f13.net

Website (http://en.allods.gpotato.eu/ad/)

Allods Online Trailer (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJDueIirkP8)

What looks like PvP action. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIu8aU081tw)

Playable race from Allods Online. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_Fxkj0If5s)

Zones and architecture (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrfZ9pEILws)

If nothing else I love the Nival guys for Silent Storm, although I can't see any trace of it in those PoS videos. They are premium persons (although they are not Ukrainian, and this is an obscure reference anyway).

Cue the "In Russian MMO noun verbs you" jokes..?

There's also a gameplay video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dvbSdUAId8) out there, part of a longer interview.

edit: Russian home page (http://www.allods.ru/) and fan page it seems (http://www.allods.net/) with more details about the game. And holy shit, looks there's Politruk (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_commissar) class  :awesome_for_real:

Doesn't look terribly impressive.

Apparently, you can build, and fight on ships. The world is also open PvP, and i like the little guys:

(http://www.allods.net/images/ao/screens/AllodsOnline_igromir08_29.jpg)  (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7QYN4M3r_k&feature=related)

Apparently, that is one player.

It seems to follow WoW really close with aesthetics and such, but the world is more like 18th century Russia with orcs. And zombie androids. And NSFW bloodelves (http://www.allods.ru/media/images/pages/elf.jpg). But combination of free to play and the steampunk version of Russian empire has decent appeal to it.

Try not to catch herpes too! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTpS_pii73E) (<-- NSFW, game related, MOB)

Hehe this game might crush wow......... :drill:



Of course Im joking.

Russian hackers stole the WoW engine?

No. This is the largest budget title for a Russian game. At 12 million.

Watching gameplay video, it's got some of the same animations as WoW. In fact, BE caster running even has the same weird sideways arm flail spasm. It is either a dedicated 'homage' or they lifted a bunch of stuff.
12million what? Dollars to the hackers? Rubles? Moon money units?

12 million dollars for development.

So they've, again, split the races into Good and Bad and thus Pretty and Ugly, respectively. Empire has the Necrons, industrial-looking humans and orcs. League (of what I can't parse) has the fluffy gremlins, classic, noble humans and evil elves.

I thought they would have tried to mix them up after seeing how this method has affected previous titles. Oh well.

Keep on mind this setup is basically like launching game in the US with factions that go...

side A: the North, robot zombies, orcs
side B: the South, blood elves, mini furries

i.e. both sides have actually some significant appeal there, imo.

Side A lacks both pretty and cute as far as I can see. Cybergawkers and furries far outnumber the people who think robot zombies are cool or orcs (one of the least played races in WoW?) to be something new and interesting. You can always have more T&A, though. Just look at what the introduction of Blood Elves did to the Horde population.

Did you click the little guy in my post up there? It leads to a video showing some of the armors he can get.

I think you can look at it this way, but on the other hand their main faction is equivalent of EVE Caldari combined with Imperial Russia (and Rogues) -- it can be argued you need to put the elves in the other camp just to balance it out, because otherwise it's like League of Extraordinary Gentlemen vs Treehuggers of Bumfuck, Backwater.

Plus, not sure how many elf lovers will stomach playing as Liberace.

Is Legolas gonna have to choke a bitch?  :ye_gods:

 :awesome_for_real:

Shit, point taken; i did overlook that particular angle.  :ye_gods:

I don't my the aesthetic, I find that style somewhat charming and not too harsh on the eyes.  What I meant was that from looking at the website, the game doesn't SEEM to offer much in the way of mechanics that I'm really interested in.   I might give it a go just for the novelty value, but I don't it has any staying power.

Edit: To be clear, I speak Russian.

After this (http://www.allods.ru/media/video/hi/Gibberlings.avi), I'm sold on the little furry race.

A 20 second clip of a few of their idle animations?

For people that are interested:  If you go to their forums and sign up for an account (the fields are relatively self explanatory if you don't understand, I will help you out, or just use some sort of online translator, it'll give you a good enough idea), then you'll get an e-mail to confirm you account.  After that there is a link from the main page in the upper right to sign up for the beta test (with slightly more complicated fields, but you'll understand most of it).  It won't get you right in, but it will put you on the list.

The first was the attack animation, which was awesome. I like the idea they're going with. Sorry, next time I'll be sure to find a 30 minute clip.

I'm so bored I signed up. The russians ask for weird info.

They even copied WoW's shoulderpad fetish? Very odd.

If you squint, that looks so much like WoW it isn't funny.

Props on the dual spear fighting though.

So, uh, some of the default orc options in the character creator are interesting.

Massively just put out a preview video.  Doesn't really look that bad honestly.

http://www.massively.com/2009/11/13/first-impressions-allods-online

I was wondering how long it'd be before Hitlorc showed up here. :awesome_for_real:

I played this yesterday!

That is all.

Did you play as Hitler Orc?

How many gpotatoes does one of those NSFW elves cost?

So my question is, just how Spelljammery is it?

I have an ability on my Avenger (Paladin) called Righteous Prayer (Judgement) that and stamps the target with Mark of the Pariah (Judgement of X).   :grin:

Ha!  Der Furorc is pretty funny, especially if you think about just how utterly the Russians despise the man. 

Checking out their (russian) web site tickled my funnybone as I slowly picked out a few words I could understand by translating each letter from cyrrilic to latin and finding stuff I recognized like "skreenshotee", "Status Serverov", "video", "consept art", "forum", "media", and "orkee". 

I just got tickled by it, but not in a critical or snobbish way.  I'm well aware that my native language is a mishmash of borrowed (or stolen!) words and phrases often misused and usually mispronounced tacked on to the skeletal remains of an archaic language used by an very minor ancient tribe that no longer even exists as a recognizable lineage.

It's Russian. It'll work well enough, but 47 men died in it's making and it might give you radiation poisoning.

But is it gamma radiation?  Because the world clearly needs more Hulk and less Hitlorc.

The beta forums say I can "spread the word!" about this game.  Anyway, I got access tonight.  Downloading right now.  Pretty nifty, downloading at 1.5 MB/s

Have fun?

I'm a glass half full kinda guy.

The game is well made from a graphics,  animations and voice overs.  Classes are kinda cool along with the races.  You get a warhammery feeling from them.

The bad: the ui is fine but unscalable.  I wish I could do more with it.  The floating combat text is crap.  The grind is there early.  Combat is easily twice as long as any other mmo at that early level.

Took me 1 hour to hit level 5 or so.

1 hour to 5 isn't bad. WoW for me is generally 1 hour to 6, 3 hours to 10, 15-20 hours to 20 (depending on race/class). And that's solo and knowing exactly what I need to and where to go to do it.

I'm looking forward to Allods. It might replace WoW for me if it's well done.

The SI-FI undead slant really interests me. So do the spell jammer aspects.

Yeah the Arisen (I think that's them) look awesome in the character creation screen dressed up in what I assume is "high level" gear.

I'm going to play around with the game some more last night since the Dwarf Army part of Dragon Age is irritating me right now.

This is pretty much how I feel.  Mobs take seemingly forever to kill, but yield a decent amount of XP.  The UI could use another pass. 

Also, you can see the items that will be on the store, even though you cannot buy anything yet.  The usual.  Various potions and bag space.

Well, based on the one day I played:  Most things look like WoW, although the character models aren't all that similar and it feels like WoW, except for the fact that they threw in Asian grind.  I didn't think the game was good at all.  Mind you, I only played for a few hours.  I had to turn off chat because it was horrific.  The community is very much like WoW except maybe ten years younger.  Every single person I heard speak was an idiot.  I found it to be uninspired and mundane.  Like Pennsylvania.

Yeah the grind is bad, but I was glancing through the forums and I found that quest xp is what drives the game, not mob xp.  Couple that with the fact it takes an hour of pressing one button to kill a mob makes it feel like a grind.

