During this past weekend, we had the opportunity to place a team of players into TERA to bring our readers some thoughts and impressions from the game being published in North America by En Masse Entertainment. In this piece, we take a look at TERA's potential. Read on!

One of the biggest mountains that En Masse and Frogster have to climb with TERA is the notion that it's "just another Asian grinder". For my money, this is the single biggest factor in how successful TERA ultimately becomes and is the hardest thing that the Korean development team and their Western partners will have to overcome. As I play TERA, I want to like it, I really do. But my innate bias shines through as I'm sent along on another "kill 10 rats" quest and forced to FedEx my way around the starter zone. I hold out scant hope, however, that things will improve once I'm on to the main continent and working my way to Arborean glory. I have to say though that, at least at this point, the notion of an Asian grinder is still there in TERA. Luckily there are offsetting factors that might win players over if they're patient enough to stick it out.

Read more of Suzie Ford's TERA: The Potential is There.

I really liked Aion, and loved FFXI, so no bias here, but game of the year, thats quite funny.

Originally posted by Leucent

I really liked Aion, and loved FFXI, so no bias here, but game of the year, thats quite funny.

 Depends on the persons personaly preference, no games have come out yet and only time will tell what game gets the award. Many wouldn't give rift any awards, but they certainly got one.

I know you didn't like TERA, but others did.

Also to make a point on the OP of the article, you'd be surprised but I know females who play TERA because of the skimpy armor, they actually like the armor and say if you've got a good body you should be able to show it in a game. Who knows, at the end of the day that is just another preference.

Originally posted by Pivotelite

Originally posted by Leucent

I really liked Aion, and loved FFXI, so no bias here, but game of the year, thats quite funny.

 Depends on the persons personaly preference, no games have come out yet and only time will tell what game gets the award. Many wouldn't give rift any awards, but they certainly got one.

 

I know you didn't like TERA, but others did.

I do agree with you beleive it or not, but no matter whats said about GW2 or how much you or I like or dislike it, theres no way Tera has a chance against GW2. unless it s a complete bomb, which I doubt.

let me share my thoughts in reality it does matter as everyone will have his/her own opinions on how to spend their time and money and with free trials it's the personal experience that counts rather than reading forums which in some cases are one-sided affairs.

well time will tell if tera makes or breaks, it's still to early to forcast anything yet.

Well that is a rather good point Leucent, with big name companies releasing big name games, no matter which one is more highly acclaimed by players, the media is a different story. Not saying any games will fail, just making a point here.

I could see SW:TOR getting MMO-GOTY 2012 in all honesty with the way media rates and portrays it, but is that how a majority of players actually feel about the game.

The fact is Tera has flopped in korea/asia, and is already consolidating servers.  This server merging was already happenign last year, after dissapointing sales and player retention.  The fact it is just now launcin NA/europe should tell you all yuo need to know about he game.  There is nothign different to this launch to the asian launch nearly a year ago.  The fact is it is not a very good game, you can read countless blogs on the state of the game alrea.

Originally posted by nhat

The problem is the strong racist bias when someone knows a game is made from Asia (KR) and automatically makes a decision just on the origin of the game.

Are you honestly trying to make this about racism? There are thousands of MMOs thats been released from the Asian market over the years and a large part are grind heavy. Yes, western MMOs have grind as well, but where is the difference? It is in how you package it. "Killing x rats" is such a normal thing in many of the games developed in Asia.

It has NOTHING to do with race, just preference. Maybe the Asian market simply enjoyes the grind. Why is that racist?

.... reading about grind in asian mmorpgs after just completed yet another slayer deed to kill 360 mobs in yet another zone in LOTRO. Hilarious.

Grind is very much a western thing. It started as a mob grind, moved to quest grind and so on. Eastern developers used to copy the grind mechanisms (early eastern mmorpgs were very much EQ2 influenced) and they do lag into coming to the west due to the westernisation, but are now ahead of their western counterparts (look at GW2 for example). While unfortunately westerners seem to get locked into worse quest grind than before (look SW:TOR).

