The Online Gamer Diary tells the tale of the online gamer and the online games he encounters on his travels. RPGDot wishes you lots of fun with this diary. Feel free to comment, ask questions or suggest new topics on this diary via RPGFool or mail us.

This time we feature:

Lineage: The Bloodpledge
Lineage: The Bloodpledge is a MMORPG which is currently in beta, but will go commercial at the first of May. This game has it's roots also in a comic book series by Ilsook Shin and takes place in the Kingdom of Aden, where the evil king Ken Rauhel is terrorizing the land. You are the child of a previous king and this is your chance to get back at him.
Well as usual this story is a bit thin offcourse as there are a lot of players and if everyone would be doing that it might get crowded at the top. Fortunately you can also spend your time on just roaming the country.

You can play the beta for as long as it lasts, by downloading the 170MB file and registering your account. The beta is free and open, so there is nothing holding you back. Upon starting the game you need to create a character. You can create up to three different ones if you like, with a single account (read more about them in the classes section). For each class there are the usual points you can spend on strength, dexterity, charisma and intelligence to name a few. Once you've done that it's time to start the game.

Depending on the class you selected you start in a different part of the game world, but your mission for the next couple of hours is simple, just level up and do it as fast as possible.

Classes
There are 4 different classes in Lineage, each with there pros and cons offcourse. There is the knight, who excels in sword combat, the magician who is best with spell casting, the elf who can wield a sword, use a bow and cast spells and then there is the prince or princess. This last class is what makes Lineage interesting as they can create a so called blood pledge in which they try to gather followers to take over castles and declare war on other pledges. If you want to know more about these classes then read the following four parts describing them. If not… well then skip it.

The Knight
Knights are good with most kind of weapons but they excel in sword combat because of their strength. Beside that they can also wear protective armor of a high level, which can not be used by any other class. As they have a high strength they also inflict a lot of damage to their opponents.

As a knight you start the game in a small town, named the Silver Knight's town. You will have a dagger a leather jacket and two candles in your inventory. The first thing to do is gain experience and thus increasing their combat abilities. The most effective way is to start killing the monsters that can be found just outside the town gates. When experience rises and thus the combat abilities get bigger, a knight can travel further away from the town to kill greater opponents. This gives more experience but the monsters are more difficult to kill also.

Knights also have a special quest when they reach level 15. The quest is given to you in the village and upon completion you get a good shield and experience offcourse.

Knights are always human and if you prefer close hand to hand combat then the knight is the class for you. Knights are the only class that can not learn magic.

Magicians
Magicians excel in magic and thus casting magic spells. Each magic spell is made up out of one or more magic ingredients, which are; Crimson mushroom, dragon's teeth, holy blue grapes, mountain ginseng, floating-eye meat, willow root, shard of jade, and bone powder. Each ingredient has different properties, and therefore, cost differently. Also some ingredients are hard to come by and some are not.

When a spell is cast a magician consumes spiritual power, also named 'mana'. The amount of mana required for a spell varies per spell, but in general the higher the level of the spell the higher the required mana amount is. In addition to that, some spells also require some of the casters hit points, which can make it dangerous to use at times.

There are ten levels of magic, which are all open to the magician. In contrast, elves can only learn spells up to level five and a prince or princess only up to level 2. In addition magicians learn the spell casting at a much faster rate then any other class. To learn the higher level spells one should visit one of the temples and perform an appropriate ritual.
Also monsters drop spell books from which a magician can learn new spells. The higher level the monster is the higher level the spell book it drops.

Magicians need a high intelligence. Constitution and wisdom for their spell casting abilities and they are naturally bad in close combat and they can only wear light armor. To compensate magicians can summon minions to fight by their side.

Elves
The elves live in the elven forest, which is a part of the Kingdom of Aden. Elves tend to stay away from humans, but sometimes elves leave the forest and join humans in their fights. When the elf starts in the elven forest, he or she has only a wooden jacket a short bow and 100 arrows. The elven forest is generally very friendly to elves and the elven NPCs often help and assist the elves during the hunt. Elves can get all the items, including weapons and armors, by processing different materials found throughout the elven forest. They do not have to purchase items to get them.