If you fix a player's damage, or mob's hps, and you can kill at 2x or 3x faster, it would be fine.  I should not have to cast 10-12 spells to kill a level 5 mob.

I played a few classes until 5, the Healer had the highest dps.  :/

Hmm...I'm from Pennsylvania. I'll probably love it.

I'm surrounded by the A-mish!  Where ever I go!   :ye_gods:

If you want a key:
http://www.globalmmo.com/promotions/contest/37-allods-online-closed-beta-key-giveaway-north-america

That's not a bad thing. You're just not hanging around with the right ones. All the amish kids I know are party animals and they all have iPods. I don't even have an iPod. Sometimes they let me listen to their iPods.

Seriously though, if you are in SE Pa. and in the vicinity of Lancaster or Berks County, I can feel your pain. I'm not too much of a fan of that area either.  Middle to Southern Chester County is a lot better. Of course at that point you're trading Amish for Catholics and Rednecks and Catholic Rednecks.

If you're anywhere within 20 miles of Philadelphia, I feel your pain.  It's a cesspit especially with Camden across the river.

Well, got my Allods key but damned if I can play. I've installed and patched twice and both times it says /bin/launcher.exe is corrupted. Reinstall the game Comrade. I've tried a couple of solutions from the net but no dice (it was like 1:30am at that point so I didn't do any real hard investigation). Anyone else hit that brick wall?

You're not missing much though.  I played for a few hours the last two nights.  I can't be assed to get passed the first 5 levels.  The grind is terrible.

You need around 8000 xp to go from 5 to 6.  Mobs are giving 20-30xp and take 30-60 seconds to kill spamming 1 or 2 buttons (and spamming them fast with like a .5 second global cooldown if they're instant).  Then you finish the tediously long kill 5 mobs quest and you only get 150 xp for the turnin.

:/

Only way to get you to pay for the XP potion.

Got it working this morning. Not too bad of a game. It does feel a bit grindy compared to WoW but I think my only real gripes are the lack of mouse Y-inversion and the feeble combat sounds.

I've created three accounts with three different keys now.

Each time the account is created normally and it accepts the key. Then the game bounces my account details when I try to log in

Do I have to type in Russian, or what?

Keep in mind, this game will be selling XP potions I do believe.

All the FTP games do though, that's not different.  Take a look at Runes of Magic; the leveling curve in that game was pretty close to WOW.  This game is pretty close to everquest.

To  be fair, it does announce to you after every kill how much more exp you need to get to the next level. Yeah, it seems slow but it's also rewarding me faster in at least one respect. In WoW, you have to get to level 10 to get a pet. In Allods, it's level 5. And there's no quest to run, just bam, 5, here's your pet spell (we'll even put it in the spell bar for you) and away you go. Also, there doesn't seem to be any down time. I have yet to rest to replenish my mana. I hardly even dent it. I may need to rest now and then to get health back if the pet can't keep the aggro but even then, I can use the Vampire spell on the next mob to get my health back up. So far, I'm liking this game. Maybe it is because I'm from Pennsylvania....

I like the game its fun, it's just the time to level is awful.

Oh, I only brought up the potions as they may want you to invest earlier in this title. Also, this is beta turning isn't it? and the beta is capped at level 10. What is the max level? Does anyone even know? Must all games have the same tempo and level range as Wow?

Level 40 is the cap.  Beta cap is 10.  I've also heard the game is out in full or it's in full beta in Russia.

You say tempo and level range being close to WOW is a bad thing?  You want long level curves in a DIKU game?

I just don't feel they have to all be the same, I also didn't say it was a bad or good thing.

Why should they not be the same?  What's the benefit for having longer than needed leveling curves?

Some people like leveling content? There's also the question of how fast you need to get people into whatever endgame you have planned. In a game with no real endgame the leveling process might as well take longer, since that's the whole reason you'd be playing the game at all.

Well if you have the content, that's fine.  But content is not "Kill 10 Rats".  There is a time limit between dinggrats or power boosts a player is willing to wait.  It's a lot shorter in the beginning.

Either enemies need not take forever to kill, or the XP needs to get bumped up.

Grindtastic!  You can almost taste the XP potions.

I know leveling on a Paladin was painful, but I hear other classes are much quicker. Namely Scouts and Mages.

The only class I didn't play to level 5 was a warrior, but Paladins were painful.  Priests were half as painful.  Summoners, mages, shaman, and scouts were pretty fast.

Apparently you get rest bonus exp from grouping?  Also mob xp isn't split when grouped though I havn't tried it, but mob xp is so small anyway.

I like the art style on this, especially those Necrons Techno-Undeads. Does anyone know of a site that still has beta keys? All the ones that I tried to google were from a couple weeks ago.

http://www.onrpg.com/MMO/event/Allods-Closed-Beta-Key-Give-Away-325

However CB1 is closed I think, and CB2 starts next Tuesday.

Thanks much, managed to get one!  :-)

There are thousands of these keys on MMORPG.com right now. 

Are any of them fun?

(http://www.democraticwarrior.com/forum/images/smilies/156016.gif)

Does this answer your question?

(http://russia.foreignpolicyblogs.com/files/2009/01/happy-xmas.jpg)

CB2 Patch Notes: http://allods-forum.gpotato.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1600


I'll give it a shot later tonight I think.  It's a fun game for being free.

I played some with the char creation tonight, and it sure looked pretty for a f2p game. Didn't make it very far in the game because I was so fascinated that I could create characters that looked very much like Hitler, Stalin, Lenin and various other personalities of the era! If they had glasses I would have made a Trotsky guy too! Then, upon settling on Lenin as my main, I started the tutorial and the newbie clothes looked like a sailor uniform straight out of "Battleship Potemkin", I swear.

Thus fascinated by the various opportunities that open up for some badass arrpee, I sadly had to stop and go to bed.

Thank the baby Jesus. I may actually log in again.

I remember getting flamed relentlessly for saying that it was too grindy in zone chat.

OMFG THAT'S WHAT MAKES IT FUN, FAGGORT. Etc.

I gotta say, I really like the overall atmosphere and tone of the game. It's just different enough without being puke inducing like most of the f2p games. It's got just the right mix of fantasy and sci-fi that it 'feels' new. Yes, it's another WoW clone under the hood but it's a good one.

Installed last night.

Unfortunately for Allods, they opened beta the same day as Mirkwood dropped.

I dig Spelljammer, but there's a Shire to Scour.

Okay, so... on playing a Paladin:

Don't.

Ever wanted to whack-a-mole random cooldowns that all do the same thing constantly in an MMO?

Ever wanted to be useless and do about 1/4 the DPS of the next most powerful class?

Ever wanted to play a melee class that had no autoattack, just a heroic-strike style "Basic Attack" that you need to constantly queue up every two seconds?

If you answer yes to all of the above, the Allods Paladin class is for you.

That "no auto-attack" thingie might be a lot more common than we first assume. At least my caster guys don't have one either.

Yeah, but there essentially is an autoattack I need to be doing. It's just manual. And, like all of my attacks, has a 2 yard range.

That was the first class I played.

On the plus side, I just discovered Fatigue XP.

Ding ding, two levels.

Yep, no auto attack on Summoners either. The nice thing is though, that you can cue up an attack out of combat (or at least at the very end of combat) and instant cast for the nect mob.

And lol at the underwear. One race gets sports bras and the elves get the Victoria's Secret collection. The undead get crazy sci-fi rubber looking bikini stuff. Found that via the Equip All/Remove All button at character creation.

Did you find out how to wand stuff? I keep getting better wands with higher DPS, but I have no "wand shoot" skill in my spellbook, so all I do is poke stuff with my dagger when OOM.

Fatigue seems like an interesting idea, where do you trade that in? The innkeeper?

