Lineage 2 now and back then

This wont be a review as Ive made review few years back. This is how I feel about the changes of this game. Ive started to play at the time of C3 and continued through C4 and C5.
The game back then was amazing - with strong medieval and magic theme, stunning art, amazing music and the gameplay was actually really well balanced and fun. Back then it was very easy to make new friends, play with them and relax. And you can make PvPs at low level and even PKs - dont get me wrong - I dont like to PK players but I dont get upset of being PKed. And its fun when big crowd of newbies chase after a PK. And its fun when somebody tries to PK you and at the end he is at the ground.
What about the grinding that the American players hate so much? Actually for me this was time to enjoy the game, to kill mobs and spent time with friends. More monsters to kill = more time with friends in a party. I dont like doing quests - run to location X talk with NPC Y do a pointless errand, run a lot more. I like to fight mobs and at every level Lineage 2 offers you a lot of different mobs to fight so I dont get bored.
Now about the players strength. Back then you can easily kill mobs at your level. Even level 70 sps could kill level 70-72 mobs - one or two without burning its all mana. The strong ones were the Raid Bosses but even they wasnt this tough as now. And they ran slower ... Now its almost impossible to solo high level monsters - but I like to play solo. I like to play with friends but I like to play solo when I feel it. Now I cant. You need a party of several people to kill a single mob. And some of the classes now are pointless as they are too much nerfed. I remember the time when we with one party fought in LOA and it was so much fun. And at the time of summoners I really like the trains and the train killing.
Now about the art. The new art of the game is soo much WOW like that at times I question myself what exactly am I playing. The old art is stylish, with music matching exactly the location and creating a feeling that you are living in a medieval fairy tail. The new art is flashy, with too much colors and shiny things like sparkling vampires. Lineage 2 was the most beautiful and amazing game, why are they doing this to it? Now at this new locations the feeling is gone and you only get the flashy stuff. And the clothes. Back then the clothes were actually cool and in the theme of the game. Now are sparkling as sparkling ... and those cloaks are ugly and look so artificial. I miss all the starting towns. I wont even talk about the skills and the gameplay after level 80.
With every change now the game feels less and less like Lineage 2 and more and more like WOW. I simply want one thing - server with C3 or C4 on it. And if they like to develop the game to made new territories with stronger monsters.

Now I cant even play for long as I get easily frustrated. I miss the old Lineage2.


And even now when I listen to this I get goosebumps.

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Looking Back

With the new year a less than two days away, I thought Id take a look back at the where weve been.  Lets hop back to last year for a second though.  Back in the first week of December of 2012, I set out some pacing guidelines for myself.  I wanted to post twice a week.  This is the 156th post for 2013.  Combine that with the 13 from last December and you have 169.  Which breaks down to a tiny bit more than three posts per week for 56 weeks.  Not bad.  Im going to try and hold this pace through 2014.

Looking at this year, I did a review of a Character Builder blind bag in April.  That was my first review.  I did another in May and June.  July is when I really got rolling with six reviews.  It was also in July that I developed my review and rating system.  Ive done sixteen more reviews since that point.  Thats a total of 24, which averages out to two per month.  Pretty good for only starting in May.  A few people have adopted my review system and done their own reviews.  This makes me happy as it means Ive given something useful to the MFZ community.

Im now north of 150K views.  Looks like I broke that barrier in the first week of December or so.  I broke 50K in late November 2012, so it took roughly a year to get 100K more views.  That breaks down to 1800+ views per week over 53 weeks.  Thanks people!

2013 felt like a good year for me in terms of MFZ.  I got to attend PAX East again, I got to play MFZ outside of PAX East, I picked up a ton of Lego cheap, and I gave a few friends a bunch of Lego so they can start their own collections.  Lets see what 2014 has to offer.  :-)

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