If you read the last post, you’ll know Tenchou has jumped ship to TERA, and that he has spent the entire weekend playing this amazing upcoming MMO. Tenchou did have high hopes for the game when it was first announced, but after playing it he has no doubt this will be his next MMO, hopefully for a long time.
With the first Closed Beta Phrase now completed, let’s take a look back on why this game was worth Tenchou’s time, unlike a certain other game with lightsabers.
Graphics
Here we are, the eye-candy of gamers, the talk of the tech-savvy, the… (omitted 3000 words). This first CBT did not have a high resolution texture pack as EME found some bugs in the internal testing phrase and are currently fixing it. They have said it should be released in the next CBT so I’m definitely looking forward to it. However, with even the low-res texture the game is incredibly beautiful; take a gander of the screenshot below:
Beautiful isn’t she? And the background? Know that this game runs @ less ram and cpu than SW:TOR, yet it is about a billion times more stunning. Once the high res textures are released, there is no doubt this game will cream the pants of the texch-savvy, the gamers, the… (Omitted 1000 words).
Sound
The music was nothing special in my opinion, the standard grand mmo music, nothing invasive, or loud or annoying.
Artstyle
Now, many current generation gamers confuse this with graphics. It is an understandable, but not excusable mistake. Although both combines into the visual treat your eyes feast on, the two are actually very different in terms of concept. Graphics is the technical aspect of the treat: The graphic engine, the polygon counts, the rendering, and the textures resolutions. When compared to cooking, it is the ingredients used in a dish, as well as the training a chef had received. Artstyle however, is a different, it is essential the artistic portion of the feast. It is the art direction, the character design, the environmental backgrounds. Again, in cooking, it would be the personal touches of a dish, the flowers, the hint of herbs and decorations
With that out of the way, the artstyle of this particular game is something I really find appealing, mainly due to my upbringing with the Eastern culture. The anime-esque style, character designs and of course, the armor design is top-notch. Yes, the poor females that are barely clothed are part of what I find appealing, but also the armors themselves are very detailed (what is left anyways). Compared to Blades and Soul, where clothing is scarce as well, I find these armors much more visually appealing than Blades and Soul, where I feel the characters are half-naked for the sake of being half-naked.
The environment is also beautifully drawn, as shown below. The level of attention to details is stunning, displaying the efforts the developers sunk into this game. With that said, people who find Eastern-influenced artstyle repulsive will find this unappealing despite the wonderful graphics engine. I’m not here to convince you to like the anime-esque style, that’s up to you to decide.
Gameplay- Combat
This is where TERA really show its true colors. The combat, when not lagging (lagged very little during CBT mind you), is a joy to say the least. The system is somewhat similar to Vindictus where it’s action-based with no targeting. But it is also quite different thanks to the array of skills your character possesses. The combat is fluid, animation is realistic and fun to watch and the control is intuitive. The ability to customize your own chains also adds another dynamic to the combat, so the player can focus on positioning instead of memorizing all their 9001 keybinds. A point of interest, each player does possess their own hit-box, meaning your teammate can, and will block you during melee combat, if you are a melee class. This will induce a higher level of teamwork for pvp purposes, consistent with the skill-based game TERA claims to be.
Gameplay- Leveling
Too easy, I had expected it to be easy since TERA was the game that, and I quote, “Koreans didn’t like because leveling was much too easy”. The statement proved to be true as the level really is as easy as they say. It is not necessary a bad thing, since the real grind is getting +12 weapons and pvp gear later on. Hopefully, the end-game instances in hardmode will be challenging enough that no pugs can just plow through it.
Gamplay- Character Creation
A surprise indeed. I knew we had no control over character height due to hit-box programming is concerned. However, the facial customization is still plentiful and the hairstyle, although not as many as Aion or SWTOR, are still satisfactory.
Gameplay- Progression
Most of the following are what I have gathered from streamers of KR, since the CBT was quite limited in terms of gear and skill progression. One of the key aspect of TERA is the gear progression, specifically, the enchanting aspect. A full-on RNG fuckfest will be the ultimate moneysink, as well as timesink for the player. I’m not against this per-se, since the grind is non-existent in the game, but I know plenty will bitch since they like everything handed to them on a silver fucking platter.
The other, is the glyph system. A replacement for the talent tree system from WoW, you add points to modify existing skills effects to make them better. The fun part is, the higher level glyphs cannot be purchase, but are drops from HM end-game instances, which means pve-heroes will be the ones with the best tools to work with in PvP, another progression bump that many will find un-enjoyable, but I actually prefer it.
