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A bunch of my friends are jumping into this. Does anyone on Dakka have any experience with it? Is it worth the $40? I've been hearing reports of insane queue times so I guess it's popular enough, but is it actually fun to play?

Yeah, after reading various articles that this is going to be a flop it certainly doesn't seem that way at the moment.

Sorry, nothing else to add. I haven't played this game, nor do I plan to.

 Breotan wrote:
A bunch of my friends are jumping into this. Does anyone on Dakka have any experience with it? Is it worth the $40? I've been hearing reports of insane queue times so I guess it's popular enough, but is it actually fun to play?

Just an aside, insane queue times aren't a good indication of popularity, just insufficient architecture.

What little I've seen on it had me underwhelmed. A bit generic, a frustrating skill leveling system (beta impression, though I don't remember who I watched that commented on it anymore), and fantasy colonialism with guns isn't really my bag.

I would like to try it but my current system would not run it well and while it is time for an upgrade this is a terrible time to do so.

I took it for a spin last night.

The basic plot is that you're stranded - along with people who havw been similarly stranded over the centuries - on a mysterious island filled with unknown power. The island grants immortality to the survivors. However, those who aren't immortal survivors (for example, everyone else on your ship) appear to quickly end up as undead. There are all sorts of poorly understood phenomenon on the island, and there is likely a malignant power responsible for much of the bad things that happen.

Technology is roughly Renaissance-era, but with fireballs and healing spells (I don't know whether magic exists off the island).

Early on, the game forces you to join one of three opposing factions in order to progress. The game is set up to encourage (voluntary) PvP between the groups.

The art styles and the name of the game encourage an "enslave the natives and pillage their lands" view of the game's plot, but so far I haven't seen any evidence of that.

Combat is action-oriented. You're initially given a sword and shield. Right-click swings, left-click blocks, left shift dodges. You level up by gaining experience through the usual methods, and this allows you to improve your stats. But you improve your weapon skills by using the specific weapons. Use a sword, and you increase your skill. Shoot a gun, and you increase that skill instead. You get points to spend on special abilities and traits as you level up your skills. Combat seems intuitive enough, and you can get some useful skills early on.

Crafting and resource gathering are pretty standard. I saw quotes praising it as "intuitive", but it seems completely normal to me.

Housing exists, but I haven't unlocked it yet.

I logged on around ten pm Pacific time, on a US West Coast server. The queue at that time was 1.

I also decided to jump in and see. I made it to the first main city but didn't explore much beyond that yet. The lack of tab targeting is messing with me a bit but that's okay. I use a dvorak keyboard and the game seems to have adapted to that, giving me the dvorak key in the UI tooltips instead of the qwerty key so that was a nice surprise.

Character creation is interesting, especially the ethnic choices involved. Definately a Spanish vibe even if the NPCs have English accents.

I'll keep playing just to see what end-game looks like.

Targeting with the sword was sometimes a pain. Occasionally, mobs would get out of my attack "arc", for lack of a better word, and I'd have to reorient myself to hit them again. The other weapon I used was the musket, and that works by aiming at whatever the reticle is pointed at. If the reticle isn't pointed at anything when you shoot, you miss.

Then I ran out of cartridges for it.

I'm going to need to go harvest materials to make more cartridges the next time I log in.