First of all: Welcome! \o/
Hopasaurus wrote:what I can expect from this experience?
You can expect a promising project, with a world of potential. The devs are active on the forums and priotize PvP (RvR) over PvE. They are basically listening to the player's discussions, suggestions and thoughts on these forums, and then try to implement the closest thing possible to that. Polls are often made by players, to find out what people think about certain subjects and people are very passionate about this game. You will find heated debates and stuff like that, but it just goes to show actually how much people care.
Hopasaurus wrote:What are some of the social aspects of this game?
Well, in live there was what was called Public Quests (PQ), which are basically areas where players could do specific tasks, such as farm mobs, click on stuff and other things to get what is called Influence (Reputation, if you know WoW).
You could then head to the Rally Master for that given chapter/PQ and get a reward (either a potion, or some gear). There are 3 stages of rewards for each Chapter, and you'd get better rewards for each stage you'd farm to.
On this server however, many aspects of the PQs don't work, so you can only get Inf by farming mobs, and many of the rewards are simply not that good, and takes a very long time to get. So yeah, it was a social aspect in live, but not so much here
There are also Scenarios (Battlegrounds from WoW), where you just sign up from your minimap, and then get in queue. After some time, a pop-up will appear and you can join (Remember to join an actualy group in the SC so you will get healed!). You'll then be with 11 other players, fight 12 from the opposite faction over battle objectives (BOs). Remember you also get points for kills
Other than that: Get in a guild! I can't emphasize this enough! Your guild is your family in this game: You fight along side them, and you die along side them. You are helpless alone in this game.
Hopasaurus wrote:How are the RvR fights going?
It's overall pretty even I'd say. Right now however, it's pretty Order dominated in the ORvR lakes. We have certain problems with players switching faction whenever they see the smallest sign of defeat (Called Crossrealmers or xrealmers). Order seems to be zerging quite a lot lately, while Destro seems to focus more on 6-man roaming or doing SCs. Order also seems to be more European, and Destro American.
Hopasaurus wrote:Biggest concern...how is the community? On a scale from 1-10...1 being the most toxic.
Erhm... It really depends on the day, lol. If you have a day where one faction completely steamrolls the other, the salt levels get up pretty high and you can expect to see whine-threads within a few hours. I also personally athink people can seem a bit arrogant and toxic. Trolling isn't that normal however. Trashtalking can be a bit of a issue from time to time. Some people (Especially Destro) can be pretty biased and/or dishonest, when it comes to talking about balance among the classes across the factions.
But with that being said, it only takes one bad experience to over-shadow all the good ones. There are lots of amazing people here too (players and devs alike), and there are made amazing threads, and posts every single day. People really do care, and want a as good game as possible.
Hopasaurus wrote:Good balance of classes?
People say that the balance right now is pretty good here in Tier 2 (Level 26), but there's also quite a few whine-threads about "Order is OP this" and "Order is OP that". I honestly feel there are advantages to Order, but it's nothing to whine about. If you're a great player, you'll do great. No matter what faction.
I do believe certain classes (and their mirror class across faction) do need some tuning down. I usually call these classes "the power classes", and they were dominating in most of live, and we can already start to see it here, too. But I think it would be silly to make big changes until we get to Tier 4, simply because we don't fully know the effect or how the balance actually is there. Who are these power classes, you might ask? Order: KotBS, Warrior Priest, Slayer, and Bright Wizard. Destro: Chosen, DoK, Choppa, and Sorc.
Now, that's just my opinion, and it's important to note that I only want their AoE sightly tuned down. But I guess you'll have plenty of time to figure out your own opinions
Enjoy, good luck and WAAAGH!!!!
