Mind if I start a thread for the actual game? --- I took the plunge on Tera Online a few weeks ago. I knew very little about it going in, but figured I'd give it a shot since I sure as hell was not going to try another Funcom title. I am pleasantly surprised! Dragon's Dogma has been collecting dust ever since, and I really like that game. To start things off I created a Lancer character. I wanted to see some instances before I passed judgement on the game, and tanking would make that easy. He's level 30 now, and has gone through the first two instances twice. They were about what you'd expect. Clear trash, fight bosses, collect loot. Bosses were more than just tank and spank, so that was nice. The dungeon-finder works cross-server, like WoW's, so you group with people from all over. So far, everyone's been relatively pleasant. The combat is great. What I like most is having to watch for attack telegraphs so I can actively block. It's cool because I actually get better at fighting things the more I fight them. For example, I fight something once and I see a wind-up for an attack, so I hold block until it executes. After fighting it a few more times, I learn the delay between the wind-up and attack, so I can get a few more jabs in with my lance, or try for a stun if the window is large enough. This learning-how-to-fight-things is more entertaining than the rote button pushing of WoW style combat. In WoW, all I have to do is look at my health and mana to decide whether or not I can win a fight. In Tera, player skill is a much greater factor. I have not been playing long, so group combat is often still a jumble of "Oooh-pretty-colors!" effects, but I can pick out things like stuns and slows. Over time I'll get the rest. Crafting seems pretty MMO standard. Take components, assemble them. Gathering nodes are all over the place though, which is nice. (Except for leather, apparently.) Also, you can break-down your garbage loot into crafting components. Kind of nice. One thing I do find cool is the Enchanting system they have. Items come in Tiers, some items are upgradeable. So, say you have a Sword A that is upgradeable. If you have another Sword B (has to be same item type) of that tier, you can combine it with your Sword A to get Sword A (+1). The stats will go up, and you'll also get new bonus stats at +3, +6, and +9. Your Sword B can be green, blue, trash or whatever, but you'll get better bonuses with increased rarity. Questing is bleh. The writing isn't bad, and the story can be alright, but 85% of the questing you get will be of the Kill X of Y variety. 10% will be escort quests. 5% will be gimmicky. Some of the gimmicky ones will teleport you to your own instance of the quest. I have been taking the time to read quest text the first time through, but I probably never will again. Levelling alts has been pretty quick because of this. Some people might be turned off by the lack of variety, but since combat is where this game shines anyway, I am over it. The levelling is significantly faster than WoW was at release. I'm not sure how it compares today, but levelling in Tera is pretty quick and painless. I have also tried Archer, Slayer, Warrior, and Berserker. I enjoy Slayer and Warrior, but I see a lot of those running around. I think I'll be starting a new Berserker tonight, and that's what I'll take to cap. I liked Lancer, but I need to not tank. That's pretty much all I did in WoW. Are any of you guys playing? (I'm actually surprised this game isn't more popular.) I've been playing on Celestial Hills, mostly for the naming policy.
Yeah, still playing it; it's still fun. Have characters on Serpentis Isle server since that's one i played on in beta.
I still have my account active, have a lvl 48 Berserker.. but I'm not really actively playing anything much. too much work.
I started the trial today. I started the game and was almost done with the Tutorial when the game hard locked my system. I uninstalled it. I kinda liked that I could play with a 360 controller but what the fuck why did all the dudes I was trying to kill take so long to kill? The combat seemed really slow because of it.
If it was tutorial then if i remember right a bunch of these guys is flagged as "group content" and these do take longer than your typical mob. The "typical" mobs i'd guesstimate take between 5-20 secs to kill once you get something more than your newbie starting abilities, depending on your gear and class. Whether that's long and feels slow, i won't guess; for me personally it's fast enough.
My sister loves this game more than any game since she got into WoW. I liked the beta, but I'm trying to finish a bunch of other stuff before Guild Wars 2 comes out so I don't really have time for it. Seems like I always see you on Dungeon Fighter.
Oh yeah, maybe worth a mention. There's something called "chronoscrolls" added to the game now -- it's similar to EVE-Online, an item which allows you to extend your subscription by 30 days, and which can be bought either for actual money from online store, or for in-game cash, from another player. Effectively, this makes the game F2P after the initial box+30 days purchase, as it's pretty easy to make enough in-game money in 30 days to buy the item and extend the subscription this way.
TERA ONLINE, in store pick up today only. Best Buy $7.99 http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Tera - ...82538&skuId=2750092&st=tera pc game&lp=1&cp=1
Tera is going to receive a large update around the end of August. They're doling out preview info a little at a time, but the overview page gives at least a general idea of what's coming. PvP battlegrounds, buffs for the tank classes, and new dungeons including a raid dungeon. I'm glad to see more endgame content coming; the 1-59 run was the most fun I've had with an MMO in a long time, but right now Tera is bit thin on the top.
