Seriously I came here to find player reviews of the game, instead it's 10 pages of the same 2 people spamming. You know what, i wont even give the game a chance, just to annoy you back. Oh & BTW the game is advertised as not being another fantasy clone, but if you look at the weapon selection is spears, hammers etc.. lol common.

I must agree with the original poster. I thought the game was neat at first, having played NwN in the past. The graphics are okay & the gameplay is alright but the level design is poor. Its always the same dungeons with no variation, if they were random it would make gameplay alot funner. There are only so many times you can do butchers quest before you start to lose interest in the game...

I uninstalled it 3 times before getting to level 6, thinking that I gave up too easily. In reality I was simply reaching out, trying to tell myself this game is mundane & boring. Uninstalled, game files deleted.

Perhaps its the entire wave of Free to Play mmo's that has tired me... I feel that there is no decent f2p mmo & i've tried just about all of them.

Regards
 

I played this game for about 6 months, while i was unemployed & doing interviews last year.

The game at first sucked me in hardcore because it was so different then anything else I had played. The graphics & sound were unbelievable & fit the mood quite well. I was anxious to move up the ship ladder into something better. Frigate -> cruiser -> battle cruiser -> battleship -> t2 stuff.

Anyways, I joined a guild, participated in mining, got level 4 missions, was doing ok myself. I had a battleship with all the trimmings & what have you. It wasn’t until we got into 0.0 space that the game opened up & it started to become clear, that the game was changed forever. 0.0 space is awesome, in the sense that players can control vast areas of space, through force. It was a constant challenge to patrol borders & defend stations, go on hunts etc. Yeah the idea is fun, but let me tell you, when there is nothing to kill & your out like a dozen or more systems away from the nearest dock able station or pos, hey man your fucked. You got to stay in that group until they decide to return. If your bored & want to do something else, tough shit.. Unless you're eager to pod yourself & lose your precious implants & ship.

That's when i started to see the limitation of the game. I tried to make things efficient. Had a fully outfitted battleship in high sec for level 4 missions, another one at the pos for ratting & had cheaper ships (fitted for pvp) in 0.0 station. For a while life in 0.0 was good, but like all things, change is inevitable. People would shift over to new things, shitty players would get weeded out, alliance would fall, new ones formed, new enemies made from old friends etc...

Yeah the game is ever evolving, & it's all player driven, which is cool. A few weeks in 0.0, dying & what have you, long enough to understand how to get around, the safest routes etc. You start to figure out that nothing is permanent, especially your ship! The only way i could around was a bit a luck & a lot of hope, with the odd report here & there. about spotted reds. Unfortunately the one major complain I have & this came as a revelation. I was just thinking & it occurred to me, the cycle. THE CYCLE as I call it is the following :
1)You lose you ship in pvp
2)You mission/ rat /mine for cash to buy a new ship
3)You lose your ship in pvp
4)You mission/ rat /mine for cash to buy a new ship
This is the NEVER ENDING CYCLE

There are only 3 ways I know of to make dependable money. Sure you can pvp & sell what you find or do the inventing stuff that’s cool too, but it just lacked. After a while you get bored of the same ratting spots, the same missions, trying to hunt down exploration sites& and mining is the most BORING thing in the game. It's second to traveling around, this game if you want to get to a destination there’s no setting via star trek to warp 8 and go grab a cub of earl-grey. No! You go from a->b->c all the way to z & hope you don’t get ganked, hope that along the way your internet doesn’t give out on you & hope for the love of god that the last several hours spent farming for money isn’t going to disappear in front of your face in a blink of an eye. Its the entire back & forth thing, i wish they had a way to move around faster without it being impractical.

I even had my own POS (as in player owned station), Which is a MAJOR responsibility because if you don’t fuel the damn thing & check it daily with a cloaked transport ship or have an alt just for that , it goes offline over time. & nobody in the guild (opps! sorry CORPORATION) wanted to have that added responsibility. Sp yeah ultimately the game went from being interesting & different to being different but the same crap as other games. (If that makes any sense.) Add to it a monthly fee which is like  my internet bill  (i had the alt account too), $36 a month (hell thats HIGHER then my internet bill). it didn’t make sense to play a game that became boring.

Anyways that was my experience & I don’t play anymore. I tried a few free mmo's, but you know what, they are all the same. I think after several years with mmo's I’ve reached my limit. But hey, there are still people playing EVE so, good luck to them & to you if you still play.

Played up to level 23 at which point I started to travel to different towns.

Graphics - 7/10
Towns are average, fields are about the same, dungeons are about average too. The login screen seems to have had the most work to it, very misleading....

