First Impressions
Finally got my serial code on Monday. I'm obviously a total noob in Lineage 2 but I wanted to post my first impressions here since I expressed an interest in the game in earlier posts.
I've played a few MMORPGs in my time although none recently. The last one I played was Asheron's Call 2, which was a real turkey that put me off MMORPGs for a while.
The best feature of Lineage II is the graphics, which is not much of a recommendation I know. The character models are particularly good. There is a definite Anime-ish style, although there is nothing cartoon-like about the graphics. The male character models look pretty much normal by non-anime standards. I particularly like the orcs, which look like your standard human, Conan-the-barbarian, big bastards, although done much better than in any other game I've seen. On the other hand, the female character models generally have that schoolgirl-like anime look, with short skirts and knee-high socks, an innocent face and fake looking boobs bursting out of whatever they are wearing. I'm not complaining in any way, but there is something very guilt-inducing about being able to see your girl character's white-panty-clad gusset as she runs. I'm married and I really don't want my wife to see Lineage 2. (And before you say, "Why not play a male character?" I need to point out that playing a male character - to my wife - means being able to hit on the female characters, because she doesn't believe that most female characters are also played by men.)
Before playing the game, after seeing the screenshots, I had already decided that I wanted to be a female dark elf fighter. The dark elf females look like women, not schoolgirls, which is more acceptable even though they are clad like bondage queens. Unfortunately, when I created my character and started playing, I found that I was totally put off the character simply by the run animation. This is the first time I have ever chosen to not play a character because of the character animations. Not that the actual animation is poor quality or anything, it's just the anime run style that the dark elf was given. If you ever saw the episode of Seinfeld with the woman who doesn't move her arms when she walks, well the dark elf women are essentially the same, only running. Being in the dark elf village is like being in some bizarro dark elf Riverdance. If you can't be bothered to play the game to see this, then you can create the same affect if you have a female friend willing to help.
HOW TO RUN LIKE A DARK ELF
You will need help from a female friend, preferably one who is tall and slim. If she has gray skin and white hair, even better. Of course, if YOU are female, or a perv, you can do this yourself.
1. The female needs to wear nothing by skimpy, sexy lingerie, preferably a black leather thong, black stockings and a black leather push-up bra.
2. She needs to stand upright, with her arms held rigidly straight by her sides.
3. Now she needs to lean forward, keeping her arms and upper body aligned, to a point where her upper body is about 30 degrees from the vertical - right about where it is hard to retain balance. Think of it as the start of a very formal bow.
4. Finally, she needs to sprint forward as fast as she can, all the time keeping her upper body and arms absolutely motionless.
Congratulations - you have now seen first hand how a Lineage II Dark Elf runs.
Anyway, I decided that dark elves were not for me. I could not decide what I wanted after that so I ended up with three characters:
- Female human fighter and gusset-flashing extraordinaire
- Female human schoolgirl-fantasy mage
- Female orc mage with pornstar fake tits
One thing I really like about Lineage II is that you do not have any real character choices to make at the start. You simply choose whether to be fighter or mage, and then at level 20 you can specialize. This gives you plenty of time to experiment and decide what style of play you want. It is also very hard to gimp your character because you can eventually learn all the skills available to your class. If you decide you do not like a skill you can just learn another and all you have lost is the time you spent earning skill credits for the old skill. The only problem with this is that eventually all characters of the same race, class and specialization will be the same.
After creating my character(s) I decided to explore a little. The first thing you get upon starting is a really brief tutorial on the main game controls, such as moving around. I have to say that I really hate the default point-and-click to move system, even more so than I did in Neverwinter Nights. It's bearable in a 3d isometric game like NWN or Diablo, but in a 3rd person camera over the shoulder game like Lineage II it is really ugly. I just learned that there is a way to play using WASD, although I have yet to try it.
The other thing you notice with the tutorial is that this is not a game written by native English speakers. The grammar and style is very amateurish and there is no word wrapping, instead the line can break anywhere in a word. Another annoying feature is that the names of items in the game do not correspond to the names given to you in dialogue. For example: you may be given a quest to kill Nyophites to gather fox fangs, yet the creature that drops fox fangs is called a Keltir. I have seen this in other MMORPGs, but in Lineage II it is true to say that almost everything you are given via quest and NPC dialogue is wrong in some way. I also dislike how items have names like Fox_fang5 or Sword2, which is not something you want to see in a beta test 14 days before the official launch.
I temporarily forgot all the above problems when I took my character out of the starter building and began hunting. The scenary is breathtaking and the combat animations are superb, although somewhat limited. One of the main things I look for in any game is atmosphere and the graphics in this game certainly deliver that feeling of being there. (Of course, seeing other characters called things like "DA0Cl33t" somewhat ruins the effect.) I will certainly derive some enjoyment out of the game from exploring during the free beta period, even if nothing else appeals to me.
