A nice attempt by Funcom but it's looks can't save what is overall a disappointing expansion.
What was once a broken game now is a functional one.
So it was with great anticipation I waited for this expansion and sadly, it did not live up to it's expectation.
The expansion takes you to the mystical lands of Khitai(along with a new race namely the Khitans to play as), Howard's own version of ancient China. And as you enter the new areas you can tell right away that alot of effort has gone into these areas.
They look very chinese, from the buildings to the weaponry and armor. The musical score is the crown on the top with it's clear chinese instruments and feel.
Since I wanted the full experience, I made a khitan character.
Sadly you still start in Tortage and the same backstory which seems a bit cheap but no matter, Tortage isn't that bad thankfully.
After Tortage you are taken to the new lvl 20-40 area of Khitai(if you are a non-khitan character you can travel there and quest there if you wish) and it's a excellent start for the expansion.
So excellent that I was sad that I had to leave when I hit lvl 40 and I have to do the old quests again.
But no matter I thought, at lvl 80 I can do the new Khitai areas and judging from the 20-40 area, these will be just as good.
But when I got to lvl 80 and started to quest in the new areas, disappointment hit in a big way.
These areas are all about grind.
You pick 5 factions out of 10 and you do the same repeatable quests over and over again until you get the items, weapons and armor you want.
And I'm talking serious grind, you can be forced to do the same quest atleast 150 times just to get one armor piece.
You see when you do a quest for your faction, you get tokens, you get 2 tokens for each mission(the higher level quests give a few more) and only 2 of the armor pieces cost 300 tokens. The rest can cost up to 3000 tokens so you can see that you are in for some serious grind.
There is a story involved but even that is all about grind. You are sent to talk to a faction but they won't speak to you unless you have gotten a certain rank. So you grind quests to get the rank.
Once that is done you are sent to another faction and you have to repeat the process.
Sure there is dungeons and raids as well but again, it's all about grinding even there.
Overall this is a very disappointing expansion. It started so well and the locations are so beautiful and well made only to drop the ball completely when it comes to the quests and the exteme amount of grind.
Such a shame.