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[Lineage 2] The Koreaning
JNighthawk
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I want to check out L2, since I've never played it or the first one. Does anyone know if there's a free trial? What's the general consensus about it? I heard the PvP was fantastic.
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True story!
List of things that are wrong
- Leveling takes a ridiculous amount of time near the higher levels. There's a higher rate server programmed into the game, but L2NA (north american) refuses to put it up. Probably not to piss of the higher levels and because it would ease up the botting possibly (how L2NA makes their money)
- The "real" PvP begins at level 60 (castle sieges). It'll probably take someone many months + many hours each day to reach that level, and to be equipped well for PvP. And for a PvP game, it's apparently pretty unbalanced too with instant win classes and gimped classes
- Half the suscribers in the game are botters that sell the currency because everything is so extremely expensive due the hardcore nature. L2NA can't ban the botters because they would ban half their suscribers and would alienate the other half of the game community that purchase the money. Expect ALL of the decent to great grinding spots to be taken by bots. You can tell who they are with names like "324jhlkdf" and the fact that they come in groups of 7, all run in perfect unison in a perfectly straight line, all attack at the same exact time, and all sit down to rest in perfect unison. The fact that they're so obvious and there all the time is proof that L2NA refuses to ban their botters
- Most people bot anyway, so you're pretty much paying monthly for a game to have a computer play it for you. To really keep up with the competition you'll need to buy currency from botters too because the economy is so screwy
- Everyone that plays botting/legit usually dual boxes a healer/buffer, which hurts group play and costs twice as much a month if you decide that you want that advantage
- The open PvP system hugely penalizes anyone that decides to PvP or decides not to, so there really isn't much PvP until you're a high level
- L2NA has been known to ban legit players. They'll occasionally go out and ban a few bots and post the story on the forums, putting up a farce that they're actually trying to ban bots. Ironically, the banned legit players were accused of botting.
- All GM reports about botting are met with automated messages. All messages/threads complaining about bots on the official forums are deleted
A lot of the high level veterans defend the game, claiming the player politics between clans and wars makes up for all the faults. It really doesn't, and honestly, EVE does all of that and handles it better and more professionally
basically what I'm saying is this game is FUBAR
Crappiest MMO i've ever played, with the exception of possible runescape.
I only played it for four months but mainly cuz I'm addicted to WoW (at least was at the time) and for other reasons that listed above.
One of the things I like about the game is it is solid and polished. Graphics, especially characters and armor are the best out there (ground textures notwithstanding). Also, the best combat animations ever. I have screenshots that look just like a movie battle from their stances (why do Western MMOs animate their characters so booringly?). Oh, and the best in-game music ever composed.
I, unlike many others, found out I really don't mind 'grindy' games. Many quests in most MMOs are just disguised grind anyway. I found that I could actually play for 20 minutes at a time better in L2 than in a questy game. In L2, I log in kill monsters for 20 minutes then log out. I got exactly the same XP per time as anyone else. Also, if I am to grind, I'll grind in L2 over any other game -- the combat is designed for long stretches of whacking on monsters and has less actions than other games; at first it seems limiting until you realize killing things for an hour is more fun when you don't have to press 20 buttons to kill a mob.
Slow leveling? Very. I don't care about reaching level cap though so this didn't bother me. I'd rather spend 6 months leveling than 2 months leveling and 4 months raiding (grinding) the same 2-3 places over and over again, actually being more repetitive than the 'grindy' game. However, if you want to reach end-game L2 is not for you. In four months of decent game play I got to lvl 41 I think. (40 is when you pick your final class, btw.)
Where does this game really shine? It shines if you're into drama and politics and player-run games. Clans and alliances form and get destroyed so fast it's crazy. Castles go down due to people backstabbing and changing sides. There's a bi-weekly contest in the game between castle owners and the rest of the world that affect the off-weeks of the game (winners get to go to prime dungeons while losers do not). However, non-castle owners (most of us) can align ourself with the castle-owning side prior to the event. As such, the castle group always wins and everyone aligned themselves to that side so everyone's happy. However, on the server I was on, one of the big castle alliances dumped their alliegence on the final day of the contest (where no one bothered doing any work for it since none was needed) and joined the non-castle group and were able to win! This meant all the big clans and their alliances could not go farm their items, mats, or XP for a week! The sky in the world turned red -- it was awesome! The drama , the clans that fell and formed, from that single event showed me what makes these type of games like crack to those that get into them.
