Ok why have I not heard about this game? Accidentally came across some clips on youtube,

man this game looks just like aion? it really good looking....

is this game big? when did it get released?

Lineage II or aion :P , Lineage < aion ?

Man the armors looked pimpin on lineage....

Lineage 2 came out years ago and has pretty unique graphics.  It is a game centered around grinding and PvP with sieging and city control for guilds.  It is an awesome PvP game, but it is old and there is really almost no quest progression. 

Aion is a blend of Lineage 2, WoW, and DAoC.  NCSoft has only made a few games in house and those are Lineage, Lineage 2, and Aion.  Although Aion isn't really Lineage 3 because there is a Lineage 3 in development.

resume:

Lineage 2 launched before wow, great pvp, with castle sieges and coliseus...then the goldfarmer/botters/boss campers fu***d up the game.

and before the recent "expansion" u could take monthsssssss to lvl up a char, since there was no quest, only mob grindy, and heavy group oriented.

but after playing this game u never complain about xp/gold =)

Originally posted by Handykiller

Ok why have I not heard about this game? Accidentally came across some clips on youtube,

man this game looks just like aion? it really good looking....

is this game big? when did it get released?

Lineage II or aion :P , Lineage < aion ?

Man the armors looked pimpin on lineage....

It's the game I played the most, it was undermarketed, I actually found out about the game the same day Open Beta was released. It's an awesome game if you take away the grind and has great mass pvp. The problem is it's the biggest grind of any game to date. The max level is 85 and starting at 72 you'd get 0.01% of your experience bar per kill. It would take you an hour to get 1% and 100 hours to gain a level. Thats what it took me and there are 10 levels on top of it now. The good thing is not many make it to maximum level and if they do they usually set up a bot to do so.

The game was released in September of 2003 in Korea and March 2004 in North America. WoW was released in September of 2004 so you can understand how the whole thing went. Worldwide Lineage 2 was the highest subscriber based game with 2 million + subscriptions prior to WoW and Lineage 1 was before that. However L2 only peaked at about 110k subscribers in NA/Europe combined.

Yes Lineage 2 looks awesome for being a game from 2003. NCSoft knows how to make good graphics although the complaint with L2 was it's lack of customization, there are only 5-6 faces, 5-6 hair types, 3-4 hair colors to choose from for each gender.

I think Lineage 2 got the FFA PvP system "Just Right" because it allowed you to kill anyone you wanted to at anytime but there were consequences. You'll find many people are looking for a clan based PvP system similar to Lineage 2, Aion is the closest to it except it's Faction based.

Originally posted by FastTx

Originally posted by Handykiller

Ok why have I not heard about this game? Accidentally came across some clips on youtube,

man this game looks just like aion? it really good looking....

is this game big? when did it get released?

Lineage II or aion :P , Lineage < aion ?

Man the armors looked pimpin on lineage....

 

It's the game I played the most, it was undermarketed, I actually found out about the game the same day Open Beta was released. It's an awesome game if you take away the grind and has great mass pvp. The problem is it's the biggest grind of any game to date. The max level is 85 and starting at 72 you'd get 0.01% of your experience bar per kill. It would take you an hour to get 1% and 100 hours to gain a level. Thats what it took me and there are 10 levels on top of it now. The good thing is not many make it to maximum level and if they do they usually set up a bot to do so.

The game was released in September of 2003 in Korea and March 2004 in North America. WoW was released in September of 2004 so you can understand how the whole thing went. Worldwide Lineage 2 was the highest subscriber based game with 2 million + subscriptions prior to WoW and Lineage 1 was before that. However L2 only peaked at about 110k subscribers in NA/Europe combined.

Yes Lineage 2 looks awesome for being a game from 2003. NCSoft knows how to make good graphics although the complaint with L2 was it's lack of customization, there are only 5-6 faces, 5-6 hair types, 3-4 hair colors to choose from for each gender.

