Yeah….I haven’t written anything here in a while huh? Well lets backtrack and see why.
TERA! I stopped Beta testing TERA, I did play some of Week #3 but It wasn’t sticking with me, and I wasn’t seeing anything that I disliked or that was broken being fixed. At that point I cancelled my pre-order. After release, I decided to buy it anyway. I was bored with all the other games I was not in the mood to play.
So I get into the game and was very confused. I was starting at level 20…I had quite a few skills and I had no control over those skills as far as moving them around on my hotbar. I went along with it and completed this so called, introduction to the game, zone. If they thought people were confused by the new action type controls vs the tab target and click method…congrats on confusing them more! It’s like me buying a leveled character with skills off Ebay and attempting to play. Who thought this was a good idea? the ONLY thing that was good about this introduction was that it gave you the back story lore of why you were in the original starter zone. This should have been made a 5 or 10 minute cinematic. Not make people use skills AND get use to battle and confuse them as to why they are level 20 already. POOR POOR design.
You then leave that area and are taken to the original starter zone and you are level 1. So how does this make sense? You were level 20 in the past and now you are level 1 in the future. Starter zone was pretty much how it was in beta. They did seem to make the mobs a bit tougher…but still I didn’t die again until I was level 17. Guild Wars 2 beta weekend I died at level 4! Basically in TERA, nothing agros you for your first 10-12 levels. Too easy!
Then the thing that always makes you feel good when you go into a game that you beta tested is when you see bugs that you reported still in the game. True unmistakable bugs. It was so nice reading general chat with people totally confused as to why they couldn’t find Vekis the mean tree that eats piglings. A day or two later they fixed it by taking out the cut scene that told you the wrong direction to run to find him.
They did seem to lessen the number of buttons needed for skills for the archer. I liked that. The game was still fun though..don’t take my post as a huge negative towards that game. It is a great change from tab targeting and whack-a-mole MMOs. You can look back at my past posts to read more about combat and game play. They do win the award for The Worst Voice Acting in a game though…the most bland and boring of any game I have played.
I joined the RP server this time around hoping to get a bit more involved and not play the game solo. My first guild was one of those that you get invited to, until you find a guild you might like. I sent them a message in my application to send me message when they were free to find out if their guild was a fit for me, and they instead just let me in. I quickly found out that this guild was no different than listening to general chat, which was still totally filled to the rim with immaturity and idiots.
Then after more searching and grouping, I found a new place…a guild that actually wanted to RP. I am far from being an RP pro. Some of them seemed very into it, posting stories on the forums, playing off each other. Then we attended some events. Now I’ve never been in an official RP guild or event (outside of being part of a GM crew in a game). Does it always take 3 to 5 minutes for people to respond? It was almost unbearable waiting for people to banter back and forth. I was enjoying doing something different though.
Recommendation for TERA – it is fun and it is a nice change from the typical MMOs. It’s only $49 and some people have discount codes for it too. It is worth trying out if you can put enough time into it the first month to get a higher level character and see if you truly enjoy it.
Also I have 2 games I am in closed beta testing for…One will be good….one I fear will fall on its face and not be what most were hoping for. I haven’t played the first for over a month now and the second I just can’t seem to get into trying it past the starter zone. Soooo, I am now playing Diablo 3! Also – I finished Skyrim – time played – 290 HOURS! Money well spent I would say.
