Community

This is probably the hardest category to rate in L2. The game has WAY more than its fair share of griefers and such, which definitely brings the rating down. Add on top of that the bot users who are farming Adena to sell on EBay 24/7. They basically claim sections of the world for their farming use and PK anyone who tries to hunt there. There is a LOT of things wrong with the community for L2, but if you're persistent you can find a good group of people buried down below all the filth. This is probably the ONLY saving grace of the community, and the only reason it's not rated a 2 or 3. It took me a while actually to find some of those people, and until I did I absolutely hated the community, almost to the point that I hated playing the game. So many of the people I'd run into out in the wilderness we just bots or if there actually was someone controlling the character they were farming and more often than not IF they could speak English they wouldn't. And I can't begin to express how sick I got of hearing "YOU LEAVE NOW OR PK" or even being chased from an area by a much higher level character screaming "PK PK PK PK"... But once you do find that small group of people that you can chat with or even form a clan with then it makes the game tons more enjoyable.

Performance/Lag

Not a lot to say here, I never experienced any lag really. About the only instances of lag I ever remember seeing were when I first entered a major city it would take a couple seconds to load all the people sitting in the middle of town in Merchant Mode. I don't really have a high-end system at all if that's what you're thinking. I am currently running an AMD XP 1800+, 1GB ram and a Geforce4 Ti 4200. Not altogether a gaming powerhouse, but it handles L2 just fine. Definitely have to give them their props in this category, with all the eye-candy graphics and everything in the game, it does run amazingly smooth. Now we'll just have to see how that statement holds up when I get to partake in my first Castle Siege with like 500+ other people around me.

Customer Service

I've only had one issue that really required technical support and they responded quickly and professionally. This category would easily rate a 9 in my personal opinion if not for other issues. There have been several instances that I have reported botters and such to ingame support only to have nothing done about it. If they would take a more aggressive actions towards botters and farmers then this category would rate MUCH higher. It would also improve a lot of other things about the game such as the community and fun factor and such.

Summary

In the end Lineage 2 falls kinda in the middle of the spectrum. There are some things about the game that were just done amazingly well. Such as the graphics; in my opinion, overall L2 might very well be the most eye-pleasing game on the market today. But that is definitely due to change with some heavy contenders due for release later this year such as EQ2, WoW and Dragon Empires. The sound is also another feature that's up at the "WOW That's Amazing!" end of the spectrum. The gameplay and content also earn high marks; particularly with eleven more chronicles to be released over time to add tons more content. But unfortunately there were also a couple features which fell way down into the "What were they thinking?!?!" end of the spectrum. The economy is easily the biggest one. Another is the grind, which admittedly is partially caused by the economy. And even though it will probably anger a lot of the younger male players, I have to put the female clothing options WAY down at that end of the spectrum also. I don't play MMORPG's for the "girly-show", sorry. The lack of character customization... Wow, don't even get me started again. I just wanted to cry, after experiencing the wonders that were available in the character creation aspects of CoH and SWG; then coming to L2 and expecting so much and getting as close to nothing as humanly possible. I just can't understand why anyone would release a game with so few options in the character creation these days. So after all the extremely high Highs and devastatingly low Lows, Lineage 2 pretty much lands in the middle; not great, but also definitely not the worst game out there. As I said before, it's definitely a "Love it or Hate it" type of game, very few people will be in the middle on this one.