Originally posted by Crysillion

Originally posted by Numot

Well, from the point of veiw of someone just now trying it out I have to see it is one of the better free mmorpgs I have seen. A much higher attention to detail, better storyline, and more unique mobs and boss fights than most.

Come on, it even has cut scenes, a f2p game with cut scenes.

As for costumer service, give them time to adjust to being a f2p game, for gods sake it has just barely been a month since they did this. When a p2p game goes f2p they get alot of new players, sometimes more than they were expecting. It changes how the whole system simply because you have more people. It will take time to for them to get used to this, but seeing all the patches and updates it looks like they are trying to get everything adjusted just right.

And as far as the grinding goes, crazy thing about it, most players hate the grind. Just be glad that the quest storyline is great. Hell. I don't want to lvl faster for power, I want to lvl fast to get the next part of the very detailed storyline.

Look at this way, at the moment this game is one of if not the best free mmorpg on the market, it can only get better from here and it is not going anywhere anytime soon.

And on a side note, yes, I will most likely be putting money into this game at some point because it is worth it.

For being an F2P game, yes, all things considered, it is one of the better ones. But that's not really a fair thing to say considering the game was P2P for around 7 years before making this change. It's just a case of a game being outdated and underplayed being more-or-less forced to go F2P to attract new players and thus new revenue to stay afloat. That is exactly what happened, but the game has had horrible customer support for the past 2~3 years I've heard, I was simply underlining the point that it's F2P and now that's kind of an accepted thing. Sadly that's how it works. "Hey it's free, you can't complain!".

The game has a fair amount of complexity in it's skills and politics that give it much more depth than most F2P games, again a huge plus, but also a byproduct of the game being so old.

 

The point is, on a scale of 1-10, the game falls somewhere in a 4~5 number. It's not really really bad, but it's far from great. If it was being hosted by a proper company, then I could probably easily put that up to a 8~9 because for the most part, it's not the game itself that's bad, it's the company that's running it. Yes, I said NCSoft is trying to make change in my original post and I stand by that, but I feel it's going to be a "too little, too late" ordeal. Because this is a Korean game, our NA (and EU) version is behind by about 6 months. If we have any serious bugs, we have to wait for the Korean version to fix them. This also goes for any serious imbalance issues or client bugs which L2 seems to also have a lot of since GoD (oddly, it did not have nearly as much before this patch).

I will only speak on the part about it going free to play as the rest of the post is not even worth replying too. 

When we say its the best FTP that includes other pay to play games that went free so it is fair to say its the best. Lineage 2 lasted 8 years in the west as an Asain Pay To Play and to me that will always be a success. Sure it could have done better but what game not named World Of Warcraft could not have also done better? Now I have to get back to trying to awaken my sub.

Originally posted by Crysillion

Originally posted by Numot

Well, from the point of veiw of someone just now trying it out I have to see it is one of the better free mmorpgs I have seen. A much higher attention to detail, better storyline, and more unique mobs and boss fights than most.

Come on, it even has cut scenes, a f2p game with cut scenes.

As for costumer service, give them time to adjust to being a f2p game, for gods sake it has just barely been a month since they did this. When a p2p game goes f2p they get alot of new players, sometimes more than they were expecting. It changes how the whole system simply because you have more people. It will take time to for them to get used to this, but seeing all the patches and updates it looks like they are trying to get everything adjusted just right.

And as far as the grinding goes, crazy thing about it, most players hate the grind. Just be glad that the quest storyline is great. Hell. I don't want to lvl faster for power, I want to lvl fast to get the next part of the very detailed storyline.

Look at this way, at the moment this game is one of if not the best free mmorpg on the market, it can only get better from here and it is not going anywhere anytime soon.

And on a side note, yes, I will most likely be putting money into this game at some point because it is worth it.

For being an F2P game, yes, all things considered, it is one of the better ones. But that's not really a fair thing to say considering the game was P2P for around 7 years before making this change. It's just a case of a game being outdated and underplayed being more-or-less forced to go F2P to attract new players and thus new revenue to stay afloat. That is exactly what happened, but the game has had horrible customer support for the past 2~3 years I've heard, I was simply underlining the point that it's F2P and now that's kind of an accepted thing. Sadly that's how it works. "Hey it's free, you can't complain!".

The game has a fair amount of complexity in it's skills and politics that give it much more depth than most F2P games, again a huge plus, but also a byproduct of the game being so old.

