Jacob Whirlwind has obtained the Ancient Prestige Armor in the Nightfall Campaign.

Jacob Whirlwind - Ancient Armor

Jacob also has obtained all the Avatar skills, both for his own use and of course for all the heroes.

Avatar of Grenth

These Avatars are skills that are quite formidable and add a lot to the success of parties employing Dervish characters or heroes.

Windy Reaper has completed the Eye of the North campaign [EotN] and has obtained the Asura Rank of Not Too Annoying (5), which allows him to purchase the Necromancer Asura Armor. Of all the Necro armor, only this armor appealed to Reaper, and though it was a lot of work to get the gold and the other materials for the armor, it has been worth it to look this great.

The Asurans also supply Spectacles as head gear as an additional bonus.

Asura Necro Armor

Reaper is using a Kerrsh’s Staff, which is a unique item in the EotN campaign. It is obtained once per character after a long and difficult quest. All of our brother’s and sisters have this staff, either for their own use or for the use of their heroes. Since the staff has a health bonus of +60, it is one of the most powerful weapons in our world. It is no doubt that the Asurans make excellent weapons, and we are all fortunate to be able to carry this powerful weapon.

In addition, Reaper has displayed some of the other accomplishments, such as animal companions in his Hall.

Fellowship Monument

Other recent completions of note include both Windy Flayer and Windy Delight completing EotN and with Delight helping Flayer get a unique shield, Flayer now has a Droknar’s Axe and a Droknar’s Shield, both of which are unique items which can only be obtained on the first completion of the EotN campaign. Here is Flayer with his new weapons.

Droknar's Weapons

The Droknar’s weapons that Flayer carries, each have a health bonus of +30, so he is afforded a powerful health bonus as he forges forward through our world.

Update: Jacob finished enough of the EotN to get a tapestry and has displayed his armor in the Hall of Monuments.

Jacob Closeup

Here are the snapshots we have taken of our travels:

The Dragon Festival 2010

For the past few days there has been a chain of quests to get most of the Victory Tokens that are required to get a mask. I misunderstood, even after reading, that I needed to get 250 tokens for each of my 8 characters to have them each get a mask. It turns out that you can get one mask per account, and then use the Festival Hat NPC to get other masks for each character in the account. So now after about an hour’s work for each character, plus several more hours and a few K gold to buy additional tokens, I have a ton of tokens that I can sell to others.

I have spent some time dyeing each of the masks to match the costumes of the characters.

Seitung Armor in Green

My name is Windy Summoner. I was born on April 1st, 2010 on Shing Jea Island and began my training with Master Togo. My mission was to train to level 20 in Kaineng City and then emigrate to Elona to assist the Sunspears with the battle to save Elona from Night Fall. As a Ritualist I control the spirits of nature to help in my battles.

My weaker Seitung Armor was green in keeping with the forest colors of the island. But shortly after moving to the City, I found that Seitung armor was way too expensive since it required 32 Monstrous Claws which were 1800G each. This meant that my armor would have cost well over 40P [40,000G]. I was able to obtain Canthan maximum strength armor for 5P [5000G] and decided it should be purple. The market price for Monstrous Claws seemed very unusual.

After moving to Elona, I returned to Kaineng City and obtained a set of Imperial Armor and now wear a mixed outfit from the two sets. I prefer the boots and jacket of the Imperial set, and the gloves and kilt of the Canthan set. The Imperial jacket and boots are more formal, while the kilt of the Canthan set is cooler in the hot climate of Elona. When I visit the Far Shiverpeaks of the Eye of the North, I prefer the complete Imperial set.

Imperial Armor in Elona

This is the Imperial armor set. Looks hot don’t you think?

I like the formal shoulder piece on the Imperial set and the boots look a lot more formal and more masculine.

Mixed Set

Here’’s the mixed set that I’m wearing now.

Here are some more snapshots I’ve taken recently.

Notice my pet tiger who is now at level 20 and quite powerful.

In some previous cases I’ve needed simple databases: Books for sale on EBay, a DVD database list and a 2Moons Character database. For Books, I used MySQL and php here on this site [ But I didn't maintain it.] For the DVD database, I used Open Office connected to MySQL to store the data and image thumbs of covers. For the 2Moons characters, I used an Open Office Base application.

When I selected the Open Office solution to avoid high costs and to allow me to move the application around between computers and operating systems. Open Office works on Windows, Mac and Linux. However, the problems of backing up and saving versions of the application as I enhance it are a lot of work. Which version on the various computers is the latest one? Sure would be nice for it to be in the Cloud so I wouldn’t have to worry about those issues.

After a little searching, I found ZOHO Creator. Here’s two views of the 2Moons database that I build in an hour or so.

So it seems to work pretty well. Here is a list of weapons filterable by Character name.





CAUTION: Do not use the JavaScript snippet. It breaks Wordpress layout.

One of the issues that I struggle with in OOBase was building a form that filtered by character. I had to get an obscure script from a fellow in a forum to solve the problem. But with ZOHO creator, it was easy. Just drag a LOOKUP field into your form and set the field. Problem solved.

