I played Lineage 2 from OB all the way till the beggining of Chron 3, coming back every Chron to see how it was.. and made some "just to mess around" characters in private servers. I am not coming back t Lineage 2 and I think this is just another stupid update to a game that needs to face that it failed (WoW even wtfpwned it in Korea) and the developers need to go back and start from scratch.

MMOs are games you have to invest time on, no question about, but to invest your soul and real life? After Lineage 2 I went over to WoW and I am not leaving it anytime soon. The developers have to realise that grindfest games are not going to survive, people will get tired. World of warcraft is heading the right direction with this expansion, lowering their insatnces from 40 mans to 25 mans and their 20 mans to 10 mans, making their 5 man dungeons half their pre TBC size and reputation earning ALOT easier. This appeals to both, hardcore gamers that want to farm the game, and casual players that can be included in the entire game. A casual player can be in a casual guild that wont progress as fast as a noarmal raid farming guild, but they will progress, really fast this time, now that they dont need 20 to go do the easy raid and then 40 to go do the hard raid. My brother was in a guild that could barally complete the 20 players needed for Zul Gurub on an ocational night, TBC gets released, now they have a 10 man Karazhan group farming the place, and a second group almost finishing it.. My guild that farmed MC and BWL and AQ40 is very well progressed, but gear wise, you went into a 40 man, invesetd 4 hours  and 5 people came out with new gear, with these new 10 mans we can throw in 4 different groups, giving 20 people the ability to progress, this is one of Lineage 2's failures, its such a grindfest that even the master grinders (koreans) gave up on the game.

Second failure, cheaters. NCSoft can throw all this useless crap on (GameGuard) to stop cheaters and it will fail because they arent fixing the core problem behind it, the sheer dificulty in aquiring gear as a casual player and the penalty of losing that said gear. Again, in WoW, you have the ocational people that buy gold but all they get out of it is mounts and maby some gear that will be worthless in 2 weeks (once they reach top level and all the gear is Bind on Pick Up) and sometimes Pots. In Lineage 2, if you arent in an alliance that can defend you in the top leveling zones, plus that you can farm the top leveling dungeons in, you wont get gear. Its as simple as that. What does a casual player do? They buy tons and tons of adena, go around aden and seek the help from farmers to provide those said items.

Third failure, customization. Everybody in Lineage 2 looks exactly the freaking same. It's boring. There can be three or four different C,B,A,S grade sets, but its always one that everybody wants (sometimes people experiment with another) and you always needed to have the ENTIRE set in order for it to mean something or for it to work. This problem also goes along with the cheaters problems. You get to 61, you want A grade, you have 4 of the set pieces required for A grade but you still cant wear those pieces until you have all the required parts. So a 61 in full B grade can totally harras a 61 that needs just one more piece of A grade to complete set. Pathetic. There are no variations of weapons for different people and enchanting via crystals (again another way your local farmer friend loves to help) just adds a miniscule difference, because in the end, everybody has the exact same enchant.

Fourth Failure, content. The game is shallow. Simple as that. It needs alot more content to back it up. They have been fixing this every since Chron 4 but the game is still sticking to its, just farm farm farm and grind grind grind roots that get boring and shove everyone away. Where are the reputation rewards? The different quests that actully give meaning for you to go out and kill something, get a reward, or something. Mounts.. why do only castel leaders get one of the things people since Open Beta have been wanting, which are the Wyvrns?! The dragons were fun and popular for about 2 weeks into chron 2 then they were just a.. meh.. have different mounts, have more things to do, more things you can try to achieve.

