GarfunkeL
Racism Expert
Well, after trying TERA out for a bit more, I'll take that back. It's prettier than any other MMO I've ever seen - yeah, beating TOR too. The curious mixture of cartoonish and "realistic" graphics work well too. It's outrageously fanservice-y as my level 25 priestess has been wearing mini-coctail dresses or similar, with high heels of course and flashing her panties while running & jumping, all the time and same goes for all the female characters. Some of the male characters are pretty outrageous as well, though this is somewhat balanced by the cute furry race and the "fearsome" furry race.
The combat system is actually very nice change from usual MMOs. ohWOW got it totally wrong. There is no "auto-attack" and you don't button-smash, as you can keep buttons pressed. Many attacks take charging - for example, warrior's basic attack hits in three stages, each successive one for more damage. Thing is, you can't change direction nor block while it's happening, so you must time it well. If monsters hit you, there's a fair chance of them either interrupting you or even knocking you down. You get additional abilities fairly quickly and utilizing them and chaining them to combos is the bread-and-butter of the combat. Bad combos are a waste of mana and time, while good combos can knock out whole groups of enemies without you taking any damage. Data4 is correct that it can get boring using the same "tried and true" combo all the time BUT most zones alternate the types/groups of enemies you face and there isn't a single combo (at least not on the classes I've tried) that works flawlessly on both singular, heavy mobs, groups of light monters and groups of minions led by a heavy.
Playing as a healer is especially nice, since I can solo-quest easily enough (something that was nigh impossible, as a Holy Priest, back in vanilla WoW) even heal-glyphed ('specced) and if I get bored of that, I'll fire up the LFG-tool and do a run or two if the instances. Since heals must be targeted, just like all attacks, being a healer is actually much more fun than in other MMOs - you have to not only juggle aggro/threat plus mana/MP but distances to your party members and the range of enemy melee attacks and specials. That's as a Priest, not sure how different it would be as a Mystic.
That said, it's certainly not perfect. They have obviously skipped corners where-ever they can, as there's only one zone to level at a time, though I guess WoW is quite special in that you always have at least two zones to level in, and many armour/items are just recolours of previous ones. Rare/superior armors mostly seem to have unique models/textures, or least the two rare robes I've found so far stood apart from the normal/uncommon ones. Monster re-colouring is another issue but that plagues all MMOs. It's just not feasible to have unique looking monsters for every zone, I guess.
Anyway, I'm quite charmed by TERA. Maybe it's because I've been trying TOR since it went F2P with a buddy of mine and compared to it, TERA is awesome. Plus I haven't really played any MMO's after quitting WoW back in 2008, so I'm not fed up with them. There is certainly a lot of grinding as all quests - aside from the few useless crafting ones - revolve around killing things. But the mixture of highly-detailed T&A female models, active combat, gorgeous scenery and pretty nice music has kept me interested, so far. If you can stand the huge download, definitely give it a go.
I alternate. I'm more of a PvE and Solo player so theres no real guild or bros that I'm bothering with such an irregular schedule.
