Another year, another humongous list of MMOs to sift through. Right on the heels of Blizzard’s own Diablo III, worldwide Korean MMO TERA is on a mission: to tear you away from whatever MMO you’re playing now, and earn the right to collect your subscription fee at the end of every month.

At first glance, TERA‘s main selling points are beautiful landscapes, controller support, and action oriented gameplay that forces you to manually aim your attacks, as well as block and dodge enemy assaults. But how well does it work? Is action-adventure gameplay viable for an open world MMO?

As previously mentioned, without hesitation, the biggest draw of TERA is easily the combat system. While other dungeon crawler titles such as Phantasy Star, Vindictus have adapted a less traditional method of combat, those games are heavily instanced: full action combat isn’t exactly a stand-out mechanic in open world MMOs. Immediately when you boot up the game, you have the option to utilize native 360 and PS3 controller support, as well as your typical mouse and keyboard MMO staple.

Imagine conflict in your favorite action RPG, from Amalur to Dark Souls — that’s basically how combat works in Tera. Although it isn’t as nuanced or twitch as those few titles, it does get fairly deep the more you level up, as you gain a number of different skills that both complement, and literally chain off one another. On the screen is a small reticle, which allows you to aim all of your attacks despite what direction the camera is facing.

I ended up choosing the Warrior class, and using a 360 controller: to my surprise, the experience translates perfectly, as it felt like I was playing a typical console action title.  It also helps that my class lends itself incredibly to a controller, given that it isn’t your prototypical manifesation of “MMO Warrior”. TERA‘s Warrior is actually more akin to a rogue, opting for quick movements and attacks — the Lancer, Slayer, and Berserker classes are more slow and deliberate in terms of melee interaction.

By pressing the back button, I was able to map pretty much everything I wanted to every button on the controller. My setup uses LT to initiate conversations/pick up items, “A” to jump,  “LB and RB” to change my list of skills, “X, Y,” are mapped to attacks, and “B” initiates an awesome Spider Man-like evasion flip.When I hold LB, RB, or LB+RB, I can switch to different pages of skills, and use those by pressing A, B, X, Y, or LT/RT with the aforementioned bumpers held down.

Using a 360 controller is great for leveling, but will it be viable long term? While I can’t imagine using a controller at end-game for serious raiding, TERA does make concessions to potentially make the tactic feasible. For instance, it is possible to deliberate choose certain attacks and combo them into other attacks, meaning you don’t have to list every single skill on your controller map. Not only does this help for end-game controller fans, but it’s also a really fun way to help more casual fans not get overwhelmed by a large amount of skills.

TERA also makes a number of concessions for people who don’t normally play MMOs. For instance, you get your first mount for free once you reach level 11 — no questions asked. Typically in MMOs, you have to wait until at least some point in mid-game (around 20 or later) to have the right to pay a ton of in-game gold for a means of travel — thankfully TERA lets you start chugging along fairly easily. Flight paths (nodes which are used to easily travel across the game’s world) are also significantly shorter than most MMOs, as they have a Star Wars “warp speed” type clip that expedites travel across long distances.

Keep in mind though, that at it’s core, TERA is very much a traditional MMO. It has the holy trinity of classes, people can steal your quest items and kills, and quests progress fairly similarly in regards to 90% of the MMOs on the market, in that they consist largely of a number of fetch/kill quests. Thankfully, TERA manages to stay engaging because of the combat system: a testament I’ve seen many players also reiterate through in-game chat. Because you are consistently involved in combat, it never quite feels like a grind — group bosses are also much more exciting given the fact that you basically have to constantly move around.

While I haven’t embarked in my first instance/dungeon (the first one is level 20), there is (thankfully) a dungeon finder tool readily available in the game (take notes, TOR!). As far as group composition goes, things are fairly traditional in terms of the “holy trinity” (tank, healer, DPS). Lancers are generally agreed upon as the “main tanks”, but Warriors can evasion tank as well, provided they’re skilled. Mystics and Priests are on heal-duty, and everything else is DPS. As a Warrior, I’m looking forward to trying my hand at tanking, but for now, I’ll keep leveling and reporting my thoughts.

All in all, TERA can be a great distraction from whatever MMO you’re playing now, whether it’s TOR, Rift, LOTRO, Aion, WoW, DCUO, or anything else. Provided you have open mind towards the decidedly anime aesthetic, TERA‘s combat system alone might be worth the price of entry.

