New skills, meanwhile, spring up every couple levels, so my combat style keeps changing to accommodate them. Maybe that'll go swerving into a Grand-Canyon-like timesink abyss before it's all said and done, but for now, I feel like I can make tangible progress in 30 minutes or so. I made it to level 10 in about five hours, but even after that – all the way up to 20 so far – the pace hasn't really slowed down too terribly much. Tera, though, hit the ground running and never really looked back. It's fastKorean MMOs have a rather dubious reputation for grinds that span lifetimes, going so far as to be ritualistically passed from father to son for generations in some cultures – at least, until a new WoW expansion comes out.
Instead of cursing my clumsy fingers every time I take a headlong dive into the unpleasantly sharp bits of a sabertooth cat monster's face, I simply sniff out a couple crafting materials and – between time spent and the resulting buffs – I'm ready to leap back into the fray before I know it. As a result, gathering's become a natural part of my combat rhythm. Similarly, you get a variety of tiny combat buffs (brief regen, for instance) for gathering resources like herbs, minerals, and crystals. Meanwhile, a functional group-finding tool and other MMO mainstays – bafflingly absent from recent titles like Star Wars: The Old Republic – are present and accounted for here. In that respect, Tera's well aware that carving up Mother Nature's most regrettable mistakes is its biggest draw, and it wastes little time in getting to that particular point. I'm an especially big fan of being able to click on an enemy type's name and have its stomping grounds immediately highlighted on my minimap. The little thingsCombat might be hogging the spotlight, but Tera also nails some finer points of MMO design shockingly well.
If, however, you think you've got everything all figured out, the prologue becomes optional after you've run through it once. Happily, most of my time was spent deliberating – not leveling a character for 20 hours only to realize that they didn't fit my playstyle. I picked the rogue warrior (oh god, not that one), but it was close. Ultimately, it came down to the warrior's roguish charms (and roguish speed and roguish love of dual-wielding and roguish everything else, oddly) versus the slayer's larger-than-life-sized cleaver. So basically, I was able to test drive each class' more potent powers, which proved essential in deciding which monster mashing rhythm suited me best. Sure, I scoffed at the dime store high fantasy novel plot and climbed ladders at a speed that could charitably be described as “not in cryogenic stasis,” but I was also level 20 for the entire 30-minute-or-so duration. While many prologues end up as bulbous, fat-stuffed bellies covering the real meat of an experience, Tera's kicks off the proceedings in a nicely intelligent fashion. The prologueYes, this is in the correct section. In Tera, though, I'll sometimes even hop off my mount mid-quest and cannonball into a small army of unrelated enemies simply for the pure joy of, you know, hitting stuff. In most MMOs, combat is a means to an end.
As a result, timing my warrior's double-bladed attacks perfectly and then leaping out of the way at the last second provides split-second, hair-splitting thrills. In other words, it's probably not the best strategy. Standing still is akin to being a deer in the headlights of an oncoming 18-wheeler. The plot and quest structure are hardly original (more on that in a bit), but battle's satisfyingly meaty sights, sounds, and high-flying dodges exert an almost primal pull on me. As someone who's never quite been able to shake a World-of-Warcraft-born case of “been there, done that, bought the Horde hoodie from Hot Topic,” I've still found myself utterly ensnared by Tera. The Good Mobility in battle This really is a game-changer for MMO combat. However, for those of you having trouble resisting the siren song of a subscription right this very second, here are some early thoughts. I've been putting its high-octane (for an MMO, anyway) hack 'n' slash through its paces for review, but obviously, one week on live servers isn't even close to enough time to render a final verdict. Tera, the new swords 'n' sorcery 'n' tiny-beaver-people-for-some-reason MMO from En Masse and Bluehole, has been out for a bit over a week now.
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