Yes the innkeeper.


This game makes you press a lot of button.  I played a scout class and literally just rolled my fingers over the 1 through 3 key in combat.  It seemed to work.

I've heard this game uses Starforce, is Starforce really as bad as I hear it is?

Swhat?

I hadn't heard that. Who the fuck puts Starforce in a server-based game?

If its true, this goes off my machine tonight.

http://www.star-force.com/press_room/index.php?news=2387

 :oh_i_see:


This actually looked somewhat interesting for a F2P game. A shame.

Keep in mind that's for the russian version of the game and is their FrontLine product not Starforce itself.  Without digging into it more, I don't know if it's as bad as starforce or not.  It also may or may not be on Gpotato's version of the game.

It's this one, and it still sounds pretty bad:  http://www.star-force.com/solutions/products/fl_mmog/ (http://www.star-force.com/solutions/products/fl_mmog/)

I just uninstalled and ran the StarForce Removal Tool (http://www.onlinesecurity-on.com/protect.phtml?c=55).

Apparently, it found nothing to remove. So there's that.

StarForce is Evil Incarnate because it injects itself into the kernel and goes wild with device drivers, APIs and whatnot. It's basically a faulty anti-virus software where the virus is you. I'm guessing FrontLine is more like the anti-cheat software WoW runs, Warden, or Valve Anti-Cheat, or PunkBuster or some other external library implemented for process monitoring. It is not necessarily AS evil as StarForce itself. Probably still evil, though.

So.....



Is it fun? Is it solidly made? Does it have good direction in the form of help and what not?

I would say it's fun. It's not as fun or engaging as WoW but I don't think it's horrible. I will say my personal preference is for the Empire (Allod's Horde) as the setting and feel for the 'good guys' is less interesting and seems to be very average fantasy fare. The Empire has a neat mashup of high fantasy and sci-fi at least in the opening area.

As for help, if you know WoW, you'll know this. It's pretty intuitive. 

It's probably going to be the best f2p game out there when it officially releases.

It's a poor man's WoW.

Interesting, as it seems to have more things that interest me.

Anyone know where to get a key?

To my knowledge the current phase of beta ends on the 15th. Unless you know someone willing to trade I'd say you're out of luck.

I had an email saying it was extended until the 21st.  I only played a few times.  I didn't think it was very good.  Maybe it's better now. 

2000 more keys available from Massively.

http://www.omgponies.info/massivelyCodes/index.cfm?fuseaction=home.getCode&codeInfoKey=31

Of course, it probably still has Starforce. (If anyone discovers the NA client doesn't have Internet Herpes, let me know. I wanted to explore it more.)

Did they decorate it for Xmas?  I might look at it again if they did.  As little as I might pay attention to holidays, I love them in games.

I think we decided that it didn't have StarForce specifically (I ran the official removal tool and got a message telling me it wasn't there), but may very well have something called FrontLine from the same company.

Honestly? I played to level 16 so it must be kind of pretty okay. Mainly, there's a lot of quests to keep you going... but they're all Kill Ten Squirrels (you get squirrels in this game instead of rats). But (in my opinion), you're not really missing anything massive.

I feel about the same as Azaroth.  It's okay.  Kind of bland, I thought, but not terrible. 

Thanks for the link.

Apparently it runs FrontLine, but I can't find anywhere that it's like Starforce, which often fucked with other games you had.

Haven't played much due to lack of time, sadly. But I haven't found StarForce and it hasn't fucked up any game I have installed for me - and I have lots of them installed currently. I also have Daemon Tools, which isn't impacted in any visible way either.

The only bug I keep running into is when the game does a major update and something fubars the launcher. The workaround is to rename the launcher (add a 0 or anything to the end of the name) and run it again. It then doesn't show any buttons or controls until it completely patches (which is kind of a mini game in and of itself - 'In Soviet Russia, Game Plays You!').

CB2 is extended until the 21st.

I am disinclined to give them the benefit of the doubt regards their new product.

I know, I agree. I've uninstalled and reformatted and won't be heading back to Allods any time soon.

I know I should be more vigilant about programs that I've paid for, too, but I am very, very suspicious of any "free to play" software. 

Heh, isn't that overreacting, just a bit?  :awesome_for_real:

After one of them, Zodiac Online, to be precise, snuck a trojan in, I'm gonna go with 'no'.

Edit: Speeling

No. Don't sneak shit onto my computer.

Besides, what's overreacting? Uninstalling, reformatting or not going back?

I don't think the first or the last are anything but a personal choice. Reformatting is something I've done regularly for years, and I have everything set up for it to be a quick and painless process. It's the best antivirus you can have, and I've experienced enough e-stalkers to really want the best.

Reformatting was what I meant. Unless it is a root-level trojan that is somehow either virtualizing your OS or injecting at kernel level, anything can be removed. And StarForce apparently can be removed easily with the removal tool.

I do agree their (StarForce) policy is totally fucked up, to say the least. But technically, this thing is apparently merely a set of drivers, albeit running with ring 0-privileges, but it is in no way different from many other drivers I'm installing regularly. And I can just delete it.

I imagine it's no different than GameGuard.

What is bad about the programs you guys are speaking about, what side effects do they cause?

Did an icicle fall and knock you out?  How you be alive on the internet reading F13 and not have heard about them?  (http://www.mymerrychristmas.com/forum/images/smilies/shocked.gif)

Well, bearing in mind that it doesn't actually have Starforce, the net effect seems to be people nerdraging over some different piece of software which nobody knows the side-effects for.

They are generally anti-cheating / anti-hack programs that are potentially rumoured to do bad things to your PC (and some may have). A lot of complaints have occurred because they are often hidden during an install, might impact on other programs and some have been notoriously difficult to remove. Their overall effectiveness is also in question as hackers develop workarounds for them.

So, uh, CBT3 started. Is this still just nice art on a terrible grindy game?

I don't think it was terribly grindy.  Just combat was very slow.

Keen (http://"http://www.keenandgraev.com") has been blogging about this a lot lately.  I didn't think of posting it here until this thread popped up today, but he seems to play it fairly frequently and has given some more updates, especially recently, on open world PvP and some of the mid-higher level stuff.

Gosh, thats sounds a like a good bit of fun (http://www.keenandgraev.com/?cat=219).... I'm glad I have a life time to lotro, and this game will be free :)

Astral boat combat and PvP is  :drill: .

Yeah - not gonna lie, astral ship combat sounds pretty cool. We'll see if it is actually awesome or not.

Played this over the weekend, (There was no NDA in signing up) i found it rather cool, the art is top notch and the world rather compelling. It did however seem to contain a GREAT deal of kill X quests. But i did enjoy the gibberling warrior I made.

It is missing a great deal of features that some of us may take for granted, no item linking, no dressing room, and only two options for loot distribution (Roll, or free for all) and for some one like me who is coming from LOTRO, its hard to go back to seeing your appearance change EVERY time you get new gear (AKA, no cosmetic system) and having no control over look, or color including the ability to hide parts.

The combat was rather solid (I got up to level 8) and I do feel what others are talking about in regards to length of time to kill A mob.

However, the astral premises I think is the most compelling part for me, and I can't see this game as being anything other than a success when it finally launches. It has a well fleshed out world and lore, incredible visuals, great spelljammer/steam punk/fantasy feel and the items in the cash shop are able to be gained in game, but look to definitely be purchased for sake of convenience by most. Oh boy do they seem very primed to sell you bag space and storage. They seemed reasonably priced as well, if I go by the idea that one crystal is worth one dollar, it makes some of the items offered about 1 - 10$.

There are many translation errors and very funny item names due to miss orders of the adjective/verb/noun in item titles. That, and I really hope there is more to questing than kill X, as i think.... I have only done a few quests that were not kill X. PvP apparently is a major component of this game at around level 20-30 (?), combined with the guild, and personal astral ships...... This could be highly interesting.