I think Lineage 2 got the FFA PvP system "Just Right" because it allowed you to kill anyone you wanted to at anytime but there were consequences. You'll find many people are looking for a clan based PvP system similar to Lineage 2, Aion is the closest to it except it's Faction based.

thanks for the great answer =)

Proabably the best PvP game I have played

The harshness moulded the community, a hard game to level in until recently. Now you can reach 50+ in a few weeks

The only reason I don't play it is/was the economy being screwed, primarily by gold farmers controlling prices and players buying gold inflating the prices with bought gold thereby propagating the farmers...vicious circle.

It also had a lag problem during sieges but they still were damn good fun

I hope and pray that NCSoft get there ban hammer working this time round or another great game may get screwed over.

Put simply L2 is the best, funnest, but hardest (in terms of levelling) games I have played

Originally posted by kramster

Proabably the best PvP game I have played

The harshness moulded the community, a hard game to level in until recently. Now you can reach 50+ in a few weeks

The only reason I don't play it is/was the economy being screwed, primarily by gold farmers controlling prices and players buying gold inflating the prices with bought gold thereby propagating the farmers...vicious circle.

It also had a lag problem during sieges but they still were damn good fun

I hope and pray that NCSoft get there ban hammer working this time round or another great game may get screwed over.

 

Put simply L2 is the best, funnest, but hardest (in terms of levelling) games I have played

very interesting to hear actually. A hard lvling system is something we western's are not a custom to so therefore i think a hard system like that wouldn't work, We don't like to spend years to reach the highest lvl.. I think...

Originally posted by FastTx 

WoW was released in September of 2004 so you can understand how the whole thing went.

No WoW was released Nov 23, 2004, not Sept.

That was a great day... some fond and not so fond memories...
That quest "Deep Ocean, Vast Sea" will forever be etched in my mind... what a horrible quest..
Too many Murlocs and not enough breath...
 

How come in all these years you never even heard of Lineage 2? It ranks higher here on mmorpg.com than WoW. There has been countless articles on it here also. It's not like it has a small playerbase, it's geting smaller but it was once huge. Until like ppl already mentioned above the bots screwed everything up.

Yes It was seriously underrated in the first years but it eventually grew and become recognized as one of the best in it's class of MMO's.

Imo Lineage 2 > Aion . Yes it has a lot less customization options (but if I wanted to spend hours customizing a character I would play The Sims 3 and not an MMO). Yes it's a very grindy eastern style MMO (that's why I like it so much). And in the first Chronicles it had a really hardcore risk vs reward system. Now it's all "soft" cause of whining western players that don't like their weapons to break while overchanting... or didn't like dropping their gear/items in PvP or PvE (now gear/items can only be dropped if you're in PK state)

It's gone all soft and squishy to attract more western players... but in it's glory days it was undoubetly the greatest MMORPG ever made, players couldn't take anything for granted... it consumed insane amounts of time to level up at higher levels. Quests gave no useful rewards whatsoever making it a necessity to grind and grind (me loves the grinding :D ), people didn't have as much quest guides and drop databases as there are now... we had to go in groups and search for the drops/spoils we needed... Equipment was a lot harder to craft... Higher gear was only obtainable by raiding the big bosses, or if you were incredibly lucky you could get them on "regular" mobs at about 1/100000000000 probability.

Still remember doing the Giants Cave quest over and over to get random A-grade 60% recipe... grind and grind for all the mats needed to craft it and then failing the craft (damn 40% :P)... THE PAIN! OH THE PAIN!!! but that's what made it so much fun... it tasted so good when you finally got that item you spent months craving (and fighting) for... And then the next day that same item could be dropped if you for an instance decided to do a little PKing and were caugth while in PK state (if you had a PK count above 5 you had a BIG chance of dropping something when you were killed if still on PK state)... that brings to memory the funny Sin Eater quest, a nice little pet that followed you around and consumed your EXP but in return at a certain rate reduced your PK count (repent your sins evil PKer :P ).

