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Forsaken World: A Casual New Players perspective
VooDoo_Papa
Member UncommonPosts: 897
I've been playing Forsaken World since September very casually after bouncing to and from numerous MMO's both free-to-play and pay-to-play. Due to my casual lifestyle and my taste in games I've really begun to settle into playing Forsaken World.
Let me preface this by saying that yes, the game has a cash shop. Does this mean you cant purchase items in the cash shop without spending real life currency? No, there are ways to trade in-game currency for cash-shop currency and vice-versa. Does this mean you'll be able to completely gem out your character to the equivelant of someone who is willing to spend $4000 on cash shop gear? Probably not, but then again the percentage of people spending that type of cash are very uncommon. In fact, you probably wont ever run across someone who spends that type of money. Its feasible to keep up with your typical cash shopper if you're a competitive gamer, however you wont obtain the items instantly like a cash shopper can. Its going to take some work. If you have a problem with either case then maybe you're not as competitive as youd like to think you are?
Aside from that, the game remains very competitive and non-cash shoppers can and do rank very high.
Now, did I spend money in the cash shop? Absolutely. I bought a mount, some bank expansions and a couple of outfits. Mounts, btw are pretty much given to you in the game both temporary and permant. If you dont have a permanent mount by level 20, you must have missed something. I purchased one because I didnt like the ram, it was too common. Bank expansions are obtainable in-game but I didnt find this out until after I purchased them. One suggestion I'd like to make: About once a month they offer bonus currency when you purchase. Try to wait until these sales happen instead of purchasing the currency for standard prices. Its a stinger when you spend money on cash shop currency to then find out it is going on sale the very next day.
However, I digress. This isnt a review about the competitive nature of the game or cash shop spending . This is a review from a casual players perspective. Ive bulleted the pros and cons of the game below, but first I would like to give a little more insight on what you might expect when you first play the game.
Combat and Classes: Its your typical MMO fare with skill rotations and the popular 3 talent tree per class. The trinity exists and like most MMO's you're expected to perform certain roles when in groups.
Graphics and Animations: The graphics are pretty nice, on par with say World of Warcraft but with better Art. Dont confuse graphics with Art. When I speak of graphics Im talking about actual graphics technology. The art in this game is much better in my opinion, and they seem to have a very busy art department based on the variety of models and terrain in this game. The animations are also very nice and I'd put it up there at the same level as WoW with the edge given slightly to Forsaken World.
Quests: So far I've stuck to the main questline and doing dailies. Levelling in this game is very fast, especially when you use training grounds regularly which I'll get to later. There is quite a bit of dialogue in these quests, but just like the classes and combat its just like every other MMO you've played.
Now that I hit on the bones of the game, I'll cover what I feel are its pros and cons:
Pros
Guilds: Forsaken World is very focused on guilds. Here a guild is more than a chat room, its a society. A guild can build a base that is shaped by the guild leader and its members. You can build structures that are functional with guild shops, fishing grounds and its own economy. Guilds can also war against each other in a type of battle ground.
Pets: This isnt a feature limited to a class, and pets in this game are more than fluff. Anyone can tame a pet, but theres a taming profession that allows you to tame more rare and deadly beasts. The mechanics for maintaining and growing pets is pretty involved and the amount of pets you can aquire is pretty big.
Casual Levelling: Getting from 1-20 is extremely quick on its own just following the primary quest chain. Beyond that there are ways of gaining experience that dont even involve questing. There are "training grounds" where you just need to be in the vacinity of the area to accumulate exp. You can earn items to increase the experience gain at these training grounds and the purpose of this is to remain there while you are afk. This is usually done at night when you're not playing or at work. This works out really good for casuals, especially if you dont like quest grinding. I've found that if I just do a couple dailies and park my toon in the training grounds the only quests I end up doing are the main storyline quest. Your guild can also build camp fires that will give you experience based on their level for a certain period of time. These are held at the guild base and becomes a very social event for trading and just meeting guildies. There are also a few items that increase your experience while you are out questing, some of which can be crafted.
Jobs (crafting): Unlike most MMO's, in forsaken world you have the opportunity to take part in any of the available crafting jobs you want without losing the progress. Excluding "socialite, merchant and adventurer" there are 12 job professions.
Cash Shop that isnt a Cash Shop: when you earn achievements in this game, you earn points. Those points can be spent on items in-game and are not limited to Forsaken World but can be spent on any of the Perfect World Entertainment games. In Forsaken World you are also rewarded for days logged in and earn currency to spend in cash shop. You can buy a vast amount of items in this shop without spending a buck. Both of these are seperate shops from the real currency cash shop.