Did I mention the artwork is awesome? In some ways, I can't believe this is a F2P game, it certainly does not "Smell" like one.


EDIT: Special note to PvP players, There is NO mini-map!  :ye_gods:  :grin:

EDIT2:Chicken helms! (http://www.keenandgraev.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/keenlvl25.png)

I died for the first time when I was playing over the weekend, there was some level death aggro magic elemental in one of the areas who I got a little too close to.

I could not help but laugh out loud when I was thrown into purgatory as a death penalty. You're standing in a great hall, and there is nothing but blackness around you, but there is a giant winged angel with a giant sword standing in front of the door leading back to the world, and there are a bunch of NPCs just hanging out with you. I was only in there for 15 seconds, being level 6, but I can only imagine that time increasing as you level up. It gives you incentive to buy the 'drops of myrrh' or whatever to reduce the time spent in purgatory.

I also think this has a lot of potential. It is somehow like a WoW clone with a different but cool art style, a few fresh ideas and done right, and you play for free.

The biggest downside is the pacing which somehow seems too slow. And the facerolling combat. I just pushed whatever button seemed to light up, didn't seem to make any difference other than some opener skills. But I only played to 7-8 on 3 classes (paladin, psionicist and necro), so don't know if it gets more complex later on.

Did anyone make it to ship/space combat there? That is the biggest thing that sets it apart from WoW and probably one of the selling points for MMO veterans.

I never made it passed level 6.  Combat took to long and it was spammy as fuck.

The game is SO close to being decent, it's that much more frustrating. The time to level seems notably high at lower levels, the lack of player damage at lower levels seems totally hit or miss (my bow hit for 89 on this creature, and 7 on this creature of the same kind?) - I want to like it, but it seems dead set on making me dislike it just enough to not want to play it.

My thoughts exactly.

Translated by bot from the Russian site. (http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=ru&tl=en&u=http://www.allods.ru)

TL;DR

* Six player crews
* Mode of transport between the Allods
* Large amount of storage
* Many stations from guns to steering to navigator to crows nest
* One player is the captain
* PvE and PvP by ship, including raids and fleet battles
* Trophy room in your ship, medical and repair bay.
* Some kind of goblin workers you can have repair things
* Ship can be destroyed completely.
* PvP mean other players can loot any chests, or trophies from your downed ship.
* Combat seems to be able to include naval and boarding combat (ground)
* Systems power management and overloading..

Awesome set of videos and descriptions from the Russian version. (http://allodsfan.com/2009/12/astral-video-allods/)


Awesome datas... (http://en.forum.gpotato.eu/?CD=ALLODS_EN_N001&CMD=&TC=0100000000&MD=VT&US=N&AS=Y&TNO=62&TNOLIST=&TCLIST=)


My god, it sounds awesome. Randomly generated allods with exploration and loot and piracy.


Basically what STO should have been.  :why_so_serious:


(http://www.allods.ru/images/galleries/22/t_1_2.jpg)

(http://cgenetwork.com/image_upload/images/12Screen010_Astral_Ship.jpg)

Woops.

Yeah, they have good ideas.  But their combat is irritating but I'm going to play this because, shit, it's free.

http://allodsbase.com/en/talents#_20

Here's a talent calculator.  Kinda show you how much customization there is.  Apparently after level 10 you get these rubies that you can put into buffs and it's like so sort of Final Fantasy grid system.

Sorry, wasn't terribly original but I couldn't resist.

I havn't played this game passed level 9 or so, but there wasn't a grind at all.  It was all questing but the limiting factor was combat time, not the amount you killed.

But the game kept you moving at a decent clip so you saw different environments each time.

I meant nothing by it really, as I haven't played it. I was just in the mood for a bad pun. Although I have to admit the complaints about slow and spammy combat are what have kept me away, because it does look interesting enough otherwise to warrant a try.

Give it a shot, it's free to try.  They are handing out beta keys like candy.

Definitely worth a try. I felt no grind really, and the button mashing I dont agree with, well, no more than any contemporary title. The time to kill a single mob...could be less.

However, I would LOVE to get a ship and be pirates with some people.  :rock_hard:

Yes, the button mashing takes away a lot from the combat.

Don't misunderstand, the lack of auto attack is an interesting approach; but largely meaningless when you replace auto attack with a generic attack you have to press constantly in addition to your other skills.  It makes the game feel very loose and unrefined.

Or, intentional and controlled.

I didn't play the game long, is there some kind of penalty to just mashing autoattack? It has it's own cooldown, I can't imagine it being difficult to just macro a G15 / N52te to just run a repeating macro on the attack button.

There is no penalty to mashing your melee or ranged attack every time it's up.

I was curious about the 'Rubies' thing, but I didn't realize it was so in depth. HRM.

What's an Allod?

The name for the chunks of the worlds that are floating in the astral ether.

(http://www.unequalledmagazine.com/wp-content/gallery/gpotato-allods-online-astral-images/allodsonline_screenshots_allods.jpg)

Also. (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/allod)

Allods and Allods 2 were the russian names for Rage of Mages and Rage of Mages 2: Necromancer.

Apparently there is a lore connection?

Same world. One in the same AFAIK.

Very cool, also the Psionic class is a really interesting set of mechanics, with the mental link mental overload stuff and the mind clones.  Sadly its the same tired as fuck combat system so I still can't be bothered but I do like what they've done.

Oooh. Rage of Mages was awesome! :drill:

Gaaah there went any resistance I had to this.

They better let me move the UI around.

No dice yet. We'll see if that changes (laffo).

So its giant floating poop  :awesome_for_real:

Gaaah, again. Why on earth do people think it's a good idea to put your character's most critical information (hp/mana) in the least likely place on the screen for your eye to go, and also as far away as possible from the second most critical information (cooldown timers)? It makes no sense! :tantrum:

Allods Online Astral battle ( part 1 ) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXIBRu2Nddk)

Allods Online Astral battle ( part 2 ) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3wrKiFecJY)


FFS how awesome is that?

Totally Awesome until the small group of friends gets constantly pirated by the much larger guilds?

Buck up sailor!

Also:

Exclusive Allods Online dev tour: Astral Ships and the end game explained (http://www.massively.com/2010/01/15/exclusive-allods-online-dev-tour-astral-ships-and-the-end-game/)

I'll give them credit, the production values on this seem absurdly high for a free MMO.

That said, the ship combat is both <3 and high risk, high reward.

Get keys here. (http://www.massively.com/2010/01/19/allods-online-closed-beta-test-4-key-giveaway/)

EDIT: Fixed.

Nice url there, bucky.

Hmmm, Allods actually move around, so no instanced location is ever located in the same place and you have to physically navigate to each one.  Interesting mechanic.  And a lootable treasure horde aboard each ship (which are non-instanced boardable)?  That's just fuckin win.

I've played skyship stuff b4 but never put together like this.  And this is the 1st online game to ever truly take a swing at bringing something like Spelljammer or Battlestations (pnp games built upon crewed ships, etc.) to bear, and no - darkfail doesnt count.  I hope it goes well.  Yah, you can tell they stole a few elements from a few other games but so what.

I also like the way they've inserted meaningful chokepoints to give PvP actual value ingame (not just simply a rep. grind).  Stuff like fighting over demon-hunting grounds (which provide fuel for the ships), raid-bosses, and the treasure hordes aboard ships themselves.  Very nice.

I'm gonna try this out.  (crosses chest)


ummm... which faction is everyone playing here???  (not that it matters, you can attack anyone regardless)

I'm a gibberling, what will i play at launch? Who knows. however I am a gibberling, and my girl is one of those elf things... And from memory, I am on the first server. So if you join us, you have at least two people to play with already.

