So, I get to be a part of all five of Tera online's closed betas as well as their open beta and head start event and that's pretty awesome. I love beta testing MMO's, always have, I love seeing them in their pre-launch phase since it really shows the developer's true colors in regards to how they respond to player input and where their focus is. One thing that never fails to wreck an online community is poor leadership on the developers end. I've seen Aion, one of the more interesting MMO's, fail almost entirely due to a lack of proper and professional management from NC West. I'm hoping En Masse Entertainment is able to prove just how much they care about their players and the virtual community as a whole.
The first closed beta began last Friday and lasted until Sunday, giving us about two and a half days to explore the first areas of the game (Levels 1-22). The whole thing started out a bit rough, due to either En Masse underestimating how many people were in the beta or just a faulty server, and both the open servers took a nose dive after a few minutes. Not a great start but they recovered well and we were happily playing Tera shortly after this crash. The only other thing I'd like to mention here is the queue, oh boy that was a long one...my friend and I waited about an hour to log in, probably why the server crashed, tons of people were part of this test. En Masse quickly sorted everything out and I wasn't stuck in another queue the entire beta, yay for them, it took SWTOR half a month to rid us of long queues.
The Gameplay: What do I need to say about this? Oh yeah, its awesome. I love Tera's gameplay, it gives the player such a high degree of control over their character's movement and combat unlike any MMO I've played before. With the lack of a targeting system Tera forces players to constantly think about their positioning in relation to their targets and making their strikes accurate. This is not the game for people who like to sit around and press 111 222 111 333 5 and expect to win a fight. No, the combat is extremely demanding on the player and your success in combat is ultimately dependent on your ability to be strategic with your fights. This goes double for the Warrior class, which I ended up choosing to play for this test.
The Warrior Class: Widely regarded as one of, if not THE hardest class to play. It is the only class you can select with a 5-star difficulty rating (Yes, En Masse categorized their classes based on difficulty). I'm typically a guy who plays the rogue/assassin type character and I was sorely disappointed by Tera's lack of "rogues" until I realized that the Warrior might as well just be called an assassin. They utilize two swords, focus on evasion, backstabbing, high attack speed, and poisons. Yeah, they're pretty much Tera's assassins minus the focus on daggers (Sadface). My experience with the warrior was a good one, I enjoyed the fast paced combat simply because it keeps me engaged and even when I'm grinding stuff for Guild Quests I still enjoy fighting against the AI.
PvP as a Warrior: Yikes, this was a bit rough at this stage in the game, I was finding myself having trouble dealing with many of the other classes at 22. I know PvP isn't balanced around low levels and you'll typically find more balance at endgame but it was just damaging to the ego when I can't come close to dropping a Slayer despite having similar gear/level. I had the opportunity to fight several slayers (the dudes are everywhere), a few Berserkers (went better than slayers), and some Mystics (Did not go so well). The PvP is fun but I do foresee some balancing issues if not just from observing the reactions and class populations from the Korean/Japanese servers. Slayers essentially dominate most other classes in 1v1 PvP which is somewhat frustrating since most games struggle with balancing their heavy DPS classes for PvP. Aion's Templars and Gladiators were some of the easier classes to play and were near impossible to beat as another melee class unless you were another Glad/Temp. Hopefully the feedback from KR/JP servers will be enough to get some balance for future PvP.
BAM's: "Big Ass Monsters", the "Elites" of Tera Online. These guys are tough at first but the game is based on player skill so much so that you can solo these titans without much issue, aside from how long it takes. People constantly post videos of them soloing these and trying to look awesome. Well, it does kinda look awesome to see a little dude fighting a behemoth all by himself, nimbly dodging through waves of attacks and shelling out damage all the while. Killing a BAM is a lot of fun and typically very rewarding, the drop a lot of loot and crafting materials.
Boss Experience: My friend Shiggy (Slayer) and I (Warrior) decided to take on a field boss to see just how far we could get with two people against a large boss. The result was: We killed it, but it wasn't easy. The particular boss we chose was level 25, three levels above the first beta cap for us, so right away we were put at a level disadvantage. The fight started easily enough, I tanked him while Shiggy put DPS on and tried to stay behind him. This worked until about 70% when the boss started glowing and lighting began to cover over its arms. His attack speed went through the roof and he began a near non-stop barrage of powered up attacks directed at me. Eventually there was one I just couldn't avoid, I figured it was fine to get hit once...I was wrong and died immediately, crushed under this thing's titanic ass. Shiggy took aggro and kited him around while I res'd up and headed back (It was near a teleporter thankfully) and by the time I had gotten back the previously powered up boss was back to normal so we kept bringing him down slowly but surely. Every five or ten minutes the boss would "enrage" again and we were forced to kite him around until it ran out. This became difficult because he started launching projectiles at us if we got too far away...eventually we did kill him without wiping but it was an incredibly lengthy battle and really kept us on our toes. We got some good loot from him including a whopping seven uncommon boss runes which I can use for crafting in the next patch. (Typical BAMs of that level don't drop anywhere near that many). Bosses can be incredibly tough but are quite fun and rewarding.
Instances: I only did one instance that was called "Secret Base". It was a pretty fun experience, lots of elite mobs to fight through and two dynamic boss battles. The bosses are the cool part of these instances, they feel more fluid than typical bosses on MMOs, the ones we fought rarely stood still long enough to let us get in many hits. The bosses don't just sit there and let you hit them, the move around, use long range attacks, I almost felt as if the boss was kiting the players around, how backwards is that? The video of our first encounter with the boss of Secret Base can be seen here.