The cons of the game:
Bugs: Unfortunately game has quite a few bugs that effect stability. You'll experience frequent crashes in the Freedom Harbor zone which is the main hub of the game. You'll also become stuck in the terrain occassionally and since there really is no GM support in the game, you'll end up having to recall back to your bound location. In worst cases, it can cause you to lose progress on trade run quests and in very rare cases you'll end up having to get someone to kill you in order to become unstuck.
RNG: There are several random number generator mechanics in the game. Cash Shop Lottery boxes for starters, however that only effects the person willing to spend money on the cash shop lottery box. When you find gear it comes with some base stats as well as some unidentified stats. The unidentified stats are randomly generated after you ID it. Fortunately there are items in the game that allow you to re-identify the item but again, the outcome is random and will cost you money.
anyway, thats my little review from a casual gamers perspective. This is one of the few games that I have played where trying to play catch-up doesnt have me beating my head up against a pez dispenser disquised as a quest giving NPC. Sorry I didnt cover any of the PvP aspect, I havnt really gotten there yet. Maybe I will do a seperate review at a later date on that.
Comments
Cash Shop - Unlike almost every other F2P game out there (and I've played pretty much all of them), this is the ONLY one that I have ever found that allows you to trade in-game currency (tradable player gold) for premium currency (Eryda leaves for cash shop). You do this through the in-game vendor. You can also purchase bank expansions directly from the bank npc (though you'll usually find them cheaper from players) or if you're smart you'll figure out that depending on AH (Auction House) prices it is often cheaper to trade your gold for leaves and then just buy the 3-pack of bags or bank slots instead. Ironically, sometimes if you do the 'item price' you find the 3-pack of bag slots is MORE expensive than buying them in individual or 2-packs!!! So do your homework and your math, monitor prices over the course of a week or month before diving headfirst into the economy. The cash shop prices are horribly expensive but this is also true of nearly every other F2P MMO cash shop I've seen. The only difference is that here, it merely becomes more of a 'grind' and the main issue is either 'how much will you spend?' or 'how well can you earn gold currency?' to determine whether the cash shop will be a pain or a pleasure for you. Many 'enhancement' mechanics, primarily for PvP, rely on paying lots of in-game gold or using a certain cash shop item (Star Crystal) for refinement after about level 40 or so (halfway to max level). You will encounter heavy 'twinks' and cash shoppers who will pretty much one-shot anyone who isn't outgearing them. Pretty sad to lose to someone level 45 when you're 54 just cause they're twinked out like crazy. If you are mostly about PvE then the cash shop will affect you very little. A good team for arenas can overcome nearly any disorganized team, twinks or otherwise. High level PvP was nearly nonexistent, they just end up making twinked out alts instead.
PvP - don't bother with a PvP server, there were cash shop potions added that restore about 12k health or 12k mana (depending on which type of pot you get) instantly and with a short cooldown. You won't be able to really kill them in World PvP unless you have help. Only difference on PvE servers is no 'world PvP' (ganking) outside of towns. Cash shop additions negated it anyways so you won't be missing much. They did fix a major issue with Fissure dungeons not working on Channel 2 for PvE servers so you should be fine on PvE. Most PvP is focused on arenas (only at certain times on certain days of the week). Also if you're inside an instance and on a PvP server, if someone doesn't like you or you screw up (accidentally or on purpose) you may get a good chance at being booted and pk'd. If you piss off the wrong person or guild, expect to get pk'd constantly and stalked while on trade runs.
Guild - FFS, worst shit ever. Being in a high level guild is mandatory if you hope to make it past level 60 without pulling your hair out in frustration. Many crucial things like high-end pet skills, Level 5+ tradeskill recipes/materials, and much more are what you will miss out on if you aren't in one of the very few level 6 (or higher) guilds on the server. You grind out boring 'trade runs' which is basically run from one NPC in a zone to another (on the same or different zone) without being pk'd (on PvP server) about 3x a day. Each run takes usually 10 mins depending on how well your guild knows the runs and guides you to doing them. Most guilds have mandatory X number of runs needed a week or get the boot, with higher guilds demanding more (and you need to do it or you get booted and no more high-end crafting stuff for you, go buy stupid level 50 vendor pots). You can buy stuff from the AH but it becomes prohibitively expensive.
