Greetings old friends,
I saw the trailer and it did its job. It got my attention and made me want to try the game. I haven’t played in almost a year, and I never really understood the crafting in the past. So you can take this as the perspective of someone who is clueless and starting to play the game.
The short version is wow! This is a really fun game to play and addictive. It moves along at a good pace that makes you fell rewarded and entertained. The direction it is going is now clear, not just forum post, and I like it a lot.
I picked a server to start on; I played by myself to see what the experience was like without the joy and fun of friends. At first the crafting system was tricky to understand however after a little experimenting I started to understand it. I can see how the discovery system will work and it is pretty cool. I still consulted websites for the more complex items, and I wanted to see what as all possible currently.
I started by building a house the most basic thing. I quickly discovered that it takes fair bit of work to build yourself a 8x8x5 cube to hide in. Initial reaction to this was this seems a bit grindy, but then again that based on the perspective of minecraft. MMO’s usually do take a little more work than a multiplayer game. In hindsight I had a house about 4 hours, and I feel pretty proud of that little cube. I went caving next, and started to learn the ores and fuel system. This was a lot of fun. Getting lost in the caves and finding a way out was a little adventure in and of itself that feels quite rewarding. Something that I noticed hung me up was it is not really clear how to build or get the furnace to work, a small note when you hover over the item that says something like “It takes two pieces to make a furnace and this goes on top” would go a long way to helping a new player. They’re going to build one of them put it down and wonder why it doesn’t work.
Next I started constructing the machines. I was able to figure out placing them easily. I like the crafting tree and the way it progresses. I am not a big fan of the time delay component. I can see how it adds to the game but it feels so artificial. I have already done the real work of locating this material and bringing it back to the location to do something with it. Making me wait to get the items just feels excessive, especially when coupled with things breaking so quickly.
I went exploring in the world last night and enjoyed the experience. The terrain was interesting and at times challenging. The area players are spawned felt like a nice little enclave once I got further out. I also found a settlement as I was walking back to my house and it was really exciting to find. There were some impressive builds in it, and I immediately began thinking about moving there. I also ran into a nice player on a quest to find the almighty gold. It was a nice interaction. I like the chat text font.
I am really happy to see how the core loop turned out. It feels like we have a winner.
We will be adding more after the next update and will check with the community on what areas need further explaining.
