Great game!

OneOldCoder

Having had my say about a game i didn't like, i thought it would be appropriate to extoll the virtues of a really good game.

Istaria is without a doubt the best online game i have played.  There is an outstanding community of players that are always willing to help new players, although sometimes you have to wait for answers. 

The graphics are beautiful, and everytime i play i feel immersed in the world of Istaria.

You can switch between all of the classes as a bi-ped, which they have at least 15 adventure classes, and 20 craft classes.  (You can have one of each active at a time).  And you are not locked into one particular class.  If you start out as a Warrior, you can change to Mage, Druid, Chaos Warrior...whatever.

If you play as a Dragon the classes are somewhat limited, but this in no way detracts from being a Dragon...In fact, Dragon is one of the most awesome characters you can play.

The crafting is extensive, including creating buildings on your plot, and all the extras...trees, shrubs, christmas presents...whatever....there are a lot of things you can craft just for your plot of land.  Then there is also all the Armor, Weapons, Dragon Scales, and a multitude of other items to craft.

Some of the leveling is a bit of a grind, but compared to other games...i would have to say Istaria beats them hands down.

There is an arena for PvP play also, however i have never gone there, and don't really know much about it.   Perhaps someone more familiar with this would care to comment on it.  I don't believe it is used very much.

I just can't say enough about how good this game is...I would highly recommend it to anyone to at least give it a try.

 

green13

While the game isn't without its virtues, a few claims in your review are so far from the truth as to boggle the mind.

Consider that any new player who reads this and downloads the free trial is going to instantly see through these, and then disbelieve every other positive claim you made.

1) The community is a mixed bag. Most are very good - the best you'll find in mmos. But there are also some very angry, nasty types there and they are left to run rampant. When one of the chat channels turns feral, it's really quite impressive.

2) The graphics are terrible. This never bothered me. Even on a fairly good PC, I had to play with the settings down. I've never met a memory hog quite like Istaria. Landscapes are incredibly sub-par compared to every other mmo on the market, though I always thought character models (particularly dragons) looked quite good.

3) Unless they've fixed this (finally), dragons are pretty limited. Theoretically you can make a spellcasting or melee dragon - but at least last time I played, melee dragons were about 5 times as strong as spellcasters. They're definitely cool to play, but very limited, especially compared to the multi-multi-multi-multi-classing bipeds.

 

OneOldCoder

green13...apparently you have had a bad experience with Istaria, which is unfortunate, however i stand by my review of this game.

The community of players is by far the best group of people i have had the pleasure to meet in an on-line game, and while you may have met some that were not so great, i would still say it is much better than the vast majority of games out there.  The experiences i have had in Eve, WoW, Runes of Magic, and many other games have been much worse.  I have played Istaria for about 7 months now, which is not a very long time, but have yet to see anyone use swear words in chat, be anything but polite and helpful, and just plain have a good time.  Of course, a lot of how people treat you is based on your actions also, so perhaps it is just because of my demeanor that i have not had a bad experience yet.  Another thing that is good about the community is the fact that there are no 'gold sellers' in this game...money is not as important as in most games, and thus does not have a market for these types.

As far as the graphics in the game, I wonder if you actually played the same game i am playing....the graphics are very good, and while not the most amazing visual effects of any game on the market, are comparable to any i have seen.  Perhaps you haven't played in quite a while...lots of things have changed.

Since you did not specify what type of system you tried to play the game on, I can't possibly know whether or not your 'fairly' good system could run the game very well or not....'fairly' good systems typically get 'fairly' good results with games...this has always been true.

I am running an AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4400+. at 2.31 GHz, with 2 GB of ram, and a NVidia GEForce 8500 video card running Windows XP Pro 64 bit.  I have had minor issues at times, but nothing major.  I guess i just expect to have to tweak the game settings a little to get the best performance for my system.  This may be due to the fact that i am a computer tech/programmer/developer myself.  The issues i have had, which are very few compared to other games, have been dealt with by the support people in a very timely manner, and i have always had good results.

I have heard that there are some issues with Vista, but this really doesn't surprise me in the least.  I have heard that the issues are being dealt with, and i believe have been taken care of now.  I am sure the website has all the information regarding system requirements, and any issues.

