Move over Voyage Century Online (VCO), nDoor's Atlantica Online coming through.

Finally, a game that I, bianora, don't get bored with half way through. The last game I played that was like this was VCO (didn't leave due to boredom).

 I have played a fair few MMORPGs since, and half of them didn't cut it. They either eased my boredom IRL for a short period of time or I simply logged in and logged out within 5 minutes.

 At level 54 (a level I have never usually gotten to in games) and counting! I have a set of mercenaries following me (think Guild Wars but with 8 mercenaries battling by your side) around helping me pull off my dirty deeds.

 In battles with mobs/players, think Final Fantasy when you're wondering around the plains and the screen smashes  (Platform: PS2) and suddenly  you're taking turns in hitting each other (except you can see the mobs you want to attack).

 I'm simply comparing the different aspects of the game to other games that I know of. Playing this game for free is, in my opinion, a luxury.  With a few extra implements you could safely say that they could get away with making it P2P. I would certainly pay subscription for this game.

 It's hard to say if you will ever be able "claim" to have completed this game, there are so many things to do, i.e. complete crafting, complete all quests, complete your monster info log (which, is probably next to impossible since I'm only 12.4% at level 54), etc.

There's so much to do that I can't see boredom setting in, if my character dies of old, I'm reincarnating!

I had to add some of the mercenary comments to my mobile phone, some of them still make me wet myself with laughter. Especially the Beast Trainer, I can't work out if she farts or blows a raspberry when she's finished an attack, if it is coming from her or my surroundings!

 Yeah, I have a noble stead too, who galiantly takes me to my battles and beyond.

Summary of the positives (in my opinon):

9 mercenaries to assist you in battle (inc. yourself).

Free League helps make the game beginner friendly, i.e. avoiding PKs (player kills), still giving everyone a satisfaction of PvP. Anyone can enter. It also makes it fair for everyone, so everyone gets an even shot at each other.

Dying of old age, unconfirmed but it's what I've heard. This allows a cycle of different players to earn that limelight if that is their aspiration in game.

Receive a gift from nDoors for playing for an hour (usually a treasure map).

Monster info adds another side to the game, helps increase stamina; sometimes needed to complete quests; makes it easier to locate which mob may drop which items and how frequent it is dropped; helps locate a particular mob full stop.

Stamina system, in my opinion I am not for or against this idea. Put into play for many reasons, i.e. make botting more difficult, encourage community involvement, etc.

Game map is based on IRL continents/cities, etc. i.e. Harbin, Rome, London, etc. This encourages geographical awareness (which I have always sucked at), so basically this can be seen as an educational aspect of the game.

Crafting skill experience can also be gained via players, so you don't always have to go to NPCs and those players (a.k.a Artisans/Craftsman) gain experience from levelling other players.

Mentorship, you can mentor players below level 30 and gain 200,000 gold when they reach level 30.

Advertisement system for guild and misc. The misc. ads are displayed at the top of the game client, where people can advertise their wares and also advertise what they are teaching, in general advertise anything they want that maybe of use to others. This prevents spam in the peers chat, although people still advertise in there, albeit somewhat less than what usual than what you would see in other games.

  ~ Many more positives, there are just so many! ~

 Basic Negatives (from what I can find, since I have found very few):

Stamina system, like I said - I am not for or against it so it must go in positives and negatives.

Not enough hairstyle and facial options.  I'm a chick nDoors, we like choices! Lol!  It would be cool if we could have ability to change facial shapes, etc. I played a game that had this implemented, where you could change the hair colour on a rainbow chart. Trying to remember what this game was called is proving difficult, maybe Perfect World (PW) or another game. You could change body size, boob size, etc. Basically your had more ability to replicate yourself or someone else, etc.

There is a blocking system implemented (which is a positive) but you can only block through whispers and sometimes people don't appear in my peers list so I can't add them manually, namely the bots.

Free League (FL), there is a downside to the FL which I believe needs to be rectified, you are put into divisions (the number beside your character name when you begin is [18] - this means your FL division is 18, should you choose to enter). I have found that I have been placed with players twice my level (when I was a youngling at level 20-30) and gotten annihilated, you might be able to learn from failure but there is a limit and this can discourage you from ever entering the FL again.

