Wandering in the lands of massively-multiplayer online worlds as often as I have, I always knew this day would come eventually. Nevertheless, Lineage II: The Chaotic Throne takes the prize for making me actually do it. Today, in the course of playing, I actually sat down and worked out exactly how many of a certain opponent I needed to kill to get to the next level.
Why? Because I knew that would be all I would be doing until I reached that level. And when I managed it, I worked out the figure for the next.
We return to the old warhorse Lineage II in the wake of its latest patch: a one-gig monster that must be its largest since launch. It expands the game with a mass of new features: building on key strengths while introducing new areas and new race the Kamael.
Other additions include occasional instanced dungeons and an auction system for the really rare items, instead of just relying on player-run shops. It's all trying to move Lineage into the post-World of Warcraft world. Which is all well and good, but it does nothing to alter the fact that at its heart, this is a pure, grind-based Korean-model MMO of stupefying tedium.
The new starting area created to showcase the Kamael only draws attention to how out of date this game is. You stand in a field, hitting monsters until you go up a level. For as long as most games last, that's it.
A handful of quests are available, but they're either simple running back and forth between NPCs, placed distantly on the sprawling faux-epic levels, or simply something that gives you a little more money or an item for killing a load of the monsters you're standing in a field with.
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