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In my copy of CoV, NCSoft packed a 14-day trial license of Lineage II. Since it’s one of the only games in the genre with which I was not familiar, I figured I’d give it a go.

I downloaded and installed the client yesterday while doing work related things and played for a few hours last night. My initial impressions:

The installer/patcher was buggy. After the client finally finished patching, it wouldn’t let me run the game. I had to dive through the support forums looking for the error code I was given, then find and delete a folder from the game directory before the patcher would download the files correctly. Running a complete file check didn’t show anything as wrong

Integration of an MSN IM client into the game is kind of cool. But, when I tried it, Adam was unable to talk to me – every time he tried to say something to me, I got blank lines. Heck, the Matrix Online AIM client was better than that, however clunky it was, at least it worked

The complete lack of character appearance options reminds me of FFXI, or even Ragnarok. You have 5 races to choose from, and a grand total of something like 16 possible facial combinations.

The game is a 2d world seen through a 3d rendering engine. You click to move. And it is difficult to click on items on the ground to pick them up (though, there is a command to grab nearest loot on ground). The similarities to Ragnarok continue

Dwarves are scary. The males are all old men. The females are all teenage little girls.

Class choices are limited in the extreme. There are two to choose from. Unless you’re a dwarf, then you get no choice. You will be a fighter. But dwarven fighters aren’t really fighters. They’re merchants. Apparently. After trying my dwarven fighter for 5 levels, and getting a warning about something magical happening to the first char on an account to hit 6, I switched and created an elven mystic.

Elven girls are even scarrier than dwarves. It took me two or three kills before I realized that my skirt was flying up for an extended period every time I cast a spell. The skirt doesn’t just float up. It hovers. And shows off your char’s lacy thong underwear. Yeah. I was happy when I found a pair of stockings that prevented me from flashing the universe every three seconds.

Yes. Stockings. The female elves get stockings. Not pants. In fact, the newbie pants you are given are actually less decent than the unclothed model. Just as there are very few facial options, there seem to be only one style of clothing for each race/gender model. The colors and textures may change, but the shape stays the same. Just like dyes in Ragnarok.

There also don’t seem to be a whole lot of npc models. I noticed that the things I was hunting in both elven and dwarven territories were remarkably similar. Kind of like FFXI, where everybody has bunnies to kill, they just have different names. And, just like players don’t have that many models to choose from, neither do the NPC’s in town – there are probably 5 different models they used, if that.

That said… I can’t come up with anything else negative to say It’s durned pretty. The reduced choices streamline play a great deal. The quest log is similar to the one you get in EQ2, with the addition of a compass that points to your next objective (ala CoH but way flashier). The in-game map is dead sexy. At least, it would be if it scrolled automatically in stead of requiring you to manually pan around to find yourself.

OH! I do have another complaint. A real live honest complaint. Of doom.

So, the newbie helper NPC warns you that certain mobs assist. She then tells you one or two types that do. And warns you quite emphatically not to provoke them. I heed this advice until I get brave and realize that I’ve not seen what happens when you die anyways.

So, I find a pair of orcs. And I shoot one. It goes badly, and I run. And run. And run. And run. I make it all the way across the area, and run into town. Past the sentinel NPC’s. Who stand there and watch the orcs slaughter me. I respawn in town, 50 feet away from the orcs, who are no longer aggro. The guards are still ignoring them. I kill off the orc I had injured, the other one kills me. Still no assistance from guards. Kill off the other one. Talk to guard. He gives me a quest to kill orcs.

Yeah.

Anyhow. I’m gonna play around with it a bit more over the next few days. My girl is lvl 7 now, and with pants and a total of two nukes with which to frotz things, she fears nothing. At least, not one at a time, she doesn’t.