Bethesda finally let the cat of the bag: an Elder Scrolls MMO is in the works.  The game is set to center in on the story of Molag Bal and his quest to overtake Tamriel. Lead developer Matt Firor has stated that they are on track to create “the best MMO ever made — and one that is worthy of The Elder Scrolls franchise.”

Personally, I’m pretty excited to see what they can do with Tamriel, because outside of Arena, this could potentially be the first time we’ll ever see the world of TES in it’s entirety. I’m really excited to see the Summerset Isles, and all of Morrowind, not just the portion of it they featured in the third Elder Scrolls game.

The game will be developed by Zenimax Online Studios, meaning Bethesda will still be perfectly free to keep working on Fallout 4 and another Elder Scrolls game down the line. Bethesda has also announced the game will be compatible with both PC and Mac platforms.

The latest Korean MMO has just dropped in the US — TERA Online. Combat is done in an action oriented manner, forcing players to dodge enemy attacks while launching attacks of their own. To supplement this action approach, the game has support for traditional controllers in addition the typical keyboard and mouse setup. Standard MMO tropes like the healer, tank, and DPS trinity exist,  as well as the inclusion of a traditional quest system, world encounters (BAMs), and instances.

In addition to the aforementioned gameplay elements, the developers have also adapted a version of Eve’s PLEX system, which allows for a currency called Chronoscrolls to be purchased by players for real cash. Chronoscrolls can be subsequently sold or bought on the action house, as dictated by the player economy — using them will net you extra game-time. In case you’re interested,  expect more TERA coverage from Gamer Limit in the coming weeks.

Guild Wars 2 hasn’t had a beta of this magnitude since the inception of the project — in fact, this is the first massive beta that didn’t largely involve the press. Thousands (if not tens or hundreds of thousands) of gamers are going to flood ArenaNet’s servers with sugary beta-testing goodness, and there is absolutely no NDA involved, meaning anyone and everyone can screencap and dump video to their heart’s content.

While I did encounter some technical issues with the beta thus far, I was able to capture some video of the event to show off some of the game’s content – new videos will be added as they are recorded. Without further ado, here are a bunch of videos of Guild Wars 2‘s beta event.

Character selection

Charr Blood Legion Intro

Norn Wolf Intro

Human Noble Intro

Roaming around the world

How World Encounters work

Charr Mesmer showcase

Charr Elementalist showcase

Norn Engineer showcase

Norn Thief showcase

Norn Necromancer Showcase

Human Warrior showcase

Human Guardian Showcase

Human Ranger Showcase

At the recent Guild Wars 2 preview event, we were able to test out a number of general mechanics, but what about the professions? At launch, the game will ship with the Guardian, Warrior, Engineer, Ranger, Thief, Elementalist, Mesmer and Necromancer classes.

Although I did try out quite a few professions, the Necromancer is the one I spent most of my time with. So without further ado, onto the my discussion about the paranormal, undead, and various other terrifying creatures that go bump in the digital night.

The basic draw of the Necromancer is that he performs a DPS role, but unlike most of the other Warlock derivatives in other MMOs, he can also utilize support and healing functions (mostly self healing at early levels). Rather than the Ranger’s “companion pets”, the Necromancer can summon “minions”, which are more fleeting in nature, and perform concise roles than a general “pet” function. Additionally, Necros can toggle their Death Shroud ability to enter a shadow state, granting them new abilities.

One thing I noticed about the minions in particular is that they die often, so you’ll basically have to constantly re-summon them in heated combat situations. I hope that ArenaNet is able to fix this issue in the final build, because while it’s understandable that these minions shouldn’t be overpowered, it’s a bit annoying to have to constantly micro-manage them, which takes away from the gameplay experience a bit.

The minions I was able to experience were the Blood Fiend, Bone Minions, and Bone Fiends. Like Diablo III in regards to sustained, so long as you allot each ability to a slot, you’re allowed to keep as many minions out as you like — just keep in mind that there is a maximum amount of skill slots. Blood Fiends constantly leach health, Minions do DPS and can explode on command, and Bone Fiends attack from afar, with the additional ability to root opponents in place.

Like all professions, the Necromancer has different skills depending on their equipped weapon, whether or not they’re underwater, or depending on their Death Shroud state (there’s even a combination of underwater + Death Shroud). There are ten possible weapon combinations for the Necro, made possible through a Staff, Scepter, Axe, Dagger, Focus, and a Warhorn. I was able to experiment with everything but the Focus and Axe, and found that your skillset and strategy drastically differed depending on your weapon choice.

