Xalien and I have been discussing whether or not we were going to play this one. We did like the graphics, art direction, and game play, but are a bit concerned about several things like swiftness of Korea to NA patches and endgame content. However, having a good (drama free) guild to play with would definitely be a plus.
I would have thought anyone actually following TERA in the slightest would know why it was failing in korea, lack of endgame, that stacked with easy leveling = people getting bored and moving on
and some people believe that TERA is a very western MMO apart from the art, which may not appeal to the eastern market
So its failing for the same reason any modern MMO fails. Huh. Who woulda' thought that graphics wouldn't be enough.
Lemme look over 300 pages of BG chat where someone said graphics were gonna make the game. Hold on.
Its failing because:
in Korea: No zerglings
in Japan: you can't date/rape the loli's
So long as EME doesn't NCWest it, it'll be fine. And most MMO's lack endgame at the start. You fucking deal til it hits.
I don't think another MMO will ever really have a "successful" launch, mostly because of how spoiled the general playerbase is and how saturated the market is.
You'll have people complain about PvP, Endgame, random bugs, server stability, and nitpick everything and compare them to games that have been out for several years. For some reason people have come to expect instant gratification and perfect MMOs, something they will never be. To those people I say good riddance.
Hell yes!
No game is going to be perfect at launch day, and they will always be partially viewed as "lackluster" compared to long term established MMOs that have been out for a while. To me, you need to look at what new games are coming out and see if you like what they're bringing to the table, then stick with them while the sharpen up to be something more than what they had at launch. If you look for that perfect blade right out of the gate, you'll almost always be disappointed. This is whats happened with recently released MMOs (now to a year+ ago), and it certainly looks like thats what the trend is going to be moving forward. Thats how I look at it anyway.
So it's been about 6 months or so since last I played TERA and as much fun as it was I do not think it will do that well in NA either.
I'm not saying the game is not fun, I had a blast playing it but it's something you pick up for 3 months and move on. The whole game is designed for 5 people groups and it's 5 people playing aside 5 people.
It needs content that can bring together alot of people desperately. It will definitely not be the next WoW and it wont even be the next FFXI.
A while back they announced content for groups larger than 5 man. Whether or not we'll be seeing that content on launch is up in the air. But it's definitely coming.
Yeah they've been talking and talking about it but it's nowhere to be found. It should be part of the game post lvl 20 imo.
personally I think them making 5man+ events pre cap would be pointless as it's so easy to level to cap these days(so noone would be doing these events after a few hours when they progress pass the level of said event) as well as the new 60+cap coming soon which is going to probably make a lot of the current dungeons worthless (outside of maybe enchanting)
it would just be wasted time for them designing said things when they could spend their time doing other things like making content for next level cap (60+) which is what they're doing and is supposed to be coming pretty soon
if level progression wasn't as fast as it is now, I'd defiantly agree if they spent more time adding lower level content, but the way it is now I think it's perfectly fine pre endgame
Well the reasons as to why the game has not done well has already been discussed before. A good portion of the folks here don't care too much what happens outside of NA (however I understand that if the game is failing in the other 3 regions it may have a big impact on several areas such as expansions etc.) And like I said in an earlier post, some people here are just going to give the game a whirl for 6 months to a year to play the sexy little ass, show off the +items they get with full sized pictures in BG, and eventually move on to "greener pastures" such as Blade & Soul or Archeage or whatever new hyped up game comes along. So they simply don't care if the game fails in the long run or not, they would of moved on by that point. Some do actually care and hope the game succeeds to be able to maintain the P2P model and hopefully come out with several expansions, but that is left to be seen. And plus most of you guys already know how MMOs are nowadays versus the golden era (specifically 1996-2004). Instead of spending half a decade or more in one MMO, these days it is more of: A. Get into hyped MMO B. Play hyped MMO C. Get bored of said MMO (by this time usually severe merges have happened) D. Throw MMO E. Rinse and repeat A-D. Wait till the year 5000 when you guys can have sex with said character creation models... and... somehow go to step E. You guys are pigs.
