause the creature level you fight against to raise even while you gain no fighting skills, defense, etc. If you're going to do one of the side professions now, get used to the concept you're only there as a buff machine for the "real" players.

To coincide with the everquest: TNG syndrome the classes have been revamped to fall into the four traditional mmorpg classifications: tank, caster, crowd control, and healer. Decide which you want to to play and early as again, as in EQ you'll now be restricted in what sort of armor will work for you now and how. My now master pistoleer for instance is debuffed anytime I wear anything but recon armor.

Prepare for having to get new equipment and what a pain that now is. I play on Bria and with the mass exodus on my server (Coronet there can sometimes have as few as 50 people now!) it's been virtually impossible for most players to find the armor and weapons they're looking for. I have three guildmates who've been trying to find just one armorcrafter currently working for over a week now. Most seem to have just quit in disgust. The few posts I've seen from them are marking that there's a significant drop in use of pre-curb armor and the exact same armor made with the same materials just the next day. So "DROP" armor has been replaced by the hunt for crafters....

And of course, be prepared for bugs, bugs, bugs. Like being on a plain now and not being able to target the stormtrooper 2 feet from you because you can't see them. Or not being able to /listen to musicians, which is why my alt is on hold. Or more pleasant ones, like the one that's currently ending an occasional mission for me before I even reach it's spawn point.

All that being said, if you're willing to forgo individuality and the concept of being able forge your own way in the galaxy it's not so bad. Pistoleer allows me to mop my way through static quests quickly, which is something I was never able to pull off as a Ranger. The combat upgrade isn't an upgrade at all; it simplified combat and because of that it does move quickly, but it does so at the expense of the flavor of the game. The only good thing about this combat upgrade is the respec and that hardly required the annihalation of the game population to pull off. But of course, there's something to be said about taking something and driving it into the ground...

At this point, I hope there are a LOT of returning players coming in. They're going to find a simpler, slower pace of life that hearkens back to the games of 5 years ago, but if all the servers have been hit like Bria, it's likely we'll be seeing a downsized set of servers within the year if we don't have some sort of influx. And with the multitude of bad press I've seen from PC Gamer IGN and G4 over the past year I don't think they have the PR budget to pull it out otherwise. Which would be sad...even as badly as they've damaged the standard game experience it's a lot of fun still. And ROTW has been quite enjoyable so far, even if I'm stuck playing in a style I don't like to have to do it.