Alright, I have some impressions to share. (My level is quite low yet, but according to other people there's no end-game content yet beyond heroic versions of lower level instances.)

Right now this game has one of the weirdest combat mechanics I've ever seen. For all practical purposes it's nothing short of being broken, though it's somewhat fun... if you like Alice-in-Wonderland kind of fun.

The most important stat is Luck, because it's absolutely needed to deal any considerable damage. Without high enough Luck not only crits are rare but also your attacks/spells only deal 1/2 damage most of the time. Same goes for healing, so healers have to stack Luck too, sacrificing other stats.

Damage is totally unpredictable (at level 10 I could deal 50 to 250 damage to the same mob with the same spell). A spell that uses more mana/has longer cast time/has cooldown can therefore sometimes deal less damage than a low-cost/fast-cast/no cooldown spell. This is counter-intuitive and illogical.

For several classes even a single non-elite mob of their level poses a serious threat (especially later in game). I play a mage so I can consider myself lucky so far, but melee classes really have it tough. Some mobs can literally kill a warrior tank with a single crit because their damage output is through the roof and armor mitigation doesn't work.

About a quarter of the talents are buggy and don't work like their tooltips suggest (or don't work at all). Mobs are poorly scripted and unlinked (so you can almost always pull one mob from a group and others won't react) like they were on the early WoW free servers.

Worst of all, lag is unbearable sometimes. Like after today's patch which was mostly supposed to address lag issues.

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I sincerely hope that Astrum Nival will reconsider their plans to release this pathetic mockery of a MMO game worldwide. Suffice it to say that even Russians (who are typically less than demanding) have mixed feelings about Allods Online by now.

Well, it's still in open beta stage so things may evolve rapidly, but current situation doesn't look particularly promising.

I could add that stat/item dependency is nearly unbelievable. You need to change everything you wear every 2-3 levels or you won't stand a chance. Your stats have to be perfectly allocated or you'll have a really hard time leveling. The game may look like WoW but its character building requirements are hardcore, absurdly so in fact. You need a perfect build to feel somewhat comfortable but you can't even easily experiment/respec. Because every respec will cost you a hefty sum either in gold or in RL money.

I agree with you in a lot that you say here, I'm currently playing in the Russian open beta even though I havent got a clue about the russian language (working out the quests is a whole new misson in itself^^). But i have played enough mmorpg's in my time to wing it, and now have multiply characters my highest is ranked 11.

Sure the mobs are tough and when you level up a spell talent to the next rank or euip a replacement weapon/item ect, it doesn't feel like it is having a major impact on your damage against the mobs, and going against an elite mob solo is just suicide.

But these are factors than can easily be fixed with upcoming patches to balance out the playability so im not worried there.

The things I like about this game are too many to list but the main one being is that you have to stand still to fight! No more peeps running around you in circles and jumping up and down like a moron whilst spamming all the buttons in pvp has got to be a bonus in my book. Also the overall fluidness of the game. (apart from the lag it feels very responsive when you do get a non lag moment to yourself and thats me playing from England to Russia)

I think this is going to be my main mmorpg, hopefully they will get endgame Astral ship content correct as I can see that being a hell of a lot of fun. But as for all the minor flaws that what  patches are for.

Yes it's usually lag-free during nighttime but many people can play only during peak hours. And under high load servers perform not too well.

To say something specific about PvP I need to have a look at endgame PvP first. AFAIK right now people mostly gank lower level characters in mid-level zones. Since all servers are PvP, there's no escape. And it adds more problems with leveling.

Duels aren't implemented (at least, not yet) and Arena lacks functionality (essentially it's not even true Arena but rather FFA).

Luck is screwed up, but its not the main stat, and an unlucky crit is a good way to counter people who ignore the initiative stat. ex: with base luck (around 20) you will get lots of "unlucky crits", with 50 luck you will get no unlucky crits, and with just 65 you'll get about 80% crits. It takes quite a bit to get rid of those unlucky crits, but a litte after that, to get a damn good crit chance.

What I dont like is replayability, there are lots of quests for you to lvl questing, but next time you will be playing, you will have to do the same quests again. I'm close to lvl 20 and there is one thing I've noticed. If you see a mob that you dont have to kill for a quest - dont worry, you WILL get quest involving killing that mob, basicly, a genocide.

