Hello!

So the Allods Online mmorpg in Russian has been released recently : retail boxes in Russia and now everyone can download it for free and play for free (in Russian). It will stay a free to play game. The game will eventually be localized in French, German and English.

NDA is lifted on the open beta test so here are my first impressions for those who are wondering and lack information (and can't read Russian)

The client size is 2.24 G, update then is 355 M. You can download it from http or through torrent.

There's a launcher and an autopatcher for updates.

A problem during installation : patching process of the 355 M update found a corrupted launcher.exe so i kept the Patches folder, deleted and reinstalled the game and relaunched the launcher after replacement of the Patches folder and the process was completed.

1. CHARACTER SELECTION

The char selection gives some customization : face, hair form, hair colour, body height, face details, eye colour, skin colour. You don't have many of them though.

You have 2 enemy factions and three races for each factions.

League ("good side") : humans, elves, furry critters moving by threes

Empire ("evil side") : resurrected (undead?), humans, orcs

You have different classes dependent on the race : druid, magus, necromant (elf necromant wtf???), archer, warrior, mystic, scout, shaman (check the website maybe i'm forgetting some).

Original stuff : elves have wings and hoover over the ground, the critters are always three and are fighting together as a pack.

Oh and yes some classes have pets (druids eg).

2. GRAPHICS

The character models are very good, detailed and vivid, the amours displayed on the char selection are original and impressive, feel adequate to the body.

The environment is a mix of say... Vanguard and Runes of Magic, better than WoW, but it has its own style, the sky is beautiful and looks like a painting and the ground is more like Runes of Magic but with better textures. The grass is animated, blue butterflies, water looks like water, day/night cycles. The towns have an interesting look too, original one. I mean it doesn't feel like a clone of anything I know (not that I know every games anyway 8-P)

Special effects are good, lots of sizzling stuff, looks fine.

Animations could be a tad better for some characters but you have funny and fluid emotes and fight moves.

3. SOUNDS

You have some voice-overs and normal sounds and normal music. Nothing that will whoop you down, but is as it should be.

4. GAMEPLAY

You have the usual bar with skills and shortcut, nothing special, worked normally. Nice thing is a button to interact with NPC or loot anything around and a key to enlighten the special objects or characters which you can interact with.

5. INTERFACE

It's not that good because you can't reconfigure much now, it's too big and bulky, the chat room modifications can't be saved. They need to work on that. The small map seems useless (but the real map works normally). There's a compass. It's still beta so subject to change.

6. GENERAL

Not a lot of options to reconfigure the game, some must be saved at each launch (beta remember).

You have a chat room, grouping, friends lists, guilds, auction house, mail, etc.

The game was running very smoothly for me with all options maxxed (nvidia 8600 GTS 512 M, 2G RAM, 2 core processors, win xp SP 3).

Servers are now both pvp and pve, developpers said they devised a mysterious system not implemeted yet to satisfy both carebears and gankers 8-P

This is a F2P game but there's a item shop, you buy crystals with real money and you can then use crystals in the game for stuff. The shop isn't implemented yet and I don't know if these crystals give you a real advantage over other players in terms of gameplay.

7. SPECIFICS

You have an introductory mission for each side, a nice touch lacking in some mmorpgs.

This is a game developped in Russia based upon a popular RPG licence in Russia, developpers said they want to imbue the game with national specifics without rebuking people who have no clue. So if you play on the Imperial side and go to the castle you'll have statues very similar to Lenin, a typical soviet derelict restaurant, a red star on a throne, etc. The imperial side has a lot of quirky references to Soviet Union, uniforms, postal service, etc. It gives a sort of strange feeling of fun and bewilderment but is really original. The League side will show izbas and golden domes, for instance.

Parody seems there too, "do you want to live forever?" asks an orc (starship troopers), or a big bad orc standing in front of a throne exactly like Thrall in WoW.

You can wander in a sort of hyperspace on ships and attack others or astral monsters and caravans, shoot them with ship cannons, etc

The game is immensely popular now, starting from 2 servers, they have added 3 and they are full to the brim, the website is strained, but it's the same for every mmorpg start anyway.

