world bosses, combat, and art styles

Chicago

First i would like to say my first impressions of the world boss for a level 16 raid were quite good, the visuals were super cool, watching him knock over trees was great and it was exciting and made me want to get into the game, i will say however that as others before me have stated this was much more like an elite mob than a boss and it brings up some concerns i have that i would like to raise, as always i know this is pre alpha 2 and its an early version and when it is polished i think its going to look amazing but my issues are this

firstly the combat, to put it bluntly it was boring, for a game that is suppose to be risk vs reward there was absolutley 0 risk fighting this boss, obviously i know it will be different when pvp is enabled etc but there were no mechanics, the boss damage was almost un noticeable, steven looked like he was mostly afk playing and still found it near impossible to die and it was taken down by half a raid group, the mechanics were dull, the tree totem whilst looking amazing is a 15 year old mechanic and nothing more than a totem that has had its visuals tweaked, the combat looks not much more than standing around spamming 1,2,3 for a fixed rotation ( and i am a tab target enjoyer ) and this almost made me switch to action target as a preference as to how dull it looked.

there also needs to be something that brings people to the boss, mechanics, maybe the boss could drop scales on the ground that could be looted for crafting by people not actively killing the boss or you have to tag him for a quest line or something because usually what happens with open world pvp bosses is after a few tries they are controlled by the biggest guilds and alot of people wont make it worth their time to even bother checking him out, there were alot of positives and a few negatives but as it is a work in progress i think for the most part its looking good

another thing i would like to talk about and this might be personal preference only but, intrepid has one of the best art teams around, the cosmetic packs even if they have been pretty dull the last few months look absolutley amazing, who ever is creating them is top notch, the world looks amazing with all the weathering systems etc,

however i think that AoC needs its own art style, one thing that world of warcraft does really well is that when you see a new zone its exciting and you can tell if its dangerous just by stepping into it, and i think this is all about art style, the problem with ashes art style is, for a whole new planet there are so many things that could be done but most of the world that i see looks like something i would see if i just went for a walk in the bush on earth, there is no reason to have the same tree's the same rocks' as here on earth, and i feel it doesnt match well with dragons and cyclopses, given we have only really seen the riverlands but as ashes map size is suppose to be huge i really hope that its not just copy and pasted trees and rocks throughout the entire world

Songcaller

I've started to test other games now. At one time I only played ashes (a1) and no other games at all. These days, I find a lot of red flags which leave me less inclined to put all my eggs in one basket.