Review

Response01

Illutia

New Players = The game is very confusing for a completely new player to get used to. There are many things that are unanswered that a new player will either need to find out on their own or find out from another player about; which isn't very likely. Some basic commands like attacking are covered, but once you leave the newbie map you are basically on your own, having to find out yourself how to sell items, start a craft, choose a class, start a group, leave a group, and where to go next.  If you can't find a player willing to go out of their way to help you, you basically won't make it past choosing a class. There are unfortunately  many flaws regarding teaching new players how to play the game.

Leveling = There are 50 levels, as you level you will come across very few quests(Probably about 10 if you focus on leveling to 50, none of them worth the effort required to complete them).  It is a boring grind, you are basically holding the space bar down and occasionally pressing a couple buttons every now and then as a Swordsman or Knave. As a bard or priest, soloing is not an option because of how slow it is, you will play support, as a priest you will be spamming a single button and enter while training until your fingers tire.  As a mystic you will be doing the same as a priest; just with damage spells instead of support.

Classes = There are 5 classes: Swordsman, Knave, Priest, Bard, and Mystic. They all seem to be fairly balanced.

Donations = Donations are accepted and in-game items are also given for donating.  It was stated that the staff will not give out donation items that give an unfair advantage to donating players at the start of Illutia because of their mistakes in doing so in their former game; Aspereta.  Unfortunately, over the past few years it seems that they are making donation items that do indeed give an unfair advantage to non-donators.  Example: A "Dragon Set" was put on the list for donating, with a full set of this at level 1 a person who donates will be doing 124 Damage to an enemy every time he or she is hit, plus the 5-20 damage a weapon gives. A person who does not donate on the other hand does only the 5-20 damage from their weapon.

PvP = There are 2 arena maps in this game; one for Levels 1 to 35 and one for Levels 36 to 50. The PvP is not as balanced but this game was not made to revolve around PvP either. Swordsman are quite hard to kill, Knaves do a very large amount of damage, and Mystics have a range but do not do less than half the damage of a Knave. Bards and Priests play support in the arena.

Progress = The staff are working on 2 different games at once and are limited to money from donation and their own pockets and volunteers that are willing to help out as Event/Game Masters and Guides.  But even with that considered, progress is extremely slow, with only 1-2 maps being released every 6-12months.

Professions = There are a good amount of professions, you are allowed 2 per character.  Professions do seem to be very unbalanced, blacksmiths, tailors, woodcrafters, and leatherworkers are all useless after 50, alchemists can only make 2 potions worth making. Farmers don't have much use either.  There is no "craft book" for you to see what recipes you've learned so you basically have to memorize every thing you learn. Nor is there a way to tell which professions you've learned, the level of your professions, or an explanation on how to level your professions.

Community = There are better game communities than this, and worse ones too.  A fair amount of the community is anti-emo and homophobic, some racist. But people like this are bound to sprout in every type of game community.  As you level and meet new people, it won't be as bad. The rest of the community doesn't seem that bad at all.

Support = The Support(the e-mail address that is mailed to for problems) e-mail in illutia is known for how unreliable it is. I've heard  the chances of you receiving a reply are slim to none unfortunately .  In-game however, seems to be the opposite.

 

Wish Realm

Wish Realm is a game similar to Illutia, it was meant to be the pay version of Illutia and is still in the works. There some maps that are the same as in Illutia but there are also many maps that are unique to Wish Realm. Wish Realm offers some graphics that are of higher quality that are not in Illutia.  It also offers 4 different timed events that can get boring after a couple weeks.  On Friday and Saturday a double experience event is activated. The amount of players online ranges from 0-15 players if both servers are online and running at the same time.  It also offers a exp-based type of game at 50 which allows you to continue to improve your character even after capping 50.  Since the community is small they are more tight-knit than the Illutia community, it does have a couple of bad players though.

Favoritism has been sighted in this game by Kimster and a few other players. A staff member(Krona) had teleported a pre-50 player into a Level 50 map and given a rare mount and a dagger that dropped in a level 50 map to a pre-50 player providing him with a huge advantage.

Wish Realm is meant to be a game in which you need a group to level, but with such a small community it can be very hard to do so.

QueenBeth

Update: The game is now more new user-friendly. New players start out in Shores of Renewal and learn simple things like moving, equipping things, and killing things before moving on to Astral Realm. In Astral Realm there are many NPCs who extensively explain commands, trading, interaction, and other things. After going through Astral Realm's quests, you are told to pick a class: Priest, Bard, Knave, Mystic, or Swordsman. The new player is then given the choice to start exploring in the game's main towns of Patrian or Ipcus. There are signs in the towns and roads leading to the towns that explain where things are, and new players get a map of the town they choose to explore that gives important locations in the map.

The dragon set referred to was altered to not be overpowered, but donation items have recently gotten to the point where people who donate tend to level more easily than players who don't have donation items.

A new client is coming out in the next few months. Updates from the game's forums have talked about a better user interface, multi-platform compatibility (possibly able to use Illutia on Mac/Windows/Linux), tradeskill overhaul, timed automated mini games, and more/better visual effects.

Updates are still slow and sporadic, but hopefully that will change with the new client. It'll also probably help when Wishrealm is ready for beta testing which is said to be by the end of summer or so.

NapalmDeath

I guess creating thread about my own review instead is a good idea...

To beth:

1.there are several donation items that give a completely unfair advantage over others.

2.the game is rarely being updated now, and the update that's coming soon isn't going to change much about the game or the gameplay anyway.

3. these 2 things are nothing yet. there are more than enough reasons for people not to play Illutia, or quit after a short time.