But what I REALLY dont like is itemisation. No, payboys dont get advantage in terms of items, but what really sux is that you have to farm rep quite a lot (it takes 20-120? minutes for max rep, but you have to do it every 5 lvls). Mobs are WTFBBQQ, some can oneshot you if you are unlucky (that goes for casters, yet warriors may have hard time with mobs too). With damn high intuition (it says 0% chance of mobs of the same lvl landing crits on you) you get critted 20% of time, if not more. If it says 30%, dont bother meleeing, you will get chaincritted most of the time.
Also, seeing the items you get for rep (and you have to if you dont want to be pwned by... trash mobs, you can still kill them with party... bt wtf), the vendor loot you get for quests (they should add option to give gold instead of loot, coz 90% of time it sux... ok 95%...), AH is pretty dead (its buggy too)

According to Astrum Nival, it's rather Precision than Luck that causes mobs to deal abnormally high damage (it makes senses, considering how they almost ignore any kind of armor). Devs are going to fix it, so leveling will probably become easier but I doubt that combat system as a whole will become any better.

Too many variables that create too much uncertainty - that's the problem. Yes, mobs may have different stats, there's nothing wrong with that. But there should be some constants that guide the player. For example crit rate should be the same vs. any mob of the same level. For caster classes, DPS should also be predictable (they're already limited by mana pool so in most cases there's no need to limit them further by resistances).

In Allods Online nothing is predictable. Sometimes it's funny, but mostly it's not. For example, I have a mage of L18. One of my spells hits for ~500 and crits for ~1k. On a 20 sec c/d it's too much, since 1k instant-kills most mobs at this level. I also have 75% crit rate and indeed crit quite often. Why am I not satisfied? Because this spell can hit for... 100. Sometimes. It would be OK if it only happened for certain types of mobs who are resistant. But it happens randomly and it can seriously screw things up. I'd prefer if it was 300-400 on hit/600-800 on crit but 95% of the time.

I wouldn't mind if fire elementals were immune to fire. Would be harder for me to fight them (since I'm a fire mage) but that would make sense. But they are not even resistant. You absolutely can't predict which kind of mobs will be resistant to something.

Not all casters have a hard time. It's quite easy to level as a mage if you have high Luck, Instinct and Initiative. In PvE you can kill anything except CC-immune bosses. (I kited and soloed 40k+ HP elite quest mobs for which other classes need a full group.) Mystics become "easymode" too when they hit mid-level.

Itemization suffers from the same too-many-variables issue I mentioned before. Quite hard to keep ALL of the stats you need at desirable level. On my server AH isn't dead but it's still not much of an option for a mid-level character because gold is limited and prices are high.

Argh, this is no good. I hope they balance this out before it comes to English.

They should, game is fun, but too buggy for an open beta. Played with my (paladin) friend today, he got eaten about 2 to 3 times by some non elite tiger. Too bad I was busy ninjaing Qitems to help him.
But, frankly speaking, I like watching people getting killed by some trash mobs, making bets with my friend if the "almost dead" guy is going to make it, or not. Where else would you see a trash mobs pwning people? THATS PRICELESS!
Other than that AO is a great game and it has a great potential and great bugs!

p.s. xenorace, I know you'll join the Emperor! We have necrons! And comissars too! Too bad they cant execute teammates, I'd love to do that sometimes.

edit: I lol'd: http://www.mmorpg.com/showFeature.cfm/feature/3679/page/1
At least we dont have THESE problems d^^b

Originally posted by Silverune

I agree with you in a lot that you say here, I'm currently playing in the Russian open beta even though I havent got a clue about the russian language (working out the quests is a whole new misson in itself^^). But i have played enough mmorpg's in my time to wing it, and now have multiply characters my highest is ranked 11.

Sure the mobs are tough and when you level up a spell talent to the next rank or euip a replacement weapon/item ect, it doesn't feel like it is having a major impact on your damage against the mobs, and going against an elite mob solo is just suicide.

But these are factors than can easily be fixed with upcoming patches to balance out the playability so im not worried there.

The things I like about this game are too many to list but the main one being is that you have to stand still to fight! No more peeps running around you in circles and jumping up and down like a moron whilst spamming all the buttons in pvp has got to be a bonus in my book. Also the overall fluidness of the game. (apart from the lag it feels very responsive when you do get a non lag moment to yourself and thats me playing from England to Russia)

 

I think this is going to be my main mmorpg, hopefully they will get endgame Astral ship content correct as I can see that being a hell of a lot of fun. But as for all the minor flaws that what  patches are for.

 

 

Why would you be going up against an elite mob solo? Elites are suppose to be killed by a group.

