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[Column] TERA: Sauntering Through Tera
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
We are ready to launch a brand new column today with the arrival of The Tourist that will feature jaunts through MMOs of note. In today's installment, we take a look at TERA. See what The Tourist discovered and then leave your thoughts in the comments.
Let's get the big question out of the way first: TERA has an excellent free-to-play model. Rather than take anything away from non-subscribers, En Masse is taking the opposite tack. If you want to run dungeons, do PvP, play more than one character (limit of two), and access every quest, you can. It's the same exact product players subscribed for at no cost. Buying a subscription earns you more goodies, such as a shortened dungeon cooldown and higher daily limit, a handful of consumables, reduced auction fees, and a mount. Instead of gating players behind pay walls, TERA has adopted the popular lockbox system, ala Guild Wars 2. You'll find these fairly often in your travels but the keys are rare, unless you buy them. It's a reasonable system and totally optional.
Read more of Chris Coke's The Tourist: Sauntering Through TERA.
Confident and unashamed, Poporis rarely feel guild, embarassment, or sadness." Read: They lick themselves in public.
Comments
Nice read, I too agree it's worth giving it a try, love it or hate it, it's free so there's not much to lose.
I will warn you though, if you're not a fan of standard MMO quest hub leveling... this is a painful one to reach max level in, also the combat starts off a lot slower than it should, it certainly picks up as you go along.
A writer and gamer from the Philippines. Loves his mom dearly.
Can also be found on http://www.gamesandgeekery.com
Gave this game a go, and enjoyed it to the very end... which happened to be level 60, after getting all the best gear, but did not run the "mastercrafted" treadmill. At that point in the game, the only reason keeping a person hooked would be the friendships.
I went on vacation for a week, and when I came back, I was off the addiction, and didn't feel the need to log in. If you have never played TERA, give it a go, specially since it is free. Once you reach maximum level, unless you want to run through the gear treadmill, put it down, and use your time in other stuff.
Steam: Neph
"Story quests also lead you through the unfolding events of an Arborea in turmoil. Quest types are easily identifiable (asterisks for stories, exclamation points for throwaways) so you know what's worth reading."
No, asterisks are for turn-ins, exclamation points are for pick-ups. It's red for story and yellow for throwaways.
lol pretty bad when you mess up on something as simple as quest markers. did you even play the game? i mean really, its the same as in any other game, ! are always for quest pick ups, though this game takes a spin and makes ? for continuing a quest, and asteriks for completing, but lol.
also saw you failed to mention the constant downtime the game has been facing for going on two weeks now, everyday has been shutdown servers with no warning possibly due to hackers and mega ultra lag on the original servers.
Be the Ultimate Ninja! Play Billy Vs. SNAKEMAN today!
Bought this game before it was F2P, and subbed for 2 months. I found the game world well made, but I cannot stand the combat. Too many games have started adding in this dodging BS - I'll wait till they get their act together and make it more like WoW, because I refuse to move more than once or twice a fight (Ice Nova + Blink). Too bad WoW ruined their own game with WotLK, Cata and Mists, or I'd still play that.
[mod edit]I thought I was lazy.... but this guy is even lazy in a video game, beats me, i'm only lazy in the real world.
It's been good for about 4-5 days now, I believe someone managed to hack into their servers and started disrupting their service...like crashing the servers/deleting characters. At least they made a post about it and admitted someone managed to compromise their system, most companies won't admit to something like that.
I seriously think I would fall over dead if anybody writing at MMORPG ever actually got to cap in this game instead of taking screenshots of the starter zone and calling it a day. A few points I'd add as a vet player:
1) The game's hard. It starts out easy and gets progressively more difficult with a steep curve about halfway through leveling. If you're not leveling a Berzerker, then you have to take care of your gear while leveling, enchant it some, and use good crystals. You can die while leveling, which is something that's been removed from WoW and its clones.
2) The only people who think Isle of Dawn is breathtaking are people who have not seen the rest of the game. Isle is mindblowing coming fresh from uglier games, but just wait til you get to the capital cities, Heartwood, Scythra Fae, Tirkai Forest, Fountain of Shara, Bastion and Baldur's Temple, etc. If you can run it on max, there's very little that touches it.
3) The armor and weapon designs are all race, gender, and class specific. If you have a human female, the design is completely different than on a high elf female. You can also dye every piece of armor in the game using custom RBG/brightness sliders. There are dozens of armor designs per race/gender/class, and every single one is usable to remodel gear while leveling. So I disagree very much that everybody looks the same within a race/gender/armor type. There will be overlap no matter what, but there's a lot of customization here, including re-usable costume and accessory slots.
4) You haven't truly experienced Tera's combat until you've stepped into a hard mode. Most of the bosses have relatively simple mechanics that are, in practice, very difficult to execute. There is no Deadly Boss Mod telling you the attack timers; you have to outsmart and outplay the AI of a very large, fast monster that wants you to die. There's no global CD to stare at, there's no skill in the game that's spammable, and there's no set rotation. You use skills based on priority, situation, and cooldowns. The starter zone only gives a tiny, tiny taste of what the actual endgame is like.
This is basically what I have been posting here since ... I dunno', January 2012. I like this post.
Was doing CoF MK2 today, we failed to beat the timer because the healer died 11 times. Silly people, not used to watching bosses movements... playing the game like it's WoW.
Also yeah, you can completely customize your look to look different even with the same armor set... nothing like seeing a neon green baraka running around.
