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So what's Lineage 2 like?
ThumbtackJ
Member UncommonPosts: 669
in Lineage 2
I'm downloading it right now, because in the end I like to form my own opinions, but still, feedback is always nice.
Is it still populated?
Is it a heavy grind (that's more or less what I'm looking for) to cap where it takes a long time to level?
How important is gear, and how do you acquire it?
What is there to do once you do hit the level cap?
Looking over the classes, both Summoner and Wizard look fun to me (particularly Necromancer on the Human Wizard side of things), are these decent choices?
Comments
Tried it about a year ago.. it's a linear themepark nowdays. Levels go very fast and everything is easy.
Too bad since i was looking for the same as you; grindy, long term goal mmo. I don't like click-to-move games, but i could have paid that price for a decent game.
Well that's a bummer.
I'll still give it a go, but at least I won't be surprised if it lets me down.
It isn't easy and fast after 85. It's a very big grind after 85 up to 99. It takes a couple days to get up to 80, then maybe a couple more to get from 80 to 85, then from there on it's a GIANT grind. They just wanted more people to populate the high level areas, so that you could find exp groups and things like that and more pvp.
i have had my best experience in mmorpg's in lineage 2, however the game has changed a lot from its earlier days. i played since the beta for over 6 years.
to answer your questions :
population : haven't played in a while but last time i checked it was doing good (when the game went f2p)
the leveling process has changed drastically since it went f2p. it used to be extremely grindy at all stages of the game. however, now the earlier levels are faster to get (way way faster). you are kinda hand-held up until lvl 75 and there, the grind begins to reach max level.
gear : gear is very important. you get shadow gear (those items have a decay and disappear after 30 days i think) that you acquire through questing during your leveling up to 75.
you can get non-decaying items through mob drops (very rarely), raid boss drops (almost guaranteed but you'll need a party) and crafting (only dwarven can craft, though you can buy/gather the materials needed to craft some piece of gear and use a dwarf to craft it).
once you hit level cap (good luck with that because it's gonna take a while) :
-you can level your subclasses to max (you can get 3 different subclasses, read up on that on a wiki because there is a lot to learn about it)
-you can pvp
-you can do siege with your clan/alliance
-you can compete in the olympiad to become the monthly hero of you class
-you can do raidbosses and 'special' raid bosses (special bosses respawn more slowly, are more powerful but can drop unique and very powerful items) in order to gear up
maxing out your characters is a very long journey
regarding class choice : that's a matter of opinion, summoner are beginner friendly and can solo easily.
there is one important thing when it comes to lineage 2 though : join a large and active clan.
they will usually provide you with gear, tips, parties to level with, etc
get a mentor as soon as you can in order to get the mentor/mentee benefits. (more experience for you and your mentor and very powerful buffs for you that will help you greatly when you lvl)
there is so much more to learn about the game but that's for you to find out
i'm seriously eagerly waiting for a possible lineage 3, there were rumors of it being developped last year but ncsoft korea doesn't seem to be willing to talk about it
Years ago it was a long long grind but it was still fun. There were very few quests. Max level used to take over a year for a normal player, most didn't make it. The castle sieges were fun PvP fights. Gear was expensive and higher grade items required to save for quite some time.
The bots were a big problem though. It's what drove me to leave, they monopolized the good grinding spots.
I hear the game has changed a lot over the years.
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own.
-- Herman Melville
Lineage 2 is a game unlike anything out there. Its not a themepark by any means. The game starts off with you doing some questing as a tutorial but as you get higher the game opens up to where you do your own thing. Some play for PVP, some play for the PVE and some just play for the social aspect that the game offers. Its free to play so just download and try it. I have been playing for years and still enjoy the game today. Its one of the few real mmos left.
Thank you all for the feedback. I'm certainly interested, unfortunately, the game runs like absolute crap. I'm fiddling with the settings right now trying to find a decent balance, but so far no luck. Everything is fine when I'm standing still, but the second I go to move the camera, or move in general, it gets choppy as hell (running on a GTX680, 8GB DDR3, i5 2500k, Windows 7x64, for reference).
EDIT: Still poking around at it. It crashed on me once now, and for some reason, Chrome stops working while L2 is running, so that's certainly odd. I have no clue what the issue is. Maybe it has just not aged well in terms of optimization? I'm giving up on it for now. Maybe I'll come back to it later, but for now I can't be bothered.
I can't fully answer your question but I can this, the basic controls for playing the game are awful, probably the worst of any MMORPG I've ever played. I wanted to love the game but the mechanisms in place for playing it were so poor that I just couldn't make myself stick with it.
looks like you forgot to disable hardware acceleration in your flash settings. there is a bug with flash and some games/gpu. if you play a game with a flash video in the background (youtube,etc), your gpu still thinks you are on youtube and runs your gpu at 2D settings resulting in some awful fps drops since your graphic card is running at 10% of its capacity.
go on youtube, open a video that isn't in html5.
right click on the video -> settings : untick hardware acceleration in the first tab.
that should solve your issue, if it doesn't : update your drivers.