Elite mobs there don't differ so much from normal ones. At L24 my mage had ~4k HP. I had high Instinct score and my survivability was very nice (since incoming crits were very rare). Still, once I was one-shotted by a normal mob who critted me for 4k. Closer to L40 mobs crit for insane amounts of damage even on plate wearers.

And if, for some reason, you have low Instinct score, it'll happen to you all the time.

Is this post still current as of today, with the issues surrounding stats and mobs etc? Im spending a good chunk of my monthly download limit to try this thing out, and if its a POS, Id rather not.

 I'm wondering where exactly this "current state" information has come from, because the closed beta for the version we're getting doesn't even start for another 3 days...

2 Azureal:
Yeah, the info is still current. All recent patches were minor bugfixes at best.

2 Kordesh:
I played Russian open beta. Everything I've posted here is being widely discussed on Astrum Nival forums. Also there are other issues besides playability. For example, their online store. Of course, since the game is f2p, it's logical that they sell in-game stuff. But prices are a little beyond reasonable level. A max size bag costs $30, a single respec - $10.

Originally posted by wowfan1996

2 Azureal:
Yeah, the info is still current. All recent patches were minor bugfixes at best.

2 Kordesh:
I played Russian open beta. Everything I've posted here is being widely discussed on Astrum Nival forums. Also there are other issues besides playability. For example, their online store. Of course, since the game is f2p, it's logical that they sell in-game stuff. But prices are a little beyond reasonable level. A max size bag costs $30, a single respec - $10.

A: How long has the russian one been out? I think it's a bit hard to harp on playability based on an open beta in a completely different version. Just saying.

B:The shop prices don't phase me though as that sounds about par for the course in most of them sadly. Jade Dynasty and even WoW now charge like $10 for a freaking pet, and if you were to pay for all the bag expansions in JD you would end up paying out upwards of $50+ as well. Respec items in JD were about $10-15 as well if I'm not mistaken.  Personally, I never spend money in f2p games so I couldn't care less. Yeah, I'm "that guy" who would rather play for a month and then get bored and do something else. I can't understand how anyone justifies spending hundreds of dollars a month on that crap. I think I bought a inventory expansion once in a game I thought I was going to play for a while (for like $5) and instantly regretted it.

The f2p system is inherently corrupt, so price gouging isn't that shocking. If the company doesn't completely suck you'll be able to get along without the items, but if enough people don't start forking over expect changes to be made to "encourage" people to buy shop items if they actually want to do anything later on. Gpotato unfortunately doesn't have a great history with the way they handle cash shops and are notoriously scuzzy about it. 

Originally posted by Kordesh
How long has the russian one been out? I think it's a bit hard to harp on playability based on an open beta in a completely different version. Just saying.

It started on Oct. 1 and quite some people have reached L40 by now. Some even managed to finish the construction of their ships and confirmed that Astral is still empty.

I'm not sure what you mean by "different versions" but it's possible that international closed beta will be indeed somewhat different. You see, mobs became "hard mode" only about 3 weeks ago after a certain patch. And while developers acknowledge it as a bug, some people still speculate that it's been done on purpose (to prevent the mainstream crowd from leveling too fast and reaching end-game before some more content is added).

Originally posted by Kordesh
WoW now charge like $10 for a freaking pet

True, but pet is a vanity accessory. It has nothing to do with actual gameplay.
 

Originally posted by Kordesh
Personally, I never spend money in f2p games

Me neither. I mentioned it just because it's so typical for Russia - prices are steep while quality is low.

Originally posted by wowfan1996

 

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Originally posted by Kordesh
How long has the russian one been out? I think it's a bit hard to harp on playability based on an open beta in a completely different version. Just saying.

---

 

 
It started on Oct. 1 and quite some people have reached L40 by now. Some even managed to finish construction of their ships and confirmed that Astral is still empty.
I'm not sure what you mean by "different versions" but it's possible that international closed beta will be indeed somewhat different. You see, mobs became "hard mode" only about 3 weeks ago after a certain patch. And while developers have acknowledged it as a bug, some people still speculate that it's been done on purpose (to prevent the mainstream crowd from leveling too fast and reaching end-game before some more content is ready).

 Actually I was more referring to the idea that the russian version may have been out for some time and that it may be more polished when we get our version. However, since it's only been out for a month in Russia, thats not exactly a lot of polish time so I would imagine differences would be minor. Honestly, I think the "hard mode" suddenly getting added in would likely be less to do with trying to slow down level advancement and more to promote the sale of performance enhancing consumables as that's generally the case with such things when the game suddenly "ramps upward in difficulty" either by a certain level or via a patch in a f2p game. 

