http://nw.perfectworld.com/ This game is currently in Open Beta to the entire public. Free to play MMORPG. As a former hardcore WoW player in my college days this game is worth checking out if you have the MMO itch surfacing like me :x Game is instanced, looks sharp if you have the right setup, and is not a huge download to start off. Five classes right now, a sixth one pending for future. Guardian Fighter - tank, sword and shield Great Weapon Fighter - 2hander, dps Trickster Rogue - 1hand, dual wield, dps Control Wizard - ranged caster, crowd control Devoted Cleric - ranged caster, healer The holy trinity is alive and well here and I miss it much so after dipping into Guild Wars 2. Leveling is standard procedure, kill X, fetch Y, come back and go. There's a quest assistance which comes in the form of a sparkling pixie dust trail that takes you to all your objectives should you choose to use it (Z bind to enable/disable). Instances have quest hubs and lotsa nifty stuff. Combat is mouse based, you target, click, and hit keys. Default keybinds: Left & Right mouse (basic attacks), Q,E,R (cooldowns), 1,2 (resourced attacks, think WoW warrior + rage attacks), 3,4,5,6 potions/mounting Game is based loosely off Dungeons and Dragon's 4th edition rules Crafting and professions are like SW:TOR MMO, send an npc off to do stuff and you retrieve the awards. PVP so far from what I've seen is 5 on 5 BGs. That being said, this is a free to play game so there are some microtransaction stores in tact. There's a stigma with free games and these stores is that for the most part people can pay their way to victory; not the case here. The game has some cosmetics and some conveniences locked away for microstransactions. For example you can buy your most standard potions, scrolls, etc for gold you acquire from destroying monsters and finishing quests. Now there's another currency for completing certain feats called Astral Diamonds, these are only awarded off dailies, pvp, and trading. Now we have the real cash grabber, the ZEN, which is universally used in all the free games w/microtransaction stores presented by Perfect World. You can purchase ZEN straight up to buy things or you can slowly convert astral diamonds from your questing, pvping, dungeoning rewards. The conversion rate is a player economy controlled entity that will probably go down with time. Again, you can play this game entirely for free and acquire just about everything... in due time. For those of you that have creative tastes, there are PLAYER designed dungeons and quest lines that can be had in the form of the Foundry. This is similar to the Star Trek MMO which is also made by Cryptic; they just improved the tools in this one and are probably adding more stuff in the future. Anyways, I'm on the Dragon shard right now with a 55 cleric (max is 60) from playing bits here and there the past two weeks. The game has 3 shards/servers at the moment and it's globally being logged on so there's never a shortage of people on right now while they're racing to 60 and playing content.
Looks good, I was looking for a new free online mmorpg. I used to play Silkroad online but I stopped because it became too boring.
I haven't been playing lately but they have churned out a lot of content. I am just finding random things to tide me over until FFXIV haha
