Ha thats great, and you speak exactly what i would interpret this game to be like if i were to base games off reviews like this. However since i tend to like the movies critics rate medium or poor, this isn't the same for games, but I'm lucky to decide first hand to try this game regardless of this review or really any review since there seems to be so many(ha the few reviews for this game all basically are just as bad as this one is on outlining what the game actually is and does). But through my investigations it has turned out to be a great game so far, most of the best action has started once i was high 20's and knocking out some harder dungs. I wonder if people played the first 20 levels expecting it to be challenging, when basically these levels are designed to really help you get the hang of the game and its control structure since it is a different style then anything we've played before. It would be pure madness and i think more people would leave this game after getting their ass beat in the first dungeon then the people that left because they claim it to be too easy. The review says you can let your characters do all the work and basically afk while this happens. Ha I put my family in a lvl 32 dung last night and the characters i were using were around lvl 39. I had a new gun stance i wanted to level so this wasn't an attempt to level my characters, just the stance since stances are leveled based on uses. Needless to say i decided to crash out, just to check on it an hour later and all my players were DEAD. Probably got one of those mass spawns which just wiped me out. When your character resurrects from dieing, it doesn't start fighting again either, it just stands there and gets rocked again and again. Meaning for this pointless blabber is really to push some more education about some of how the game works. Also ide like to note me getting me ass ripped bad on dungeon Porto Bello which is a level 38 dung and the chars i was using were 40. This game is not easy, i learned this the hard way expecting every dungeon as i progressed to be the same walk in, kick some ass, and take some names. I believe my death count on last nights questing in Porto Bello to be above the 30's, all in all it was a great time as me and the other two people i was with were trying to get stabilized after dieing so we could then again make a stance against the endless mobs getting ready for the next round.

What kind of content were you looking for? This is not me calling you out in anyway at all. Im just curious to what you look for as in content vs. what maybe some others feel is labeled as content. I personally Will list content as available things you can do other then the endless grinds. This being said i wont claim this game has tons of content/features available other then the constant grinding but i will say it does have enough to keep most people occupied. The quests are fun and surprisingly they don't tend to stray much from the initial storyline, and additional quests become available for certain RNPC that you acquire later in the game. I think the multiple stances and fighting/skills available is pretty well designed and actually pretty fair. I know many people during the UO days would always complain because of my list of legendary skills but this game has a good balance. You can only become SO good and then it will be based on your actual ability to interpret the game or the player you may be facing in PVP. But in a lot of mmorpgs out right now, the list of abilities usually are directly under the one class. I enjoy how this game has made it so the recruitable NPC's throughout the game have a unique mix of new classes and skills. I think one big feature that a lot of players look for into any mmo is a form of crafting. Right now Granada has a real basic form of crafting which I'm not proud of. But one thing if you use any common sense you will see most of the items you pick up throughout dungeons are a form of ore. As of now there is really no use for this ore other then selling it, but its said a crafting system is going to launch when Granada Espada launches. We will see. Other features other then actual game play ones would be its ladder system for pvp. So you can at anytime challenge someone to a duel and under your profile it will show your wins / loses and rate you on the ladder scale. I get duel requests all day long so this game is not lacking player ambition to interact in a more physical way with other players lol. I am as of this post 0-3 in duels, ya I still suck at them but I'm getting the hang of it. The additional monster quests and monster ember quests give you some more incentive while you do some grinding. If you join a faction, and its encouraged since this is one great way of meeting people but this also allows you to participate in the Sunday night faction wars, which is a server wide event that allows factions to try and claim some of the territory available in Granada. I'm just like you when it comes to community and interaction. This game doesn't discourage group playing as i see it based on my post before this. While the dungeons get harder and harder you really want to squad when challenging these places. As of before level 50 there is no penalty for death since you will just be res'd over time. But once you hit the 50 mark you can now be PK'd and you can also start Pking to earn those PK Points(Baron Points). Also you are not auto res'd over time. This is a big reason to be squading at these later levels since if you go down, your down unless you log off. I found at the beginning dungeons people were just doing their day to day breakfast grinds, but as i started hitting the enemies that actually hit back(they all hit back, just a little sarcasm lol) more and more people all over want to squad and team up. I went from just around 3 friends on my list to around 30 from level 25-40. The market system is pretty sweet in finding those much wanted items you either want to buy or sell. Another game feature i found to be pretty neat is that the items that are selling for 2-5million vis(game coinage, and this is a lot) such as the control rings for the Summoner RNPC, and several other rings which can be found at any dungeon and at any level as a random drop. I funded all my new weapons and items up until where I'm at right now with a random control ring drop that i picked up ha. This left me with a nice 1.5mil bank account at a low level. I'm curious if i can type anymore, i guess thats what boredom at work allows you to do heh.

