Dragon Nest

[Bear]

Phantasy Star Online meets Ragnarok Online.

It's crack on a stick, free-to-play, and fun as helllllll. Comic of it will be incoming XD

I have to recommend this game, its pretty damn fun. .

*Edit* Oh and Pie and I play on Elena and usually hang out in channel 27 in Carderock. (or whatever the first non-starting town is called).

[RollCasket]

That sounds totally like what I want =P

d/ling it now...no idea what class I'm gonna play yet...and also fairly certain I have an account with them from some other game (I think I have an account everywhere...) but I'll mess with all that tomorrow =P

thanks for the link!

Currently I've been playing Elsword, though that's a 2D sidescroller action rpg, so prolly different, but still cute.

[Bear]

Awesome! We should play together! Fei and I are totally enthralled with this game, its just got so much awesome sauce to it. To be more accurate, its like PSO + RO + Seiken Densetsu 3 + Quake 3 Arena.

Awesome fact paced dungeons? Check
Interesting classes and skill trees? Check
Simple but tight controls? Check
Interesting equipment and character stats? Check
Awesome PVP? Check
Awesome dubbing and charming style? Check
Community manager willing to be candid about where they need improvement? Check

Down sides:

Cash Shop (hope to god Nexon doesn't abuse this)
Still in open beta
Bot issues

[RollCasket]

Bot problems? Is that the part that's like RO? lololol, jk =P Also, your character names would prolly help. I also do love Seiken Densetsu 3, don't oversell me on the game though, now it's got a lot to live up to, heh.

What classes you two playin? Might start warrior...I think. Long as I can use a controller I should be fine though.

[Bear]

Haha, well let me explain a bit:

The play style is very much like PSO - all dungeons/fields are instanced with hub towns where the players interact. When entering a dungeon you choose its difficulty level and go in and wreck monsters, destroying barrels and landmarks to get items and stuff. The item drop system is similar to PSO as well. It very much is an action-game MMO.

The upgrade systems are a lot like RO - You upgrade items and try to over upgrade them to get massive bonuses to your equipment. A piece of gear can be upgraded all the way to +12, and they will sell a cash shop item to ensure equipment isn't destroyed in attempts to over plus.

What makes this MUCH nicer than RO is that equipment drops rather reliably in dungeons and the upgrading system is not as harsh. I've already gotten several to +9 and +10 without the use of shop items. The other nice thing is that in RO the upgrades could significantly effect character power whereas in DN only your weapon and off hand increase your power, all armors just get simple HP/MP bonuses for their upgrades.

The skill trees are a lot like RO - Complicated skill tress for each class with interesting different paths to custom build your character to your play style. In RO you could make really cool things like battle priests and specialize in certain things that made the games systems very interesting - DN allows for a lot of diversity in builds with you putting skill points to level the skills you care about with talent trees that branch out, even within subsets of a similar sub-class.

The class system is similar to Seiken Densetsu 3 - You only have 4 base classes to chose from (which are gender locked), but from there it branches not once, but twice. Think Holy/Dark --> Holy/Holy, Holy/Dark, Dark/Holy, Dark/Dark. At the second branch that allows for 16 different classes, but because of the skill trees, you can have two very different characters of the same end-class.

PVP and a bit of the gameplay is reminiscent of Q3 Arena - The system has an FPS reticle used for aiming and the camera is placed above the right shoulder of the character, allowing you to see moves of enemies easier that need to be avoided. When you enter in PVP, it seems everyone is set at the same health/mana (though not gear or skills), and you pick a team. When you enter your character is tinted red or blue depending on the team and you go at it very much like an FPS (maybe I should say it's closer to TF2)? Either way, its tons of fun.

In Summary - Fast paced action with interesting skill and class builds (complete with interesting and cool skills effects) without any of the grindy feeling of RO. Get on, have fun, but also sit there and agonize over your dream build because we all love to nerd out too. hehehe

[Bear]

Oh, and also I'm rolling a mage-to-be-force user (Sillil) and an archer-to-be-acrobat (Vallesia). Pie is playing an archer (Sentinia).

[RollCasket]

Eww gender locked >.> I hate when games do that =P Also, EVERY NAME IS TAKEN >_< I wanted to make a warrior named RockVolnutt but that was taken, though oddly RollCasket (archer) was not /boggle, and every other name I wanted was taken so I just went with the joke name AftaShave.

It's one of those that uses the mouse to move so that sucks, no controllers >.> I also had to turn it on low settings and still runs only ok-ish. I'm sure it'll run better on the desktop so I'll try that tomorrow sometime.

[Bear]

Yeah, Pie and I aren't too enthusiastic about the gender lock thing, but they make it suited to it, like how the mages come from a coven of witches. I just think of it as playing a single player game with limited customization or, perhaps more aptly, like an FPS.

Oh, I should probably also mention that Pie and I are on very seldom and erratically - with everything we have going on it's completely random for us when we have free time. It's one of the main reasons I had to back out of raiding (and WoW as a whole).

[RollCasket]

Well...got the warrior to lvl 6 and did the tutorial thing with the archer and it's...kinda eh. I used the great sword and axe as warrior, and for some reason there were...a few times where my character was just throwing out attacks without me doing anything while using the axe...so not sure what was goin on there, but I don't have a good sword so I'm stuck with that for now =P Archer also seemed wildly boring, so I dunno x.x

I'll mess with it more when I can play on the desktop tomorrow so I'll give it another shot then, but so far I dunno =P Oh, and the costume items don't look as good as I would've thought from the overall cuteness of the game.

[Bear]

Well, I'll admit that the beginning of the game is not all that spectacular, the first time Pie and I played we were pretty underwhelmed. The dungeons were small, they had you go back to the same ones over and over and since everything is instanced, you spend a lot of time staring at a loading screen.

The first time we played it, we got to about 5 or 6 or so and hadn't decided to come back. We thought it was a nice little distraction and nothing more.

Then for some reason a couple days later I decided to give it another go and see more. And I got out of the newbie zone and things started to pick up faster. A lot of the appeal comes later when the dungeons are longer and more challenging and you begin to unlock your skills. Once you exit the starting zone, you can set the difficulty to Abyss on dungeons you are entering the first time, so there is no artificial grind to "rank up" on the difficulty scale.

Once it started picking up steam, I saw on an Acrobat downing a higher level dungeon and it had me captivated. If the video doesn't look interesting, then the game probably isn't for you =/