“Lvl 35 healer LFG Cruma Tower”

Lineage II: The Chaotic Chronicles has been in retail play for just over a week, but any one new to the game may think that for a player to reach level 35 in a week, the game must be pretty easy. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The NCsoft product is a massively multiplayer online role-playing PC game that is directed to hardcore players. Those upper levels seen running around the servers have been in the game for much longer than a week. They were in the open beta phase of the game, and their characters were rolled over into the retail or pay-to-play release.

The game itself is graphically stunning, with sterling environments, incredible mobs, solid musical elements and challenging gameplay. But L2 is also fraught with some problems, and in the long run, those problems may result in a reduced community for what could be a dynamic world and rich MMP experience.

What problems you ask? Well, let’s start with hardware server issues, like memory leaks and NPC server crashes, and progress to periodic disconnects where the player is booted, but the mobs they are fighting continue to hit and kill the player. When you log back in, you are dead, and suffer a loss in level experience points, and may have dropped an item. The development team is hard at work, according to announcements, on the memory leak issues and on the NPC server. But there are major areas of lag as well. Just step into any town without adjusting the frame rate of the game’s displays and you will be lucky if you are not slowed, initially, to a dead stop. And there is more.

However, before delving into that, let’s look at the game overall.

Lineage II is a fully PvP game, which means player-versus-player. You can indulge in combat with other players anywhere at any time. However, should you attack and kill a player who does not fight back, you incur bad karma and your name goes red. Red players will be attacked by NPCs and the likelihood of dropping an item upon death is relatively good. Since it will generally take 2 or 3 deaths per player killed to get your name back to white, it is also possible to de-level your character. Players who indulge in mutual PvP combat have their names turn purple.

Therein lays another potential problem with the game. A young player will run up and strike another player, signaling they wish to engage in mutual combat. The name of the attacking player goes purple, which means that any player can then attack him or her. The player who was attacked fights back. But lurking off to one side is a higher-level player who is waiting for the second player to go purple. The moment he or she does, the higher-level player attacks and kills the defending player. It is a cheap way to get a PK rating, and if the player killed drops an item, the duo may grab it and run. This is a far-to-common practice. The easiest thing to do is not attack. Most of those who initiate in this manner have no desire to “go red” and will break off the attack if the player they attack does not fight back.

There are five races in the game: human, elf, dark elf, dwarf and orc. With the exception of the dwarf, all the other races can go down the path of either a mage or warrior. There are skill trees and professions. The dwarf only has a fighter class, but the game does throw them a caveat, of sorts. Only dwarves can craft. While other races can find resources, the dwarves can ‘spoil’ a target for a better drop and craft those drops into items which sell well.

Do not expect a lot of player models. The choices are finite and players may often be distinguished by their clothes, not their look.

If Lineage II has one main problem, it is that it is a treadmill supported by an economic system that is inane. Items in stores are ridiculously priced when balanced against the adena (coin of the realm) drop from the mobs. While players can run quests for adena, the possibility of any one player garnering enough adena to outfit himself, or herself, for their level is not that good. A level-two bow costs 14,000 adena (thereabouts) in the stores (though you can buy it for 10 in private player-run stores), but the players for whom that bow would actually have value are hunting mobs that drop 40-70 adena per kill. So you are literally killing hundreds of mobs in order to earn the adena for a bow. But wait, there is armor to consider and a decent melee weapon, if you are a fighter. For mages, they must buy a weapon that has a decent Magic Attack rating, armor that improves their mana pool (though doesn’t really fit the billing as protection should a melee mob draw close enough to attack), and then invest in spell books to learn their skills.

Each kill will give the player experience points (xp) and skill points (sp). The former is used to level the player, the latter is used to buy skills to become a more potent combatant.  As you level, skills are made available and there are levels to the skills themselves. New skill sets become available for fighters at levels 5, 10 and 15. For mages it is at level 7 and 14. Fighters and mages can move into a profession at level 20. As one progresses up in level and skill sets, the more costly the skill sets become. A skill that may have cost a figher player 60 sp at level 5, may then cost 1,100 at level 15. The more specialized the skill, the more it will cost. A mage can buy ice bolt at level 7 for 260 sp. At level 14, that skill will cost 1,100 to level and at level 20, it will cost 2,000. That latter number is a light figure compared to some other skills.

Mobs are color-coded by name to reflect their difficulty. Blue is easy, red is very hard compared to the player’s level. At level 20, a player can battle a mob known as a Mist Horror Ripper, which is an aggressive level 27 mob, with a life-drain range attack and hard-hitting melee. The ripper, if the player solos it, will yield 918 xp (about .42 percent of a level) and 47 sp.