 

The point is, on a scale of 1-10, the game falls somewhere in a 4~5 number. It's not really really bad, but it's far from great. If it was being hosted by a proper company, then I could probably easily put that up to a 8~9 because for the most part, it's not the game itself that's bad, it's the company that's running it. Yes, I said NCSoft is trying to make change in my original post and I stand by that, but I feel it's going to be a "too little, too late" ordeal. Because this is a Korean game, our NA (and EU) version is behind by about 6 months. If we have any serious bugs, we have to wait for the Korean version to fix them. This also goes for any serious imbalance issues or client bugs which L2 seems to also have a lot of since GoD (oddly, it did not have nearly as much before this patch).

You make its age sound like a bad thing. Trust me, its age helps it alot. In fact most people say Linage 2 has aged much better than most games, when you consider some don't even make it 2 years, most are lucky to have 5 years. This game has 8 years under it and it is still in its prime.

Think of Lineage 2 as a fine wine, it will only get better with age.

As for the whole being forced to go f2p, maybe, but I can tell you this, Lineage 2 will make more money as f2p than it ever did as p2p. Simple fact is f2p games in most case makes more money.

And as for customer service, once again pointing to rappelz, Lineage 2 can not be as bad. In Rappelz we have people getting their accounts hacked and stuff taken. They send the email to customer with all screen shots and everything else needed inculded. They don't hear anything back for a month, sometimes 2 or 3.

As for it being a Korean game, not true what you said about bug fixes. Rappelz is a korean game as while, NA is 6 months behind on only the major updates. The NA gms are allowed to fix bugs and tweak the balence a little bit. Simply because thing happen when the code is translated from Korean to English. And being 6 months behind is not bad, because we get to see most of the bugs and how to fix them before we even get the bugs if we get them.

Why do have such a negative take on Linage 2?

Originally posted by Crysillion

Basically, I suck at writing reviews

No, you don't. I very much enjoyed your review. Thanks!

BTW does anyone want to be my mentor? :D

I was thinking of trying this game, but the bit about awakened classes sounds.... well, terrible. Can anyone bring any more information on that, because it sounds like they decided to simply homogenize the class system at high levels. Is this for balance or laziness?

Originally posted by rgb192x3

I was thinking of trying this game, but the bit about awakened classes sounds.... well, terrible. Can anyone bring any more information on that, because it sounds like they decided to simply homogenize the class system at high levels. Is this for balance or laziness?

I have not yet awakened so I can not tell you anything about that, but everyone says the real game starts at lvl 85.

However, even if you think the awakened system is a turn off you still should try it, there are so many awesome things you can do in this game. My main is lvl 55 atm and I have loved every minute of this game. And there are plenty of side quests for when you can't take anymore grinding. Like the more than meets the eye quest that I just did that allows you to transform, it is awesome.

The real game dont start at lvl 85, at lvl 85 you just enter in the last fase of the game.

Imo the real game start at lvl 41, if someone dont like after this lvl this is not the game for him.

About awekened class's, dont know nothing about, didnt get there yet.

I really like the diversity of class's bellow lvl 85......

[quote] At this point, you will find that leveling seems much slower than it was not even 5 levels ago. Instead of leveling over the course of 30 mins, you will now be asked for about 2~3 hours a level, at the 80s it will take noticably longer, usually in excess of 6~8 hours a level. That's still not that bad, if we're honest.   [/quote]

at lv 80, only 6-8 hrs a lv???  how? with mentor buff??

Lineage 2's free to play model is the one I hope most companies adopt. Say what you want about the gameplay itself (I like it), that F2P set-up doesn't lock you out of anything. Instead of me feeling like it's "Me vs them" to see how long I can go without paying money, I feel no pressure, and instead can look forward to when I feel like purchasing something to make my play a little more convenient. It's a great set-up, and I hope NC Soft is making money from it.

I like L2. Yes, the grind can be a pain at times, and yes, it suffers from some odd lag spikes here and there. Overall, though, the art design is nice, the monster-design is fantastic, and the PvP... I mean, that's awesome. Who doesn't want to raid a castle? Also, open PvP leads to some funny stories I like to tell friends. And that's where MMOs shine to me: Unscripted adventures.

If you're considering L2, try it. In the current market of Themepark MMOs, it's a nice change of pace.