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You owe it to yourself to try this game!
Smashix
Member UncommonPosts: 91
Even if you don't stick around for the long haul, give Atlantica Online a try. It's so different from probably anything else you have ever played, that it shows you what is possible in an MMO.
A RL friend of mine found this a few years back and I had never heard of it. I tried it and I'm hooked.
The concept is strategic turn-based combat with a 3 * 3 grid of a team made of 1 main character and 8 mercenaries (mercs). So you have a team of 9 characters that you manage. On a typical turn, you can use 5 mercs. Each merc has a physical attack type based on its weapon (an axe can hit a row of enemy mercs 3 across, a spear can hit 2 mercs one behind the other, a bow can hit 1 merc anywhere in the enemy formation, etc.). Each merc can have 1 or more magic abilities, which can be attacks, buffs, debuffs, heals, guards, etc.).
Each magical ability can be skilled up and each merc can wear many different types of gear (weapon, armor, charms, earrings, necklace, boots, etc.) that can be upgraded, both by enchanting the gear to +1, +2 to +10 and/or by replacing it with higher level gear. So you manage 9 characters with 9 times the gear of, say, a WoW character.
There are a number of ways to have more than 8 mercs, by storing them in merc rooms or a house. We are also very soon getting a new type of merc called a merc corps (already live in Korea), but I wouldn't worry about this (yet) as a new player.
There have been a number of recent overhauls that make the game a lot friendlier for new players. You get free licenses, such as teleportation, until level 81. You also get a lot of free upgrade items, such as crystals you need to upgrade mercenaries that you used to have to farm. You also get a number of free mercenaries at level 60 that you used to have to buy.
If you have more questions, feel free to ask and I'll try to answer.
You can also start a free account and roll a character on server Sikyon and whisper me ( Smashix) when you are on. Our guild (Epic) is helpful and friendly to new and casual players. We are casual friendly, while still trying to do things as a guild (guild dungeons, etc.).
Edit: April 2015: I am on hiatus for now, but Epic guild is still active.
Comments
There is nothing wrong with the game. Until very recently it was an excellent game. Recent changes, gratuitous arrival of too many mercenaries (why why why?), loss of home expeditions etc. have maybe taken it down a notch, but it's still the only turn based combat MMORPG as far as I know and a very good game.
The problem is the publishing company, Nexon. They are not good. From redesigning storage and not compensating those who spent real money on increasing their storage the old way and just simply lost it in the redesign, to a massively, MASSIVELY overpriced item mall and the various 'tricks' and pressure they use to try and part gamers from their cash. To say they are 'destroying' the game is maybe a bit wild, but player numbers are caving and server merges are happening in all their regions.
I figured out a while back how to describe Nexon. You know the player you sometimes see who openly cons other players out of money with item scams? The ones that will use any unfair exploit or bug to beat rivals? Nexon are the publishing company equivalent of those types of players.
If you are into Might and Magic Heros or Age of Wonder type combat, this *is* the game. Just a shame Nexon *isn't* the company.
I loved this game for a week or so, way back when it first came out.
But the cash shop just kills the entire thing, honestly, i don't think anything Nexon does is worth touching anymore, they're just greedy and their IP blocking / server seperations are insane.
Atlantica Online is a great game, but only if you're willing to spend unlimited money on it.
For the rest of us who like turn-based MMOs there are better options like Dofus and Wizard 101 which are much more reasonably priced.
While the item mall can be expensive, there's usually some good events throughout the year that allow easy access to things like the blessing and the warrior packs. Just got to be around for those.
That being said the direction the devs and Gms are currently taking on the game is ruining it for most the long standing players. Devs make the content from Korea and the feedback to the devs seems to almost never ever happen.
PVP hardly exists now, and is even frowned upon outside their free league joke form of pvp, which is only during certain times, but is multiple times in a day. If you want to do the never revamped war system style of pvp make sure you don't attack a AC (volunteer to forums) because they will ban you.
