As someone currently playing I felt it was a fair review to. I tend not to look at scores, whats a good score for one month isnt the same for a game the next month, things change to fast in our genre to put a number on anything and it certainly changes over time as an mmo matures.
Its enjoyable, it works, and it has potential to grow, sure it has systems that arent particularly innovative, but coupled with the unique combat and quality, it could become something special in time.
TERA is something beautiful, in look and feel, and id certainly agree the team should be proud of what they have produced, whatever the scores may be.
Great review. You brought up a lot of the same points that I hear from friends who play Tera. They say it's a great game (combat, graphics) but the PvE is repetitive, the PvP is broken and the end game is missing. One guy I use to play Aion with said it reminded him of Aion's launch.
I played on Dragonfall server and I would definitely give the social/community there a 1/10.
To be honest I think you're being a little unfair to the community
I am being 100% honest. I am not talking about the Island of Dawn only. I thought it would be better after the IoD, but it was more of the same.
By the way...I rolled a new toon on the RP server since RP servers tend to draw in the adults...it was really bad as well. You and I apparently play during different hours if you see anything different.
I still think the longevity and innovation scores are far too high given the fact that:
1) only doing 1 thing innovative that we've seen and/or the reviewer has actually played (the combat) so should be 4-5
2) Longevity is impossible to determine by a level 20-30 something a few weeks after launch. Longevity should get an automatic 5 for EVERY game until a re-review is done a month or two after release.
That, of course, all just IMO.
I would have given TOR a 7-8 in Longevity after 2-3 weeks, but a 1-2 after 6 weeks.
I played on Dragonfall server and I would definitely give the social/community there a 1/10.
To be honest I think you're being a little unfair to the community
I am being 100% honest. I am not talking about the Island of Dawn only. I thought it would be better after the IoD, but it was more of the same.
By the way...I rolled a new toon on the RP server since RP servers tend to draw in the adults...it was really bad as well. You and I apparently play during different hours if you see anything different.
I play about 10 hours a day, so don't know how I could miss the trolling.
Been in the level 25-55 range for two weeks now and have yet to put someone on ignore and have only been annoyed by one person, also why have I been these levels and played so long?I meet people and end up just talking or joining in on them while they quest, even if they aren't on my quests. And I am on a PvP server, Basilisk Crag. Hell, just this morning a level 60 came and helped me finish BAM quests and yesterday someone I met while leveling went on her 60, we formed a party, she left the party and healed us from the outside while the five of us fought BAMs so she wouldn't cause us to lose xp. She did this for over an hour...
I spend probably 50-60% of my leveling time in groups I didn't even look for, they just happened through area chat or random meetings.
The low level areas are people rolling alts, who want to troll while leveling to make it more entertaining.
I played on Dragonfall server and I would definitely give the social/community there a 1/10.
To be honest I think you're being a little unfair to the community
I am being 100% honest. I am not talking about the Island of Dawn only. I thought it would be better after the IoD, but it was more of the same.
By the way...I rolled a new toon on the RP server since RP servers tend to draw in the adults...it was really bad as well. You and I apparently play during different hours if you see anything different.
I play about 10 hours a day, so don't know how I could miss the trolling.
Been in the level 25-55 range for two weeks now and have yet to put someone on ignore and have only been annoyed by one person, also why have I been these levels and played so long?I meet people and end up just talking or joining in on them while they quest, even if they aren't on my quests. And I am on a PvP server, Basilisk Crag. Hell, just this morning a level 60 came and helped me finish BAM quests and yesterday someone I met while leveling went on her 60, we formed a party, she left the party and healed us from the outside while the five of us fought BAMs so she wouldn't cause us to lose xp. She did this for over an hour...
I spend probably 50-60% of my leveling time in groups I didn't even look for, they just happened through area chat or random meetings.
The low level areas are people rolling alts, who want to troll while leveling to make it more entertaining.
Unless it got better, my whole Tera experience until level 42 was filled with a terrible chat, immature people, and plenty of sexual chat comments. But who knows, maybe it changed.
Remember... all I'm offering is the truth. Nothing more.