You’ll notice that he embedded views look pretty generic and don’t match this website at all in style. Sure would be nice if ZOHO provided “Themes” or worked with the stylesheet of WordPress or other CMS where the embedding occurred.

I did find a minor problem. If you build a Dropdown list field, and then later you try to add or modify the choices, Creator will likely kick out some errors. Based on a forum post, they will consider this as a future enhancement, but as a workaround, you can edit the form script to fix the order of the entries.

ZOHO provides useful and free subscriptions for each of their Office features. For Creator there is a free subscription that allows 3 applications, 1000 records and 200MB. But if you want more, the next upgrade is $15 / month. Sigh… There is a reason that I don’t spend $15 / mo to play World of Warcraft. That seems way too expensive compared with my hosting service which gives me UNLIMITED MySQL databases and UNLIMITED storage for $5 / month.

But the good news is that it works just fine and is easy to use, even for a novice with limited database experience. Force.com provides a solution too, but their solution requires a database administrator level of knowledge to use. ZOHO is much better.

You can share your application for $$ or for free, with or without the data, and with or without the ability for them to modify the application. Pretty slick. They also have a place for developers and clients to meet base on requirements of work that clients need done.

- windy

Demon Spear

We are all level 72, or more for Christmas. Some of us are wearing our Christmas hats. At level 72 we all get to wear those new helms we killed the bosses in Castor and Norak to get and we all have new weapons.

We have included a gallery of our latest photos with this Christmas Card.

To work up from level 68 to level 72 has taken about a day and a half for each of us. We started doing the quests and hunting in Crespo and then at about level 70 we were able to move to Draco Desert and do the quests there. There are two types of quests, the normal quests and the Commission Quests. Commission quests are purchased at a special commission center.

The commission center for Crespo is in Parca Temple and of the several quests the two that were interesting were the ones to hunt Kolaiger and Clay. There were other quests to hunt Ellipse and Elaiden. These monsters are quite powerful and it takes a long time to kill each one. So the first day for each of us was taken up with working in Crespo to reach level 70.

While we could have gone to Draco Desert at level 65, we found that it was best to reach level 69 or 70 before going to Draco. There are a few quests to accomplish there, but the best quests are again the commission quests to hunt Altar. These quests pay high numbers of experience points and are quickly accomplished if one works in parties of 2 or more members. The women warriors among us found that we could more easily attract party members or join parties. “Level 70 Spear Party Girl looking for a Good time” was a line that worked best for me. But many players realized that since everyone got credit for all the kills, that partying is the way to go in Draco.

There is a rise in bullying in Crespo and Draco. High level players stand around and fight among themselves near the Merchant NPC and Commission Center and often beat up on lower level players. Or for some reason, players steal mobs of players that are working in the desert. It seems very silly since players can quickly level up by working together. Those that understand this progress rapidly. Although there are no Akris horses in Draco, the loot drops are good and prey plentiful. Another problem in Draco is the hackers that sweep through and steal all the prey. This reduces the prey for a time, but by chasing a hacker one can sometimes either steal their mob, steal their loot and often they leave the area since they don’t want to be photographed while they are hacking.

We have all made it to level 72 or above. VengefulBreeze, our summoner brother, has made it to level 74 where he has picked up two new skills. We’ll have a nice Christmas and get back to work progressing through the game with our new weapons and helms.

Have a happy holiday and may the five gods protect you,

DemonSpear, Aloken Warrior.

Christmas in Loa Castle

Hi, Demon Flayer here. I’m a younger brother of many of the folks you’ve seen before, and as such I’m often given the task of selling things that my other siblings find along the way. But that’s a small annoyance compared with the large advantage of getting the hand-me-down armor and weapons from my older brother Windy Flayer.

As you can see, 2Moons has been decorated for Christmas. The main towns of Loa and Braiken have trees and Santa. I’ve not checked yet but Parca Temple usually has a tree outside on the walkway too. Last year they left that tree up until July as I recall. But Heiharp is a cold and snowy place, so the tree seemed right at home in the cold weather.

Another new item has appeared with the recent release that helps me in my selling and will no doubt help you in your Holiday Shopping tasks. The Agency is a place where you can go to check prices or buy items that are for sale anywhere in 2Moons. In order to buy inside the agency you must carry a special amulet that is available from the store, but anyone can enter the agency and use it to check prices of items that are for sale.

Pricing Silver Argates

Here is the price listing for Silver Argates, a popular and very powerful upgrade stone that high level players use to enhance their weapons and armor. As you can see, the items are easily sorted by price and by selecting the middle of the list, it is easy to determine the median selling price for the item.

I”ve included some other pictures of the agency.

Once you price your goods in your shop, then you must sit in the square and wait on passers-by to buy your items. Or of course, folks visiting the agency will see your goods in the lists sorted by category and can purchase directly in the agency. But while you sell, you can’t be doing anything else in 2Moons. It can get awfully boring sitting for hours waiting on those buyers I can tell you. You will notice only a few folks selling in the square. I usually sell in Asray rather than Kalibus. As you can see in the gallery, Kalibus is quite a mad house with all the sellers.

But there is plenty of time after the sales to kill monsters and do quests, and I get hints about the best places to hunt and the best quests from my older siblings.