Also make sure not to start a war on the towns known as spiking because again if you attack a AC you will now get banned or have your guild dissolved, while most long term players were once told that being spiked was a feature intended to keep guilds active suffered and accepted it(for 7years), but don't attack their ACs!!! Hey, if you want to be treated above all others (and not have to play fair) you just need to join a nation or guild with a AC and you will get all the favoritism you want, chances are the GMs will even put their hacked max level, special itemed gear in the guild with you, and currently they do.
PVE wise, for 2 years now it's been the same spot for grinding levels and mats for gears, you'd think after 2 years they would get the hint people are becoming numb to the same stale setting day in day out. They won't add any new tbs missions because of "hackers", can't fix that with code huh?....Don't get me wrong they added new areas with super overpowered mobs that makes the heaviest item maller wonder wtf.
The current entire year has been gold sink, and item mall events designed to be gold and money sinks. Read their forums if you want to see what the community thinks of this, but the Gm is all happy..........so sad.
They recently added IP blocks to the north American version from other countries, also semi known as the international version, because of deals involving other providers. This make sense to them on paper, but not to gamers with common sense and they will just make you think yourself stupid trying to get them to understand the everyday gamers take on why its dumb to even do this to begin with.
Believe it or not, I do love the game but as a gamer, I cannot play this game anymore with how pathetic/obvious the favoritism is currently in this game( to the Acs), and that never ends well when veteran players are leaving each day. Also playing events to lose gold or money on just isn't that attractive to me.
Too many mercs? What? Seriously what? Now that's something I've heard noone ever say in any MMO. I love the fact that there are so many options now.
I am out for now, because the game just gets too repetitive and grindy at higher levels. I just got bored with doing the same thing over and over.
Yep Nexon is a problem. Their customer service and customer feedback stinks.
My main point still stands, though: this game has enough going for it and is unique enough that you should at least try it for a while. You can do really well in Atlantica PvE with 0 dollars spent. PvP maybe not so much.
RIP Ribbitribbitt you are missed, kid.
Currently Playing EVE, ESO
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed.
Dwight D Eisenhower
My optimism wears heavy boots and is loud.
Henry Rollins
Unfortunately, they managed to screw up just about every single other thing in the entire game. They even screwed up a lot of things that I didn't realize it was even possible to do badly. It's not just the flagrant pay-to-win item mall; a lot of games do that.
Atlantica was the only released game I've ever seen that had their regularly scheduled maintenance for the English-language version take place during the evenings in the US--also known as the time when the most people will want to play.
The system of having various mercenaries as part of your party was cool, and you can add more as you go. The problem is that the new ones always started at level 1, making them far too weak to use immediately. And the leveling system was such that they couldn't gain experience against mobs too far above their level, so you couldn't just catch them up by sticking them in the back while your stronger characters kill mobs.
People complain about games being on rails, but Atlantica really takes this to the extreme. As best as I could tell, most of the quests in the entire game were part of one enormous quest line. You'd get a quest to go kill 10 rats, then upon turning that in, get another quest to go back and kill 10 more rats. And you can't take both of the quests at once, as they're all part of the same line. So you had a ton of running back and forth to acquire the next quest and continue where you had been.
It's not just that the item mall was flagrant pay to win, though that's bad enough. It's also that the pay to win items are per character. Want them for all of your characters? Pay again separately for each character. People who don't play alts might be fine with that, but I'm sure not. They aren't minor buffs, either; one was something like double your attack power.
Combat experience made it so that characters that delivered the killing blow got more experience than others in your party. This tended to result in higher level characters getting more experience than lower level characters, causing the levels in your party to diverge.
The game also had an auto-combat feature, to let the game automatically do combat for you. If you used it, it really exasperated the problem of levels diverging, as this was really prone to having stronger, higher level characters deal the killing blows. And that's quite apart from the issue that a game offering to basically play itself for you is never a good sign.
This isn't a signature, you just think it is.
Atlantica is still my favorite game, with 70+ mercenaries and 270+ magic skills. I am also still an editor on the Atlantica Wiki (http://atlantica.wikia.com), where I and other volunteers try to keep AO information available to players (especially info on new content and current events).
Hi GrandpaDJ, I've seen discussions about this elsewhere, but I never got the point of this, can you elaborate?