E3 10: TERA Impressions

I admit I’m not a heavy MMO player. It’s not that I hate them, I just know myself too well. I will get addicted, so I avoid them like the plague. I don’t know what it is but MMO’s are like drugs. You know it’s bad for you and all the grinding gets annoying after a while, but you can’t stop playing it no matter how hard you try. I seriously never saw one of my friends again after he got into World of Warcraft. When I heard from En Masse Entertainment that TERA will offer a “unique perspective and experience to the popular MMO genre.” I couldn’t help but be intrigued.

As I entered the room I was given a choice of classes which ranged from fast melee types to magic based Sorcerers. We could choose between Berserkers, (melee, axes, unpredictable) Warrior, (melee, fast, swords) Sorcerer, (magic, long ranged) Slayer (melee, big arse sword) and our guide was a Priest. (magic, useless saves your arse) I have a habit of playing it safe and without fail always go for a sword wielder, so I picked the Warrior. What can I say I’m unoriginal. As a set-up we were given the choice between using the standard mouse and keyboard or a Xbox 360 controller. For the sake of testing it out and the fact I’m pretty much useless with a mouse, I used the controller.

Our mission was simple, get to the top of the hill and beat the boss. First we were shown how to fight by facing a giant enemy crab. The main draw TERA has up it’s sleeve was it’s action RPG elements. While standard MMO’s use a turn based/ATB style system, TERA instead uses a more fast paced approach. You are given the ablity to run, dodge and attack at will during combat. A Kingdom Hearts to your Final Fantasy. As far as I know only the melee based characters can dodge since it’s a certain skill you have to obtain. But the main idea of attacking enemies is to time your attack based on what your enemy does, basically Action Game 101. How well you do is based on your skill rather than statistics. Sure you can be a Level 50 warrior but if you aren’t any good at dodging you might as well be Level 5. To ensure it isn’t spammed, dodging requires MP. Your MP recharges faster when you attack enemies making a nice balance between offensive and defence. Along with the standard attack you are given many different skills which range from combos to stun attacks. I didn’t get much chance to look around the room but other classes work in similar ways, except for Sorcerers who stay at the back casting spell as you normally would. Only difference is magic can be casted faster than in most MMO’s. The Priest of the other hand uses healing circles, the more concentrated and smaller the circle the more it will heal, so you can choose to do a wide area small heal that will get everyone or focus on one player. The circle won’t follow you once casted so a level of communication must be high. During the boss battle I wasn’t paying attention to our Priest and dodged out of the way of a heal by mistake, wasting his precious mana in the process.

The game had a heavy focus on team work, being a higher level mission meant that we needed to be in a team in order to survive. a well communicated team will obviously win, something the group before us didn’t do very well, which lead to their demise during the boss fight. Our alertness needed to be high, even our first enemy took 5 people what seemed like an eternity. Which was probably closer to 5 minutes in retrospect. Thankfully our other enemies went down like flies with our 3 brawlers charging in and our Sorcerer and Priest for support on the sidelines. What really stood out was how fast paced combat was, everyone quickly dodging out the way and counter-attacking in an instant. This need to be alert made for a more interesting experience, and from a personal standpoint it made for a better game. One thing that bored me in most MMO’s was the lack of doing something during combat, after doing all your buffs there is very little you can do other than wait to use items. TERA will at least make the combat aspect of MMO’s a little more exciting.

Our demo only covered combat, but from the looks of things TERA will be a pretty standard MMO affair only with an added action RPG element. Chances are you won’t be swayed to trying this out if you aren’t a fan of the typical MMO tropes, but those looking for something slightly different in combat, TERA is something to look out for. TERA is set to come out in 2011 on the PC.