Http://2moons.acclaim.com
I'm looking for some people to sign on and play this game alongside me and the missus in the hope of creating a UK/EU based guild. But first let me explain a few things...
I've tried the whole gamut of MMOs out there. World of Warcraft, Dungeons & Dragons Online, Warhammer: Age of Reckoning, Age of Conan, Final Fantasy and many, many more so I think I have a fair point of view on MMOs these days.
2Moons had attracted me a while back, but was locked out to non-North American players due to licensing issues. This is no longer the issue, the game has had a big update and now has a new character class.
Price: The first thing that attracted me was the price: Its a Free To Play / Micro-transaction based game, so you can try it for free. Through my initial inspection of the store, theres nothing in there thats absolutely essential for day to day playing, just the usual 'Super' Health potions and XP bonus potions.
Game DL/Updates: Its only a 1GB download, and updates to the current game took me around 15 minutes to install over my 10Mb connection.
Characters & Creation: The characters can be loosely grouped into your usual fare of Tank, DPS, Mage, Healer, Hybrid, but theres a lot more depth to the characters than say WoW. Maybe not like DDO which Im very used to playing, but its a stat & skill system that very close to Diablo2.
Actual creation is very simple. You choose a character 'Type' and a name, and your done. There's no facial changes / hair styles ect, and no customisation of initial stats or skills.
Levelling Up: The devil here is in the detail. You have 4 main stats and a set of skills that are 99% unavailable when you start. Stats are nice and simple - Strength, Dexterity, Health and Spirit. You start off with stats such as 20/10/15/15, and every time you level up you get 5 points to put into these stats. The game nicely exposes what those points do when you trial where you put them by showing the effect they have if you were to commit before placing them.
Skills are bit more invovled; you need a skill trainer and the appropiate skill book and level requirement to learn new skills, as well as the pre-requisite skills in the skill tree. You gain one skill point per level, with which you can either open up a new skill or improve a currently existing skill. Each character type has a broad range of skills, probably around the 50-60 mark so theres a wide range of options and 'builds' to choose from.
All in all, its very Diablo2-esque in character levelling - simple, open and enjoyable.
Oh, by the way, theres 180 levels for your characters to play through currently. And yes, you can get one total Skill respec if you want to at higher levels.
Combat: Now, I like my combat. I'm no PvP master, infact I prefer teamplay PvE to PvP but I as I looking for something that has been missing since my massive Diablo2 grinding days.
And this has it in buckets and buckets of Gory, stylised fast paced combat action.
I was expecting a pure WoW clone to be honest. WoW is slow and laborious, questing I found dull due to the length of time it took to complete even one quest, and the combat slow and 'push button when timer off'.
I found 2Moons a different kettle of fish altogether. Its still the Auto-Attack/Use-Skill model of combat seen in WoW/WAR/LOTRO and the other clones out there, but the speed of combat and the way that skills string together into combos make this much quicker and much faster paced.
Also, the combat system incorporates a nice little 'knockback/stun' system that I feel lets the lower DPS output character types compete with the higher ones fairly in solo play. Basically as long as you keep landing the blows, the monster will be pushed back a step and stunned, while your character while keep stepping up and delivering attacks. Only if the monster blocks an attack does it get to deliver damage to you through its own attack. the whole stepping up and continue to attack in melee works very well, I found.
Questing: Its limited, granted, so far I've had the usual "Go there and kill XX amount of so and so becuase of this made up reason", but this game gives you so much FUN killing XX amount of monsters that you end killing XXXX amount of monsters out sheer pleasure.
This basically means that it takes 5-10 minutes to complete a normal quest, instead of 30 minutes of grinding per quest.
Another small bonus I found was much of the mobs are passive, so you can motor through areas without having to kill loads of carp on the way to where you want to get. Only those that are well above your level are agressive,
There are dungeons in the game as well, but have only so far encountered the Maze for Newbies which is solo only. Nicely challenging, it really did make me think how to attack and how to handle groups of Mobs (kill as fast as possible!
) .
Problems: Of course theres problems with the game, I would be remiss to not name them.
Forums: The game support forums are a bit of a joke to be honest. Full of insults and lazy talk, as also its obvious a lot of under 16s play this depsite the games 17+ rating.
Community: Err, not really had much luck in grouping so far with others (make that none!), but i think the potential is there for Teamplaying. Especially if we can get an EU guild going. there was certainly no newbie recruiting for guilds going on.
Limited exposure: Currently have a level 20 Vicious Summoner, so have not exactly seen much of the game yet.
Overall Opinion: If you want fast paced, enjoyable combatr MMO that has a distinctly Diablo2 feel to it, want it free to play and want it easy to get in to, this is the MMO to try for you
Its also got some awesome Asian-style graphics that doesnt need much hardware to run
*********************************************************
So if your interested in playuing, and get into this, drop me a shout and we can hook up in game to form a Guild.