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Originally posted by Kordesh
WoW now charge like $10 for a freaking pet

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True, but pet is a vanity accessory. It has nothing to do with actual gameplay.

Granted, but $10 for a pet is still outrageous, even moreso for WoW were that content is being developed based on your monthly fee, and you're still being asked to pay for it as the only way of obtaining it. 
 

Originally posted by Kordesh
Personally, I never spend money in f2p games[/quote]

Me neither. I mentioned it just because it's so typical for Russia - prices are steep while quality is low.

Actually I've found it to be the opposite with their single player games, but it may merely extend to that and not their MMOs.

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Originally posted by Kordesh
I think the "hard mode" suddenly getting added in would likely be less to do with trying to slow down level advancement and more to promote the sale of performance enhancing consumables as that's generally the case with such things when the game suddenly "ramps upward in difficulty" either by a certain level or via a patch in a f2p game.

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Originally posted by Kordesh
Granted, but $10 for a pet is still outrageous

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Originally posted by wowfan1996

It's called "monopoly". :-) Well, seriously speaking, I agree with you. Blizzard is charging more and more for less and less - an alarming trend. But they are only able to do so because other developers fail to deliver. Lack of serious competition encourages corporate greed like nothing else.
 

 

first of all, on the $10 pet, it is a retarded vanity item that simply adds to the 800 vanity pets most people already have, so if you somehow feel like you really NEED this thing and are therefore being forced to fork over another $10, maybe you should consider the fact that blizzard has you addicted to retarded vanity pets before you start worrying about your money.

second, i totally agree that blizzard has been getting more and more money and has been producing a crappier and crappier product, but you are exactly right about it being a monopoly. blizzard doesn't owe you anything, if you dislike their greed, stop playing their game. Of course, if there are no other decent games to play, then that blame falls on all the other terrible game studios, not blizzard.

i guess the point is that blizzard has a good product, but they are greedy bitches. if nobody else is capable of making a good product, then as a customer you are going to be stuck with either a bad product or with the greedy bitches. you still vote with your dollars, it just sucks that there is nothing good on the ballot.

Originally posted by Kordesh

Originally posted by wowfan1996

2 Azureal:
Yeah, the info is still current. All recent patches were minor bugfixes at best.

2 Kordesh:
I played Russian open beta. Everything I've posted here is being widely discussed on Astrum Nival forums. Also there are other issues besides playability. For example, their online store. Of course, since the game is f2p, it's logical that they sell in-game stuff. But prices are a little beyond reasonable level. A max size bag costs $30, a single respec - $10.

A: How long has the russian one been out? I think it's a bit hard to harp on playability based on an open beta in a completely different version. Just saying.

B:The shop prices don't phase me though as that sounds about par for the course in most of them sadly. Jade Dynasty and even WoW now charge like $10 for a freaking pet, and if you were to pay for all the bag expansions in JD you would end up paying out upwards of $50+ as well. Respec items in JD were about $10-15 as well if I'm not mistaken.  Personally, I never spend money in f2p games so I couldn't care less. Yeah, I'm "that guy" who would rather play for a month and then get bored and do something else. I can't understand how anyone justifies spending hundreds of dollars a month on that crap. I think I bought a inventory expansion once in a game I thought I was going to play for a while (for like $5) and instantly regretted it.

The f2p system is inherently corrupt, so price gouging isn't that shocking. If the company doesn't completely suck you'll be able to get along without the items, but if enough people don't start forking over expect changes to be made to "encourage" people to buy shop items if they actually want to do anything later on. Gpotato unfortunately doesn't have a great history with the way they handle cash shops and are notoriously scuzzy about it. 

Jade dynasty has 3 different respec items:

Jade dynasty skills are listed in separate "pages" depending on your levels and then there is the other page sort of "talents".

1 - There's the current skill page respect which costs 10-15 $

2 - There's total respec which costs 30 $

3 - There's the "talent" respec which costs 5-10 $

So allods shop is still cheap even the 30 $ for max bag is cheap since you get it maxed in jade dynasty for example you buy an item which costs 3 $ bag one 2 $ the stash one and can upgrade them till a certain limit (10 times or so) then you need to buy an improved one which costs 5 $ for bag 4 $ for stash one (6 or more times).

Figure out the cost and tell me which is cheaper.

[The last bit was not for the person I quoted just for everyone to calculate if they wanted to.]

