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Log of an Allods Newb
OSF8759
Member Posts: 284
Pre-Log Entry:
I've had some curiosity about Allods for a while now. After reading several Massively articles on it, and seeing some impressive videos and screen shots, I decided to give it a try. (You know, that's one of the biggest advantages of F2P. You can try something out with no investment other than some download and initial play time.)
I had my concerns, because the Allods forum here at MMORPG.com is full of some pretty negative things. Especially about unbelievably horrific pricing in the cash shop. Of course, if any of it turned out to be true, I could just uninstall, no harm no foul.
My previous favorite F2P MMOs were Rappelz (lol, wut?) and Runes of Magic (a very strong contender in the F2P space). I've played both only very casually, and didn't find the games compelling enough to spend any money (though RoM was close, the lack of character options for factions and race limited my interest in the game).
Comments
Log Entry One:
After download and installation, I started the game up and found a wealth of options, the very ones I had found lacking in Runes of Magic. Two factions (Alliance and Horde har, har) and several races for each. Naturally, my eye was immediately drawn to the Horde, er, Empire.
Normally I like to play stealth+alpha classes like Rogues, but the Scout (uh, that's a Rogue right? lol) didn't really seem to grab me. I laughed at the Healer (like I always do), and looked right past it to a very interesting fellow: the Psionicist. Mez and blast is a great play style, one I don't get to play enough. But I generally don't like to play squishies when I'm brand new to a game. I like to play something a bit more forgiving so I don't die too much while learning the ropes. And there he was, his graphic bigger and badder than any of the others: the Warrior!
So I roll Warrior and what could be more appropriate than an Orc to make a Warrior as mean and hostile looking as possible. The customization options are what they are, I guess they're pretty good for a traditional MMO, but games like City of Heroes have me spoiled. I'll just have to accept this is one of those games that has you looking just like everyone else. But look at that armor and ginormous sword! My Warrior looked just like the lead singer of Metallica, if the lead singer of Metallica was and Orc, a weightlifter, and wore awesome evil fantasy armor. Looking good right away is great!
But when I got into the starting area I was a bit disappointed. Gone was the ginormous sword and awesome armor. Instead, I was wearing what looks like a sailor suit. Oh bait and switch, how I loathe thee! I finally understand: they weren't showing me how I was going to look right away, they were showing me how I was going to look at max level. Cute. Real cute. My mighty Orc Warrior is wearing a sailor suit like a 3 year old girl. We are not amused.
But it gets better as the starter area is unlike any other I've encountered. You're aboard a ship sailing through the astral plane. One of the missions takes you through the cannon area. Boy, was I impressed! You could see the ship was under attack by other astral ships. The ships looked awesome and the astral plane looked even more awesome. Huge and immersive! A mission has you take a shot with the cannon at the enemy ship. You only have to do it once to complete it, but I couldn't help but take several shots as I watched my blue balls of energy (uh, that came out wrong lol) glide towards and impact on the enemy ship. That was fun!
The starter area ends with you facing down one of the biggest entities I've ever seen in any MMO. Some kind of astral demon by the looks of it. Everything seemed to go black and I found myself standing in an area with lots of other players: the sewers.
The good news is I had gotten rid of the sailor suit and was now wearing a magic wifebeater t-shirt. Just a little something to let you know this game is a little bit different (that, and the captive fairy wearing an outfit right out of Victoria's Secret that is also hanging out in the sewers).
I got to kill some League prisoners. Killing helpless good-guy prisoners is just the kind of thing you want to be doing as an Orc. I smacked around some slugs, too. Their death animation is funny, and their animations and slime trails when they're alive are really impressive.
There was a hiccup where I had difficulty finding part 2 of the Psychometer quest, but I found it after some wandering around for a while. They really should make it more clear where the next part of your quest is.
So after finishing up the sewer (boy is it annoying when the Sewer Rats run away from you when their HPs are low!) I went out into the main city.
And what a city it is! The graphical style of the game is very clean and simple, highly stylised and runs smoothly even on my modest hardware. The sky looks especially good with stylised yet realistic clouds and sun. The tower in the center of the city is huge and impressive, complete with giant statue atop it holding a shinging red...something. The world really feels huge.
