A while ago I was looking at  a game called 9Dragons by acclaim and when I got my new video card I was going to try it, but since then Ive heard nothing but bad things about it....is it really that bad?

mostly people hate on it, and yet have never tried it...

I know I never will try it, I hate these kind of asian grindfest games... but I wont judge it, it may actually be good.

So what people say sometimes doesn't matter, one mans trash is another mans treasure

It's a fun game, you have nothing to lose except your time.  Try it make your own opinion.

Like most asian mmorpgs the first 20 levels are easy.  Then you hit the grind wall and everything slows to a crawl.

No, it's not bad at all.  It has great fighting animation and authentic oriental martial art flavor.

But imo there are two serious flaws in it:

1)  Grinding is made worse by the fact that dev. are VERY VERY slow to add in new content.  Instead they increase the xp required to level to delay people's exit from the game for lack of new maps/skills.  Grinding is the reason most upper level players quit.

2)  Skills: all skills got unique animations, but much of that great work goes to waste.  Because you need to grind training your skills, so naturally ppl will stick to the most powerful ones.  In the end, same skills get used over and over with same animation ----> boring.

There are many other small flaws like class balance issues, and lacking quests and poor quest rewards etc.   But those are the two that made me quit playing.

I didn't like how vagabonds get treated not just by the developers for how they designed exp gain, but also by the players.  Its really hard to get into a party when you are using a perma-vagabond.

Also like others said.  Kick ass fighting animations, just like Fung Wan Online.  However, just like fungwan the lack of updates and contents makes it suck.

Not a bad game just very hard to lvl at a certain point and yeah it does become a grind fest after that.. But the plot is amazing and the graphics are very smooth (unlike 2moons which people somehow think it looks better ...BULLSHIT) The players also seem to be a lot more helpful and kind then in 2moons... Give it a try, you wont be disappointed..  

My objective review:

Well this game is one of those asian grind-a-thon game. But this game isn't really that bad, what it has of is plenty of atmosphere (specifically that of ancient chinese wu-shu world). However if you're gonna talk specifically about gameplay the game is your typical "click to move" asian grind fest. It is fun for the first 50 levels then it becomes simply rediculous as the amount of grinding you need to level up past Five Dragons level (lvl 60) is simply rediculous and get even more grindy (imagine getting 0.02% xp per kill and gets worse) but that's understandable for a level based advancement system. As for skill, it uses a point system that levels up the more you use the skill kinda like UO's system, that's fine and all except that the major disappointment here is that 9 out of 10 of your attack skills are worthless (most people simply take the first skill and level it to max then get the last skill of each category type you'll learn at around level 70 and max it -- there's simply no point in taking all the other attack skill), simply put an amazingly broken skill system.

Each of the clans has 4 classes altho they are named differently and "seem" to have different fighting styles but that's just an illusion, the skill set are all the same but with different graphics/names. A Wu-tang "white tiger" (hybrid class) is not much different from a Beggar's sect hybrid class. The most popular clans are of course "Wu-Tang" and "Heavenly Demon" this creates a disproportion in regards to player economy. See some skills like "light foot" that allows you speed travel are restricted to specific clan specific spell scrolls (ie. Wu-Tang members can only use Wu-Tang light foot scrolls/books). The books/scrolls are very rare random drop from monsters that you defeat. This creates a disproportionate demand and high price for specific clan members to pay.

The 4 classes are of course standard of most RPGs you get the warrior/fighter class, the mage class, the hybrid (melee/mage/hybrid) class and the buffer/priest class. The most popular ones are the mage and hybrid class and the least popular are the warrior and buffer/priest class. The reason is while warriors can solo on their own while in the early levels, once they reach their mid-high level they find it harder and harder to solo as mobs tend to hit harder and harder and the warrior/fighter simply cannot stand up to prolonged fights. Hybrid class tends to have the easiest time soloing (even soloing bosses which nobody else can do) due to their extremely good ability to both heal themselves and fight. This creates a disproportionately high number of Hybrid class and shows that the class system is "unbalanced".

One last issue that broke the back is that Acclaim seems to have no interest / don't care / can't do anything about balancing the game. When pressed for answers it seems all they can do is say that their hands are tied by the Korean developers and they can't do anything about it. Such passing the blame is simply sad. If you're gonna publish a game then at least have some form of creative control over your product. Note that the game hasn't been updated with new content for the past 6-8 months and it only recently (December 2007) has a patch been released to fix bugs and a little content update. A lot of players who "used" to love this game has left and hasn't looked back.

9dragons is the junk its mad fun and creative 

but yeah it did get boring after a while

I played it for a while has pretty good graphics, special effects, and over all is a great mmorpg

its not that bad, its worse.

The only thing missing is apet system but still is a great game

The skill system is great too