Gameplay - 6/10
It plays very similar to World of Warcraft, ability to jump, get rides & pay for transportation between villages. Often times you will wind up agroing things you dont want in an effort to get some distance. The item drops are frequent & have the typical variations (good, rare, unique). Health & mana bars, lots of quickbar slots to worth it. Alot of useless filler skills, will have to browse forum to plot a character path. You will find the developers were gunning for a f2p warcraft "clone" with a "gore" setting.. I found alot of the same monsters in different maps, re-colored, re-paleted, smaller or taller =/

Grind Level - 5/10
The game has the backing of Korean developers, so you should know by now how it is. The game will suck you in until about level 20ish, at which point there seems to be a lack of quests. What is available involves alot of repeated running around back & forth. At level 23, exceptional mobs were generating 0.07 xp each, could not imagine how bad it will be at 30 or 40. Experience rewards from quests often knocking you up 10% your level or more (with rare occasions 50%+). My few attempts at dungeons were a dissapointment, as the experience reward for a 4 man team was pitiful. IF you pay for the basic or premium subscriptions you get +30% or +50% increased exp, respectfully.

New features 7/10
Some nightmare creatures that appear for 3 in-game hours. Dna stuff to enhance skills, possesion beasts, gory gameplay.
Very different, but not quite enough.

Conclusion:
Another korean grindfest trying to play off WoW's susscess, pulls you in for the first day or so. With bland, boring courier quests making up the bulk of the questing system & a grind curve that would put lineage 2 to shame, its not quite enough to keep players interested for long periods of time. Can be fun with a group of friends.






 

Hello,

The first 2 days of the Trial, I found myself really submerged into the depth of the game. Just figuring out the menu system & the learning the basic mechanics. A real crack addiction, you can say. I was totaly addicted & was very impressed

By the 3rd or 4th day I joined a play corp for rookies, there was always a few people on & I got help with missions. Around this time I lost my frigate at least once a day, but that did not stop me. Eventually  I got a destroyer which is like the 2nd step up from your starting ship. Now I was in a position to help others & effectively help myself to agent running.

So for the next week I trained my skills to get a cruiser & farmed missions for cash. Before I knew it, I had all the cash I could ever want waaay before I could use the ship. Consequently, I purchased the ship & all weapons & sub systems about 4 days before skills permitting. Thats when it really started to get boring, I had zero incentive to log in. I would go about my day thinking, "Oh i should remember to log in around X:XX time so I can train the next level of skill". I had all the skills & purchases written down on a peice of paper too, like a real pro. I felt like I had a handle on the game.

With 3 days left in the trial I finally got my Cruiser III skill completed & hoped into my new Cruiser!!! But then the expansion came out & had to wait another 24 hours to play it. Oh well, no big deal right? Some things are just out of our control.

With the new expansion wierd things started to happen. I was running my first level II mission, autopiloting to a jump gate. Eventually I got to my destination & engaged the encounter, but then I started getting shot at from nobody. I checked my overview and it said "no objects". I right clicked in space & got no options. As im trying to figure all of this out, my shields are gone & my armor is getting destroyed, fairly quicky. I put the armor repairer on, to buy some time while I try to quickly figure out what the hells going on & why i cant see the enemy ships. Well at this point I was left with only 1 option, relog. It worked, no problem I came back in saw all the ships & all the planets. Luckily I didnt die and warped out immediatly. Close call, but damn I was really annoyed with that.

I finished the mission & autopiloted to the "drop off zone" which is several systems away. Unfortunatly along the way I somehow managed to get "stuck" right at the warp gate of a 0.4  security zone. Well I have no idea what to do i try different things & ask around in rookie channel. FInally I open a peition & the GM askes me to rename folders & gives me the location. Fine, no problem but when I get back in game I was still stuck. So i update the petition, & wait .. & wait & wait. Im thinking to myself, why doesnt this guy just teleport me like 1 foot away so i can get on with my day". So after 25 minutes of waiting I start getting nervous. After all im in 0.4 security space & vulnerable to any ass. The last thing I want is to loose my ship when I have zero control over the situation. & im sure filing another peition for that would be a real big waste of time.

So, as you problaby guessed, I waited a bit more, no response from mr gm. No help really from rookie channel, even after posting the question several times. Nobody in my corp chat room, either. Then I get slammed, nailed, destroyed. There goes everything, just as I had feared. But you know what, after he killed my pod I was unstuck... yeah ironic isnt it. Just as im figuring out my clone business & having to go back to my destroyer & farm another 6 mil + weapons (im really dismayed at this point) the gm gets on and I just told him the entire story. His response was exactly as i had expected, He wouldnt help me now that im unstuck.

well that ends my 14 day trial. Bottom line, I tried. I feel this game, has potential if you stick it out. Im sure the player run corporations have alot of good stuff to add. I was about to transfer over to the real corporation too. But that was really the last straw for me. I was already struggling with the idea of paying a company just so i can wait around for skills to train. The missions were boring & repeatative. Mining was really boring too. The only saving grace was the corporation & the hopes of making friends and doing things together. Perhaps some time in the future I will give it another go, but for now this game has unfortunatly, lost it's appeal.