Just my personal 2cp. Played it for 2 weeks and this is my input:
>>> Stability/polish:10 ; no arguments there
>>> Graphics: 10 ; nothing better that I have seen for now.
>> Combat & Class: 8.5 ; I like the combat a lot, but its becoming repeatative pretty quickly. Not enough options in my humble opinion to make it 9 or 10.
>>> Instances and Grouping: 7.5 ... ok
>>> Quests/linearity/making your own choices/theme park: 5 ... OR LESS ... this was the deal breaker for me.
I played on Dragonfall server and I would definitely give the social/community there a 1/10.
To be honest I think you're being a little unfair to the community
I am being 100% honest. I am not talking about the Island of Dawn only. I thought it would be better after the IoD, but it was more of the same.
By the way...I rolled a new toon on the RP server since RP servers tend to draw in the adults...it was really bad as well. You and I apparently play during different hours if you see anything different.
I play about 10 hours a day, so don't know how I could miss the trolling.
Been in the level 25-55 range for two weeks now and have yet to put someone on ignore and have only been annoyed by one person, also why have I been these levels and played so long?I meet people and end up just talking or joining in on them while they quest, even if they aren't on my quests. And I am on a PvP server, Basilisk Crag. Hell, just this morning a level 60 came and helped me finish BAM quests and yesterday someone I met while leveling went on her 60, we formed a party, she left the party and healed us from the outside while the five of us fought BAMs so she wouldn't cause us to lose xp. She did this for over an hour...
I spend probably 50-60% of my leveling time in groups I didn't even look for, they just happened through area chat or random meetings.
The low level areas are people rolling alts, who want to troll while leveling to make it more entertaining.
Unless it got better, my whole Tera experience until level 42 was filled with a terrible chat, immature people, and plenty of sexual chat comments. But who knows, maybe it changed.
Thank you...that's exactly what I am talking about.
Unless it got better, my whole Tera experience until level 42 was filled with a terrible chat, immature people, and plenty of sexual chat comments. But who knows, maybe it changed.
I would't disagree, there are many players who need a good swift ban.
i just report and block and go my merry way. Still, I'm amazed how many players are still running in "young adolescent" mode and are still astounded by their li'l pee-pees and how potty jokes never get old.
tee-hee.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
Unless it got better, my whole Tera experience until level 42 was filled with a terrible chat, immature people, and plenty of sexual chat comments. But who knows, maybe it changed.
Thank you...that's exactly what I am talking about.
Well, I'll admit, that's all BETA was, and all Island of Dawn was when I got TERA a week after release(due to some computer troubles).
But otherwise, since reaching the second continent, I have not once witnessed any sexual talk, immaturity(besides one or two OWPvP arguments about ganking), elin discussion, alienware comment or WoW was the first MMO remarks.
So it's a shame to me, when I see people badmouth the community constantly because I think who i've met so far, have all been great people who are beeing misrepresented.
The people having retarded discussions are just trying to have fun on the Island of Dawn, and can you blame them? Hell maybe even participate a little, it could be fun, or you can just turn off the chat, the chat is more customizable in TERA than any game on the market right now.
Sorry for the wall of text. Apparently writing from a mobile device does not alloparagraphs. *********************
You know, I keep forgetting to bring this feedback but better late than never:
*A) I think "Customer Support" is a feature that would be valuable in including in future reviews. It is actually a pretty important aspect of an MMO that somehow always flies under the radar of reviewers everywhere. Good customer support is a rare gem to find, and this game has it in spades. While you'll always have a small percentage of people claiming it's terrible, by and large a solid consensus is that it's eerily good. In my experience the best customer support I've received in years period. Whether software, furniture, dentist - these guys pull off this generally unrewarding job and should be recognized and encouraged. So maybe future MMOs take their CS seriously.
Perhaps using numerical scores is not such a great idea. As you can see people find it hard to read. They look at a number and disregard your dissertation. Additionally some might feel what you write does not quite match the number given. That I believe is because the value of a "10" score changes between reviews. That in a of itself makes numbering little more than a handle for contention more than useful feedback. I would suggest a one or two sentence summary, clearly highlighted to score. Instead of 7/10 a sentence saying weak in this aspect but I felt it more than made up for with this other aspect." period. Next section. ********+*********+*++****
As an example look at the SWTOR score. That game most definitely blows TERA (and arguably all other game's) with it's story and voice acting. But by the same token TERA blows it right out of the water and is on an entirely different category when it comes to combat, healing, aesthetics, performance. So at the end one could argue they would end up with a similar score instead of a full point discrepancy. Again, because the value of the score changes between reviews.
