Review from me (lvl 30 Knight) (lvl 23 Wizard) (lvl 22 Artisan)

Enigma

Ok...

I think I just totally lost 24 days of my life.  Here's a little review of my thoughts about the game..and since I did obtain some levels with multiple types of classes and races, I think I have some sort fo tiny voice in this whole mess.

 

At first the game was fun.  DANG fun.  Other then the logging in 23,452 times to get in it did get better.  The fourth server was added before the said date and then 2 more servers and so on.  

Killstealing:  Kill Stealing was not an issue on Darkelf area or Dwarvian island.  However, Kill Stealing is very bad on Talking Island (human starting point).  Many people will just take a couple shots from your kill to leech the XP and SP from ya...effectively fighting without danger of dieing.  If you do hit him...you pretty much cant kill him unless he fights back or you'll turn red.  Dieing red will cause you to loose any items you are carrying, wearing, and holding.

Adena (gold):  Its plentiful here.  If you hunt the right creatures you wont really have a problem obtaining money.  However if makes you wonder why in the world a floating eyeball would carry a staff as loot...but thats ok

Duping:  This hit the offical forum boards 2 weeks after OB.  No one could ever prove anything so it was like a salem witch hunt with screenshots from imagedump that would rival the best screenshot taker from Star Wars Galaxies to prove an exploit.  This Duping rumour lead to the true monster...

Bots:  Bots in a mmorpg are bad...having it in open beta already is worse.  To even put salt in the wound, over 80% of all bots are chinese (matter fact 100% of all bots I encountered were Chinese...32 bots in all ..in one Mine Shaft).  This is why the bots are so prevelant here in Korea/China:

Go to Ebay then look up adena . From there, locate a Chinese seller then locate all his adena bids.  I found one chinese guy who will make $7,550 US dollars if no one else makes another bid by Friday.  $7,550 US dollars in China equals to double and sometimes quadriple the amount.  So he's roughly making $16,000-30,000 A WEEK depending on the area of China he lives.

Now imagine not one, but over 200-400 chinese bots doing this from all existing servers. The sad thing is GMs are saying they're banning 300 bots a day but i dont see that as 27 seperate people reported the same bot...but thats another story.

Conspiracy theory: Now rumours are circulating that NCsoft are "encouraging the bots to do their thing" as it geenrates more revenue for NCsoft (a Asian based company).  Now this is just a tehory now dominating the frorum boards....I dont know what to b elieve about that.

Hack N Slash: Dear gawd this is the clincher for me.  After level 20 you just get so sick of killing stuff over and over and over and over and over and over and over.  I wouldn't be able to play this game for free much less a monthly fee.

Quests: Quests are very odd and hard to read as all the words are abruptly broken in mid sentences as if the programmers dont have a clue with the English language.  The Quests system is probably the worst system than in any other mmorpg.

Graphics are great, armor and weapon selection is satisfactory, Scammers are overrunning everythings, bots are dominating, and the panty shots are getting old.

Forum moderators: I honestly think they're 15 years old (no offense to you younger guys).  The often make fun, belittle, and flame people when moderators are suppose to keep the peace.  Also, forum moderators are allowed to play with their same forum moderator name (which is a big no no) and one of them even scams people in trade and then makes fun of them on the boards..The Moderators do this and its tolerated.

Would I buy this game: No, not at all.  Is the game ok?  Its ok if you dont mind the chinese pre-programed bots making 30K a week in real money.  Is the game pretty: yes 

I wouldnt recommend this game to anyone really.  True, its an open beta, however open betas should not have all these problems in terms of hacking.

Save your money for another mmorpg coming out soon

JackDonkey

I'm getting bored of lineage 2 also.  All I do now is camp outside dungeons and look for groups because once in a while you get an interesting group and have lots of fun (maybe I should try a non pvp mmog then).

Kill stealing, I didn't mind it, the part about kill stealing that bothered me was the people who complained about it.  It's almost always unintentional.

Hack N Slash, yes it is getting old, fighting by yourself is not fun at all and I will glady take less experience or less adena to fight in a group with people higher levels then me but they think they're doing me some kind of favor by not wanting to group with me cause I wouldn't get any exp.

All of your other points I'm pretty much neutral on or don't know/care enough to comment.  However one thing that I wanted to point out most of all, I come from eve online where time is your exp, lineage 2 is my first leveling mmog and this is what I found I do not like about mmorpg's:

En1Gma wrote "..and since I did obtain some levels with multiple types of classes and races, I think I have some sort fo tiny voice in this whole mess."

I have found that in the classic leveling style game people think their respect is based on a number (their level) they think that if they are a higher level they are greater than others.  It is unfortunate that people think this way.  That is also why I didn't bother including my level in this post, because who cares.

Enigma

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Originally posted by JackDonkey

 It is unfortunate that people think this way.  That is also why I didn't bother including my level in this post, because who cares.

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When people mention their levels its not to brag or boast (whats to brag about a lvl 30? When theres like 80 some) rather its to show you how much time they put into it, thus, they know what there talking about when they review a game.

You wouldn't go to a person who a Bachelors of Science in Computer Science if you were seeing if you had lung cancer would ya?  You would look for someone with credentials enough to help. Thats why people often times mention their level.  To show they have experience.

EVE is the same way.  While you do not get levels you do get skill levels (Im a forum mod over there).  While it is not strictly a lvl per lvl people do review eve and use their skills as leverage and credientials...

When you want to get a review for Half life 2....would u go to www.walmart.com keyword: reviews? Or will you check out the various computer-game specialized sites and mags first?  Its the same theory behind showing levels

JackDonkey

I'm sorry I did not mean to flame. Just an observation of the difference between the two different styles of "leveling". You just provided me with a good example.

Enigma

oh you didnt flame at all!

I apologize if my response seemed that way   Hehe

nolf

i 100% agree with your assesment.

cool game, fun at first, nice to look at, not worth the money.

after a couple months in beta, i stopped playing while it was free.

Nolf - Master Asshat

Someone's gotta do it!

Desalus

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Originally posted by En1Gma

EVE is the same way.  While you do not get levels you do get skill levels (Im a forum mod over there). 

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DOWN WITH POLARIS!!!!

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Killer 86%, Achiever 46%, Socializer 33%, Explorer 33%

DrFrag

Agreed. Best review I have seen so far. I won't be buying the game either.

Shagsbeard

You have a common misconception about L2.  We weren't beta testing.  The game has been being played in Asia for 7 months or so.  All we're doing on NCsoft's servers is stress testing.  There is absolutely no development going on.  There is no modification of the game other than translation.  All the issues about botting have arisen during beta for two reasons... both NCsoft's fault:

1) The decission not to wipe at the end of open beta.  This is utterly ridiculous.  I personally wouldn't buy a game simply on this choice they made.

2) Using 7-10 month old code that people in asia have had access to.  This is why the bots showed up so quickly... they've been using them in Asia for months.

So... advice to other game designers:  Don't make stupid choices.  Think about the game, not the players.  Make a good game and the players will come to it.  Cater to the players and your game will be crap.

-Sig-
Don't try to teach a pig to sing,
It rarely works and only serves to annoy the pig.