May the five gods protect you,

Demon Flayer

Sandy Dunewinds of Elona

Finally in 2012 an Open Source MMO appeared. As late as 2009 the entire field was littered with the corpses of failed and abandoned projects. With a few exceptions, like Panda3D , very few Open Source MMO platforms have made any lasting impression.

However, now the long wait is over. Dream World has appeared. Dream World combines the good ideas from a number of proprietary projects that have gone before, but has opened up the world to players and non-programmers.

Free or Pay to Play

The first decade of the 21st century saw an explosion of Free to Play MMOs. Of course the leader, WoW showed that millions of users were looking for the MMO experience, but many weren’t ready to shell out the $15 per month to play the game. Guild Wars, and possibly other games, had a free to play model once you had purchased the game. This model has proved profitable and we have seen two sequels to Guild Wars.

By late in 2010, the single player or single campaign game was largely extinct, except in the hand-held market. Dragon Age: Origins was one of the last of the single player genre and soon spawned a true F2P MMO. Even in the hand-held market the hand-held computer, which used to be called the smart-phone, has spawned many online games as well.

The primary motivation for the ubiquity of MMOs is based on economics of the game company as well as the interest of the players. The game companies have discovered that they will make more money over time if they build a loyal player base and the way to do this is to build a long-lived game, as WoW and its ancestors have proven. The game designers are kept gainfully employed with constant upgrades to the game as the players grind on through the levels, engage in epic battles, dress up in boutique armor and weapons and buy and sell loot. The income from the micro-transactions for buffs, mounts, vehicles and costume armor provide plenty of income to sustain the servers, and the designers.

Finally Dream World

Late in 2009, a dedicated group of software designers began putting the parts of Dream World together from the corpses of other OpenSource games and new code. By late 2010 the game showed promise as a platform, and during the next year the releases came fast and furiously as the platform gained momentum. The Open Source nature of the product and the promise of being able to move characters between worlds caused the most interest as the platform took its final form.

Some of Dream World’s features include:

• A world builder based on the general ideas of Unreal Ed, the editor for the Unreal game engine, but with a more intuitive interface.
• The ability to import map as well as model geometry built in popular tools like 3dsMax, Maya and Blender to build new maps, characters, NPCs [non-player characters] and monsters.
• The ability to define new character classes, complete with character models, cosmetic customizations, experience level path, behavior animations, skill trees, skill animations, armors, and weapons.
• The ability to define new buffs and candy, which apply within a class or across classes.
• The ability to define new monsters to kill, including all their attributes of resistance, health, experience, attack type and damage. Also monsters are defined with loot dropping, mobbing, re-spawn times and wandering behaviors. Boss monsters are easy to define.
• Any character [account] can contribute any map, character, item, or monster content to the game. This contribution is done in the context of the game and may be subject to review of the management or a peer group of characters before being released to the entire population.
• New content is downloaded and cached on the local machine as it is accessed, this technique was pioneered by Guild Wars. A large game wide client update is not required to continue to play in old content areas. New content is downloaded incrementally as it is accessed. Deferred update occurs when a new character or new character content appears so that a novel character may appear as a gray blob for a while until it’s content is loaded.
• Characters can play in PvE, PvP and PK [Player Kill] modes and can avoid all types of play. Most worlds enact automatic behaviors which punish repeated harassing of other characters including “jail time” and large fines of in-world currency.
• Skills and tasks can be defined to enhance game play or to allow non-violent characters, skill trees or whole worlds to be created.
• Worlds can optionally define real-world currency exchange. Gateways to PayPal and other online payment services allow the game currency to interact with real-world currencies as Second Life has pioneered. Each world sets it’s own exchange rate as either a fixed number or based on a currency exchange.
• Characters can find, craft or import game objects from the outside world into the game world and then sell them to other characters to make money. The sale of loot or crafted items is limited by in-game creation or farming, but sale of imported items are not limited. This allows the game economy to interact with the real-world in all the ways that Second Life has pioneered.
• Public Key encryption techniques can be used to “sign” created items, so copyright can be enforced for items sold by characters in the game. Copies of items do not pass the authentication test for their creators. Items can be forged but on close examination, their creation date will be shown to be later than the original, so the forger can be identified.
• The items for sale by the game designers are indistinguishable from the items for sale by other players. These sales are the micro-transactions that can provide income for the server farm and salaries for game designers. A small sales tax can provide additional income for the game designers.
• Web portals for sale of game items provides a more convenient method of finding those in-game items than wandering all over the in-game world to check out the many store fronts.
• Some characters “own” game land for store fronts or houses, but most game players are wandering mercenaries who are too busy leveling their characters, and engaging in epic battles to spend time gambling or engaging in sex play. While castle building and sex play are possible, they are a minor part of the game rather than a large part of the game as in Second Life.
• Streaming of in-world music, video and in-game voice communication is provided by a variety of means. The open source nature of the software allow a variety of best of breed methods to be used for this communication. We no longer are killed by monsters while we type in a chat window.
• The game behavior is controlled by the game server rather than the client, so that while the game is open source, a well controlled server is not easily subject to hacking. So while game players may modify their clients, this does not  allow taking advantage of other players in the game. The open source nature of the software means that bugs that cause crashes or allow hacking are quickly fixed.
• While many of the progenitors of Dream World are medieval RPG games, the platform has spawned worlds of every flavor: WWII battle fields, Planetary Warfare, Anime style RPGs, Corporate and Educational meeting and educational venues.
• Since characters can move among worlds with ease, medieval RPG characters often appear in educational contexts where students are showing off the characters they have worked so hard to build.

