Sword of the New World celebrates their second anniversary

I have criticized this game as well as some of the K2 staff from a very long time and I haven't been banned from their forums at any point of time. Reason? There's a line between constructive criticism and harassing, ranting and abusing. The game had it's worse times a few months back but I am glad with the way they handled most of the issues in the past few months. Especially the duping issue where they took their time and cleared the cheaters properly rather than like Sge their counterpart where they permanently banned or mass banned loads of accounts for huge amounts of time. There were problems with content updates but considering that we now have a balanced nicely spread schedule of content for the next 5 months and we still end catching up with the other versions at the end of this year is really good.

In my honest opinion cramming loads of updates in a short while does not give you the satisfaction nor the feeling of something you have achieved. In simpler words I prefer hunting Elite Cockatrices for months to get my Claire rather than using some jackpot lottery stuff which Sge has to get spinelles and finish the quest rather way too easily.

I prefer equal and fair game play over something like whospendsmoregetsmore type and I can find it in SOTNW rather than Sge.

wow is truly amazing how many fake comments are being posted just to drag in some unaware new player and all registed today too! jon merriex must really have some free time, well at least readers are warned about the kind of people they will be dealing with if they waste time with this game!

Well, from the comment I have seen from the 1st reply Jeremie to Iceingshadow, I can say that the comment went from degradintg to promoting. which show still the trust anbd commitement of players to that game. and I am sure this game will continue and will offer still good content to their player. Great Game SOTNW, and Happy Birthday again... My this one more year be for the game the beginning of the Golden ages, road to a Wonderfull period when K2, SOTNW and players will enjoy the game and its contents.
Peace...

As for the game itself, I really love it. The ability to control 3 toons at once is one of the best features. My wife and I have been plating since beta and we have worked hard to get to the top of our server. In the past two years we have sank more money into this game then what I just paid for my new car, lol. But it is a game we enjoy. As far as botters, they will always be around like any other F2P game. Am's act like they do something. you report on, call for an AM, he says he will deal with it and the next day you see the same botter running around. As far as updates. K2 dropped the ball recently hard core holding this most recent patch for over 9 months. many of those months the community was left in the dark and forgotten about and if any word was mentioned, it was a date that came and passed with nothing to show for it. Now for support, K2 provides little to no support to its player community at all. They seem to do as they please if if it causes several people to leave the game, they don't really care. I lost count how many old friends here left because K2 has no clue what they are doing or how to run a MMO. Yes K2 recently did a Mass Ban of many players in May for about 2 weeks to investigate their accounts for duping. Many were found innocent and their account released, many were proven guilty and their accounts banned. But then a number of know and proven accounts have been banned for botting, duping and other infractions against K2's TOS and we still see them in server everyday. Yes you can see an AM in game several times a week, but none of the AM's play the game and if you ask any of them questions about the game, or glitches you found, they have no idea what you are referring to with many quest cause they don't even play this game. Best they can do is ask you to submit a ticket. Good luck there, that's like talking to a brick wall in this game.

If your looking for a great game to just play around with, come join us. If you want to try and be one of the top players or in a top clan, don't. You will just get called a duper by half the server and even K2 will ignore you. To be one of the best here you have to use Cash Shop, no way around that and once you go down that road with K2, its a never ending battle between K2's ignorance and their disregard for their customers

I tried this game some time ago, and it was, in my opinion, one of the worst online MMO games I have ever come across.

That was quite some time ago, before it went F2P. Maybe it's better now, I don't know.

I was thus surprised to see this announcement and learn that the game is still alive and kicking. As for me, I will never go back. Never.

Now what I would like to know Neume, we all know the topclans are pretty much untouchable at the moment. Yes they did put in a lot of effort as well, but with several new things added, why hasn't K2 taken the time to balance droptables to give newer players and those who have been unable so far to catch up with those topclans a little more chance? I am talking about the Secret Tower and Jormungand instances for example. Instead of making them decent viable methods to gain equipments, they are turned into yet another ubergrind and as such effectively fail to balance out a playingfield which as of yet is completely out of balance. Or snailshell/old chesspiece droprates. This is something I would like to see answered. Why not try and level the playfield to a small extent so more people can actually attempt to enjoy ALL of the content and not just the top?

