Silk Road Online is a free to play, pay for premium, MMO. It is set in the 7th century, on the trading road between China and Europe. The game itself starts with a very haggard character creation. You have options, but it is difficult to understand the implications of your choices. Your first choice is your model, it determines your face, hairstyle, and body, and each model has their own name and storyline. While they are all interesting, I would be much more interested in being able to start my own story in a new world, than to play out the life of someone foreign to me. The other selections are fairly meager, you can choose height and weight, and your starting weapon.
Once we actually got into the this was a big drag right off, and it seemed like developing your character was a real chore. We were lost in a sea of possibilities, some of them available to us immediately, and others we would have no hope of doing until later levels. This is normally par for the course, but without any tutorial or even NPC guidance, it was extremely frustrating to start out.
We did not get very far in this game, in fact, we couldn't even finish the first quest. When we first started in the world, we found out early on that we could not even create a party until we reached level 5! .This was a big drag right off, as we were hoping to get into the world and immediately start leveling together based on the choices we made and had in mind during character creation. This was a big turn off to me, in any given MMO that I start, I want to be able to immediately start grouping with people, and on my terms if necessary.
Aside from the fact that you can use very little but autoattacks until almost level 5, and the fact that the first 5 levels were nothing but grinding, this game was simply a buzzkill from the beginning. My avatar needs a good, interesting, fulfilling beginning, or I'm just not going to be invested in it.
-Lance of the Hill People
Showing posts with label Mini-Review. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mini-Review. Show all posts
Sunday, July 6, 2008
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Mini-Review: Dungeon Runners
This post will be done in entirely in the style of what it feels like to play this free to play, pay for premium MMO.
Ok, made my character, didn't have a lot of options. Choice of Fighter, Ranger, or Mage, and all of the options were either satirical, sarcastic, or particularly dooming, but I choose fighter. I'm looking at a 3rd person view here, and it looks like someone nearby has a yellow eclamation point. I've seen that before. Ok, it appears to be a Noobsaurus. That's funny? I talk to the Noobasaur, Noobasaurus is HILARIOUS. I find myself reading every word of his tutorialistic quests, and can't read a single one without letting a full laugh escape the dungeon of my gullet.
So I guess I've got a quest from the Noobsaurus to try to get my support ticket answered. My number is 54,000,001?! Funny, but only because it's true. I guess I'll check out this guy with a quest. Turns out he's in line to get his support ticket answered, but he's willing to trade tickets if I do him a favor. This goes on, and eventually I trade with the guy with ticket number 2, and I get a quest that lets my leave the starting area.
MEANWHILE: I'm getting other quests from people, and townspeople are giving me rude and sarcastic remarks, while the hermit who lives near a bunch of people sounds exactly like Krusty the Klown. The quests almost all take place within a dungeon known as the Dew Valley Forest, and the gameplay is almost exactly like Diablo. They even have weapon and armor descriptions that involve 2-3 suffixes and prefixes that include lots of animal names and irrelevant adjectives.
I walk in with two of my friends, and we plow through waves of wolves and rat people to complete the first 3 levels of the dungeon. No problem. We take a trip back to town, and one of the guys gives us a quest to kill some rat boss at the bottom. We enter his lair, and hip hop music starts playing. Chalk it up to odd choice of exciting dungeon music and move on. I die. The death penatly is 100% negligible at this stage, and I simply teleport instantly (at no cost) to my teammates. Action resumes. We bust through the lair, fighting as hard as we can, and the final boss is a rat guy with a posse. The posse members carry a boombox and there are some huge subwoofers in the rats lair. I let out a couple laughs, and when I go to turn in the quest, the quest giver remarks that I'm the 109th person to inform him that Rattle is dead. He chooses to believe me though, and gives me the reward.
This goes on.
Long story short, download Dungeon Runners. Playing is free, so just give it a shot, and make sure to read what those quest givers are talking about!
Ok, made my character, didn't have a lot of options. Choice of Fighter, Ranger, or Mage, and all of the options were either satirical, sarcastic, or particularly dooming, but I choose fighter. I'm looking at a 3rd person view here, and it looks like someone nearby has a yellow eclamation point. I've seen that before. Ok, it appears to be a Noobsaurus. That's funny? I talk to the Noobasaur, Noobasaurus is HILARIOUS. I find myself reading every word of his tutorialistic quests, and can't read a single one without letting a full laugh escape the dungeon of my gullet.
