You're asking the advocates of Guild Wars 2 their opinion on Age of Conan, or was this question placed in the wrong part of the forums.

Originally posted by Fendel84M

Originally posted by Xasapis

That's nice publicity you generated for him right there.

Besides, do you really need TBs opinion to see what the general concensus is regarding Diablo? I think this site alone has exploded with complain threads.

So naive, the millions enjoying the game never goto a forum to bitch and moan. Thats why if you took a sample of this forum, WoW would be the least successful MMO of all time rather than the most.

I suppose for you, the world does not exist outside these forums though.

Far from it. Personally other games keep me away from Diablo right now. The thing is, for those interested in forums such as this (and is obviously not the majority that buys games in general), there are plenty of threads discussing issues, without bringing outside "evidence" about the game's problems, real or imaginary.

In any case, you fail to understand the function and necessity of these forums. These are not for people who have settled in an mmorpg and are having fun with it, but those who have moved on and are looking for something else, something different. It is obvious that the majority here probably has played WoW, but it's also obvious that are here to look for alternative to WoW mmorpg and not sit here and praise its merits. This holds true for pretty much everything in the market, it's just that the more popular mmorpgs will have the most people looking for other things to play.

Originally posted by Lobotomist

If you like Diablo clones you would probably play all of them ;)

But why settle for second best ?

Perhaps because the "original" does not live up to the expectations, while the "clones" do, plus provide even more features and a better price to entice people away from the "original".

That's nice publicity you generated for him right there.

Besides, do you really need TBs opinion to see what the general concensus is regarding Diablo? I think this site alone has exploded with complain threads.

Let me see ...

Those who pre-ordered will get a set of cosmetic skins that noone else will have (for now). Basically that's a set of skins noone will have but those who got the game early.

https://forum.tera-europe.com/showthread.php?t=73558

Then you have those skins mentioned in that page. They don't look that special compared to what is already in the game. However, there is the potential to expand it with much more items, but that would mean exclusive development for the cash shop. Too risky imo right now.

You also have NPCs in all major cities selling skins, assuming you don't like the looks of your weapon.

In any case, I'm still quite happy with the look of the gear. It might change in the future of course, but I doubt it.

This "cash shop" is the mildest thing you could find in a P2P game. It is nowhere near the ballpark of GW2 that some people mentioned, where Anet is expecting it to be a major monetisation avenue. And of course, it is very mild compared to TSW, which seems to be adopting a LOTRO style approach on cosmetic gear, only with a subscription model. In any case, it is hilarious to see people crying wolf over Tera's "shop", in comparison they should be crying gonzilla towards the other games mentioned in this thread.

Originally posted by Thorbrand

...

There´s  2 games that you make quests and have loads of fun doing them they are not boring at all.

GW2 / TSW

He nailed it!

I'm prety sure World of Darkness will obliterate GW2 and TSW in terms of quests. What did you say? WoD is still in development? So what, so are those two games you mentioned.

Originally posted by Wakygreek

...

 The cash shop is nice so far, but I do agree with you... if EME starts putting pay to win items in there I am unsubbing. Given how well they have been taking community feedback however, I do not see this happening with NA Tera. I hope they add more fluff like costumes and additional skins etc.

P.S. I would love if they sold a hearth stone of sorts that teleports you simmilar to how the safe haven scrolls works. Put it on a 15 minute CD and call it a day, I would pick that up.

For now you can use the unstuck function from the menu. It works the same as a heartstone.

The OP is a flat out lier. He relies on people not actually checking the link and take his word for it. The link he posted discredits everything he said.

Originally posted by spizz

"Lineage 2 was grindy. Farming mobs for 8 hours raised your experience by 4%. Dying cost you 2% in exp "

Omg..I would throw such a game in the garbage can with with such a gameplay. No content but long hours to level up to keep their customers probably.

Best open world PvP content I've played in any mmorpg so far. The game nowadays is a lot different than what it used to be (a lot faster to level etc, has quest when it had only one class quest etc). It is also very F2P, so you can check it out if you wish. It's old school though, so you probably won't like it.

It was not unheard of to lose an entire level or more during castle sieges. You'd still do it though, because the monetary gains for your alliance by controlling a territory's taxes was huge. Btw, you'd lose a lot less exp via PvP death than PvE. I think it was 25% compared to PvE.

