When logging in for the first time you'll notice that you don't have a character yet. It would be wise to hit the create character button. You are presented with a screen with roughly 3 parts. The first one selects race, gender and 5 facial and 5 hair features. The races are Turan, whose white and looks like some half nekkid version of a Final Fantasy character. Their starting classes/jobs/whatever are Defender and Templar. Defender being some sort of melee and Templar being some sort of caster. The next race is Bartuk, which is an overly muscular black guy who is too damn tall. Wait what? A black guy in an MMORPG!?!? Finally a non-racist MMO *cough*FFXI and WoW *cough* now lets look at the classes they get, Warrior and Shaman... uhhhh forget that last sentence... And the last race you can choose is the badass looking Kruxena, as it is some sort of demonic cyborg whose face would frighten children it is my favorite and because it looks so cool most people will choose it. It's classes are the Rogue and the Soul Hunter. Now after you have chosen your
Now the first thing you notice when you log in is there will be 1 or 2 guys sitting right next to you who are doing odd things. These are other people they are important to doing group work later on, remember these people are neccasary to your success later. DO NOT **** THEM OFF! Now the graphics to this game are pretty damn beautiful and don't require a PC from another dimension to view. The only problem that I noticed on the tutorial place is that the lighting becomes sketchy at times, but I am sure it should be fine at launch. When you start you are given n00b armoUr which you will soon replace with crap that drops as you go. The interface is very good except that I haven't as of yet found out how to enable more action bars on the sides of the screen (thing I loved about WoW.) Now as you go through the tutorial place killing stuff you will notice my absolute FAVORITE part of the game so far, the death animations. Sh*t gets chopped off, they squirm around a little bit and tend to make odd noises. These always manage to get a small chuckle from me. The basic moves everyone gets when they start out and talk to the trainer guy are Vigorous Slash and Intensification at level 2 and Double Slash at level 3. They can be found after getting them by pressing "k" or by clicking on the very conveniently located interface buttons on the right side of the screen.
After you get out of the tutorial place you will find yourself in an extremely beautiful winter place. The slightest things like breeze moving the tall grass trees swaying gently as their branches rustle is what makes this game extremely lovely. The music is soft and delivers a very creepy mood, a weird thing is that the sound settings are capped at 1/2 the max values when you 1st log on and need to be manually put to full in the settings.
More to come as I play more of the game, but as it stands now I am in love with the game and will be playing through release depending on how the classes are. If it continues on this path of awesomeness it will easily replace WoW in my heart.
9/10
Edited, Mar 1st 2008 3:00pm by manwithplanx