Recent reviews by masterp

Disclaimer: this is my first time playing BDO (but have played Lineage2, WoW, and many other MMO's).

First quality of life issue: LAG. It is server-side, and they are 'working on it'. It's not as if they knew there'd be a massive influx of people from steam, right? ... Loot will drop, but I am unable to pick it up. We're talking.....the loot disappears before I am even able to pick up a 1/10th of it due to severe and continual lag. So be warned: you may not be able to pick up loot (with or without pets, does not matter).

Second, with no loot, you're playing Farmville. BDO has crafting, fishing, and farming galore: all of that goes into the economy to make bigger and better things, all the way up to end-game things (like top-tier upgrade stones for weapons/armor). In addition, you can send out your workers (that you hire and board through a grindy mechanic called CP [Contribution Points]).

Third, you will level so quickly, that you run into a big problem: you can no longer damage the higher level mobs to efficiently level. You need good gear to level at 56+. 150+ap/200dp. If you don't powerlevel very hard and hold out for the Jarette's 6 piece jewelry (42 AP for rings/earrings/belt/neck), then you might be ok. But to beat 42 AP from the free 20-day jewelry, you need 9ap neck, 7ap belt, 7ap ring x2, 7ap earring x2. That's basically Pri jewelry, requiring either lots of luck or silver (10mil per piece x 2 x 6 pieces, assuming you you dont fail a single pri piece which you will fail a lot, thus meaning the jarrette's will be the best you can do for a long time). TLDR: To continue leveling, make bank money. Mobs are difficult to kill 56+, requiring 150ap/150dp.

Fourth, the fun: the fun doesn't exist in this game. There are clans out there with 80/80 members (or more) who each has 100+ billion in wealth. You start this game with about 60 million given to you for free, but beyond that, you will be starting from scratch trying to piece together a bottom tier duo set and hoping for some uber/lucky boss drops. To have fun, would require you to be able to compete in PvP. Getting wrecked by people at 280ap will not be fun. Nor, can anyone reliably PvP for fun, as the entire servers are lagging because the massive influx of people.

TLDR: Servers are laggy AS ♥♥♥♥ and sometimes entirely unresponsive (loot). Do no buy. Boycott this game until the servers are fixed. Even with the servers fixed, you are climbing an uphill battle with the vet's sitting on knowledge and wealth, much of which can be traced to the wealthiest clans owning castles/nodes.

Great game, except for three things:

1) Trying to get decent equipment is hard as the loot/buying options are fairly rare. Because of this, you'll constantly feel undergeared 24/7. Most of the time, if you have two useful stats on a piece of gear, that'll be your gear for 10 levels.

2) Puzzles suck in this game. Incredibly stupid 95% of the time. I don't mind the entire 'go ahead and rob/pillage entire town' thing, but the "here's an incredibly difficult puzzle that you're going to have to google the solution for, because we're ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ devs" is highly annoying, if not downright crazy. Couldn't the devs have at least made the puzzles somewhat less annoying? Is it neccessary to have a puzzle that requires fairly exact weights to be stuffed onto four different buttons without good hints for how much needs to be dumped onto the buttons? Seriously? Also, hiding buttons on walls and expecting people to see the buttons that are camo'd super well on the walls is -not- cool. It's not good game design. It's just annoying. Stupid and annoying, and probably enrages anyone over 35 and makes them hate you, your game, your devs, your friends, and your family.

3) Why is it that you have to be so careful about which way you go at the beginning of the game? Or the middle of the game? You wander the wrong way, and BAM, level eight archer one-shots your level two characters. Go south and you run into a giant team of level 6 orcs who wreck your level two's. Go north? Level 5's eat your face in. The only way to get any experience is to try to kill every rat, rob and pillage the town for hours, try to do as many quests in town as possible, get to level 3, and only after that, go west and only west. Even then, don't go too far west without going back to town to get more XP from completing quests. Not to mention, you must sell things, get better equipment, buy skill books, learn additional skills, or your face is going to get smashed in.

That said, this game is not -that- hard. It's not -that- difficult. It's just....you have to be aware that doing X and Y is required or you'll get stuck or killed. Sure, you can choose between any letters between A and Z, but X and Y (google and going certain directions first) are required.