With many different worlds running the Dream World software, it is now possible to migrate your character between worlds and servers. When a new world appears, you can now visit or join that world with your high level character from another world so that you need not start off at the lowest level of existence in the new world. Those who find the new world exciting can decide to play the copy of their character in the new world as well as the old world, or to move back into a previous world while merging their enhanced attributes, skills and loot. As characters, we are no longer trapped in one version of cyber-space, but are free to move between cyber-worlds. At long last, our cyber-selves exist outside of any particular cyber-world.

- Windy

The following gallery shows photos from a Dream World based on Guild Wars.

Demon Spear

I am Demon Spear, an Aloken. I’m writing this to let you all know that my brothers and sisters and I have all reached level 68 here in the world of 2Moons. It has been a long road to get here, and we have far to go, but by helping each other with loot, and sometimes DIL, and by working with other folks here in parties, we have been able to progress to level 68 which gives us our new armor and a new weapon at level 66.

Our little brother Windy Lancer is at level 56, but he is following  the path of the dual axes and is progressing rapidly. He will receive hand-me-down weapons from Windy Flayer and will be able to save his DIL for his wings at level 102.

We all look forward to working for our wings at level 102. That is the true reward for all of our hard work. While there are many levels beyond that, we all see obtaining our wings at a major step in our lives here.

Good luck to all of you and here is hoping that the five gods will protect you in your journeys.

- Demon Spear

Closeup of Sandy

Whew, we made it. It was quite a struggle to get to level 67 and my new armor. I’ve tried several places to work, but Castor Cave L2 has been the most productive. I worked some at Crespo but this often took too many pots. I quckly found that Draco Desert did not work well. While I can get a lot of Exp from the monsters there, one mistep and I’m dead and the pot cost is very high. I have had the best progress in Castor Cave working the sections with Algols.

I joined a Guild for a while, but soon found that the guild was really just a private chat channel for the leader and a few of his friends. The guild chat among a few members is a constant annoyance while you are trying to work. I finally just left the guild after a few days.

Now that I have my new weapon and armor I can work more effectively in Crespo and perhaps after a few levels, I’ll go back to Draco.

During my work I did run into a group one day in Castor and we partied for a while. I was able to gain about 50% of a level during that afternoon. The Mage class really works best in a party since the AOE [area of effect] skills that I have are not well used when I work by myself. All my skills use a lot of MP [energy] and recharge slowly, so working in a party allows me to level more quickly since my skills take advantage of the mobs.

May the gods protect you,

Sandy

WindyLancer

Hello. WindyLancer here. I’m a level 56 now after working up through the levels to Castor Cave L2. I was born in a separate server from my brothers and sisters, but in the great update that brought Aloken to our world, I was moved to the same server as the rest of the group. This allowed them to share loot and help with funding my armor. I have progressed quickly with hand-me-downs from WindyFlayer.

I’m at level 56 now and have a full set of fortified Radiance armor and some powerful axes. It may not be long now that I’ll catch up with WindyFlayer and have to wait for his hand-me-downs as he levels up. That won’t be a problem. I’ll be patient has he works toward level 102 and his wings.

We have recently found that Argates sell for 8-12M Dil so saving for our wings may not be as hard as we once thought.

May the gods protect you.

WindyLancer

Luna Online

There are several YouTube video reviews: Here and Here.

You’ll find all the features you’ll expect in an MMORPG.  So if you like the look, and have a computer with a modest graphics card, this may be the game for you to try.

The game team is quite serious about punishing those who grief other players, but it seems that one of the most annoying issues is a player stealing a kill from another player. It’s called KS or Kill Stealing. It seems odd that the game does not simply fix this issue in the same way that 2Moons [Dekaron] has solved it. In Dekaron, once you start killing a monster, then you get the experience even if another player kills the monster, unless some time passes or you die and are unable to finish the kill. This effectively prevents KS issues

Well, if you are looking for an MMO that is Terminally Cute, then Luna Online may be for you. Enjoy.

Windy.

Rappelz shows a very nice face on the website. But the graphics are dated, circa last millennium, and the game play is slow and the animations are simplistic. I recall better game play, graphics and animations from Rune which is 10 years old this month. If you want to play an MMO on an old computer with a 1024px monitor then Rappelz may be for you. It does seem to have all the expected MMO features, and has very modest graphics requirements. I’ve included lots of screen shots so you can see how it looks.

Bright Portrait

The window size cannot be changed, it is fixed at 1024×768. So on a 1920×1200 screen on my laptop, I can’t play it in window mode because I can’t see the text. So I have to run it full screen. I can’t find fault with the game play since I never got that far along. Beyond the dated graphics, the primary issue for me is that there is no keys for movement. The WASDF keys you expect to move around are not present. You can only move by clicking the mouse on the terrain ahead of you.