For instance, while using the dagger, my auto-attack was severely limited, and basically forced me into melee range. When using the Scepter however, my autoattacks and abilities had a farther reach.

Death Shroud reminds me of the World of Warcraft’s Shadow Priest mechanic, but it’s a bit more tactical, and is limited in use. Ran by another statistic unique to Warlocks called Life force, you can toggle the shroud instantly, granting you an additional life bar in the form of Life Force. Once it’s all gone, you’ll go back to your normal state and your normal health bar.

As a result, it’s clear that Death Shroud will be a crucial mechanic in group situations, where Necromancers will be able to off-tank weaker enemies with this extra health bar. Additionally, it can obviously be used as a “last resort” cooldown to save your skin (as I utilized multiple times while leveling!).

I noticed that compared to the other twenty or so press members that were playing, I leveled up slightly faster than most of them, but not as fast as a few other classes, like the Engineer. This seems to be about on par with typical life leech classes in other MMOs, due to the fact that while they aren’t the absolute highest damage-dealing powerhouse in the game, their ability to stay alive and heal themselves constantly helps when it comes to leveling.

My time with Guild Wars 2 was incredibly fun, and I can’t wait to get more in-depth with the rest of the classes — particularly the Engineer, which one lead developer told us was the most “interesting class in the game”. If you’re joining in this weekend on the GW2 beta event, be sure and check out the Necromancer.

Aion, the worldwide Korean MMO, has gone completely free to play – no more subscriptions. Starting this month, you can level from 1-60 without any sort of fee. You’ll also naturally get all of the updates the game has obtained over the years, which includes extra content, and a number of tweaks that let you level up with less grinding.

Former writer James P. loved the atmosphere and the gameplay, so we’d highly suggest giving it a chance — even if you decide it’s not for you. Personally, I’m ready to jump back in after my account has been idle for a few years.

Guild Wars 2 carries a lot of expectations in the gaming community. Considering Guild Wars 1 was basically a dungeon crawler and not an MMO, many gamers are skeptical whether or not ArenaNet will be able to pull off a truly persistent world. On top of that immediate concern, there other claims ArenaNet has made, that if true, will chance the face of MMOs as we know it– enhanced grouping; event driven quests; truly competitive even-ground PVP.

Even with all of my skepticism intact, after previewing the game at ArenaNet’s recent press event, it looks like the famed developer is poised to succeed with Guild Wars 2.

For the purposes of this event, we played the Human starting area from levels 1-10. I don’t say this very often, but Guild Wars 2 is not your typical MMO. Right off the bat, you’ll notice when booting up the game that there are no “quests” — they have been replaced with “events”, which are much deeper than your normal progression fodder.

For instance, say you approach a town in most MMOs — the town leader may ask you to kill ten centaur enemies that are “attacking” the town. When you approach the specified area, the centaurs are most likely grazing around their camp, doing nothing. Once you complete your kill task, you go back to the perfectly serene town, turn in your quest, and never see that area again.

Guild Wars 2 wants to avoid all that, and make the world itself seem more alive. With the “event” system, you’ll find that not only are centaurs actually attacking the town, but they can actually murder NPCs and burn the town to the ground entirely. If you choose to join in on the fight, you’ll help fellow players not only rebuild and save the town, but you’ll also optionally drive the centaurs back into their own camp, and destroy their home base. During any point, you might actually complete the event parameters for bonus XP, but you’ll completely forget about it in favor of becoming lost in the quest.

What Guild Wars 2 has done here is truly remarkable, because in the 10+ events I was able to experience, this system actually works. In the finished product, events will scale depending on the amount of players in the area engaging in the event — meaning a large epic battle will actually feel epic, but if you’re alone in your task, it won’t be impossible.

Speaking of dynamic groups, this is easily my favorite part of Guild Wars 2. Multiple times, I was able to fully complete fixed events and randomized events without having to worry about a party, or having people steal my quest drops. ArenaNet has not only instanced individual drops, but allowed players to obtain equal XP even if they aren’t in a party when attacking mobs with other players. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve dreaded seeing other players come in and steal rare required mobs in a certain area — when I only need *one more* red dragon, and that dragon spawns once every fifteen minutes, it’s absolutely maddening to have that kill stolen.

