I am playing this currently and it is interesting, to say the least. And confusing. It is a pretty huge game in terms of depth and content, having been released in China some time ago. My experience is very fragmented, and I have been reading a ton of (mini) guides just to get a basic grasp of the game. I will just blurt out some stuff that stands out to me with maybe an explanation or two (which may be quit incomplete or even incorrect), in bulletpoints.
- If you buy the Deluxe pack now, your char will actually be carried over into release (1 feb), no wipe.
- It is ftp, however you can sub (9 dollars) which gives you some pretty huge benefits, one of which is that skilling will continue offline.
- The game is set entirely in historical China, so if you are expecting purple Elven forests or other whacky environments you will be disappointed.
- Character creation is very Asian, as is the world: however if you can relate to the whole monk/martial art/monastery/kungfu/inner peace/masterShifuKungfupanda thing, the world is gorgeous and consistent.
- Combat is totally based around the Martial Arts, divided over 8 different school of Martial Art. So melee it is, though there are somewhat ranged meleeattacks. But no fireballs or lightning or roots sprouting from the ground.
- The game is actually quit beautiful.
- You gain xp with all sorts of different activities, which is then converted into Cultivation points that you use to skill up your martial arts skills(also offline if you sub).
- You can increase this XP-->cultivation pointsrate in several ways: pills(crafted), doing certain tasks, being in a certain surrounding that matches your current skillset, stuff like that.
- Cultivating skills takes real-time, you can take most skills to level 5, getting it from 4 to 5 will take a full day, can only cultivate a single skill at a time. There are ways to speed up this cultivation by doing team practice (get up to 10people then do synchronized shit for 10-25 rounds to seriously increase the cultivation time, make sure you have enough cultivation points accumulated): you can also pay silver to speed up the cultivation of a skill.
- The 8 schools are more or less competitors to eachother (and their temples are spread all over the map) and a lot of gameplay and PvP is tied into this.
- Schools can declare war to eachother and such, Guilds can own territory: this part is still totally unclear to me but when looking at the complicated UI-windows (with lots and lots of tabs) that cover these features, it seems to be very in depth.
- There are "good" schools and "evil" schools; your choice of school will definately impact the way you can play, in relation to PvP, bounties, school-discipline/rules, how to make money etcetera.
- There is open-world PvP, with bounties, jailtime, executions, repenting.
- Repenting is what you do when you do something that is not allowed by your school: you accumulate points and when you reach a certain point you have to repent, which means kneeling down in your temple and sitting there for a certain amount of time: when I visited my (good) schools temple, almost all of the repenter-spots were occuppied.......you are bound to many rules when you are part of a good school.
- There are Spy-mssions where you go spy on other schools: great way to earn xp, but very dangerous;
- You can patrol for your school, revealing spies of other school (other players); there is a lot of gameplay that ties into the animosity between schools.
- There are dailies, achievements, weeklies.
- You can only have 1 character per account!!!
- When you delete your char, you have to wait 2 real-time days before you can create another!
- Each school has 3 different martial art skillsets, tied to a certain weapon (or bare hands).
- Each of these sets have damage-moves, feint moves, a supermove (lots of damage) and blocking (with a set-specific blocking buff), where block>damagemove>feintmove>block, sort off. You have to read your opponents moves, then react accordingly. I only recognize Blocking though, so I still suck hardcore at this.
- There are also fly-moves which are very important and kinda cool, mix them in with your other moves to really own (again, not even close yet). It is a unique combatsystem, that will undoubtedly turn of lots of people, also because of the lack of magic.
- With the fly-moves you can jump onto houses, run across roofs so two duelling players will run around all over the place, cool to watch.
- Each set has an "Inner Skill" which is pretty much the defining skill for that set and gives a certain buff: this skill you can actually take all the way to level 36 and sortoff indicates your "level" in this skill-based game;
- You can quickly switch between the 3 sets of a single school, but all skills will then go on a 7 second cooldown; the normal cooldown is 1 sec.
