Perfect World is by far one of the best free MMOs that I have ever played. There are a few contenders for that spot, but Perfect World was the most balanced. Below, I review both the game play and the community; much in the way I did with Maple Story in my last post.
The game play and features in Perfect World are straightforward and often fun, though it has its own drawbacks as well. The character creation is one of the best I have seen for one reason alone. It is one in which you can make an avatar that looks just like you, or of anyone you want. I was able to create an avatar with a face very much like mine (it was eerie to look at). I also had a character that looked like my husband. Needless to say, it was fun to play around with this feature alone.
The first downside would be the limited selection of class, race and sex. You can choose from human, wingelf or werebeast. The humans had the classes of warrior and mage while the wingelves had the ranger and cleric classes. The werebeast race had the werebeast class and the werefox class. The werebeast class didn’t allow you to customize the face and only consistent of males; whereas, the werefox class was only female. The upside to the class system were the nice skills that each of the classes could get. Each had a unique skill tree, allowing 2 or more builds each.
Perfect World is a foreign game like many free MMOs. The translations are often barebones, literal, and dry. This makes the translation either awkwardly funny or very boring to read. Perfect World happens to be more on the boring-to-read kind. I’m sure I would be more interested in the plight of the denizens while questing if I didn’t feel like falling asleep. Therefore, I am sure I really missed out on some story as I never bother to read any of the text boxes anymore. Did I mention that no free MMO can seem to get their word wrapping to work right? (This includes Maple Story which I discussed in the previous entry.) The only text that is truly amusing are some of the names found on the map like Mount of Ant Gathering.
Perfect World is far from perfect, but it isn’t all bad either. The combat is one of its better features for a few reasons. The first is that you can fight in the air, on land, and in the sea! I was taken aback by this. It was so much fun to be able to fly at level one as a wing elf (humans and werebeasts get flying steeds at level 30). It’s also important to be able to battle well in all three mediums as the quests will have you going everywhere. The second thing is also something rather simple. You can’t go through the game relying on just your basic attack; in fact you begin to struggle (if you don’t know what you’re doing) around level 15. You must chose and level your skills effectively in order to stay alive. This adds challenge and interest in the day to day grind. The third reason is the pets that only the werefox class can have. In some builds, you can totally rely on your pet as a tank, while your avatar blasts them away with some of the second most powerful skills in the game. You can also tame nearly all the creature in the realm; you can even have up to 10 pets if you have the money.
There is something called an Ironblood Tablet Quest (or FB) in Perfect World. At level 20, and every 10 levels after, you will have the option to go on an FB quest–the acronym actually comes from the Malaysian translation. You will need a good party before entering the respective dungeon and taking out the resident boss or bosses at the end. There are many reasons why the FBs are so popular. First off, you get a really awesome weapon upon completing you first FB. Second, you never have to worry about finding help for these quests (I will cover this later). Thirdly, you get a really nice experience bonus for completing each FB (all party members receive the bonus). Fourthly, the bosses have a very low chance of dropping something called a molder which can be used to create a really powerful piece of equipment. These can easily be sold for a good bit of gold. Fifthly, they are a nice challenge and break up the otherwise repetitive grind.
This game is great for novices, but not so great for high leveled players. It’s great for lowbies because there is a lot of help that comes from the player base, and a good guild is usually not that hard to find. There are lots of quests to do in the lower levels and experience gain is pretty steady. When you get to level 60 or so the quests are not as plentiful and the experience gain begins to plateau a bit. The daily quests that you get at 30 and 60 can help with this though. At first, bosses are pretty easy to take care of on your own (or with a little help), but they become difficult very quickly. By the time you are level 50 it is very hard to get help killing the bosses that you need to complete your cultivation (in order to get better skills and stuff).
Perfect World has a typical but effective crafting system. You can make any weapon and armor that is sold in the game. There are also many useful items you can make through alchemy. All the raw materials need to be gathered. Sometimes you may see another player selling some (often overpriced). Herb gathering was the most popular choice for one main reason; you could create a grade 1 item that gives 50 health regeneration lasting 10 minutes. This item is crucial for some classes (this can be a good thing or a bad thing). Forging weapons, armor and accessories is beneficial as you can receive bonuses on the items you create. The downside to making your own equipment is the great amount of cost it takes, not to mention the time it takes to find the materials (or the number of forging attempts to get the bonuses you desire).
