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TERA: Community Play Event Report
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
En Masse Entertainment hosted the first TERA Community Play Event in North America this past weekend. It’s the first time that most western players have gotten their hands on one of the most widely covered and hotly anticipated games coming out during 2011. Press members were invited to the event to check out the game and, with no NDA, there’s plenty to talk about. MMORPG.com’s Garrett Fuller and Suzie Ford were tagged to check out TERA and offer a few thoughts about the game.
I have to be honest with you before I start with my first impressions of this weekend’s community play event. I’m not really a ‘minutiae’ type person. I prefer to experience and write about a new game in broad strokes from a visual and experiential perspective. I prefer not to study the game before starting out in an event like this one as there’s something exciting about going into a game as a blank slate, ready to explore without preconceived notions.
Check out our first TERA Community Play Event Report by MMORPG.com News Manager Suzie Ford.
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Comments
Love your report Suzie, nice reading. I have tested EU last weekend. For now i will be choosing Mystic female
I would be surprised if this didn't turn out like another Aion. Pretty graphics, no substance.
Someone in chat said, "TERA seems like the offspring of an Aion and Lineage II marriage." That seemed pretty spot on. :P
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
ok well now I'm drooling.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Hope you don't mind Suzie
https://forum.tera-europe.com/showthread.php?t=13249
For European fans, that didn't join the event.
I'm completely flattered. Thanks for doing that.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Your'e welcome as i did same for US fans.
http://www.tera-online.com/forums/showthread.php?p=339423
Not a bad report on the game, but I am tired of people complaining about the female characters. Yes, they look like strippers, it's how Korean games are. Just pick a male character and you won't have a problem.
But, if the writer is a ...female... and wants to play a character resembling herself as many players do, she should have a choice in what she should be able to wear.
I don't care any which way... I do think the characters are way over the top.. and they have been a common complaint from this community, so I wouldn't just dismiss it.
I've yet to get my hands on this game, but it reminds me so much of Phantasy Star in the way the combat plays, I'm excited to give it a shot.
Ya the community test players gave a LOT of feedback so hopefully from this experience most of the small annoying stuff will be fixed. And this wasnt the version EM was working on, so some of the problems may have already been addressed.
I do notice alot of people comment on the female armor, let me just say not all the armor is so scantily clad. There are alot of armors that are really nice and cover most of the body, imagine that.
I dont really know the reason the Elin where not avalible for this event was, but there has been alot of complaints about the Elin's look. So Blue Hole Studios is revising the armors to be less revealing, not that they really where in the first place, but I can understand the argument.
Thank you for your impressions, Suzie. I don't mean to single you out, but I'd like to point out the inaccuracy in your statement that "all MMOs take the ‘barely there’ approach to what only slightly resembles armor for female characters."
Such a statement is more than slight exageration or hyperbole, it's flat out wrong and perpetuates a very unfair and innacurate perception of MMOs. Although I am a male gamer, both my sister and daughter play, so I'm not completely insensetive to the existence of "stripper armor." However, very few mainstream MMOs deprive players of the option of wearing modest clothing (by western standards), if they so desire. Your MMORPG.com player profile doesn't include a list of games that you've played, so I'm not sure from where you're gathering your data. But, I'd like to challenge you to revise your statement, or better yet, honestly examine this issue in a subsequent article. I think that if you were to actually compile a list of mainstream MMOs, you would find that those preventing female characters from wearing modest clothing are well in the minority. I'll even go out on a limb and say that none of the games I've played deprived me of the option to cover up, save possibly for Lineage 2, which I didn't play long enough to discover if it had cosmetic slots or not. Obviously, none of us have played every single MMO, but I think my list covers a pretty broad range of the more popular ones. Can you honestly name more than a few that don't provide for modest armor or clothing? I can't.
Age of Conan
Aion
APB
Allods Online
Black Prohecy
DCUO
Dragon Nest
DDO
EVE Online
EQ I and II
FF XI and XIV
Forsaken World
Guild Wars
Hello Kitty Online
LEGO Universe
Lineage 2
LotrO
Maple Story
Mythos
Pocket Legends
Rift
Runes of Magic
Ryzom
Spiral Knights
SWG
Vindictus
Wakfu
WoW
World of Tanks
kudos for the laugh, stripper tanks would be sweet
@Adhesive33
While I'll grant that I should have qualified the statement with "many MMOs take the 'barely there approach" to female armor, I stand by my statement in a general way, particularly with regard to Asian developed games. Many of the games in the list you mentioned have the option to clad females more 'realistically' but the fact that it's optional is troubling to me. Male armor models do not -usually- include going out to fight in a jock strap and spike heels. :P
My favorites, however, are games like Lord of the Rings Online and Age of Conan simply due to the fact, as you so ably pointed out, that the females are fairly well-covered armor-wise.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
By the looks of it they are going to need to do a *lot* of "westernisation" very quickly to appeal to the mass market.