Fifth failure, PvP. This is an open PvP game, it is the backbone to Lineage 2, it always talks about its amazing PvP.. where? I was part of Siegharth, the self proclaimed PvP server in North America. The Karma system is a joke, nobody wants to fight unless a group forms or whatnot, and you cant openlly kill anybody because the penalty of it is just o huge (losing gear) It's stupid to the extent that WoW has alot more of an open PvP than Lineage 2. Granted you cant kill alliance but you can go around any area above level 20 and kill as many opposite faction players as you desire, and you see them all the time, so you can world pvp as much as your heart desires, with no penalty. Lineage 2's PvP is crap talking, thats all it is, and thats all they do. talk talk talk talk and line hop. We're this immense PvP? Why cant we attack different towns? clan halls? something that you can raid that cant be once every two weeks for 2 hours. I havent had as much PvP fun as invading Orgrimmar and killing Thrall. It was just an invasion, nobody in horde knew about it. That's fun. Castle sieges i did have alot of fun in, and they are a highlight, but Lineage 2 needed alot more than those once every two week events. Add something more than retarded arenas or colliseums. WoW has the battlegrounds, which make WoW PvE servers have alot more PvP than Lineage and their open PvP servers. It's pathetic really.

Sixth Failure, Dependancy on buffs. Seriously, buffs made and broke the game. If you dont have buffs, you dont PvP, you suck at leveling, you just dont do anything. No buffs = you suck. WoW has buffs, but the buffs it has arent so overpowerd, and the game doesnt depend on them. Granted, in a raid situation, buffs are mandatory or else you arent going anywhere, but that's a good reason and a need to have alot of buffs, but to fight anyone at anytime, or just to grind.. that brings us back to cheaters again. When people need to have a second account to have a bot following them around buffing, you know you failed and your game has failed. Oh and Soul Shots.. rofl

Seventh failure, no more noobies. The game needs people to be attracted to the game and have people constantly coming and buying your game. WoW does a good job in this by having very low level insatnces and group quests that give players of low levels the chance to group with other players, find guilds, and make friends. The game will feel alot more attractive and they will keep progressing. Lineage 2 gives you a nice welcome with it taking you a loooooong time to reach level 20 in order to have something else besides one stupid attack, and then its off to the mega grind. People get turned off as soon as they reach 20 and find out, its the same exact BS. Oh and watch out with those PKers, they take away that EXP that took you a long time to get. Taking away EXP after a death is ridiculous.

And well, those are my main beefs with the game. Now after saying all that, Lineage 2 has been my fav MMO and I love it. If NCSoft releases Lineage 3, I will be one of the first in line for OB and maby a spot in closed beta as well, i just hope they fix the game. Now I dont want a WoW copy either, i used WoW as a reference only because WoW and Lineage 2 are the only MMOs I have played for more than 2 years each. NCSoft needs to grab its strengths, which are the ability to make incredible graphics. Lineage has graphics that dont compare to any other MMO and they are far superior. The use of Soul Shots is also awsome, especially when they hit and the sounds. My gf looked at me play a private server of Lineage 2 and she was like, how can you like WoW more than this, this looks alot better and much cooler. She's right, the look of it is alot better. The spells are awsome, the attacks are great. NCSoft also succeeds in music, the music for this game is also top notch. The PvP does need a little more skilled added to it though, as of right now, PvP requires no skill at all. Point and shoot, point and shoot. Just fix this a bit.

i already know what it says without reading it. Yea we ar NCsoft know are game has gone to shit and we are working on L3 so we can get rid of this once great game that has got so bad that our players are resroting to playing WoW

I finaly  hear what i have been waiting for a long time ago: new races!
In other stuff, i think L2 needs more  armors, new items, but what really needs? fix some big bugs

The One BIG bug that arleady have LINEAGE 2 is the textures!!!!   example: karmian set: on humans magic is green color but when u wear it whit a human warrior its not the same texture!!!!!!!!!  (shows you the Mithril shirt)       DAMN  NSsoft FINISH WHAT U START!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!   

