Game review after 75 hours

narckoz

I have extensive experience in MMORPGs(Lineage II, AION, Archeage, Black Desert) and would like to express my opinion after 75 hours of playing this game. It's very beautiful, the world is beautiful, even though it's an alpha, the game is addictive, you want to explore, but there are a couple of huge downsides.

1. Lack of fast travel (I'm a grown man, I want to go in for a couple of hours, do a couple of quests, explore new places in the game, but the thought that I will have to walk to the point of interest for 5-15 or even 20 minutes... and the worst thing is that you have to go back later) - They could at least make a reverse teleport to the points (cities) where the player set the respawn point.
2. I was very pleased with the crafting system, and in my naivety I wanted to explore almost everything... but I discovered that you can only study 4 lessons to reach an advanced level. The crafting system is intertwined, and to make a weapon you need skills from other branches (this makes it almost impossible to create a closed loop - you are always dependent on other players). For me personally, who doesn't want to be a member of large guilds and have to wake up somewhere with an alarm clock, or spend 2 hours transporting some cargo from one city to another - this is a dead end.
3. There's no way to transfer items between your own characters, even though they're linked to the citizenship system. For some reason, there's no way to transfer items (mail, inventory, anything). This completely ruins the crafting prospects for solo players.
4. Of course, lags, dissynchroni and being thrown out of the game.(but I think and hope this is temporary and related to the alpha version)

Conclusion: overall, I liked the world and the game, and I'd love to spend 2-3 hours a day exploring the world, crafting, and so on. But the way it's currently implemented, it's impossible. I hope the developers change these critical mechanics, add more content (interesting quests), and of course, improve the technical aspects of the game. (PvP and sometimes PvE, when everything freezes on your screen for two seconds, is impossible.)

Novacadian

You are correct that the game is not geared so much to the solo player. That had been my style of play from the beginning of alpha until now. Recently joined a small guild.

Re: Fast Travel - You may consider going off on your adventure and logging off where the exploring is to continue. You will reappear where you had logged out. You can then continue on exploring until you wish to return. Items can be sold in any settlement and the "Items" area of your storage can be accessed from any storage on the map.

Re: Crafting - Again, the intention of the game is to foster player interactions. With the market system you should be able to sell some items which you can craft on your own in order to raise fund to purchase those things you need yet do not have the crafting ability to do so on your own. My journeyman alchemist can craft nice healing and mana potions on their own. These could be traded/sold for other items which my character does not have the skill to produce. A small guild can go a long way to aiding that process. My guild is only 30+ members and does not impose stringent scheduling at least up to this point.

Hope that gives some options open to you.