Lineage II: The Chaotic Chronicle is a massively multiplayer game that won’t
have mass appeal. At the heart of the issue is that it requires a very large
time commitment and the rewards for that commitment are slow in coming. As a
result, a lot of players will more than likely give up on it long before they
reach the point where the game is supposed to hit its stride.
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| Elves, dark and light. |
At its core, Lineage II is much like most other online RPGs. You create a
character and then fight monsters and complete quests to earn experience and
gold. However, the game is balanced a little differently in that it requires a
lot of time to get your character to an effective level and in that it bills
itself as player versus player focused. That may be the case, but the player
versus player restrictions, and lack of restrictions in some areas, make it
difficult to really view the game as a true player versus player experience,
especially for beginning players. There are no safe zones in Lineage II, so any
player who wants to make life difficult for beginners can wander into the new
player areas and slay newbies as they try to fight low level monsters to gain
their first experience points. You can make the argument that this is just one
of the hazards of life in Lineage II, but from a gaming standpoint the lack of
safe zones really hurts the game. A new player can log into the game to try and
complete the first few quests and fight low-level monsters for experience, only
to find a high-level player killer getting his jollies by slaying newbies.
Unless the player killer gets bored and moves on, the new player is pretty much
trapped in the nearest town without being able to do anything. It is a virtual
guarantee that the game will lose new players because of this, which will hurt
the game as a whole.
On the flipside, the player who decides to go the player-killer route will
generate negative karma. Initially, their name will appear in purple to signify
to other players that he is a player killer. If he continues his murderous ways,
his name will eventually go red. Red players will be virtual outcasts, unable to
enter towns because they will be attacked on sight by the NPC guards. Even if
they do get into town, merchants will refuse to trade with them. Also, other
players will receive no karma penalty for attacking a player-killer, so they
will often attack nearby player-killers en mass. For a game that purports to be
focused on player versus player combat, these are some pretty harsh penalties
and restrictions for choosing to go that route outside of the game’s clan
battles. Karma can be worked off by killing monsters, but before you can be
considered reformed and earn back your white name you’ll need to spend a lot of
time in the fields killing monsters.
Speaking of time spent in the fields killing monsters, you’ll be doing a lot of
that for quite some time after you begin play. You’ll need to walk out of town
to the fields just outside the gates where low-level creatures congregate and
just patiently begin killing the same two or three creature types over and over
again. There’s not much to do when fighting other than to click on your target
and then watch as the battle plays out, occasionally using special abilities if
needed. Your reward for defeating a creature is experience and a paltry sum of
the game’s currency, adena. I say paltry because Lineage II has the most
expensive merchants in just about any game I’ve played. You’ll be using the same
weapon for ages and through several level advancements, and you’ll be pushing
level ten before you can afford to outfit yourself in a full first level set of
boots, gloves, and the like – all because everything is so darn expensive.
Partly because of this, there’s very little feeling of advancement or
accomplishment in the beginning of the game, and the beginning lasts for quite a
long time.
In other MMOGs, you can try to speed your way through the game’s starting levels
by completing quests and teaming up with other players. However, the early
quests are long and tedious and the payout is minimal. For example, you may be
instructed to kill 50 creatures (yes, 50) of a certain type. You’ll read a brief
text message describing your motivation for doing this task, but that’s about
it. Accept the quest and go back to repetitive creature hunting. Killing 50
creatures takes some time, especially when you must go into a resting mode
between fights to recover hit points (who can afford potions when they are
saving up for a pair of boots?), and at the end of it all you’ll get some darn
near worthless item. The quests seem to be there more to make you think that
there is a good reason for you to hang out in a field slowly slaughtering a
species of wolf other than your need to slowly level up. As for questing with
other players, there’s just not much of that going on at the lower levels. I
could rarely find other beginners looking to team up and hunt.
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