Overall: Tera left a good impression on me after the first test, I really feel like En Masse is invested in giving us a good gaming experience and providing consistent, innovative content for us in the future. Tera's gameplay definitely makes it stand out from typical MMOs that we've seen in the past. I'm extremely excited for the second closed test beginning on the 24th of February. Thanks for reading! If you'd like to contact me in-game I'll be on Serpentis Isle (I think?) under the name "Cross".
The first closed beta began last Friday and lasted until Sunday, giving us about two and a half days to explore the first areas of the game (Levels 1-22). The whole thing started out a bit rough, due to either En Masse underestimating how many people were in the beta or just a faulty server, and both the open servers took a nose dive after a few minutes. Not a great start but they recovered well and we were happily playing Tera shortly after this crash. The only other thing I'd like to mention here is the queue, oh boy that was a long one...my friend and I waited about an hour to log in, probably why the server crashed, tons of people were part of this test. En Masse quickly sorted everything out and I wasn't stuck in another queue the entire beta, yay for them, it took SWTOR half a month to rid us of long queues.
The Gameplay: What do I need to say about this? Oh yeah, its awesome. I love Tera's gameplay, it gives the player such a high degree of control over their character's movement and combat unlike any MMO I've played before. With the lack of a targeting system Tera forces players to constantly think about their positioning in relation to their targets and making their strikes accurate. This is not the game for people who like to sit around and press 111 222 111 333 5 and expect to win a fight. No, the combat is extremely demanding on the player and your success in combat is ultimately dependent on your ability to be strategic with your fights. This goes double for the Warrior class, which I ended up choosing to play for this test.
The Warrior Class: Widely regarded as one of, if not THE hardest class to play. It is the only class you can select with a 5-star difficulty rating (Yes, En Masse categorized their classes based on difficulty). I'm typically a guy who plays the rogue/assassin type character and I was sorely disappointed by Tera's lack of "rogues" until I realized that the Warrior might as well just be called an assassin. They utilize two swords, focus on evasion, backstabbing, high attack speed, and poisons. Yeah, they're pretty much Tera's assassins minus the focus on daggers (Sadface). My experience with the warrior was a good one, I enjoyed the fast paced combat simply because it keeps me engaged and even when I'm grinding stuff for Guild Quests I still enjoy fighting against the AI.
PvP as a Warrior: Yikes, this was a bit rough at this stage in the game, I was finding myself having trouble dealing with many of the other classes at 22. I know PvP isn't balanced around low levels and you'll typically find more balance at endgame but it was just damaging to the ego when I can't come close to dropping a Slayer despite having similar gear/level. I had the opportunity to fight several slayers (the dudes are everywhere), a few Berserkers (went better than slayers), and some Mystics (Did not go so well). The PvP is fun but I do foresee some balancing issues if not just from observing the reactions and class populations from the Korean/Japanese servers. Slayers essentially dominate most other classes in 1v1 PvP which is somewhat frustrating since most games struggle with balancing their heavy DPS classes for PvP. Aion's Templars and Gladiators were some of the easier classes to play and were near impossible to beat as another melee class unless you were another Glad/Temp. Hopefully the feedback from KR/JP servers will be enough to get some balance for future PvP.
BAM's: "Big Ass Monsters", the "Elites" of Tera Online. These guys are tough at first but the game is based on player skill so much so that you can solo these titans without much issue, aside from how long it takes. People constantly post videos of them soloing these and trying to look awesome. Well, it does kinda look awesome to see a little dude fighting a behemoth all by himself, nimbly dodging through waves of attacks and shelling out damage all the while. Killing a BAM is a lot of fun and typically very rewarding, the drop a lot of loot and crafting materials.
Boss Experience: My friend Shiggy (Slayer) and I (Warrior) decided to take on a field boss to see just how far we could get with two people against a large boss. The result was: We killed it, but it wasn't easy. The particular boss we chose was level 25, three levels above the first beta cap for us, so right away we were put at a level disadvantage. The fight started easily enough, I tanked him while Shiggy put DPS on and tried to stay behind him. This worked until about 70% when the boss started glowing and lighting began to cover over its arms. His attack speed went through the roof and he began a near non-stop barrage of powered up attacks directed at me. Eventually there was one I just couldn't avoid, I figured it was fine to get hit once...I was wrong and died immediately, crushed under this thing's titanic ass. Shiggy took aggro and kited him around while I res'd up and headed back (It was near a teleporter thankfully) and by the time I had gotten back the previously powered up boss was back to normal so we kept bringing him down slowly but surely. Every five or ten minutes the boss would "enrage" again and we were forced to kite him around until it ran out. This became difficult because he started launching projectiles at us if we got too far away...eventually we did kill him without wiping but it was an incredibly lengthy battle and really kept us on our toes. We got some good loot from him including a whopping seven uncommon boss runes which I can use for crafting in the next patch. (Typical BAMs of that level don't drop anywhere near that many). Bosses can be incredibly tough but are quite fun and rewarding.
Instances: I only did one instance that was called "Secret Base". It was a pretty fun experience, lots of elite mobs to fight through and two dynamic boss battles. The bosses are the cool part of these instances, they feel more fluid than typical bosses on MMOs, the ones we fought rarely stood still long enough to let us get in many hits. The bosses don't just sit there and let you hit them, the move around, use long range attacks, I almost felt as if the boss was kiting the players around, how backwards is that? The video of our first encounter with the boss of Secret Base can be seen here.
2 comments:
Zoaea: Hi fest, nice blog you have. Tera sounds fun. Are you in contact with any of the old Void members? Contact me through the old legion website!
Zoaea (aion)
Hey, glad to hear from ya :D if you wanna play Tera with us join up on http://avaricegaming.enjin.com/
Most of the old Void members still play Aion (not as much as before) but yeah we'll be playing Tera on alternating weekends for the closed betas :). Drop by Avarice vent if you get a chance :D info is on the site.
Post a Comment