One of the things I like to do before doing this sort of “one month later” review is to at least have reached the initial maximum level in the game and played at least a few hours of that level caps end game content. That way, I can have a better informed personal opinion of the type of content that is available and how the gearing/character progression is laid out.
All too often, I have read personal opinions that a game sucked where they never unlocked the ultimate skill(s) of a class or dealt with the higher level content where you did need to deal with those higher level class skills that had a lengthy cooldown. True, there are some games that just do not grab you at the start where it is just best to call it quits early on. But it is hard to take someones opinion seriously when it is passed off as them having actually played most facets of the game when in fact, it was only early leveling/questing.
The game does offer a very quick preview of each class at level 100 (and soul level 100) during the intro tutorial but this isn’t a great representation except for flat damage/defense since you cannot test allocating those soul level points. This preview character lacks bonus damage, cooldown reductions, MP reduction, etc (not that the tutorial content requires any of these). Skills are assigned randomly and cannot be changed. The point is that the game play and combat doesn’t feel any special which is why I still needed to play at max level for a bit. I skipped that during the CBT since it was clear that some classes had not gone through a more granular tuning pass.
Aesthetics and combat are both subject to ones personal tastes. As I’ve noted in prior postings about this game, I personally found MU Legend’s combat extraordinarily boring and generic. And while the graphics look nice, they also are rather generic. One of the biggest off putting things in the visuals department however are stiff character/mount movements. Even Guardians of Ember put more effort in this area.
This whole generic/boring/unmemorable description applies equally to the gearing/pet/wings progression. Your character effectively lives in the Room of Duty in order to do your daily tasks of limited entry content which are all vital to being able to enchant your gear and/or upgrade your pets (irrespective of tier). You need Magic Gems and Zen as a base currency. You acquire certain materials as drops that are used for socketing equipment or re-rolling properties. The cubes that are awarded from most of those limited entry content offers additional materials for enchanting/evolving gear/pet/wings. The same goes for the cubes from the Mythic (which at least has unlimited entries) and Epic dungeons (2 dungeons with 1 entry limit per day). And the only place to grow your artifacts is in the labyrinth (unlimited entries but is also one of the most mind numbing/boring grinds that I’ve experienced).
The basic premise is this Korean MMO development mindset; one that is filled with an array of consumable materials that are used for progressing gear (the normal enchanting, re-rolling properties, and evolving process). Inventory clutter is a given in games of this sort but it goes over the top in many Korean designed systems (I covered this before since they were designed with gaming net cafes aka PC bangs in mind). The clutter is meant to fill inventory to push players to whatever monetization design used for gaining additional space.
Webzen’s premium subscription service offers several important quality of life (QoL) enhancements which can be time savers: remote shop to sell stuff or repair equipment, remote de-enchantment, remote storage access, 1 or 2 extra tabs of personal stash depending on premium level.
These companies need to naturally find ways to monetize a free 2 play title so some sort of monthly subscription service is usually standard. In-game microtransactions are also part of the norm and Webzen’s cash shop is one of the dullest/uninspiring shops I’ve seen (notice the trend I am getting at) when it comes to character customization options (limited cosmetics that are also time limited and need another cash shop purchase to continuously extend that time limit).
It also has those questionable items like the red and blue imprint scrolls (allows adding a random property onto a piece of gear – the higher quality red scroll allows properties that can’t be acquired in-game) and pet boxes. Pet boxes allows by passing the limited entry Fabrice Garden’s where the drop rate of pets from the cube are low (and then you are also fighting RNG with tier level and pet type rarity). As noted in prior postings, the majority of items in their cash shop requires unbound Redzen (the games virtual currency which can be earned in-game by selling items on the auction house) or via real money transaction by purchasing it from Webzen.
I’ve rarely used the “pay2win” term since it is normally about “pay2convenience” but with this game, you can just straight out sink huge amounts of money into Redzen to use to purchase the above. The highest tier gear in the game (purple Epics which also have set bonuses) can’t be sold on the auction house but are likewise, going to be the most difficult to enchant. Mythic gear on the otherhand can be traded and if need be, unbound using a 2000 Redzen cash shop item which allows it to be traded. Because enchanting them will be a bit easier compared to epics (an Epic may be higher tiered but if poorly rolled, won’t matter much), it’s expected that the most well rolled/highest enchanted mythics will still fetch a good amount. The point is that such BIS items can be purchased directly via this method (for me, anytime you can purchase any sort of BIS gear using virtual currency that the company sells, I define that as “pay2win”).
The Platinum premium service level is pretty much mandatory for anyone serious at being at the top. The QoL features are extremely time saving, the additional entries means extra currency and materials, the 30% soul experience boost is a huge advantage, and the 5% monster attack bonus while it may seem small right now, will become more noticeable as player attack increases over time. The simplest way to see that is by comparing 1000+5% versus 10000+5%. Percentages matter when it comes to larger numbers. That’s why high income tax brackets welcome any percentage decrease in their tax rates because those savings still translates into a material amount.
In the past 2.5 weeks, I’ve sort of stopped playing. Most of the limited entry dailies in the Room of Duty can be subjugated (you pay a small amount of Redzen to receive a percentage of the rewards for having it completed automatically; using bound Redzen gets you 60% of the rewards while unbound Redzen nets 80%). It’s a convenience feature (ala mobile) when you may not have time to do your dailies. For me, it turned into a convenience feature from having to do these mindnumbing dailies with what is clearly a mediocre/uninspiring game.
And now that my Platinum subscription from the Frontier founder pack has expired, that purely psychological “attachment” of feeling compelled to login to the game (just for the sake of getting the most out of that subscription) is now gone. So even though I have some of the extra rewards from the service, the reality is that they’ll go mostly unused unless Webzen make some drastic changes to the game. Any form of compensation will end up coming too late for this title for many. I personally only see lip service happening given the amateur level handling of how their publishing subsidiary has dealt with an array of problems during this first month of “open beta testing”.
