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Forsaken World 'Review' from a long-time player
jcdenton2k
Member CommonPosts: 6
Aesthetics: Superb
Aesthetics is the entire artistic style that's more than just 'graphics' but takes into account the environment as a whole. They obviously have a bit of a pseudo-cartoony feel that seems familiar and yet different, like WoW in high-definition. Watch some YouTube vids in 1080p for an idea of what it can look like maxed out, its damn good for a F2P game. I'm not going to say they're bad aesthetics just because they don't look like Vindictus or any other hyper-realistic game.
Sound: Average
Break out the MP3 player. While the music is decent it does loop a little too often. Each area has its own distinct graphical and audio flavor but very few soundtracks are good enough that you wanna listen to them outside the game (Aion, Ragnarok Online, etc) and this isn't one of them.
Gameplay: Average
Its an MMO. The game is VERY quest-heavy and does a good job of having a decent storyline alongside the quests if you bother to read the quest text. However, the 'grindiness' of daily quests (some of which are required to progress with the main storyline such as the 'Socialist' job) ends up dropping this down to just 'average'. Its not a horrible grindfest but there is enough repetition to be aware of it. There's an entire encyclopedia of entries fleshing out the background of the world and characters. While widely despised, the Socialite quests do provide some character to otherwise-forgettable NPCs within the world around you, but repetition of the same thing makes you stop caring after you help X npc with Y problem for the 20th time.
Mechanics: Below Average
Potions are pretty much spammable on a 10 second cooldown so PvP comes down to disable/stunlock or whoever runs out of potions first. Cash shoppers have an obvious advantage here unless you are willing to grind out enough gold to buy what you need to compete.
Your spells use a good chunk of your mana and you will be potion-spamming during instances and boss fights which makes you need to either grind for tradeable gold via AH manipulation, grind repeatable quests for enough soul coins to buy npc-potions, or LONG AND BORING grind of tradeskills.
Tradeskill-grinding is severely hampered by a 'stamina' system that limits how much you can craft/gather per day. The stamina refreshes 3 points per hour while offline and 12 points per hour online, so most of the 'population' just goes afk overnight since the game doesn't boot you for being afk. You spend one point each time you craft something (regardless of its level). The amount of stamina you can have goes up as you level, but it fails so hard at keeping up with the outrageous mana usage of most classes that people end up either buying from the AH directly or just using only NPC potions.
Cash Shop: Above Average
Here's how 'cash shop' works in Forsaken World, explanation of currency is below. You earn soul coins, you gather/find/craft something that has value to other players and pay soul coins to list it in the Auction House (AH). When you sell it, you collect your earnings as tradeable gold/silver/copper (D&D currency type system). You can then use an in-game exchange vendor to directly purchase premium currency (Eryda Leaves) using in-game currency (Gold). There are no direct sales of overpowered items, and the best stuff is always earned, not purchased or given.
Yes, cash shoppers have an advantage here (like in any other MMO) but that advantage is mitigated because it takes actual skill to play effectively and also because ANYONE can become as powerful as a cash-shopper provided they earn enough in-game GOLD to directly convert to premium-currency LEAVES via the in-game NPC and then they can BUY anything in the CASH SHOP without spending any money! This will require a good bit of effort depending on how economical you are in manipulating the AH and other players and whether or not you're in a helpful guild. Paying for the leaves with real-money just provides a very-quick shortcut in this process. This is the same for masteries (increased damage/resistance passive skill) that require GOLD to upgrade.
Currency
There are 3 types of currency.
-Soul coins are what you earn from npcs and quests, used to buy skills, potions, and goods from npcs. Contrary to what most people say the potions from npcs are not worthless, they just don't restore as much as player-crafted ones but they can be bought without limit so it evens out.
-Gold coins are 'tradeable' currency used in the AH (separated into diamond, gold, silver, copper in a D&D style system), some custom npcs such as those found at guild bases (to buy special guild mounts) or a traveling goblin npc near the starting area that sells premium potions for a hefty gold price. You can get nearly anything you want with Gold, and the 'premium' currency is only there to provide an easy shortcut for the most part.