So I guess I've got a quest from the Noobsaurus to try to get my support ticket answered. My number is 54,000,001?! Funny, but only because it's true. I guess I'll check out this guy with a quest. Turns out he's in line to get his support ticket answered, but he's willing to trade tickets if I do him a favor. This goes on, and eventually I trade with the guy with ticket number 2, and I get a quest that lets my leave the starting area.
MEANWHILE: I'm getting other quests from people, and townspeople are giving me rude and sarcastic remarks, while the hermit who lives near a bunch of people sounds exactly like Krusty the Klown. The quests almost all take place within a dungeon known as the Dew Valley Forest, and the gameplay is almost exactly like Diablo. They even have weapon and armor descriptions that involve 2-3 suffixes and prefixes that include lots of animal names and irrelevant adjectives.
I walk in with two of my friends, and we plow through waves of wolves and rat people to complete the first 3 levels of the dungeon. No problem. We take a trip back to town, and one of the guys gives us a quest to kill some rat boss at the bottom. We enter his lair, and hip hop music starts playing. Chalk it up to odd choice of exciting dungeon music and move on. I die. The death penatly is 100% negligible at this stage, and I simply teleport instantly (at no cost) to my teammates. Action resumes. We bust through the lair, fighting as hard as we can, and the final boss is a rat guy with a posse. The posse members carry a boombox and there are some huge subwoofers in the rats lair. I let out a couple laughs, and when I go to turn in the quest, the quest giver remarks that I'm the 109th person to inform him that Rattle is dead. He chooses to believe me though, and gives me the reward.
This goes on.
Long story short, download Dungeon Runners. Playing is free, so just give it a shot, and make sure to read what those quest givers are talking about!
Monday, June 23, 2008
Mini-Review: Last Chaos
This is a free to play, pay to win, MMO that was recently featured on one of those sites that list tons of free MMO's. It's called Last Chaos, it's a relatively small download for an MMO client (700mb?) and has decent graphics for a free game.
Character creation was very easy, and very limited. You can only be a human, and you can only choose from 5 classes. And in case you wondering, which you probably weren't, the class you pick also determines your gender. Someone played a bit too much Diablo II...
Anyway, I chose healer, and I was dumped right in the middle of what appeared to be some kind of tomb. Turns out this was some sort of dungeon underneath the city of Randol, and it was full of zombies! I could handle the zombies easily enough with my bow, but they certainly made it difficult with a very odd control system:
Left click on the ground- move to that spot
Left click on an enemy- move into range and attack
Left click on an enemy- select that enemy
In other words, you use the same button to move, select, and attack. It was awkward, but not unmanageable. Something I would have to figure out how to change before paying any money for the super duper features. Back to the zombies...
The zombies were mindless and slow, and died before they got to me. I had a special ability or two, but they were utterly useless to my autoattack at that point. I worked my way through a few dozen mindless guardians and simply clicked on the exit to finish the mini-tutorial. That's when I was immediately placed in what seemed to be the only city on my map. It was nearly impossible to tell what was going on that was appropriate to my level.
However, I was not completely lost. The first thing I did was seek out a class trainer, as I have played many RPG's in my day, and would not think of adventuring with outdated skills! I found the trainer, and had very little luck in actually deciphering what was actually available right off. It wasn't too terrible, just very unorganized for the most part. I trained the next level of my self heal and super bow attack thing, and headed off into the wilderness.
Journeying outside of Randol I ran into some other players killing foxes and wolves. I asked if I could join them, and didn't a single response for about 5 minutes, so I went off on my own. Equal level enemies were easy enough, and thanks to a 1.5x experience bonus buff, I was able to level fairly fast! It wasn't long before I was killing elder and dire wolves outside of town. But, as joyous as wolf extermination can be, I found my attention diverge to what appeared to be an angry sasquatch. Level 13. I was only 6 at that point, and thought it was about time to see what the death penalty was like.