~ Not enough negatives from my view to balance my review ~

 This game is a must try, regardless of negatives and whether you are convinced or not by what I say. I have gone on long enough, there is waaay too much about this game to even be able to mention in full detail in a thread.

 See you in game and join my guild (Archelaos) on Thebes server! Haha!

~ bianora ~

~ Touch my food, feel my fork!  ~

i thought VCO meant virgin coconut oil. lol. oh, and it's funny that you got lotsa smilies on your review. haha.

kidding aside..

i think this is a pretty good review and i feel the same way too about atlantica. but maybe you'd like to point out some negatives about the game to keep your review balanced.

 You're right about keeping it a balanced view, I'm not sure if I could make it balanced though. I honestly don't have any negatives to say about the game, maybe others do but this game is more or less a perfect fit for me.

There were things that discouraged at one point but then I thought of the benefits. I'll edit it and add the parts that was discouraged by but either later saw the benefits or got used to.

I like the smileys on this forum.   It's probably my first real review but I know I could have been more imaginative, didn't exactly know how to approach a review.  

Thanks

bump

good review~! proably one of the best ive seen so far including all the official website reviews.. this is the kind of feel we AtOers are getting once we get to understand the game..playing 10 levels is not enough descreibe the faults and pluses of the game..  from my experience the positives commnets i have about the game early in my AtO career was switched to faults and all my negatives became pluses for the game..

good job

More screenshots.

 I think I'm just a little bit craaazy...

*random bump message - didn't know what to say* 

My Answer to your review here.

I am a player and I am not into illogical advertisement of this game.

Atlantic Online – A Critical Analysis.

I have been playing this game for a while now. Here is where I break down and critically analyze the game.

Graphics
Well not really remarkable but then again if you are using a low PC and you are not into good graphic options the game is quite alright. There are shadow textures and the strategy battle mode is kind of silly and it takes away the surrounding graphical resolution as all the battles are just a loading of 2 monster types similar yet different in Mdef and Pdef randomly numbered in a set from 6-8.

Community
It is pretty much as the free to play community of other free to play games. It is nothing much special. Every now and then you will find people using racism or slang and the chat filter kind of makes it more prominent. Some of the players have even found out a way to overwrite the filter by calling people “nab” than noob.
The community section is for accessing players and no matter how many times I have added people from the beginner’s column, I have found they are either placed there to be used by players or just kept online to fill the list. I have actually found a few players from the beginner’s column who leveled after being added into the guild.
In this section you will find crafters and I think it is more of a gameplay support system than a real mass of online game playing players.

Gameplay
Almost majority of the gameplay is solo stuff without much team gaming found. Team gaming forms the essence of the Mmo gaming and it completely lacks in it. Every now and then you will find over-leveled players spamming peer chat and trying to get a party to do some solo quest. By over – leveled players I mean players who have leveled but do not have good skills or armors or weapons to do the solo quest or continue with it. The most irritating portion of the game is the inventory system and the opening of the boxes kind of locks you. This is again an item shop dependent portion so we can well make out where the game is trying to make the money out of cash shop.

Monsters
The game has a strategy oriented battle system and the monsters generally form of a mix of two separate monsters. Strangely every group will have 2 separate monsters one with a high Mdef and the other with a high Pdef so as you have to select proper mouseclick to make the most damage.

Game-Balance
This is the best portion of any game that I like to analyze.
The game has auto battle option and auto battle is again limited to license and auto battle points. I have seen the worse use of this system throughout the Atlantic playfield. Sometimes it is so bad that many free league toons are also into auto battle and their geek armor / rings or their geek skills won’t allow you to proceed further in division.
So here we see that the game is ready to gear up for item shop based free games that form a bulk of population in mmo list.

Sorry for all the folks out there trying to make Atlantica Online a success, here is my review after playing the game and picking up tits and bits form what exactly is going on.

Guild / Town System
There is not much here but a chat panel and a few town buildings for making town grow.
You can make the town grow but if your guild is not active it can be taken away by another guild with more guild points. So the urge to make the town grow is limited to the cash flow from the tax payments and nothing more. The numbers of towns are limited and as such it is more likely that you will be bided out eventually from a town as you will loose guild points every time you try to save it.
I lost my town through guild point bidding as my guild had many support members of the game who didn’t join when we had to do training centre to keep the town. Also support people go offline after a point of time in guild and then the only way is to dismiss them from guild.

