gaming & rant 02 Aug 2007 01:29 pm by shinigami
2 moons Open Beta started.
2 moons is a free MMORPG, released by Acclaim, originally the Korean game Dekaron. Acclaim advertised it as a 17+ game, “totally brutal”, “extreme violence” - the mobs will die in different ways, depending on the damage you inflict - and “heart-pumping action” - read: open PvP.
The open beta started out promising enough (July 30th) with the server working fine by the time I downloaded the game and logged in. There was and still is some lag, but not more so than expected. No complaints here.
I have several complaints, however. (Duh. Why else would I rant here?)
The visuals are surprisingly bad considering Acclaim also released 9 dragons (also f2p, so that’s not the isssue) which looks a ton better. Also, for some reason 2moons reminds me of a (much) improved version of the old RPGs I played (say Nox, Diablo 2 or Baldur’s Gate) instead of other MMORPGs I’ve seen.
Yes, this is an issue, as I’ll talk about bellow.
Strangely, the game looks better if you zoom in a lot. Unfortunately the more you zoom in the more you get annoyed that you look like everyone else in your class and level range. Why? Because when you start out picking a class/race (they are one of the same) means playing a standard character (no, you can’t even choose the gender) and a certain level has precisely ONE type of armor or weapon for your class. It’s so bad that when there were more of us grinding in one place I almost got confused. lol.
Oh, this reminds me, the areas are small and therefore very cramped. Still, so far it’s better than in 9 dragons as there are level-appropriate mobs in more parts of the map.
The community sucks. I know it’s a free game but this being the beginning of the open beta I’d have thought the community’d be better.
Lots of people go around asking n00b questions about controls/how to do basic things (does anyone believe in reading before logging in? especially as there was plenty of time in the days before the game was actually released again for OB), “the best build” for the class they randomly picked? chose and NPC locations (all on the minimap). W00t for the community! (I’m not normally the PKer type, but in this game I might just make a chara with a nick like “AskStupidly=DIE”)
And there’s already funny cybersex invitations/teasing shouted on chat. Since this is a 17+ game, supposedly. Too bad it isn’t. The game is free to download and play. For everyone. 17+ members, my ass.
So what about the maturity level of the game?
Well, yes, there is indeed lots of blood. And yes, when I use a skill the mobs almost explode into pieces and splatter everywhere. It’s here that the graphics hurt the game most: since the game looks kinda meh, all this is really not that impressive, it looks more like a red stain on a generic wall instead of a pool of blood in, say, the grass.
Almost all the NPCs swear a lot, your trainers/”skill masters” act very jaded and treat you like you are an unimportant rookie at bootcamp, the game calls you a pussy when you fail at fishing (don’t get me started on the fishing…) and one of the first quests you do has you get back a girl’s ring that a drunk gave to a hooker. The nudity levels seem what you’d expect in most MMORPGs, namely no actual nudity, just lots of skimpy clothing, especially on female characters (like hel-lo, Lineage 2 Dark Elf…).
All in all, the “maturity” of the game is what you’d sell as “mature” to teenagers. For adults though? I don’t think this is anything special. In fact I’ve seen posts complaining on the official forum.
There were some amusing lines, like the girl who lost that ring saying “Thank you, I’ve always depended on the kindness of strangers.” I wish the game had more of this irony.
The controls are mostly fine. If you played any CRPG before you will take very little time to get used to everything.
There is one thing I hope they fix: the mouse controls suck. Many times I have to adjust the camera because the game registers my click on the ground as a click on the invisible wall between me and the character. This, of course, is especially “amusing” when I am about to be surrounded by mobs.
Good aspects?
There is no penalty for death, no matter if you died in PvE or in PvP, you just respawn at the last respawning point you check in with. This is really nice as there are aggro high level mobs in the very first map (you can outrun them, though), and sometimes mobs enter the city and kill whoever.
There is an option to automatically refuse PvP invites, which I found after manually declining 3 or 4 invites before I was even level 8 or so, and the game had only been out for about a day. Lots of eager-beaver PvPers in this game.
You can listen to your own music in-game as long as it’s mp3s.
Ok, actual screenshots from the game. Unfortunately I can’t seem to connect today and I only have older screenshots. Enjoy the first map and, in the second screenshot, one of the 2 starting towns, everyone looking the same and the creative nicknames… (StickItInMyAss is truly inspiring >.>)