The laggy performance is something held over from when it was still new.
Basically, L2 is built on a heavily modded Unreal Engine 2. They took a game engine that was built around individual, discrete maps, and retro-fitted a streaming system to dynamically load new map "chunks" while you play. Map chunks are basically what would be separate maps in a typical Unreal Tournament type game. You'll notice the performance hitching a lot when you're nearing a chunk line (which happens to correspond with the grid lines on the map). How bad the chunking is has a lot to do with how many new zones are streaming in (like if you're coming up against a corner where it has 3 new maps to load instead of one), and how many assets there are to stream in for each one. It doesn't help that Unreal Engine 2's maps are quite "heavy" to begin with.
So, basically, it's an effect of NC choosing a game engine that was never intended for seamless worlds, and making it work with seamless worlds.
Another reason you'll see a lot of lag, especially in populated areas, is because the Unreal 2 engine - at least the modded L2 version - doesn't pre-load everything automatically during the "loading" process. It loads in just whatever is within your player's view frustum. As you rotate the camera, or begin moving in a given direction (but mostly rotating), it's only just streaming in the assets you'll need to see... this makes it lag up a lot... especially when it's player characters loading, given all the different models and textures it has to load for all the various armor sets, character races, hair, etc. etc.
In Unreal Tournament 2004, you didn't get that lag because the engine would do this sorta "360 pan" during the level load, so that all those assets *were* pre-loaded by the time the game view came up. For some reason, L2 doesn't seem to do that, and so... lots of lag.
Now, Epic went on to re-code Unreal Engine 3 from the ground up to load seamless, streaming worlds right "out of the box". So if L2 were to be recreated today, on that or similar tech... you wouldn't have that problem. As an example, see TERA. It's a game very much based on Lineage 2 type concepts (it was originally going to be Lineage 3, but some folks stole the code and split, to start their own studio to make TERA... true story that), but it runs beautifully, even as you move into new areas.
Anyway! Long-winded explanation... but it's something to keep in mind if you continue playing. There are tweaks you can make to mitigate it, but I forget exactly what they are at the moment. I'd have to open up the settings and look at them myself. I don't have L2 installed atm :-/
I have been playing Lineage2 since the closed beta, about 10 years. I decided to quit a few weeks ago because NCsoft NA doesnt care about the gaming experience anymore. The only thing in their focus is to milk the players for real money, buying items in their in game store.
The PvP in the game is a joke and if you cant afford to spend lots of $$$ you cant compete with those who can. PvP is not rewardning in any way and completly pointless. The players that uses scripts and bot programs can target and find you where ever you are on the map. So, dont expect to find a safe spot to grind old fasion.
Bot patries has infested all the good hunting areas and they are even doing quests for ppl that are afk. Legit players keep reporting the bots but NCsoft dont care. You cant kill the bots go get an hour grind because then you go red and are chased from the spot anyway by eaither the bots (who attack caotic players) or other players.
Because of Real Money Trading, that NCsoft NA showed complete lack of competence to fight, gear prices gone sky high and no normal player can afford nothing of value anymore, and by that no fun in game.
Leveling goes fast up to 92 if you buy items like vitality boost potions in NCshop for NCcoint (real Money) But when you level that fast you cant afford any gear when you reach the higher level span. You are forced to buy in game Money because NCsoft removed drops from monster during normal hunting with about 90%.
Dont expect to get any attension in the forum, unless you have problems bying NCoins with your Visa or Paypal, then you get Quick attention.
All events is based on buying stuff from the NCstore. Those things you buy in the events is mostly crafting like items that fails with what you try to craft in 99,9% of the time.
The major area of the map is unused because its low level areas and noone grinding anymore because you level up by doing some ok quests. There are a bunch of low level raid bosses all over the map but they give so littel exp and take to long to take down so noone cares to do that either.
Hopfully but probably not, NCsoft dull staff can turn it around but I guess the game is dead so what they do is to try to squeeze out as much Money from the players Before they Close it down.
So Worth start playing? Absolutly not!
This isn't a signature, you just think it is.
Items don't matter, while player skill does. It's easy to gank half of the server wearing vesper and even some heroes as an Elemental Master (some people consider it the worst class ever) in karmian.
PKing is very rewarding, especially when you are reading whines in shout chat about how they just lost an hour worth of grinding after 2 pks. And when you get whispers with insults and then gank them again it gets even funnier.
Although L2 turned into absolute junk after H5.