Unless it got better, my whole Tera experience until level 42 was filled with a terrible chat, immature people, and plenty of sexual chat comments. But who knows, maybe it changed.
Thank you...that's exactly what I am talking about.
Well, I'll admit, that's all BETA was, and all Island of Dawn was when I got TERA a week after release(due to some computer troubles).
But otherwise, since reaching the second continent, I have not once witnessed any sexual talk, immaturity(besides one or two OWPvP arguments about ganking), elin discussion, alienware comment or WoW was the first MMO remarks.
So it's a shame to me, when I see people badmouth the community constantly because I think who i've met so far, have all been great people who are beeing misrepresented.
The people having retarded discussions are just trying to have fun on the Island of Dawn, and can you blame them? Hell maybe even participate a little, it could be fun, or you can just turn off the chat, the chat is more customizable in TERA than any game on the market right now.
I'm not saying it's all a bad community, I met some cool people too, but your second paragraph (which I underlined) described the regular chat on my server, so I guess maybe it's just because of different servers I don't know, but truth is it was pretty bad, even after the starter island. So I say it was 50/50.
Remember... all I'm offering is the truth. Nothing more.
I thought that the score was a bit low but then I am one of the ones that likes the game. I have said before that I think this will be a game that you either like or you don't so I would expect opinions about it to be polarized.
As for innovation being low, I think it is important to remember that you don't usually want to change to many things at once. With very few exceptions you don't ever add more than about two huge changes into a new game. The only recent game that I can think of that breaks this mold is GW2 but then they are basically running on a platform of completely changing how mmos are done. So changing combat and adding a political system seems a pretty reasonably amount of major change.
The other factor to keep in mind is that changing combat and how it is done is a HUGE change. Combat is 80% of the game play of just about any MMO. So while it might be just one thing, it is no small thing. Further, the UI also had to be redesigned pretty significantly from the MMO norm to work with this altered style of combat. And they did it in such a way that it works well with a controller or a keyboard. When you compare it to what FFXIV tried to deliver with their controller centric design and just how hard it failed for most PC players, well, I think Bluehole did a pretty amazing job in the UI redesign department.
Really, sit back for a moment and consider how badly such a deep redesign of the UI could have gone. In MMOs, you simply don't mess significantly with UI design. It has too much potential to blow up in your face. And yet they didn't have much of a choice given how they wanted to change combat. Still, it was significantly different from the norm and even I didn't have much trouble picking up the new way to do things. I am not a shooters guy. This is literally the first game I have ever played for any consistent amount of time where I have had to use WASD to get around. The fact that I didn't need a detailed tutorial to get going on it is a strong testimonial to a well designed starter area and a well designed UI.
Also, regarding the quests. Sure they are pretty basic but I also felt that they were just right for this style of game. I enjoyed the story that came from the storyline quests. Not exactly Tolkien but still very interesting with a betrayal coming from the inside and such. The rest of the quests, frankly didn't need to be any more complicated. They are just tasks. If you want to go grind dungeons to level, queue up. (hopefully your a lancer) If you want to go grind in a group. BAMs are that way. -----> If you simply want to solo, here is your list of tasks. Maybe I have a very low bar, but I really didn't mind that these "tasks" were not overly complicated. The combat itself was enough fun to make up for the quests being standard fetch, kill and deliver. They could have added some more variety to the storyline quests but frankly I think it would have gotten in the way had they had to much of that in the regular task. It would have taken too much away from simply enjoying how the game played at its combat core. Sure when combat itself is little more than another chore then basic kill quests are simply not good enough but when combat is fun, kill quests are fun and non killing quests loose their necessity at best and start to get in the way at worst.
So while I can't argue with your assessment of the quests in principle, I still disagree with your conclusion. I think this older, more basic, more "boring" style of questing works well with this style of combat and that too much of the new style, inovative, puzzle/minigame type quests would actually get in the way.