WHAT A SHAME, a truly game that have all that bug bugs around... and seems that nobody  cares about it !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i hope that all bugs and this in spacial finish on these cronicle chapters, and the new one have all fixed       please do something right!!!!!!!

i was try all kind of MMO and in the end Lineage 2 is the best of all of them, yeah much better than that shit called WoW i hate that shit bad grafics, bad characters.... all about that game is a shit i dunno why is the most popular game, i think is cos the stategic game was the best ( i agree on this) but   world of W sucks really sucks i played a cuple of time....  and i give my acount cos that game is.... ugly (with poligons stupids and uglys....... like old games)
In conclution: lineage 2= best game and wow (its not the worst but it coldnt be the best

Lindrea, you are obviously not a hardcore player and therefore not the target audience of L2. But you've got WoW, so there's no problem in that. Game developers are allowed to tailor their games to a specific audiences, just like television shows have target audiences and advertisers develop their commercial spots to attract a certain group of people. (I say you're not a hardcore player based off of several comments you made, maybe you consider yourself one, but I don't.)

I won't go through your post point by point because it was really long and I don't feel like doing that. But here are just a few things, in no particular order:

You talked about pvp and the penalties (loss of xp on death and chance to loose gear.) First, most people are in clan wars and own clan halls, which considerably lessons the sting of dying in pvp. Yeah, at level 77 it hurts like heck, but not below level 72. The 1% you loose (or less with the xp return you get from going back to your clan hall at death) can be regained in about 10-20 minutes of killing mobs. Big whoop. Plus, you can't drop gear when you die anymore. They changed that this chronicle. So fight all you want, you're not going to loose your gear (unless you have more than 5 PKs, that is.) And they even added scrolls that you take during sieges so you don't loose any xp when you die on a siege field. And in the next expansion, they're changing the death penalty relative to your level. Loosing 4% at level 40 in no way compares to loosing 4% at level 79. So they will change it to make it more comparable.

Also, you mentioned not being able to use equipment without having a full set. That's completely untrue. You can use any equipment you want, without having a full set. It's not going to gimp you as much as you act like it will. Anyway, most people keep their B-grade set until they have accumulated most of their A-grade set. When they are ready to buy/craft that last piece, they sell their old set of equipment to fund the purchase.

And customization? I've played other games with 100x the customization, but none have been as aesthetically pleasing as L2. In most games, the graphics suck and all the customization in the world can't make up for that fact. In other games, you can customize everything about your character and the graphics are good, but the camera is stuck behind the character or in 1st person, and you never see your character's front, so what does it matter?

i understand and i am a hardcore gamer. I was one of the first 75's in Siegharth (prolly top 10 sometimes its hard to tell since u cant see other people's levels) But doing crummy hit fixes like adding scrolls and what not doesnt help that much. I understand that the game is geared towards to a different audience than other games, im not asking for a WoW impersonator.. hell, the exp grind would't be much of a hassle, if that wasnt all there was to do. Heros? Seven Signs Competition? Nobles? its all a bunch of crap. Add some real content. The only reason the grind got annoying was because ok.. here i am, 6 hours in the middle of the night in 11th floor ToI, oh yes.. fun fun.. I got my set done everything is good, now what.. *cricket chirps*

That;'s really my beef with it, the game is way too shallow. And the game does need alot of customization, maby it has changed since Chron 3 from last time i played, but everybody looked the freaking same. Yeah I saw a Zubei wearing Silver Ranger once in a blue moon, we all got a huge crack out of it too. And I wore a half B grade half A grade set once.. a Spellsinger in C grade my own level could wtfpwn me.

I love the world this game was based under, I was a WoW basher when it released and an L2 lover, but the game got annoying after every sorry NCSoft attempt at making this fun. Adding a bunch of dungeons that look exactly the same, trying to fix the karma system by giving you 5 free PKs and a way to take em off through quest (its supposed to be open, let there be a free for all in killing and make some lowbie areas peace zones where u cant fight or something to prevent griefing) . Im just pissed to see them not fixing core problems with the game instead just adding crap after crap. I'll keep my hopes up for Lineage 3

Lineage is a really nice looking game with many nice options, but there is too much to fix. to me a rollplay game shoud have a nice storry and many nice quests.you should be able to lvl and make xp without killing mobs all the time.It's a little sad that all the dungeons are the same with different mobs. i played lineage 2 for about a half year and i am bored. till the endgame it's nothing but killing mobs.

what about some  npc's with nice new quests to lvl without getting bored?