I'm looking for some people to sign on and play this game alongside me and the missus in the hope of creating a UK/EU based guild. But first let me explain a few things...
I've tried the whole gamut of MMOs out there. World of Warcraft, Dungeons & Dragons Online, Warhammer: Age of Reckoning, Age of Conan, Final Fantasy and many, many more so I think I have a fair point of view on MMOs these days.
2Moons had attracted me a while back, but was locked out to non-North American players due to licensing issues. This is no longer the issue, the game has had a big update and now has a new character class.
Price: The first thing that attracted me was the price: Its a Free To Play / Micro-transaction based game, so you can try it for free. Through my initial inspection of the store, theres nothing in there thats absolutely essential for day to day playing, just the usual 'Super' Health potions and XP bonus potions.
Game DL/Updates: Its only a 1GB download, and updates to the current game took me around 15 minutes to install over my 10Mb connection.
Characters & Creation: The characters can be loosely grouped into your usual fare of Tank, DPS, Mage, Healer, Hybrid, but theres a lot more depth to the characters than say WoW. Maybe not like DDO which Im very used to playing, but its a stat & skill system that very close to Diablo2.
Actual creation is very simple. You choose a character 'Type' and a name, and your done. There's no facial changes / hair styles ect, and no customisation of initial stats or skills.
Levelling Up: The devil here is in the detail. You have 4 main stats and a set of skills that are 99% unavailable when you start. Stats are nice and simple - Strength, Dexterity, Health and Spirit. You start off with stats such as 20/10/15/15, and every time you level up you get 5 points to put into these stats. The game nicely exposes what those points do when you trial where you put them by showing the effect they have if you were to commit before placing them.
Skills are bit more invovled; you need a skill trainer and the appropiate skill book and level requirement to learn new skills, as well as the pre-requisite skills in the skill tree. You gain one skill point per level, with which you can either open up a new skill or improve a currently existing skill. Each character type has a broad range of skills, probably around the 50-60 mark so theres a wide range of options and 'builds' to choose from.
All in all, its very Diablo2-esque in character levelling - simple, open and enjoyable.
Oh, by the way, theres 180 levels for your characters to play through currently. And yes, you can get one total Skill respec if you want to at higher levels.
Combat: Now, I like my combat. I'm no PvP master, infact I prefer teamplay PvE to PvP but I as I looking for something that has been missing since my massive Diablo2 grinding days.
And this has it in buckets and buckets of Gory, stylised fast paced combat action.
I was expecting a pure WoW clone to be honest. WoW is slow and laborious, questing I found dull due to the length of time it took to complete even one quest, and the combat slow and 'push button when timer off'.
I found 2Moons a different kettle of fish altogether. Its still the Auto-Attack/Use-Skill model of combat seen in WoW/WAR/LOTRO and the other clones out there, but the speed of combat and the way that skills string together into combos make this much quicker and much faster paced.
Also, the combat system incorporates a nice little 'knockback/stun' system that I feel lets the lower DPS output character types compete with the higher ones fairly in solo play. Basically as long as you keep landing the blows, the monster will be pushed back a step and stunned, while your character while keep stepping up and delivering attacks. Only if the monster blocks an attack does it get to deliver damage to you through its own attack. the whole stepping up and continue to attack in melee works very well, I found.
Questing: Its limited, granted, so far I've had the usual "Go there and kill XX amount of so and so becuase of this made up reason", but this game gives you so much FUN killing XX amount of monsters that you end killing XXXX amount of monsters out sheer pleasure.
This basically means that it takes 5-10 minutes to complete a normal quest, instead of 30 minutes of grinding per quest.
Another small bonus I found was much of the mobs are passive, so you can motor through areas without having to kill loads of carp on the way to where you want to get. Only those that are well above your level are agressive,
There are dungeons in the game as well, but have only so far encountered the Maze for Newbies which is solo only. Nicely challenging, it really did make me think how to attack and how to handle groups of Mobs (kill as fast as possible!
) .Problems: Of course theres problems with the game, I would be remiss to not name them.
Forums: The game support forums are a bit of a joke to be honest. Full of insults and lazy talk, as also its obvious a lot of under 16s play this depsite the games 17+ rating.
Community: Err, not really had much luck in grouping so far with others (make that none!), but i think the potential is there for Teamplaying. Especially if we can get an EU guild going. there was certainly no newbie recruiting for guilds going on.
Limited exposure: Currently have a level 20 Vicious Summoner, so have not exactly seen much of the game yet.
Overall Opinion: If you want fast paced, enjoyable combatr MMO that has a distinctly Diablo2 feel to it, want it free to play and want it easy to get in to, this is the MMO to try for you
Its also got some awesome Asian-style graphics that doesnt need much hardware to run
*********************************************************
So if your interested in playuing, and get into this, drop me a shout and we can hook up in game to form a Guild.