-Eryda Leaves are the 'premium currency' of Forsaken World. You can also buy almost any cash-shop item with gold through the AH or from other players through direct-trade or player-run shops. You can buy
cosmetic-only costumes (no stats or benefits besides looks)
rare-quality pets (you can also earn rare pets through gameplay with a LOT of work)
star crystals = only mandatory cash-shop item used for upgrading gear, but can be randomly awarded (with 0.00001% chance or less) by 'praying' for free once per hour with a clickable button at top-center of the UI.
guild-booster items to help ease the grind of maintaining the guild base by easily awarding guild funds as well as items needed to build certain structures that reduce these maintenance costs, and since most people won't be running their own guild base (only about 20 or so bases TOTAL per server) then I don't count these as mandatory cash shop items.
bunch of other random crap I can't remember off the top of my head because its either useless, absurdly overpriced compared to the AH, or can be earned way too easily via regular gameplay/quests and can be safely ignored, an example of these types of items are the 'emote' scrolls for teaching emotes that you earn from doing socialite daily quests since you can find them in AH for less than 1 gold each usually, depending on your server.
Overall
Play this game if you want to play a F2P fantasy MMO. This is the best, hands down, because of the simple fact that you can easily trade in-game currency for premium-currency via an NPC in-game or negotiate the trade through other players as well as having ANY cash shop item tradeable and sellable with other players. As for Sci-Fi F2P MMO, that's up in the air on how strict your definition of 'Sci-Fi' is and your tolerance for crappy Asian-MMO mechanics. Anyone who hates this game, go try playing other F2P games and then you'll see how generous this one seems by comparison. Its the 'lesser of 2 evils' sorta deal. This game isn't perfect but it is better than the vast majority of other Asian MMOs.
Minor Note: Beware random Chinese text at certain times, especially after major patches. The localization usually takes a month to get everything taken care of, at least until its all borked again with the next update.
Comments
I couldn't get into it enough to give a decent review. The auto run to quest hubs and npcs was an instant turn off. The animations and moves were incredibly dull and played out, the text was lifeless, etc. I actually like Eden Eternal despite it having auto run, but it's just so darn pretty and at least it has a tiny bit of character, interesting animations, and a couple other things I like.
When it comes to PWE games I would prefer Perfect World Online or Battle of Immortals. BoI is pretty neat, but became boring to me after not too long. PWO is pretty, with flying, cool character interactions, and very relaxing music, but also becomes boring quickly with dull animations auto run to quest hubs, etc.
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Playing:
FFXIV, TERA, LoL, and HoTS
My Rig:
GPU: GeForce GTX 770, CPU: i7-4790K, Memory: 16 GB RAM
You know right off the bat a game sucks hard core , when Deva go to making post on off site forums to put a shine on there game.
reveiw from a long time player my butt . 1 post on the forums total and you just happen to decide < o golly gezz nows a good time to make my first post on a review of a glitched up 1/2 baked cash shop heavy game and make it look like its made out of solid gold>
Its a pay to win that doesnt even have all functions opened and working yet , theres no ingame suport what so ever , theres no game balance , the UI is a freaking mess covering 40% of the screen . and you freaking pets do most your fighting for you . ya sure sound like a great game to me.
Its just one of those Turds that no matter how many times you flush it just wont go down, And no one wants to own up and get the plunger for it .............
I totally appreciate your review. After leaving PWI because of their out-of-control CSers who they have allowed to wreck the game, the fact taht you cannot buy end-of-game gear with your credit card is definintely a HUGE plus (and perhaps some evidence of the developers amending their sin of greed in PWI).
I've attempted to try FW as an alternative, having left PW recently, and the graphics and lack of character customization (esp compared to PW) does take getting used to. I absolutely LOVE the auto-tracking!
My character hit lvl 30 today, and things just started to get interesting. From what I can tell no one person is allowed to master all the manufacturing skills, and there is enough dependance between the various skills to allow for each one to turn a profit that ought to sustain them through the game.