Now it's great that new ones will be added. But ... isn't it easier to just rebalance the "old" existing ones? I mean you already have something in game and by a simple droptable redesign you make full use of it. Like Fire Gate, Jormungand and Secret Tower. Why not tweak these instead of adding new things leaving those three gathering dust and mostly unused? That sounds to me like "oh wel we do have a road here but let's just make a completely new one", instead of "hey we have this cool road here and we change it a little it will be an awesome road more people use!!" What also worries me is how some raids promote a rather unhealthy type of gaming. I am referring to the raids with 0-12 hours of a spawn window. Now do note I am not referring to their base respawn of X hours, but the window coming AFTER it. Examples: Rafflesia and Griffon. First you have the respawntimer of 24 and 36 hours. But then you need to wait 0-12 hours for it to actually pop-up. Now we all know this is done by a minorty of players as most simply cannot stand staying or running around in one spot. It's monotome and mindnumbing. So even if done in the example of Griffon with say 12 people and 2 people at the same time that leaves 2 people needing to run around for 2 consecutive hours non-stop since they might else lose the egg or someone else may show up first. Now having 12 people for it is actually a pretty ideal situation. Usually it will be far less even in a rather large clan (due to work, school, timezones and what not). In fact in smaller though well geared clans this can lead to 2 people running around for 6 hours per person. That is a VERY unhealthy way of gaming. Will K2 do something about things like these as well? Frankly as a company you should be concerned with health issues to a certain extend if you ask me. I mean by putting in such a window you effectively promote an unheathy way of gaming. Now I am sure it was "designed" for large clans, but frankly how many are there of those? And there are more then enough medium/small clans capable of doing it. Why deny them the ability to do so because it was designed for HUGE VERY active clans?

Speaking of the difficulty of catching up to big clans... it isn't impossible and it doesn't make this game horrible. Most people who quit just didn't know which fights to fight.

I don't think anyone should get really good stuff from Fire Gate xP. FG kind of sucks because it's so easy to disrupt; it should be reworked to be a true instance, and keep its 84e/elemental weapon drop list. Rafflessia though should be an instance.

As for the instances we already have, Jormongand and Secret Tower already drop Le Rouges. My clan--the third strongest in Bristia, yet owner of no colonies--has gotten several from Jorm. The seals are a real pain to farm for, but I guess that's the price of a low chance for LR and a chest that doesn't have a key. I hope that part is fixed. All I would ask for from further or retooled instanced raids is guaranteed or more common 92e armor recipes. Rafflessia being instanced, which is purportedly going to happen in 4.0, would be great; it has a pretty high chance of a recipe drop (at least doing that is better than Secret Temple, Vergo and Katovic mobs).

Griffon is awesome. Instances aren't the only way to spread out raids between clans. The 12-hour camping monotony does the same job that variable timers do--force people to work for the raid they want, and prevent any clan from entirely locking down the boss. I get annoyed with Lightning Gate for being a hard-and-fast 28hour timer, because it means you can never get it alone. With Griffon you just have to find it first and be more prepared to kill it. Yes you have to have great DPS, steel/serp pistols and lots of people to down it before being outDPS'ed or found, yes you have to have powerful members to PK the opposing side. Yes you had to spend the past year farming SS and OCP despite being PKed by the big clans. Most likely, any new clans will take at least eight to ten months to get to that point. But that's where the victory lies.

I'm going to be really bored when, in 4.0, a lot of our current on-map raids go instanced. People prefer that, it's more conducive to less dedicated playing and on-demand fun. It probably will make us less unhealthily game-obsessed. But it takes away so much of the competitive aspect. The prerequisite for raids in this game is gear and numbers, you need more of each for each subsequent raid. The bosses aren't *hard*, there's no skill involved, if you have the requisite gear.

So skill comes in in outdoing the competition. I have fun with it. I camp Griffon with full squads and come back again even if I lose them all. I'm not Korean and have never before played a Korean game or for that matter any MMO except Guild Wars and a little FFXI. But I feel like putting work in and catching up is fun. Retooling something like Rafflessia, making 92e armors more widespread for people who can do a mid-range raid like that, won't ruin the competitive aspect at all.

Putting ELR in raids that don't have their respawn time set in stone would be nice though. *Wishes*