Market and Economy
The economy is quite nice and I have found that your stuff usually sells at quite a steady rate. I think it is mostly support controlled but you can still have the pseudo feeling that this is player controlled.

Crafting
You can craft but it is really no point crafting if you see crafted products are not special and they sell for lower gold than the amount of gold needed to craft. There are some special products that can well only be crafted but the stats in them is not that much appealing to level up your craft skill which is a very costly and time consuming process.
Support people will always have greater crafting level as to them they need it to make the Market balance.

Mini Games
You have the training centre and the treasure map hunting or the developer challenge which are pretty good and can be fun for some time.

Errors
The game is dependent on time. Each turn takes 30secs. So if you lag you will miss turns either against monsters or against opponents in free league. The game has many battle speeds and I have found that the same toon and the same opponents difficulty level rises or falls in free leagues with different battle speeds and thus I think the game is a bit dependent on the internet speed when it comes to free league. The game still lags a lot in it’s near to release from the days of CB.

At-last and not the least, I have played the game again till 60+ levels and I feel kind of bored going further. May be it is the lack of team gaming that makes it more of a multiplayer diablo mix with the market and the chat to connect players.

All said and done I think from free leagues to the community with artisans and beginners this is all made up support of this game. I do not want to waste my time here anymore in atlantica online. I deleted my character at level 70ish and I am sure not going to give this game another try, reasons being lack of actual players and support community trying to control every part of the game this way or that way including all the towns. If you want Matrix in a mmo world, go ahead waste time with this game for sure.

Here is the evidence...........Why real players do not get towns …….

Suppose there are three guilds in Atlantica Online …………….
For your convenience what exactly going on in the Atlntica Online gaming world I have made the guild names funny……
Guild Name – Support Controlled 1
Guild Name - Support Controlled 2
Guild Name – Player Controlled
Now at the beginning of the game the three guilds start off and at the time when town is offered all 3 guilds have 25k points.
All of them get a town suppose.
At the next town bidding the Support Controlled 1 bids the Player Controlled 1s town with all the guild points. Now the Player Controlled 1 Bids his town again with all the points. Let’s say Player Controlled guild wins the town.
In the next bidding the Support Controlled 2 bids the Player Controlled guild’s Town and wins the town easily as in this time the Player Controlled guild has lost points to get the town in the first bidding.
And thus 2 Support Controlled guilds 1 and 2 here can get the Player Controlled towns quite easily……
So the Player Controlled guild looses the town through points. You may say, why? not war and stuff but the honest explanation with me is the in – game support controls all towns this way or that way by just creating guilds with bots and making guild points by keeping bots online and thus I say the gaming world of Atlantica Online is in – game support controlled.
Why should they do it?
1. May be to sell inventory license packs through item mall.
2. May be to keep the town gold to them so as to make gold selling to players in Atlantica Online.
3. May be just to keep the towns from getting messed and exploited like a guild leader can just dismantle all the buildings and go when he has to leave the town?
4. Flaws in huge numbers and still the game is released , you must be kidding to release a faulty game and then just going on marketing and advertising about the game in gaming sites.

The evidence of my writings can go on but on a nut shell the game is released and the game could not be fixed it all these three CBs and it will never be fixed. So anyone want to waste time with this game can do it.
How about this problem that is the core fundamental problem in this games system?
The limited time actualy in laag do not allow you to take the turns or in laag it does not allow you to take all the turns and thus you miss turns. If you shout the problem out in free league then people may answer all your other characters were stunned. You can make the same logic against monsters too. But my explanation is we have a faulty system released as a game which do not work when it laags and thus this error if not fixed and i do not know if slowing the game more will fix it, will eventually kill the game.

Answer is simple........To the market system…..
Go and try and make some market sells with your character at 0 gold both in bank and with you and sell an article at higher the fixed price. I did the same and my item got sold in 24 hours that I was AFK online. Demand and supply is not working here what is working is just pure pseudo system with a different explanation through demand and supply.

