Wish Beta journal by Scott Adams.

 

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This document is archived at: http://www.msadams.com/wishbeta.htm

 

 Last Update: 1/18/03 07:47

 

1/13/04 Log

 

I was accepted on the wish beta 1/13/04. The following is information I am allowed disclose to the public by the NDA as follows:

The additional rights granted to you under this Amendment are as follows:

  1. Tester may write about the Game in newsgroup, articles, or using any other media (collectively called "Articles"). Tester may disclose certain details about the Game in such Articles.
  2. This Amendment does not allow the Tester to disclose program code of the Game, or any other copyrighted material that is part of the Game. This Amendment applies to Articles about the Game only. Tester may, however, post screenshots of the Game, if such screenshots are part of the Tester's Article.
  3. Tester shall inform MR about Tester's Articles in a reasonable form, such as sending MR an Internet link to a newsgroup or web site with the Article.
  4. Tester must not disclose any information about the Game that MR explicitly requests not to disclose.
  5. MR reserves the right to terminate this Amendment for individual Testers or all Testers at its sole discretion.


The initial list of topics for Paragraph 4 of the Amendment is as follows:

As you see here I must post my articles so I will be using this document and updating it on a regular basis. First a look at hardware needs. Note that GF4 MX cards do NOT work with Wish.

 

System requirements:

 

 

Wish is a next generation fantasy MOG running on one super server.

 

I downloaded the client and installed the beta with no problems. Upon entering the client it patched automatically before login.

 

The game uses a point and click interface. It was very easy to pick up and reminiscent of Shadowbane and Never Winter Nights.

 

The graphics looked good. Not in the SWG class but heads and shoulders above Everquest and Dark Age of Camelot.

 

The game is skill based somewhat along the lines of UO and SWG. The following is from the Mutable documentation…

 

Skill Progression

Skill progression in Wish is use-based, with caps on gains for individual creature types. The more difficult a creature is, the more skill you can gain for it.

For example, a chicken may allow you to progress from 1.00 skill to 1.50 skill before you will no longer gain skill from fighting chickens. Once that happens, you will need to move to a different creature type (for example, sheep) to continue increasing your skill. Your maximum skill level is determined by the sum of all the caps of each different creature type (yes, this means your potential maximum skill will increase when a new creature type shows up in the world). For resource gathering skills, replace "creature type" for "material type".

Clerical heals and other buffs fall under the same skill gain system, except that the target is considered to be the creature that is being fought by the person that you buffed. Therefore, you can gain skill by healing and buffing other players until you hit the cap, at which point you'll need to buff/heal players fighting different creatures.

Skill gain is not random - every action you perform until you hit the cap will gain you some amount of skill depending on the effect of the action. Even if the gain is too small to display on your skill chart.

 

As of this report I was only able to play for a few minutes. Character generation is simple and has a large color pallet. I took the default character and went with that.

 

You start the game as reborn hero who must pick his new path in life. You start on an island surrounded by lava. The graphical effects were very good. From conversations with wraiths to pick a major fantasy class and then pick major and minor powers in the class. I selected a mind orientated (mage) class and selected nature changes as my major and offensive magic as my minor. Note you can pick a combat class and still master one line of magic.

 

I then took a teleporter to my starting city. The teleport screen was swirling colors that somewhat reminded me of AC1/2 without the wormhole. This is where I stopped play for the time being.

 

I will update this journal further in the future. I will accept questions to answer about Wish. I will answer only within this document so I can have an article link to give to MR per the NDA. Mail any questions to me.

 

 

1/13/04 evening

I have come across an excellent site. I will not be repeating information found there. See Xavori's Guide to Wish

 

Played some more this evening, there was a large patch but finally was able to get in. On the wish list is some indication of the size and time of the patch. I know it will come, just wished it was in now.

 

I picked up play where I left off. I was outside the town of flathead and so I wandered in. there where many stores with multiple stories. I never opened a door but just walzed in. I found I could climb stairs easily. I found the autofollow and targeted another player as he want about town. I NEVER got stuck, the pathfinding is very very nice.

 

After awhile I met an admin by the name of Lady Tara. Due to her mannerisms and in role speech I thought she was an NPC at first. I finally targeted her and did an examine and saw she was an “Admin”.

 

A bit about targeting and interacting.

 

When you target an area and it is not a targetable item then the target window shows the waypoint of the location and a beacon appears that is similar to the waypoints in SWG. When you target anything else you get the name of the target in the target window and then below you get a series of icons that indicate what you may do. This is also similar the radial system in SWG but appears always in the same spot as opposed to over the item. You will get things like examine, attack, converse to give some examples. You can use the number keys as shortcuts to the icons, also double clicking a target defaults to the first icon which is usually the logically thing for that target.