I do hear that the creation of a toon of one faction, will block you from the other (not uncommon) but this is only true at launch, in beta, you can make anything.

(http://simg.gpotato.eu/allods/common/overview/classes/Gibberlings1.png)

Is registration down, or should I be getting a US proxy?

Whats the problem?

I haven't registration since CB3 so.. I dunno. I do know I got some fancy errors redeeming the code, but it still worked.

I just registered, so should be fine.  Their download link is thus:

http://gpotato.cdnetworks.net/US/AllodsOnlineDownloader.exe

Got it working, turned off AdBlock and NoScript temporarily.

Edit:
FYI, if you get an error mentioning a connection failure when registering, try doing the same.

Getting 4.5 MB/s, pretty swell!

Oh, looks like while logged in to the site I can send out invites!

And I'm going to put this stuff here, in case it still applys:


Launcher.exe Corrupted? (http://allods-forum.gpotato.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=4587&sid=860513e3ec557d91e86def454953d8ac)

Installer corruption issues? (http://allods-forum.gpotato.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=1583&sid=860513e3ec557d91e86def454953d8ac)


This stuff may have been fixed, if not. there you go. Also, this is the last closed beta (this is what they call closed!), open beta is next. There is no NDA AFAIK (<-- balls?).

Ok, it took me TWENTY MINUTES to download 2.5 GB, patch up and start customizing the character.

That's just disgusting.

I'm going to be making an Ork Paladin tonight if anyone wants to play.  If the woman doesn't have anything to say about it, I should be playing in 30-50 minutes.

I'm a.... human Karian healer, on server A_0. Name's Tzara.

Edit:
The art direction is basically that of WoW, but with Michael Bay at the helm: everything has more awesome. It reminds me of Warhammer Online, but a more attractive and vastly better realized Warhammer.

I loved all the enforced travel time. You get your ship damaged, it's back to port. You want to open your boss chest? It's back to port. And apparently it can be long travel times back to port.

Plus the amount of time it takes to make a ship, the time it takes to repair it and the potential to lose it due to FFA PvP. Especially as pirates come to pick off the survivors of boss battles.

I'm looking forward to the results of this experiment.

I'll never play this game, but I adore the little Teddy Bear Trio of doom species.

Gibberlings are pretty much the sole reason I installed this.  I had a little bit of fun with it, but I really just don't care to play a game like this at the moment.

The art direction is a cross between anime and WoW.  Similar style, different pallette.
It does have a slightly asian feel to it though.  There's click to move and many of the NPCs dont have homes (at least in the area I'm in)... they just stand around giving quests, etc.  For instance, the innkeeper has no inn and the postmaster has no post office.  

I'm playing a Psionicist and I feel like I'm in a Cthulhu game.  Interesting mechanics there - mind links open up a bunch of other abilities and one must monitor their mental fatigue.

I'm on server a1_gala_us as "phantomphreak" (empire)  or "Skinobi" (the other faction)

Recently seen in chat on leveling speed: "It gets better later. First levels are meant to weed out people who have no patience." That's a new one on me.

I'm in as Serin, empire side, second server, but I'll probably reroll as league on the first server since that's where people seem to be. I need targets to heal.

Is there a PvE server?

First it's beta.
Second there are only two servers.
Third, I don't think there are any special rule servers.

Currently playing as Revco, Orc Paladin.  I have to say, I am feeling drawn to play a Gibberling of some sort.

I really like the fatigue system.  Shame Blizzard hasn't copied it for rest xp yet.

So far, it is quite a fun game. Playing as a psionicist. I like the class mechanic.

For a free MMOG, this game is pure awesome. There may be bad points to it depending on what you like/dislike, but the production quality on this is excellent.

Multiplayer Unrealistic Wildlife Extermination Simulator. Literally one quest told me to find a unicorn and "kill that bastard".

So much grind. Oh god. The quest for more bagspace, which you want so bad, makes you want to shoot yourself in the head. Apparently Koreans aren't the only ones capable of inflicting this upon people.

Runs ok though. Audio starts looping sometimes and needs a restart. For an MMO made from 12 million dollars it's still unimpressive.

Or you buy it from the store?

There isn't one single item in the store you can't get in game, but you can just buy it. As for your unimpressive comment, I completely disagree.

A store which doesn't work at the moment.

It a beta.

However you have to love the humor of the first bag quest, and its title.

The drop rates are the funniest. It's literally a joke.

Captain obvious!

Its a bag slot increase, that has you killing tons of creatures for items that have an ultra rare drop rate and a quest title called "All most free". I suspect you didn't read the quest?

Also, I wold not even bother, you toon will be wiped.

I, personally will just buy it, its like... uh...2-3$?  AND has more slots.

The conclusion therefore is it's better to pay monthly for a game that's fun instead of paying to remove hurdles from a game that's not.

Bitching.

It's a pretty fun game. I like it. It's certainly the most all-round polished game I've played since WoW. It certainly looks fantastic given you like the art style. The UI is quite lacking, but I can deal with it for now.

They aren't hurdles. They're the free alternatives to paying an in-direct "subscription fee," in case you're just oppressively poor or a stingy bastard. Make a monthly budget of $15 and then start comparing it to subscription MMOs. My guess is that with discipline (i.e. by not wasting your money on bullshit), they'll come off just about as grindy. Correct me if you have proof of the opposite. RMT has the obvious advantages of a very low barrier of entry and, for the bean counters, people who can't hold on to money to save their lives. That's however not your/our problem.

Working on another healer, Nivith the cleric on server 1. Turns out it's possible to gimp yourself as early as level 6! Woe to whomever doesn't take the pushback immunity talent asap. Aside from that I do like the class design a lot so far; I only have four or five spells but it doesn't feel spammy - there's a dot, a hit that procs a buff on a short CD, and a couple other things I can do depending on how many stacks of the buff I have. Spell preparation is neat too.

It's quest-grindy as fuck but I keep logging in for some reason. Not sure if I actually like the game or if I just want to see PvP and boats, and the alleged jump in kill speed that I keep hearing occurs around 10 or 15. I was able to raise one of my factions to max rep in something like an hour by grouping up and killing rats with some people. I imagine later factions will take longer but seeing it go by so quickly was refreshing even though I wasn't high enough level to buy any of the nifty blue gear I unlocked.

Also, league ftl. Empire humans look better, the hamstermen are adorable but they're everywhere, and these glowy elf wings make me want to gouge my eyes out a little. And this is coming from the dude who ordinarily plays the pinkest, frilliest, pansiest characters available.

This is probably a stupid question but, is there teleport in this game?  In Rage of Mages you could teleport where ever you could place your cursor.  Given that you could zoom out pretty far, this was  :heart:

You can reset your talents in the middle of the city in Empire, I don't know the equivalent League side.

I think most people will grind their lives away in this game to get to the astral ship combat portions.  The only reason one would do this is because it's F2P.

For every utterly ridicoilous and absurdly drawn up quest there is always one man to buckle down and spend untold hours to do it. It's not a money thing, it's a mountain thing. Why do we do it? Because it's there!

I don't really see how it's relevant to the topic... your idea, if I'm getting it right, is that the game has these huge obstacles you have to overcome in order to enjoy it, which simply isn't true unless you consider yourself obligated to play the game for free. That's however not the intent and I hope no sane person thinks a game of this scope can be completely free to play, it's just naïve to think so. That a few people either don't want to or can pay a small sum to circumvent these hurdles shouldn't affect your personal enjoyment of the game.

If one is one of those people, then yes, he or she is going to have the experience one can expect from a completely free game, i.e. not a very good one. "Free" entertainment exceptionally rarely comes without strings attached and this is indeed no exception. That's not to say that trying to fleece your customers at every given opportunity is acceptable, but I have not got the impression that's what they're trying to do. Paying for some additional bagspace isn't like paying for levelling up, as crucial as that bagspace may seem.