The idea that you have to slog through hours/days/weeks of boring grind to "get to the good stuff" is soooo 2004.

If the game isn't fun from the get go, it's not worth it IMO.

All things get old/stale after a while.

2004-2012 is 8 years of "grind to level then end-game PvP and Raid"

I'm done with that, TOR proved that to me without a doubt.

I only still play WoW because I like the endgame part, that's fun, and I already have a bunch of toons at max level.

It doesn't get any better once you get on the main island. It's still the same kill x of y quests throughout the game, at least up to level 20 (when I finally gave up forcing myself to log in). The combat was a blast, right up until level 10 when I realized that being able to dodge was the only thing the game had going for it. The combat stops being fun when you're still doing the same thing over and over and over. I agree with what was written in the official forums, it's like the game was never meant to have any quests, just non-stop mob grind, then at the last minute they decided to tack quests on to those mobs with little care to making it exciting.

I only got to try one BAM, on the account of a friend who stuck with the game till 36. It was fun, but it's not nearly enough to get me to buy the game let alone pay a sub, and it was honstly the only thing I found enjoyable in the game. It is indeed a beautiful game yes, but I need more than that. Even if this went f2p, I'd honestly sooner player Aion (more established, larger audience) and that's probably not going to happen either.

If you love it more power to you, but I'd be surprised if this found more than a smaller, loyal audience 6 months out, if that long. That should be more than enough to keep it profitable and afloat, but I don't know how much of a "hit" this is going to be.

Originally posted by chilliz

The fact is Tera has flopped in korea/asia, and is already consolidating servers.  This server merging was already happenign last year, after dissapointing sales and player retention.  The fact it is just now launcin NA/europe should tell you all yuo need to know about he game.  There is nothign different to this launch to the asian launch nearly a year ago.  The fact is it is not a very good game, you can read countless blogs on the state of the game alrea.

It's #9 on the top 10 mmos in KR, it's still successful.

You can check www.gamemeca.com/ in google translate it on the right side to see the ranking it goes up and down."

  yup the only thing they need now are a story, interesting quests, voice overs, cut scenes, and plot, their combat is pretty good now they just need-----------everything else

i thought it looked cool but then i saw a loli i like to stay away from pedo asian games

Originally posted by nhat

It's #9 on the top 10 mmos in KR, it's still successful.



You can check www.gamemeca.com/ in google translate it on the right side to see the ranking it goes up and down."

 

That's not #9 in MMOs, it's #9 in all games in general, it's based on daily logins.

But did you know TERA used to on a regular basis reach #1 for daily logins? Yes, it did flop hard in Korea, it was worse than TOR as in, it was hyped even more than TOR was here in Asia, I would say it was GW2 level hype and the max level cap on release was guess what...50(see the similarities?)

Much like TOR was forced out the door by EA probably stabbing at the back of Bioware, TERA was pushed out the door by NCsoft pressing hard and trying to sue the living shit out of Bluehole. They released a super hyped up game with no polish and no content(same thing as SW:TOR) and the inevitable happened...it maintained it's subs for one and a half months then dropped faster than any game i've seen(more than TOR).

It's been stable sitting at #6-9 for daily logins now which is nice, but it will never rise up again because people that left the game won't go back. I think it's a good hint to how SW:TOR will sit and survive for a long time with a decent community but won't grow because many won't give it a second chance even if it releases tons of new content, just like TERA quickly did to try to rectify itself in the East.

For me is about what I plan to buy in May.  Got Tera and D3 in May and I think Tera is probably more fun and a longer lasting purchase than Diablo 3.

GW2 doesn't even have a release date.

After spending some time in this weekend's beta, I will have to disagree with the article's title.  I don't think the potential is there. (wish it was because I'm coasting for a MMO to call home but this one just felt so extraordinarily bland...)

I think my biggest problem with this game will be that it's published by Frogster, after the mess they did with Runes of Magic, I really don't have a lot of faith in them as Publishers, otherwise the game looks ok