Originally posted by Wizardry

I was glad to see the topic of bots copme up,but i can tell you as a 2x player of this game,he is a lier.Although WOW has the lagest quantity of cheats and RMT sales ,this game  has the most obvious cheating i have ever seen.The bots and cheating going on is so out in the open for even a noob to notice,there is no way in hell this guy is is telling the truth.I have seen several articles on real life threats and beatings based on this game over in asian communities.The bots literally run in and out of the cities,back n forth to the farming spots.Players are using cheats to run multiple clients,so they can have healers to aid there hacked out PVP.This game should have been buried a long time ago,but i think koreans take this game very seriously over there and alot of them are making there life/living offf rmt sales of this game.

Although there was nothing wrong with this interview,id like to see ALOT more intensity brought into the interviews and force out the topic of CHEATING onto a much higher level.Although this game is basically a korean community ,it's games like these that bring out the many cheat programs that soon become a part of north americanized games.If this guy that was interviwed truly has a heart for his product and game ,he would be much animated about the cheating in this game,as is he just came across as a sheer out lier.

I might also add,that i was pleasantly surprised to see others posting under this topic about cheating,because frankly i didnt think many cared about the cheating in this game.

For a x2 player of this game you sure don't have any clue about what you are talking about.

1. Botting is not that obvious. There have been multiple times I've been accused of botting when I was running a legit client. Why? Because people are quick to throw that excuse out, especially when they lose in pvp.

2.I have no idea why you are talking abut RL threats and beatings in asian communities. That's in Asia, and it's not like Americans are really great about games either. I can link to dozen of EQ news articles where American players let their children die b/c they were busy playing EQ.

3. You don't need cheats to run multiple L2 clients. I have no idea where you got this idea from.

4. I have no idea what you are talking about Koreans making their living off of adena sales. Koreans don't farm on American servers. Koreans don't even sell adena. Chinese farmers are primarily responsible for the adena trade. Talk to a farmer in game, they sure as hell aren't speaking Korean.

5. I have no idea where you get this "Korean community" thing either. The Koreans play on their own shards. Americans play on American shards.

i agree with the replies above

l2 is the game if you look for a competitive pvp mmorpg

the problem is that even after almost 3 years in the 6th update:

1. cheating (zoom/wall hacks, ebayed equipment, botting, account sharing) is a huge issue that destroys competition
2. the openness of pvp (lvl 78 char fights lvl 60 char almost everywhere on the map) and an unbalancad class system makes pvp fun mostly only for high lvl/ selected classes
3. theres very little (pvp) content for example quests where theres rewards for pvp

im really hoping l2 develops towards fixing those problems but im even more exited about
new games like warhammer online to see if they can fix them from the go.

 

I have Been Playing L2 for over 3 years now and I love it. I hate the cheaters and I blame NC soft for the botting they could easily fix the program to log off if you even try 2 start that walker program. Yes it will just go back 2 farmers playing like in c1 and c2 but at least that was fun they would PVP for the area and that's how I got most of the 388 PVP points I have now just killing farmers. yea the Grind sucks but you feel good about what you have done. and no I'm not max lvl after 3 years. I always seam 2 come up short on money so I end up making a new player to make some cash 2 fund my main and they all just share armor and weapons.  But over the 3 years many of my  friends quit and I end up with they gear. I like the free gear but I hate when friends quit. At least the ones that quit 2 go play WOW come back. But some quit forever I lost a dear friend that way.

