If you disliked the gear grind of WoW you will not like Tera.
Instead of fixing the flaws and actually expanding on the game they went F2P pay to win. It is a game centralized around 2-3 dungeons, and receives a tiny bit more PVE content every 6 months (generously) and is devoid of PVP.
They went F2P and elite players (subscribers.....) get massive bonus' (dungeon loot drop increases/instance reset reductions 50%), and this is a big deal because the enchanting system works around getting gear of the same tier to hope for a successful +1 (1-12) of your gear (which fails more than it succeeds by a long shot) and from 9-12 if you are not using gold lettered (highest level of gear almost only found in dungeons) you are going to be spending massive amounts of gold on the other materials required for enchanting.
And since gear at 3-6-9-12 receives another bonus rather than a flat increase in the items base stats the difference between 9 and 12 is huge, especially when masterwork (another gold and time sink devoid of thought to prolong the barren wasteland which is actual content) +12 is pretty much 30-40% better than a +9 non MW.... this has pretty much killed real pvp and will until bluehole and enmasse pulls their moronic heads out of their asses.
A progressive rng enchanting system that fails often and makes players waste 50k-150k of gold (rng for you) is terrible.
a little info on the items/enchanting:
an item has 2 base stats, then other stats below all the base information, along with these other stats (on enchant gear) you have enchant stats that activate at +3-6-9-10-11-12 (Masterwork only)
The added stats and 3-6-9-10-11-12 stats can be rerolled, because they are random and almost always bad for you and you want the ideal stuff that benefits you. Unfortunately if you reroll it reroll EVERYTHING, but you CAN lock some in place with another item you buy with gold! Each locked in stat takes up some of these things you bought with gold, and you reroll and lock in everything you want until your item is actually good! Whew step one done!!!
now you got to masterwork this piece of shit! Oh and if your item cannot be MW don't even bother with the first step, because in pve it doesn't really matter but you will get your ass handed to you by masterwork PVP players (fun!). Buy some masterwork enigmatic scrolls (a lot of them because RNG!!!!!) and ID scrolls so you can turn it into an inidentified item (with the enigmatic scrolls) then identify it again in hopes of it being masterwork (thats right you just make it unid and id it over and over again!! makes sense!!). When it is masterworked congrats!!!
Step three is so much fun!!! 1-9 is not that bad really it can cost a bit of gold but 10-12 is amazing!!! You need tier gear of the same as the item (t14 you need t14 gear from instances, better sit in que for an hour and hope the same slot of gear drops that you need.) Buy some expensive masterwork alkahests and drop that item in the enchant window and hit go! Failed? Buy another form the ah for 2-10k or do the dungeon again, rng on getting the item rng on using the item!!!! Amazing design!
You are +12??? Used 50-150k gold possibly more??? GRATS. But wait... what are those holes in the gear.... sockets??? No problem! Buy some zyrks (because regular gems are terrible and for levelin) for a few hundred g (not bad!). Whats that? You died in an instance? Better check your gems and hope they are not broken. That's right, they can break. Never fear! You can buy scrolls that prevent them from breaking on death, one scroll per death though so stock up!!
In reality you ill do the last step first, the gems and such then make it a mw item and get it to 9 asap.
The end, 2 dungeons run 100+ times to get this far, 6 months, and no new content... whew you don't have to do that over again... was it fun? No not really... looking forward to this again? No not really.... Good design of a good game? No not really. Conclusion.... Tera is a terrible game beyond leveling and even then you would be be better off with a single player game with some actual enjoyment because in Reality... Tera is below the standard of MMO questing.. fetch this... kill that x1000, with a new style of combat found in all single player action games but worse because it needed to be toned to a MMO experience.
And final footnote, HM (hardmode) dungeons (where you get the current tier) has a long dungeon cooldown, so going back to f2p p2w the bonus' for paying are tremendous, you get in there more often and have better drop chances for what YOU need.
INB4 new f2p players who are still questing say I am being mean to it "cuz iz gud ftopee gaem n free iz gud", played korean version... pre ordered.... played nearly all the way to f2p announcement.... hopes that their "big news" was lots of new good changes to a game that went from 10 full servers, to 3 one on high one on medium and one on low. (pvp>pve>rp respectively), but no... /f2pp2w. And if free is gud, I would rather pay for actual enjoyment, and if you suggest I pay to receive the p2w bonus' on "elite". I would rather pay or something else than garbage... at a faster pace. An mmo is 60$ for 4 month, the price of a full game. I expect SOMETHING new in that span of time.
Hoped you enjoy the read.
/e but path of exile is good.
This post was edited by GEZodiac on Feb 26 2013 08:17am