If it's done sensibly and with some kind of alternative, I for one welcome our cash shop overlords, because it means I can play a larger number of MMOs at no additional cost.

I realized I never gave my toons name. Its Springer, and my girls name is Nadira. We shall be on a bit this Saturday (like now) if anyone wants to do some groupige.

Free MMOs like this are perfect for when you get that MMO itch, and you need to be reminded by you don't play MMORPGs anymore. It's definitely a far cry from Runes of Magic, I wonder how they will react to this new competition.

Picked up a beta key and the client this weekend.  Damn is that a fast download.  Found out why too when I noticed my connection turned to crap yesterday.  As a part of this something called Pando Media Booster is installed.  Its the torrent client they use to distribute it.  It "helpfully" remains seeding the file after completing the download.  It is very easily uninstalled though through add/remove.  I will have to see if removing that fixes the random disconnects I was seeing fairly frequently.

Anyway, it looks really, really good.  It even plays adequately.  The left side - fairies, gibberlings and whatnot - intro is fairly cool the first couple of times you run though it.  Though I imagine it would get really old after multiple run throughs.  The quests are fairly questy.  Nothing really new that I've seen.  Mob spawn is odd.  Potentially, triggered by some minimum number available.  The automagic quest tracking and map marking is fairly nice.  It could really use a mini map through.  Keybinds are fairly sparse.  There are a ton of stats, 19 in total I think.  It does highlight your classes "primary" stats though.  This carries over to equipment mouseover as well which is a nice feature.  You seem to get 1 talent point and 1 stat point each level.  I could really do without the stat point thing.  That just feels ripe for screwing yourself over.

Combat is really odd.  Sometimes you get crits and things die fairly quickly.  Sometimes you get the really thrilling dodge, dodge, parry, miss streaks I remember from playing EQ as a monk back in the day and the combat can take forever.  I am not exactly sure what it would take to kill you on the newb island/allod though.  I only ever got below 60% health once.  Health regen appears to work in combat.  One very annoying feature is the lack of an auto run.  There is click to move, which is broken by turning or strafing, and W or arrow up.

The combat log also makes no sense.  You only appear to log outgoing damage and it does not look like it records what attack does what and what is hit by the attack.  The floating combat text is also less than helpful.  Incoming damage is oddly down and to the right of the character.  Someone mentioned melee combat being really short ranged.  They weren't kidding. 

There is also a ton of undocumented stuff, particularly in regards to abilities.  Paladins get some sort of shield mechanic that is only cursorily explained in a quick tip that did not stick around in the tip log.  I also think it may be bugged.  It seems to absorb everything on occasion.  I played a gibberling psionic guy for a bit.  Their mind link skill occasionally proc's some instant cast mind link buff.  No where is it explained where that comes from.  The stun ability appears to have charges, but it's so short I don't know what the charges do.  About the gibberlings, the extra two little guys may act as a melee range dot, but the combat log was no help in figuring that out.

"R"

Made and Orc scout on sever one named "Grimst".

There is some of that Eastern Europe jank!

That was handy.  Thanks.  Quickly remaped that where it belongs.  Also remaped the character/inventory screen where it belongs too.

Removing that "media booster" fixed the DC issue.

I also figured out what ranged weapons do for casters.  They have a fairly nonobvious +magic stat which is not helpfully highlighted as something to care about.  That stat is huge.  Found this out after completing the Damned Soul quest on the League starting island.  That was  :uhrr:.  Level 7 raid boss.  Anyway, its a buggy fight.  We had about 9 people trying to do it.  Something appears to go wrong with it and its HP stops updating for most people.  We did have one guy who could see what was going on so he just kept calling it out.  Anyway, that resulted in a +42 magic wand for me.  That more than doubled my spell damage.  I went from crits of 20 to crits of 50.  Woohoo!

Fatigue XP is fairly cool.  Kind of oddly implemented, but still interesting.

Not defending this game, but just saying that Turbine uses Pando Media Booster for LotRO downloads.  It's not simply Eurojank.  Also, I've found it easily uninstalled as well, with only a folder in C to delete after.

Even NBC uses it.

I wonder how much money they would make if they allowed players to buy their way to lvl 30 w/o having to go through the grind.
When you really stop to think about it, games like this would likely benefit from such models.  Let's be real, the lvl grind isnt that compelling nor difficult - so why not just give one the option to buyout of it? 
I mean most sub. game allow a lifetime sub., which usually goes bust anyways... so in this sense it'd be similar pricing, but instead of giving a sub., they give you 30 lvls of xp. 

Most powergamers will reach that level in 3 days anyways and still bork the pvp/endgame balance, so in my eyes the best way to actually balance such things is to offer lesser players an alternative.  And sure, if they'd like they can roll an alt and still go through the lvl grind, all while helping to twink out their main (instead of the other way around; twinking out the alt).  Feel me?

I like the ding-grats of a leveling process, but only when it's fast paced.  I like making new characters because I get new abilities and I can progress at a decent clip.  Then it slows down and then I get bored and quit and stop paying money.  If only a game came out with a decent leveling process that took 1/4 (or even faster) of the time it does in any contemporary sub-based MMOG then padded the "endgame" with a shit ton of stuff to do, will be a success.

Or you know have 30 to 40 hours of gameplay for the leveling process, and then start the real game there.  Make it an very very very long tutorial.

This relates to Aion a bit for myself.  I leveled 1-20 at a decent pace, though it slowed down at 16 or so.  I kept playing and it just got longer and longer for the ding-grats.  That's when everyone quit in my legion.

The moment you have to think about how much longer it is till the next X (X = level, ability, newthing) then you're doing it wrong.  You just need to find the average time for a player to start thinking that.

Its a disturbing trend recently that playing the game, has been replaced with the term "Grind". And it has nothing to do with this title, or how MMO's are created. Players seem to simply not want to play games anymore; just read the last page. God forbid they play the game.

What game are you talking about?  Designers seem to be developing content to get players from point A to B instead of developing content to play in. 

There is no game to be played in grinding out levels in Allods.  Playing the game is fighting monsters and getting loot and building pirate ships and raiding other boats.  Playing the game is not doing 100 quests and killing a few easy mobs and turn them in and move to the next area.  That's not playing the game which is why you need to reduce the bullshit and get to the fun stuff.

I'm talking about any game. Perhaps its my outlook. But I don't see doing quests, exploring the environment and reading the story's that go with them as a hurtle to point B.

"Playing the game" seems to have been replaced by players with "Grind".

Its like my friends son, when he gets a new game, the first thing he does is go to the PC and look up cheat codes. As for designers, seems to be more of a reaction, than a cause.

Perhaps someone should make a game where you start at max level with the best everything, and every action taken slowly moves you to level one.

I mean, I'm not sayin' I hate grinding lvls... but if I'm going to do it, it's gotta be a pretty compelling world and a relaxing experience.  Allods took the Atlantica model for grinding though...  very basic quest locations and givers, pretty/static art but non-functional, etc.  It goes a long way having a lively world to "grind" in if you're gonna grind, especially if there's enough alternative distraction to ease the pain.  Games that dont provide this should learn to make coin by allowing people to skip it...  or hey, they can just deal through gold farmers who do the same thing (shrug).

People who enjoy the journey through the levels are rewarded by not having to pay a huge sum of RMT, as well as being rewarded with excess gold/loot and a lifetime's worth of lore...  which yah, philosophically is a game in itself imo.

What's the prospective lvling time to get to 30 in Allods anyways?

For the record, I didn't post any of that because of JUST the comments here. There really isn't anything at point B, but the sliding scale...

I have no clue, but anecdotally, I did see a level 40 PC run past my lvl 6 paladin yesterday.