     Point is L2 the best game I ever played and I'm not a gamer so that means nothing lol. But I will play it till the end because I like it that much and all the friends that still play it 90% of them are in the same Alliance with me and it's a big Alliance. Will I play any of the new games coming out in the future.........no. This is my last and final game. L2 is fun and hard.......it makes you happy and sad. But it's takes 2 much time if you want 2 get any were and  you may think I don't play that much because I have no player that's max  but 6 out of 8 of them is close to max and if you think about the time it takes 2 get 1 near max you think about the time you lost in real life. Is a game really worth all that.  NO!

     If you can quit playing online games then you have already won. if not your stuck like me but the day Lionna server goes down on L2....... is the day I win......and I get the best prize of them all.

 

My Life Back   .

Originally posted by Lindrea

i understand and i am a hardcore gamer. I was one of the first 75's in Siegharth (prolly top 10 sometimes its hard to tell since u cant see other people's levels) But doing crummy hit fixes like adding scrolls and what not doesnt help that much. I understand that the game is geared towards to a different audience than other games, im not asking for a WoW impersonator.. hell, the exp grind would't be much of a hassle, if that wasnt all there was to do. Heros? Seven Signs Competition? Nobles? its all a bunch of crap. Add some real content. The only reason the grind got annoying was because ok.. here i am, 6 hours in the middle of the night in 11th floor ToI, oh yes.. fun fun.. I got my set done everything is good, now what.. *cricket chirps*

That;'s really my beef with it, the game is way too shallow. And the game does need alot of customization, maby it has changed since Chron 3 from last time i played, but everybody looked the freaking same. Yeah I saw a Zubei wearing Silver Ranger once in a blue moon, we all got a huge crack out of it too. And I wore a half B grade half A grade set once.. a Spellsinger in C grade my own level could wtfpwn me.

I love the world this game was based under, I was a WoW basher when it released and an L2 lover, but the game got annoying after every sorry NCSoft attempt at making this fun. Adding a bunch of dungeons that look exactly the same, trying to fix the karma system by giving you 5 free PKs and a way to take em off through quest (its supposed to be open, let there be a free for all in killing and make some lowbie areas peace zones where u cant fight or something to prevent griefing) . Im just pissed to see them not fixing core problems with the game instead just adding crap after crap. I'll keep my hopes up for Lineage 3

You're going to get your wish:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unreal_Engine_3#Unreal_Engine_3_2  -- Look at the 11th game listed there :). Will probably need a pretty beefy system to run it though... Unreal Engine 3 is no slouch (look at Gears of War for reference).

That said...

I tend to agree with alot of what Lindrea said.. While it's pretty wide in terms of leveling and such.. it's not a very deep game at all. And, I disagree with an earlier comment about it being the only true open PvP game... Shadowbane is far more open PvP than L2 is. As Lindrea points out, there are penalties in L2, and they have toned down the PvP and its consequences drastically since launch. I remember when a GM would say mob-training someone was a legitimate PvP tactic, as was griefing someone right outside a newbie area (I know, because I reported it once and that was the reply I got).

However, it seems that even NCSoft had to acknowledge that open PvP games are simply not the way to go if you want a large player-base with a healthy flow of new players. They had to tone it down.

As for the botting.. a couple people have tried to basically make it sound "not that bad" and used the fact that it's an open, un-instanced world as the explanation of why there are so many. I would agree with you, if I hadn't also played many other MMOs without instances where botters/farmers were forced to do their thing out in the open.. and I never saw botting even remotely close to what I've seen on a regular basis in L2. Dark Elven Village? Heh... yeah.. Saw at least 15-20 botters, all dwarves in the same gear, the same look and the same nonsense garbled names, running the same exact patterns... Go out to the swamp-lands.. same thing.. they're swarming the hills around there like ants at a  picnic. And NCSoft is, at best, completely incompetent at dealing with them. At worst, as some have alleged, they're in league with the RMT farmers. However, when I've reported the same group 3 weeks in a row.. and they were still there a couple weeks after that... it's not so much of a stretch to believe it.