My hope is that PWE will not get greedy again and start to reward CSers with ultimate gears. Let's make this one a real gamer's game... and force those CSers to play the game as well, so the rest of us can have some fun too!
Sorry boss man your post isnt gunna help cover for a post left by staff to fluf us nubs , we all know that the lvl 80+ update brings ruins into the game that O my add stats to your toons built...... and how do we get ruins you ask well we will craft them ........ with items we buy from the cash shop....
Sure with luck you can make 1 without cash shop . its about the same chance you have crafting a gold bar wot out cash shop
QQ
I don't work for PWE, in fact I don't even play FW anymore because the grind became too much to 'keep up' with my guildies. Also lots of botters on the server I was on and very few GMs or punishments handed out. The botters just make new accounts and keep on going, no system seems to be in place to actually IP-ban them or subnet-ban them. Sad, really. Blame the damn 'elitepvpers' forum for that fucking bullshit. Feel free to make an account on their forums and curse those fuckers out for making most of the newer bots/hacks for nearly every MMO and online game out there. Google it, I'm not gonna link it here, they don't deserve it.
If I were well-connected enough to speak Chinese and talk to the actual devs of this game WanChu (something like that), a Chinese company in China are the ones that actually code the game, PWE just publishes it in certain areas. We have to direct as much hate of the mechanics at the stupid idiot Chinese/Korean/Japanese developers that don't give a shit about Western tastes as we direct hatred at PWE for bothering to bring that shit overseas. People doing stuff like 'Project Rainfall' to BEG a company like Nintendo to SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY on already-translated games, versus imported poorly-translated bullshit in F2P games. Yeah....all the best stuff never makes it here.
Only thing I rated 'Superb' were the Aesthetics (art style) and only because it looks pretty damn good on highest settings (compared to WoW at least). Everything else was kinda 'meh' with an above-average cash shop only because of the 'trade for premium currency' mechanic present in-game through a vendor.
AutoRun is NOT MANDATORY, it is OPTIONAL. If you hate it, then don't use it. Problem solved, right? You are in the minority as most players (myself included) like being able to auto-run to the next objective especially with the repetitive dailies that run us back and forth between the same NPCs. It helps us to be able to click to the objective, get up, stretch, maybe RELAX instead of constantly having to be 100% focused on it. Compare this to how people play hunters (or huntards, if you will) by tab-targeting the nearest mob and hitting the 'pet attack' hotkey while they sit there and /yawn. Yeah, nobody made a fuss with that, did they? Autorun is a matter of taste and you can ignore it and still enjoy the game. The WASD movement is kinda shit because you can't get rid of 'click to move' and you WILL misclick on the ground when you meant to click on the mob, and it WILL frustrate you at least once. A and D actually strafe instead of rotate so you have to autorun and hold the right mouse button down and turn with the mouse instead. Very annoying especially if you play more than an hour at a time.
It isn't pay to win. I PERSONALLY knew people that both cash-shopped and didn't cash shop. If you are THAT worried about cash shopping then ignore the PvP stuff completely and only PvE since raiding is pretty active on all the servers/channels. Outside of PvP, cash shopping isn't really needed at all, most stuff being in the AH for cheaper prices (for the most part) when converting premium-currency prices to gold prices. Believe me I have played 'pay to win' F2P MMOs and I KNOW what is pay 2 win. This MMO isn't one of them.
The 'broken/missing functions' that you're talking about are being developed pretty rapidly. They release regular content patches and ignore the bugs. Maybe that is what gets them the most profit, so meh. We may not like it but they are a business first and they do w/e it takes to make money from their players. The NA version is a few patches behind the Chinese version due to localization time needed and w/e other reasons. It is F2P so meh. Go learn Chinese and bug the developers instead.
I don't understand the person saying animations/moves are 'dull and lifeless'. Compared to what, exactly? What animations are 'better'? Can you provide a video link? I actually found the FW animations pretty decent overall and fairly fluid. Part of the 'Aesthetics' of the game, and pretty 'Superb' in my view. I've seen bad animations, this game doesn't have that issue for the MOST part with character animations. As for repetition, well yeah, its an MMO. As for enemies or NPCs I was pleasantly surprised a few times by what they'd do in their 'idle' or 'patrol' animations.
The quest text is pretty damn nice if you bother to read it, very flavorful and vivacious! Have you done the 'Charlie's Tavern' sidequests? Those are some of the funniest ROFLMAO moments I've *ever* had in ANY MMO!!! No shit! If you are tired of stupid boring quests (in your view) then do those sidequests from Charlie's Tavern and get a smile on your face.
The best part about them was the one part with the goblin-thing in the cage and his remarks...heh. One of the reasons I think SW:TOR is so popular is that having voice acting actually compels players to be invested in the story since 'ZOMG WALL OF TEXT' and they just click through otherwise. Lazy players need to go read some fucking books.
Don't blame elitepvpers, blame PWE. It's their fault that they doing nothing about bots. Oh, yes, they getting money, they don't care. Actually, I support bots/exploits, even I've used some programs to get on top in 1 f2p mmo... They knew what I'm doing, but never got banned. Ah, true, I've used to spend some cash in their shop...
Thanks for the review. I admit I've had fun playing jade dynasty and a few other PWE games, but cash shop players ruin the game. I dont just mean the casual spender like myself, but the ones who spend thousands buying lotto and mounts, and stuff only to flood the game market with their crap and sell at outrageous prices. If anyone is ruining the game its them. They make the economy so F-up that its impossible for new players to enter the game and compete unless you do the same. No one wants to associate with the noob who has no mount, no cash shop items. With no friends the noob quits becuz the game becomes very boring with no one to talk and party with. Damn popularity contest.
I'd fail this game, I've played it before, and it was, to put it nicely, very dull and uninteresting. Average asian grinder with crap cash shop. The quests were really hard to move to, and the map doesn't really tell you about the npcs. 2.5/10 overall for me.
Graphics - 4/10
Gameplay -4/10
Cash shop -0/10
Combat- 3/10
Sound -4/10
Innovation - 0/10
Mobility -3/10
Mechanics -3/10
As for your recommendation, I disagree because DC Universe Online is the best F2P game and I'd still only give it a 5/10. DCUO doesn't have any gamebreaking items at all. SW:TOR imo deserves a 6.5/10.
Currently playing this and DCUO on a very casual basis and I'm enjoying it quite a bit. I have no intention of PvPing in either game so as far as I'm concerned the cash shop items are completely unneeded. Not every MMO out there will appeal to every gamer- for me both are fun diversions while I wait for something better. I will agree that the autorun seems really cheesy/lazy, but I've adapted to it and use it quite a bit- the game just doesn't get my full attention anymore while it's running.
Ive been playing these F2p and this one is really deep for being a f2p game. The only things i have a problem with is the camera doesnt move when i move so i have to use a mouse. Very annoying if your fighting multiple mobs. The Lagg. So much lagg even though it has gotten better. The constant disconnets. There are days that you dc like every 5 minutes. I hope Perfect World can rectify this situation.
Edgar F Greenwood
Nah, man. Just gotta do Henrys and sometimes he will give you items for it. Pretty easy to craft Perfect Gold Bars
Besides that, this is a pretty accurate review. I've got a level 56, and I wouldn't call it the *best* F2P mmorpg out there... but it's certainly do-able without any credit cards. I'm adding that not many things are over-farmed, since the drop rate lowers once you're much higher level that the mobs you're killing. It keeps the economy pretty balanced.
But basically what kills this game for me, is the lack of content. I know they're adding an expansion soon, but there is really a lack of any deep content.
Game leveling breaks down to:
- Do Henry quests 10x a day (mostly errands, running back and fourth)
- Do God's Trial every day (instance event that takes place 2x daily, takes about a half hour)
- Send your pet on a Journey.
- That's it.
every day was just the same...couldnt stand it anymore. sanding afk at the campfires, quest which were kill 20x 'monster x' horrible memories of this.
I tried this game some months ago.
