Vindictus is the game that invented the kind of combat that Tera has and it is quite good for a run through if you havent.

As for your questions with regard to Tera -- They seem to be shooting for Lancers to be the primary tank but they want Warriors to be a primary tank also but not as good as a lancer.  Personally I find Warriors much more interesting than lancers playstylewise.  Money isnt as bad as people are thinking but good items can cost a pretty penny...  People are trying to sell merely semi-good items on the AH for the equivalent of 4 months of gameplay.  Yeah at that point you are much better farming the item yourself rather than buying it.  Both equipment and skill are important.  A good player with lousy equipment can do things that a lousy player couldnt do with any equipment but a somewhat good player with great equipment can defeat a great player with only somewhat good equipment.

You are just early into your fists build.  Eventually it will work its way up.  What you want to look into is things that say add an extra component to each attack.  I know I was all over the map with my fist build but by the end of closed beta I was able to kill things pretty quickly whether they came in a pack or individually. 

BUT when I was around QL5 yes I was able to kill things but it took forever -- Attack attack attack HOT heal heal attack HOT makes battles take a long time but you survive.  Look to abilities that trigger extra dots and damage off each of your attacks and eventually you end up not doing all that much damage per number but you have so many things running it just eats them alive.  I must have had 15 or 20 lines of numbers that ran on each attack.

In essence the content for 54-59 out of a level 60 game is the least valuable content of the game.  You are taking content that could be replayable and making it not replayable because nobody is going to hunt 57th level equipment at 60th level.  At the same time the players are just trying to put the last of the levelling out of its misery for endgame.  Most people do not think of such until the home stretch.  Before that they enjoy themselves a lot more.  I mean gaining level 46 is a good thing but you dont worry so much that that item you just got is a waste.  It is a means to the further ends.  That uber level 58 item is going to be outclassed at 60. 

Note that this also works for expansions...  If you are adding 10 levels to a level 60 game, the hardest level should be the earliest level and the easiest level the last one.  This allows the old equipment and content to not be outmoded too very rapidly and preserves the maximum amount of content for the timeframe people will be at the longest.  It also preserves content when people go through the game later on because normally what happens is people completely skip the raids from the earlier content because the items are so very rapidly replaced in the new expansion.  If the levelling were reversed then there would be a reason to still do such content even when the content is 3 expansions old. 

Actually even back in the old old days of MMOs where it was as you said more about the journey, I can tell you that the last couple of levels were still "looking at the endgame and wondering why it is taking so long" levels.  The only games that were not really like that were games like Asheron's Call with no real ending level that anyone would ever hit.  126 was a milestone in Asheron's Call but it was very very far from being maxxed out and had no significance except in exp chains. 

I just think the last few levels should be quick -- Content tending more towards the middle and the end than the near end.

One thing that has always kind of gotten to me is that the longest levels (often by far) are the levels right before the endgame.  By the time you reach level 55 in a level 60 game, really the main thing most people are thinking of is getting to that end and actually many people will actively avoid upgrades and buy things they can use at the end rather than wasting capital on something that would be useful now but outmoded later.

At the same time the earlier levels and content tend to go by really fast.  This includes the mid levels where people might be avoiding the dungeons and other content because they would not be using those items for very long.

Levelling is kind of backwards.

Yes I can see having the early levels be faster than the middle levels, but the last few levels should also be relatively fast because people are mainly targetted at the endgame.  I mean how many people really and truly enjoyed the level before the cap more than the other levels?  For most it is the most tedious level and others might be the only level they try to blitz through.

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A much better model would be something like this...

Instead of having say level 20 take 1 hour, level 30 2 hours, level 40 4 hours, level 50 7 hours, and level 59 10 hours....

Have the longest level be level 45 at say that 10 hours with level 50 being 6 hours and level 59 being only 2.

Well you see, if a FTP game had a spending cap of $35 per month (double the normal subscription) then a lot more people would actually pay that $35.  It is the people spending $350+ that turn those $35 spenders off -- as the playing field is not at all equal at that point.  But I wonder just what percentage of the money coming into a FTP comes from people who spend say $350 or more per month on the FTP game.  I have this sneaking suspicion that it may be a higher percentage than people realize.  I mean it doesnt take all that many $2,000 per month whales to marginalize the contributions of the normal player who isnt free-riding.

Actually I think it is as much that the top tier MMO mills have messed up enough // lowered the bar enough that the goal has passed through funcomm as opposed to them simply stepping over said goal.  That said TSW is very unique in a lot of ways and is one of the few games that will actually push the genre in some directions.  I hope games in the future borrow story/quest elements from TSW and combat elements from Tera/Vindictus/etc.   Put both together and you could have a good game.  I mean we do see elements of Warhammer in games these days that were good even though that game failed...  Without warhammer you would have never had Rift.

There was a short time when they had major debuffs to the gankers rifting into enemy territory to gank the level 28s.  There were enough vocal complaints that they decided to nerf and remove such debuffs making it back into a gank-fest again.

In essence unless you want to die to gankers A LOT you end up having to group to do solo quests -- or you have to have a high level from your guild babysit.