The event system also lends itself well to dynamic groups, given how so many different variations there are. For instance, in addition to the centaur example before, a town’s water system could be under attack, and any number of bad outcomes could occur, from poisoned water to an outright blight. In fact, for some events, there are as many of four tiers of outcomes, all of them dynamically giving you XP the entire time. Again, you’ll completely become lost in the moment, and eventually realize you’re leveling up and gaining XP — not the other way around.

In addition to levels 1-10, we also were able to test the World vs. World system with up to 40 players. Of course, the full WvW mode will accommodate for hundreds of players, but we were easily able to get the general gist of the mode by encountering various skirmishes at set areas of the map. Just in case you’re wondering, World vs. World is one of two PVP modes set up in the realm of Guild Wars 2. Competitive PVP will automatically level other players to 80, giving them equal gear and equal skills, allowing utter skill to take precedent over anything else — there is no way to gain an advantage. World vs. World subtly levels players to 80, but still holds you to your skills and gear at your current level, which can still allow players to earn gear, and thus, earn some competitive advantage. You can access World vs. World and PVP at anytime through the in-game menu, and you will instantly enter it.

World vs. World is similar to recent Dynasty Warriors iterations, in that it is largely a hack and slash affair, with strategy and war weapons mixed in. Various bases and checkpoints are strewn about the very large map, which allow for capture from any one of the three giant teams on the map. When a player captures a node, they’ll either gain a valuable supply commodity to build new war weapons, a vantage point, additional score to win the mode itself, or all of the above.

Each “round” of WvW will last around two weeks, and will wrap up on a score based system. Servers will be competing against other servers, and will constantly be matched up depending on which group is the most competitive. ArenaNet mentioned that various tweaks will be made to ensure that low performance servers aren’t completely abandoned in favor of other competitive WvW servers, but they couldn’t elaborate upon that. Sadly, other than in-game chat, there are no plans to include an in-game “Vent-like” functionality for teams, so servers will most likely have to rely on fan-sites for Vent/TeamSpeak info. Players on opposing teams also won’t be named, as to avoid meta-conflict and outside stress — instead, you will see “Invader” above their character.

In terms of leveling, players can take to the standard questing and world map mantra, or level from 1-80 completely through World vs. World. ArenaNet mentioned specifically that there are quests and things to do in WvW in addition to the player vs. player conflict, so no doubt many people are going to role play as various merchants and adventurers, which is a nice addition to the game. Leveling itself will largely be uniform, in that gaining most levels will “feel” the same when we’re talking straight progression.

To clarify, in most MMOs, levels 1-20 may feel really easy, but once you get up to say, 49-50, it becomes extremely difficult. Guild Wars 2‘s leveling will feel mostly the same, in that it will scale your level with the area you’re in, allowing you to level to 80 based on your comfort zone. This system will allow players to enjoy the world more regardless of the area, as opposed to grind in zones that they hate just to knock their level-notch up one digit.

So long as the game can keep people entertained, Guild Wars 2 is shaping up to be an amazing purchase — at least until level 80. Everything will hinge on whether or not ArenaNet can continue to develop new and interesting content, and whether or not they can keep their early zones updated to entice newer players. Be on the lookout later this year for more Guild Wars 2 news and previews, in addition to our official review. In the near horizon, I’ll give my complete  impressions playing as a Human Necromancer.

At a recent press event, ArenaNet has informed Gamer Limit that considerable effort will be made to ensure that people of all levels could enjoy Guild Wars 2‘s content in the final build of the upcoming MMO. For instance, if a level 80 player were to revist the very first starting area in the game, Guild Wars 2 would scale down that player’s statistics so that they didn’t automatically one-shot all of the locale’s enemies. This will ensure that players can not only go back and enjoy content with their friends and guild-mates, but also with random players that happen to be in the same area. This mechanic is compounded by the fact that you can’t “steal” drops, or quest-related objects from other players, as the game “auto-groups” you with characters in your vicinity.

Inversely, if you find yourself in the game’s “World vs. World” (WvW) function, GW2 will scale your up to level 80. The system will make some concessions so that players who have better gear and more skills will still have an advantage, due to the time you put into your particular character. Competitive PVP will put everyone on the same exact playing ground, both in terms of statistics and loot — the reason for this decision is because ArenaNet wanted the game to be a viable e-port that could be picked up by absolutely anyone, where the outcome was 100% determined by skill.