8. QUESTS

Very standard quests : kill x crabs, find y plants. Repeatable quests. Quest texts are well written, you can read them as they reflect the psychology of NPCs. Waiting with 30 people in the starter zone to kill a respawned boss was lame though, developpers should know better now ;)

CONCLUSION

So these are only my first impressions : it's fun to play and level up as in any decent mmorpg, but I'm not a high level and didn't do any PvP or instances. For people who wonder if this game is worth waiting, the answer is definitely YES. I would say the quality level is that of Runes of Magic which is imo a pretty good F2P game. I didn't mention things that are relevant to the beta status of the game like servers, lag and options. The game has been updated 3 times in 15 days so it's alive. The most cumbersome thing is the bad interface but they have already improved the chat room in the last update and it's still beta (can't stress that enough).

 Looks interesting, but looking at publisher forces to facepalm :/

Originally posted by MyPreciousss 

furry critters moving by threes

resurrected (undead?)

character models are very good

environment is ... better than WoW

game was running very smoothly for me with all options maxxed

Some comments:

"Furry critters" are officially called Gibberlings.

Arisen (or Zam People, as they call themselves) are indeed sentient undead, quite similar in concept to the Forsaken of Azeroth,

I agree about character models. (Maybe that'll finally make Blizzard to upgrade pre-TBC models in WoW if nothing else did.)

I can't say that environment looks really "better than WoW". Not better than Northrend in any case. But the engine is nice. Absolutely fluid at 2560x1600 w/everything maxed and AA on. Even in crowded areas. (That's something I could never achieve in Dalaran. Blizzard must be seriously ashamed that WoW has a worse engine than a f2p game.)

---

I agree with most of the rest. One thing to mention is that currently there seems to be no conventional way to respec. But developers are going to change that AFAIK.

Sorry if you said it didn't see it anywere, how did it seem the leveling speed to you? fast, ok, slow? That's the major point I first look in a F2P before trying it.

Very fast till LVL4 and a bit slower after that. Max LVL is 40, so that's reasonable. You'll do fine if you'll stick to quests, I suppose.

Recently got lvl 13 as a mindcrafter (russian obt), and I like it. It has its issues (like not able to share quests or combat log not displaying channeling damage and kinda big UI) but since its OBT its forgivable.

OK! Now about the stuff which makes it different from other MMORPGs. Its MMORPG so you wont find it innovative (I havent seen Astral ship battles yet) but it has some nice features...

Stats: You can add some stat points here and there, items give much larger bonuses than 1 stat point per lvl, but trust me, these points make the difference. You have like 14 stats and you need most of them. You can go all the way endurance for tanking, but without agility and iniciative, you wont evade much and enemies will crit you frequently (like 80% crit, feeling like tanking now?), thus spending points (and gear) evenly make your character much more efficient than some dumb investment in one or two stats. Its not that hard, but it makes your character unique to some extent.

p.s. willpower affects your ability to get healed, fury decrease enemies ability to get healed, thats something new in mmorpgs.

Skills: You get them at 1st lvl and can spend them to get new skills or improve old ones: 1 skill points for lvl 1, 2 for lvl 2, 3 for 3, thus 6 points to get one skill maxed. Will you focus on some skills or prefer the versatile character? I prefer second, but some disagree, that all about playstyle. Also all of the skills are unique, you wont get that old shit like ice bolt, fire bolt, shadow bolt stuff where the only difference is the type of element.

Talents: Remember WoW? Screw it! AO has talents, but to take them you have to walk through a grid, it isnt something that will change the world, and I think there are games (not mmorpgs) with system like that, but it makes your character unique. (3 7x7 talents grids, talking about combos)

Classes: My friend plays sentinel or paladin (dunno how its called in english version, and heavy melee specced priest should be THE paladin, ye priests got plate armor at lvl 30). It has 1 to 3 (or 4?) barriers (you get more at higher lvls) which allows you to delay the damage (for 10 secs). ex: you have 1 barrier, you got hit for 100 dmg, and then for 50, you are damaged for 50, then if you got hit for 10000, you get damaged for 100 and barrier now hold 10000, so you might as well kick some butt in 10 secs. Ofc that class has skills to lower damage and to prolong barrier.

Necromancers can act as healers and can ressurect, no not as undead, but it is strange, I like it, though the idea of being ressurected by necros gives me creeps, lore says thats its necros who study the art of life and death (like scholars), and priests only rely on their gods for ressurection.

p.s. I love my mindcrafter, I got choke (join the Dark Side!) and blade barrier (aka Magnetto from x-men) so its kinda badass, I can rape ppls minds too!