Conclusions

Rappelz is very dated in graphics. Looks like a 10 year old game, which it may be.

• It is free to play and free to buy, so as an introduction for a MMO for an older computer it may be ok.
• Guild Wars may work fine on your computer, and is only about $25 per kit. And the graphics, game play and animations of Guild Wars are much better.
• If you have a modern powerful computer and a large screen, don’t waste your time. Go with Guild Wars or 2Moons.

I’m going to go install Rune on my system just to give it a try after all these years.

- windy

Dragon Age: Origins is a new game from BioWare, the makers of Baldur’s Gate back in the last millennium [1998]. Way back in that ancient history, a stand alone RPG made a lot of sense, but in these days of X Box Online, Sony Online and dozens of Free To Play MMOs like Perfect World, Dekaron [2Moons], Ether Saga, etc. it seems odd to bring out a game with no online play.

There are many reviews out there. Here is one from SlashDot.

The other odd thing about DAO is that the entire description of the game has all the keywords and phrases that you would expect from a game that was online. They talk about parties and loot and leveling and approval and so forth. Here’s a quote:

The Approval system is a fun way to learn about each of your companions. There’s a surprising amount of story to be told for each of them. Surprising, at least, until you realize how much story there is in the rest of the game.

The reviewer does talk about having finished the game. I played Guild Wars for months and was nowhere near “finishing” the game. And during the experience, I recall that I and other folks came back to do quests long after they had completed them. The attraction, in part at least, appeared to be that the high level players had fun helping lower level players to finish the quest and progress in the game.

None of this will be possible in this historic throwback game that is not online.

So it appears that DAO will be a few hours of play and then it will pass into history.

Baldur’s Gate and its sequels have long passed into history, but I occasionally log into my Guild Wars account and the community is still active and vibrant.  I look forward to Guild Wars 2 which has a surprisingly similar logo to that of DAO. But GW2 will be an MMO and from everything that I read will improve two of the limiting issues with Guild Wars: The low leveling cap and the difficulty with solo play, when you can’t find your friends online.

Dragon Age Origins

Guild Wars 2

As you can tell from the other Guild Wars posts on this site, I found much to enjoy in Guild Wars in particular and MMOs in general. DAO looks interesting, but without online play, I have no interest in even trying it.

- windy

Sandy Dunewinds in Crespo

I’m working from level 60 in Crespo – a place of strong monsters. I can kill the monsters with my powerful fire, lightning and ice skills, but they cause a lot of damage, so it takes a lot of pots. Since the skills have long cycle times I need to use several skills rapidly to do damage to the monsters and if I also have to manually trigger pots it’s way to complicated. So I’m trying some Auto Pots. But at first I messed up and purchased pots that were not automatic.

Automatic pots are placed in your F key slots and will automatically trigger themselves the level of HP or MP [ Health or Energy] reaches a lower level.

These auto-pots reduce the keystroke load to allow me to level up more easily. All the other characters have skills that are such that auto pots have not been required, but for this character at this level, auto pots make it possible.

The auto pots are purchased from the Acclaim store for real money. It costs about $2USD for 1000 pots of any of these types. I made a mistake and purchased the manual pots first, so I hope to use those up later.

After working a while in Crespo without auto pots, I hooked up with a level 86 mage who wanted to make a party for the Treasure of Crespo. So together with a level 66 knight, we three headed off across the snow to try the Treasure. The knight and I were able to kill some of the early mobs, but after we met the mobs of Zombies we both died quite quickly. After that I tried to stay back, but got caught once more by the mobs and had to walk back into the dungeon to join the group. After that I stayed well back from the mobs as our leader pressed on into the breach to kill the mobs and bosses. I was able to help though, since twice I passed health pots to our leader to allow her to press on toward the goal. In the 30 minutes of the dungeon, I made up about 25 % toward my next level.

With Auto pots I was working the monsters in Crespo and making some progress. I was able to kill the Kolaigers and the Clays one or two at a time, but if they ganged up more than that I was easily killed even with Auto Pots. After a time I decided that I might be able to make better progress in Castor Cave 2F. After selling off my loot, I TP’d through Loa Castle to Castor Cave and did the run past the Vermouths to the area of Peccare. The beasts were easy to kill using alternating Ice, Lighting and Fire skills.

Lightning Skill

For the past couple of weeks, the loot has included health and energy candy that gives a boost for 5 minutes. This can be a great advantage.

All Candied Up

I hope to be able to continue to work in Castor Cave using the Auto Pots to reach level 68 and my next level of armor. I find that it takes about 500 pots to level up and each 1000 pots costs about $8USD. It is good that the other character types can level easily without the pots and I hope that soon I can move beyond their use.

It took about 500 of Health and Energy pots to level up about 70% to level 61. Assuming that I could progress two levels with 1000 HP and MP pots, which is very optimistic, then it would cost ( 70 levels * $5 = $350 ) to progress to level 140. This is very optimistic based on the progressive nature of leveling. Also it is very expensive compared with the $15 / mo to play World of Warcraft.

