Open Beta - Lineage II opens

[Moloch]

Lineage II is to have a free open beta starting Sunday 28 March at 12:00 AM Pacific Standard Time.

The beta will last for about a month. And how's this? - characters created during open beta (only) will be able to be carried through into commercial release on April 28!

There's also going to be a series of real life pHat L3wt for being the first or the best.

Check the Press Release out here (http://www.plaync.com/about/press_release_032404.html)

Sign up for beta at http://www.lineage2.com/

[JonnyG]

Interesting approach. It makes it so people will put more into the beta in order to have an advantage when the game goes live.

[Parthon]

Definitely an interesting approach. They certainly get to stress test their NA servers.

The fact that the game is already live in Korea and this pre-release stress test should guarantee the most problem free MMO launch ever for a North American game.

[Leoghan]

Here is something I do not understand. Is this a case where you have to buy the game in order to get into open beta? I know they were doing a program like that, but I don't know if that was open beta or closed beta.

[MarcS]

Haven't been able to play for about a week.. The game is fun, but the PvP only aspect is a total dis-incentive to for me playing. Now that open beta is going, have they added a non or partial pvp server by any chance?

Just curious.. Working on my GDC update.. Just thought I'd stop by and say hi.
:wave:

[DX_Mage]

Hi man =)

[Vali]

I was planning on trying Lineage2 but I was over at a friends house and watched him play. He was in a newbie area. Some high level guy came in and wiped them all out.

Kinda hard to get a character going if you have some high level guy that thinks its cool to slaughter newbs.

-V

[Leoghan]

I have played a little of it. I am not sure it is my cup of tea, but I like testing things and submitting bugs so I will test it for the rest of the month. Probably will not buy it though.

[Cassandra]

I don't really like the game much myself. Although I do like my orc fighter girl. She just looks cool with them claw like weapons they give at the beginning, otherwise there isn't enough to keep me interested for more then a couple few days.

Marc.. Right now there is virtually no PvP at all. People kill someone, gets a red name and other people continiously kill them until they are level 4 again. I personally don't think thats the best thing to do but I heard people shouting about "Oh he's a pk! Kill him" About alot of people. So it seems there is alot organized resistence to PvP being offered into the game. I don't know how it will change when people get higher level but with losing items and experience if you're killed im not sure PvP will ever take off on the NA servers.. especially with the current mentality.

[Pollux]

This game is definitely not my cup of tea. IMHO, it sucks as much as Horizons...

[Liv]

closed beta was ok, even with pk'ing. now that it's open beta theres not enough spawn/space and too many idiots, so that I found it was unplayable yesterday. anyway there will be no localisation (dont know if thats the proper english term...), so nothing for me.

maybe its some sort of different cultural attitude.. but I thought it was kind of weird that they have a strongest man contest (who's the first at lvl 40 gets alienware stuff). chasing powergamers in one month through the whole game, so that they lose interest even before release? or even promoting powergaming "at all"?

the 3 servers are all pvp afair marc.

[Parthon]

I was planning on trying Lineage2 but I was over at a friends house and watched him play. He was in a newbie area. Some high level guy came in and wiped them all out.

That gives me the shivers. I will never play a game that allows/encourages this type of behavior.

Didn't the debacle that UO PvP turn into serve as enough of a lesson for game designers?

Personally the whole LineageII PvP system would only make sense to me if once you are "red" and are killed, your character is perma-deathed and deleted from the server. I don't know if that is even enough of a penalty for the hardcore gankers, but potentially "losing an item" for griefing behavior is obviously not a strong enough deterrant.

[Cassandra]

I actually like the L2 PvP system myself. Though I really dislike the rest of the game. Then again I enjoy full PvP a good deal. Just the items are horribly expensive to buy from a shop and I dislike deleveling so much.

[esion]

I hate deleveling...it killed me in FFXI (that and the lack of time to play).

I liked L2's PvP, but I also thought that it was kinda difficult based on the controls. One thing that I never got to participate in, but wish I could have, was the guild siege and guild kingdoms stuff. I think its a really cool idea and I think that for the style game that L2 is it would work great.

Like I said a long time ago I think L2 is like how Shadowbane should have been. Great graphics, great PvP, but of course leveling treadmill and griefers ruin all. If no other games were coming out I would invest in it, but im leaning towards other games right now.

[Vali]

Bleh, since Ive got nothing else to do I figured Id give it a shot. 6 hours of a download from fileplanet and another 4 hours of patches- I wonder how much longer I have left till I get to try this game.

-v

[JonnyG]

Thats the coolest thing about Guild Wars.

Seriously it went like this. Download Guild Wars executable - 30 seconds. Run it, it streamed for about 60 seconds.

Create a character, hit play, stream for another 30 seconds and your in town exploring.

Wow, 2 minutes of download, a couple minutes of decision making while creating a character and you're up and running.

[Leoghan]

And where can I do this guild war download? :P

[Vali]

gah :P what do you have to do to get into the game? Send cookies over to the developers??

I would love to come in and check it out

-V

[Cassandra]

Yea.. patching for L2 is awful. I had to restart the patch client 7-8 times because it just stopped working.

[Vali]

the patching seems to be working fine, Its just- Im coming on 12 hours of downloads.

Im thinking im really going to like GW

-V

[Vali]

tick tock, tick tock... whens GW get released? It may just beat this download....

-V

[Cassandra]

Wait until you actually start the game.. I haven't been able to login all day. The servers -stay- completely full. I guess its all the people flocking for a free game like me. :)

[Jade_Dragonfly]

Tried all day and was only able to login for about 45 mins. Leveled my mage to level 4 and then the Kain server crashed. :(

[Leoghan]

Yeah today has been tough getting on to their servers.