Finding various mobs I needed for my missions wasn't too difficult, and I didn't mind wandering a bit as there are many interesting things to see in the city. The only real problem came when it was time to use the June Stone to travel to an islet (an Allod, as the islands are apparently called). I found out you can fall off the edge of an Allod to your death. A part of me was miffed, but part of me appreicates the reality of that. And the death penalty was not bad at all (at least at this low level). A few seconds in purgatory, and out with no other ill effects.
After checking the forums, I figured out there's an option on the June Stone menu that is currently hidden by a bug. Careful mouse movement allows you to click it and complete the quest, but here's hoping the next patch corrects this real gamestopper of a bug.
I was really impressed by the astral ships swinging by this part of the world. They look great and if you look through the windows you can see interior details. It would be too awesome for words if you could eventually have one of those ships to call your own and fly with other players and/or NPC helpers. Too much to hope for? Something tells me not!
So off to the Mystery man who lives in the central tower in the city, and then turning in "Fatigue" to the Innkeeper Goblin before logout. Fatigue had me worried at first. I thought it was some XP penalty you accrued over time, but it's not a penalty at all but a bonus. Sort of like resting XP I guess.
All that in my first session. The good: I had fun, and was very impressed with the graphics and animations. The Warrior is as hardy as I hoped for a newb toon (and hey, magic wifebeater lol). The bad: one showstopping bug (but fortunately with a work-around) and the quest has gone missing again. I have no idea where I'm supposed to go next. Maybe that's the point. We'll see. Leaving a newb undirected can be a discouraging thing for a game to do, though.
So far, so good. And Gpotatos? I'm temped, but let's see if this game will hold me for several more play sessions, first.
Allods looks and plays just like a AAA MMO, at least in this early part of the game.
Log Entry Two:
Infiltrating an Orc gang is where the quest next led me (once I wandered around a bit to find it). Having to rest a bit to recover hitpoints after a couple of tough fights against the Orc Duelists gave me some time to take a look at the cash shop.
There isn't much there. Storage, buff potions, death-penalty removers, and strangely, animations like fireworks, confetti and the like. I was disappointed there aren't any mounts, pets or appearance armor to make you look cool. Right now my 18 size bag is plenty big. I'll buy extra storage if I ever really need it (and if I last that long in the game). On the upside, it looks like you can play this game without spending any money pretty easily based on what's in the cash shop. On the downside, there's just not any really sexy/cool items to get.
I got my magic wifebeater upgraded to a dirty magic wifebeater. At first I was wondering if the graphic was bugged because the two looked so similar, so I kept equipping and unequipping trying to figure it out. Then I noticed my new wifebeater is dirtier and more worn looking than my old one, so I figured out it was supposed to be that way. Magic wifebeaters are still weird.
I spent some coin on a new weapon, a nice hammer with a bit more DPS than my old Mace. Turned out to be a waste as the next quest provided me with a much better sword upon meeting the Orc leader.
Some of the quests are really counterintuitive/buggy. The quest to find the book that the Black Hyenas have stolen had me grinding on Black Hyenas for a good long while. I realized something was wrong, the book wasn't dropping, so I consulted the forums and it turns out there's a Black Hyena contact you have to talk to and either pay him for the book or fight him and take it from him. I fought him and got it pretty easily.
There was a quest to talk to a fortuneteller near the tower. The map pointed to an incorrect location and I again had to consult the forums to find the location of the NPC.
Fortunately this was followed up by a quest to take a guy's head. I killed him and upon showing the guy the head, found out he hadn't wanted that guy dead after all. Kind of an Idiot Ball, but it's a pretty funny image of an orc coming up to the guy, lifting a head out of a bag and saying, "Here's that head you wanted!" only to be met with a look of confused horror.
The mystery of who set me up to kill the poor crook will have to wait as I went to an Innkeeper Goblin to log out. With the fatigue XP cashed in I went from level 5 to almost level 7. Hmmm, less than 2 levels in nearly 3 hours of play? This seems like a very slow leveling game. I can only imagine what later levels are like.
Still, I had fun, even with the quest issues and disappointing cash shop. I'm confident I'll be logging some more hours in Nezebgrad (though I will confess a bit of a grindy feeling started to creep into the game during this session. I hope that's not a sign of things to come).
Log Entry Three:
Still playing and enjoying the game more than I thought I would. Gone is the magic wifebeater, it's been replaced with some not-entirely-ridiculous-looking armor. Really, I'm just glad the sailor suit is long gone.