May the five gods protect you,

Sandy Dunewinds

Level 36

On September 24, 2Moons went down for a day to do the upgrade that allowed me and my sisters to come to America and Europe from Korea where my kind have been playing in Dekaron. At the same time the servers were reorganized. This had the effect of moving eight servers to four, so things have been quite a bit more crowded recently. Many high level players have been helping my sisters to level up, but I have worked mostly by myself. I had some great help from my brothers and sisters to get powerful stones for my armor and weapons and DIL to allow me to upgrade my equipment.

With powerful equipment and armor I was able to reach level 24 in only one day. Today I’m at level 55, have my new weapon at level 54 and my new Violet Armor which is fully fortified with level 21 medials. I thought you might like to see my photos that I have taken along the way showing my armor and weapons. I am working to catch up with my brothers and sisters who are almost all working at level 68.

I’ll talk to you again when I make some more progress.

- DemonSpear

But I wouldn’t say it was Perfect by any means. Compared with Guild Wars and 2Moons [Dekaron], it has some minor drawbacks. I’m not going to do a full review here, you can find more complete reviews on the web. I’ll just do an overview of some of the features that I found most notable.

Here are some of my observations in the order that I encountered them:

• Installation is gigantic and apparently monolithic. By that I mean that apparently all the content is downloaded at the beginning. The download is done by the first installer and comprises two files totalling 2.5GB. Once the installation is complete and you start the game, it updates itself for another 20 minutes. Sigh… Guild Wars is much smarter. It downloads content incrementally as you visit new areas. 2Moons is a monolithic install, but it’s quite a bit smaller.
• The options for character customizations are way over the top. So far I have only seen the options for humans, but there are about a dozen tweaks to positions and sizes just for the face. The number reminds me of Poser, rather than a game. In my opinion, Guild Wars dozen different faces and a half dozen different hair styles and skin shades was plenty, but if you want to be an ugly portly knight or mage, this is your game.  I do appreciate the ability to have the choice of gender for each character class. 2Moons allows no customzation at all for each class, not even gender.
• The graphics are indeed good, as many of the reviews point out, but I wouldn’t say that they are stunning. They are quite a notch below Guild Wars. The environments are more interesting than 2Moons, but the character animations of PW are quite a bit cruder than either Guild Wars or 2Moons.
• The battle animations are slow and simple in PW. Both Guild Wars and 2Moons have more responsive and much more interesting battle animations. While the performance of PW seemed just fine, the slow pace of battle can become tiresome after a while. As I progress in strength, and it only takes 3 rather than 15 seconds to make a kill, this is a lot less of a problem.
• The environments are huge and sparse in PW. Environments in 2Moons are simpler and less spacious, and the environments of Guild Wars and huge, but in GW one never feels that one is running along forever and ever without encountering interesting things. Monsters in PW are too far apart to make for efficient leveling. There is lots of running involved. Perhaps flight solves that. I remember seeing something about flight being a skill that you learn at level 10.
• Quests are more interesting in PW than in 2Moons. The quests in 2Moons are pretty much a joke with kill a bunch of monsters being the primary idea. Of course Guild Wars quests are the thing that drives the whole story line. I haven’t seen much of a story line in PW, perhaps I missed it, but the early quests are more interesting and lead you through a tutorial of the game.
• Some of the comments I found on the web indicate that PW is a grind to level up. The levels actually seem close together compared with GW or 2Moons, but it is harder to level up since the damage dealt with weapons is small compared with the strength of monsters at your level. So it take many seconds to kill a monster at your level even though that monster is doing no damage to you. This mismatch makes leveling take longer even though you don’t have to kill very many monsters compared with 2Moons.
• The game lacks a comprhensive wiki. GW has a very complete wiki and MMOSite has a fairly complete wiki for 2Moons. As far as I can find the PW wiki is woe-some and a simple task like obtaining your first pet at level 3 is insurmountable without help from the local population.

Perfect World is an interesting diversion, but I doubt if I spend much time there. Like EtherSaga, it has its points, but 2Moons continues to hold my interest. I look forward to Guild Wars 2, AION and Tera all of which should be opening up during the next year.

Update: Right before I reached level 6 I found some shiny new hammers. At level 6 I was able to boost my strength to take advantage of them and kills are down to 3 seconds from 15 seconds. I also found a new halberk and learned the tailoring skill so now I’m a blacksmith and a tailor. As a tailor I made a new helmet, although you can’t tell since helmets never show in PW.

- windy

Ether Saga online is a cute cartoony Free to Play MMO that follows the recent model of “Free to Download and Play”, but “Pay” for upgrades and costumes. This game is a full 3D game with modest system requirements. My Alienware m15x was not working as hard with this game on full tilt as it does with 2Moons.

After about 6 hours with the game, there is much to love and a few things that aren’t so nice.

Generally. The game is beautiful and friendly looking. The graphics are wonderful and the animations are well done. But beware, this is not a browser game. The download is 1.7GB and after that there is a large update; so it takes a little while to download and install. I had no problem installing it on Vista x86.

