Usually when I stop playing something (to the point where I never bothered to reinstall it after updating to a new system), rarely do I look back (as there was usually a reason for why that title just ended up becoming out of favor).
A few days ago, I decided to see what it felt like to log back into a game that I had not played in at least an year. That game happened to be Riders of Icarus (published by Nexon and developed by WeMade Entertainment).
Tamable mounts including ones with flight has its appeal. The game also has some pretty nice graphics and several different combat modes (tabbed targeting, action combat with auto-lock, and action combat with manual targeting which happens to be my favorite).
One of the first things that turned me off before was the tiny character stash which was nearly completely filled as I played through the initial starter zone/tutorial. The leveling also felt a bit slow going and the combat itself didn’t feel satisfying. The thing that caused me to stopped playing last October was the amount of disconnects where to its credit, the client tries to reconnect (it informs you with a message).
The operative word was “tries”. More often than not, it would fail to reconnect but not after having tried for a few minutes. It’s not like the game (or at least the server I was on) was bustling with players.
In summary, that first character managed to only log around 2 hours of play time of which I hit a whopping level 5 (level cap at the time if I recall correctly was 30). When I upgraded my system a few weeks later, I never bothered to reinstall.
I decided to give it a shot again and rolled the new Trickster class that was released with the Rise of the Trickster patch this past summer (July 6th). Nexon (which also publishes K-TERA) knows about the revenue impact of TERA’s Elin class so the diminutive/loli Trickster was something they probably proposed to WeMade Entertainment as a win-win. The class also has a wackiness to it which is something I have a spot for; that wackiness is being able to kill monsters while wielding a giant teddy bear. Sign me up!
I noticed the character creation/selection screen had changed. The new class also started in a self-contained solo tutorial instance instead of an actual open world starter zone where you were playing with other newly created characters (not sure if this is solely for this class). The tutorial eventually progresses into a main hub (Hakain’s Crossing) where you tame your first mount and have quests that lead you to some of the NPC’s that you’ll be dealing with often.
The game rewards a chest which you can open for level appropriate gear and bags that increased the number of slots in your personal stash. It also awards another chest that opens in what seems to be 5 level increments. Very small but nice improvements to that initial playing experience when you are trying to appeal to a newbie player (in my case, someone returning as a newbie that didn’t have a very positive impression the first time around).
I finally came across some AFK players in the Victory Plaza area. Essentially though, the place was a ghost town (not Devilian Asperon level bad but pretty close). The game has 3 servers though so it could be that I’m just on the most unpopulated one now. I also don’t think this new class had any major impact on increasing the player population of this title.
That entire “ghost town” effect is something that I can see which plays on the psyche of a new player. Myself, I’m okay with soloing as much as possible so the lack of players doesn’t really bother me. But for many who play MMO’s for the complete social experience, I can see where that appeal may be compromised by what looks and feels like a dead server.
Leveling while going through these initial tutorials was much faster where I hit level 9 before it gave me the first quest that puts actual combat in the open world. That part will be a better indicator of character leveling and progression. Overall, this second newbie experience with the game has come across better where I’ve logged back in several times already. Basically, the first time around did not feel fun at all.
The game client has some underwhelming spots though; the UI for one (the system one is like spartan/utilitarian). The other sore spot is display resolution that is limited to 1920×1080. While I do have a 4K gaming display, I have my system set to a display resolution of 2560×1440 since there are still far too many titles that don’t allow re-scaling the UI and chat text.
I plan to see how far I can go. Maybe I might actually get through the questing and make it to max level (which is currently 55).
