I've only played my character (a warrior) up to lvl 6, but the game, as far as im concerned, is quite engaging.

When you make your character you get to chose a veriety of things. First your race, of which there are two, Humans and Domi (I think thay are called). Then you chose one of the three basic classes, warrior, mage and ranger. "OMG ONLY 3 CLASSES, thats lame." Dont worry! At lvl 5 you get to chose your sub class, of which there are three to every primary, so there are 9 classes in total. After that you chose you looks, armour, wepon and colour. Id say, take your time with this. The game dont seem to be that gear driven. The armour dont have any stat, for example. So you might have to hang on to it for quite some time. Thankfully you have a decent amount, not a lot but decent, to chose from. Change the colour too. Then you set of in to the world.

The tutorial quest, of which there are only two, don't give you much in the way the gameplay works. It quite hard to figure out the way the rolling (attack) bar works at the bottom of the screen. But you just have to take your time.

The first missions are also your garden veriety of "kill x this" and "fetch this", but as you progress they get better and you imerse your self into the world (If you bother to read them). There are also no pointers (on the hud or on the map) to show you where to go, so reading the quest is a must to finish them. I think this is a good thing, since I, at least, tend to get a better feel for the world that way.

The combat is fun too. Its a bit like a cross between "AoC button mashing" and your standard "press 1,2,3 rince and repeat", and its hard. You have to learn, as formentioned, how the attack bar works and then put your skills in, with things like cooldown, damage and combos in mind. The mobs are quite hard too. You also get more damage if you hit them from the sides or the back.

You get Fame XP for finishing quest and killing mobs. When you reach a new lvl you get two points to spend on your three attributes, on which your skills are based. And every other lvl you can chose a new skill. This means that you dont have to run to any trainer. Im a bit ambivalent about this, though. I like trainers, but its also kind of nice to not have to break of your quest run to go and see them.

You also get Personal XP (PeP) for killing mobs. Its MUCH harder to get than Fame and somewhat more rewarding too. When you reach a new lvl of PeP , your stats go up. That means you get more dmg, faster movments and better control (for mages). The crux is, that when you die, you drop one lvl of PeP and you really dont want to do that! So it also keeps you from doing things that might be considered a little bit to foolhardy. You want to stay alive. But as I always say "Better run away today so you can....run away another day"

The graphics are good too, if some what cartoonish, but the art direction is excelent. It feels like a real world, not some pre fab houses and trees plonked down to make the illusion of a town or a forest. The character modells looks good too, and with the veriety of armour and cloth, hardly anybody lookes the same.

The sound still leaves you with something left to be desired. You have your standard wind blowing in the trees kind of deal, and at night the crickets come out. But there are almost no voice acting and my steps dissapear when im walking in pavement (not on gravel, though).

All in all, it a really good game. Sure there are some chinqs in the armour, but the overall look and feel is fresh and new. The comunity is happy and helpfull, and I've hardly noticed any bugs (except for a pair of childeren who where floating) at all. The fact that its free to play, for the first 7 lvls, ought to make people at least try it. Thats my two X (put in what ever you like, babes, stones, any kind of mony)

Thank you!

Oh, if you dont like my spelling then...who cares  

Your spelling was fine, I understood you :)

Thanks for stopping by to post your views so far :)

I can't seem to "get" the combat.

I assigned my mouse wheel to changing of abilities/skills.

seems to work okay, but when I use an ability the rolodex type thing changes me to the next one.

I dont' want to change from a long range magic attack to a short range attack.  But it changes this for me.

I guess it would be neat for the combo attacks I've read of....

But I don't like it at all. Every time I use an ability I have to change back the deck/rolodex thing to use the ability again.

Maybe I need to experiment more with the  handling of the UI and my controls. I don't think many people are going to like the way it handles by default though.

Originally posted by Pipwicky

I can't seem to "get" the combat.

I assigned my mouse wheel to changing of abilities/skills.

seems to work okay, but when I use an ability the rolodex type thing changes me to the next one.

I dont' want to change from a long range magic attack to a short range attack.  But it changes this for me.

I guess it would be neat for the combo attacks I've read of....

But I don't like it at all. Every time I use an ability I have to change back the deck/rolodex thing to use the ability again.

 

Maybe I need to experiment more with the  handling of the UI and my controls. I don't think many people are going to like the way it handles by default though.

You cant stop the skillbar from turning, that´s part of the appeal. You need to prepare your skilldeck in a way, that makes use of that feature. For example: put the same skill (like ranged attack) in the rightmost slot of every bar of the skilldeck. So if you choose that row of skills, you will always get a ranged attack. Of course you have to wait for the cooldown, but hopefully later on you will get more ranged attack skills.

When arranging several skills take their cooldown period into account.

I played a bit in beta before and I played the last weekend. At first the game is quite confusing, but when you get a hang of it, it is not bad at all. The graphics are ok (better than warhammer imo), there are some interesting options and you should not die (that hurts). Also the first character I made was just fugly, but later on I figgered out how to make more nice looking characters. Worth a try ( and you can try for free)

I do understand your positive expression with tcos, I must say that for a MMO launch, this has been a smooth ride.

However, I'm currently at lvl 8, and feel a little bored with the game, its not the graphics which I enjoy, I think its the quests, and a little bit disappointing to me, also the combat system.

When I first read about this game, I liked that they brought aiming into it, and that they tried to rethink the basics of the mmo combat thing. But anyway it turned out to be a little bit like aoc, hybed to be the new thing, but turned out to be fundamentally like the old with a twist.

I don't feel like dodging helps a lot, often when I am pretty sure that I have dodged an enemy attack, I'm still hit, even when standing behind the opponent. The lack of collision boxes annoys me, and the spinning wheel disappoints me a bit. I didn't read that much about the game before I tried it, but I fail to see how the wheel differs from for example wow, in which you also can have multiple skillbars, it just makes it a little bit more annoying then what I'm used to from wow, aoc etc.

The idea however would have been good, if I could apply logic like, when I select skill a, the bar would turn and give me skills b, c, and d, buf if I had chosen skill b, I could set up my bar to give me a different selection.

Its still very early to say much from my first 8 levels of the game, and my disappointment might be because I was hoping for something new...

What do you guys think as the first impression of the game?

Im lvl 7.9 now, and just entered my sub. That's also an excellent thing, you don't have to pay for the actual game, just the sub.

I havn't tried to group, yet, but I'll do that tonight. I don't see any problems though, since the community is helpfull (and very talkative), at least on my server, Inernational PvP.

I don't see the quests as boring. Sure, there are some that isn't up to par (runnung around with invites to a tea party is just plain silly), but then again I havn't played a single MMO that hasn't got them. There are other though, that are really sweet. For example, the one where your are sent to investigate some suspicious people and and start beating up that poor dock worker, then taking on a group of "ousted". There is also the one where you are sent to investigate a murder, that has two different endings.

After lvl 8 you should also get your house quest, to decide which noble house you want to align to. My guess is it's after that PvP start to come into play. I hope.