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[Seriphyn]

Played the open beta weekend for this, will be saying goodbye to my life.

What separates it from other MMOs is the fact the game is all hack'n'slash/twitch-based mechanics; an enemy is lifting its sword to attack you, you better dodge right out the way. Similarly, if you're surrounded by a horde of enemies, your attacks will strike them all simultaneously. If you're a mage/archer, you have to actually shoot the enemies manually, and can miss if you're aiming's retarded. In a party of five up against a huge room of bad guys, it can get pretty explosive.

Personally, this is what I prefer for in a game. The devs accurately describe other MMOs as "playing the interface". When engaged with an enemy, you have very little reason to actually look at what's occuring, staring at stats and prepping up hotkeys. While TERA does have hotkey attacks, it's more like Mass Effect; if you use a hotkey attack, it can and will miss if you haven't aimed it correctly. You need to pay attention to your stats AND what's going on in the battle. The bigger mobs (They can be two storeys tall, and aren't bosses, just general fauna) will have massive jumping AoE attacks, so GTFO the way when that happens is important. I play the warrior class, which is rated the highest in difficulty. Two swords, relatively lower health, but speed and mobility. I don't just stand in one spot and face the enemy, I've got to keep moving in circles around the enemy, while swinging my swords and timing special attacks. This is easier on huge, slower enemies, but risky when they make their AoE attacks.
 
The only dealbreaker for some may be the artstyle. It's South Korean in origin, and while the game was repurposed for a Western audience, it retains that style. The game is VERY sexualized (for both genders, so it's hardly womanizing), and it does have lolinekus in it and this little teddy bear race (well, so will WoW for the latter). As Asian high fantasy, it's also completely "original" in the sense it doesn't take from medieval Europe or general Tolkien copypastes (so, like Final Fantasy), which can be intrepreted as "alien" to some players. I find the lolineku race adorable, but sometimes it's a bit immersion-breaking seeing little girls run around in battle. The lore has it that the world is a dream of two titans, which provides nice dramatic license for the artstyle.

I understand a lot of you will go for Guild Wars 2, though. If you prefer a break from that endlessly-recycled auto-attack MMO stuff, TERA's your game. I couldn't go back to such MMOs after this.

EDIT: Oh, another thing that sucks is the fact there's two separate publishers for EU and NA, so you buy one, you can only play in EU or NA respectively....I bought the NA version...so, FML and my sleeping cycles.

Also, has an interesting political system. Soundtrack is nice, too, I quite like the human and aman themes.

EDIT2: Also, made with Unreal Engine 3, so looks fantastic.

[Davlos]

http://www.mmoculture.com/2012/04/former-ncsoft-staff-jailed-for-lineage.html

Considering how TERA's devs just had the guilty verdict of stealing Lineage 3's assets handed down to them I'm not going to touch it. Also, based on principle alone I'm not going to support any commercial product that is made by thieves who stole their shit from a previous employer.

As an Asian I'm sick and tired of the typical Asian attitude where plagiarism = fucking resourceful. I'm already tired of the bullshit the China students give me about being a "race traitor" when I refuse to let them copy my papers. Bluehole is getting all this buzz because of the work they stole from someone else. TERA does not deserve to succeed, and I sincerely wish them the same fate as APB and RealTimeWorlds.

[Seriphyn]

Wow, Davlos, first time I've heard of this...either I wasn't looking or that case doesn't have much exposure.

[Davlos]

Wow, Davlos, first time I've heard of this...either I wasn't looking or that case doesn't have much exposure.

Naturally it's news that the devs will want to suppress and kept from its customer base, for obvious reasons. Reason news hasn't broke out en masse is because TERA is kind of a small-time player right now.

[BloodBird]

What follows are my opinion in general, not directed at anyone in particular.

Whenever I've the funds, I'll pre-order this to get the days ahead (hogging names, mostly) and much like SW:TOR I'll give this a fair trial period of a month at the very least.

The game-mechanics interests me immensely, from the fact area-effect attacks, positioning, agility and movement play major parts in PVP, archers and mages needs to aim, to possibly friendly-fire incidents... to the fact people can DECLARE themselves outlaws, thus earning the right to attacks anyone level 11 (or whatever it ends up being in-release) to 60 and being attacked by anything with a pulse as a response. Instant -10 and free aggro for everyone! Outlawed/Vigilante guilds in conflict and the dynamics between these will likely be pure, distilled enjoyment. Or an gigantic collection of fail and grief-festing, depending. The political scene looks promising as well, but can risk falling into the same line of shit as Linage II.

The negatives seen so far are purely aesthetics. I FUCKING HATE PORN-ARMOR. And FUCKING PIMPS. Humans, Castanic and High elves are the most glaring examples. Humans, whose males look like smooth pretty boys and the females scantly-clad whores, VS the Uber-pimps and super-whores, (Castanic) and High Elves just... I'm not sure ifEMO BITCHES will ever cover it.