Out of all of these fairly unique ideas, I absolutely love the fact that you can’t have quest (events) objectives stolen from you. There’s nothing worse than dreading another player moving in on your quest drops, forcing you to take twice as much time as you actually needed to finish a simple quest. With the new grouping system, Guild Wars 2 will feel more like a true MMO when it comes to PVE questing.

One of Guild War 2′s consistently mentioned selling points is that it strives to turn the concept of a typical MMO on it’s head. The main change in Guild Wars 2 is the move towards a more balanced class system, rather than the “trinity” of tanking, healing, and DPS.

We already knew that this was in the cards for GW2, but only recently was it revealed that this was partially inspired by Team Fortress 2‘s class based system. Designers Ben Miller and Jon Peters stated that they wanted parties to have a more organic feel to them, like everyone could contribute in a meaningful way, without having to fulfill prescribed roles.

In regards to that elephant in the room, Peters had this to say: “I just detest dependency and the lack of teamwork it creates. It seems awfully silly to get people to play together and then not have them interact other than to say ‘are you doing your job?”

[Source: VideoGamer.com]

Guild Wars 2 is going to feature a hybrid system that isn’t seen in MMOs often. Once you buy the game for $60, you won’t pay any subscription fees, and you’ll have access to a “F2P store” of sorts, that allows you to conduct micro-transactions for aesthetic gear.

The major upfront perk is that once you buy the game, you can come back at anytime, even years later to continue your adventure. This is one of the biggest disadvantages of current MMOs (The Old Republic immediately comes to mind) — you have to pay the entire monthly fee to even get a taste once your subscription runs out. If you just want to go back into your world and see your character again, you can do that.

The President of ArenaNet stating the following regarding the micro-transaction issue: “We think players should have the opportunity to spend money on items that … offer more ways to express themselves … on account services and on time-saving convenience items … But it’s never OK for players who spend money to have an unfair advantage over players who spend time.”

Well, that settles that. Hopefully ArenaNet will succeed in this ambitious endeavor, and influence the increasingly conventional MMO genre going forward.

[Source: VentureBeat]

Fret not, MMO fans – Guild Wars 2 is still on the way. Details so far about the game have been hazy-at-best, but nonetheless the MMO will have a beta this Spring, with the game to follow in 2012. The beta will be press only at first, but then will switch to a selective public offering (just like TOR).

Considering that by the developer’s own admission Guild Wars 1 was not an MMO (but a heavily instanced CORPG), I’m pretty excited for their second effort, which seems to be more of a complete, non-instanced experience; once again without monthly fees. Will Guild Wars 2 and Mists of Pandaria take a significant chunk out of TOR’s userbase? Tune in sometime this Fall/Winter to find out!

Source: ArenaNet

[These impressions are written from the perspective of a level 41 character (out of a possible level 50), with experience in Warzones, World PVP, Questing and Flashpoints - basically everything but Operations. A full scored review will not follow until we have explored and experienced the entire game. All screenshots are in-game.]

The Old Republic has a lot to live up to. After all the hype and all the budgeting, a game that is now known as “the most expensive MMO ever made”  is going up against a number of market leading MMOs, including the up and coming Guild Wars 2.

So is this “story driven MMO” worth $15 a month, or does it take the “Massive” out of MMO? Read on to find out.

Without hesitation, I have to state that TOR gets it’s hooks in you pretty deep pretty quickly. Almost every class has an incredibly intriguing setup, to the point where each intro could easily be the next Knights of the Old Republic game in their own right.

The Republic Trooper will find his transport ship shot down in the middle of a warzone, right at the beginning of the game; the slave-born Imperial Inquisitor will find himself vying for an apprenticeship against overwhelming odds – whatever your personal style is, there’s something here for everyone. Accompanying these gripping stories is a major selling point: full voice acting.

When I say “full”, I really mean “full” – even meaningless quests from lowly officers and beggars are voiced by a diverse array of individuals, and the acting itself is top shelf material (drawing from industry greats such as David Hayter and Nolan North as player characters).

The starting/early areas such as Hutta and Coruscant are sure to delight, and it’ll feel like you’re blazing through planets at 88 miles per hour. By the time you next check the clock, and realize you’re a human being again, you’ll be somewhere around level 15.

However, after that initial honeymoon, the big budget sheen starts to become just that; a sheen After you progress past the few first planets, the game starts to become more and more like a typical MMO. Quests will start to blend together into kill/fetch variations, and the worlds will become more barren/typical fare.