 

I was inducted by Tara into citizenship of the town of Flathead. I was told to expect things in the future because of my new alliagance. I got a guild window for joining but found out that the guild chat was limited only to those with privileges. I am not sure if they plan this to change in the future as it was annoying. This made the guild window simply an announcement window the house leader can use.

 

After this I went and walked about and explored. I found the village blacksmith and some rocks that I could mine. But I had no pick ax and was not able to find a merchant to sell me one yet. I found there where many trees that indicated they could be cut but again I lacked the tools. I started the game with 100 gp and some reagents. Like AC and SWG you need reagents to cast any spells. There is no mana bar but simply health and endurance. Endurances goes down as you run from anything. Currently it switches you to auto-run as you sprint away.


You can set your stance to automatically attack when hit or to stand your ground or to flee.

 

I also found many herb bushes about that I was able to harvest reagents from. None though were for spells I currently had. I need coal for for elemental missle, and belladonna for decay. I cast decay on a mob and was amazed how well the DOT worked.

 

The player models still need work and are on the list to be done. The mob models though are incredible. I stood next to a horse in game and listend to him neigh at me. It almost looked like a photo. The trees in the game are all in gentle motion in the breeze as the grass. They use the same graphics engine as DaoC but have turned on more of the eye candy options. Looks very nice.

 

I have found out that this beta is due to end in only 2 weeks. It is primarily a load test beta and they hope to have 10,000 testers beating on the server. I know I will be playing frequently as the time is short. After that they plan a development cycle through summer when once again they will re-invite the testers back.

 

Right now I am seeing some very nice potential in this game. I know I am going to miss playing it when this beta cycle ends.


There is a nice feature in game where you hit the tab key and all mobs in the area get their name highlighted. You release the key and the tags drop. Makes it much nicer than having them on all the time.

 

Server went down for a few hours so I went and played SWG. When it came back up I jumped on in again.

 

I finally found the pickax merchant and spent some time mining. While there I talked with a number of the other players. During our mining I saw a message that said that one of the mobs had gotten into the monks treasurery and the monks were very mad. I thought that amusing and kept mining. A while later Eagle Eye reported he had tracked down the mob and killed it and found 5,000 gp on the corpse. Very nice. Obviously I will be paying more attention to these mini-quests. Eagle eye then offered to share his find with me and gave me 1,000 gp. Very neat.

 

Not sure if I will get any play time tomorrow or not.

 

1/14/04 evening

 

I searched about the town and found the alchemist and was able to buy some coal. This reagent is used in the spell elemental missile one of the 3 spells I started with. I have 2 others, decay which is a DOT and lower resitance which lowers the magic resistance of a target.

 

I grab a small amount of coal and later bought some belladonna from a herbalist. The herbalist says BETA over his name so may not be in the final release. You can actually collect herbs yourself by forage at bushes about the country side. The type of bush etc is in its name. This is very much like Morrow wind alchemy skill. There are many craftsmen in the town and most simply have nothing to say at the moment. I assume they are placeholders at this time.

 

Lady Tara the leader of the Flatshead announced that someone need help rescuing his family. This was a GMevent and was fun. A large group of us of about a dozen all joined up with Corban (spelling?) and then went seeking his family. He kept announcing he had found pieces of cloth etc along the way but I never actually saw anything.

 

I placed my char in auto-follow and was amazed once again on the path finding in the game. I never once got hung up or stuck on any object.

 

Along the way we met and defeated Trolls, Ogres and Pug Dragons. Eventually we found his wife and daughter and they had a touching re-union. We were told to return to Flatshead and Lady Tara would reward us. We received 1,000gp for our efforts. We were then told to go to another town to continue the adventure. My limited playtime for the night was wrapping up so I decided to stay in town and resupply my reagents. During the battles the loot order was set to first come so being a mage I never got any loot as the front line players got it all. There are 3 types of loot order in the game. First come first served, random and master looter.

 

I went to the back of the town and discovered a field of Hopstalks with Hop Devils infesting it. The hopstalks are targetable like all the fauna in the world. I did not attempt to harvest or farm it at this time.

 

I target a Hop devil and hit him with Decay and then ran off. Decay would get him down to half life or so before it would wear off. I then would either throw a elemental missle or use my dagger on him. Note that spell effects are very good. With decay a graveyard appears around you as you cast it. Looks allot like the proposed type spell effects in EQ2. Very nice.

 

I noticed that the guards would runs in and start attacking the Hop devil and would kill him off. I was still able to loot the body so I came up with a plan of standing in one place. Throwing decay on the devil , then casting missile and then letting the guards defend me and finish him off. I could watch my skills in necromancy can evocation go up. In beta we start now at skill level 2 in things. I am about 2.78 in necromancy at the moment. So leveling a skill is visible but not instantaneous.

 

The movement of mobs currently is a bit bizarre. They know instantly the spot you targeted to move to and that is where they head. I have put in a suggestion that this be changed. It looks very creepy and not real life at all.