Any death had the potential to make you drop one of your items. And items back then were expensive. It was not unheard of to take a month to collect materials for certain higher level equipment. So having friends that could pick them up and having a clan that could afford to replace your losses was a nice thing. You'd of course have to think as a team and contribute to the whole, so that one day one of your own items may get replaced. Also picking an item off a fallen enemy in PvP was quite the insult and the reason for endless extra PvP (or item randsoming).

Most people nowadays play for their own. These game require strong community ties, something that is rare lately.

Originally posted by dlld

Originally posted by Xasapis

Originally posted by dlld

Originally posted by Azmodai

C'mon how many games allow you to group up from level 1 to 60?

uh.. every wow clone in existence? I can't think of any besides perhaps age of conan (SP tutorial) that prevents grouping from level 1.

I think what he meant was to say that this is the most efficient and fastest way to level.

perhaps yet if i do "Lfg x" where x is anything that isn't marked with the 5 group icon there's always a whole slew of people going "you can solo that" and usually everybody almost instantly leaves the party after a bam quest.

That is the usual behaviour indeed. Still, it's a lot faster and more efficient to do pretty much everything with a full group. That of course implies a reliable group of friends that you can call to join for the whole time. Strangers usually don't group except for whatever they can't get away doing on their own.

Originally posted by dlld

Originally posted by Azmodai

C'mon how many games allow you to group up from level 1 to 60?

uh.. every wow clone in existence? I can't think of any besides perhaps age of conan (SP tutorial) that prevents grouping from level 1.

I think what he meant was to say that this is the most efficient and fastest way to level.

Well, the vendors were open because there were no level 50s to keep them open. I suppose the could have kept them shut from the start and only open them after the first election. What you need to qualify (not get voted) as vanarch is:

• Be at least level 50
• Be leader of a level three guild with at least 20 members
• Pay a candidacy fee of 3,000 gold and 100 Catharnach awards

Actually no, that's not what I'm saying. Plus you're making a gross generalisation about what Koreans or easterners in general like to play. If anything, they have more variety in their mmorpgs than our western wow clones.

From an achiever's perspective, one of the first major (emphasis on that, there are other minor goals along the way of course) goals would be to reach max level. An explorer would obviously have different major goals. A PvPer would have a similar goal to the achiever, but for a different reason. A roleplayer would have a goal that would be completely different than any of the other guys mentioned above.

For each of those players the levelling speed mean different things. For the achiever it's the goal with capital G. For the explorer it is just a means that ease the exploring of dangerous areas, desirable perhaps but not necessary. For a PvPer it is necessary because every advantage counts. A roleplayer could care less about levels and could potentially stay at level 1 for his entire journey into the game.

Now, which of these guys do you think will find the questing dull faster and which one will call it a grind, whether it is or not?

To answer my own question, most of the above would not care about the levelling speed. The achiever would probably call it a dull if there wan't enough variation to spice his routine. The PvPer would call it a grind, because it's something that he's basically doing and not enjoying, a means to a very different end.

In any case, I suppose we will keep on disagreing on the point and it won't make much difference. The thing is that for people who play exclusively for PvE, the questing in Tera badly needs some spicing up. Still, this game is a Lineage 2 derivative, which means that when you've played both games, you can see that Tera is missing something, but it's not the quests. It's the meta game of land control and PvP sieges. This game is right for PvP in so many ways, and yet, beyond grudges between guilds, there are no tie ins with the world itself. I guess I miss my times in Lineage 2 where half the server took a side with my alliance and defended our castle, the others took the other side and when the thing was complete, we were both hunting each other and denying access to whol continents.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that we focus too much on the quest system to realise that this is not the thing that is mostly missing from the game.

Originally posted by SuperXero89
...

Secondly, I don't know of anyone who's calling Tera's "leveling speed" a grind.  I think most people are simply referring to the fact that the leveling process consists of little else than slaughtering mobs over and over again, and I don't even think it's an issue of picking the fastest way to level up.  There aren't a lot of options for progression in Tera.  There's questing, straight-up mob grinding, BAM grinding, and dungeon grinding.  To my knowledge, there aren't any rewards or at least no measurable rewards for exploration, there's no battlegrounds for progression through PvP, and there's no player housing or other sandboxy features to take players' attention off leveling aside from crafting.  What exactly can players to do make progressing through Tera feel less like a grind?

And here we reached the core of the issue imo. It's not that the quest system is inherently bad. It's just that the alternative activities are either not working (Nexus, PvP battlegrounds) or can't be accessed (PvP on a PvE server). The game definitely needs more activities in what is already there. I don't think that merely more interesting quests will solve this ... void.