[Ravenous]

The patching and all other general connection issues come from a short sight of NCSoft, over 50000 open beta players and only 3 servers, you do the math ;)

OB so far was ok, minus the connection problems (thank god i didnt have the dl/patch problems since i was in CB, downloaded the client and all patches in 2 hours back then), the sheer number of players just makes it very hard on newbies. As example, if you start a human and get the quest to kill giant toads, you can bet you will sit for over 3 hours on this one since those mobs are camped like hell (i.e. at least 3 ppl per mob). And this is a lvl 5 quest. They just need to add more servers and things should be fine.

As for the gameplay, I think its nice, the learning curve is rather flat (when you're used to mmorpgs). The PvP is a new approach, and I havent been in trouble yet (mostly cauz all my chars are around lvl 10 heh). I agree it might sound stupid when everyone can gank anyone, but the downsides to exsessive ganking and griefing are enormous imo. The key is, if you get attacked by a player, either run towards town, or simply let him/her kill you. Might sound stupid, but heres why: if you dont fight back, they will lose a ton of Karma, which will turn their names red. This disables them to enter towns (guards will jump em and kill em in 1-2 hits), plus they will get hunted by PKKers 24/7. A nice thing for hunting PKers is that once their name turns red and they get killed, they will drop some items.

I agree that the cost of items in shops might sound a bit high, but by doing quests you can crank up cash fast. Ardena will be the main fuel of L2, everything is a cash sink in the game. Once ppl get to higher lvls they will be able to make cash faster, and dont forget the owners of castles and guild buildings, who will have some extra income.

Generally I'm impressed by L2, the beta blows some of the already released MMORPGs dead out of the water (Hz anyone?). Very nice visuals, good skill system, currently healthy economy, quests and dungeons en masse, high lvl content as guild sieges, owning castles and breeding your own (mountable and later flyable) dragon, mounted combat, a guilds ability to "level", pretty nice package imo.

To the people having severe problems, this might sound stupid but patience is a virtue :) It currently might take a few mins to log on, but its well worth the wait.

[Cassandra]

I don't see where the fun is myself.. I did all the quests up to about level ten with my human girl and its just killing mobs over and over pretty much. The toad quest is crazy not because of people camping it but because you have to kill 10-15 toads a ore sometimes. I know its random but I had to kill at least 100 toads to get 20 pieces of ore. went from 7 to 8 doing that quest. I don't really see it getting much better myself.. Only thing I like about this game is still the cool orc females. ;)

[Leoghan]

I just noticed the "thong" that the DE female wears. Wow... now this is a game that is trying to get my attention ;)

[Vali]

I still cant get in :(

-V

[Cassandra]

I started a DE a while ago and all they wear as the start is carefully placed leather straps. Its kinda silly.

[Leoghan]

Vali,

What's it telling you?


Cassandra,

Yeah its umm innovative :P

[Vali]

I log in fine, when I click on a server it says Access Failed, please try again later and sends me back to the login screen

Earlier today I was able to make some progress on the second server (I dont know if you call it progress) but I was able to click on it- I sat for about 2 hours waiting for it to do anything though.

I can barely read what it says by the servers. "Net cong" - I suppose this means "net congested??"

-V

[Leoghan]

Ok so you can log into the server choice screen... Here is what I do, I just rotate through them. I'll click on server one, if that doesn't work, server two, etc...

It has worked for me most the time, though it takes time 5-10 mins.

I hope you can get in if just to see the thongs :p

[Vali]

Ive been trying :P Ill give it another chance.

My first character will be a darkelf :P


Because - whenever I decide to head into battle, the first thing I go for is my S&M gear! Ive tried full plate, chain mail, and various versions of half plate... but I always find myself coming back to the bondage suit

-V

[Leoghan]

One warning on the DE, for some reason they bend over when they run? Maybe it is a bug, I hope so!

[Vali]

thanks for the tip :P and I finally did get in

Im not sure I really like the controls- they are a bit different than any other mmo Ive played. Oh well.


-V

[Leoghan]

For me the controls are horrible, but I think if I liked the game enough that wouldn't matter.

[Sherri]

I've been playing since closed beta and now in open beta, not real sure if we will buy it or not but it fun for now lol

[DX_Mage]

four days now that I haven't been able to get in to give it a whirl.

[Vali]

Its a very pretty game, Ill give it that- but I have very sincere doubts that Ill be staying

-V

[Ravenous]

They're just adding 2 new OB servers to balance the player load, hope this will help a bit.

[MarcS]

An amusing, if very male oriented trick to try.. play a dark elf female, start her running, and rotate the camera so it's on the ground in front of her. Very amusing.. My wife and I were laughing pretty hard. Some of their artists really need to get out more.

Again, the game to me was fun, but open PvP just doesn't appeal to me. Too bad, because otherwise, I'd still be playing.

[Jfeil]

Originally posted by MarcS
An amusing, if very male oriented trick to try.. play a dark elf female, start her running, and rotate the camera so it's on the ground in front of her. Very amusing.. My wife and I were laughing pretty hard. Some of their artists really need to get out more.



Is that what this is all about? (http://www.gucomics.com/archives/view.php?cdate=20040329)

John

[MarcS]

Pretty much, yah. Almost hit the floor laughing when I saw that comic last week. :)

[Jotun]

Just remember kids...that dark elf chick doing the lap dance for you is really a 40-something sweaty, fat, bald guy living in his mother's basement.

[Leoghan]

And here I was never even thinking about checking out the front or considered bouncing. I guess we know where my female anatomical preferences lie.

[Pollux]

Originally posted by Jotun
Just remember kids...that dark elf chick doing the lap dance for you is really a 40-something sweaty, fat, bald guy living in his mother's basement.

YUCK!:uhoh: