As most long-term MMO gamers know, it saves a lot of wasted time and effort to read the communities responses to a game. For those of you who haven't yet read into what the players of Zentia have to say- Here's the forum link.

http://us.changyou.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=83

My personal review:

I've played this game since the 3rd of January, and stopped playing roughly a week ago.  My character is mid-range in terms of level - 64, out of the newly raised level cap of 80 - and I had stints in both casual and hardcore PvP guilds. My main problem with this game is the attitude of its general player base.

It's common place for gamers who aren't willing or able to devote large amounts of their free time to a game to quit after being bested. While some follow that trend in Zentia, it's more common to turn tail and run to the forums. There, they seek GM intervention to combat the advantages achieved by players who do devote their time to achieve their extraordinary status. This meddling comes in the form of limitations, and aggressive policing of PvP practices. Though Zentia programmers implemented an equal exchange penalty system for PK-ing in the original version of Zentia - which is still in place - this interface has been tampered with in the US server since I've been playing. These changes include an increase in the monetary cost of player killing, as well as the allowance of PvP protection (locks) as combat support to PK other players engaging in PvP.

Allow me to explain.

Zentia's in-game currency system operates like this -- 100 copper = 1 silver, 100 silver = 1 gold, 100 gold = 1 gold brick. Max money you can hold in game is dependent on your level. At level 60 you can hold roughly 60 gold bricks.

For every player you kill (provided they report you to the captors for doing so -- which they generally do) you have to pay 2gold. Considering this game has a relatively low population, as you can imagine.. the economy isn't well developed. I had 30 gold bricks and was in the top 10 richest players. 2 gold for every PK is steep.

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As for the PvP locks.. The GM ruled that players would be allowed to wear PvP locks to engage in mounted PvP with Force Attack (Pk Mode) players. Here's how it works.. The player equipped with a PvP lock mounts a multiple passenger beast, and invites the rest of his team to ride. The drivers PvP lock renders him and his passengers immune to direct damage. However, passengers are still free to cast skills. The only way the force attack player can attack back is with Aoe damage..

You can see the highlight of this policy in a video made by it's users, Here:  http://youtu.be/8Dp-0R6Hp7k

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Aside form this, exp gained from mobs and instance runs has been nerfed since the 2.0 patch, making leveling in Zentia dependent upon it's story-line quests. While this isn't necessarily the end-all of end-alls, as most people prefer questing to grinding, it leaves little to do after daily quests are finished.

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Going a bit further in depth with the game economy..

Items necessary to upgrade ( let alone max ) your talisman are only available at in-game shops at a rate of 1 stone (server wide) every 6 hours for 2 or 10 gold. Otherwise, players must purchase these stones from the cash shop for 199 tokens. With a market system in place for players to sell tokens for in game gold, the average exchange rate is 30gold = 100tokens. That's 60gold per stone. Your talismans require anywhere from 6, 8, or 12 stones to max out, and the success rate when using such stones isn't even guaranteed. It's common to fail at least 5 stones on each socket. When you get higher level talismans ( level 60 rank 3, and up) it becomes necessary to purchase preservation charms from the token shop as well to ensure that a failed stone does not remove a previously successful socket. These are much pricier than stones.

Other items, such as soul extractors (which are used to transfer the stats of one pet onto another, to customize its appearance or reset it's rate of learning skill points) are only available by chance from the cash shops lucky wheel. If you can even find one available for sale in the 40 user-created stalls it will cost you 1.5-2 gold bricks. Likewise, revival elixers (necessary to break the tests that raise the level cap as well as several high-end dungeons) can not be purchased from the token shop due to the fact that the price on them was ''too cheap'' and led to exploitation of the cash shop reward system.

Fashion in Zentia is taken to a whole new extreme as permanent costumes provide buffs to your stats when worn. In example, a favorable buff to use for my class (DPS) is 15% strength to Physique or Magic Resistance. As you can imagine, that kind of a boost to a class build on strength provides a significant advantage over those who do not have it in PvP. Unfortunately, you cannot buy permanent costumes from the Zentia token shop. They've only recently begun hosting permanent costume sales after three months of complaints from the community. Unfortunately (again), they neglected to tell us before hand that these permanent costumes will be bound items that, even before equipping, cannot be sold or even transferred for the use of our own alts.

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In closing, I would not recommend this game to a friend or even a stranger. While there are plenty of unique and highly enjoyable features implemented in Zentia, mid-game content offers only disappointment. This is in part the fault of GMs, who seem inexperienced, for poorly thought-out changes to the game play and even less profession behavior in the way such changes are announced to the community. The rest of the blame can be saddled with a small player-base and the creation of a second server which spread the population even thinner, and the lack of dedication to personal achievements on the part of the children the cute graphics and whimsical, fairy-tale atmosphere, attracts to Zentia.

x Lolita

-- Please include your own experiences with this game in a reply, or any questions that you might have concerning the Zentia community or game play.