To be honest, I have no idea and am not going to bother checking out K-TERA streams or checking Inven to see if anyone has bragged yet about getting the server first level 70 achievement. The point of this posting is to revisit my realities about this level 70 “expansion” entry to see what solutions Bluehole has offered since then to reduce the (IMHO) ridiculous grind.
The point is that at least 1.5 weeks ago, there were still players grinding dungeons and open world mobs who were still level 66 or 67. Bluehole issued an update on January 10th which included the ability to gain experience again from gathering, crafting, and fishing. There is of course a caveat with gaining experience from gathering; nodes must be manually collected (it would not be out of the question if Nexon KR eventually proposes a new auto gathering pet which will allow earning XP and pitches it as a revenue win for both them and Bluehole). Let me be blunt; given the new pet companion system, I wouldn’t be surprised to see something to that effect snuck in somewhere as a skill which can be acquired after some ridiculous grind (or outright cash shop item).
Bluehole’s update last week on January 17th provided some additional XP from field mobs (25%), increasing the experience from level 65-69 daily quests, and reducing the difficulty of level 65-69 daily quests. I doubt any of these will make the level 68+ grind to 70 feel any better.
If I could have the opportunity to interview the current product director for K-TERA, the main question I would be searing his/her ears off with is “what the hell happened to the following new zone and associated story that was teased by the previous team handling the game during the 2017 TERA showcase event, and why didn’t they take the time to incorporate that into the level cap increase?
Part of me believes that the actual production work for this never fully got off the ground when personnel within Bluehole were shuffled between projects (i.e. moving some to/from Ascent: Infinite Realm) to form the current “new” design/development team. I know the question is also somewhat rhetorical since I had previously felt that Bluehole had been pretty much running the TERA franchise on auto-pilot (while in a slow descent) when it came to investing in the production of actual new content (given the costs involved).
But I will admit my interest was piqued when they began showing some signs of life with the class awakenings and other changes like fishing and the revamped gathering/crafting system (and now this newly announced pet companion system). The above new zone and associated story (which was hinted back in late 2017) was something that folks like myself were looking forward to (with no expectations of them reversing a prior teams decision that the level cap would remain at 65).
So when the initial news was posted regarding the level cap being raised, my first thought was that it was going to be somehow associated with this new zone. As the actual update has shown though, Bluehole’s solutions has been tweaks of experience grinding dungeons, field mobs, and running daily quests once the initial level specific quest has been completed. Korean players aren’t exactly thrilled with this either so I can only imagine how this level 70 update will end up being received by players in non-Asian regions (specifically with regards to NA-EME and EU-Gameforge).
On the publisher side, I don’t expect much from EME to mitigate the base K-TERA implementation since I am no fan with how the current PC product manager (Sean Neil) for TERA has managed the game (lazily/sloppily handled with the bare minimum attention to quality and detail). It’s been more or less shoveling out cash shop updates in order to meet the monthly/quarterly revenue metrics. Unfortunately, just like with ArcheAge and other games that have a small percentage of whales with way too much money than actual sense, TERA has some customers who enable the job security of individuals who needed to be shown the door an year ago. Gameforge isn’t that much better; they only seem better due to what I mentioned at the start of this paragraph.
Despite my disappointment at how the game is being consistently mishandled (both development and publisher side), nothing else has been anywhere close to being a suitable replacement for those parts of the game which I do enjoy (like the aesthetics, wacky races, the game world, the combat, and in an odd twist, the new gathering/crafting and fishing). I just don’t fall for the ridiculous grind design and have closed my wallet until further notice.