Sieging was a joy to behold, Dwarven Warsmiths summoning their siege golems to tear down the walls or the castle gate... rows of sniper lines on the castle walls firing away at the storming invaders, and as if it wasn't enough to have to fight players defending the castle, the clan that owns the castle can buy mercenaries (AI controlled) to help in defending... and they're not completely helpless, even if they were it's still more enemies you have to go through...

For all it once was, for all it's evolved... for all it still is, Lineage 2 is a must for any true MMORPG fan. Get over the stupid flame wars, and grudges between different MMO players, different styles...etc etc etc... and try it.

Believe me, you missed out on one of the great games of our days.

Don't get me wrong, I'm currently an Aion pre-order and I'm going to keep playing Aion. But Lineage 2 still deserves a chance, at least to know what it's like... even though it used to be a lot better.

nevermore82 that stuff about farmers ruining game game really bothers me, what would prevent the eastern farmers from ruining this game as well?

prolly nothing :(

Lineage 2 is my favorite MMO. The sense of accompishment that you got from that game was what made it great. Games these days dont have that. I am hoping that Lineage 3 stays similar to Lineage 2.

Well, quoting kramster's post

"I hope and pray that NCSoft get there ban hammer working this time round or another great game may get screwed over."

NCsoft made a big mistake with Lineage 2, they wanted the big bucks quickly and didn't seem to consider that players might get fed up with all the botters/farmers.

In reality, botters/farmers are paying accounts like everyone else, so why would they ban them if they were paying? From time to time they decided to make examples out of some, but is wasn't near enough to "clean up" the servers. Unfortunately like in a lot of other things in life, money rules all. Most companies want to make lot's of money and fast instead of making less but for a longer period of time.... economy is not my area of expertise but imo I think if they tried to keep the "real" players happy then it wouldn't have failed as bad as it did in the last year or so.

Well but to answer your question I guess the only way is to really be severe with botters/farmers, enforce an unforgiving ban hammer with no exceptions. Yes they'll lose paying accounts, but Aion doesn't seem half as grindy as Lineage2 so I think people won't feel the need to buy gold (or Kinah to use the correct ingame terminology) online and ruin the economy.

Keep the true customers happy, seems rather simple I know, but I guess it's really the key to success imo.

In Aion's case... only time will tell. Let's hope for the best.

Originally posted by Korvenus

Lineage 2 is my favorite MMO. The sense of accompishment that you got from that game was what made it great. Games these days dont have that. I am hoping that Lineage 3 stays similar to Lineage 2.

Well seeing your Avatar and your Sig I can tell that you are one of those (like me) who are eagerly anticipating TERA.

But do you know how TERA came to be? It's the old Lineage3 development team that left NCsoft and reportedly (of course NCsoft won't admit to this) stole all the projects code and then founded the Bluehole Studios company.

So in fact, TERA is what Lineage3 was supposed to be. And to back this up, NCsoft already stated that the Lineage3 project is postponed until further notice.  I have a funny feeling that it might never see the light of day. TERA is using UT Engine 3.0 (what Lineage3 was supposed to use) and now NCsoft claimed that they're postponing the L3 project because they want to make their own Graphics Engine from scratch.

Even if it's not just a lame excuse so they don't have to admit that they lost the project to another company, it's a big, make that HUGE task they have ahead of them, I don't doubt their capabilites... but it will surely set the project back a couple of years.

And after watching what bluehole did with TERA and the power of that UT 3.0 graphics engine, NCsoft will really have to exceed everyone's expectations regarding Lineage3... because if (and when) it sees the light of day, it will have to be a next gen MMO like TERA is and whatever gets release until then.

I'm more inclined to think that NCsoft will wait to see the results they get from Aion and then decide... if Aion turns to be a big hit they'll probably be more interested financially to improve on Aion future expansions, etc... than on Lineage. Imo of course.

Its been quite some time since I've heard any new L3 news.  However, I believe that the last NCsoft Press release about it stated they are developing their own engine, are in production and will give more details in 2011.  Of course I can't find a quote but I will look eagerly tonight after work.