I agree that the game needs some work, but it is a closed beta 1, so we can hope they will recognize the problems and fix them, but I would hardly call in unplayable. I experienced little to no lag, and have not had any troubles killing things even one level above me. It looks great visually aside from a few things still written in Cyrillic. I think people should give this one a try if they got a beta key and make judgements for themselves, as I believe this review/preview was unnessacerily harsh. I was pleasently surprised by AO.

But this is my opinion and the OP is entitled to his as well.

Originally posted by splad

Originally posted by wowfan1996

It's called "monopoly". :-) Well, seriously speaking, I agree with you. Blizzard is charging more and more for less and less - an alarming trend. But they are only able to do so because other developers fail to deliver. Lack of serious competition encourages corporate greed like nothing else.
 

 

 

first of all, on the $10 pet, it is a retarded vanity item that simply adds to the 800 vanity pets most people already have, so if you somehow feel like you really NEED this thing and are therefore being forced to fork over another $10, maybe you should consider the fact that blizzard has you addicted to retarded vanity pets before you start worrying about your money.

second, i totally agree that blizzard has been getting more and more money and has been producing a crappier and crappier product, but you are exactly right about it being a monopoly. blizzard doesn't owe you anything, if you dislike their greed, stop playing their game. Of course, if there are no other decent games to play, then that blame falls on all the other terrible game studios, not blizzard.

i guess the point is that blizzard has a good product, but they are greedy bitches. if nobody else is capable of making a good product, then as a customer you are going to be stuck with either a bad product or with the greedy bitches. you still vote with your dollars, it just sucks that there is nothing good on the ballot.

Some people defend corporate greed to the grave, it's almost as if they have a stake in it .. hmmm

Originally posted by qombi

Originally posted by splad

Originally posted by wowfan1996

It's called "monopoly". :-) Well, seriously speaking, I agree with you. Blizzard is charging more and more for less and less - an alarming trend. But they are only able to do so because other developers fail to deliver. Lack of serious competition encourages corporate greed like nothing else.
 

 

 

first of all, on the $10 pet, it is a retarded vanity item that simply adds to the 800 vanity pets most people already have, so if you somehow feel like you really NEED this thing and are therefore being forced to fork over another $10, maybe you should consider the fact that blizzard has you addicted to retarded vanity pets before you start worrying about your money.

second, i totally agree that blizzard has been getting more and more money and has been producing a crappier and crappier product, but you are exactly right about it being a monopoly. blizzard doesn't owe you anything, if you dislike their greed, stop playing their game. Of course, if there are no other decent games to play, then that blame falls on all the other terrible game studios, not blizzard.

i guess the point is that blizzard has a good product, but they are greedy bitches. if nobody else is capable of making a good product, then as a customer you are going to be stuck with either a bad product or with the greedy bitches. you still vote with your dollars, it just sucks that there is nothing good on the ballot.

 

Some people defend corporate greed to the grave, it's almost as if they have a stake in it .. hmmm

Or like NCSoft, putting out a 'special' boxed version of their asian grinder months after launch, that comes with items only someone who'd been playing for awhile would want?  Yeah, two vanity pets...that's just *vile*....

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Originally posted by Archeminos
I experienced little to no lag

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Originally posted by Archeminos
and have not had any troubles killing things even one level above me

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As a mage I was reliably able to kill mobs 3 levels higher. But to keep my character effective, I had to think about my build first. Also I had to buy new gear almost every level. (And prices in AH can be quite high for L20+ gear. At least in the beginning.) It's easy to level if you do everything right. But it becomes nearly impossible to solo level if you make a mistake somewhere.

The game isn't hard, but it's also not forgiving and thus not newbie-friendly.

Well since they are limiting people to level 10 in CBT1, maybe they are going step by step to get feedback and see what needs to be fixed where. It has a lot of potential so I am going to keep an eye on this one :D

That and you can build an airship late game...an AIRSHIP!

of course its expensive and needs 5 people to fly.....but an airship!

I don't know why they capped it at L10. In Russian CBT you could reach L40 already. (And in OBT too, of course.)

They hardly have many issues with L1-10 content either. At L5-6 combat might be a bit difficult due to your crappy stater gear. But as you progress further, you can improve the situation quickly.

Currently the worst issues are:
- poor mid-level (L20-30) itemization;
- too much ganking in the starting PvP zone (around L23-27);
- lack of end-game content.

I'm pretty sure they won't be able to fix any of these problems in just two weeks.