If I had a nickel for every time someone told me “hey Omali, check out this new MMO from Korea, it is totally different,” I would put those nickels in a sock and use it to beat those people unconscious. And yet, half because I know it won’t go anywhere and half because I enjoy torturing myself, I inevitably download the game and play it, hate it only as much as I hate myself, and uninstall the godforsaken pay-to-win uninspired grindfest. This time, however, I was invited to the beta under the pretense of “it’s just like TERA, but free!” Which is great, because juggling subscriptions was really the reason I left TERA.
In fact, don’t mind if I accidentally refer to RaiderZ as TERA at any point in this article.
1. Combat
RaiderZ is polite enough to introduce its new players to the variables of combat relatively early in their playing experience. In short, what this means is that in order to stay alive or function with any sort of efficiency in RaizerZ, you’re going to have to know when to hold em, know when to fold em. Combat is very similar to titles like TERA in that you’ll be tasked with dodging, blocking, and choosing the right moment when to strike. Dodging isn’t an end-all beat-all, and won’t protect you 100% from taking damage, but it is a very important tool in mitigating and holding off as much damage as possible. Creatures will shove, throw, ram, and eat their foes, meaning if you want to have a chance at survival, you’re going to need to pay attention.
Because of this, combat in RaiderZ is what I like to call: Engaging. Sure, you can go all out DPS, focus on just smashing your target as much and as quickly as possible, but you will likely die a lot or at least be forced to either guzzle down enough potions to heal a small army, or sit out of combat waiting for your health to regenerate. Or, at the cost of slightly longer battles in the short run, you can make intelligent use of your dodge, block, and special attacks to mitigate, block, and interrupt attacks.
I also like the idea that you can literally beat things off of certain mobs, and either consume them on the spot or use them as a weapon. Certain enemies like crabs will randomly drop crab meat, for instance, which can be picked up and eaten to boost health regeneration for a small amount of time. Other creatures will drop their weapon or body parts that can be picked up and used as a temporary weapon of your own. There is also an inherent satisfaction in breaking off the body part of something you just beat to death, and using it to slaughter its nearby tribe members.
2. Quests, Resources, And Grind
Outside of its combat, there isn’t much innovation to RaiderZ. The leveling process is the standard grind of moving from hub to hub, taking on quests and occasionally fighting “party” size monsters. Again, what makes RaiderZ enjoyable and engaging is the combat, even though as you progress through the game, you begin to realize that it may just be the one degree of separation that keeps this title from being thrown in the pit with the other thousand generic MMOs that come out of Korea every year. There is a story aspect that plays out through instanced areas, and is a decent part of the game.
Since RaiderZ is a monster hunting game, this is also where you will obtain most of your gear. As you wage your genocide against the hodgers, bandits, and bears (oh my), you will come across various crafting materials to use in forging new equipment. There isn’t much thinking in crafting your equipment, either. You simply go to a vendor in one of the cities or villages, they show you a recipe that displays exactly what creature drops each item, and you go and beat the crap out of said creature until it drops what you want. Unfortunately one issue I’ve come across is that in the time it takes to knock the correct resources out of a mob in quantities high enough to make a set of armor, I’ve already outleveled the stuff I was going to craft and have to load up on a new mob.
PvP in RaiderZ is really on the back burner, although there is an open PvP zone you are forced to go through if you want to progress to the end-game.
3. Gold Farmers, Chat Spam Galore
I saved this for last, because I know for someone like myself this can really kill a game. RaiderZ is filled to bursting with gold farmers, both in-game and spamming chat. The starting areas, as well as the first main city you hit (Ingen) are so full of gold farmers that chat is impossible, due to the overwhelming level of spam. The problem with gold spam might not be so great if RaiderZ had some automated system built in to stop it, but until that happens, players either have to ignore it or individually block each player.
In fact, the chat system in RaiderZ is mediocre, bordering on pathetic. Not only does Perfect World not offer a simple way to click on someone’s name to add them to your block/friend list, the game makes the Kindergarten level mistake of using a font that has the same symbol for the uppercase i as it does for the lower case l. So even if you want to block the number of gold farmers or private server ad bots, many of them use names consisting of random combinations of both letters, making them difficult if not impossible to ignore.
MMO Fallout 