I killed the sasquatch without getting hit. it wasn't just easy, it was too easy. A couple shots, run away, a few more shots, and the beast was done. I was disappointed, so I went after some level 17 beast of sorts. Thinking that this would be the end of me. The creature managed to hit me as I was overconfident and bored at this point, I took about 35% damage in the first hit. I soon realized how easy it was to simply run away and lure him around the entire wilderness slowly depleting his life, and enjoyed an entire level when I finally defeated him. I was unimpressed.
It was about this time that I realized I had some quests queuing up that I could acquire from mysterious sources out in the wilderness. I clicked the icon on my GUI display and quickly discovered that I was too high level for most of them already. Apparently you have to be the exact level for the quest to get anything out of it. And these weren't the kinds of quests that helped you level by loading you with XP, these were quests that teach fundamentals of out of combat gameplay. I still don't know how to get my spare items of good or better quality transmuted. Something about Lorraine?
Anyway, the game was enjoyable, but not worth committing to. If you're super broke, and really need something to do with your time, give it a shot, it's at least entertaining. But, unfortunately, I see no benefit or satisfaction out of getting far in the game.
For a freebie? Above average. Paying for it? Not for me.
-Lance of the Healer People
Character creation was very easy, and very limited. You can only be a human, and you can only choose from 5 classes. And in case you wondering, which you probably weren't, the class you pick also determines your gender. Someone played a bit too much Diablo II...
Anyway, I chose healer, and I was dumped right in the middle of what appeared to be some kind of tomb. Turns out this was some sort of dungeon underneath the city of Randol, and it was full of zombies! I could handle the zombies easily enough with my bow, but they certainly made it difficult with a very odd control system:
Left click on the ground- move to that spot
Left click on an enemy- move into range and attack
Left click on an enemy- select that enemy
In other words, you use the same button to move, select, and attack. It was awkward, but not unmanageable. Something I would have to figure out how to change before paying any money for the super duper features. Back to the zombies...
The zombies were mindless and slow, and died before they got to me. I had a special ability or two, but they were utterly useless to my autoattack at that point. I worked my way through a few dozen mindless guardians and simply clicked on the exit to finish the mini-tutorial. That's when I was immediately placed in what seemed to be the only city on my map. It was nearly impossible to tell what was going on that was appropriate to my level.
However, I was not completely lost. The first thing I did was seek out a class trainer, as I have played many RPG's in my day, and would not think of adventuring with outdated skills! I found the trainer, and had very little luck in actually deciphering what was actually available right off. It wasn't too terrible, just very unorganized for the most part. I trained the next level of my self heal and super bow attack thing, and headed off into the wilderness.
Journeying outside of Randol I ran into some other players killing foxes and wolves. I asked if I could join them, and didn't a single response for about 5 minutes, so I went off on my own. Equal level enemies were easy enough, and thanks to a 1.5x experience bonus buff, I was able to level fairly fast! It wasn't long before I was killing elder and dire wolves outside of town. But, as joyous as wolf extermination can be, I found my attention diverge to what appeared to be an angry sasquatch. Level 13. I was only 6 at that point, and thought it was about time to see what the death penalty was like.
I killed the sasquatch without getting hit. it wasn't just easy, it was too easy. A couple shots, run away, a few more shots, and the beast was done. I was disappointed, so I went after some level 17 beast of sorts. Thinking that this would be the end of me. The creature managed to hit me as I was overconfident and bored at this point, I took about 35% damage in the first hit. I soon realized how easy it was to simply run away and lure him around the entire wilderness slowly depleting his life, and enjoyed an entire level when I finally defeated him. I was unimpressed.
It was about this time that I realized I had some quests queuing up that I could acquire from mysterious sources out in the wilderness. I clicked the icon on my GUI display and quickly discovered that I was too high level for most of them already. Apparently you have to be the exact level for the quest to get anything out of it. And these weren't the kinds of quests that helped you level by loading you with XP, these were quests that teach fundamentals of out of combat gameplay. I still don't know how to get my spare items of good or better quality transmuted. Something about Lorraine?
Anyway, the game was enjoyable, but not worth committing to. If you're super broke, and really need something to do with your time, give it a shot, it's at least entertaining. But, unfortunately, I see no benefit or satisfaction out of getting far in the game.
For a freebie? Above average. Paying for it? Not for me.
-Lance of the Healer People
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