Honestly....u r talking about content for MMOs, are they ANY content in an mmo that doesnt exist in another one?

this is purely based on my opinion, so fanbois please bash away:

Pretty much every MMO nowadays have very little "content"  imo, its how they package the grind that seperates them from the rest of the bunch.
Wow fanbois will jump in here and question me about their quests, i'm sorry, killing 20 of A, gather 100 pieces of B, killing 10 of C, D and E and gather the pieces so the door of F will open are not "quests", they r simply use to make grinding all pretty and it makes u feel like u r doing something useful. Quests are when u actually do something useful, the so-called "epic story quests" are quests, granted there are a few in WoW, but its so few and far in between its just like any other MMO.

Then i'll mostly be questioned for PvP, the "end-game content", while i do agree PvP is content, pretty much every game out there has PvP too standardize to consider it as anything "above other MMO". However, I feel that Clan battles, Sieges and organize battles can be consider "end-game content" in a sense that it takes knowledge and cooperation among members in the game to do well. Ganks and 1v1 battle however i tend to discard that as "content"

After PvP, its crafting system and the economy. Crafting is the only content i feel exist in WoW, the multi-dimension crafting system is wat impresses me and in this sense and i feel WoW deserves credit for it (even though its copied from Runescape). This i feel is the "little" content that exist in WoW.

I'm not defending SoNW per se, but when u question the game for content, are you truly aware of what content really means? are u truly playing a game with content? or a game that claims it has contents? I agree that SoNW has very very little content as of now(dunno wat they'll add in the future) but can you say there are tons of other games out there that has WAY MORE content than this game?

BTW i'm only using WoW as an example becuz majority of the people who discredit other games for "content" tend to use WoW as a game with "a whole lot of content".

Imo, the one game that truly has a lot to do, a lot of content is FFXi. I played it, i enjoyed it, i quited it. The epic quests, the hunt for rare weapons, the crafting system, flexible job system and the pet raising in that game can all be considered "content". Its a game where u will truly "have a lot to do". HOWEVER, the game is not without its downside (too party based, "grind", outdated graphics, and among many others).

So next time before u question a game for content, think hard wat "content" really means, and does the game u r currently playing have that much more "content" compare to the one u r about to bash?

This is exactly how i feel about the perception of games vs. content. When it comes to mmo's i just play them now for fun factor and if i myself is having fun. I cant find anything that can compare to what Ultima Online offered as for "content" and things to do. I mean come on you could setup your character to be a master cook, carpenter and tamer, but also have it sword fighting while hiding and stealthing in and out of town. So after my ultima days i was biased at any game ide go to looking for this same "content" or what i thought and what i knew to be what i enjoyed. But a friend invited me to play some Star Wars Galaxies and eventually after i ignored the things i generally looked for in a mmorpg i started liking it and what it had to offer. From there i went to FF11, EQ2, Lineage 2, WOW then LOTR(for a month or so) and all these games were good games. I didn't stop playing them because i was bored, i stopped because of over population, all rares being camped night and day, and this is what turns me off from games. This is also why i enjoy SOTNW now because the community isn't over populated. If it were ever to get huge like a WOW or the way LOTR is heading ide eventually quit and move to the next thing for a new experience. This being said though its in reference to the post before me, the post is extremely right when it comes to content in these games. The one game i really thought would get me hooked for many years to come was Wish by Mutable Realms, but was canceled due to lack of players. This game was a UO remake kind of but added so so many new things to the way the mmorpg games would have functioned, and was extremely player/story organized with daily newspapers plus the world was to mimic the kind of worlds Bethesda puts in is elder scroll series...HUGE. So the lesson I'm trying to portray is that if you base a game on what features it has, and while playing it you are comparing it to a previous experience with another game, you'll never be happy with new games coming out since you will have that been there done that attitude and you will ultimately ignore the fun you can have. Players make a game, not the game itself. Every game can be a wonderful experience for you if you meet the right kind of people that challenge you mentally and create a sense of pleasure and satisfaction you can get from interactive friendships through mmo communities. This is why mmo have become such a huge part of gamers lives and now people that were never gamers before. They allow you to create friendships based on this interactive community regardless of race, culture, country ect... This is the biggest thing i look for in a mmo now, and really the only thing that matters to me personally anymore. If the game is good enough for people to play and continue to play, then its good enough for you to meet these people over the course of time and enjoy many many quality times.

