brief beta review

sn0wblind00

Opinionated review, so please stray away from flames.  Figured I'd post this to help potential buyers before I sign-off from this forum area.

I'm an avid FPS player who also has played many mmo's in the past.

I found the gameplay boring. In my opinion, from an FPS standpoint...it's bad. From a rpg perspective..it's bad. There is no depth from the rpg area of the game. There in no depth on the melee end, and the magic shows lack of reward for an incredibly tedious grind. Combat is so slow unless doing archery or wasting stamina sprinting. I didn't like the fact that skill doesn't determine an outcome on most occasions, and numbers matter so much.  Swimming and fighting is very frustrating, as you have one key to swim up and one key to swim down.  It just felt like a mediocre mod for some fps, with an empty world connecting players.

The PVP is balanced, as everybody (outside of the newbie-area) wears the same armor and has the same skills, minus the few who grinded magic for testing.  The differential factor in pvp is the amount of potions you have and numbers.  It was tested and someone with 1 skill in polearm will do the same damage as someone with 50 skill.  This is with a rank 40 weapon tested.  The only thing that changes is durability rate.  They do have annoying towers in the wilderness at some areas now, so it makes pvp areas limited to places where it's hard to find people. I'd assume this would obviously change when more mobs and people enter the game. Open pvp does indeed work as intended, but city aspects are still buggy. It's not hard to live as an rpk guild fyi.

I mapped most of the world excluding the continent on the lower-left.  They are adding new mobs ocasionally, but the world is still very empty.  Each starter-area has it's own few mobs, and there are a few unique ones on the outlier continents.  They are very spread out and nothing unique comes from them, as of now.  Almost every mob is very generic for a game made in 2009, and some of them downright lazy.  There are a lot of starter-race mobs...those more than any. 

I was surprised by the lack of detail and options in the game.  Quests are practically non-existant, with only a few right now that can be completed in no time.  The only unique areas to the world will be player cities.  The world's graphical aspects are not 'mesmerizing,' to quote another person in this forum.  You may encounter a unique-looking tree and then see it pasted over 100 times.  The water that feels and looks ten-years-outdated.  The spell animations are plain.  The character models look pretty good ingame, as do the mounts.  The movement on the mounts is surprisingly well done.  The sky looks nice.  Weather features are not in the game currently.

There are a ton of annoying bugs that will still be there come release.  If you like the core gameplay, you will probably be able to get over them.  A lot of game features are not enabled in beta with no word if they will be in the game come release.  List for both is too long to get into.

The game isn't for everyone. Looking at the core, some may like it.  If you like rpg-lite with manual spell-aiming, you may like this game.  For me, it feels like it is trying to tackle two genre's and did both without any depth.  Instead of playing a manual-aiming 'rpg' where everyone is more-or-less the same and where you spend most of your time running to find targets, I'd rather just get to the point and play an fps.  Personally I don't enjoy the game, and uninstalled it tonight. Anyways...it's not for everyone, but probably for some.

And for those who do end up buying it...go have fun and raid tasos's guild's city, kill cult. In beta, they are at the southern-most ice island on the western-most part of the map (not the mainland). Chances are they will go there come release.  Best city I saw, with a dungeon right next to it, and some farmable mobs with chests within a few steps, as well as being isolated with a harbor. The server may come down if you try, though, lol.