Initially, you were blazing through planets at what felt like a breakneck pace – now, you’re spending 4-5 levels per planet – and those levels are much harder to earn (incurring some grinding). Of course, you have the option to grind through Space Missions or PVP in addition to PVE content, but both of those aren’t exactly the most exciting options after doing them for the 50th time.

Space Missions will invoke some memories back of old on-rails Star Wars action; but keep in mind the key word here is “some”. These missions are completely guided, and feature your own personal ship, armed with missiles, lasers, and a few special abilities/weapons. At first, these missions were pretty enjoyable, and enough of them kept springing up to the point where the time spent playing them was worth the experience obtained.

Eventually, I realized that none of these missions are varied – they’re the same exact thing every time, down to the last enemy starship appearance. It had gotten to the point where I had memorized every nuance of enemy patterns and the ship’s heading and course – unless it was absolutely necessary, I avoided these missions after level 30. Hopefully, Bioware can patch in an AI system for these missions to keep things varied a bit.

Warzones are also similarly boring after repeated play. At the current moment, there are only 3 missions: Huttball (basketball/soccer), a Hoth-centric Capture the Point/Domination, and a Bombing Run variant set in a hangar. In my opinion, Huttball is a lost cause, as most players ignore the ball in favor of killing each other in the middle.

The Bombing Run is also not the most exciting gametype, as it’s incredibly easy to defend a door (any damage will stop an attacker from arming a bomb), and you need to bomb/hack 5 entry points to win the match. So, that leaves Hoth as the only fun PVP map, and even then, you have a 1/3 chance of getting it when you queue up. Because of this lack of ability to choose your gametype, I hardly play PVP anymore.

At level 41 (you get your “fast” mount at 40), I’ve only encountered World PVP a grand total of ten times, even on a High[ly] populated server – if you’re looking for a heavy world PVP game style like Aion or Dark Age of Camelot, I’d look elsewhere.

Diversions aside, at level 30, the game completes it’s transformation into a run-of-the-mill MMO. You’ll trek across planets slowly with your 90% speed increase mount you get at level 25, find flight paths, do typical quests, and hearth/take those flight paths to turn those quests in. Although you could find solace in Flashpoint based instance distractions, you’re going to want to do the bulk of your leveling through questing or PVP, and your mileage may vary on either account. Stories continue past level 30 (into a second Act), but they’re  not nearly as exciting as the first half, mainly because of all the grinding involved at later levels, and how sparse the actual story content is.

For the most part, I solo quested all the way to 41 – I only stopped a few times to do “heroic” missions (quests suggesting 2-4 players). The reason I only stopped a few times wasn’t out of boredom, however, as the XP rewards are pretty decent for heroics; but availability.

Simply put, in my experience, you have to spam general chat or keep your eye on general for heroic advertisements. At any given time, there are only around 30-50 people on my current planet, making it hard to find groups often, and showing a disadvantage of the fragmented “planet” system, and not one cohesive world, a la most MMOs. Another issue is if you’re in the hub section (The Fleet), getting someone to come to your planet and help with a quest is more of a pain than running over to your friend’s real life house across town.

You have to enter at least 4-5 different load screens before you can exit the Fleet, get to your ship, select the planet, leave the airlock, enter the planet, and get to the actual quest. Most MMOs have it figured out by now (ie portals in WoW’s hub worlds) – unfortunately for TOR, it further fragments the game.

However, despite my issues with it, I’d personally recommend that everyone give The Old Republic a chance. I truly think it’s as close as we’re going to get to KOTOR 3, and I’d go so far as to say that each individual story (all eight!) rivals the epic scale of KOTOR 1. At the very least, you’re going to want to pay the ~$50 to take the plunge for your trial month, and then decide from there; because end-game wise, there really isn’t a whole lot to get your feet wet with.

At the current moment, there are two Operations (raids), three total Warzones, and a level 50 PVP planet (Ilum). That’s about it. On my server (and many others), Guilds have already cleared out all of the Operation’s Hard Modes for days, and are hungry for more.

The true test of survival for TOR will be if they can pump out new Operations and Warzones at a faster rate than they bleed subscribers. From what I’ve seen on a personal level, a lot of people are already going back to World of Warcraft, or are planning to play Guild Wars 2 if TOR doesn’t get more updates.

Personally, I don’t think I’m going to do much with my main after I become 50, but that won’t stop me from making at least two to three more characters and experiencing their stories. As long as the prospect of a mostly solo journey doesn’t bum you out, I’d suggest doing the same.