One last comment on activities. The dungeons are very entertaining imo (the bosses are more engaging than your regular scripted bosses of other games), but since the game features just one tank class atm, it bottlenecks the whole system in hour long waits when using the dungeon tool. More organised guilds of course have no such issues.

Originally posted by Torrmwyre

Originally posted by SuperXero89

No one is complaining about TERA having too many quests.  We're all complaining about TERA having too many quests that suck.

This.

 No game ever in existence has enough quests. However, trying to fill that gap with a bunch of bad filler copy-paste quests is definitely not the way to try and contest that idea.

This I can agree with. Although, I'd still like to differientate between what we call quest and what we call a simple task given by an NPC.

I like TSW approach on the questing. Less quests, less quests in your log, so both the quests become more important and the clues given by the quest NPCs become invaluable and something that need to be kept in mind and not forgotten.

Tera has unfortunately just a single quest, the story line one (or the one with the red exclamation marks if you like). Everything else is minor tasks unfortunately, with very few exceptions.

Originally posted by SuperXero89

Originally posted by Xasapis

You're confusing grindy with dull or boring. Objectively looking at Tera's levelling curve, it is not grindy by any definition. I can agree that people may find the quests dull and the process boring, which would eventually make the game a chore to play. Still, this does not make the game grindy.

Lineage 2 was grindy. Farming mobs for 8 hours raised your experience by 4%. Dying cost you 2% in exp. Even if you played 24/7 back then, you'd still needed at least six to eight months (including deaths from PvP and sieges). A game with no exp loss that you can level in a week if you play 24/7 is not a grind.

Whether or not a game is grindy depends on more than leveling speed.  If you're doing the same things over and over and you get bored doing it, the game becomes a grind.  Even if you enjoy it somewhat, the fact that you're doing the same repetitive tasks repeatedly could still cause the game to be considered a grind.

Was Diablo 2 a grind? Under your definition it was, since you basically run the same areas vs the same monsters again and again and again. It was quite repetitive in nature, so I suppose you could call it a grind under your definition, but it was not boring.

I don't know. Now you people start to confuse me, because people label anything they find boring as grindy.

I think it's more of a state of mind than anything else.

• What is the first primary goal of a level based mmorpg?
• To level to max.
• How do you do it?
• By doing those tasks that would optimise the experience gain, no matter how dull they are.
• Are there any tasks less boring or gameplay options that are not that dull?
• Perhaps, but if we pick those, we don't optimally level to max.
• So you're boring yourself by choosing the fastest yet potentially dullest way possible to level?
• Yes

The link below is how they describe it.

http://tera.enmasse.com/game-guide/endgame/political-system

Personal opinion about the system will come after the first voting is concluded.

You're confusing grindy with dull or boring. Objectively looking at Tera's levelling curve, it is not grindy by any definition. I can agree that people may find the quests dull and the process boring, which would eventually make the game a chore to play. Still, this does not make the game grindy.

Lineage 2 was grindy. Farming mobs for 8 hours raised your experience by 4%. Dying cost you 2% in exp. Even if you played 24/7 back then, you'd still needed at least six to eight months (including deaths from PvP and sieges). A game with no exp loss that you can level in a week if you play 24/7 is not a grind.

SuperXero89's examples are more valid in terms of variation in tasks. You just listed the main quest line of the game.

Well, GW2 hype is off the scale right now, so I guess they do understand hype.

Originally posted by gestalt11

Originally posted by Lagoz

It's a disease called GW2.

Everyone who is waiting for GW2 is dooming TSW for not being GW2.

There's plenty of great elements in the game. Read the biased preview I wrote for example 8)

Nah people been sick of questing for a while at least a year maybe 3.  GW2 Open beta just made it more pronounced.

I don't think that people are tired of questing. Give them an mmorpg without quests and I'm pretty sure that noone will touch it. What happened is that the quests have deteriorated in importance or that tasks have been wrongly elevated into quest status.So instead of having some meaningful questing and perhaps some side taks, everything became a side task. So in turn, everything lost its appeal and became a chore.

What happens with GW2 and other recent games, TSW included, is that they try to elevate questing back into their original meaninful status. Dynamic events that affect part of the world in GW2, missions that require thinking to be solved in TSW are among the things that can potentially invigorate the genre.

Quests are not dead, not in themepark games like GW2 or TSW, that's for sure.