Tera closed beta

[Gogan]

I keep finding new things I like about this game. I really need to take some screenshots and/or video to demonstrate things. Some more random observations...

I'll second Path's opinion about grinding mobs. I know we've all been trained to loathe grinding mobs, but the combat and the mob AI actually makes it fun. At least so far. Each mob has one or more "tells" that indicate a particular attack it will perform. Maybe its eyes will flash red, or it'll perform some kind of animation (e.g. bangs its club against its shield). If you pay attention and are quick, you can avoid these attacks entirely. You do have to be relatively quick though. This holds true even up to "elite" mobs, which recommend a 5-man party to kill. They're all soloable if you pay close attention and are quick. The fight will take 10-15 mins and any mistakes can result in a quick death, but it's definitely doable for skilled players. It's quite rewarding.

There are repeatable quests in Tera, which usually involve killing 10 mobs, for example. What I like about these quests is I can pick it up, go out and kill, say, 50 of those mobs and go back to town and turn in the quest 5 times. I don't have to turn in the quest after every 10 mobs.

There's a built in screen in Tera that lets you view all of the guilds on the server, how many members they have, what level they are, how much "praise" they have (part of the political system, I think). You can even apply to guilds in-game. The whole guild system is really well done in Tera, and I haven't even gotten into the whole political system yet. There's guild leveling with bonuses, just like WoW. You can watch this video to learn more about guild leveling (which includes guild housing). Rumor has it player housing is in the works too.

Leveling a healer is starting to get tough solo. I'm level 37 at the moment, and the speed at which a dps class kills things is so much faster than me. I don't have any trouble killing things really (though I have to be careful when taking on a bunch of mobs), but it takes significantly longer than an archer, for example. Getting to 60 as a healer will be an accomplishment. I hear Lancers (tanks) are the same way.