As for innovation being low, I think it is important to remember that you don't usually want to change to many things at once. With very few exceptions you don't ever add more than about two huge changes into a new game. The only recent game that I can think of that breaks this mold is GW2 but then they are basically running on a platform of completely changing how mmos are done. So changing combat and adding a political system seems a pretty reasonably amount of major change.
Generally I'd agree but with MMOs we've seen games that "don't ever add more than about two huge changes into a new game" for 8 years or so, and none of them have done all that well in the long run.
I think with MMOs, unless it IS different, why leave your already established game that you know for a fact will have more content and less bugs?
Because of one or two changes?
If those changes are significant enough, sure, I can see that.
But I don't think "gimmick" changes like we saw/see in WAR/AoC/RIFT/TOR/TERA are enough to keep people playing in the long run (generally speaking, of course)
And you always have to factor in burn out.
Same thing in a shiny new coat, well the shine wears off and what is left?
I'd say it's explaination #1 as to why all these MMOs post 2004 have had massive releases and mass exodus after a month or two.
I realize the difficulty of writing a review for a huge game like an MMO and I like the idea of the partial updates with a summary review at the end. It's still a bit short of what I think ideally a review should cover for a game, any game, but it's a good step forward.
However, living through the decline of TOR as an active player, I think a few things should have been considered more in the review:
Social - talking about the current community in the game is VERY misleading. TOR is a much better game if you have folks to play with. But now that numbers on a lot of servers are dropping the game gets a bit boring and you can't even do a lot of the content without other players. This review item should really only focus on the tools provided by the game, e.g. LFG tool, can you move your toons between servers, or is the game architected in a way that everyone plays on basically one server. Guild tools should also way heavily in this score. The people making up the community is not something the game can control. Just by rolling on a "bad" server you may end up stuck with a horde of trolls.
Longevity - for this review item it would be good to know how the quests will affect rolling alts, which is a major thing providing longevity for a lot of people. Again, looking at TOR, the class quests are different between the base classes, but you cannot progress through the game by only completing those. Aside from PvP, all other ways of gaining XPs are the exact same for all your alts - space missions, side quests, FPs, ops, heroics. This does get old by the third time through, and if your server has a dwindling population, you may not even be able to do the group content.
Similarly, roadmaps and promises of future content are just words. Even granting the best of intentions at the time of utterance, stuff happens. It's nobody's fault. While it might be worthwhile to mention them, promised features shouldn't contribute any points to a game's score. If a game delivers a lot of new and exciting content that would have justified a higher score than originally given just update the initial review, or re-review the game.
Meh. THis review is on key with some and completely off key with others.
Combat is a blast. PvP is a blast. TERA IS NOT MEANT TO BE A PVE GAME. If your looking at TERA for just PvE you will be sadly disappoint when you reach endgame. It has 4 or 5 dungeons. Couple normal mode dungeons and 2 hardmode dungeons.
That being said TERA makes up for its lack in PVE with its amazing PvP. This game doesn't need instanced PVP. Traditional (emphasis on that word) Battlegrounds will destroy this game.
Gripe: The UI is extremely customizeable in TERA. Ever piece of the UI can be moved around or resized to exactly how you want it. The only UI I have issues with is the Guild UI like he said, it doesnt have a lot of functionality. But that is one piece of the UI, not the whole UI like he is showing in the cons.
All I got to say is, if you call TERA uninnovative because it used some things from a single player game with online capability, then every game in the MMO market is uninovative.
I am seriously going to doubt any review you guys ever do if you call GW2 innovative as well. Because GW2 is doing exactly that. Taking great idea's from other games and just bringing them together in one.
RvR done. Dynamic Events Done. Instanced PVP....yea... Player Story done. Weapon Swapping done.
"In the immediate future, we have this one, and then weve got another one that is actually going to be so were going to have, what we want to do, is in January, what were targeting to do, this may or may not happen, so you cant hold me to it. But what were targeting to do, is have a fun anniversary to the Ilum shenanigans that happened. An alien race might invade, and they might crash into Ilum and there might be some new activities that happen on the planet." ~Gabe Amatangelo
Comments
As someone currently playing I felt it was a fair review to. I tend not to look at scores, whats a good score for one month isnt the same for a game the next month, things change to fast in our genre to put a number on anything and it certainly changes over time as an mmo matures.