It was nice, but mostly a copy-paste from Perfect World. I've stopped playing arounf level 35.
The game become so boring and repetitive. The class aren't that amazing either. The daily quest and God Trial is the worst thing ever made.
The graphic are generic to an asian mmo.
I would say there's way better fantasy mmo out there.
Plus all PWI game cash shop are horrible and give way too much advantage in PvP late game.
If you want to play a free 2 play game that does it right=LOTRO , nuff said
Anyone see the Nightfall trailer?
I really liked it until it got to the in-game footage.
Well i agree with the stiff animation, potion dependant combat, and overall....cheap feeling of the game, it does look like it was put together too fast...
Anyway, the biggest turn off with these types of games (not sure if the is the PW model or not) is that it takes what would normally be a grinder game where you farm mobs for all sorts of interesting and usefull stuff, and converts that mob gind into repeatable quest grind. Something thats far more boring and monotonous.
A quick read of the games forums lets you know that the NPC giving out boring repeatables early on is still the go to guy for boring repeatables at endgame, only then you need to do them since theres not much else to do.
I could really see the charm in games like this when they pair a decently entertaining combat system, instersting scenery, and diverse mobs to kill...all dropping diffrent usefull items...it can be relaxing when taken in smaller quantities.
This game just decides to pile drive you with quest spam as the main for of progress, tieing in cahs shop currency with repeatables that are incredibly boring. You going to spend a whole lot of time running back and forth between NPC's (on auto run to make it even more mind numbingly boring) doing repeatables. I actually found myself ignoring the quests for a while so i could spend some time trying to enjoy the mediocre combat and to see if anything interesting drops off the mobs.
Regardless its a very forgettable game, id say that PWI may be its better reincarnation, however you can feel that its just PWI with new scenery no flying and the same quest spam mechanics.
PWI as a company really needs to work on a good combat system, get rid of its potion dependancies, and tone down the repeatables and quest spam as the main means of progression (or cash shop coin collecting) Hell make some fun dungeons where the boss drops some cash shop coins, put them on 24hr cool downs, then at least people will be grinding something fun, rather than ferrying junk to and from npc and collecting lame mob drop items in far off locations.
Anyway...not sure the point of playing a game like this when Aion goes 100% F2P in a week and a half. At least thats a game thats well made and will be a great hold over untill some good P2P games come out.
I agree with your critique on audio especially. Soundtrack is really important in an immersive game, imo. This is a bit weird. but I actually consider the music system of Runescape to be the best out of MMOs. The game provides you with hundreds of tracks, all authentic and company-made, for any situation. If you dislike the music in a current area, or think it needs to be more haunted or epic, you can just switch to what you think is appropriate. Makes the grind a lot more enjoyable...somewhat.
Aside from that, Burning Crusade is the only soundtrack I've ever been able to listen to outside of an MMO. Fell in love with the Blood Elf themes the minute I rolled one.
Good review
I'm really sick of the whole "There's a massive fanbase for X", or "Y would be a WoW-killer if it just had a chance".
There is no massive conspiracy waiting in the MMO playerbase.
There are no "sleeper-agent fans" waiting to convert once the X or Y is unleashed on the world.
Yep.
It's a decent game before you are forced to run the dailies or sit by a campfire to level. They might of had a chance if they had enough non-daily content to hit the level cap.
If you are a long-time player of Forsaken World, it's easy to tell from the comments who has played to level 70+ and who quit (or wants to) before they even hit the level 60 minimum to participate in nightfall events.
I'm really enjoying the game, but only because I finally hit level 60 to try and catch up with my ingame BF so i could play with his MM. So many of my friends have come with me to FW and gave up in their 30s and 40s. I admit, the game isn't easy to get into. It does feel repetitive and over-run by dailies. At first, I was like "really? this is what im going to have to do everyday to level to 80? What's the fun in that?" And so i quit my MM at level 52 several months ago.
But my BF came back to the game and when he hit level 60, he was getting seriously hooked into the game. So wanting to spend time with him, I came back and started all over again with a priest. When I finally hit level 60, I saw what all the hoopla was about. Wow, the new Nightfall update is a seriously awesome addition to the game!