Originally posted by Hexxeity

My interpretation of the review:

GRAPHICS:  If you are easily swayed by pretty pictures and do not care about having a unique avatar, you'll love it!

FUN:  Even though an MMOG is supposed to cultivate something of a long-term interest, I knew this one would grow tiresome after a few weeks.  But allow me to talk up the good points anyway!

ROLEPLAY:  No one actually does it in this game, but you could if you wanted to!

SOUND:  The sound didn't make me want to shove icepicks into my ears, so I'm giving it a good score!

CUSTOMER SERVICE:  (Okay, she actually addressed important questions here, so I can't be snarky.  Damn.)

COMMUNITY:  There is absolutely no interaction with other players in this massively multiplayer game, but at least no one tries to st33l ur killz!

VALUE:  This game is worth exactly $0, and that is what you should spend on it.

Pros:  Plenty of fluff!

Cons:  There is no game here.

OVERALL SCORE:  7.4 (Good) because unless a game causes your motherboard to explode, it is against the policy of MMORPG.com to give a critical review.

LOL   

Coming to MMORPG.COM for a pertinent review of a game is like tuning into Fox News for unbiased news.

You might as well look for stock tips in the Enquirer. Youll have better luck.

Just started a free account and one thing I will agree with the reviewer on is the game seems fun in small doses, especially coordinating your attacks across several characters.

I have a question for veterans: how does the whole Republican vs Royalist system work? At higher levels is there an actual battle between the two factions going on? Also, I saw some ballot boxes so I'm guessing there's a political element, although I didn't see any current candidates.

Ya if you play it solo then it tends to get kind of boring if grinding is on your schedule. But once you start squadding the fun tends to last a lot longer because the shriveled raisin balls you once had as a solo quester just became melons and you think you can take on dungeons 6 levels above you now that there are 2 or 3 of you doing it. Tends not to be the case once one of your idiot gunners decides to shoot the barrel or box that just spawned which then spawns 20 more high level creatures on top of you. Thats when it gets interested lol, if you've played this, you will know what I'm talking about...im the guy screaming at my dumb ass musketeer for screwing me over once again. As for the political system ya they do have battles, between the royalist and republicans. A level 52 faction, or may be 53, can decide to side politically with one or the other and are then put into the political system. They have special events for these things and i believe you get a certain level perk based on the side you choose. BTW Lisa Lynway kicks some ass...her dagger abilities are amazing. I'm seriously contemplating replacing my fighter with her. Cant wait to see the dual dagger stance at level 45.

/em wonders if NeoMesis's return key is broken.

Ha is this in reference to my extremely long, comma infested, completed run on type sentence? And in response to that, I blame it on crack. Otherwise i have no clue what your comment was based off of lol.

Hey for anyone that is actually interested in playing this game, but doesn't care if its the USA version(Sword of the New World), you can still sign up for the open beta on the English Singapore version(Granado Espada) and they just announced their business plan today for how the game will be paid on as of launch on August 30th. The best thing is if you sign up and play the open beta and you get at least one of your character to level 20, when they launch the game on the 30th everyone with a lvl20 or above character will receive 90 days of free game play once launched. They also are going to be a pay to play system with a cash shop. But the coolest thing is the money you pay to play each month, 5.40usd / 40usd for the year, will also give you that amount in credit to the cash shop. So you pay your monthly, and then you get credits to the cash shop as well to buy those premium items. This is just some FYI for anyone interested. Here is the full article on the business plan they came up with. http://ge.iahgames.com/en/news/?aid=219&sec=1&ssec=4 , you can also sign up for the open beta and download the client from there as well.

I didn't really care for the game that much when I tried it (though that review was pretty worthless...) from what ive played, theres one quest every 5 levels or so (a few more at the early levels) although the game never tells you who gives the quests or if you have a quest available for some reason.  The quests you do get are fairly decent, although require you to have a healer on your team (which is something i do find slightly annoying, whats the point of saying:  You can make a team with these chars, if your forced to use certain ones anyway?).  Note:  Whenever someone mentions content, these instanced missiosn type of quests are what they are talking about imo.  For instance, most of CoH missions would be considered content, WoWs kill x missions...not so much, but maybe its instanced dungeons would be.

 But after level like 10 or so, you get 1 quests every 10 hours of playtime or less, making them a rather moot point in the end.  Most of the time, all your doing is finding a good spot for your family to whack monsters, possibly using skills, and then looting off of the monsters they kill.  For hours on end.  Korean style griding at its finest. boooorrring.   Eventually i got sick of it and stopped playing.  Good graphics and by far the best music in any MMO, bar none though.