More number crunching? You bet, but this is just an example of the treadmill of this game. Everything is costly, and hard to come by. This may be a way to make up for a small number of quests, but it is also what leads to yet another problem with the game. Higher-level players often enter into hunter areas of lower-level players to farm adena from mobs that are not a danger to their health, and not a high drain on their mana pools (mana pools are used in virtually every attack, but are particularly drained in special attacks). This creates a problem for the players who are hunting at their level. Kill-stealing, griefing and ninja looting (the mob, when it dies, drops adena, and sometimes other items, on the ground) are common. Players also have what are know as bots farming. Bots are third-party programs which create a set of macros what give players certain and specific instructions. Basically, the avatar becomes a robot performing programmed instructions. A player can set up a bot, leave it in an area that is full of mobs they can kill easily, then go to bed and awake in the morning with an inventory well stocked with adena.

For the record, bots, griefing, KSing and the like are against the EULA’s (end-user license agreement) code of conduct. The game’s GMs have warned time and again that anyone found to be using bots, or engaging in practices that violate that code will have their accounts suspended. But one only has to look at the game’s forums to know that bots are prevalent and farming is occurring – which includes kill-stealing and ninja looting – and seemingly not much is being done about it. However, in the defense of the game managers, it is awfully hard to tell which may be a bot and which may only be a rude individual who does not care to speak to anyone, or who may not know the language being spoken.

Lineage II certainly has its share of languages used in-game. This is an international title and clans consisting of players from throughout the world are prevalent.

The game does have a clan system, but this puts a lot of pressure on a clan leader to supply the clan with sacrificed sp to level that clan. To take a clan from level 0 to level 1, the clan leader must supply 30,000 sp points (which have been donated to the cause and not used to level skills). The clan can all chip in to supply the 650,000 adena to level up the clan. It costs an additional 150,000 sp, and 2.5 million adena to get to clan-level 2. At clan-level 2, the clan can have a clan house. The cost to increase the clan, which also equates to room for more clan members, goes up. It is not until clan level 4 that clans can participate in siege warfare for control of one of the five castles within the game. The owners of a castle won in battle, must set up times for sieges by other clans. There are several benefits to getting and holding a castle – among them are setting a tax rate for the accompanying town, and a second is that the clan leader, if he or she has done the quest for the dragon egg at level 35, and evolved the baby dragon into a ride by having a clan level 2 house, can mature that dragon into a flying, fire-breathing dragon only if they are in possession of a castle. The game may have done well to institute an sp pool that all members could contribute to, but that the sp donated was only for clan-leveling purposes and could not be used by a single player for skill advancement.

Lineage II is a gorgeous game that certainly has its challenges. But this is a game that also has some hurdles that jump in the way of making this a smooth ride. It is a PvP world, but the numbers of PvP battles taking place are relatively small. But this game is only in the ‘prelude’ mode and the first big patch should occur in June in the first form of the ‘chronicles’ chapter. If some of these problems can be ironed out, then the game will certainly have the ingredients to hook players into playing for a while.
 

Gameplay: 7.4

Server problems abound, and while they will obviously be fixed, sluggish control elements, a poor targeting system add up to an experience that could be so much better.

Graphics: 9.3

This game looks terrific. One only has to see the effects, the environments and the player animations to know that the bar for MMPs has been raised. There are some minor clipping problems in places, and holes in the world with whited-out areas below that are distractions to this.

Sound: 8.5

Fresh music for different areas keeps the game lively

Difficulty: Medium/Hard

This game is a treadmill for hard-core players.

Concept: 6.9

The economy needs a major overhaul, as does the clan system. Clan warfare and castle siege are a cornerstone of the game, but with clan leveling restrictions, it is a part that many players may never truly indulge in for most of their gaming experience.

Multiplayer: 7.2

Groups of players share xp and sp from mobs killed, which actually subtracts from the experience. Players can get more xp and sp from soloing. True, a group is not as big a drain on the mana, but groups should be rewarded in some way, maybe with better adena drops.

Overall: 8.2

Lineage II: The Chaotic Chronicles has been in release for just more than a week, but already is seems headed for a niche group in the MMP market. This is a game that is for the hardcore gamers and with a rash of server problems and memory leaks (not to mention clans who farm and exploit), the game – as it stands now – can be a source of frustration, especially if one buys into the level-grind aspect. If, however, one uses the time to group with clanmates, journey the land and enjoy the challenges of fighting together, Lineage II can provide a unique MMP experience that is a source of wonder and delight.