taultunleashed

Hello L2 players,

I am a former EQ and DAoC player now exploring FFXI, and I am looking to find out more info about the game from a L2 player's standpoint.

If someone would be so kind to outline a few points of the game in their most un-bias angle.

1. I am looking to find out more of charactor advancement speed, how long does it take to reach max level, on average, with powergamer potency.
   
2. How does your charactor advance in skills? In DAoC you were allicated points as you level up to spend in the areas you wish to be stronger in. In FFXI you skill up the more you use a certain skill. in EQ it's a little of both.
   
3. What is the endgame objective(if any), and are there large raid scale fighting grounds to continue character advancement beyond reaching maximum level?
   
4. Is there a large segregation between types of players? (FFXI has a problem with "JP ONLY" groups)
   
5. Is there a large database of rare drops and ways to customize your charactor so that not everyone is equiped the same (FFXI has AF that basicly anyone 60+ without alot of money wears, DAoC has Epic that basicaly anyone lv50 without alot of money wears)
   
6. How does the games economy work? is crafting viable? any way to mass market your old gear ( auction house or baazar )
   
7. Any negitive points you would like to touch on?
   
8. Lastly is this a game you see yourself playing a year (or even two) from now, after WOW and EQ2 are on the market?

Thanks for your time, perhaps I'll see you in game...

I've been playing since the start of open beta on US servers and have quite a few friends playing, so I'll try and answer all your questions.

1. Max level atm is 70, when Chronicle 1 is released in a few weeks it will be 75. The max level on my server is 55 atm, and those players have been powergaming since the start of open beta (they didn't delete characters on release). I expect it to take another 2 months for them to reach lvl 75 IMO.

2. You get small increases in stats when you level, put when you kill mobs you get exp and skill points. At certain level increases (5,10,15... depends on the race/class) you get to spend your skill points on spells and skills.

3. Well, being a pvp game one of the end game objects is for your clan to own a castle. There's a limited number of castles (I think 6 in Chronicle 1) and when this is released, your clan can siege a castle and take it over - there are benefits to the clan for doing this. Other clans can then challenge you and have a mass pvp fight for the castle. Don't know how it exactly works cos I haven't done it yet. There are large scale attack mobs, there will be a dragon in Chronicle 1, but I don't think there's very many raid level mobs.

4. There are different local releases of L2 across the world, Korean was the original, US came second, Japan and China are to have separate releases too (but no European yet (: ). There are a number of chinese players on the US servers, and I've not talked to any at all, generally they are always wanting to PK and offensive and can't speak English (I can't speak Chinese either). I think most people have the same experiences. However, when the China release goes live, I expect most of them to disappear from US servers.

5. There's a lot of information on the web on drops, but there isn't really a lot of variation. The number of items in the game presently is very weak. You can have a look at lin.warcry.com if you want.

6. Crafting is only available to dwarves and only one of their classes. I wouldn't recommend it, as they don't have a lot of skills for being useful in the end game.

7. Erm... there's quite a few to be honest.

8. No.

Take it from me.. This game is the Shiznit.. Ill backup Drae on all of the above..
The negatives include massive amounts of chinese that infest the servers to farm money.. They then sell the money on ebay because the american dollar pwns the chinese yuon.. and accualy it isn't individual chinese that farm.. Its chinese slaveshop owners that pay the workers per adena(which is the currency of lineage) and they then consolidate the funds and sell on ebay. Sadly it kinda makes me laugh..

The PvP is pretty good if you ask me..

Oph

Yeah, the chinese botters are a problem, but don't really impact gameplay. I'll be more interested to see what happens when they finally get the Chinese local servers up and running and see if we loose some of these griefers.

Didn't have time to finish my post earlier. The pvp is ok, but there's problems with it being unbalanced. Yes, a game has to be unbalanced in order to give different classes benefits over others, but being a pure pvp game (i.e. pvp is permanently on), support classes - healers, buffers - are really shafted when it comes to pvp. They can't pvp anyone solo and it's too easy for others to come up PK people for fun.

The big patch (Chronicle 1) is changing a number of small things connected with pvp and adding more content. Hopefully, there will be enough fixes to keep me playing!