For those of you who have not yet hit level 60 and experienced the new Nightfall expansion, you are quitting WAY WAY too soon. The entire game changes and opens up at level 60. I'm desperately climbing my way to level 70 so the instances i need to farm are a little easier to handle (and squads are willing to take me). Most squads for the higher level instances prefer you to be level 70+ so that the instance isnt overly-stressful. Now that I've experienced a few in my 60s -- I can see why it's probably wiser to wait.
To the guy who was complaining that there arent enough quests to level to 80 -- you obviously don't understand how the game works (or any good MMO -- none of them are gonna just let you quest your way to the top... any game that does that is just stupid). In fact, I'm severely behind in my regular quests because there's so many essential things to do that automatically level me up. In fact, if you level up too fast, it means you neglected a lot of other essential duties. You need to use experience points to open up new skill scrolls to level up your existing skills. You need to work on your socialite and adventurer jobs or you wont get the skills associated with it to take care of business at the high level essential quests. You need to make sure you are earning rank points, carnival coins, doing your fissure dailies... everything counts towards something. So if you all you're interested in is just leveling to the 80 cap -- well then hell yeah, the game is gonna be deathly boring and tedious.
My overall take is -- hard game to get into. But if you stick with it, learn as much as you can along the way, when you hit level 60 nightfall, its a whole new world of fun and imo, that's where the game is -- and where it excels over other F2P games that i've tried.
And one last thing -- I absolutely LOVE how easy it is to farm gold so that I don't have to pay real money... and I mean, easier than other F2Ps that I've played. But like all F2P games, you have to be patient and creative, pay attention to what's in demand, and farm in your downtime. In FW, I feel like my efforts are rewarded much faster and easier than other F2Ps. Buying a pro mount from the boutique was 3 weeks of farming and AH selling for me... and well worth the effort. It may sound like a lot of work, but for me, it's just more game to play! I continue to trade my gold and feel like I'm able to keep up with the CSers. The cool thing is, jobs like artisan, jewelcrafter, armorer and weaponary can make you some serious gold because there are so many CSers who leveled up by buying their gear and mats from people with these jobs. But at this point in the development of the game, there are a very VERY select few who have leveled these jobs to a point where they are enticing to CSers. So if you are willing to work on leveling these jobs right now, they are gonna be a cash cow for you!
To the OP: your overview is great, and right on the mark. Nice writeup.
I'm level 80 and gained 114 croma, 45 mastery, and +9-11 gear and I can tell you this review is a crock.
This game has no content, besides whatever's in your wallet. Once you hit 80 all there is is farm certain quests and farm money, or play AH all day. Gear has gotten so cheap you're just better off playing the AH all day really. That and farming Ghostfang whenever you can find leads - or make 200 level 60 alts and get their dedication to 60 weekly and run GF all week. Ugh, terrible.
IR sucks, even PW's TW was better and it sucked too. Can't compare to L2 siege, or the old glory days of Ragnarok Online. What little PVP there is on the PVP server sucks. And is mostly composed of the top 3 guilds one shotting each others' 60k hp after wasting 30 minutes farming red hand and idling for a stupid Zodiac boss to spawn.
Basically, any positive reviews of this game are from people who haven't played long. Everyone else knows it sucks. Their 10 year old DirectX 8.1 engine is also terribly unstable and crashes incessantly.
Edit: the craft system is worthless besides artisan, basically. The only rings that sell are with uber rare crit dodge/crit def, and they sell for 2d+ ($20+) but don't let that entice you because you'll only get one in 200 crafts if you're lucky. Most people just use Arena rings, since they're better than anything you can craft. Same thing with necklaces - but they can get you higher max profit with Crit Dmg/Crit chance (5d+).
You can only craft low level gear (weapons/armor)that can't compare to ToK set or arena purples, and this is by far a worse job than artisan or jewelry. Only a few hardcores bothered to max the jobs for bragging rights.
Additionally, to craft upper level gears you must be in a guild with a high level base - pretty retarded.