 

Near the gate of the town there is a large stand. A town crier walks around town and then every so often gets up on the stand and makes his announcement. The current one is that there is to be another party Jan 16 hosted by Lady Tara. Next to the town crier stand is a paper boy. I purchased the one page rag and read all about happenings in the area. Very nice touch. EQ used to have these for a number of years and they were always fun.

 

On the subject of NPCs the merchants and others in the town do not simply stand about. They walk around doing things such as the healer would be seen harvesting berries, the blacksmith goes to his smithy and works on a weapon. Guards patrol etc. Very nice immersion feel because of it.

 

When trying to figure out what spells I can use and when I opened the built in help system. Very nice as it is 100% html orientated. There are already 3rd party add-ons see http://www.dispressa.com/wish/dhelp/  It turns out that spells will require certain levels of skills before they can be used. You purchase a spell scroll and then can either memorize it or cast it, both actions consume it. I am assuming you can cast a spell even if you are not high enough to memorize but this is an assumption at the moment as I did not test it.

 

I decided now would be a good time to die. I had so far escaped death in the game, sometimes very narrowly and had no idea what the death system was. So I started to head to the front gate so I could get killed next to town. On the way I discovered to war dogs that were not tamed yet and running loose. I selected one and on its menu I found TAME, which I clicked. The first time it failed but on 2nd try it succeeded and my pet window popped up. I now could have the pet attack, release, and some other commands which I do not remember at this writing. I ended up taming both dogs.


Since this was my first experience with pets I ran outside to test them. Dying being forgotten. I sic them some mobs that had given me trouble outside the gate before. In moments they reduced them to corpses. I then had to log off and hoped my pets would still be there next playtime.

 

 

1/15/04 morning

 

I only had a short playtime this morning. First thing I noticed was my pets were gone. Ah well. Next I went and tried to find some elderberries for my resist spell. No luck at the herbalist. Then I started checking the plants in town and found an elderberry bush, in a few short minutes I had harvested a stack of 50.

 

Next I started to explore the town more. I located the banker and opened my personal strong box. I split my stack of gold into 1,000 and 800 and then moved 1,000 gp to the strong box. I continued thru town and located a carpenter. I purchased a box form him. Rather heavy at 14+ pounds. I found it could hold items but did not reduce their weight. I placed some items in it and then went back to the banker and place the box in there. This is very useful for bank storage.

 

I purchased a hand ax from the blacksmith and tried to chop a tree. No go. I then went to find the merchant I had bought the pickax from and bought a fishing pole, a kilt, some dye and a lumberjack ax. I then was able to chop wood. I sold the wood to the carpenter but it looked like mining made more money. There are assorted different trees about, pine, oak, etc. When I attempted to chop on the dead tree in the center of town I never got any wood back. Just the failure message that I was making a mess of the tree!


The animations for mining, foraging and lumberjacking are all very good and look fairly realistic.

 

I still have not died nor have I found the armorer yet. I suspect as a mage I wouldn’t be able to wear much in the way of armor.

 

1/15/04 tidbits learned.

 

Another thing I have not mentioned is the downtime. Currently both meelee and mage users draw from an indentical pool called endurance. It is used when you sprint, cast or hit. As it stands you only need a minute or so of “resting” to get your endurance back. The animation is similar to AC’s where you take a knee.

 

I just learned about the color coding system of name tags currently in game. BTW you can turn name tags on and off with ctrl-n, you can also cause ALL nametags to show momentarily by holding down tab.

 

Note to see this in color be sure and look at the archived web document vs. any monochrome forum copies of this text.

 

It is as follows:

 

The color really represents how aggressive a creature is, but that will change to show how dangerous it is when we have a few days with 25 or more hours in them.

Players
Threat level 0 or NPC
Threat level 1
Threat level 2
Threat level 3
Threat level 4
Threat level 5
Threat level 6
Threat level 7
Threat level 8
Threat level 9
Threat level 10


Note this does not indicate level but aggressiveness.

 

Another Tidbit I just learned is you can turn the camera 180 degrees by simply hitting Backspace.

 

A great photo preview here:

 

http://www.mmoworlds.com/index.php?page=article_details&artid=144&table=mp_articles&pageId=0

 

1/17/04 I finally dye.

 

I log on for a quick session of about half an hour. I decide it was time to see how to change my clothes. I found the armorsmith but his wares were not for my mage. I then located the tailor and bought a set of padded armor. With my low agility this seemed to be the best I could do at the moment. I put the pieces on and noticed how very bland and blank they looked! A pale tan color.

 

I purchased some dye then and a dye tub. I placed the item in the tub but it said I needed more dye. I added a dye packet and got a message that the I could now dye two more items. I dyed my tunic and sleeves the same color. I then used some other dye I had, this I had bought from antoher merchant when I was trying to figure out dying before. I then dyed my leggings this neutral tan color. Last I purchased some black dye and dyed my boots.