I’ll leave a description of the game, races, and classes to their website. I’ll confine myself to my observations and comparisons with other games I’ve played in this genre. This is by no means a complete review of the game, but a set of first impressions after playing the game for about 6 hours. I expect to be drawn into a game during that much time and if not then it’s time to move on to more interesting fare. I am willing to give a game that much time and don’t expect it to be a hit in the first 10-20 minutes.

There are a large number of levels. So one expects a “Grinder” but also there seems to be a developed Quest system. So Ether Saga probably doesn’t have the downsides of Guild Wars capped leveling system where the maximum level is 20, but seems to have a better quest system than 2Moons. Quests are listed in a special dialog and it’s easy to see quests there that are appropriate for your level. Although I was not able to find a quest for my character because it didn’t give me good directions to the place where the NPC was that had the quest.  The Ether Saga quest panel did indicate what rewards were given for the quest so you could pick quests intelligently. Guild Wars has a very nice quest system with good rewards. 2Moons as I have said elsewhere here has a lousy quest system with trivial rewards.

Starting a Character. I chose a Dragoon – melee fighter – as my character, and there are quite a few options, including gender, when you create your character. All the characters, apparently, come with a Pet OOTB. Mine was a cute little fox. Oddly, the character did not come with any weapon, but I found that I could kill things fairly effectively with my fists. After a few levels and what I thought were quite a few coins, I went to find a Lance. Apparently, based on the very incomplete wiki, each character only has one weapon type. It was not obvious where to find weapon. The blacksmith was no help. Finally I stopped by a “Merchant” and she had what I needed. A little while later I got the same thing as a drop, but the merchant also had some upgraded armor for my character, who by that time was level 5. Minor annoyance: the length of character names is limited to 10 so I had to use WindFlayer rather than WindyFlayer. How lame is that?

Leveling is a Grind, even at low levels. The leveling effort quickly becomes a grind. There something like 150 levels total, but by level 9 the grind was particularly tedious. The game animations are quite slow and at first that seems charming, but even at level 9 you only have one killing skill, so whacking away at all those cute little critters can take a very long time. By comparison, I started a brand new character in 2Moons, also a melee character, and in about 6 hours brought it up to level 24. This was admittedly with some help from his brother who had cash to spare for upgrades, but regardless, 2Moons is much more efficient and quicker to kill things in succession. In Ether Saga, if I went after low level prey, then I had to kill a lot to make any progress, and if I went after stronger prey, I had to use the Healing Skill after every 2 or 3 kills to build myself back up to avoid dying. The good news was that this did not require purchase of pots, which is lucky since I have accumulated very little loot and cash as I leveled.

Drops are few and far between. The drops are far too infrequent to build up any sizable loot, and I barely kept by pet fed. Compared with 2Moons and Guild Wars, it is very difficult to build up a store of booty. My pet was sitting at about 75% energy most of the time since the food drops were not frequent enough.

Traveling About. The world is large and there are teleports and Auto Route lets you click on a the map or select an NPC and forget it, for the most part. Auto Route occasionally gets stuck, but that’s no big deal. There is a minor problem with the map that you cannot zoom in and then pan around to see the world in detail. Zooming in or out is always based on your position. The world is beautiful and site seeing is a pleasure. As you level up to about level 20, it looks like you just move clockwise around the town.

There are mobs of prey, but I never saw any that attack unprovoked. But I have only reached level 9 so far.

Skills are Rich. There is a complex skill design based on 4 parameters rather than the more typical 2. And another good thing is that you don’t have to hunt a skill trainer or merchant to get new skills. Just purchase your skills with Spirit points from a dialog. I found that I had plenty of Spirit points, but not very much currency as I leveled up, which is a problem, as you will see. The Dragoon comes with a fighting skill and a healing skill. The healing skill builds up your health quickly whenever you want, as long as you aren’t actually fighting at the time. There are also health and energy pots, but with so little currency, I wasn’t looking for those. I never got a pot as a drop in the first 9 levels.

Your Pet. All the character classes come with a pet OOTB, and you must feed it. It does damage as you attack, and really helps you level, but for some reason it actually levels faster than you do. You need to feed it all the food stuffs that you get in drops to keep it healthy, but don’t worry, you don’t need to eat yourself. If you die you resurrect back in town and away you go, but if your pet dies, you are in deep trouble. Apparently there are Scrolls and a Hunter who can resurrect your pet, but the Hunter costs big time. The currency is Gold, Silver, Bronze. At the end of 9 levels I had about 4 silver and a few bronze. It costs 50, yes that ’s Fifty, Silver to resurrect your pet. I’ll probably be level 20 or more before I see that much cash. [Update: I was able to resurrect the pet by buying a "Resurrection Scroll" for 5 Silver. Quite a bit less than 50 Silver for the service. There is a difference since the Scroll does not resurrect the pet with full energy.]

Bottom Line. I’ll probably spend a few more hours, but the slowness of leveling, sparsity of drops and currency, and the slow pace make this game an eye-candy adventure, but not a place where I’ll be spending more time.