As far as how powerful/weak a particular character type is, that is part of any game that has different types of characters.  If you didn't like how one was to play, then perhaps you should have tried a 'multi-multi-multi....etc'...biped, as you seem to think that was the strongest character in the game.  There are a lot of Dragons in the game, and a lot of Bi-ped characters in the game.  I haven't heard very many complaints about the choice people have made, however there is always a bit of wishing for a different skill/ability, whatever.  Pretty typical for any game.  And besides...if you don't like the character you have chosen, you can create a new one and try a different type.  The subscription allows for 7 characters, with one log in.  If you get a sub-account, then you can log in with 2 characters, and i believe you can stack as many sub-accounts as you desire.  I currently have two accounts, and can log 2 characters in at the same time...however i also have 2 computers that i can use to do so.  Makes for some very interesting play.

Having said all of that, this is still just my opinion of the game, and i would absolutely recommend it to anyone to at least try.  I have enjoyed every minute i have played Istaria, and plan on playing for a long time to come.

green13

Nice go at trying to pin the community problems on me...

But seriously, the problems I spoke of were mostly seen in chat channels - without any involvement from myself. I learned after a couple of weeks of playing to leave the marketplace channel off most of the time, and to turn it off immediately once it started going feral.

I still have screenshots of some of the more spectacular moments. Want me to post them here?

There's also nothing wrong with my computer - I have similar specs to your own. It runs every other mmo just fine including ones released this year - but Istaria is a memory hog that requires reboots every 3-4 hours. And Istaria's graphics are just about the worst in the subscription mmo market. Trying to claim otherwise, of an mmo this old, is bizarre.

My comment about dragons wasn't that your choices are limited - they were non-existent the last time I played. Theoretically you can specialise in magic or melee, but in practice melee is many, many, many times stronger and more effective than magic. It's something they could easily fix, but probably still haven't.

I forgot the killer number 4.

4) This is a solo game.

No-one teams up. The most social that combat gets is players buffing each other in passing. Players only team up on rare occasions to kill big boss types for special quests. This is mainly because of biped multi-classing.

On the flip side, the building side of the game is very social. Everyone co-operates and works together to harvest and build.

This design always struck me as incredibly bad, and it's probably the game's biggest drawback. Allowing players to solo is obviously good - and Istaria scores well on this point - but mmo's are social games and it's strange that Istaria's content/design discourages team combat.

 

shadowmage

Green is correct that there are some problem people in the game, but that is true of any game. I personally very very rarely run n to a bad community maybe it was the times during the day he played.  Or under the owners he played, for there was a bad time when the game was owned by worse owners then now and at other times.

I like the graphics my self and thing they are great. Yes they have some problems and there was/is a bug that one of the blight clients would lower your graphics some. I am not sure if Green ran into that problem or now.

Dragons are much improved, Melee is still slightly better but more spells have been added to improve Dragons Casters. Again I am not sure that last time you have logged in or if you even check out the official forums.

Yes it is a very solo or friend based game. But there are hunting parties out there, but as I said they are friend based for the most part which I feel is a very elder game kind of thing. Any game this old is going to see most people at the highest levels with thier friends that they like to play with. But they are working on the Laybranth that they are trying to push some group content in.

green13

Unfortunately I had bad experiences with vitriolic members of the community under both owners. I was only free-trialling under the old owners, so wasn't around long enough to say how they dealt with things like that, but saw several months of seemingly unrestrained bad behaviour under the current owners.

Unless it's changed ownership again in the past 18 months?

Graphics - depends on how you define it. Quality is low generally, though actually pretty good for character models. Characters are more detailed than cartoony games like WoW. But landscapes and buildings really show the game's age. I always thought the artwork for dragon lairs was very nicely done though. Even with the poor quality graphics, they looked good.

But compared to any other mmo - and I suspect most people who might try Istaria will have played at least one - Istaria's graphics will look sub-par.

I am glad to hear that dragon magic got some love. I recall there being a fair slice of the dragon community not happy about being forced into melee to avoid being gimped. That change should make them happy

 

Sanguinia

Hmmm, this discussion is making me consider giving this game a try.

spookydom

Im playing the trial at the mo after reading this thread.  Enjoying it,  but my goodness it takes a long time to check the fials every time you boot up.....i'm loosing the will to live here

shadowmage

If your using the non-web page patcher. in the options uncheck full check. It will only check and download files when needed.

spookydom

Thanks Shadowmage will do:)