Since the game's one selling point is it's story, they'll probably make one class from each side available for free and the rest will cost you. Plus all the F2P crap like limited inventory, limited money, limited chat, etc. You end up paying more in "Free to Play" to get everything than you would if you just bought the game and paid for a sub. F2P is a bait and switch just to get you in.
Questing in Skyrim or Dragon age or any single player RPG is fundamentally different then typical MMO questing - it's almost never kill X rats or gather X roots. My main point is someone should design an MMO with that sort of questing. The trick is actually changing the game world based on your questing. If you were supposed to burn down a siege engine, it shouldn't pop up again 30 seconds later. I don't know if MMO's can handle that with current technology.
Incidentally I enjoy crafting in MMO's, so I do in fact pay to gather resources. I find it more enjoyable than killing countless mobs. And by optionally I meant you could either kill mobs for a resource or gather them from the landscape. Some people just want to kill things so you accommodate them as well. Choices are good.
I'm rambling now, but we've touched on a problem I see in most MMO's, including WoW. They're primarily based on killing things, all other activities are incidental to that. I disagree that has to be the case. Games like Star Wars Galaxies, Vanguard, EVE, etc. at least tried to allow for something more - greatly differing playstyle options. That's what we need more of.
Um... The Good: Terrific combat that connects you to the onscreen action. Exciting encounters against big monsters. Great instanced dungeons. Diverse, attractive world invites you to explore it.
Killing mobs doesn't have to be central to the quests, it could be incidental. Maybe you need to kill some monsters in order to get where you need to go or optionally gather resources from them to make something. You can do questing like Skyrim or Dragon Age and still kill plenty of monsters in between, as you do in those games.
I hate to be "that guy" always thinking the next big MMO will be great, but if the Elder Scrolls MMO plays like an Elder Scrolls game with the same combat mechanics in a huge open world where you can do anything you want (and, God, please, has rewarding and deep crafting) it could be what everyone is looking for.
So the takeaway here is that a tiny bug like this is newsworthy when the game is from Blizzard. If the same standard were applied to all games released these days this site would be nothing but bug articles.
The server crash notwithstanding. That was bad but not exactly unprecedented in an online game launch. For the record I do not like the connection requirement for single player.
Half the people who were listed there last Friday are gone. I feel kinda bad for them, I even removed my sarcastic review. This is why you should never say "Anyone could make a better game than that!" This is what happens when "anyone" tries.
@TheCyborgNinja Hell no, I'm not paying $60.00 for the privilege of "making up my own mind". I want to know what the entire community of professional game reviewers thinks before I buy anything. It has always served me well.
Another note, shipped does not equal sold. The publisher can ship as many copies as they can convince stores to buy. Then if people know the game is crap, they'll collect dust on store shelves, receive drastic markdowns and eventually get returned to the distributor. Other people will but it, decide it's crap and return it or sell it used- repeat cycle.
ggregd's comments