Ekim's Gamer View: Lineage II First Impressions
Ekim, 2004-05-14

It's been a while since I last poured my thoughts out to you guys, and I'm sorry. This year's theme seems to be "Busy!". I can't promise when I'll write again, but for now let's enjoy the time we have. So let's talk about gaming. Lots of new games are on the horizons. Some are already out! A couple of weeks ago NC-Soft went on the offensive and released two games. Rest assured that we have people playing both City of Heroes and Lineage II, and we'll have reviews for them as soon as we can. In the mean time I'll give you a first impressions look at Lineage II which I have been playing for the past week. And before you send me any hate-mail, remember that this is NOT a review... yet.

A step backward?
Maybe not, but Lineage II certainly is not a huge step forward as far as I can tell up until now. Although it's highly enjoyable from the first few minutes of play, it quickly tests a player's patience. I've played many MMORPGs, and many of them were XP grinds, but this one is the king of them all. The good thing about it is that the carrot always is hanging inches from your mouth, and it keeps you going with the clever mix of skill-system and level-system. Gaining levels merely means that you gain more health and magic points, while you continue to gain skill points with every kill, which you can spend at any time you want. Some landmark levels will grant you new set of skills to advance, and a new career path opens up for the player at every 20th level, which keeps the experience kind of fresh until the end.

Graphically Lineage II has nothing to envy from any other game. It's gorgeous, period. But you already knew that just from the screenshots, didn't you. Still, one thing that you might not know, and that I have not seen anyone mention in their early reviews/previews, is that characters actually bump into each other here instead of walking right through on another. Yep! Character collision is a reality in Lineage II, and it's a bigger deal than some people out there might think, in my opinion, because it offers another level of strategy in PvP.

Still, Lineage II, at first glimpse, seems to be just more of the same, in a better-looking package. I'm not saying it's good or bad (I'll leave that for the review), I'm just saying that, despite what the developer might argue, there's nothing fresh here so far.

Killing in style
I remember trying Shadowbane last year at about the same period and being utterly disappointed from the get-go. There are a lot of people looking for a true PvP game out there, and Lineage II certainly tries to fill the void. Actually, imagine Shadowbane with more style and more stability, and you have a good idea of what to expect from Lineage II in terms of PvP. Players can duke it out to their heart's content. They can be evil if they so desire. The problem right now is that there is a lot of room for griefing, even though a "Karma" system is supposed to be in place to prevent it. We are promised a better implementation by the start of June, so let's hope things will get better in that area in the near future. For now PvP is enjoyable when practiced with respect of other players. But playing a full PvP game you simply have to expect that you will get killed, and that "fair" and "unfair" are terms that should be used lightly.

Community, I spit at thee!
I have to say it. If you read this and you play Lineage II, you will either sympathize, or disagree and call me names, or say something offensive about my mother like they do so often in the game. But Lineage II has, by far, the worst community I have ever had the displeasure of sharing online time with. I say this with a pinch at the heart, because it seems silly to penalize a game because of the players that inhabit its world, something over which the developers don't have any control. But the things I've read on the chat are just too unbearable to overlook. But I will fault the game for it because the developers have made a glaring mistake in making it impossible to turn off the global chat that is always filled with very, very immature and sometimes even offensive people!

True, most games have this sort of problem. But most games enable you to choose which chat channel you want to see, or don't want to see. Here, the system allows you to filter the Clan (guild), party, and trade channels among others, but not the overly used global chat which drowns out all others by a ratio of 20 to 1 sometimes… I truly hope this is something that will get fixed soon. It would be extremely easy for the developer to add a simple filter to their chat system. But it would also be very easy for me to knock off points to the game's final score if it's not fixed. The community aspect of any mmorpg is very important, and shouldn't be overlooked for any reason.

I've met some very nice people in Lineage II, and most of them are not the ones chatting in the global channel. I'm sure that, like me, they wish they could turn it off for good.

Sweet and sour
So for now I'll just say that my experience in Lineage II is both good and bad, with the good still outweighing the bad, but not by a whole lot. I'll continue to grind until I get to a more advanced stage in the game to see if the bad finally wins over the good, or if it'll be the other way around. I've enjoyed the time I spent in the game world as long as I ignored the pointless chatting and the insults that are constantly flying around in the global channel.

And let this be a lesson to all gamers that took the time to read this: an online game is as good or as bad as its community - that means us, the players. Be civil, please.