Allods Online -

[Fordel]

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

[Malakili]

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.

[Ghambit]

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)

[ezrast]

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.

[tkinnun0]

Is there a PvE server?

[Draegan]

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

[Cadaverine]

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.

[Soukyan]

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.

[Gets]

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.

[Mrbloodworth]

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.

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.

[Gets]

A store which doesn't work at the moment.

[Mrbloodworth]

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.

[Gets]

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

[Mrbloodworth]

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.

[Gets]

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.

[Tarami]

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.

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.

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.

[ezrast]

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.

[Typhon]

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 

[Draegan]

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

[Ghambit]

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.

[Gets]

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.

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!

[Tarami]

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.

[Mrbloodworth]

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.

[Nightblade]

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.

[dd0029]

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.

[Mrbloodworth]

One very annoying feature is the lack of an auto run.

"R"

[Mrbloodworth]

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

[Hoax]

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

There is some of that Eastern Europe jank!

[dd0029]

One very annoying feature is the lack of an auto run.

"R"

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  .  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.

[Hawkbit]

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.

[Mrbloodworth]

Even NBC uses it.

[Ghambit]

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?

[Draegan]

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.

[Mrbloodworth]

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.

[Draegan]

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.