Nick

My biggest beef with the recent wave of new powersets is that they've been gimicky and shallow compared to earlier offerings.

Where once the subtlety, skill and individuality of each powerset lay in its secondary effects and how they interact with other powersets (both the character's own and that of team-mates), now we keep getting powersets with arbitrary built-in rotations sold to us in PR speak as complex and fun new mechanics.

*yawn*

Beast mastery doesn't look too bad - it just has the pack mentality mechanic - but personally I think it would be better without it. I can imagine eg. beast mm's inside missions rushing from one set of mobs to the next in an attempt to keep pack mentality running constantly and team-mates screaming 'slow down' a lot.

@Muddyskunk

I'm all for GW2 but trinity gameplay isn't absent and some gaming media are misreporting key info about professions.

What GW2 is doing differently is de-emphasising healing (as in other players) and all professions can skill / trait themselves into damage or support roles or some combination thereof.

@Macabre 13

Sadly I have to agree. There's been way too much shady behaviour on the part of MMO developers so trust is in short supply.

I don't care much for WoW myself but I do trust Blizzard, and a few others like NCSoft and Trion.

@Blacknimbus

Tera is a bit of a freak in that respect. I don't think any other MMO has done this and I doubt TSW will.

For what it's worth, Funcom have said that if they have regional servers - this was unknown last I knew - that they would not be region locked.

@real65rcncom

FYI, Hellgate London is back.

But I actually see 'lifetime sub' and immediately think 'imminent failure'.

It's a red flag that says 'we predict box sales will be much lower than we need so please buy a lifetime sub' and also a fair indicator that the game will, if not actually shut down, go free-to-play or freemium relatively quickly.

Fair enough to those who like them and buy them but the only MMOs to have offered them to date have been very poor performers. That's a fact.

@TerilynnS

Yeah. I find this.... seriously creepy.

I don't gender bend in MMOs - just not my thing - but trying to discourage it by making it more expensive (than not) strikes me as perverted.

Why does the developer care about concordance? Unless you're planning to sleaze onto and/or hook up with other players - again not my thing - the real gender of players is completely irrelevant.

Creepy...

@Dril

I think you're right.

Going by the number of hours I normally play and the amount of time I invest in other gaming activities (eg. my website) I've been labelled as hard-core....

But I'm definitely not. I loathe end-game raid grind and all the varieties of masochism typically enjoyed by the 'hard core' crowd.

I also loathe the arrogant elitism typical of many (but not all) who self-identify as 'hard core'.

For people who insist on drawing this line, I think less loaded terminology is called for, eg. old school and new school. It's descriptive but without the inherent value judgement of superiority the 'hard core' crowd currently enjoy.

@rossdonohue

Maybe he was thinking of GW2 when he wrote it? Their artwork is nice.

@Maximum Proxy

Definitely a matter of taste.

Personally I find my taste for anime has its limits, eg. when I tried Lineage two I found the art style super garish and a major turn off.

@Beau

"To this day, it packs more graphical punch and originality than games a quarter of its age."

The graphics are a bit dated but Ryzom's artwork is spectacular.

@Kave

I agree.

I normally don't play games with cash shops but they seem to be being very generous towards players with the business model - no sub and the cash shop looks innocuous.

I'm on board.