Elves have very balanced abilities, more than the other classes. They can wield a sword, can use ranged weapons and have the ability to cast spells. However Elves are the safest in their own forest as there are monsters who only attack elves and there are some human villages that do not take kindly of elves.

When you create your class you can decide if you want to go for a ranged elf with a bow, one that can wield a sword very well or one that can do both very well. Additionally if you want to use magic then this makes it complex to get a balanced character as you need strength for wielding the sword, dexterity for using a bow and intelligence for magic. So the elven class has every possibility to create a balanced character and are the only class that can see in the night.

Prince and Princess
The prince or the princess are a special class. They do not excel in anything and are only average in battle and magic. Their most important ability is to create a blood pledge. Only they can do this, which gives them a main role in Lineage. To take back their thrown, which has been taken from them, they must gather their fellows (knights, elves and magicians) to create a blood pledge and defeat the Anti-King.

As they are leaders, charisma is their main attribute. They have to look after the members in their blood pledge. They can also take over other castles and raise taxes and, maybe the most important thing, they can declare war against an other blood pledge.

When fighting in a pledge you can safely kill anyone from the opposing party without worrying about alignment problems, due to PKing. The war will end when one of the two parties surrenders, one of the leaders is killed or when a truce is signed.

Alignment
You start Lineage as a neutral character and you can either turn into a chaotic or a lawful character. You become lawful by killing only monsters and you turn chaotic by killing other players, which is freely possible in Lineage. Being chaotic has it's disadvantages. First you find it's more difficult to purchase items from vendors and upon your death you are more likely to loose items and experience. The only advantage you have when you are chaotic is when you are a magician as you can then cast chaotic spells with much more power. The alignment of a character is expressed with the color that is used to display the character's name.

The Looks
Lineage uses 2D graphics with an isometric view resembling Ultima Online. Your character will have absolutely no problems disappearing in a crowd, as all characters of a class will look exactly the same. Well there are differences for males and females but none of the characters can be modified to fit your needs.

When your character moves behind an object the object becomes transparent so that you can always see your character, regardless of where he or she is. But when the night hits then..... it becomes dark. If you're not an elf that means you hardly see a thing, which makes it practically impossible to fight anyone. I wonder why they make things so difficult for other classes as the night takes a long time.

Taming
Every class can tame creatures and the dog is the most commonly tamed creature. You can tame multiple creatures that can assist you in battle. For every 2 charisma points you can tame 1 creature. In lineage you see often several dogs following a character, who assist in killing monsters and allowing to attack bigger ones more easily.

Player Killing
Killing other players is freely possible, but is punished in one way or the other. First you will get more chaotic, which has disadvantages as explained before. Secondly you will be chased by the guards for the next 24 hours after killing an other player.
in the time I've been playing up to now I have yet to encounter a PKer, so I guess you don't have to worry about that a lot.

The Blood Pledge
Lineage introduces their own form of guilds by means of a blood pledge. The blood pledge is always led by a prince or a princess, who need to be at level 15 in order to start a pledge and gather followers. One of the most interesting things they can do once they formed a pledge with enough followers is to lay siege on a castle. Such a castle is occupied by an other prince or princess and the members of their pledge. You will have to fight them in order to take over the castle. However next to the blood pledge members you also have to fight the NPC guards of the castle and any mercenaries that are payed by the prince or princess.
To win, the outer gate of the castle must be broken down followed by the inner gate and ending in the death or surrender of the invaded prince or princess. Also the siege must be completed before sundown and the invading prince or princess should not be killed. If this is not accomplished then you will have to run for your live. If you do succeed then the castle guards will immediately follow you and the new pledge will assume control of the outlying town and you can raise taxes.

Summary
At a first glance Lineage looks like an average 2D online RPG, but it differs from others by implementing blood pledges and sieges. Is this enough to warrant a monthly fee when playing it? (the client software is free). Well I don't know, I haven't played it for a long period of time. Once I've invested more time I might be able to give my view on things. But the fact remains that there are millions of registered users in Asia, which makes Lineage one of the most played games over there, I guess they can't be wrong, or can they?