I agree -- in most FTP games I end up spending about $50 per month to play when I am playing.  Subscription games are much cheaper.  The other issue is a lot of FTP games have you WANTING to spend even more -- There are a lot of people who spend $200, $500, even $1,000+ per month to beat you.  Worst are the games with contests -- be the first to do X -- non-big spenders need not apply.  I actually quit one game that I had started which had a top 5 contest that I was about to get 4th place in but ended up 6th because 2 people decided to spend over $1,000 right before the end just to get ahead of me for a $200 payout.  Note in this game I had only spent $40 and was probably the lowest spender with any chance whatsoever.  I was even in a conversation with one of those people.  He apologized but said he had to do it -- yeah. 

Bu1sy C2n not t3alk r1ght no2w.

OOOOOOOooo Vindictus style combat in WoW...  That could actually turn it around.

(This was in reply to Nexxon buying out Blizzard)

All I can say about this is thank goodness it isnt faster than the lion.

If it were say speed 350 then I would not be happy about it.

Well I will say one thing about En Masse Tera... 

I asked a question about a quest where the target was not given on an orange dot and was certainly not obvious.

The second response to the question was a private message from a GM telling me where it was.

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I don't think I have ever seen a company where they actually have GMs watch the world chat and reply to questions therein.  While I can't say much about bluehole and the issues that are happening in korea and the choice of frogster in europe, I can say that the customer service by enmasse is top notch.

Well, the balance was as follows:

Old days:

If you were a warrior you could carry a ton of items, but you had to walk them back to town and walk them back to where you were hunting -- you didnt even get a gate spell so if you got lost you were LOST. 

If you were a caster you could carry a very limited number of items, but you could instantly port yourself back to town.  And many casters could also port themselves back to their hunting grounds.

Later:

Warriors got a method of hearthstoning back to town.  Casters might have some extra convenience but the basic transports were available to all...  Hence to make inventory management equal they equalized the carry weights.

The problem is it isnt exactly entirely lifted.  You still cant talk about how the game used to be just how it currently is.  IE if you disagree with the changes over time to certain features that is still under NDA because you cant reveal how things were handled in say 0.7 or 0.8 only 0.9.  I guess there would be ways to sidestep that in some cases --especially where in the open beta it was shown as one can talk about that and contrast it...  In my case leave it to say that I think the 2.5 jump height they have currently is too low. 

As for the game itself I found it a roller coaster.  I had times I hated it and times I loved it.  Expect to go through a lot of ups and downs.  In the end I found the hard quests too hard and the easy quests too easy and was longing for inbetween.  It is definitely worth a playthrough.

Well, enmasse changes things regularly -- what you are seeing here might just make a larger severing between K-Tera and Tera.  This might be for the better in some ways because I think I trust enmasse more when it comes down to creating battlegrounds maps. 

Warhammer's main problem was their conquest system was NOT ready and instead of acknowledging it they kludged the system to make winning not possible until they had their ducks in a row.

We got to the fortress REALLY EARLY before there was any hope of defeating one and it was obvious it wasnt ready even then.  This was before they made it really hard to flip the zones.  Now, if they initially had it set up so that the fortress battles actually worked instead of being a huge lag and crashfest and had a much more compelling city raid system, things would have not gone downhill the way they did.

The other BIG problem was the one you mentioned -- 2 sides -- *BUT* that could have been easily rectified without adding a side.  Put a moon in the sky.  When the moon is full chaos gets bonuses.  When the moon is new, law gets bonuses.  It is neutral when the moon is at half.  Now you have periods where one side has a definite advantage and other times when the other side gets the same.  This would make it possible for the distaff side even on moderately unbalanced worlds able to succeed during their time of the month. 

The mergers made things worse -- you could go from a balanced world to a very unbalanced one with a merger. 

The only game that had a good diplomacy system was vanguard.

It actually had a full set of levels for being a diplomat which actually opened up some equipment etc.

They didnt make as much out of it as they could have but it is still a major part of what made that game special.

The worst is when there is a game you genuinely like on some level that is fatally flawed on a different level. 

This can happen in many ways.  One way is that you played to the end or worse near it -- say to level 57 in a level 60 game and then your class gets a massive nerf.  Now you will never be as powerful as you once were and are now facing a gear treadmill that will just take you partway.  You enjoy the game but the experience of the character is ruined.

This can happen via server merge or population shift in a pvp game -- IE you enjoyed playing the game a lot and your server is relatively balanced.  Now you have a merge and you are all of a sudden an extreme underdog.  Your home city gets raided every single day and your side has no hope.  And it is now no longer fun.

Then there is the endgame bait and switch.  You have a lot of fun playing to the level cap and then the game changes a lot.  It may have been solo friendly but now everything requires a group.  OR you might (as in rift) have had tremendous lattitude in the kind of equipment you wore -- ie lets say you had all purple valor items.  Now you have an artificial mechanic (toughness) that you MUST get.  Every upgrade is a downgrade except for the artificial stat.

Then there are changes to how game skills interact.  You had a fairly unique way that you played your character and by piecing together skills and items that were maybe not intended for your class, you are able to take it into a role or hybrid role that people generally did not consider.  It was the heart of your character.  Then it is swept away // no longer works.  Now your character is forced to conform.

They really need to get off their cans and start selling timecards.  It would make a lot of people a lot more confident if they could buy timecards and just enter the codes to extend their time rather than having a billing cycle.