Races: GIBBERLINGS! YES! GIBBERLINGS!!!!!!! Soooo DAAAAAMN CUTE!!! During the character creation you chose face, hairstyle etc for each of them! And for a pet too, if you got one (thats a pink squirell; kinda nuts, but its gibberlings, they ARE nuts).

So... Think of WoW gnomes, now make them cute and furry and get 3! of them!!! Thats totally badass, their animation kicks ass too, though their /rasp isnt as good as Xadagans (kick one's ass, or more private part >.< literally ) their /afk is priceless (3 cheering furballs drinking from beermugs half their size). Bow shooting, where one holds the bow and the other pulls the string. Too bad on russian servers too many ppl play humans and elves (whores, rly). I'd like to see the charge of 30 furballs, at least their enemies will die laughing.

p.s. Think necrons when you want to imagine how Zen people look like, their necromancer looks like tech priest. Too bad unlike WH40k, Xadagan comissars cant kill squad mates, because sometimes you want to!

Sides: Light side is about classic russian fairy tales, not only that though, it feels nice and relaxing to walk among birch trees, peasants working and etc...

Dark side (which I joined (they got cookies ok?) and know more about) is about soviet era and has more steam-punk stuff (I dont think light side got any of steam punk stuff, they rely more on magic). Huge monument in the center of the city, with golden statues inside, and dirty city outside, full of rats, gangs and goblins (think of immigrant workers =.= ). Its a jewel for a russian gamer, for other ppl it might be new expirience, there are not much russian games after all, I mean good ones.

Quests: I like the quest's desriptions (get some milk for an army camp, from... horses! russian army isnt american one. sometimes, it might be the only way to get some milk...) They are quite standart, but there are lots of them, and unlike lovely barrens, you dont have to run that much in AO, which means you can lvl by completing quests without bothering about grind n stuff.

I hope gpotato wont screw up this game, I enjoy it, I hope you'll enjoy it too.

edit: wall of text TT

 Atleast enjoyable and informative text wall to read :). Thanks.

After playing the Russian OB for 2 days.  This will probably replace Granado Espada and Runes of Magic as my choice for F2P game.  Between this and whatever P2P game(s) I decide to resub to.  I should be good till FFXIV, SWTOR, and WoW's new expansion come out.

I just want ask if game is really missing something or I just messed something in options..

I tried Russian open beta.. My russian skill is in sorry-ass state.. I just know nothing..so I am just guessing "what this button or checkbox is doing".. 

Anyway, problem is... in my client there is alot of sounds missing.. or I just think.. no casting sounds for example.. I can hear footsteps, some voice overs, few effects here and there and rarely music (WTB loop music option - is there any??) .. so .are sounds just incomplete? Or i messed something in options?

Second problem is is view range.. or better.. range where other characters appear. It's just too close. Well, I am still in starting zone which is pretty crowded so maybe there is limit how many character can be rendered at once.. but fact is i can see other players and NPCs just few meters around me.

Any comments on this issues? :) If so..thanks very much..

 

There are sounds for some emotes and spells, but not for all of them. They'll be adding them later. I think I've read somewhere that there were no character sounds until some stage of CBT (or the start of OBT?), not sure about this.

It will take some time for the game to grow ripe, but its going quite steady as it seems. Next patch should be tomorrow, and in the latest patch rogues caught a nerfbat (they were pain in the ass for everyone), now forums are full of whining, servred them right though. Wanted izi modo, got nerfbat kekeke

Hands down this game will be a huge success. I am playing the Russian OBT as well, and even though I don't read of speak a lick of Russian I can see that this game will appeal to most.

Cute cuddly character <check>

Great gear design <check>

Interesting atmosphere <check>

Female avatars that do sexy dances <CHECK>

All kidding aside, I really like what I have seen so far. I don't want to get to far into the Russian OBT before the the translated client comes out. Kinda just wanted to get a sneak peak and wait patiently for the English version.

P.S. This WILL replace Runes of Magic if your playing it. I played RoM and to me Allods just has way more production value invested and it shows with the product.

Originally posted by xenorace

P.S. This WILL replace Runes of Magic if your playing it. I played RoM and to me Allods just has way more production value invested and it shows with the product.

Definitely agree. The PC I was using for RoM was a storage PC.  Not the greatest PC, but still not the worse.  RoM ran like crap on it. Allods on other hand runs just fine even at my 2nd flatscreens native RGB connection resolution of 1920x1080.  RoM chugged even at 1280x1024 on medium settings.