I couldn't really find any aggregate system for Korean websites that talked about the game in depth as to why the game went from 37 to 35 to 15 servers so quick. I mean sure we already talked about half a dozen or so reasons but that is it. For the Japanese market I was able to use 4gamer.net and they use a very similar system to Meta-critic. There were several hundred responses and each had 3 subsections of what they thought was 1. Good 2. Bad. 3. Overall feel for the game. A good portion of them were thorough. Yes we already know East =/= West. I will make another post (since this one is already getting big) the top 11 good and the top 11 bad most commonly talked about aspects of the game. Two big RED FLAGS popped up and were mirror mistakes as to what happened to Aion here in the States. Sure a good fault goes to NCWest but then one might question how some of it didn't originate from NCSoft and how they handled things (or lack thereof). I could of broken up the list some more but I am sorry, I am lazy! And like others have already pointed out, take into consideration that some of the elements in TERA were made originally with the "Westernization" in mind: hence why some of the things implemented didn't work out so well on the East.
BAD:
01. Tons of botting/other forms of cheating/RMT ads/BOT Heaven (also includes camps being overrun with them especially in the level 40+ areas).
02. Price(very high price even for Japan standards when compared to other MMO counterparts in service there toppled with the fact that many felt the product was unfinished at launch).
03. Taking too long to get GM response (also ties into lack of in game support/bad management of the game/updates etc.)
04. Boring quests/content is very basic/fetch Quests/gather Quests.
05. RNG and the fails that comes with it.
06. Lack of content (ties to in-depth content and endgame content).
07. Tough to make parties most of the time (directly connected to decreasing population).
08. Difference in party level even by a small amount has a big impact/penalty (exp rewards + rare item drops reduced: 4 level difference?) Limiting most if not all of the content to 5 players only.
09. There is only the main story quest (probably connected to heavy voiceover/cut scenes/storytelling?)
10. Too easy to level up.
11. The ! click NPC quests.
My thoughts on the BAD:
01. RED FLAG #1.
02. Well of the 500 or so MMOs out there about 40 of them are P2P within the $10-$15 range. I'm pretty sure this game will be around $14-$15, I highly doubt they will go above that.
03. RED FLAG #2.
04. Self explanatory: Yes most of them fall into this type of questing ***
05. Self explanatory: Too harsh of a RNG will make people leave your game. Don't be a Scrooge or a Douche Baggins and make it more lax.
06. Hopefully they add quite a bit of endgame content by the time it goes live here or at least a moderate amount.
07. Self explanatory: If a game sucks (especially if it is tied to a really bad launch/release) then yeah unfortunately this will happen. One of the major reasons people leave MMOs.
08. Think some of you guys said they are working on content to be more than 5 players so that is good. As far as the 4 level penalty, maybe they can change that before it goes live here?
09. I take it there is only the main story that has heavy use of cut scenes and voiceovers? I'm ok with this, I wasn't expecting more than that.
10. Aion took 4-5 weeks on some servers, while 5-6 on others to be server 1st. The exponential curve past level 35-40 was icky. TERA takes around 1-2 weeks. Some are happy about it, others not so much.
11. This is silly. Most NA/EU players don't care about a ! on top of a NPC.
Aion: Oh hello RED FLAG #1 and RED FLAG #2 nice to see you!... again.
*** Well this is a theme park MMO with your usual fetch quests. I mean you weren't expecting it to be like SWTOR (theme park with a tiny twist) with full voiceovers and choices topped with a companion with the romance option? Did you? Well? What? Were you thinking of some Castanic/Castanic love session? Or some High Elf/Elin smooching scene? Or a Money Cash Ferret sandwiched in between 2 Barakas? Oh well! Too bad! Not in my MMO!
GOOD:
01. Beautiful graphics (dungeons/cities/overall feel of the world/not taxing on your system).
02. Combat (fast paced as well as the non-targeting aspect of it).
03. Very fun in parties (especially for boss fights).
04. Cute/adorable/beautiful characters + Customization/creation of characters/races.
05. Beautiful music (as well as ambient/environment sounds).
06. Ease of leveling up.
07. Amount of quests to help with the leveling process.
08. Big ass monsters.
09. UI ease to use.
10. Ease of use of AH/sorting/finding items/size of shareable warehouse.
11. Very stable server/very responsive (little to no loss in connection).
12. Mainly for NA/EU: Like BG Temp already stated, they are already making changes due to direct feedback.
As far as opinions go, you know how people love to make comparisons between MMOs. This is no different. Aion was the 2nd most commonly used, while Continent of the 9th came 1st when compared to TERA. Not sure why it was compared to as the most. I have not played it yet. Maybe someone can chime in as to the similarities both games have.