Its enjoyable, it works, and it has potential to grow, sure it has systems that arent particularly innovative, but coupled with the unique combat and quality, it could become something special in time.
TERA is something beautiful, in look and feel, and id certainly agree the team should be proud of what they have produced, whatever the scores may be.
Great review. You brought up a lot of the same points that I hear from friends who play Tera. They say it's a great game (combat, graphics) but the PvE is repetitive, the PvP is broken and the end game is missing. One guy I use to play Aion with said it reminded him of Aion's launch.
7.7 is too generous. I will rate it 5 / 10. Graphics and combat is the only saving grace in Tera.
I am being 100% honest. I am not talking about the Island of Dawn only. I thought it would be better after the IoD, but it was more of the same.
By the way...I rolled a new toon on the RP server since RP servers tend to draw in the adults...it was really bad as well. You and I apparently play during different hours if you see anything different.
I still think the longevity and innovation scores are far too high given the fact that:
1) only doing 1 thing innovative that we've seen and/or the reviewer has actually played (the combat) so should be 4-5
2) Longevity is impossible to determine by a level 20-30 something a few weeks after launch. Longevity should get an automatic 5 for EVERY game until a re-review is done a month or two after release.
That, of course, all just IMO.
I would have given TOR a 7-8 in Longevity after 2-3 weeks, but a 1-2 after 6 weeks.
I play about 10 hours a day, so don't know how I could miss the trolling.
Been in the level 25-55 range for two weeks now and have yet to put someone on ignore and have only been annoyed by one person, also why have I been these levels and played so long?I meet people and end up just talking or joining in on them while they quest, even if they aren't on my quests. And I am on a PvP server, Basilisk Crag. Hell, just this morning a level 60 came and helped me finish BAM quests and yesterday someone I met while leveling went on her 60, we formed a party, she left the party and healed us from the outside while the five of us fought BAMs so she wouldn't cause us to lose xp. She did this for over an hour...
I spend probably 50-60% of my leveling time in groups I didn't even look for, they just happened through area chat or random meetings.
The low level areas are people rolling alts, who want to troll while leveling to make it more entertaining.
Unless it got better, my whole Tera experience until level 42 was filled with a terrible chat, immature people, and plenty of sexual chat comments. But who knows, maybe it changed.
Remember... all I'm offering is the truth. Nothing more.
Just my personal 2cp. Played it for 2 weeks and this is my input:
>>> Stability/polish:10 ; no arguments there
>>> Graphics: 10 ; nothing better that I have seen for now.
>> Combat & Class: 8.5 ; I like the combat a lot, but its becoming repeatative pretty quickly. Not enough options in my humble opinion to make it 9 or 10.
>>> Instances and Grouping: 7.5 ... ok
>>> Quests/linearity/making your own choices/theme park: 5 ... OR LESS ... this was the deal breaker for me.
Moved to D3 after 2 weeks.
http://werewood.wordpress.com
Thank you...that's exactly what I am talking about.
I would't disagree, there are many players who need a good swift ban.
i just report and block and go my merry way. Still, I'm amazed how many players are still running in "young adolescent" mode and are still astounded by their li'l pee-pees and how potty jokes never get old.
tee-hee.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Well, I'll admit, that's all BETA was, and all Island of Dawn was when I got TERA a week after release(due to some computer troubles).
But otherwise, since reaching the second continent, I have not once witnessed any sexual talk, immaturity(besides one or two OWPvP arguments about ganking), elin discussion, alienware comment or WoW was the first MMO remarks.
So it's a shame to me, when I see people badmouth the community constantly because I think who i've met so far, have all been great people who are beeing misrepresented.
The people having retarded discussions are just trying to have fun on the Island of Dawn, and can you blame them? Hell maybe even participate a little, it could be fun, or you can just turn off the chat, the chat is more customizable in TERA than any game on the market right now.
