"No WASD and jumping are dealbreakers for me."

What. The. Fusk.

A stupid extra movement input type and a pointless action are game-breaking critereon? Feh. I'm more interested in whether the game features noob ganking (under the guise of PvP) and whether or not they bother to clear the servers of gold website spammers.

Those two are way more "deal breaking" than some stupid feature many of us don't care about. So what if you have to click to move? That just about describes every other asian grindfest on the list. Jumping? Since when was jumping integral to a game? Sure, I played Perfect World too, double jumping was neat. But I could've lived without it. It's not integral to the game like say @ MapleStory which had a couple of timed jumpquests (besides the entire game being modeled mostly after a 2D platformer anyway).

Pssh. Developers should concentrate on more important features that have been neglected since a freaking decade ago. Like REAL PVP, with arena tournaments, ladders, ranks, rewards, etc. REAL partying/guild/messaging systems with features you'd expect from IMs since the freaking 1990s like ignore and block (yes, many shit games don't even have these).

And what's with the dumbass static "quest X at level Y" crap? Even BBS RPGs (text games FFS!!!) have random quest generators to at least alleviate the boredom of predictable fetchquests.

Each new game is just the same old crap grindfest with just a change in UI differentiating it from the corpses of older games.

Now that version 12 is out, let's see how Flyff measures up.
 

- PvP ... you've gotta be kidding me. With the addition of the weapon/shield piercing system, Flyff is now heavily skewed in favour of those who use the Cash Shop, as well as 1-handed weapon users. Simply because if you wield a 2-h weapon, both your hands are tied... on the other hand a 1-h weapon wielder will typically have ANOTHER weapon (or a shield) in the other hand which can also be pierced, giving them TWICE the upgrading capacity. Basically the devs (Aeonsoft) screwed over half the Flyff classes while overpowering the other half, which were already over-represented in PvP in the first place. If you're looking for "balanced" PvP, forget it.

Guild sieges, war... HAW, don't make me laugh. Only the uber top guilds have enough money to compete, and you can bet all of their members will be decked up the wazoo with cash-shop stuff. If, like the majority, you don't plan on wasting thousands of real life dollars "upgrading" some pixels, you'll never be part of a siege. Best you can hope for are random guild duels with other normal players. Also, the arena is one giant gankfest where people randomly run in, stab someone, and run out or get stabbed before they can. If that kind of PvP is your idea of fun, go right ahead. On the other hand, if you're looking for PvP of substances, with ranks, ladders, tournaments etc... look elsewhere.

- Partying ... still the same "1 partner, everyone else stay out of range" crap. If you have friends, you'll only be able to party with 1 person at a time, because having more nearby will decrease your exp. Basically, Flyff forces you to choose between your friends.

- Flying ... still nothing to do. Flying mobs are a joke, flying combat is a waste of time, and 12 versions into the game, flying exp / level STILL does a big fat nothing.

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The only thing about Flyff, after playing a bunch of other MMOs, is that the grind is actually fairly fast until 2nd job (level 60). In most other games getting to 30+ already takes quite a bit of time, whereas in Flyff the levels fly by and only start slowing down around 50ish. I'm talking about time for working adults who have the odd 1-2 hours a day for gaming... not school kids who have nothing to do and can waste all day on this game.

TL;DR summary: Flyff is getting stale, and with each update is getting more geared towards spending on improving your gear through using Cash Shop items. Content-wise it ran dry a long while ago... I'd say around version 6-7.

Don't kid yourself: all the "new" updates, like pets and jewelry upgrading... they all require a heavy investment in the cash shop (i.e. protect scrolls). I've raised plenty of pets, they were all epic fail 1/1/1/1 stat pets, you're practically forced to buy the Cash Shop item scroll that allows you to reroll it's stats in order to get a decent stat pet. Piercing, upgrading... hah! If you don't use protect scrolls you're just begging to have your item destroyed. And guess what? The typical upgraded item has been measured to cost around USD$300 worth' of protect scrolls... don't believe me, read the official forums for yourselves.

