ZU Online

well guys.. im back..and its time i do a review, this one will be shorter than my usual essays....

Zu online, i downloaded it while i was training a long skill on EvE. Figured. meh, its free might as well give it a try while i do f all on eve!

Graphics:

hmm..dont know what to say (as per usual!) sort of anime asian normal free mmo graphics, this is my first asian free mmo that ive played thats your usual grind fest, (voyage century if anyone remembers). But i still feel they are slightly different to those screenshots i see of other mnos, i actully quite like the cartoonish graphics which i did not expect!!! this one comes down to a love or hate

7/10: could use more options to enhance the games graphics (i got a new PC!!!!)

Leveling:

well... its fast. i been playing about 8 hours, after 2 hours i was lvl 20, you lvl fast on this.. i frigging love it! ok the cap is 300 i believe, but you still feel a sense of achievment when you level. how you level. i will come onto that now...

9/10

Quests:

everything you do will be a quest, you never just grind mobs.. you get quests to grind mobs!!! 90% of quests will be grinding, its very easy grind though, the xp from quests is amazing, i lvled from 22 to 23 through 1 quest, that quest was to turn around and speak to the npc accross the bridge.... awsome! but yes most if it will be kill x mobs, i can understand why this gets to people and it will get to me im sure. also the rewards (armour etc) is very very good, qest rewards are the best armour, however you are always killing you lvl mobs and they will always drop armour, it is so easy to get the armour for you that you dont need to worry about finding a npc to buy the armour off, at least that is for the begging i have not got onto refining armour or the higher lvl things yet.

10/10 for easyness 1/10 variety

Contests:

i have only been in 1 contest, it was a general knowledge style quiz that all players could participate in. this was a free for all contest, once you hit around lvl60 100s of contests become open to you, i havent done one yet but there is a huge variety of stuff to be done in these and they are brilliant xp i hear, so if you are bored of grind just enter one of these and do something totally different ingame which is a really good feature, there is so many contests that you never are far away from one, and there is plenty of people doing them to make it good fun.

10/10 best feature

Pets:

Pets in Zu are only for riding on, and for giving bonues to your stats, you cant actully fight with them which is dissapointing, a cool feature is that to level your pet you have to go to a desegnated pet zone, walk it about, basicly you stand there while it prospects (just like saga of ryzom) it finds xp leaves which you feed to it and it lvls up, also it finds the required leaves and stuff needed to keep it going, you have a sanitation,health and another one i have forgotten name of (just how much the pet likes you) each of these have different leaves and things that help keep your pet going.

7/10

Community:

One of the main aspects of a mmo for me is a mature, helpful and funny community, Zu is a real mixture of both, plenty of people are kind, helpfull all the time, there are quite a few people that are happy to sit in the chat and slag everyone off and ruin everyones day,sadly i have yet to see a gm anywhere, cant contact one to complain is diabolical.

0/10 GM support 8/10 general community

Clans (not what your thinking) + customization:

Clans are the classes of players, or proffesions, its your standard mmo tanker, spell caster etc, nothing special here, customization of your character is terrible, chose about 3 hair cuts, 2 different faces, and the colour of the hair..... ingame customization is not great visually wise, when you put on new armour it dosent change your appearance as far as i have got, however the actual amountsof armour available are very good and plentyfull

appearance 2/10 amount of items 8/10

Item Mall:

Some off you will know about my view on item malls, i dislike them but the company has to make money, personally id rather have adds placed everywhere on the login screen!! but its there and it cant be avoided by some players.

1/10

My Fav, PVP!!!!!!!!!:

The Zu online website wont tell you much about pvp, i couldnt find alot of info on it when i had a quick browse. (this is not comming from experience only what friends have told me.) once you get to lvl 20 or 30 cant remeber, you are open to pvp from anyone, very few people kill there own faction (race), you can set to pvp mode which is where you kill your own faction and no one gets deductions etc, however the 3 factions have identical maps of the game, anyone from  the other 2 factions (3 alltogether) can wonder into your world and stark Pking whoever the f**k they want, bar ultra noobs. this makes it very cool as my friend says brb going to jump into WU's world and kill some guys walking there pets, which is brilliant as you are never safe on ZU! you get the feeling the only reason you lvl so fast is so you can pvp and sneak around the other factions world, this is why i can do the grind, i know that very shortly il be having a good fight with pvp and some form of body looting, not full looting.

9/10

Overall: 7/10 for a free game i rate this VERY HGHLY  compared to many of the free games out there.

recommended to: i would say anyone waiting for AOC, WAR or any tbr mmo, as a time filler have some fun killing some other players eh! anyone looking simply for a cool looking free mmo with good pvp again this is a good place to go.

any questions? comments? post em here i love to hear from everyone at mmorpg.com!

Pompey606

ps: before anyone says, yes as usual it turned out to be long and boring!

http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/gameId/294/setView/features/loadFeature/1746

really good preview of the clans, and the map feature which is an awsome feature i love,

basicly on mmos i always have trouble finding the npc for the quest, on ZU in the simplist terms you click on the persons name and if your in the right area it gos there automaticly on a rail that it works out, very handy. so gone are the days of spending hours finding that one npc!

I agree with you... this game really surprised me. I enjoy it a lot when Im bored hopping between WOW and EVE.

Yeah I actually like the cartoony look of the game xD.  the gameplay is also smooth it's very casual friendly

I'd give it 7.5/10 for a f2p in beta

god that you agree guys! one of the main issues is the item mall.. i will admit i am very anti micro transactions.. but i paid 5 pounds to see what the fuss is about..and i could not buy anything.... for the best pet egg it is 100 BUCKS! that is outragous

i got 500 gold and i buy just 1 christmas set and some medicine and a lukey casket(i've forgotten how to spell it) and i'm poor now. i even have not enough bones to feed my pet. how poor i am...... DX

i'm very poor now.. i think

Query about the pets thing, that might be a bit inaccurate. I know from the tiny bit of time I played in beta, you can summon pets that are used for combat, not just for riding or boosting stats in specific areas. Specifically, the Summon Puppet spell. I don't remember what class its specific to or even what the rest of the line is called, but I know it exists, I even have a few screenshots with my character fighting with one.

correct the summoner can spawn a sort of pet to fight, in the end its classed as a skil but yes its a physical object that is a bitch in pvp! thank you for reminding me! but other classes normal pet to ride on does not attack. just gives you boosts etc..

This game is quite amazing. I think the game still needs to add some content and fix some bugs.