I played casually on Erica from closed beta I love the special events, my favorite was smashing the pumpkins with the crono and picking up all the loot that exploded out ;)

What you are looking for is:

The Lineage III project began January 1, 2008 and will be announced to the public in 2011.
On April 27, 2007, Seoul Metropolitan Police reported that seven former employees of NCsoft are suspected of selling the Lineage III source code to a major Japanese game company. According to NCsoft, the potential damage caused may exceed $1 billion USD
Lineage III was originally anticipated to use the Unreal Engine 3, but a NCsoft representative has since stated that NCsoft will instead develop an entirely new proprietary engine.

it's because lineage is entirely mouse based, click to move style...

it's still fun, definitely addictive, and looks great, but... there's only so much you can do with a mouse.

I played Gustin from open beta till final on Lineage 2.  It was the game that got me hooked on mmo's. The graphics were some of the best if not the best at it's release and still comparable to alot of today's games.  It was a grinder though,  I believe it took me somewhere around 8 months to hit the lvl 75 cap then maybe 5 months after it raised to 80 and maybe 5 more to 85.   Then you subclass and do it all over again. If you ever plan on playing L2 you should just be warned, for every 10 real players there's one bot.  That's what drove me away from the game in the end.  ( and also the server merges but that's another story)  I'm a firm believer in NCSoft though,  after playing AoC, WoW, LoTR   i've decided that i like their style of game.  That may sound weird to say but i enjoy a bit of grind.  It's kind of nice to say " u know what.......... i worked my A** off to get where i'm at, and i earned it"   i know Aion won't be as grindy as L2 but i hope it's not as easy as WoW.   

Originally posted by Handykiller

very interesting to hear actually. A hard lvling system is something we western's are not a custom to so therefore i think a hard system like that wouldn't work, We don't like to spend years to reach the highest lvl.. I think...

A lot of us can't handle it...

I played L2 for a long time, but ultimately quit long before end game because it was just taking wayyyy to long to level up. The game was fun, but it is the textbook definition of an Asian grinder. Unfortunately I do not have the time nor the patience to level on that severe of a treadmill. Also, the total lack of quest content made grinding mobs very very boring.

Played L2 for about 3 years.  I really liked it and still have some friends in it that I am trying to win over from there to AION.  It was a good game and grinding was bad, but again that is just part of gaming especially if you want to LVL.  I don't think I would want to be part of game that just told you to go from one place to another. 

Originally posted by helioth

it's because lineage is entirely mouse based, click to move style...

it's still fun, definitely addictive, and looks great, but... there's only so much you can do with a mouse.

lol

I would actually argue that mouse movement is  superior in certain situations. Besides I don't understand why westerners are against mouse movment. Did you play diablo? Did you play neverwinter nights? mouse movement.

In any case, to the thread, L2 was my first mmo and it's an amazing game. I even have an account now so that I can continualy work toward 80. Even though I took a very long break the world and sieges are amazing.

The economy is what killed it to me. I can't feasibly imagine making enough for S 80 gear. I am lucky that I have all my S grade gear but the amount of time it seems to me that I would have to put into making s 80 gear would preclude me from leveling.

Originally posted by FastTx

What you are looking for is:

The Lineage III project began January 1, 2008 and will be announced to the public in 2011.
On April 27, 2007, Seoul Metropolitan Police reported that seven former employees of NCsoft are suspected of selling the Lineage III source code to a major Japanese game company. According to NCsoft, the potential damage caused may exceed $1 billion USD
Lineage III was originally anticipated to use the Unreal Engine 3, but a NCsoft representative has since stated that NCsoft will instead develop an entirely new proprietary engine.

Thanks FastTX.

On another note I always found grinding mobs in lineage fun with my Sorc.  Turn on some musice get on vent with the guild and smash mobs with two hits.  Every once in a while Rang Rang go away.  I wish still to this day not to have left that game. Alas my work committments at the time were to exaustive.

