for anyone who's never played before, this game is the greatest MMO made to date (personal opinion). I have played it nearly 4 years on the Korean servers, briefly on the Japanese servers and for a month on the Chinese servers. this game is THE reason I learned to read Korean. we have maintained a very active community over at
http://www.bladeandsouldojo.com to support this game. fans have made decently thorough EN patches for it to help those who have no interest in learning to read JP or CH. I've dozens of videos of various parts of the game and hundreds of pictures and translations done. if anyone has any questions about anything in the game just ask.
that said, it is the single most beautiful game out and for anyone who has played Korean MMOs you'll understand that they make beautiful games period. the fluid motion, combat (arguably vs Tera) and actions overall in the game are better than anything you've played before. many will not like the lack of tab target, it's a dieing style that the Koreans thankfully prefer to avoid. the character creator is typically NCsoft meaning there's 4 tabs of sliders each tab being several pages. character creator takes many people hours, DAYS to complete. you can also save any character profile to copy it or give to friends in game. classes are race locked and each race has an exclusive except the elegant Kun (changed to Yun for NA/EU). Lin technically have 2 but one is considered a hybrid of 2 others. there are no healers. the generic trinity of tank healer and dps is gone. everyone can tank or dps and will. 2 classes have talents to increase their threat which help them to tank. a summoner can augment their cat to tank as well. a couple of the classes have some powerful group support skills (forcemaster, summoner, warlock) but there's no real healer/support. to counter this you must know how to play your class, time blocks, read movements of bosses to avoid instant kill actions and taking excessive damage.
unless you just use a default template character its rare to see 2 people ever alike because of the in depth character creator engine. couple that with the fact that dobaks are for the most part purely cosmetic and the fashion show ensues. flagging yourself for PVP requires equipping your factions dobak or one of the dozens of minor faction ones. the dobaks look different on each race/gender as well. you'll pick up literally dozens of dobaks from quests, drops, factions, farming, instances, etc. in your bank there's a second tab purely for costumes. for those who want to play the summoner and have an adorable cat, you can dress up your cat in their own specific costumes! and change their appearance at several scattered cat beauty shops in game. want a panda cat? done. tabby? ok. sealpoint? yep.
crafting isnt something you as a player do in game, you set work orders with the guilds. they complete them then mail you the results. crafting is required for the later QingGong movement quests as you have to turn in some specific crafted only items that require crafted materials from ALL professions. you can craft some basic gear and accessories that work well as upgrade fodder. also cooking gives nice stat bonuses from the food produced. alchemy for obvious reasons is popular. making charms is important also as you need to release cursed items. you can pick up any 2 gathering professions and 2 crafting. each gathering supplies 2 crafting and each crafting requires 2 gathering, some pairs line up perfectly, others do not. I'd link the complete page for it all on NCsoft's site but it's 100% Korean.
I'll end here and next time post media stuff from my adventures. again if anyone has any questions speak up.
I always play a healer/support so I'm interested to see how this goes for me. I don't know if I'll play the summoner or the Force Master!