Basically, if you're a freeloader gamer, don't play Flyff. You'll never be able to compete with the uber +10 equipment, heavily pierced CS hoars. And even if you're willing to burn money, at Flyff's uber epic fail success rate (it's normal to burn like 30+ attempts per ++) be prepared to spend like there's no tomorrow. In fact, the Cash Shop makes them so much more money than flat-out $15 subscription per month games do.

Crap. I was just about sold on your review, until bots were mentioned. Strange how many companies don't seem to give 2 shit's worth about their game going to hell in a handbasket by letting farmers and botters run rampant and ruin the economy.

Edit: Well, I gave it a go. Doesn't seem that bad, there's only 1 server but 9 channels, and I figure most of the crud would be on ch1 so of course I avoided that one.

Seems fairly sparsely populated (no pk/pvp?), which IMO is a good thing when you're trying out a new game. I only encountered 1 bot (could've been a reeealy antisocial person, but he would've told me to shut up or something at least), but since most people don't really talk it's kind of hard to judge.

Nobody mentioned stats are allocated automatically as you level, this may be the reason not many are playing. You can allocate your skills though... however, there are 3 skills trees for each class type (warrior, archer, mage), and most of the later skills have fairly high prerequisites on the same tree, so you'll pretty much be stuck on one skilltree unless you dilute your skills across the trees a lot (not good).

Given that I live on the other side of the world (GMT+8) I've kinda expected MMOs to be a bit laggy, but I don't see why they should since SOME games can pull it off fairly well. For example Flyff is hardly laggy at all, in fact I can play a hit-and-run AoE type there. However most other games lag like crap. I think it's mostly due to the game companies not having enough b/w.

Asda is sort-of in the middle grounds: there's lag, but it's tolerable. I won't be aoeing or hit-and-running though, unfortunately (it's bad enough to discourage that). Plus I noticed it's pretty easy to lose mobs chasing you, they return to their spawn spot after a mere couple seconds' chase.

Grind seems quite okay, still doing around 1%+ per kill at mobs my level around level 20. Killspeed isn't too fast though, actually it's pretty slow, and you'll want to haul a bunch of pots around. Natural regen while sitting down is fine early on but it's not fast enough.

There's a little skill animation lag, and you don't transition immediately from one skill to another when pressing the hotkeys, but it's bearable. Still, the overall kill time is pretty slow, plus the walkspeed could really use some increasing.

Overall not bad, I'll probably dabble in Asda Story for a while more, but it really doesn't offer anything new except for a couple of minor novelties, like the pathfinding and digging.

Apparently it's an Open Source MMO.

Contrary to the barely literate mumblings of the underaged posters if the other threads, this is actually a decent free game if you're coming from old-school MUDs.

 http://www.daimonin.com/AboutUs.html

I'm not saying it's a frackin' awesome game - what I'm saying is that the morons posting their "reviews" have no clue what they're talking about. Of course this isn't going to compare with shit like your average (and horribly mediocre) asian grindfest. If graphics is all you care about then you're in the wrong forum, gtfo.

That said, this thing is still apparently very much a work in progress. As a programmer, I'm mightily interested in it. As a gamer? Not really, I'd rather relax with something that's finished, heh.

How's the PvP like in this ROSE Online?

I played Flyff and Perfect World too. I don't consider grinding a problem, but Flyff is getting a little stale after a couple years on-and-off. I dropped PW since after level 30 global pk just means server drama all over again when random noobs gank you for no reason. That's why I liked Flyff, you could explore the world without worrying about some asstard wiping you for no reason.

And nobody really answered how grindy Rose is. I don't really care if there are quests but I don't like it if there are too many like PW, nobody wants to party you at lower levels because "F U nub dun party me im questing"... fail game.