Yeah but games like Allods, there isn't anything really to explore and the quests and story isn't compelling, nor does it match up well with the game mechanics (DIKU).


I don't think it's too long.  I got to level 8 or so in a few hours of play and I think this game only had 40 levels or so.

Noticed this morning that the little compass arrow thing points the wrong way.  If you are assuming the blue side is forward, you are going west when it points east and if you assume the red is forward, you are going north when it points south.

The elites are fairly annoying.  Some are easy solos and some are most certainly not.  The only way to tell is to get clocked for 250 or for 60.

I found my first elite last night.  Stephan the Sneak.  As a summoner, I'm pretty used to ignoring my pet at level 6, as the mobs barely scratch the thing.  Stephan, however, destroyed my poor hellion in 3 seconds, and promptly ran up and smacked my face off in another 2.

I see now why everyone said Pally's were better tanks.

Just a side note, this is a very group oriented game. Even a duo helps immensely. Time-to-kill-mob seems to be balanced for this. Solo seems possible, but it will take a long time. Pick your poison.

That makes sense.  The mob XP is already fairly pitiful, so the group split is not a big hit.

You have never actually used a compass.

Patch out. Notes here (http://allods-forum.gpotato.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=5628).
Some nice QoL things, but the important stuff seems to be:

Basically, PvP flags work now so high-level zones aren't all PvP+ anymore. In addition, dying now gives you a debuff when you rez that murders your stats and renders you useless. Apparently at level 40 it lasts for 50 minutes (!?!). You can remove the debuff by spending money in game or by using cash shop items.

So PvP is consensual now, and the new ridiculous death penalty ensures that most reasonable people will avoid flagging like the plague.

The forums are exploding with PKer tears.

Rather handy.

Wow, is that 50 minutes of play time or real world time? Because I'm sure that having a death penalty that incentivizes players to stop playing right after failing is a great idea.  :uhrr:

Um, the removal items negate it..so...so?

So those removal items cost gold, and getting PKed gives you the full death penalty. In PvE the money sink probably isn't such a big deal, but in PvP that means you're essentially wagering about 3.5g on every encounter - somebody's gotta pay up, or sit out for an hour.

This is all hearsay; I'm not high enough to PvP yet.

It'd be interesting if it was wagering: if 3.5g wasn't a large amount of money, and the winner got 3.5g from the loser, then that could possibly maybe even work in the: "PVP is slightly meaningful, but not scary". This is just a money sink.

If it's a large amount of money, well, maybe it'll drive all the pvpers to EQ2.

Well.  My paladin is up to a whopping 13 now.  The apparent character wipe with the new server names was kind of annoying.  I thought I had to restart. The 125% XP post patch was very nice for this. I was either lvl 8 or nearly so when leaving the newb island.  My previous run through had seen me leaving the island at lvl 6.  One thing I did differently was I ground out the available reputation for the blue weapon.  I can't imagine the Empire side does not have something similar.  That made leaving the newb island much more palatable.  My last experience had been very rough.  I was not doing much damage at all and that made the very streaky combat even longer.  That blue weapon meant I was doing roughly 2/3 more damage coming out.  So, grind out that faction.  It's not that bad.  It was just three or four of the repeatable faction turnins if you do all of the quests that give faction.

I would recommend it again for the lvl 10 weapon, but that was significantly more annoying.  With the XP bump, I was half way through the zone and lvl 11.  I had to do that faction quest 20 times because I just had to have that new shiny sword.  :why_so_serious:  Why yes, I did spend 36 hours straight camping for an FBSS back in the day in EQ, why do you ask?  The way things look to work without the xp bump is you complete the zone and do a couple of the repeatables and get your shiny instead of grind it out. 

I also did the first legion side dungeon.  First point, never go with someone in the group outside of the level range.  We filled a slot at the end with a lvl 17 something or other and the XP went from adequate to absolutely zero.  Second, these things hit hard.  At lvl 12 I was getting clocked for 200-300.  That's fairly rough for the speed of combat.  I had 1800 hp.  Multi tanking is possible, but damn.  Damage gets really nasty then.  There were several multi mob pulls.  It made me long for WoW target marks.  Healing with a cleric was rough, but adequate.  But holy split DPS batman.  Also, casters mobs don't seem to care about LoS.  The last boss has a really cool chain you up and roast you in a bonfire thing.  It has an great graphic.  But it's  :ye_gods: for an intro dungeon.  It lasts 45 seconds and does a 100+ damage every 2 seconds.  You can have two people in them at the same time and one of them can be the tank.  For all of the trouble, it was not that bad.  About what I recall Deadmines being like back when I started WoW lo those many years ago.  Some of the loot was reskinned clones of the rep gear, but some of it was new pieces not available elsewhere. 

Getting a group together really makes the new WoW LFG look good.  I don't think another paid MMO is going to be able to be released without something that works at least as well as that thing.  But since this is free, we take what we get.

Any way, lvl 10 sees the other portion of the talent trees open up.  You still get 1 skill point for the main tree per level.  But at lvl 10, three talent trees open up.  You need to buy rubies with gold to get points to spend in the trees.  Each thing costs 1 ruby.  There does not seem to be a limit on the number of rubies you can use in the talent trees.  However, rubies cost progressively more cash.  The first costs a gold.  The second is like 1.3 gold, etc.  These talent trees are grids like a scrabble board.  You spend rubies to open up the options.  On occasion, you may need to spend rubies to buy a blank spot if you want to expand your talents a specific way.  The talents offer things like 5% more to a stat or new abilities and skills.  One of the paladin skills is an AoE.  Another is a party heal on finishing move.  Neat idea, but the cost makes it grindy.  I don't know if there is a cap other than cost for number of skills you can have.  You can purchase a talent again to increase the bonus, for example 5-10% bonus.

You're allowed 1 ruby for every level 10+. It's a neat system but at 19 I suddenly found myself severely lacking in funds and unable to by my talents. Pretty sure the xp bonus throws the income per level way out of whack.

For those who are still interested (not me, I think it's awful!), I just saw that they have 7000 or so keys on MMORPG.com again.

To be fair, I've played so much worse (and paid for the privilege).

I have too, but I'm really trying not to anymore.  And it's not really awful so much as uninspired, maybe.

It gets a bit more entertaining once you open up the talent thing at lvl 10.  But it's still fairly uninspired at the beginning.  And without the 125% xp boost currently going on, its going to be a long slog to get to the potentially interesting astral ship PvP bits at the end.  And some of the odd choices, most notably the lack of common / commands, ie /who and the apparent lack of a /reply add some really unnecessary annoyance to an otherwise entertaining game.  But it is somewhat fun in an early WoW sort of way.  And free is some fairly nice icing.

Please note that Closed Beta 4, the current phase, is going to be ending on 2/3/2010.  Not sure if there will be another closed beta or if it will switch to an open beta as rumored. 

I'm going to get a chance to ask a few questions of the Allods people, though I imagine it's going to be PR spin/hype regurgitation though.  Anyway, anyone have any suggestions? 

Keen and Graev's made a video about the astral ships.  Looks neat

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_RuhBtW8XU

The fuck do you have against links anyways?  Uses it for what, when, where does it stay hidden on your system leeching your bandwidth?

Open beta starts Feb 16th. http://allods.gpotato.com/news/2010/02/10/allods-online-announces-open-beta/

Characters created in open beta will not be deleted.

Soooo, anyone sticking with this thing?  OB started yesterday yes?  I'd say if it's better than Runes of Magic (the other white meat) it's probably worth at least installing.

So little time so many games, and the FPS aspect of GA has killed any want of mine to do target/skill combat for now. Nothing to do at all with this game, I still say its well made, and for a free game, god dam polished.

It's plenty better than ROM.

