13th September 2004, 7:16 PM
In answer to your question ABF (I think I sense someone else here from the context :D), yes, you can click to move. As you SEEM to be debating, there are a few times when this is quicker than direct control. Most of the time, I direct controlled, and anyway, direct control makes me actually FEEL like I'm in there if you catch my meaning, but sometimes I'd rather just click on an enemy and let my character move and auto-attack by itself.
I suppose I should explain a few more things. First off, you can jump. You aren't barricaded from parts of the world by small knee-high rocks. You can fall off any cliff you want. The only barrier is the ocean. The whole thing is one big world, no load times except when travelling between continents or into instanced zones. (An instanced zone is when you travel into a dungeon and it is seperated from the rest of The World, in that you and your party (and anyone you invite to your instance). In other words, multiple parties can go into the "same" dungeon and fight the black dragon, but it'll be a different dungeon and dragon. This keeps the "line syndrome" from forming where parties are lined up just waiting to fight that boss. Don't worry, most dungeons aren't instanced, so it's not like they are defeating the whole concept of MMORPG with that :D.)
ANYWAY, so in other words the game gives you the mobility you might expect from an adventure game like Zelda rather than an RPG. The battles are pretty free form too. You can attack while moving (so can the enemy, so don't try escaping unless you have a good escape plan, just get into fights you know you can win without that, unlike KOTOR with it's cheap "just run until you recover and then go back and smack up the guy you switched to melee mode!" trick), and you can control your character during battle for better attack positions. It's all turn based, so it's not really Zelda style total free-form fighting, but you get a lot of movement. That's mainly for the rogues though (they have a lot of back attacks). Anyway, a lot of spells have casting time, and those can't be cast while moving. (If it's an instant cast spell, it can.) When you are attacked, instead of just cancelling your spell, your spell's readiness meter is lowered by an amount. So, if you are casting something, while it'll be slowed down by enemy attacks, it'll eventually get through. I'd still recommend using the really long spells to START the battle or when you are in a party and some warrior is taking the major punches though. Anyway, whoever angers the enemy most gets attacked. You can anger the enemy by doing the most damage, casting the most buffs or debuffs, or healing everyone a lot. Basically, the enemy will target what it considers the most valuable team member, unless you know how to sorta space out things. Generally, keep the warrior as the guy taking the punches. Clerics should be spacing out their healing spells so they don't get targetted as much. Fortunatly, there are taunt style moves that raise the anger level towards whoever cast it, or lowers it towards the caster. Those are very helpful to keep the party moving smoothly and at maximum power. Oh yes, there ARE super powerful moves that will stun you, those WILL cancel out spells that are still being prepaired.
PVP is cool. In full PVP servers, anyone from one faction can freely attack people from the other faction whenever they want. I dunno, some people like it. Others don't like being stalked or taken out by crueller players. In partial, the PVP is, as far as I'm concerned, completely perfect. If you want to challenge some random person to battle, you right click on them and just challenge them. They can refuse or accept the challenge just like that. If they refuse, tough luck. You can't just freely attack whoever you want, and that's the way it should be. Some people actually want a chance to PLAY the game. Nothing like starting a brand new one of these and being killed, REPEATEDLY, by some idiot who likes "newb hunting" for HOURS on end. The game engine itself needs to have a system to defeat jackarsery. Some people actually are UPSET that you can't just freely attack people on these servers. Honestly, these are the people who these servers are made to PROTECT everyone else from. The only reason I can think of for them to be upset is because they can't annoy people or hunt newbies any more. Boo hoo. Anyway, aside from the simple consensual dueling system, there's the war system. The game is CALLED Warcraft, so a way for massive battles between factions NEEDS to be in there somehow, even in partial PVP servers. They found a great solution. When you enter a region controlled by the enemy faction, you'll be informed. You can't target them, and they can't target you, YET. However, those NPCs there... Hmm.... You see, if you want to start a war, here's what you do. You gather your forces (since taking on an entire village with just you is called "kamikaze", and the Japanese didn't do too well with that strategy...), and then you rush forward and attack, the NPCs! :D You see, you can freely attack the enemy side's NPCs. This ALONE won't allow you to attack enemy players, but the enemy faction NEEDS those NPCs. If you take them all out, you win control over that area after all and get to use the NPCs yourself. However, by attacking the NPCs, you have given yourself PVP status (which lasts 5 minutes after the last time you attacked the enemy faction, so keep it up if you want that mode to last forever). Under PVP status, anyone on the enemy faction, ANYONE, can, and will, attack you. The SECOND they attack you though, they gain PVP status, and you can now counter them. So, the battles start with one side smashing into the NPC guards standing outside the city (they will fight back, and they will also freely attack anyone of the enemy faction who has PVP status themselves, they are guards after all). then quickly after that, anyone who wants to join in will defend the city by attacking the attackers, with that, everyone who attacked will be attacked now by the invaders (who should have made quick work of the NPCs by then, if not, they were stupid and didn't prepair for the difficulty level of that city). In this way, massive wars can break out, BUT anyone who doesn't want a part of it can simply not attack anyone and they won't be in PVP status, and can just go about their business. Note that not even area effect attacks will be able to hurt someone who hasn't consented to combat in one way or another. Basically, this system easily allows people who either just want to play the game (or know they are far too weak to standup to anything and will just end up running back to their corpse a few times trying to escape), to actually just play the game peacefully, while at the same time allow people who love WAR (what is it good for? Absolutely everything!) to bash it out and have it quickly escalate into a huge scene worthy of pictures... if you actually have the good sense to TAKE a few during these epic brawls! *hits self*
I suppose I should explain a few more things. First off, you can jump. You aren't barricaded from parts of the world by small knee-high rocks. You can fall off any cliff you want. The only barrier is the ocean. The whole thing is one big world, no load times except when travelling between continents or into instanced zones. (An instanced zone is when you travel into a dungeon and it is seperated from the rest of The World, in that you and your party (and anyone you invite to your instance). In other words, multiple parties can go into the "same" dungeon and fight the black dragon, but it'll be a different dungeon and dragon. This keeps the "line syndrome" from forming where parties are lined up just waiting to fight that boss. Don't worry, most dungeons aren't instanced, so it's not like they are defeating the whole concept of MMORPG with that :D.)
