If you are looking for a WoW clone, then run far away. But if you want a true to form Korean grind, this is your game.
At first glace the game appears quite impressive, three races, multiple classes (three-four basic and then tiered after that), diverse skill tree, large race vs. race vs. race scale battles all in a sci-fi universe. The small Bellato Union with their giant MAUs, the Holy Alliance Cora with their magical summons and the Accretia Empire with their doomsday siege weaponry, would make for a very exciting and rewarding experience. This however, based on your play style and your familiarity with western MMORPGs, could be a good or bad thing.
WoW has changed the face of the MMORPG for the western world when it was released. It boasts now the highest fan base in the Americas and is rapidly becoming the number one MMOG of all time, if it isn’t already. There is quick leveling at lower levels that mean everyone gets powerful very quickly and then at level 60 or so spends all their time trying to find the right drop to complete their epic gear. This is the MMORPG that the western world plays and thus wants. However to compare WoW to RFOnline would be unfair to RFO.
RFO is based on the Korean way of MMORPG, which is to totally devote your life to the ‘grind’. The ‘grind’ is the nonstop PvE or PvP action to get that next 1% or in some cases the next 0.01% exp. With a max level in the current patches to RFO being lvl 50 this may seem low, but seeing as the game is still only two months old, there are only a handful of players over the lvl 40 mark and only enough to count on a single hand are nearing the lvl 45 mark. Not only will you ‘grind’ for hours and hours for a single percent of exp (and I do mean only 1%), you will also ‘grind’ away your PTs.
PTs are your current skill level is things like melee, range, defense, and shield. Every time you attack or get hit by a monster or enemy race with enough damage, you will gain a certain number of skill points. These skills points level up your PTs, which in turn allows you to wear stronger armors, equip more powerful weapons and cast more deadly magic. As you level your max PT increases which in turn you will have to level up or you may end up become ‘gimped’ (a high level character’s term for someone who power leveled and didn’t raise their PTs and now can’t wear better armor or carry a bigger stick)
This action of leveling up and then maxing out your PTs creates the before mentioned ‘grind’. Most players after playing the first 10-15 levels realize what is actually required to continue and most run back to the ease of WoW. Most reviewers also stop at this point and complain that the game is lacking content and too tedious. True the game doesn’t have large map scrawling quests with delivering eggs from a mountain top to a NPC three towns over for a piece of worthless gear because that is not the focus of this game. The Race vs. Race vs. Race (RvRvR) is the primary focus of this game. With the current patches there are at least three maps that you can encounter enemies of another race and engage in PvP play. However this is not recommended for anyone under level 25 and at that should only do so after level 30. So levels 1-29 are a grind to get to the PvP mode. But once you get there, a magical thing happens, the game gets really exciting. Currently there is a giant battle for control of the central mining area (more later) every 8 hours that faces all three races against each other is a battle of dominance. Depending on the server you choose to play on this can be a blast or frustrating as hell. The main server (Spirit) is the most balanced so far and makes for large scale, fairly even battles every 8 hours. The other servers tend to have some imbalance (on water it’s really bad apparently) that means one race wins all the time. The GMs have promised to fix this imbalance soon but there is no time table.
Winning the Chip War (CW) for mining control gives the victor access and protection at the center of the map where members of the winning faction can mine ore at a faster rate. The minerals mined can then be processed into materials needed for the crafter class or sold for cash. Also the amount processed as a race determines the tax rate for all goods bought and sold on the market. If you don’t process the ore mined, the tax rate will climb and everything will cost more and then the inverse. A nice system really seeing as it seems to punish those with the largest population that neglects to control the tax rate.
As for the PvP portion of the game, you will not find any 1v1 battles this time around because of the potion system. There are no healers in the game so health is restored with potions that can be bought at must sundries littered throughout the towns and maps. Once you get to the PvP part of the game you will find that you need to cooperate with other members of your race to take down enemies. People complain about this fact, but once you try it a few times it can be a blast.
Wrap Up:
The reason that this game scores low by most reviewers is because the game takes a while to get into and most reviewers can’t spend the time to get a character to lvl 30 with decent PTs and start the bulk of the game. If you want a game that is quick to get into and with easy leveling, then RFOnline isn’t for you, find a copy of WoW and play there. If you don’t mind the Korean grind and lack of exciting quests, then you’re found the right game. The game is undergoing some bigger patches from the home planet so more options are being added soon, so even if this games doesn’t appeal now, come back in a few months and see if the new feature intrigue you. There will be in later patches, guild bought bases, guild vs. guild battles, inter-race soccer games (not kidding), space battles, planet scale wars, guild controlled planet vs. guild controlled planet (at least a year off) and so on, so the world is expanding and shouldn’t be thrown aside because of the long grind.