General Discussion

very interesting to hear about this title... the graphics seem amazing for it's age, still better then any current game I've seen, which is quite astonishing. A lot seems to have changed since the sole grind-bot fest it used it be. What seems to stand out with this game is the end-game, with so many special activities beyond mere raids, like castle sieges, olympics, monthly special events... from reading info on their web site and forums. Looks like I'll have to get this game :)

Is it true that this is the second biggest MMO in the world - with 2million? Is there a site where I can find out about MMO's subscriber numbers??... just curious.

It has a huge subscriver base in Korea. I think the NA American version has around 60,000 though exact numbers can be culled from the NC soft website from the quarterly report.

It's a great game with great graphics. However it is not for everyone though you will never know until you try it. Just remember that the idea of the game is power, so people strive to lvl up as quickly as possible (especially given that the game has a long leveling curve) so you will not find many people in the new player areas.

Lineage II
1,302,340 subs worldwide
89,337 in US + EU

...and growing...

In that bot hunting spree I got victimized and stripped of account.

I played as usual. But one day when the server restarted i somehow managed to log in same character twice. I instantly reported this. For a reward they just stripped me of my account. I did several CS complaints. But nothing. Im very sad i dont live in US. Would have been nice to take some juridic action.

Glad I see some word of Lineage 2 atleast.

Lineage 2 rulz :P
only fix for open pvp since Shadowbane is too old.
Prettiest omg graphics of any game, mmo or other.
Very stable.  The reported server issues were only a very minor inconvenience.

Pandamonia
74 Warsmith
Outsiderz clan
Barts server
Lineage ][

While I would like to make all good comments I will not in this case.

Server issue's are here and they will stay so we just have to deal with it.
GameGuard another bane to L2 will stay aswell even if the program is more of a crash-happening kind of add-on then anything else. To this date I fail to see the advantage of this system but that's just me.
While they may comment on making the game easier for new players I can only say that the current situation for new-comers is good enough. As a first-release player I believe that making the game to easy at the start will make the new players even more willing to look for alternitive ways to continue to play after the initial ease has worn off. Besides this game is advertized as hard-core orienated so I like to see it continue that way.

For example: att the availabilty to get gear is far more easier to get compaired to when the game was first released (atleast up to top c-grade gear). Basically I am talking about lvling up to L52: people can get through lvls.
However after that lvl people will run into trouble as at that point less availabilty and the build-in gambleing system of crafting of this korean based game will kick in. Aka recipes are available in 60% or 100% success rates when talking about b-grade gear.
At even higher lvls when going for A-grade (L61+) only 60% successfull rated recipes for gear becomes the norm. Some of the more wanted recipes to make armor-sets are only available via triple-gambling quests. The other way to get gear of that kind is by killing raid-boss's which are allmost never available with the current raid-boss farmer situation on all NCNA-servers (farmers: people are paid to work in shifts watching spawns of the raid-boss's 24/7). Casual players will look at gear that is way overpriced and doing the gathering of the raw materials could be allmost seen as gigantic with the added disadvantage of failing crafts that could have taken months to gather.

Another issue that seems to stay is what is called the inbalance between classes: I will not get into this as has been an ongoing topic since C1. Many suggestions have been and are made by the current players. The Rock-Paper-Sciccors system that will come with C5 is supposed to help with the issue.
Unfortunately at first glance I am somewhat sceptic and so seem others but I will not pass judgement on it yet untill it is implemented.

As to events I can only comment on that fact that the latest versions of events were a Movie competation which excluled all non-North American players. They made the prices real-live rewards which in itself can be seen as good but have the disadvantage that global/national laws may screw it up if you do not live in the USA.
The other event of resent date was a Battle Tournament which was only interresting if you happend to be the top of the server again excluding a larger portion of the players including new-comers.
I am hoping that the next version of the battle tournament will become more accessable to all players and fortunately an offical poll after the tournament seems to indicate that this may be the case next time around.

While they did add a lot of things that made level 1-52 a lot easier, part of that ease is also player created; as the bulk of players move out of those levels, there's a surplus of lower level gear available for cheap.

I believe that the upcoming changes, as well as the C4 changes, will make the UI and integration into the game easier rather than the actual gameplay, i.e. C4's voice overs for the tutorial.