Gameplay- The Dungeon Crawler
During the leveling process you will have a choice of poison: Questing, hunting BAMs (Big Ass Monsters or Elites as we usually call it) or instances around your level. The choice decreases as you reach max level, as everything that’s worth a damn will be dropped from Hardmode instances. Put it short, TERA will be heavily instance based in end-game PvE content, no doubt about it. So how’s the dungeon crawling you ask? Should be fun for the first ten times or so, then probably mindnumbing by the 11th. Once you learn the pattern of the instance, as it does not random, everything becomes basic muscle memory and reaction. I mean, it is better than just skill spamming in traditional MMOs, but only slightly. I have talked to some end-game TERA players, and they have confirmed that the current end-game instances get boring after a few times, as the difficulty is pretty low. Hopefully, the next patch (lv60 patch) will bring some major hurt to this cycle.
Gameplay- Politics, PvP
These two really goes hand-in-hand I feel, so I’m going to combine it. It’s pretty simple, borrowing a little from Jedi Master Yoda: Politics leads to Drama, Drama leads to Hate, Hate leads to Conflict, Conflict leads to PvP. Politics always brings out the worst in gamers, as we are largely anonymous on the interwebz, and also because the Western society functions very differently to its Eastern counterpart. In Eastern society politics can lead to conflict, but often it leads to cooperation. Western society’s core values breed individuality, which contradicts with community and cooperation. Pride from individuality often leads to conflict, which leads to PvP. This is why faction-based MMO fails, because people with different ideals are forced into the same faction based on aesthetic choices. (Let’s face it, WoW would be so much more successful as a non-faction based MMO, however due to Lore it’s basically impossible) At any rate, with the political system in full-swing once this goes retail, this should provoke some really good clan and alliance based PvP for many years to come.
Gamplay- Crafting
This particular aspect is where TERA dropped the ball. The crafted items, according to my KR sources, are worse than the items dropped from end-game instances. More importantly however, the cost of crafting is high for such sub-par items. The only real use for crafting is to make skins for your armor and weapon re-skinning, or sacrificial items for enchanting. BH is planning some changes for crafting in future patches, so maybe it’ll be worth it later on.
Gamplay- UI, tools
Coming from the fail that is SWTOR, a fully customizable UI was a welcome sight indeed. The scale can be changed, and everything can be moved and removed. The only problem was the chat window, with a limit on how far it can be downsized, but a minor rant on an otherwise great UI customization. Now, why can’t SWTOR do the same thing @ launch?
As for tools, I never cared for combat log at all, but it is available. LFG has its own separate window, which can be invaluable later on for casuals to find groups. Auction House is polished, with search function and list armor/weapon by type (Now why can’t SWTOR do the same, again). You can buy a shop pet to afk shop for you in town; available quests are easy to find; mini-map shows all useful NPC by icon; help window is fully functional; character tab has basically everything you’ll ever need to know about your character; guild window is clean and allow for future functions to be added. Honestly, all the tools you’ll ever need for the game is already in-game, and about as polish as possible.
Overall conclusion
The game seemed extremely polished even pre-release; I mean it does have one year already in KR so that is to be expected. The gameplay was smooth, enjoyable and immersive. There’s no doubt in my mind I will get my money’s worth in this game, as I can simply spend hours just staring at my less-than-properly-clothed character. There are some issues with the game, such as the current lack of incentive for open-world PvP, can the player-base support such an elaborate political system, and the ease of the current end-game content. Hopefully, BlueHole and EnMasse will be able to address these issues properly to ensure this game will succeed in the NA market.
One last comment about MMO in general: Although the obsession of the next “WoW-Killer” has finally died down (Thanks in large part of people actually getting bored of WoW, and pandas), the interwebz is still crawling with these new-age MMO players who must compare everything to WoW (No doubt their first and only MMO). These people, are cancerous to the genre in general. Most of them were casual gamers, and/or people who are brought up by the Western norm. Their personal preference of “their way” is stubbornly strong, combined with the easymode catering provided by WoW these people became the bane of many MMO developer, BW being the most recent examples. They fail to see epics handed out on a silver platter destroys the achievement and progression aspect of MMO, and fail to see PvP without losing penalty is basically poker without wagers. Of course, these people far outnumbers the traditional MMO gamers and most companies would love to get their hands on the pie, by sacrificing their own game, without realizing that these gamers will never be satisfied, unless they are playing WoW2.
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