Atlantica Review of Closed Beta 1

INTRODUCTION

Not a fanboy, but I've tried almost everything since the days of The Realm / Shadow of Yserbius, back in the days.  I do like the game, but I will try to give a review of both good and bad, because not doing it like that is no way to balance an argument.  I'm not doing this for a contest or anything like that (didn't bother with reviews during the course of the beta).

Most games now days all mimic WoW (which mimics its predecessors).  The point is, that most games bring nothing new.  New 'AA' , new master levels, new alternate this or that.  It's been done before 100 times.  Most of the mmorpgs pump up the graphics like mad (eye candy), hoping people will swallow it down and say, "ooooh pretty".  To top it all most games use the same interface.  If it works for WoW it must work for us, or if not the WoW interface, it's some form of Diablo interface.  UO was probably one of the best games  ever (mmorpg wise), but we are not talking about UO here.  Atlantica is not top end graphics, not by far, but for a f2p (free to play) game, it is extremely deep.  The sheer depth rivals that of many subscription games.

I will not give an explanation of the basic combat control since there are enough reviews around doing that.  Everything written is from the perspective of a 53 shaman/mage in closed beta 1. 

BAD

• It is laggy sometimes.  However I'm in Europe and the servers are on the West Coast.
• Running away/dying/disconnecting in a battle all have the same penalties (xp/gold loss), however the gold loss can be minimized by storing everything in a bank.
• Combat may be laggy with 3 people (27 units), again though it may be my system since I'm running on power saving mode, otherwise my video card crashes .
• There could be more interaction with towns overall.  The town interface is still buggy as most things in the build menus are displayed as ?????.  Translation errors are still around, and some messages notifications are bland , as in citizens don't pay taxes...but it doesn't say WHY.
• Some of the quests to attain the C class mercenaries are horribly boring.  Witch quest is ok, but the Beast Trainer is absolute torture.  It takes forever to do.
• It IS a cash shop game, and though most cash shop games start milking the player base one way or another, we don't know WHAT will be in the cash shop.  They may be smart about it, or just plain down dumb.
• GM communication is sketchy sometimes.  No definitive answer on a wipe for closed beta 1 was given until AFTER the servers shut down.

• Chat window...yes you can filter out chats, but you can't have multiple tabs, and the text cuts off badly in both private chats and in the global chat window.  (might be fixed later?)

• Friend list can only hold 30 people, which becomes a problem later on, however guild list can hold 40 people, sadly that's the max number of people a guild can hold.

• Some crash bugs, but it is beta 1, and they know about them (doesn't mean a fix is on the way though).

• SPACE, there is not enough space to hold things.  Unless you get licenses(buffs) for more storage or use extra mercenaries for storage purposes.  For how deep the game is, it doesn't seem storage was well thought out.  There are ways around this but they aren't readily available.   Rome has a warehouse, but it only holds 24 items.  You will always be short of inventory space.
  
  

• Lastly, lack of character customization.  The eye candy could be better. 

• Towns when under control seem to be dead.  Trees don't move, no 'bustling' activity so to speak unless players are questing nearby.

• While the User Interface isn't bad, it is lacking customization, which can be bad at times.

• Some camera angles are very bad in closed spaces.  When you tilt around, due to the angle, you may get a black screen, until you tilt to a position the game can register.

  GOOD

MENTOR SYSTEM

• Incredibly well done mentor system.  Let's be honest nobody helps anyone else unless they get something, material or emotional.  Atlantica understood this, and the mentoring system is based off of that.  As a 'master' you take 'disciples' and you help them out along.  As they level they give the mentor (mentor points - no clue what these do).  At level 30, when the 'newbie' levels end, the Master gets 200k gold, and 200 mentor points and the mentorship is over.  Mentors should and sometimes are used by players to learn the game.

BEGINNERS

• You could say higher players are 'forced' to help lower players.  Either way this works for the beginners.  Either by quest or 'charity' players may give beginners 'gifts'.  In return the giver gets 20% of the items/gold value in experience for each mercenary.  Usually this may also be an ice breaker, as a conversation if so willing will ALWAYS begin from this gesture.

ITEM/QUEST/MONSTER/TOWN DATABASE

• The town has a huge item database, readily available from the get go.  Questions about an item?  Questions about a town?  The database has it.  Likewise quests, and npcs, and the hunting locations (dungeons) are all recorded in here.
• It is hard to explain the interconnectivity of the database, but it's astounding for a f2p game.  Among other things once you visited an area, if you get a teleportation license (buff), you may teleport to any location you have visited (including towns).  You may also teleport to any player in your party.   If you don't have a teleport license, towns have a traveling guild so to speak, which charges for movement (rates are set by each individually owned guild) from town to town, you will still have to run into dungeons by foot.

• Town information displays from population rankings, controlling guilds, food production and other such economics.

GUILDS / NATIONS / TOWN CONTROL

• Yes you can make nations.  Each nation can contain a maximum of 12 guilds, and each guild can contain a maximum of 40 players.  Total, each nation could potentially have 480 players. 
  
  
• Controlling a town gives your guild an extra income revenue from the citizens who pay tax every month (1 real life day).  Tax is limited by the potential status of your town, as you build it up, you get more out of it.
• Towns are not held by guilds indefinitely, but rather, each town is immune from take over for the first 12 months after acquisition.  Afterwards, other guilds may attempt to bid on your town, or later, take it by conquest.

CRAFTING

• There are a vast assortment of skills to take up, from exotics such as charms, scrolls, books, crystal, building, to the more traditional, armor, weapons (each individually, axe/bow/etc), and ammo types.
• Crafting is based on 'workload', which is something gained through battle.  You get workload as well as experience instead of just experience, when you are crafting an item.  You may also craft using 'auto-craft' which is something you turn on and walk away when you want to do something else, and you may also use craft books that automatically add a set number of workload points to your current job order.
• There is also guild crafting, which uses all members of the guild to accomplish the required work load.
• Many of the later items are not available in the market and have to be player made.
• Many items are thus market driven, not system/npc driven.
• You may buy armor and equipment from an npc up to about level 35.  Afterwards, everything is crafted / non craftable drops from monsters (rare).
• Higher skill ranked players may teach lower ranked players, thus avoiding the tax demanded by the npc trainer.  Likewise when teaching other players skill levels, the teacher gains crafting experience.

MISCELLANEOUS

• The game also maintains a COMBO system, which most players don't know about.  For example, if a sword mercenary/hero uses dark seed (a rare skill), and a shaman follows up with dark hex, it creates a NEW spell effect called Flames of Hell.  There are other COMBOS as well but people usually don't distribute this knowledge easily (easier to just test everything out yourself or with friends / guild).
• There is an auto-run feature for all quests/npcs/towns.  This is a very good feature early on, when you don't know the game at all.  By using the auto-move from quest to quest you find where npcs/quests/towns are located.  Later on though after you learn the game, the use of auto-move is not as substantial but still helpful.
• There are also multiple ways/levels to enhance weapons and armor.
• You may switch the main hero class at any time (most likely with a cash item, it wasn't implemented completely in beta 1).
• You may bet on tournaments and/or join in them.

This is just a brush off that came off the top of my head.  Yes the game isn't perfect, but for a f2p, it's not bad at all.  While this is a tilted review, and I'm sure many would like to pick every word apart, the game is 'fun'.  Yes there is a grind, but what game doesn't have a grind.  These games all have a grind, what matters is how well you 'hide' it.  

53 Mage, Atlantica (Closed Beta 1)