Truly the rpg of our time.
Gameplay: Ground breaking in many ways. This game starts you in Ascalon, a peaceful country that is having a sort of cold war with the charr, a race of evil minotaur like creatures. You, and thousands of other players, are selected to be the hero to end the Charr threat. This is where the story brings you in at a nice slow pace. The exclusion of a tutorial is very well replaced with a happy friendly countryside (even the catacombs from ashfords abbey aren't very scary or depressing.) This area in the game is where you will learn your basic spells and abilities, while gaining a few levels. It's basically designed to give you a good feel for how the games mechanics work, with weak enemies, and no death penalty so as not to slap any newcomers in the face. After you complete this area, the true game starts to develop, as something known as "the searing" basically kills everyone in Ascalon. Those charr bastards... Anyway two years go by and you are now in a ruined wasteland that was once ascalon. You will get some better armor and things here, and set of to end the charr and everything else bad in the game world, which is amazingly huge. I frequently will still hear names of places I have never seen until I get there. The skills system works nicely as well. Your character is given 8 skills to pick from the one's he gets throughout the storyline. This may seem limiting, but it really forces you to think about it and strategize for different situations. Also this game, PVP or not, is very team based. Almost every quest after the pre searing ascalon requires a group, simply because they are too hard alone. There are henchmen in each town for you to get, but they usually suck. One of the faults with this system is that in the later levels you will need a party who is really skilled, as the missions get really hard by the end. This can be frustrating, as many people in this game, for lack of better terms, are retarded. Eventually you will however find a party you work well with and beat the missions. Overall not perfect in Gameplay, though very close.
Graphics: Graphics in this game look very nice, even on my crappy 5 year old computer. It may disappoint some since it doesn't offer a huge array of options for graphics, but it already looks nice at base levels so it doesn't really need sliders. One of the things that bothered me and made me give it a 9 was the clarity of distant objects. Even at full settings, the object will turn into 2D blurry photos worthy of nothing above the N64. Thats not even really really far off objects you cant really see anyway. Sometimes it's a tree only 40 feet away, or it's the wall of Ascalon in the distance, which would be fine if it weren't so huge and noticeable. Overall though this is very solid graphics wise.
Sound: I haven't once experienced a glitch in this system yet. Their are tons of sounds and tons of orchestral songs that play at just the right times to immerse you into the moment. Very solid.
Value: Huge game. 50 bucks. No monthly fee. Awesome.
Tilt: If you aren't already playing this game, give me your name, address, and phone number so I can come over and punch you in the face for being stupid. Go play it already!!