I don't expect to ever have the L2 feeling again, but I dream of it for L3

Originally posted by Sacfed

Originally posted by FastTx

What you are looking for is:

The Lineage III project began January 1, 2008 and will be announced to the public in 2011.
On April 27, 2007, Seoul Metropolitan Police reported that seven former employees of NCsoft are suspected of selling the Lineage III source code to a major Japanese game company. According to NCsoft, the potential damage caused may exceed $1 billion USD
Lineage III was originally anticipated to use the Unreal Engine 3, but a NCsoft representative has since stated that NCsoft will instead develop an entirely new proprietary engine.

 

Thanks FastTX.

On another note I always found grinding mobs in lineage fun with my Sorc.  Turn on some musice get on vent with the guild and smash mobs with two hits.  Every once in a while Rang Rang go away.  I wish still to this day not to have left that game. Alas my work committments at the time were to exaustive.

I don't expect to ever have the L2 feeling again, but I dream of it for L3

 

 

 

I love grinding in L2. It's just a shame that at the higher lvls there really aren't a lot of solo spots. Hot springs and silenos (or ketra orcs I suppose).

However, I don't think they will make L3 a grind game. My sense, especially when they have mitigated "some" of the grinding in the lower levels, is that L3 will be less of a grind.

Lineage 2 was also my first MMO. I played during Open Beta into Retail. In retail, I played on Gustin, a human wizard. I will always love my time in L2. It introduced me into MMOs but it was also a lesson in patience. I quit multiple times. There was one point where I thought I quit for good at level 28, gave all my stuff to a friend including money. Some time later I got that itch again and came back. My friend was still playing. He helped me with armor etc so I could actually play the game again. But it was still such an steep uphill battle to level. I finally quit for good at level 35. The game just wasn't engaging for me. Suffice it to say, I was bored and tired of the grind.

I did play on Private servers for a bit. Again, playing it off and on. Even with the ridiculously increased XP and money drops, the game really wasn't fun for me. It got boring really quick.

After all that, Lineage 2 will always be my first MMO and I love it for that. Since then, I've had the MMO bug/itch.

I too have looked and looked playing many other games and always finding myself comparing the new experience to L2.  Actually, the short amount of time i spent in CB for AION I really got that L2 feeling back.   The graphics are stunning, the gaming style is similar and the paths you can take are endless.

Actually, if there was one thing I didn't like about L2 was that you had a bunch of similar characters running around in all of the same gear.  I was a Cleric that went Prophet and when you were pretty much maxed out (or close to max) you all looked the same.  I really think with Aion there will be none of this you can make your Char look any way you want it too and then you can color your gear and with stigma's, manastones, enhancements, etc there will be no similarity from char to char.

I am sure there will be posts about the "best" build for Chanter (which I will be playing) or templar, or sorc, but face it that will be one persons opinion... AION I believe will rock.

Originally posted by kramster

Proabably the best PvP game I have played

The harshness moulded the community, a hard game to level in until recently. Now you can reach 50+ in a few weeks

The only reason I don't play it is/was the economy being screwed, primarily by gold farmers controlling prices and players buying gold inflating the prices with bought gold thereby propagating the farmers...vicious circle.

It also had a lag problem during sieges but they still were damn good fun

I hope and pray that NCSoft get there ban hammer working this time round or another great game may get screwed over.

 

Put simply L2 is the best, funnest, but hardest (in terms of levelling) games I have played

It used to be the hardest leveling, but since the Gracia upgrade they have added a vitality system that if you log out in certain areas you get say 300% experience max.  It is much easier now and you should be able to get a level every 1-2 hours of gameplay.

I really like Lineage 2 and the different areas.  I think the drawings are much better than WOW, but there are some plain areas that I believe could use some work.  (Guild Wars has a nice wave surf and L2's water edges are very plain and flat just to name one).  The night and day cycle that affects each area that a player grinds in highlights the artwork and is pretty amazing.  (Hope the same thing goes with Aion).

Movement is click to move with no a, s, d, f, and no jumping about.  But other than that I find it very enjoyable.  I get a month still every now and then.  The more I play the more I am impressed.  Don't expect much until you hit about level 20.

I do not however recommend it.  It is not for everyone.