As Exitium wrote, this is certainly a 'hardcore' MMORPG. You can PvP with anyone at any time, you lose lots of XP when you die, and you can even lose valuable items on death. All this is good, IMO. I am particularly happy to see lots of 'experienced' PvP players from other MMORPGs complaining about the PvP system in Lineage II. They complain because the game does not give any rewards for PvP, but it does impose reasonably big penalties for being killed in PvP and for killing someone in PvP who does not fight back ("murder"). This discourages all but the really hardcore griefers from taking PvP too lightly, which is why people are complaining. The best thing about the PvP system is that it allows you to smack-down people who are pissing you off, or at least try. This makes people somewhat more respectful of each other than in other MMORPGs. The system is far from perfect, but it is already better than the way PvP is handled (or not handled) in other MMORPGs.
Being a 'hardcore' MMORPG also means that the level grind in Lineage is no better than in other games. I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand I agree with the developers that a player economy will only work if item drops are rare, and that the game will be better if everyone does not have a level 70 character three weeks after launch. On the other hand, games where levelling is slow need to have many and varied things to do so that there is less mindless repetition. Unfortunately, Lineage II provides very little for the player other than mindless levelling. There is a very limited crafting system, but you have to play a certain race to take advantage of it (Dwarf). There are quests, but they are all the extremely over done collect so many of this, deliver that, go kill the other type quests. Eventually there will be massive castle siege PvP events, but that aspect is not available as yet and the servers lag so much when there are more than a few people in one area that no-one has much confidence that this feature will work well.
The other problem with the game system is that there is a severe lack of different weapon and clothing models, I keep hoping that a MMORPG developer will one day realize that players are more interested in being unique than they are in being 'uber' and a MMORPG could go a long way simply by having lots of different colored clothing, armor and different weapon styles without the need to give every different item a unique magical ability. Lineage II has a worse item selection than most MMORPGs I've seen this close to release, and bear in mind I have seen Asheron's Call 2, which was heavily criticized for this problem.
On the plus side, for me at least, Lineage II does allow the player to hunt solo. I hate games where being in a group is forced upon you, simply because I have yet to see a game where it is easy to find a group, get organized and travel to a hunting spot without wasting a huge amount of time - time that I do not have because I can rarely play for more than 2 hours at a stretch. I love to group in the situation where I actually have the time to do so, but a game where you can do nothing without a group really turns me off. On the downside, Lineage II seems to lack any incentive to group since there are no obvious worthwhile rewards other than a minor XP bonus. This is going to change I hear, and unlike with other MMORPGs a statement to that effect from the developers does not worry me because they appear to recognize the benefit of having a game that encourages both grouping and solo play.
Reading through what I have written so far, you might get the impression that I really do not like this game. While it is true to say that I have mixed feelings about Lineage II, and I have not yet decided whether to play the game at retail, it would be wrong to conclude that I dislike it. As I mentioned earlier, I really am a big atmosphere fan, and Lineage II does at least have that aspect covered awfully well, in spite of the dumbass kewl-d00d players. I am very capable of finding things for my character to do, even when the game does not provide spoon-fed content, and this game has lots of potential for player-initiated gameplay such as organizing a clan, clan warfare, PvPing, PKer hunting and random acts of charity. However, I would not go as far as to recommend Lineage II to anyone because most people do not have my tastes. Of course, the game is currently free to download and play, so anyone who is interested should give it a try.
FIRST IMPRESSIONS - SUMMARY
As I mentioned at the start, I only just started playing so this summary is based on first impressions only.
Pros-
- Great graphics and animation
- Good atmosphere
- Continuous world (no zoning, even when entering most buildings)
- Good 'feel' to the game when in combat
- Always-on PvP encourages respect among players
- Decent race/class balance
- Well thought-out economic system (probably)
- Grouping is not forced on you
- Develop your class as you play rather than choosing at the start
- Hard to gimp your character
- Camping of spawns not necessary (so I hear, no personal experience)
- Extremely sexy character models (both sexes, although I am guessing about the men)
Cons-
- Lack of content other than level grind
- Poor point-and-click NWN-like control system (although I hear WASD is possible)
- Some weird Anime-like charcter models and animation (not a disadvantage to some)
- Bad English translation and text that wraps mid-word
- Fairly unpolished user-interface (although it's not terrible)
- NPC dialogue often misleading, making quests artificially hard without a guide
- Limited weapon, armor, clothing and character styles
- Unimaginitive quests, usually of the hunt-the-rate-drop type
- Severe lag even with a few people in the same area
- A lot of problems with people running macros and bots (so I hear)
(Note: I know RPGCodex is an odd place to discuss a MMORPG, since there is nothing RPG about them, but there IS a MMORPG forum regardless and I write this for my own benefit because I am bored at work.)
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