Pole dancer armor is just fail, didnt we move away from only 13yo boys playing games a while ago?
The Dev's from BHS in fact stated that they got a little carried away with the armor renders and intend to tone it down in the future. I wish I could find that Q&A with them^^
Velika: City of Wheels: Among the mortal races, the humans were the only one that never built cities or great empires; a curse laid upon them by their creator, Gidd, forced them to wander as nomads for twenty centuries...
lol Oh come on.
I was about to reply saying "just go play Age of Conan for half naked dudes."
I understand your point but man we dont get quality games that have such insanely scantily clad female characters in "the states" like Korea does, or whatever other country (i dont know world history because i dont care!).
We have to play these tacky (dont get me wrong i love them) and lower budgeted games if we want to enjoy that style.
I dont go out of my way to play as half naked girls ok, but every single time a game comes out here (Tomb Raider) that has anything to do with a "hot" female character everybody flips out. She wasnt even hot, she just had huge boobs. lol
That said i do enjoy the style of these games, im an artist and i enjoy anime and women. This is a style that i like among others. I really wish us "western" people would allow ourselves to experience more cultured styles without actually having to leave our country. haha
Jeremiah 8:21 I weep for the hurt of my people; I stand amazed, silent, dumb with grief.
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While doing the over scantily female lingerie armor??
One wonders how designing lingerie armor could make a designer get 'carried away', it offers a visually disturbing image of TERA art designers at work
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
If I may respond to your question.
Tera has collision detection and in doing so every character has a hitbox. In order to keep the mechanics consistant you cannot change your bodies shape like you can in Aion. Character creation involves changing the face only.
Velika: City of Wheels: Among the mortal races, the humans were the only one that never built cities or great empires; a curse laid upon them by their creator, Gidd, forced them to wander as nomads for twenty centuries...
Too funny,LOL.
I'm curious about the UI-is it like DCUo? The Hotbar seems to have more on it. How does the whole camera thing work?
The camera is a mouse look with WASD for movement. When you talk to an NPC, you go into a different mode and have to toggle out of it to go back to mouse look. I don't know what that other mode is called but it just caused me fits because I'd forget briefly and run into things. :P
I NEVER play dwarfs.
StayOnTarget is absolutely correct: Customization is in facial features only.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
You know, I'm getting sick of prudes influencing the art design on some MMORPGs with their complaints.
I will say that I think all MMORPGs should have costume tabs or allow reskinning of armors, as Aion does and that there should be modest and revealing choices for all races and classes so that people aren't forced into one extreme or the other. However, there have been some games recently that have had armor looks changed for everyone as a result of such complaints, almost always with the result being some pretty poor looking armor options.
The double standard of violence vs. sexuality in Western video games, mostly due to our prudish values in the U.S., is really getting sickening. Now we want to force Eastern games to redesign armor before we accept their games here?
Once again, I'm all for there being options for those who prefer to cover up more, but I'm totally against art designs being changed for everyone, because of the (often false) modesty of the few who take issue.
Want to know more about GW2 and why there is so much buzz? Start here: Guild Wars 2 Mass Info for the Uninitiated
I agree with you fiontar; the whole false modesty thing is too much. My GF will purposefully choose as little as possible armor to wear... I guess it's all a personal taste.
But to list this as "your biggest complaint" about the game... jokes. Seriously? How does that affect the game or the gameplay?
Make an aman or a male character if it bothers you that much. I have seen many images containing various forms of armor. Some of them covering the entire character head to toe. Why don't you get another set instead of listing that as an actual complaint.
Nor does it have anything to do about realism. Games aren't real; your armor has magical properties - try and not forget that...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JaTcslgrMo
Nice write up, thanks. As a female gamer myself though I don't really care about the barely there approach, in fact I almost prefer it sometimes to looking clunky and realistically armored lol. Everyone has varied opinions on it but I just take the mentality that if I can be scantily clad and kick just as much ass as the guy in full plate next to me than... awesome.