- You can actually "steal" skillbooks from other Schools and thus aquire the skill of other schools skillsets! Again, a typical PvP feature. Not sure how you incorporate a stolen skill into your own skillsets though.
- Several skills and also fly-moves, you aquire through looting the skillbooks from mobs and in dungeons/instances. You can also buy the books from players off course.
- You can set up a stall to seel your wares (pretty standard asian feature). You can also offer your crafting services for a fee, so basically others use your crafting skill to combine stuff, for a fee.
- Crafting (6 professions, must pick 1), harvesting (5, can take them all), gives xp, everything is playermade exept some extremely basic and worthless stuff which is on NPC's.
- There are 4 more "Life-skills" (Crafting and Harvesting are Lifeskills) you can take up, which are Music, Chess and 2 more. These are mini-games of some sort and give buffs? Play music for NPC's and get them to like you, or not (some will be pissed off). Typical sandbox stuff. There is also the Beggingskill (needed for a certain school).
- There is itemdecay, and you can break down items I think.
- There are a lot of quests, some also repeatable, for which you get money and experience and sometimes a few healing herbs or maybe crafting ingredient, but never an item as far as I have seen. Buy pretty much everything from players.
- Horses can be bought in the store and are temporary! So they poof after 100 hours or so. This is not liked by players and there are some threads about this on the forums.
- When you log out, your char actually stays in the world! You can recognize these players because they will be doing some menial task, like swiping the floor or simply walk back and forth a certain path. You still see their name.so you can recognize them as players.
- Since the name tags can be a bit confusing (It shows the playername, the guildname, and often also a title according to what role that offline player has taken on, like on patrol for your School, an easy way to discern an NPC from an Offline player is to target them and look at their HP-bar: a player will also show a blue energy-bar under the HP-bar, while an NPC only has the HP bar.
- You can actually kidnap these offline players(buy a drug at an NPC, blow it in offlineplayers face, player will disappear and a sack will reappear on your back, then start walking to a place where you can sell player), for money. Another PvP-feature, since another player can fight these kidnappers and free the offline player(and earn money and xp that way). Kidnapping will yield you infamy when you are of a good school off course, so you might have to repent after that. It seems to be a good money maker though so now people are bitching that evil school-players (who do not get discipline points for this) have an easy way to make money. But there are so many ways to make money and earn XP, for both sides. Or just repent!
The world is pretty populated with NPC's too, which work with a sort of hidden faction-system. There are many ways to piss of NPC's, like standing in their view when they are watching a streetshow. You can also give gifts to them, so they will like you more. But certain actions may work well with one NPC, but have the opposite effect on the other. Also, lots of NPC have a gossip-option, that can yield unexpected information or give quests. This also ties in to how much they like you. They also react to your avatar in realistic and fun ways: try riding a horse through town: they will scatter and yell. Or cringe when you stand too close to them and tell you that you are standing on their toes. Lots of amazing details in this game for sure.
There are also several UI windows and a multitude of tabs that tie into you personal story, your schools story and achievement, the overarching story (that will run years from now), miracle encounters and what not, some of these windows are very confusing.
I am on the fence about this game, if I ever get a hang of the combat I might get to like it more. Right now I am just baffled about how much stuff and features they managed to put in this game, and enjoying the rather beautiful world. Only got ganked twice so far, and the first time the guy immediately got caught by a player and was sent to jail (has to like sit there for 20 minutes or some). Anytime someone gets caught and goes to jail (or gets executed, no idea what that means) you get a message on your screen, it's kinda satisfying.
Also, yes, even with the 1 character per account feature, there is still much to do about players that get a bounty on their head, then use an alt or friend to collect that bounty themselves, so the victim is effectively paying their ganker.
Anyway, definately not for everyone because of the typical setting and combatsystem, and PvP. But also definately a deep game.