All this posts contain knowledge for any player trying to go for this game. Yep it is always a better idea to try and find out the truth of the post by going and playing the game. I played it and this is what I have found.
 

Different strokes for different folks.

I too like the game although I'm pretty fickle when it comes to game play.

Glad you like it

I'm in Thebes as well, my main is Nilla ( may change after I rethink classes)

On a side note, I took a peek at forum troll above, boy talk about regurgitated pov ad nausem.

I concur with the OP.  Nice review, by the way.

It's a pretty lightweight game in comparison to something like EVE, or so many others, but there is some surprising complexity worked into it.

Overall, everything seems to work. And that is something that any number of new P2P releases have failed miserably at.  Almost all of them, actually.

I thought the game a joke for the first little bit, yet it brought the old Ultima series to mind when battle began. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, either.

Nice light entertainment!

I think I will play it for a while and see how it goes.

Your review was absolutely... bursting with smileys! And it was very nice as well! The game really does remind me of Final Fantasy and to be honest it is because of that that attracted me to the game.

You know, I have to agree with you when you said that it'll be hard to 'claim' to have complete the game since there are really just so MANY things to do in the game! Just take crafting for example - there are just so many darn things to craft!! And yes, the monster info is truly going to be a feat to get the 100% completion!

 Yeah there is usually one troll to every thread. Lol!  I take it with a pinch of salt, the troll seems to forget that the game has only just been released to full version (31st Oct.) and that every beta game has it's bugs and glitches somewhere. He obviously thinks that nDoors has a magic wand and can fix it just like that, but these things are trial and error.

 1 negative troll out of so many positive replies to my thread, I can pretty much say I am more than happy with the response I've received.  Being my first review and all. Thanks guys and gals.

I also have xfire, where you can find more screenshots!  bianora is my username

No one's negativity  can change my view on this game. We can safely say that some people will never be happy/satisfied, I think those type of  people are the ones that should go P2P because you can't exactly expect perfection from a F2P game when publishers/developers have a very small budget to consider, if they have one at all.

Thanks,

Bianora.

P.S. I don't think I even bothered getting past the first sentence of the troll, I just knew what was coming and trust me...I've read it all before, lol! I can't be bothered to read a repeat. Got enough of those buggers on the TV.

Actually Sourajit does have a point, but is not making it very clearly. Let me try to re-state what he is saying.

He believes that the developer is using paid players, and backend systems to artificially stimulate the game, in order overcome the lack of player density.

This is done when a game launches more servers than they can actually fill with players. This is often done to do marketing plans, or based on different business models.

The plan is to slowly ween out these supports as the player base fills in. However, it is often the case that the base does not grow as desired, and the supports are removed (due to cost), leaving people feeling that their economy has crashed. I would look for this to happen when the next big content patch comes out (new areas and classes), as it will help cover any changes.

Originally posted by madammoments

 Yeah there is usually one troll to every thread. Lol!  I take it with a pinch of salt, the troll seems to forget that the game has only just been released to full version (31st Oct.) and that every beta game has it's bugs and glitches somewhere. He obviously thinks that nDoors has a magic wand and can fix it just like that, but these things are trial and error.

 

 1 negative troll out of so many positive replies to my thread, I can pretty much say I am more than happy with the response I've received.  Being my first review and all. Thanks guys and gals.

I also have xfire, where you can find more screenshots!  bianora is my username

 

No one's negativity  can change my view on this game. We can safely say that some people will never be happy/satisfied, I think those type of  people are the ones that should go P2P because you can't exactly expect perfection from a F2P game when publishers/developers have a very small budget to consider, if they have one at all.

 

Thanks,

Bianora.

P.S. I don't think I even bothered getting past the first sentence of the troll, I just knew what was coming and trust me...I've read it all before, lol! I can't be bothered to read a repeat. Got enough of those buggers on the TV.

Man your writing though a bit against me but was a repeat too. We have had several posts in the past about the goodness of the game. But did we have a few posts which come up with troubles and problems in the game.

Problems only creep up when people start playing and experiment with different aspects of the game. A Mmo is not a month old story where you log in and you spend the month and you level to max and then you log out and go to another game.