Sorry for the wall of text. Apparently writing from a mobile device does not alloparagraphs. *********************
You know, I keep forgetting to bring this feedback but better late than never:
*A) I think "Customer Support" is a feature that would be valuable in including in future reviews. It is actually a pretty important aspect of an MMO that somehow always flies under the radar of reviewers everywhere. Good customer support is a rare gem to find, and this game has it in spades. While you'll always have a small percentage of people claiming it's terrible, by and large a solid consensus is that it's eerily good. In my experience the best customer support I've received in years period. Whether software, furniture, dentist - these guys pull off this generally unrewarding job and should be recognized and encouraged. So maybe future MMOs take their CS seriously.
As an example look at the SWTOR score. That game most definitely blows TERA (and arguably all other game's) with it's story and voice acting. But by the same token TERA blows it right out of the water and is on an entirely different category when it comes to combat, healing, aesthetics, performance. So at the end one could argue they would end up with a similar score instead of a full point discrepancy. Again, because the value of the score changes between reviews.
[mod edit - added paragraphs for readability]
I'm not saying it's all a bad community, I met some cool people too, but your second paragraph (which I underlined) described the regular chat on my server, so I guess maybe it's just because of different servers I don't know, but truth is it was pretty bad, even after the starter island. So I say it was 50/50.
Remember... all I'm offering is the truth. Nothing more.
I thought that the score was a bit low but then I am one of the ones that likes the game. I have said before that I think this will be a game that you either like or you don't so I would expect opinions about it to be polarized.
As for innovation being low, I think it is important to remember that you don't usually want to change to many things at once. With very few exceptions you don't ever add more than about two huge changes into a new game. The only recent game that I can think of that breaks this mold is GW2 but then they are basically running on a platform of completely changing how mmos are done. So changing combat and adding a political system seems a pretty reasonably amount of major change.
The other factor to keep in mind is that changing combat and how it is done is a HUGE change. Combat is 80% of the game play of just about any MMO. So while it might be just one thing, it is no small thing. Further, the UI also had to be redesigned pretty significantly from the MMO norm to work with this altered style of combat. And they did it in such a way that it works well with a controller or a keyboard. When you compare it to what FFXIV tried to deliver with their controller centric design and just how hard it failed for most PC players, well, I think Bluehole did a pretty amazing job in the UI redesign department.
Really, sit back for a moment and consider how badly such a deep redesign of the UI could have gone. In MMOs, you simply don't mess significantly with UI design. It has too much potential to blow up in your face. And yet they didn't have much of a choice given how they wanted to change combat. Still, it was significantly different from the norm and even I didn't have much trouble picking up the new way to do things. I am not a shooters guy. This is literally the first game I have ever played for any consistent amount of time where I have had to use WASD to get around. The fact that I didn't need a detailed tutorial to get going on it is a strong testimonial to a well designed starter area and a well designed UI.
Also, regarding the quests. Sure they are pretty basic but I also felt that they were just right for this style of game. I enjoyed the story that came from the storyline quests. Not exactly Tolkien but still very interesting with a betrayal coming from the inside and such. The rest of the quests, frankly didn't need to be any more complicated. They are just tasks. If you want to go grind dungeons to level, queue up. (hopefully your a lancer) If you want to go grind in a group. BAMs are that way. -----> If you simply want to solo, here is your list of tasks. Maybe I have a very low bar, but I really didn't mind that these "tasks" were not overly complicated. The combat itself was enough fun to make up for the quests being standard fetch, kill and deliver. They could have added some more variety to the storyline quests but frankly I think it would have gotten in the way had they had to much of that in the regular task. It would have taken too much away from simply enjoying how the game played at its combat core. Sure when combat itself is little more than another chore then basic kill quests are simply not good enough but when combat is fun, kill quests are fun and non killing quests loose their necessity at best and start to get in the way at worst.
So while I can't argue with your assessment of the quests in principle, I still disagree with your conclusion. I think this older, more basic, more "boring" style of questing works well with this style of combat and that too much of the new style, inovative, puzzle/minigame type quests would actually get in the way.
All die, so die well.
Generally I'd agree but with MMOs we've seen games that "don't ever add more than about two huge changes into a new game" for 8 years or so, and none of them have done all that well in the long run.