Thanks for sharing that story, you know it's bad when the woman gives you the speach! But hey, they are right after all...

Anyways, personally I havn't played much (14 day trial) but I just made it to cruiser III & aim to get into a battleship. After that, well we will see. Im like the preist, i enjoy support roles.

I'm in the same boat as the Original Poster, but im in the 14 day trial.

The impression I get, is it's more of a checklist of which skills to train. A collection of skills to accumulate to be certified for something. To help direct new players I guess...

Anyways, hope the server comes back on soon, I just got my first cruiser 10 minutes before it went down last night ........  Bad enough to wait 4 days to train Frigate IV & Cruiser III to get nailed with an expansion update.

Im a week into the 14 day trial & have read as many reviews of the game as possible. I spent most of my time understanding the game mechanics & talking with helpful folk in the rookie channel.

I've been in lower sec space (.4 is lowest i've gone) & I usually catch a dead ship. Guess im lucky but i've yet to be attacked by another player. I've lost my frigate (tristan) several times doing hard federation navy missions. I just didnt know how to properly outfit it, not even a medium or low slot was occupied. But hey, it wasn't long before I purchased a catalyst.

Now that i have a basic understanding of the game mechanics I'll be fine. Heck in 2 days away from a Rupture. So what im trying to say is, if your smart enough to figure the game out & make logical decisions about where you go & what you do when your there, the game really isn't difficult. For those with an aggresive attitude or no patience, well good luck & good bye most probably.

My only annoyance with the game is the time it takes to learn level 4 & 5 skills. Especially when you need like 3 or 4 different ones as a pre-requisite for something else. I've had the weapons, ship & a few spare ISK long before I could step foot in it.

Good game, just dont make it your "life" like WoW or Lineage 2 or any of those "xp grind games". You will be annoyed fast. Train a skill, go to bed, work whatever.

Lets imagine for a moment that you start a new account, pick your race & class.
Now, the first thing you will notice is your map, it's HUGE! Your in one of the starter towns & you shout to say "Hello lineage2!!! Im a new player".  (insert cliche cricket sound & anime sweat drop). In other words, your already screwed.

Now lets be optimistic, say you manage to get to level 20 & complete your first class transfer. Your able to participate in the seven sign dungeouns (which is probably the fastest xp to 40).  Assuming you register on the week that allows you to enter, otherwise your screwed. Moving on, from 20 to 40 it's going to be the same thing all over again. Except this time your not alone, you've just met your first friend, MR Adena. He's got 8 party members that follow him around in an orderly fashion & for some strange reason he doesn't seem to communicate with the outside world. But hey, you may get  lucky & find a player re-rolling or just having fun with an alt.

Assuming you make it to level 40, you just finished the really long & boring quest for your 2nd class transfer. Well congradulations, pat yourself on the back you beat the odds. So your really getting into the game at this point, you have some gear , some spare adena & a rough idea of where to level. You feel like things are finally starting to pick up. Perhaps around this time you try to join a guild/clan whatever you call them.

Guilds/Clans are a mixed bag, your going to need someone in your level range (+- 10 levels) to be ON & willing to party with you. Furthurmore you WILL need buffs, because without them your screwed. You may opt to pay for a 2nd account or perhaps you would prefer to depend on guild members. Again, I would suggest NOT depending on other people because you WILL get frustrated. Ideally you want a clan that uses teamspeak or one of those online voice chatting softwares. Because you dont really make friends through chatting, it's so much better to hear the other persons voice, get an idea of what age or mindset they may have. It's also probably the only way to really bond with people in the game. People just dont pay attention to the chat window. While im on the subject of partying, the party matching window is mainly used to sell equipment (lol)

Lets say you manage to struggle your way to level 50. This is going to be your first xp wall, there is another @ 55, 60, 65, 70, 73 (big one), 74, 75. From 76 & on it gets rediculous. What this means, is your getting substantially less experience for killing the same monsters. WHich your killing over & over & over & over & over etc...

Lets assume your really hardcore & manage to get to level 76 your able to hit your 3rd & final class change quest. But guess what, your best skills are at 78 & higher. SO thats probably a good few more months of grinding. At which point your finally able to compete against other players. WHEW! Alot of work just to get somewhere decent. Forget Hero or Olympiads because they are controlled by the top clans on the servers. So are the raid bosses & so are the castles.

When the game first started it was better. Everyone was around the same level range, doing the same quests exping in the same areas. It's was so much better before they put all this content & most of it isn't used.

Im sorry if I sound kinda synical, but i've played this game for around 2 years since release & you know i get to see the worst & the best. It's just not worth the time sink & the investment. Your probably better off playing on a private server to get a taste of the classes & skills. There just isn't enough choice for online mmorpg at this time. And they are all the same shit lol