Ya this game isn't a questing based mmo, but are you referring to sotnw or granado espada. In essence they are the same game, same engine. But from what Ive heard there are different quests on the USA one vs granado espada. Please someone correct me if I'm wrong. I usually just do the quests for either the rnpc cards so i can start using them, and for the exp cards. Other then that i don't use the questing element for further story development. I find it as a extreme challenge to implement a questing based mmo while also being able to allow alternatives. My ideal mmo would have a story based questing system but hell i don't mind the grind as well. I find myself grinding a lot in this game, but i found friends early in this game which has made grinding much like a permanent quest. I will always argue that its people and their imaginations that make any type of role playing adventure. The things that have stuck me on this game is really the amazing graphical content, the control system allowing 3 people and i love being able to get new characters throughout the game. Reminds me of my console final fantasy days as you progress through the game and you get one of the npc saying "hey ide like to go with you on your journey may i join your team? " And yes i find the music fantastic. It really pulls the environment together. To each his\her own.

Was bored with this game inside of 2 hours.

Ha bored within 2 hours? If i gave up on things after boredom in two hours, shit ide have never finished the Lord of the Rings movie series. But hung in there and things got a lot better. However that does not mean this game will get better for you. We all have those game thats work well for us and don't work at all. A hack and slash will take a while to get boring to me, however playing street fighter will lose its flavor after about 10 minutes of game play. I can play Quake 3 arena for hours, but guitar hero gets boring fast for me. Just because it gets boring to you, doesn't mean its not awesome to someone else. This game has almost 400,000 active users on the English Singapore servers alone.  So it didn't get boring for them I guess.

Lol just my opinion MMO's are what I love wasn't saying it was gonna suck for everyone.

Ha I hear ya, I have a hard time sticking with any mmo. I just got my M'Boma RNPC card which was a total whore, extremely hard considering i was 3 levels below the recommended level. In the end i had a elemantalist/wizard that can levitate ;). I think thats what keeps me playing is the want to get to the next levels so i can attempt their quests and get that character so i can start using them. There are some sweet consoles coming out soon which will probably draw my attention away from mmo's(One can hope cant he). Cant wait for Assassins Creed, Heavenly Sword and I think Folklore looks great too!

neoMesis, I know you're trying to garner support for your game, but do you really need a ginormous wall of text to get your simple point across?

I don't get what the rage with the graphics was with this game. I hated them. Everything was light and the bloom.. oh god the bloom of doom!

Yeah the textures were nice and crisp at least...

This game is pretty to the point of being nauseating. Where are the tough looking scar infested, eyepatch wearing fuglies?
 No, you won't find anything but prettyboys and hot babes here.

Emilin, you are right. neoMesis should really try to reduce his number of words per post. Answering each time six lines for a one-line reply is a little to much.

That being said... Emilin, Sword of the New World is not a pirate game! If you want eyepatched characters, go play the pirate-based games already out or wait for those that are not to do so. SotNW is a post-colonisation game in a baroque setting. The art designers of the game tried to reconstruct this feel through the game. Everything "needs" to be pretty. If you don't like this style, you won't like the graphics.

You realized that the textures were "nice and crisp". Me too and it's the first thing I saw when I decided to finally try this game this week. If you want them to look even better, turn off the bloom effect. Yes, it can be turned off through the option menu. I personnaly play with it off.

And before I end this reply, I want to say that you can have your scar people if you want. You can even take them in your family. The gun seller, Najib Sharif, and the sword seller, Claude Baudez, both have only one eye and you can clearly see their scar.

But I don't think that all this will convince you to try the game again, even though that wasn't my goal.

The great thing about my walls of text...oh ya they give information on previous questions. Maybe if either of you decided to read previous posts throughout this entire thread you'd have realized that my true intention isn't to sell this game,  but to fill information from where the Review extremely lacked. This thread was started in reference to the review, and how poorly it constructed its output to what readers were wanting to know. That being said, I have dedicated many value posts to this thread to clear this huge absence of information regarding the game. Sometimes a one sentence post works, but instead how about i save myself and forum lag by creating one database entry instead of several covering the same questions over and over again. One post, outlining several points and creating this "wall of text" will create less server strain, faster load times and allow for readers that care to get more informed about the questions that mattered to them. If you decide not to read the wall, don't. Its just a large post, like most of mine, considering I'm not here to climb the who can gather the highest post record. I came here to clear misleading facts about yet another game on mmorpg.com but I'm allowed the chance to correct the flaws because i actually gave the game enough time(not being a one week, lets write a review) to get a clear understanding of how the game works.