Hi, I'm new here. I just came across this post from a Google search and thought I would throw in my 2 cents. I've been playing TERA since beta, made 4 characters to L32 during beta. I've since made a L60 Warrior, L60 Sorcerer, L60 Archer, L60 Berserker, L33 Lancer, L14 Priest. I'm also surprised there are not more people playing this game, it's the best looking and has the best combat (from a PvE perspective). Reminds me of my experience in Vanguard, it was such a great game, but plagued by bugs that it drive away new players in droves. Mass exodus and it never recovered. It seems that MMO's are successful by popularity only. But popularity often does not equate to quality... They've recently merged the servers in TERA, due to lower populations in many of the servers, except Dragonfall (PvE), Celestial Hills (RP-PvE) and 2 of the PvP servers. They've now merged all the PvE servers into one, and the PvP servers into one server. Celestial Hills remains separate as a RP server. It's made the PvE server very active, and the dungeon finder/queue now works with all servers (before it excluded some, namely PvP). I initially got hooked on this game for its looks, namely the character models and armor styles. That's always been my favorite feature of MMO's, even so far back as EQ1 with the introduction of dyes to armor. Koreans really emphasize the "looks" of character models which I love (Vindictus/Mabinogi for example). The only bad thing about this is it's been so hard choosing a "main". I really like the combat style of Archer, but I end up being able to do more (and doing it easier) as a Warrior. And then there's the differences in armor styles and combat animations between races. I chose Elin for my Archer because they're more acrobatic. And I chose Human for my Warrior because Human female is the most attractive. But Castanic are a close second, with racial +1% crit from behind, and getting some very good looking leather armor styles around L60. As of today, TERA has released additional L60 dungeons. And new glyphs. Bunch of other changes too, like L1-59 armors all becoming templates. Nexus times have increased (although at odd hours) to give people more changes at earning rep and credits. Anyway, I played GW2 in beta and I liked it, but it's worse than TERA in endgame content. I just don't get why that game is so popular while TERA is not... It's obviously not because it's a superior game. It's because it reaches the most players, being F2P. Just as WoW reached the most players by having the least demanding PC requirements...
That's some pretty heavy oversimplification there... Anyway, Tera's hyper-sexiness probably (and ironically) turns off quite a few people, so that part alone is likely why it's not more successful. I think they've done a great job building their own style, but it's not for everyone and it's so obviously aimed squarely at the male demographic that I'd imagine their female audience is pretty tiny. I can only speak from my experience in beta, but I do agree with you that the combat was very good. However, a lot of people need more than that and it seemed pretty thin in every other area to me.
Nah, I don't think the overly sexual models is a big deal for the game's popularity. My sister fucking loves tera and has never made a negative comment to me about the character models. Look at any lady gaga video - her scanty clothes aren't turning off many female fans.
Well let me retort, I would never even consider Tera because of it's horribly misogynistic female characters. Anecdote is not the singular of data.
It's not, but my point is that a ton of stuff targeted at least in part at women shows women in skimpy clothing. If most women had a problem with that, it would stop. Either way, it isn't the reason Guild Wars 2 is more popular than Tera. Tera is a WoW clone with better combat. Guild Wars 2 fixes a lot of problems that people had with WoW (and introduces some of its own, but at least its different).
No. Why do you think so? I'm trying to argue that I doubt women are getting turned off from Tera significantly more than from any other standard MMORPG.
Actually I've noticed a lot of posts in other forums, ridiculing TERA's armor styles for how skimpy they are. And how it flies in the face of logic, having plate armor for Castanic females that covers much less than leather armor. There are a lot of women against "bikini" plate armor. I saw a lot of that in RIFT. Most of the sexual suggestive stuff is in the armor styles rather than character models or animations. It's no more wrong to me than women who are obsessed with high heels (which TERA also likes to force every female to wear lol). As for TERA being a WoW clone, I never played WoW so I don't know if that's true. I know that WoW borrowed some things from EQ1, and EQ1 probably borrowed things from some other game (D&D). The only thing WoW really did great was reach the most people by offering something entertaining (but not exceptional or innovative) and requiring very simple PC hardware to run it. TERA is KOREAN based, so I doubt they're going to go look at some MMO from the U.S. to develop their game. The US/European version we play is pretty much the same, just easier to level and of course translated to English.
I'd argue Tera "fixes problems people had with WoW" for those whose problem with DIKU games was combat ;> That's only half kidding btw. Tera pretty much ruined GW2 for me -- my first experience with GW2 was one of the last pre-launch stress tests. I went in, made a warrior character and very much from the get-go got struck with how floaty and disconnected the combat felt in it. I've played it for couple of hours, did a few quests/events (both solo and the group ones) and then when the game crashed on me and disconnected... i found myself with zero interest to log in again. The combat was just that lacking. I still have yet to give GW2 another try since then.
I dont think it matters that much. Tera is so broken from bots its not even funny. You can easily google tera cheats and pull up a bunch of sites, for example taultunleashed(link removed) or mmoviper(link removed). Easy examples of how no one really seems to be getting banned and the games worlds are lame. I sorta like that gamers can cheat in games and get banned. Makes it feel like a speeding ticket. The problem is they need to start going after those cheaters more. I would much rather just play games like Magic the Gathering Cards, Dragons Maze Cards or Theros Spoilers