And here's the funny thing! If your healer died 11 times, then it was probably because DPS were tunneling the boss and not using their utility skills to stun/slow, etc.
Depends, for some bosses that is the case but the orge boss at the end of CoF has that secondary aggro where he just turns and fires a lava spray at the healer, or chucks a rock... both are one hit KOs so... no dodge...no bueno.
Definitely not a bad game at all. Speccially for a f2p title. The questing is pretty standard fare of go kill X number of Y, though the combat is fun. I've been playing a warrior and it's fun to be such a mobile tank. The only thing I don't like about the game is how hemmed in the zones seem to be, but then again I'm only level 22 in the game and maybe the zones will really start to open up? I asked about that on the Tera forums here and didn't get an answer so maybe they don't? /Shrug
Still not costing me anything so no biggie.
"If I offended you, you needed it" -Corey Taylor
Great game till about 50-54 when it fell apart for me playing a lancer. I whent threw most of the game hitting 3 buttons "attack, AOE taunt, shield" wich stoped working like someone threw a switch in a dungeon called golden labyrinth. I adjusted my play style to make shield counter my main aggro skill wich helped alot bosses but not with trash that required me to be the one acctualy pulling and getting hit before anyone else.
The average dungeon que time for someone playing DPS is 30 mins. 70% of the DPS ive grouped with will pull shit before the tank even after you let them die. The game turned into a never ending shit show when ever it was time to do trash and i just stoped playing my tank. I played an archer up to about the same point and noticed other tanks having the same exact problems with DPS players with there constant complaints about holding aggro on trash pulls.
For the 10 dollars i spent to get founder status before it whent F2P it was worth it and helped kill some time till the next SC2 expanion comes out. Ill pick the game back up at somepoint after more people become experienced enough to know how the mechnics and fights work but something is telling thats gonna be a while.
hallo ~_~
Golden Labyrinth is usually what I consider the first retard test, if you're bad at games and don't think before you do things that instance will not be fun.
I can understand your frustration with people pulling the trash in that dungeon, since some of it can almost one shot you.
Nice read. Most ppl seem to want to add lame shock value to their reviews and bash games with little to no knowledge of how the game actually works. I assume it's because they don't have anything worth while to say.
I like to see the more positve aspects of games and you covered this one well. If all your reviews on games are like this I'll have to make sure to read them.
Currently playing on Valley of Titans as Gerrard the outlaw hunter and heart stealer! Enjoying myself thoroughly so far and glad to see a new piece up bringing exposure to its newly F2P state. More should try this game out. I would recommend you play on a PVP server as it makes the questing system a whole lot more interesting (watching over your shoulder(or actively hunting) for a red name adds quite a bit of intrigue to the many tasks you'll have to run). Give it a go and always keep in mind that your crosshair must be almost exactly on what you're poking or you're sure to miss with a rush or dive attack leaving you wide open.
One thing you should certainly try is to solo every BAM you can. The experience is super hard and very rewarding. Think of it as a Dark Souls kind of engagement.
Also if you play late at night you will have the opportunity to learn new languages lol, namely Russian and Portugese. BR? Rus? No eng? No prob!
So exactly like WoW?
You just described TERA as like playing WoW without DBM (and GCD). SO what you are basically saying that what makes WoW easy is DBM.
And you arent incorrect, Just like TERA a WoW boss fight is about reading the mob's tells and reacting to them. But DBM makes it so you dont have to read the tells, just follow the addon.
The only real difference is that in TERA regular mobs can act similar to a boss, although you can brute force a lot of it if you only worry about a key ability here and there.
I think it's a great game. I pre-ordered and subbed for about 6 months. Only reason I cancelled my sub was the friends I played with took a general gaming hiatus (family stuff). Rather than find new friends to game with, I just shelved the game until my friends returned.
Now we're all back in full swing and loving it. Especially since it's free now.
Races, Classes, not much to say, the idea of ??range or mele are not very clear. much aoe that's good.
99% of the npc that encontras are melee, almost no range. Artificial intelligence is rather poor, although they have good
movements, are always on the player thanks to its apparent speed hack. can not ever take away from them, plus the PK system not spend much fun.
Dungeons, at lvl 20 is not bad, except that the system in place to find groups not used. you get to be 15 minutes or more to try to complete a quest. When you enter the npc are 5 levels higher than this leads to you sometimes you have groups that can not complete them, Hard Mode impossible. and between dungeons have blind spots 20, 26, 35, 41. Not to mention the level 60 dungeon, nobody does and that's where the big mistake, do not give prizes, no insentivating and encouraging them.
Bam, excellent! almost always a shame that you have to pass by that few people are interested. unless you want to do and just waste time and crystals.
We talk about PVP when there is only one faction, there duel, nothing more, why not think to call Pk PVP, which is to kill a player when he is up and running at an outpost or city. Just what you see on battlefields that there is only 1 and is for level 60!. or GVG.
There is only one Raid (nexus) is not a raid is a lag machine when you start the game is over for the rest of the players.
end game? 1 bg 1 "raid" the machine lag, archievement? <span title="diarias aburridas y mal dise
No, it is not exactly like WOW. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess you have never played TERA. Anyone who has actually played both would not call both combat systems "exactly" alike. TERA's combat system is action oriented and requires some aiming. Wow is typical hotbar /tab targetting orientation. Yes, you have the typical "get out of the fire" mechanics in both games for some bosses, but you also have the active dodging, blocking, parrying, etc that TERA's combat system offers. Twist it anyway you like, but the systems are not exactly alike.