They also added a new Fortress system this last update that are easier to take over and have some kind of fealty system to the castles. Sounds intriguing and gives another way to break down the castle-controllers.
So what were the faults? Well, one, I didn't know many people on the server although I met some really nice people there. I was on the RP server -- Lionna -- and there were a lot of neat people but I just never seemed to be able to group up enough to make long lasting friends.
My biggest issue though may sound like a contradiction but it's not. There is a severe lack of items in the game. While 99% of items are player-made (yay!) there are only two armor sets per every 10-20 levels (forget which). When you get to level 20 for instance you go buy your level 20-40 armor and then that's all you wear until level 40. Also there's one or two best weapons for every level range, too. By level 41 I was only ever in three outfits. What makes this worse is the slow leveling! Since it takes a month to get from level 20-40 if not longer, that means there's almost no variety. I like getting items and armor for my characters in MMOs. Also, armor and weapons are super duper expensive. Like I mean I had 3million by the time I stopped playing and the sword I needed for my level range is like 10million or something. It's ka-razy! (And I actually did pretty good on the market.)
So really... I'd play again in a heart beat if they had 20 times more items to wear and find. Also, a few more story quests wouldn't hurt (they do have some and some of the back story is somewhat interesting if you can find it). I'd never play the game as my main game but I found it a nice break for variety from WoW and others.
also the L2 trailers NCsoft releases are some of the best game trailers I've ever seen, I usually check back every couple of months to see if they released anything new 8-)
Hah! I do, too. The cinematics, art, and music all create for very emotional trailers. I still load them up and just watch some of the videos... it makes me want to play -- and I would, too, if I had other friends that I could grind with (and more items *grin*). I did have a small group of people I met on Lionna that we would hunt raid bosses together and it was a blast when we'd meet up.
So yes, if you really enjoy panty shots, L2 is the game for you.
I also do not see this as a selling point.
chair to Creation and then suplex the Void.
Let me try to re-word it: i find the actual combat (especially soloing) in most MMOs to be very repetitive and not exciting or strategic in any way. In group combat this changes in good MMOs. My comment was this: in WoW, for example, I will not do any kind of rep farming or any questing now that I'm 60 that requires just fighting a lot of things. I find that it's more painful because it requires a lot of buttons (but no strategy). In L2, I find fighting mobs for a period of time less painful than in other MMOs, I think because they had this designed to be that type of game. And, actually, there is strategy in the grind in L2 (not really in the combat itself). For example, if you use too many moves you'll drain yourself of power too quickly and unlike other games re-gen is slow. So if you drain yourself, it make take 3 minutes to regain your power. Instead, you find the perfect rate of mobs difficulty and special power moves to use so that you never have any downtime and do a constant flow. It becomes almost trance-like. I guess, I'd say it's less micro and more macro management.
Anyway, my comment was not to try to convince people that whacking on mobs for an hour is fun but my comment was that grinding in L2 is, at least to me, a different experience than grinding in other MMOs. Nor do I feel that what most people call 'grind' is a naughty word in and of itself.
Another thing that really clicked for me was a good post by someone who spent time in Korea. Many Koreans don't play these games at home; rather, they play them at Internet/gaming cafes. They'll go there with friends and play games for the evening or whatever. Thus, unlike for most other gamers, to Koreans it's a social event. You're playing it in the same room with ten other of your friends. They spend much of their time chatting in person or doing other things. Thus, most Korean games the actual mechanics are much simpler and mouse driven (you can play L2 with just the mouse and it's really meant to be played that way) as they're not sitting in their room by themselves staring at the screen. So the game is more of an excuse or the reason to hang out with friends but it's not the sole thing. I dunno if that's true for all/most/many Koreans but I found it an interesting example as to the differences.
(Like Diablo, you can play it while looking over your shoulder... Hmm...)
chair to Creation and then suplex the Void.