Loong: power of the Dragon beta

I have not seen the game Loong: power of the Dragon mentioned here,  so I thought I'd bring it up so that people could take a look at it. This game is a obviously a big production in China, so I'm surprised to see so little mention of it at mmorpg.com.  But you can check it out for yourselves at http://loong.gamigo.com/. 

It's a fantasy mmo set in  ancient China. The graphics are excellent and the musical scores are fun even if they are a bit over the top at times.  The programming feels solid. I didn't encounter any serious glitches. 

I had two major issues with the game.

First, the combat. The mobs just can't touch you, at least in the beginning. Because of this, combat feels a bit flat. I press one or two buttons and autoattack takes care of the rest. On the flip side, combat is fast. You'll be able to rip through 20 or 30 mobs without breaking a sweat. 

Second, this game throws all sorts of gear at you. Potions, armor, emeralds, scrolls. You name it, you'll see it in the first few levels. I felt a bit overwhelmed by it all  as I was spending most of my time trying to figure out how to use the latest prize the game gave me.  To be honest, I like to work a bit for gear. This game seems to spoil you hard and early. 

Some other things of note:

The chat box is difficult to read. I tried to find the settings so that I could darken it up or something, but I just had a tough time reading what others were trying to say. 

The NPCs are silent. They speak only with text, so you never get any flavor for who the characters are. At least in WOW and WAR, the NPCs had some limited audio to help give them a personality. But in Loong they are mute. 

You get a mount early on (say about level 4), and the leveling is fast paced. Takes about 30 minutes to get make level 10 or so. 

Character building is reasonable and if you screw up early, there's an in-game pill you can take to wipe your stats and begin again from scratch. 

No pedo characters. This was a big relief for me. I won't play some Asian games for this reason (e.g. Aika). But Loong didn't seem to have any of that stuff -- a mature looking game. 

Auto pilot. When you're given a quest, just click on a person or mobs name, and your character will dutifully walk/run/ride the whole distance without you having to press the 'w' key once. I'm not sure whether I like or dislike this feature.

At any rate, if you're sitting around waiting for Rift or Firefall to come out, you might want to look at this game to fill in the time.