ANYWAY, so in other words the game gives you the mobility you might expect from an adventure game like Zelda rather than an RPG. The battles are pretty free form too. You can attack while moving (so can the enemy, so don't try escaping unless you have a good escape plan, just get into fights you know you can win without that, unlike KOTOR with it's cheap "just run until you recover and then go back and smack up the guy you switched to melee mode!" trick), and you can control your character during battle for better attack positions. It's all turn based, so it's not really Zelda style total free-form fighting, but you get a lot of movement. That's mainly for the rogues though (they have a lot of back attacks). Anyway, a lot of spells have casting time, and those can't be cast while moving. (If it's an instant cast spell, it can.) When you are attacked, instead of just cancelling your spell, your spell's readiness meter is lowered by an amount. So, if you are casting something, while it'll be slowed down by enemy attacks, it'll eventually get through. I'd still recommend using the really long spells to START the battle or when you are in a party and some warrior is taking the major punches though. Anyway, whoever angers the enemy most gets attacked. You can anger the enemy by doing the most damage, casting the most buffs or debuffs, or healing everyone a lot. Basically, the enemy will target what it considers the most valuable team member, unless you know how to sorta space out things. Generally, keep the warrior as the guy taking the punches. Clerics should be spacing out their healing spells so they don't get targetted as much. Fortunatly, there are taunt style moves that raise the anger level towards whoever cast it, or lowers it towards the caster. Those are very helpful to keep the party moving smoothly and at maximum power. Oh yes, there ARE super powerful moves that will stun you, those WILL cancel out spells that are still being prepaired.
PVP is cool. In full PVP servers, anyone from one faction can freely attack people from the other faction whenever they want. I dunno, some people like it. Others don't like being stalked or taken out by crueller players. In partial, the PVP is, as far as I'm concerned, completely perfect. If you want to challenge some random person to battle, you right click on them and just challenge them. They can refuse or accept the challenge just like that. If they refuse, tough luck. You can't just freely attack whoever you want, and that's the way it should be. Some people actually want a chance to PLAY the game. Nothing like starting a brand new one of these and being killed, REPEATEDLY, by some idiot who likes "newb hunting" for HOURS on end. The game engine itself needs to have a system to defeat jackarsery. Some people actually are UPSET that you can't just freely attack people on these servers. Honestly, these are the people who these servers are made to PROTECT everyone else from. The only reason I can think of for them to be upset is because they can't annoy people or hunt newbies any more. Boo hoo. Anyway, aside from the simple consensual dueling system, there's the war system. The game is CALLED Warcraft, so a way for massive battles between factions NEEDS to be in there somehow, even in partial PVP servers. They found a great solution. When you enter a region controlled by the enemy faction, you'll be informed. You can't target them, and they can't target you, YET. However, those NPCs there... Hmm.... You see, if you want to start a war, here's what you do. You gather your forces (since taking on an entire village with just you is called "kamikaze", and the Japanese didn't do too well with that strategy...), and then you rush forward and attack, the NPCs! :D You see, you can freely attack the enemy side's NPCs. This ALONE won't allow you to attack enemy players, but the enemy faction NEEDS those NPCs. If you take them all out, you win control over that area after all and get to use the NPCs yourself. However, by attacking the NPCs, you have given yourself PVP status (which lasts 5 minutes after the last time you attacked the enemy faction, so keep it up if you want that mode to last forever). Under PVP status, anyone on the enemy faction, ANYONE, can, and will, attack you. The SECOND they attack you though, they gain PVP status, and you can now counter them. So, the battles start with one side smashing into the NPC guards standing outside the city (they will fight back, and they will also freely attack anyone of the enemy faction who has PVP status themselves, they are guards after all). then quickly after that, anyone who wants to join in will defend the city by attacking the attackers, with that, everyone who attacked will be attacked now by the invaders (who should have made quick work of the NPCs by then, if not, they were stupid and didn't prepair for the difficulty level of that city). In this way, massive wars can break out, BUT anyone who doesn't want a part of it can simply not attack anyone and they won't be in PVP status, and can just go about their business. Note that not even area effect attacks will be able to hurt someone who hasn't consented to combat in one way or another. Basically, this system easily allows people who either just want to play the game (or know they are far too weak to standup to anything and will just end up running back to their corpse a few times trying to escape), to actually just play the game peacefully, while at the same time allow people who love WAR (what is it good for? Absolutely everything!) to bash it out and have it quickly escalate into a huge scene worthy of pictures... if you actually have the good sense to TAKE a few during these epic brawls! *hits self*
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)