Mana - this is insane with certain classes (vampires) using craptons of mana while others (marksman) barely using any mana at all. Cooldowns on potions are really short (less than 12 seconds) so you're expected to constantly down potions. There is no form of mana regen unless you get certain abilities with one or two class builds (water bards or marksmen being two that I know of). This again ties into the need to be able to make all those high-end pots/materials yourself or face constant mana shortages if you aren't a certain class/build.
For more, check out the real review I did: http://www.mmorpg.com/mobile/forums.cfm?ismb=1&threadId=329938
What is wrong in this review:
-You get a temporary mount at level 20, not a permanent one. You have to purchase a permanent one for 30 soul gold (bound gold from mobs/quests that you spend on most NPC services/goods). You barely get any gold from most quests so expect to be dirt-poor for a very long time until you get a reliable income stream coming in from AH stuff. Or just farm certain dailys that reward soul gold. When you send a pet on journeys (doing quests for you) they can often do the soul gold quests and you get a crapton of it at once. Guilds also pay out a good chunk of soul gold once a week.
-You don't need to cash shop to be competitive, that's bullshit. In most games yes, but with the in-game vendor to convert gold to premium currency (leaves), that isn't the case. Suck it up and earn your gold, or pay real money. Same shit, one is just faster than the other.
-You can choose from a very limited selection of pets unless you take tamer class, but MOST serious players ignore tamer class since you can just buy a 'special' tamed pet from the AH with in-game currency. You can even buy almost any cash-shop-only items in the AH since almost anything in the cash shop is tradable! You get 2 pet slots, that's it (unless you're a tamer). So you don't have MORE pets you have a VARIETY of pets to choose from. Tamer is generally considered worthless anyways.
-You cannot get every 'job' (tradeskills) , you have a certain number of 'job points' you can use to learn a job. There's a cash shop item to 'freeze' a job to be able to learn something different but you can't use any benefits of the frozen job. Most people have multiple characters with their 'main' doing gathering skills and their 'alt' doing the crafting skills. No real limits on mandatory levels for most things, you can have a level 20 alt with maxed out crafting professions if you want.
-Craftable potions you can use a certain number of times per day (Dream flasks) in order to instantly gain a certain amount of exp depending on your level versus the type of flask, usually best to use it in a level ending with '9' for max benefit such as 19, 29, 39, etc. You can also get some of these for free just by logging in daily (the low level ones at least).
-If you ignore dailies, you seriously hamper your progress in both tradeskills and achievements and will take that much longer to catch up to everyone else. There's a 'daily grind' with well over 20+ dailies just in the main city alone by the time you're halfway to the max level of 80. I got from 1-60 in about one week just doing the dailies and NEVER LEFT TOWN!!!
-Socialite/merchant/adventurer are really crappy things for the most part. Socialite is necessary for you to progress certain main quests so you'll have to stop your questing (and progression) to level it up, so damn annoying. And you have to do the main storyline quests to get job points so you have no real choice unless you wanna gimp yourself. Merchant is only used for trade runs for guilds and such. Adventurer I rarely ever used, only in one of the events that goes on (only on certain days of the week). One stupid event only happened on Mondays in the evenings (when I'm at college) so I never got to EVER do it cause the fuckers expected people to schedule their lives around an MMO. The 'Fissure' dungeons are nearly impossible to do unless you get a group with tank/healer/dps who are friends/guildies of yours. You have a 30 minute window about 2 times a day to do them. You can't find a party and make one in 30 mins? Tough shit, go abandon that quest and cry yourself to sleep. >_>
-Achievements. Oh fucking hell. One achievement system in-game that is the shittiest UI for it that I've ever seen. Ugh. Half the entries weren't even translated and all Chinese text last I played but I've heard from those still playing that they (finally) fixed it, at least till the next content patch messes it all up again. Second achievement system the 'Eryda Points Shop' if you login to their website and do stuff like running dungeons X number of times per day or praying X number of times per day (once per hour) which reward you with points to spend on stuff like 'shards' to buy set pieces of gear and other things. Then the 3rd achievement system also from the website but you gotta access your 'Core' achievements page (easier said than done) and this looks more like the traditional WoW-based achievements, only clunkier and not as intuitive, it purely is just window dressing for the most part. You get a severely limited selection of rewards, most of which are shit (except maybe the blue-quality pet cat and the permanent mount) but by the time you get enough achievement points for either one of those you've already outleveled the need to have either of them. The rest of the rewards are absolute shit you can get in game either free (daily reidentification scrolls) or dirt-cheap (blue quality low-level pets).
Phew...