TERA Korean Open Beta Live Streams

The Korean open beta for TERA began on the 11th of January, and information has been slowly leaking out ever since. Several people from the TERA Fans Community are in the Korean OBT and have been live streaming their play sessions. I've been watching DFH's (dieforhonor) stream because it's a priest demonstrating group play and I am curious how he/she has been playing. The full list of live streams is available here.

TERA Updates

I previously posted about playing TERA at this year's Penny Arcade Expo in August. I'd been on a self-imposed blackout of information, not wanting to get too excited about the game when it was still in the earlier stages of development. I ended that blackout at PAX, though, and ever since I have been intrigued by this title. Even with the reports coming in from many friends that the new World of Warcraft expansion has fixed a lot of the things that have been angering me about the title for years, I have no desire to return to that franchise ever again. And Aion, which I love despite its faults, has experienced such a cataclysmic population collapse that it is simply unplayable. For me, this means I've got all my eggs in one basket with TERA. There's nothing else coming out in the near future, so if this game doesn't live up to the hype and my own expectations I will be completely out of luck.

Having lifted my self-imposed blackout surrounding the game, I decided to "like" the official page through Facebook since my Google Reader account is bogged down with dozens and dozens of blogs, webcomics, news sites and other webpages. I've been pleased to see the regularity of the updates that are rolling out for the different classes, races, and the world itself.  It seems like every other day, a bit more information is added to the official site. It's a very manageable rate that allows me to consume each bit completely, and the regularity also keeps my curiosity satisfied. This week the site also had an additional update, an interactive world map! It works well to aid exploration of the world's mythology and races, but the information is not very precise. I hope they'll release further updates with information about the zones in different regions. At current, it's only the broad strokes.

Game Watch: Tera

I've been intentionally ignoring all chatter about Tera, a game in development and felt by many to be the replacement for Lineage 2, but I broke my self-imposed media blackout this past weekend at PAX and am now intrigued with what little information is available.

The game is undeniably beautiful. I was able to spy on a game tour given to my left while I was experimenting with the spellcasting character gameplay, and I was impressed. As with Lineage, the cities are beautiful and grand, massive in scale and full of fanciful interpretations of various forms of classical architecture. There are 6 playable races, each with their own very distinct aesthetic, architecture, lore, and clothing. It doesn't appear that there is any restriction on race and character class combination, and it will be a faction-free game. Players will be free to form alliances and declare war on any player as they see fit, and the designers are working on a political system more complex than the simple castle ownership of Lineage 2.

As a former Lineage player, I recognize many similarities between the art in both games. Certain locations seem to be flushed out, polished versions of locations from Lineage and this is not a bad thing. If they are able to extract and build upon the successes of Lineage (the art, the open gameplay, the beautiful music) and correct some of its shortcomings (primarily the combat system and steep death penaltys and extremely difficult progression) this has the makings of an incredibly wonderful game.

The gameplay took a bit of getting used to, but that is the point - wings and flight combat were Aion's revolution and the combat system is TERA's. All previous MMORPG games have been built on variations of the same combat system: select a player or NPC by targeting them with your mouse and select offensive skills to attack or restorative skills to defend. The restrictions on skill usage is primarily range based - each skill can only be used a certain distance from the selected target.

For TERA this has been completely redesigned to incorporate elements of first person shooter games. Rather than selecting a target ("locking on") and mashing skill buttons, a player must mind their range to ensure the selected skills will actually hit the target and aim the skills in order to hit. The player never "targets" anything at all. This is very different than all previous MMORPG games, and requires a bit of getting used to. I liked it, but it was still a bit disorienting.

The funniest part of my time at the booth was, of course, listening to confused World of Warcraft players who didn't understand the gameplay. The first question they all asked was "so is this like WoW" or "What's different than WoW" to which the booth staff would try not to wince and begin to explain all the differences. I don't think I will ever be able to forgive WoW for spoiling the MMO market by flooding it with unskilled players who have no experience other than WoW's quick rewards and easy gameplay. Every game that comes out is compared to WoW as though it's a golden standard, and players expect the same type of experience and level of difficulty. Hopefully the differences in TERA's combat system will be enough to set it apart from WoW so that people judge it on its own merits.

PAX!

This is my third year @ PAX, and I am still finding each year more impressive than the last. This year in particular was surprising - the addition of several new floors and satellite theaters at Benaroya Hall, local hotels, and even the expansion to GameWorks really helped thin out the crowds making it easy to navigate in the expo hall. It also allowed for more of everything! More handheld lounge space, more expo space, more console and PC freeplay, and several new rooms like Jamspace. All in all it was amazing, and I didn't explore much beyond the expo hall!

I was impressed by a lot of the console titles, even though they were not exactly my preferred genres. The new Infamous and Fallout titles look awesome, as does Marvel vs. Capcom 3. I hadn't even heard of the Epic Mickey project, but it looks brilliant - a really clever use of Mickey as a hero, with the magic brush as his weapon. It's very classic Mickey meets the Sorcerer's Apprentice crossed with Scribblenauts and an action RPG style gameplay. Their booth was one of my favorites - playing several videos on a constant loop and displaying large scale artistic renderings of game scenes. I love the idea, it's such a great homage to Disney as an animation studio that it actually works, whereas most "franchise" games (movie tie ins and the like) are poorly imagined and executed.

I was surprised to see some interesting FPS and RPG shooter titles that actually interested me. I tend to shy away from violent games because I dislike gore and have poor reflexes. However, these new types of FPS games that don't necessarily prize headshots intrigue me.

I spent a lot of time at the Aion booth playing their stacked (level 55, with lots of stigmas) Elyos Chanter. The expansion looks beautiful, of course, and I had forgotten just how much I adore the Chanter class and how it plays. I may even reactivate my account just to fool around and farm, something my twisted mind misses greatly. The new attacks look awesome, and apparently I can upgrade to the expansion for free. The features I was hoping would be implemented have not, though. There are vanity and practical pets - different pets offer unique bonuses such as extra storage or combat warnings. However, nothing about the dynamic seasons or player housing.

I also spent a lot of time at the Tera booth, watching the cinematic and gameplay. I nabbed a console for a while on Saturday afternoon, and explored the caster class and also played one of the melee classes a little bit. The combat system is brilliant, forcing players to actually aim their skills and position their character in real time in order to launch effective attacks. It does take a bit of getting used to, though. It plays a bit like Diablo 2, in the sense that they had one skill stuck to left and right click, allowing you to easily control the basic combat by maneuvering with your left hand (W A S D) and launching attacks with the mouse (left and right click). The Alt key allows you to toggle combat and passive modes, which remove the "aiming" function of the mouse and allows you to mouse over skills and navigate menus. The mage's skills were neat - a good variety that allowed for different combat styles. There were single direct damage spells that I aimed at single targets, and "wave" attacks like the old school "flame wave" from Diablo 2, that allowed me to sweep through multiple mobs when I got swarmed.

The booth guys were chatting people up, helping them figure out the controls and answering general questions. I am excited about the "no faction" aspect, but wary that the PvP system won't be fully open like Lineage 2. They hinted at a built in political system that is still under development, and assured me that PvP servers will offer "nearly" free-pvp that is still being tweaked. The gameplay was seamless - my main concern with the "no targeting" system - the most radical difference from previous MMOs - was server lag. One of the most frustrating experiences, especially in large scale pvp, is trying to target players who are not where you think they are. The game ran without any positioning issues due to lag at the demo booth, but that will be one of the things I need to test for myself on my own PC before I register a real opinion.