I think with MMOs, unless it IS different, why leave your already established game that you know for a fact will have more content and less bugs?
Because of one or two changes?
If those changes are significant enough, sure, I can see that.
But I don't think "gimmick" changes like we saw/see in WAR/AoC/RIFT/TOR/TERA are enough to keep people playing in the long run (generally speaking, of course)
And you always have to factor in burn out.
Same thing in a shiny new coat, well the shine wears off and what is left?
I'd say it's explaination #1 as to why all these MMOs post 2004 have had massive releases and mass exodus after a month or two.
Whenever the discrepancy between a reviewer score and average user score is too wide I tend to raise a eyebrow and say: nope. Next one.
uh and what do I mean by average user score? well metacritic, this sites metric. I wonder why popular sites tend to review this game so low, hmmm..
I realize the difficulty of writing a review for a huge game like an MMO and I like the idea of the partial updates with a summary review at the end. It's still a bit short of what I think ideally a review should cover for a game, any game, but it's a good step forward.
However, living through the decline of TOR as an active player, I think a few things should have been considered more in the review:
Social - talking about the current community in the game is VERY misleading. TOR is a much better game if you have folks to play with. But now that numbers on a lot of servers are dropping the game gets a bit boring and you can't even do a lot of the content without other players. This review item should really only focus on the tools provided by the game, e.g. LFG tool, can you move your toons between servers, or is the game architected in a way that everyone plays on basically one server. Guild tools should also way heavily in this score. The people making up the community is not something the game can control. Just by rolling on a "bad" server you may end up stuck with a horde of trolls.
Longevity - for this review item it would be good to know how the quests will affect rolling alts, which is a major thing providing longevity for a lot of people. Again, looking at TOR, the class quests are different between the base classes, but you cannot progress through the game by only completing those. Aside from PvP, all other ways of gaining XPs are the exact same for all your alts - space missions, side quests, FPs, ops, heroics. This does get old by the third time through, and if your server has a dwindling population, you may not even be able to do the group content.
Similarly, roadmaps and promises of future content are just words. Even granting the best of intentions at the time of utterance, stuff happens. It's nobody's fault. While it might be worthwhile to mention them, promised features shouldn't contribute any points to a game's score. If a game delivers a lot of new and exciting content that would have justified a higher score than originally given just update the initial review, or re-review the game.
Meh. THis review is on key with some and completely off key with others.
Combat is a blast. PvP is a blast. TERA IS NOT MEANT TO BE A PVE GAME. If your looking at TERA for just PvE you will be sadly disappoint when you reach endgame. It has 4 or 5 dungeons. Couple normal mode dungeons and 2 hardmode dungeons.
That being said TERA makes up for its lack in PVE with its amazing PvP. This game doesn't need instanced PVP. Traditional (emphasis on that word) Battlegrounds will destroy this game.
Gripe: The UI is extremely customizeable in TERA. Ever piece of the UI can be moved around or resized to exactly how you want it. The only UI I have issues with is the Guild UI like he said, it doesnt have a lot of functionality. But that is one piece of the UI, not the whole UI like he is showing in the cons.
All I got to say is, if you call TERA uninnovative because it used some things from a single player game with online capability, then every game in the MMO market is uninovative.
I am seriously going to doubt any review you guys ever do if you call GW2 innovative as well. Because GW2 is doing exactly that. Taking great idea's from other games and just bringing them together in one.
RvR done. Dynamic Events Done. Instanced PVP....yea... Player Story done. Weapon Swapping done.
"In the immediate future, we have this one, and then weve got another one that is actually going to be so were going to have, what we want to do, is in January, what were targeting to do, this may or may not happen, so you cant hold me to it. But what were targeting to do, is have a fun anniversary to the Ilum shenanigans that happened. An alien race might invade, and they might crash into Ilum and there might be some new activities that happen on the planet." ~Gabe Amatangelo
Not sure how half a point is too wide of a difference.
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Hmm Iam trying to find a game on this site that has the same review score. Can you help? Just ... to compare.
The fact you think it "screams" F2P makes your opinion entirely invalid and not worth considering.
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