The trouble with subscriptions.

So the thing about signing up for MMOs that have subscriptions, is that eventually they run out. This week my subscription for EVE ended up running out and I had forgotten to refill my Paypal account. So now I've got to spend an entire week and a bit without playing EVE (Paypal takes 6-8 days for Canadians).

So with all this free time I thought I'd check out other titles in the market. First I tried going back to Guild Wars 2. Unfortunately the main reason I got out of Guild Wars 2 was the immense lag I had to put up with whenever going to maps that had all the activities I wanted to take part in. Even dropping to lowest graphical settings barely got me past 30 fps not including sections where there were mobs of players.

TERA Online: 

So I decided to go and try out TERA Online, which is a free to play MMORPG with a cash shop. I'd originally avoided trying TERA because of the huge download size (30 GBs) and the speed at which they switched from a subscription to cash shop suggested that there may be issues with the game. That said after finally finishing my download and trying out the game, I have to say. Its actually fairly good. Right now I'm playing at max graphical settings with speeds above 40 fps which is awesome considering I'm not running this on a gaming rig. The graphics themselves are awesome, while Tera has a slightly more cartoony feel than Guild Wars 2 the level of detail and flair of the graphical designs have me enchanted. After playing around with the character creation for a bit, I settled on an Aman Lancer as my first main character.

My Aman Lancer: Rhelgha

Tera is an action combat mmorpg that adds an extra layer to combat in the form of having to aim all your skills. Even the Lancer, a close range tank class, has to aim his strikes in order to hit. After flipping through a few of the classes I stuck with the Lancer due to the fact that the lancer's defense revolved around using a skill to 'block' the incoming attacks. By default this block skill is bound to my right click button and it makes for an interesting combat style. I use my lance with my left click or other skills to damage the target, and whenever it looks like its about to attack. I have to use the right click and make sure that my shield is pointing at the source of the incoming attack. At first because the level 2 monsters do very little damage this seems like a non-important skill, but after getting to level 20. I'm totally in love with this combat mechanic.

The Arakia, an early game World Boss (lvl 20).

I've also started doing some Armor-Smithing since my character belongs to class that uses heavy armor. Right now I'm farming a boss monster called the Arakia for materials to create a full set of enchanted heavy armor for my first attempt at a dungeon in TERA Online.  Farming in TERA seems to be a slight bit better than in Guild Wars 2 as you get something every time you kill a monster, and so far the drop rate for rare items from this world boss has been pretty high. Where as with Guild Wars 2, I ended up killing the claw of Jormag probably a hundred time to get a very low drop rate of rare materials. I'm aware that now that rate has been increased, but the practicality of having to fight through an intense lag fest to get the drop is very off-putting.

So all in all, even though my subscription ran out. I have now experienced TERA Online and I think I'll end up spending a bit more time on this game. Since it is a free to play MMORPG this is going to workout as a good breather/ change of pace from my usual gameplay in EVE.

A small farm I've been operating out of, to collect materials for Armorsmithing.

(despite the watermark these are all screenshots taken in game by players, 2 of them by me and 1, I got off the web, because I wasn't ready to get a world boss angry and then pause long enough to take the shot).