Yay, I got a chance to play in BotB2 last night! It was a blast! What I really enjoyed is that the Devs all sounded like they were having just as much fun if not more fun than we were. This is an indication to me that they will certainly be active in the game once it goes live, and not because they have to but because they enjoy it.
The game is in its development stages now, but already works super well and is fun to play. It has a lot of the feel of UO, but I can see where it will quickly expand to become even much more than UO with tons of options. I'm looking forward to when they start up more of the crafting and beast masteries, thieving and there was even talk of some barding.
I was excited and both a little nervous about getting my key to play the game last night. I'm a PvM'r with no experience at PvP at all. Even I got enough time to figure out the basics before being wisked off to the sudden death arena. I even managed to get a "kill" in before I got taken out. While others were waiting to get their chance to battle it out, I was able to continue playing around in the game more at my own pace and had gotten pretty proficient at my spell casting. So spell casting set and ready to go, I thought I would work more on my weapons skill. I chatted with another person in game, asking if you were supposed to double click your opponent or just keep clicking on them to continue to fight. Neither of us were entirely sure. So I offered myself up as a guinie pig, told him to just double click me once and lets see what happens. Of course he did, and boy were we surprised at the out come!!! Within seconds of him clicking on my character a guard came running out of nowhere and just pulverized him. OMG did we get a laugh out of that. I think I may have laughed just a wee bit harder. We learned two things, not to fight near the merchant and that all you need to do is one double click.
An interesting thing I found that happened in game...is that your spells can sometimes go horribly wrong! I was busy working on my spell casting, attacking some cultists, at one point my health had gotten pretty low, so I started casting heal spells on myself. Apparently my magic had been corrupted somehow, and my heal spells were damaging me instead of healing. Now that was a twist I hadn't expected.
Shards Online is going to be awesome. I'm really hoping they get their funding thru kickstarter, as I am ready to play, and I'm proud to say I got a chance to play it in it's pre-alpha development.
My highlights of last nights play time:
Hearing how much fun the Devs were having while playing along with us over the live stream.
Seeing Supreme get ambushed while trying to give a demo on crafting.
My first time PvPing someone in game (even though he might have been stuck)
Me asking another player to attack me and see what happens.
which can result in self inflicted wounds or a wider effect.