It's still a generic DIKU though minus all the interesting things in the end game.  Getting to the end game will be mind numbingly boring though.

If other people are playing I'll roll up a healer and see how far it takes me. Having resubbed to WoW makes Allods feel kind of redundant though.

Christ those little gibberling things are so kawaii  :drill:

The game definitely makes a nice first impression - especially for a free game. Feels polished and I dig the art style.

I heard everything in the cash shop mysteriously had the decimal place moved over one place to the right, so now everything costs an order of magnitude more than it did before.   Any news on this?  I assume its a mistake/bug.

Keen and Graev (http://www.keenandgraev.com/?p=3569) on the bug/mistake.

In Soviet Russia, game buys YOU!

 :uhrr:

If only people got this worked up over things that actually mattered...

There was some sort of official statement that said something vague like "We'll continue to evaluate our prices and consider player feedback" which leads me to believe they are actually batshit insane enough to be the real prices.  You have to assume if it was a mistake they'd be falling over themselves to fix it ASAP.  Do they really expect people to pay 100s and thousands of dollars for just a few items?

After the latest batch of games from this genre, nothing surprises me anymore.

It will be changed, there's no way they are going to make money with the prices as they are now.

Rssn gme iz srs busnss.

It's a stupid move by gPotato, but maybe they think there still will be enough demand at the new prices. Or they need the money that bad.

I'm loving some of the early quest text.  Just was sent to intercept dirty orcs smuggling elf porn.  Never saw that in WoW.

Started this today.  Also love the lore text, it's a hoot I tells ya!  Great graphics, good performance, tons of lore.  Complete WoW ripoff.  But no way I'm paying RL cash for items.  Also disappointed at the time it takes to kill a single mob as a Mage.  Smells like grindy fun like others in this thread have mentioned.  I don't do grindy.

But, hell, it's free, I'll pop back in when the STO server goes down. 

This game is being mismanaged into the ground at this point, and developers are adding changes that basically require you to spend money at every turn to continue to play. Prices are 20x what they are in Russia.

Here's the scoop on basically why it is in such disarray - http://www.keenandgraev.com/?p=3575

If all that is intentional, then that's a really bad move, its a good game, they should not have done that.

They've spent a lot of time and money making this game. Stellar job from what little I've seen of it.   I don't fault them for a free-to-play but microtransaction business model.  It could work.  But charging so much?  No.  Fuck you.

Are they charging American players more because we are 'richer'?  Who do they think they are drug companies?  :oh_i_see:

They should use that as a marketing strategy: Allods Online, the F2P that keeps out the poor newbs.

Exclusivity could be a hell of an attraction.  :grin:

I wouldn't have minded stupid prices that were just about optional.  Didn't intend to spend any money on consumables so it'd just mean a more level playing field if they priced (almost)everyone else out of the idea too.  But silly prices combined with whacking great nerfs that make cash shop items all but compulsory does rather seem like snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.  Think I'll wait and see how this pans out before putting more time into my characters, not financially invested after all.

Well it's not like the PayPal integration works so you really can't spend money on over-inflated items anyway.

Oh wait...

So do people have server picked out? The death penalty issues make sinking a ton of time into this an... inadvisable prospect, but I'll screw around with it some just to see what improvements they do make. Serin (and Szophia) on Tensess/Empire for me, unless there's a consensus otherwise.

What is there to choose from?  All I see is ISA.

I would like to try the League, but its hard to imagine it tops the novelty of the Soviet themes of Empire. 

This is a nice little game, but the blatant attempt to rip off America and Europe users is disheartening.

Servers are limited by client version; Tensess is an NA server. Makes me wonder if there are differences between the various non-Russian versions? I'll have to look into that.

I've been keeping up on allods, as I half-assed planned to play it if the cash shop turned out reasonably priced. I was interested to see that they had dropped their silly inflated prices. This guy (http://www.keenandgraev.com/?p=3616) estimates it to cost $13/month, which is totally reasonable.

But wait, no, that assumes only 1.5 hours per day of play. Who the hell plays a MMO for only 10 hours per week? Realistically, for someone actually playing the game in normal MMO usage patterns, it's at least twice as expensive as WoW. Now I'd like to play a trio of cute little furries with a squirrel pet as much as the next guy, but seriously, fuck that.

Even better, it's 1.5 hours using only one item, and buying it in bulk discount. 

Kind of disappointing to me.  I was interested in playing this before they started dicking around with these pricing games. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Door-in-the-face_technique)

I feel like I should clarify a little of the confusion of the last 2 posts.  As stated by Keen and Graeves, yes, it does cost roughly 15 bucks to play for 1.5 hrs a night, but he meant to say, was to raid 1.5 hours a night wearing the perfume buff the entire time.  The Death Buff that everyone is talking about is actually easily remedied in game via gold or the bought perfume, or the quested for perfume at anytime, but during raiding, while in an instance, the vendor to buy off the FoD is not present, so you would absolutely need perfume for that.

So raiding 1.5 hrs every night, for 7 days a week, and never ever questing for perfume, it would cost you that amount.  Whether or not that amount is high, is up to you, but I can tell you that of my concerns, that one ranks very low.  The PvP within the game I have seen thus far at lvl 27 is very sludgey and unbalanced and while I am enjoying it as a free to play MMO, I'm really not sure I'd want to spend any real money there.  Who knows though, it is still technically open beta, so perhaps it will get better.

I heard the need for perfume (recently renamed to incense) was removed in the latest patch by removing the "fear of death" debuff, so I checked out the patch notes and player feedback to see if I wanted to give Allods a try.

It turns out that death penalty was replaced by a "cursed items" system, which is effectively permanent item loss for "blue" or better items upon death that can only be removed/avoided via items from the cash shop. All fair enough, depending on pricing, but what they somehow failed to put in the patch notes is that all player damage and health was flat-out nerfed by 250% in the patch. Newbie characters are taking over a minute to kill monsters. Completely coincidentally, incense gives a 250% damage and health buff. Oh, and the daily repeatable incense quest was removed so the cash shop is the only source. So actually, rather than just needing incense at higher levels, it must be in use at all times and Allods is considerably more expensive than it was before the patch!

This game is a perfect example of how not to run a Cash Shop.

Its sad, it was fun in beta, and I would have spent money on it in that state, then they went and got all greedy and worked the requirement of things into the design. Who knows though, perhaps this game is still popular in other territories even with this system.

Supposedly the Russians are quitting in droves too. They got the past some time ago, as it had to be localized to english. That info comes from disgruntled players who followed up with "Yes I'm quitting and yes you can have all my stuff", so take with salt.

Anyone who had looked at this may want to consider revisiting it.  I'm not sure how things were a year ago, or even 6 months ago, as I've only been playing for about a month now -- but I've really enjoyed the game so far.  Playing very casually and only paid for a few convenience items (nothing that was necessary for play), and I'm about 3/4ths the way to max level.  The content is rich, the lore is detailed (and hilarious), the quests are plentiful, the zones are beautiful, the graphics and sound are both great (though the voice emotes for things like "It's out of range" or "I'm out of mana" are still only in Russian).

They just released a huge content patch, and the changes are being very well received from what I've seen.  Give it a chance if you want something new to check out over the holiday season.

I'm so confused.  That post had absolutely nothing to do with pictures.  Seeing you post outside the picture thread just ruined my worldview.  I think I need an adult....

NECRO'D


http://massively.joystiq.com/2011/03/02/gdc-2011-allods-online-backs-off-on-death-penalties/

Then ... what's the point of having them in the first place?  :uhrr:

Wow, I might have to re-dl this. I really enjoyed it until the bullshit started flying... The community is probably never coming back, though.


Edit: After reading a bit more, I remembered they increased the amount of damage mobs do by a ton, and increased the amount of xp it takes to level by something like 500%, and apparently neither of those things have been addressed.