Had to grind up some Hyenas. They were the first tough fight I've had since the Orc Duelists. The new armor I scored as quest rewards and as resells from store (I LOVE that resell feature. It lets you score some great stuff from other players.) The new gear means Hyenas are no longer a challenge. This is good.
Ground up some of the larger snails. They look cool, their animations are great, and they're easy kills. What's not to love? And their eyes are all blinky. Allods has the graphics and animations down pat. Really impressed with everything I've seen. Except the sailor suit.
I died for the second time and after purgatory respawned in the level 10+ Military District zone. Some kind of bug? I had a hair-raising trip dodging killer horses to get back to Nezebgrad.
I was sent to kill some kind of uber goblin. As an Orc, goblins are the only race in the Empire I can actually look down upon, as it was revealed that goblins are at the bottom of the social ladder, and Orcs are one step above them, but both are considered pretty lowly. Long story short, the uber goblin beat me down pretty easily. The game popped up a tip saying, "Oh, didn't you know that was an epic elite and epic elites are just too cool for school so bring a team next time ya nub?" I was pretty pissed. I guess I get to see what putting a team together is like in Allods (I'm a hard core soloist so teaming always feels a bit fail to me).
I was then sent to kill the mother black widow. I feared another epic elite, but turns out I beat her with about half my health to spare. The game gave a popup saying "That was a plain vanilla elite. You obviously suck so we gave you this gold star to make you feel better. And bring a team next time too, ya nub."
IIRC I'm now level 8. I gotta say, the leveling in this game is pretty slow. I spend over two hours getting a bit less than one level completed. I can only imagine what it's like at the higher levels once things slow down. Things already seem pretty damn slow enough!
I had a crazy thought while playing: does the Empire represent Soviet era Russia, and the League post-Soviet Russia? Hmmm...
I had the great feeling of having had fun when I logged off. I hadn't gotten a full level, which was frustrating, but I was definitely entertained and had fun.
My play in Allods continues...for now.
Log Entry Patch 1.1: In Soviet Allods, patch downloads you!
Not a full log entry because my play time today is being taken up by the patching process. It's been troublesome. I've heard some people blame difficulties on Allods being F2P. That's not entirely fair, as if you look at any given P2P game you find similar problems in those all the time. F2P just has a reputation for chintziness, deserved or not.
At first I got the 2.8 error, which the tech support forum says is a problem with firewall/anti-virus. But in fact, the error also occurs when the patch server is down, as it was today. After seeing a post saying the server was back up, I restarted the launcher and it started downloading the patch via the p2p update network. You see RIAA? Legitimate p2p traffic! In your face!
Turns out the update downloads just fine even without ports forwarded in my router.
Will I get to/bother with playing today? Stay tuned to find out!
P.S. Some people have complained that the missions are now much harder to solo. I'll have to see for myself if that's true, but right now I don't believe it. The Allods team couldn't be that dumb.
Log Entry Four:
Turns out I found some time to put a couple of hours into the game. I went around cleaning up the remaining missions in the zone, and I started my Patronage mission as well.
I had to go to the Reserviour to pick up some croc eggs and kill the mother mutant croc. I feared another elite boss, but the croc was 3 levels below me so was defeated easily. Which reminds me, everyone on the forums is saying the damage post-patch is awful and they're having difficulty defeating mobs of equal level and it's taking a minute or more to kill -3s. This had not been my experience in the new patch so far. Maybe it's just different at level 8, but I'm not seeing the mobs being any more difficult so far. Maybe it's a level 40 thing?
I scored some really nice gear off the resell feature again. My Orc Brute is looking like he's ready for a military parade lol. The black leather boots with gold trim are especially snazzy. I think I'm beginning to feel the addicting nature of gear-based games. It's actually a pretty fun element.
Leveled a couple of bubs into level 9 at the Goblin Innkeeper. Two hours of play garnered me about 8 bubs of XP overall. That's some pretty slow leveling, but I once again had fun and I'll be returning to Allods for another round for sure.
The mounts that got added to the game are a bit of a disappointment. They're just horses. I was wanting more fantastic mounts, especially a giant wolf for my Orc to ride. There looks to be a white tiger available in the Russian version, but it's not in the North American version yet. This game needs more exciting things in the cash shop!
Much fear and loathing in the forums. So far my own experiences don't match those, but maybe that's because I'm still at such a low level. I get the feeling things are being blown out of proportion though. Time will tell. So far it's fun for me.