So, while I would find any other point to be subjective and open for debate... the botting thing is a serious problem in L2 and I wish people would stop trying to down-play it, or use relativistic comments like "all MMOs have botting...". It just reeks of intellectual dishonesty. Yes, all MMOs do have some degree of botting/farming - but none that I've ever seen (I've played over 25 to date) even hold a candle to L2 in that regard.

i used to play l2 a ton but it gets in way of haveing a life and is way to time consumeing especialy when you have school. i also think they made the grind way to much i played l2 from prelude to about chronical 4 then i was fed up with wasteing time and tired of ebaying so i quit it. i hope they either make it alot better or atleast make it so the grind isnt so ungodly. hopefully they will have their act together by L3 cus the way its looking i dont think ill start back playing L2 in the near future. ill probly just play darkfall when it comes out ,to tide me over till L3.

Lineage 2 not the worst community? GW and WoW might have more kiddies but they're not as vicious as these guys in their late teens early 20s.

What about the russian guy who murdered his clanmate over game problems on franz?
What about the clan leader who's wife and kids got harassed IRL by his enemies in game?
What about the "unofficial" forums that everyone uses where links to trojans are posted IP's are collected and the head moderator made a ploy to get users to idle in IRC to be hacked?
What about the player's clans' forums and ventrilo servers that get hacked and raided?

This game is only about one thing, money. 

The real players of this game, the "in" crowd, are nothing but e-thugs and wannabe gangsters.

It sounds like a joke, but  cross the wrong people in this game and they'll make your RL miserable.

---

Originally posted by sepok
Lineage 2 not the worst community? GW and WoW might have more kiddies but they're not as vicious as these guys in their late teens early 20s.

What about the russian guy who murdered his clanmate over game problems on franz?
What about the clan leader who's wife and kids got harassed IRL by his enemies in game?
What about the "unofficial" forums that everyone uses where links to trojans are posted IP's are collected and the head moderator made a ploy to get users to idle in IRC to be hacked?
What about the player's clans' forums and ventrilo servers that get hacked and raided?

This game is only about one thing, money.

The real players of this game, the "in" crowd, are nothing but e-thugs and wannabe gangsters.

It sounds like a joke, but cross the wrong people in this game and they'll make your RL miserable.

---

uh... sorry, but no. That Russian guy was retarded for doing that, but that was an isolated incident. I don't know everything about the situation, but it's not like some player got mad, looked up where another player lived and then went and killed him. There was more IRL stuff going on than that. And again - isolated incident. I don't fear for my safety if I tick someone off in-game. I have actually heard of "enemies" in game who live near each other getting together and forming friendships IRL. Or hooking up in other games as friends.

You can't judge a group of people based off of one insane person. Should I think all WoW players are mindless lemmings just because one kid jumped to his death while reinacting a scene from the game? Or that all parents who play WoW are irresponsible just because two parents let their infant daughter die while they played the game? And what about the guy from Legend of Mir III that killed his friend over an in-game weapon? Should I write off both of those games and their entire communities because of a few stupid people?

And I've never heard of the wife and kids getting harassed, but I bet there was IRL stuff involved in that. Nor do I have any idea what you are talking about with the "unofficial" website.

This game is full of players who form stronger bonds of friendship than pretty much any other game out there. L2 is not full of e-thugs. Wow... I seriously think I lost some brain cells just reading your ridiculous post.

Originally posted by Listof

L2 is not full of e-thugs.

Lineage 2 is Bartz. Lineage 2 is Blah.  All else is nonfactor.  Stick to your sheltered forums, and empty bot run server. I almost envy you.

Unofficial forums Currently Active Users: 337 (107 members and 230 guests)

Official forums There are 17 registered and 49 anonymous users online.


The real community thrives on psychopathic behavior. It's a tug-o-war of sadism and RL griefing just to protect those thousands of dollars of ebayed assets. Believe it or not.

Nobody ever thinks a simple game could nourish so much cruelty.

If you are posting about L2 on mmorpg.com you do NOT understand L2.

"Those who speak don't know, those who know don't speak" -Lao Tzu

flame on