 

 I found the dye tub and the ax and the pickaxe where all weighting me down. I went to the bank and put these items in the my strongbox and then logged for the night.

 

1/18/04 Pets are fun!

 

It was a few days since I was able to get a real long play session on Wish. It seemed everytime I was ready to play the servers were not. Of course this beta and they are constantly fixing and tuning stuff. I continued to read the beta boards during this time though. I noticed a long discussion on WASD vs. Point and Click.  I am currently comfortable with either and do not currently have a strong wish to go in either direction. They main motivation to use PnC instead o WASD is to reduce network traffic. With their super server planning to host 50,000 or more people I can see why they would be concerned. Anyway on with my adventures…

 

I logged on near Flatheads and heard a player by the bind stone asking for someone to lend her 700gp so she get her corpse retrieved. She promised 1500gp as pay back. I was not sure I would get paid back or not but I figured this was a good time to help some one and learn some more about death mechanics. So far I have not died in game so my information is second hand.


She asked me to follow her to the healer. I have seen the healer in town and when I spoke to him he said he had nothing for me. She did not remember where the healer was so I was able to lead her there. Next I need to trade the money to her. To do this I targeted her and then selected the first icon in the target window. It was Trade. A trade window opened up. I then selected my stack of gold pieces. I had 767 on me this time as I had placed the rest (around 1k) in the bank for safe keeping.

 

I then typed in 700 as the amount and it placed it into the trade window. I hit accept as did she and then the money went to her. She stood in front of the healer and then said it was 750. I gave her the extra 50 leaving me with 26 gp. I said I had heard there was a retrieve corpse spell that players could cast. She said the same spell was also available from the healer for 750.


I saw nothing happen and then my trade window opened. In it was 1500gp which I accepted. She then proceed to remove her newbie clothes and stripped to her underwear she then put on armor. Next she started buffing me with accuracy, strength, and a life spell. I thanked her for her generosity and the buffs. After quizzing her about the healer I mentioned I was going to always have 750 gp in the bank for emergency corpse retrieval. When you die it seems all your items are left behind on your corpse and there is no marker to where the body is. Currently you have 6 hours of in-game play time to retrieve the corpse.

 

We both left the shop and she went to the front of the town. Note there is no way to send a /tell to another player that I know and I wanted to find out about the life buff. I ran to the front of the town and found her.


She was asking if anyone wanted to group with her. I immediately said I would and we formed a group. There were some new mobs roaming the city called sea hags. I noticed others fighting them so I joined in and cast my missle, decay and lower resitance spells. They killed a number of guards and players but did not ever touch me.

 

We moved out of the city and she mentioned that we needed to get some dogs. We went to the SW of the city near the river and saw a large war dog population also there were ssome very large and mean looking wasps. I was warned to stear clear of the wasps.

 

I was able to tame 3 dogs. My taming was only 0.06 at this time and very low. Just as I tamed the last dog we agroed a number of wasps. We survived but lost all our dogs but one. I went and tamed two more but had problems with the third. She said she never had been able to tame 3 dogs. I told I had just had 3 dogs so we both kept at it. At last we had a full pack of 6.

 

She then proceeded to buff me and my dogs. I could see the buffs on my dogs but not hers. Unlike SWG there is no indicator to party members or pets to how far they are, but there is an indicator of what buffs are currently running. You get a set of icons which have tooltips that say the name of the buff. She was able to buff all the dogs and us with the same buffs.

 

We then went a little way and decide to take on some nightmares. They are large fiery horses. We were easily able to take them. Now she said we were ready to take on the corruption lords.

 

We went NE of Flatshead and found a number of them there. The fight were fun but easy as the dogs hit hard. She was a cleric/fighter and preferred getting agro as her armor was stronger than the dogs. They hit as hard as my mage spells though. We later fought some Falchans and Human Skeletons. All were no match for our little band. The corruption mobs all dropped large amount of loot that later sold well to the vendors. Definitely they are a good source of income at this point.

 

After the figting I start heading back to town on my own. Along the way I ended up running through a number of sea hags. They con orange which means they have a good chance to agro. They did. I watch my dogs stay and fight and loose as I ran off. The dogs died one by one. I made it to the castle wall but was on the north side. The gate was on the south side and I had a number of hags behind me. They hit me hard and I was dying.

 

I quickly switched my stance from stand and fight to run and flee. The next time I was hit instead of stopping I went to into flee mode. I also hit the sprint button. I quickly outran the hags but did not stop when I targeted the town entrance. I had forgotten I was in sprint mode and I kept running and running until I remembered and shut it off.


I went to the nearest vendor and sold all my loot and logged off. Another fun time in Wish Beta.

 

 

To be continued….