Log Entry Extra:
I just noticed that Allods is the #10 game on the "most hits this year" list on mmorpg.com. That really surprised me seeing it there, and notably it's the only (currently) F2P on the whole list. It's right up there with games like Aion, WoW, LOTRO and many other heavy hitters of the AAA variety. That tells you that Allods truly is something special in the F2P space.
I only hope the game hasn't shot itself in the foot, but judging from all the "I'm leaving" posts on the Allods forums and the newly-low population in Nezebgrad, I'm thinking the game might have done just that. If so, it represents a monumental waste of potential and one of the most hamfisted moves since the NGE itself (still the gold-standard for screwing a game over).
Personally, I'm still enjoying it and sticking with it for now, but people have me wondering what I'm in for in the mid-levels. But the leveling is so slow in this game, I may not get there until the end of the year lol.
Stay tuned as my Allods saga continues...
Log Entry Five (Grabbing Chests):
So after being distracted by Dungeons & Dragons Online (good game, I didn't like it much in 2006 but it's improved greatly) I'm back at Allods for another session (with some encouragement from the Quest for Chests promotion).
Beating up a bunch of Smugglers, I got in over my head and got killed. Thing is, I was right on a spawn point so the smugglers kept coming thick and furious and it was just a matter of time before I got sent to Purgatory again. But at level 9, who cares? No curse, 15 seconds in Purgatory (which is actually a pretty interesting place to see) and out. I took more care about taking out the smugglers and didn't have any more problems.
I put up some Orc War Flags for our Dear Leader as well. The Orc flags look pretty cool, and of course there's a skull on it lol. Orcs. Gotta love 'em!
I got some higher rated gear from the Resell feature again. Some ugly pants and foot wrappings. Combined with my fancy blue jacket, my Orc Brute went from looking snazzy to looking...questionable. Appearance armor and clothing would be great, but I don't think this game will ever implement it. But you never know.
I just figured out that there's food you can buy to regenerate your HPs between fights. They're cheap (only some copper each) and speed things up when you've taken a beating.
I had to do some rearranging my attacks to try to get a smooth attack chain, but I think I have it figured out.
My two hours of play got me half a level (Fatigue inlcluded) and 7 Silver Keys for the chest contest. I got a couple of stacks of Megaphones, a couple symbol markers (I don't understand what purpose they are supposed to serve) and some Incense. I'm sure that will come in handy if I ever get to the levels where it's usable.
I wouldn't mind winning the Alienware computer. Heh. Who wouldn't?
Still had fun, and I might play more with this contest on, so my Allods newb adventure continues...
Log Entry Six (Chests: grabbing 2)
So the chest promotion must be working on me because I put another couple of hours into the game.
Didn't get a whole lot done except tried to figure out where to pick up my prizes (you just go to one of the mailboxes in the game and there they are in emails) and there where the auctioneer was (so I could put up the Incense that I won). Travel being kind of slow in the game, this took a while of wandering but I finally figured it out (I am a newb, you know). Starting bid of 1 copper, buy now of 25 gold. That's a very, very good deal if you ask me. And you're welcome.
On the missions I did manage to run there's one where you learn Nezebgrad is built on an ancient Indian burial ground, er, that is, ancient Zen civilization. The Zen were the race that were all killed and then brought back to life as the Arisen. I went down into an area of the city that had fallen down to reveal the Zen ruins. Undead skeletons and litches abound, but there's also something very cool that made me say "wow!" There's an underground complex the renegade Arisen/Zen have. It's techy, it's green, it's really cool looking. One of those touches that let you know whoever did the world layout/art direction for Allods is really very good at their job. Say what you will about Allods, but the production values are outstanding.
Oh, and I finally added the 2 gold spammers who were working today to my ignore list. Finally figured out how to go about doing that. Allods' interface isn't DDO bad, but it could be a bit better.
Finally made it to level 10 with the 3 or so pips of XP I got (Fatigue, as always, included). I got excited about my Trainer's armor pack (which becomes available at level 5, but the game only tells you about it at level 10), but was greatly disappointed when everything in the pack (save for some gloves) was worse than what I was already wearing. Sold back everything but the gloves and lost 24 Silver as a result. Live and learn!
My two hours got me two silver keys which gave me two empty chests. Well, they can't all be winners! [Mall Madness]Try again tomorrow![/Mall Madness]
My newb Allods adventure continues...