Stoffer
02-09-2004, 11:47 AM
I have one of the early betas, and played the game for quite awhile. I thought it really kicked ass, due to good pve content and completely unrestricted pvp. To be honest, the early beta was the best beta i've ever participated in, and it was more complete at that stage than some games are at release *cough*DAoC/SB*cough*.
Then I moved irl and somehow forgot all about it. Last week or so, I thought of it again and started to patch. Now it's been a few months, and i've probably patched 20 hours in all without being done =).
Anyway, what it really come down to is that i'll prolly be playing this game if I don't get into the WoW beta, and I would encourage people to check it out. Btw here is a review Bone(sinister) wrote:
You guys have heard the hype before so Ill spare you the nonsense. The game has some awesome features and some annoying ones. It has attracted around a 85% of Sinister to play with the remaining 15% holding back judgement.
First its a PVP game true and true. Every server has full unrestricted PVP, there will be no server without it. The PVP is done in such a way as random acts of killing are discouraged but not so much that you wont use it to control territories or areas. The PVP system uses a coloring schema similar to UO's, i.e. players who attack innocents turn a color that marks them as aggressive during the duration of which anyone can attack them. The successful slaughtering of an innocent hurts your Karma.. as your Karma goes backwards from 0 and with each negative point your name turns more red. Reds are not given any respite in this game; an attacker who targets a red does NOT agro to the rest of the world meaning once your red if your not careful you can slide farther down the karma path just defending yourself. If a red dies he has an increased chance of dropping gear which in L2 can be very painful. Still, there are some positivies like the time it takes to work off a kill is about 1/2 hour of experiencing or say 2-3 deaths.
Second, the game has an awesome siege / guild war system that has improved on Shadowbanes and DAOC's good ideas. Basically there are 5 castles in the world each is the ruling house of a city that is nerby. Each castle is a siegable location that can only be taken in a 2 hour window once every 2 weeks. Once taken the owning guild can set down rules for the surrounding cities, spawns, and the like. Some of the advantages of owning a keep include collecting tax from the neighbooring towns, setting KOS rules for the neighboring towns (turning off kos for reds is attractive to us), and lastly owning a keep appears to link mounts to your guild a more detailed description of the dragon riding in this game can be found at other locations like www.l2orphus.com but it looks pretty bad ass.
Lastly, the game wont be over in a week. It takes a long time to level in this game but its not one of those games that you will want to level to max first then PVP as the control zone to exp is very similar to early Rallos Zek or AC. The group dynamics are not toally fucked, meaning 3 archers or 3 necros wont be the leveling norms, instead a good group consists of a tanker, damager, and healer and that exp involves no downtime killing lots of even con mobs. Lower levels can easily exp with higher levels but in many cases its probably not efficient for them as you can exp so much faster 1-10 on your own. The game is twink friendly and passing down items/cash to your guildmates will double or triple their exp time
On my BETA scale I give this game a 8/10 with bad marks for: mouse movement (why a fps engine removes the fps is beyond me), average economic system (typical collect gear from mobs and build EVE's was much better), and pvp that is more dependant on items and levels then player skill.
-BoneDancer-SiN
Then I moved irl and somehow forgot all about it. Last week or so, I thought of it again and started to patch. Now it's been a few months, and i've probably patched 20 hours in all without being done =).
Anyway, what it really come down to is that i'll prolly be playing this game if I don't get into the WoW beta, and I would encourage people to check it out. Btw here is a review Bone(sinister) wrote:
You guys have heard the hype before so Ill spare you the nonsense. The game has some awesome features and some annoying ones. It has attracted around a 85% of Sinister to play with the remaining 15% holding back judgement.
First its a PVP game true and true. Every server has full unrestricted PVP, there will be no server without it. The PVP is done in such a way as random acts of killing are discouraged but not so much that you wont use it to control territories or areas. The PVP system uses a coloring schema similar to UO's, i.e. players who attack innocents turn a color that marks them as aggressive during the duration of which anyone can attack them. The successful slaughtering of an innocent hurts your Karma.. as your Karma goes backwards from 0 and with each negative point your name turns more red. Reds are not given any respite in this game; an attacker who targets a red does NOT agro to the rest of the world meaning once your red if your not careful you can slide farther down the karma path just defending yourself. If a red dies he has an increased chance of dropping gear which in L2 can be very painful. Still, there are some positivies like the time it takes to work off a kill is about 1/2 hour of experiencing or say 2-3 deaths.
Second, the game has an awesome siege / guild war system that has improved on Shadowbanes and DAOC's good ideas. Basically there are 5 castles in the world each is the ruling house of a city that is nerby. Each castle is a siegable location that can only be taken in a 2 hour window once every 2 weeks. Once taken the owning guild can set down rules for the surrounding cities, spawns, and the like. Some of the advantages of owning a keep include collecting tax from the neighbooring towns, setting KOS rules for the neighboring towns (turning off kos for reds is attractive to us), and lastly owning a keep appears to link mounts to your guild a more detailed description of the dragon riding in this game can be found at other locations like www.l2orphus.com but it looks pretty bad ass.
Lastly, the game wont be over in a week. It takes a long time to level in this game but its not one of those games that you will want to level to max first then PVP as the control zone to exp is very similar to early Rallos Zek or AC. The group dynamics are not toally fucked, meaning 3 archers or 3 necros wont be the leveling norms, instead a good group consists of a tanker, damager, and healer and that exp involves no downtime killing lots of even con mobs. Lower levels can easily exp with higher levels but in many cases its probably not efficient for them as you can exp so much faster 1-10 on your own. The game is twink friendly and passing down items/cash to your guildmates will double or triple their exp time
On my BETA scale I give this game a 8/10 with bad marks for: mouse movement (why a fps engine removes the fps is beyond me), average economic system (typical collect gear from mobs and build EVE's was much better), and pvp that is more dependant on items and levels then player skill.
-BoneDancer-SiN