Would it have killed them to design functional armor? It certainly WILL kill them not to have done that. Female Human Lancers, for example - supposedly tanky heavy armor users, and one of the example's of high-level gear includes a suit of heavy armor. Looks good, overall... if not for that hole IN.THE.CHEST. to make an opening to expose some tits. Male Castonic's in anything from cloth to leather to full-plate incorporating feline spots in the clothes and fur to look like the MOSTHANDSOMEPUSHERSEVER. And the faces... sure, we have magic. Scars and injury can be removed with ease, allowing for all the pretty-boy/girl melee-specialists you ever want.

But it all looks so pretty. So, very, very, pretty.

The races I can forgive though are the loli-like Elin, the Baraka and the Draconic-like Aman. Can't for the life of me take the Popori seriously. Honestly, a griefer's mental image of a carebear is likely to be one of these guys...

Elin in particular, from the descriptions and their appearance, are down-right play-worthy - their appearance alone will make opponents underestimate them, sub-consciously and actually, because they will think in the lines of this;

[spoiler][/spoiler]

Innocent, frail, non-combatant.
Back-story however claims something along these lines...

[spoiler][/spoiler]

Dark, brooding, willing, able and capable... appearances, deceptive, etc. etc. The Aman are pretty nice too, and are among the most functional in clothing-style, or so it would seem. They remind me a little about these;

[spoiler][/spoiler]

I'm likely going to focus my toons into these two races.

As for the theft accusations, far as I can see it's a separate issue that has been resolved allready - the guilty parties have been punished and the sue towards the company has not gone as NCSoft wished. Or did I miss something? Have hardly slept in two days here, so I'll admit I might miss something.

[Seriphyn]

Yeah, my human male looks like he can eat female humans, all castanis or high elves...

What I'm hoping is that TERA sets a precedent for more action MMOs in a fantasy setting.

Witcher 2-style MMO with these mechanics? Yeaaaa.

[Desiderya]

There's always DDO!

[Gymir Asaadan]

From the Bluesoft guys there is another release where they have been found not-guilty.

www.enmasse.com/blog/posts/bluehole-studio-not-guilty-in-trial

Worth noting if nothing else.

[Yoshito Sanders]

Does it have PvP with consequences?

[BloodBird]

Does it have PvP with consequences?

Has any MMO besides EVE and L2 had that?

Not that I know. If the demand for PVP is that it would have to have feel-able consequences you will be reduced to those two MMO's mostly.

[Graelyn]

So be it.

[Matariki Rain]

The developers collaborated with CCP Games and their successful use of "PLEX" for Eve Online as a way of deterring gold farmers. As a result, TERA will have a currency called "Chronoscrolls" which works similarly as it allows game time to be purchased with real money and sold for in-game gold.

[Seriphyn]

Does it have PvP with consequences?

I don't know about PvP mechanics, because I'm sick of EVE's "Internet tough guys' dick-measuring contests" atmosphere, and prefer something cooperative once (I appreciate people like the competitive nature of EVE, but four years of it with no other online experience in that time period makes one fatigued of it). I do know that on PvP servers you can slaughter anyone on sight, then get yourself declared an outlaw, so anyone can slaughter you back with no negative reprimanding.

Like any other "physical" MMO, it has a great RP atmosphere too, especially with a dedicated RP server. Walk anywhere, struggling, get help from someone, make a new IC brother-in-arms, encounter a group of guild soldiers sparring and roleplaying out loud in the main city square, converse with them, join them, go take HUGE unpredictable God Of War style bosses as a group, go find a vista with a stunning view to sit down and RP together.

EVE has none of that. It's all people in the Summit clutching their scabbards and waiting for someone to say something disagreeable (alternatively, dull IC convos which could be OOC), and talk about Amarr/Minmatar slavery (again) or how a fascist Gallente govt which lasted a week bombarded the crap out of the Caldari two IG centures ago (again).

:Bittervet2themax:

In other news, Gabe from Penny Arcade and Kotaku give their positive assessment to the game, calling the combat superior to Guild Wars 2.

[Gymir Asaadan]

Seri, did you pre-order?

I am considering pre-ordering at this point and getting the collectors edition, seems like the bonus gear, etc would be worth it?

[Ulphus]

What separates it from other MMOs is the fact the game is all hack'n'slash/twitch-based mechanics; an enemy is lifting its sword to attack you, you better dodge right out the way. Similarly, if you're surrounded by a horde of enemies, your attacks will strike them all simultaneously. If you're a mage/archer, you have to actually shoot the enemies manually, and can miss if you're aiming's retarded. In a party of five up against a huge room of bad guys, it can get pretty explosive.

How vulnerable to lag/ high ping-times is the twitch mechanics, because, y'know, living on the arse end of the interwebs, that's a bit of a deal-breaker.