I played it from the CB 2&3 till the release and I wrote my difficulties inside the game. But I also wrote that if you play the game then only you may know it. After making a guild and finding majority going permanent offline in the guild I feel that there is some odd manipulation as goes the post above me by Superman. I really never knew that this kind of support may exist for a Mmo.

Now your P2P or your F2P do no make a difference in creativity of the game. You may well say that the timer on the server side will need a powerful server but there may be other ways of doing it too.
I have a few P2P accounts and I play a few F2Ps also. As far as magic wand by ndoors I am hopeful it has it. I do not think negative about a gaming company. If they have come this far with Atlantica Online then the magic wand is quite prominent.

But making a game and making the games playfield are completely different aspects altogether. For example if you see Atlantica Online free league or if you just go in to the observe battle in it then you will find mostly we have 3 spears or 4 spears combination. But Atlantica Online is not about spearmen mercenaries only and thus we can find out where the other mercenary groups are lacking.

As far as review goes this review is also by me for Atlantica Online and then I was not considered as a troll but suddenly when my writing changes and starts writing flaws I become a troll. This is weird.
My review before the beginning of Ob…

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/post/2223459#2223459
 

Your view with smileys is well accepted and taken and it is also read by me. I go with your force if I look into the game superficially but oh well I am into gaming since the whee old days of Anarchy Online and the likes and hence my review will only contain critical approach. Moreover I am a player and I am not paid to write. So I write what I feel and my posts should be logically answered or what you do in turn is just come up with your community. For example I see in one of my writings that a person answering me who happens to be from a guild with “GTFO“. This clearly shows where the community is there and thus in turn a player who reads the consecutive posts knows at hand the validity of my post.

My repetitive posts where to find real players in Atlantica Online. Real players do not need to have X-fire or there character names flashed. You just know by their posts that they are real players.

Too many player supports do not make a game popular nor the random number juggling in posts does. Here i am referring to the post that says 2.2 million concurrent players and later corrected to 800k concurrent players.At length it is us the real players of the game who make or break the games population.

You may still say me a troll as it is your wish but players read discussions and consecutive posts. Do please keep that in mind. This forum may be a place to advertise a game but advertisements do not bring about the gaming interest. Gaming interest is brought about by real player participation and to build that we need to make the game good may be better than the P2Ps too so as the item mall makes money and in turn the content is updated.

But then again you can just ignore these intricate details as perfection is an art and achieved with time and not through writings that fail to be critical.

Originally posted by Superman0X

Actually Sourajit does have a point, but is not making it very clearly. Let me try to re-state what he is saying.

He believes that the developer is using paid players, and backend systems to artificially stimulate the game, in order overcome the lack of player density.

This is done when a game launches more servers than they can actually fill with players. This is often done to do marketing plans, or based on different business models.

The plan is to slowly ween out these supports as the player base fills in. However, it is often the case that the base does not grow as desired, and the supports are removed (due to cost), leaving people feeling that their economy has crashed. I would look for this to happen when the next big content patch comes out (new areas and classes), as it will help cover any changes.

 

Hmm...I never got that vibe, but then again I honestly don't know much about that side of gaming. I merely play the game and if I like it, I refer or in this case, I made an unprofessional review. Trying to balance with the odd negatives, apart from stating the obvious ones that I'm sure people are already sick of reading, so it was a little difficult for me.

I can see that there is yet another long post from Sourajit...Let's see if I can get past the first paragraph without getting too bored. To be honest, I simply can't be arsed with flamers or trolls, at any given time of day, so Sourajit, if you're reply is full of "****ing troll!? get a life! you're review is BS!", etc. etc. then don't expect me to acknowledge what you say, to be frank with you, I have had enough of trolls taking over my threads on Atlantica forum and it's just pointless trying to reason or even get them to speak to people in a civilised manner without getting personal. Although, Sourajit, I didn't see anything personal in your first post, that's not what I'm saying!  Just explaining why I have no time for flamers/trolls.

Thanks, Bianora.

P.S. "Flashing" my xfire name has nothing to do with me wanting to become known around here or anywhere else, I was simply giving people the opportunity to view my profile that has SCREENSHOTS on it. There is no such thing as "real players", we're all players and we all exist, can't get anymore real than that.