Screen Shots. Here are a few screen shots from my adventures.

enjoy, – windy

Windy Flayer here. It was pretty easy for me to level up to 60. Using Brandish, a dual weapon skill, I was able to kill the Monsters of Crespo and level fairly quickly. I look forward to working to higher levels at Crespo. While Crespo is a good place to level up, it’s not that good a place to hunt for stones to fortify armor and weapons, so I often take sorties to other areas to harvest stones from Akris.

Hello there. I’m Windy Squall. I too have been able to work in Crespo. While I don’t kill as quickly as Flayer, I have amazing strength to resist attacks while I kill, so the Kolaiger elephants can’t kill me as I work to reduce them to dust with my repeated pounding. My powerfully fortified Phobia Gauntlets are ready to reduce Crespo monsters to bloody masses of flesh.

Hello, I’m Vengefull Breeze. As a summoner I have minions from the under-realm to assist me. In Crespo, Selaime and my fortified twinswords have helped me to vanquish the Kolaiger and Clay monsters as well as the weaker monsters of this area. I will continue to work this area for some time to reach higher levels.

As a Segnale, I have been working in Castor Cave killing Lasputin Knights and Valkrie. Crespo monsters are too strong for me to attack efficiently. I have good healing, strength enhancement skills and so I am very effective at helping a party.

Hello from Loa Castle. This is Sandy Dunewinds. As an Incar mage I have powerful skills but my killing rate and protection is not yet good enough to make efficient progress in Crespo. I’ve had the most luck working in Castor Cave killing Lasputin Knights and Valkrie. I hope soon to be strong enough to work in Crespo so that I can make faster progress. Leveling is long and painful work now, but soon I hope it will be better. I have a strong fortified Lenovare wand to use in my future work and strong armor, so I hope soon to be hunting in Crespo with my brethren.

Hi, Lady Stormwind here. As a Segita Hunter I have some amazing dagger skills and these have allowed me to hunt with my brothers in Crespo. Someday I’m sure that my bow and crossbow skills will be more powerful, but for now I’m content to kill with my Silent Killer and Rolling Attack skills using a well fortified dagger.

Sandy Dunewinds

Lady Stormwind

Soul Aura

Windy Squall

Windy Flayer

Vengeful Breeze

Folks keep saying that it works, but it does not work for any of my characters on any of the servers that I have tried.

If you look at the interface casually it appears ok, but if you actually try to send mail, you can’t.

The Mail Interface Previously Looked like this:

Notice the SEND and CANCEL buttons at the bottom of the left mail window.

Here is the new interface as of 4.6.16.

Notice that absence of the SEND and CANCEL buttons in the left window.

It would seem that the mail interface is being removed. And this version allows mail messages to be retrieved for the 29 or fewer days that mail messages are being held until they expire.

I never saw an announcment or rational for why mail is being removed.

If mail does not look this way for you, then take a screen shot and show me your interface.

- windy

Hello, from Requies Coast. We brothers and sisters are all at level 30 or above now and are hunting monsters in Requies Coast. We expect to be here working until about level 50. At this point we are hunting lobsters called Sylvans.

These lobsters are plentiful and relatively easy to kill once we are at level 30 or so. Some of us have starting hunting here before the others. Windy Flayer and Vengeful Breeze were first to hunt lobsters. I was able to start as soon as I reach level 30. At that point I was able to kill them quickly using my Flame Burst skill.

After a kill like this, lunch is served, and these lobsters are mighty tastey as you might imagine.

I do not yet have an area destruction skill and it will be some time yet before I get such a skill. But I am able to make progress in my training.

- Windy Squall

Hello from Requies Coast. I’m Soul Aura and I’m hunting lobsters too. As you can see my new Level 30 weapon and my Blood Hit skill can kill lobsters pretty quickly.

Each hit of the blood whip gives me more than 500 damage, often as much as 600.

Using the Blood Hit skill I can get many powerful hits in a row to quickly dispatch a single lobster.

Using this skill, it only takes only a few seconds to dispatch a lobster. At this point I do not yet have an area damage skill, but I’m able to make good progress here in Requies Coast killing lobsters.

- Soul Aura

Hello. I too am hunting in Requies Coast now. Since my skills do not allow me to direct power quickly on a single target. My skills since level 24 have been directing on multiple targets close by.  I have been concentrating in Denebe killing mantis and miners. My brothers and sisters were long since able to move on to Requies Coast to hunt Heilom and Sylvan Lobsters. I played the mantis and miners to my strengths using the Fire Blaze skill and Lightning Chase skill. The mantis will chase you and surround you, up to three of them at a time. By running around and collecting them and then triggering a Fire Blaze and maybe followed by a Lightning Chase I could kill all three quickly. This required that I constantly boost my health and mana energy power. The Miners do not chase you, but provide more exp points per kill. So I ran around and hit them with my wand or sent a fire ball to hit them to draw them to me to kill them with Fire Blaze.

When I reached level 34 I was able to move to Requies and killed Heiloms using the same strategy as I used with Miners. Now that I’m at level 36 I can skill three Heiloms or two Sylvan lobsters using this technique.

I now have powerful skills for lightning, fire and ice to help in my training. Here is Fire Blaze on some Heiloms.

Here is Fire Fury on a Lobster.

Here is Lightning Chase

So I have a clear training path to high levels.

- Sandy Dunewinds