There are a few ways to travel in Perfect World. You can walk teleport or fly. Walking is a bit slow, but since the game is free roaming it’s possible to go almost anywhere on foot. Teleportation is the best and fastest way to travel. The first downside is how pricy it is between cities. It is usually more affordable in the lower level areas. The second downside is that you must first travel to new locations to activate the teleportation point for that area. All cities, villages and some outposts have teleportation points. Flying is the poor man’s way of traveling later in the game. You usually fly fairly slow but can make a b-line for your destination. You can fly faster for a certain amount of time, but you need fuel crystals in order to refuel your flying sword/wings/flying beast.
The player base in Perfect World (in my experience) is very helpful and nice. There are many guilds with all kinds of people willing to help you, especially if you are new to the game. There are two main things you will need a party for in the game. One is the FBs and the other is the various bosses that must be defeated to complete certain quests–there are a lot of these. Since the experience reward from completing an FB tablet quest is quite helpful for leveling, there is a never-ending list of very high level people willing to help you complete yours. My first level 20 FB party consisted of nothing but level 60 to 70 players. Some people level up simply by helping others complete their FBs. I like to call them FB fanatics. There are some that get rather pushy though, so you should be careful if you ever decide to ask for help outside your guild. Getting help to complete the boss quests is a little more difficult. All you really need is a guild with a wide range of levels and you should be fine. Otherwise, you may need to shout for help, or get lucky and join up with another party that is ready to take down the boss you need.
Every online community has its issues to sort out, and Perfect World is no exception. It can sometimes be difficult to find a good spot to grind, especially if you are hunting a creature you need to complete a quest. Competing for kills is fairly common, but only in certain areas. One example is the west field outside of Ancient Dragon City (or ADC). There are three newbie areas, and when you reach level 20 you begin questing in this region. ADC is the melting pot of Perfect World. If it gets really bad in a particular spot, consider joining a party. Sometimes you will be invited without even having to ask.
Bots can add to this problem of competing for kills. Fortunately there are three options to this. Move to another area (sometimes this is not possible). Report the bot and feel good about yourself. Or…wait until you are level 30 and unleash hell on those selfish bots! (Unfortunately, the third option is the most effective). When you reach that level, you are free to kill other players. Though be warned, your name will turn pink (and eventually red) inviting other Pkers to take you out. The higher the PK (player kill) status, the greater chance you will drop a random item. So just be very careful if you feel like taking down those dreadful bots; also, they will come back after about 10 minutes. Killing monsters also helps to lower your PK status faster. But enough about those evil bots.
There is another unfortunate side to PvP (player versus player), at least the kind you will most commonly encounter. It is PvP camping. This breed of player gets really bored and they decide to take out their boredom on lower level players. There are two likely spots for them to camp: near bosses and outside of Fishing Village. The former is obvious. Players often need to wait for a boss to respawn, and if you come alone to ‘wait in line’ you’re making yourself an easy target. Though this actually doesn’t happen that often. Fishing Village is probably a prime spot for campers because there are a lot of level 35-40 quests around there. Also the place is very small, remote and out in the open. This makes it really easy for people to spot you. The good news is that you can spot them easily too, and, hopefully, just avoid the situation altogether.
While I am on the subject of the Fishing Village, let’s talk about boss luring. This is either very funny or dreadfully annoying depending on what part you are playing. Basically, bosses will follow you as long as you keep them interested. There is a high level boss by the name of Zhang not to far from Fishing Village. Remember I said how open everything was? This makes luring Zhang to Fishing Village child’s play. My suggestion is that if you are ever idle near there–stay in flight! Every now and then you will see this ginormous thing lumbering toward the town. The next thing you know, everyone who was standing around is now dead. Zhang happens to have a devastating AOE attack (area of effect). I find it quite humorous when he uses it and ‘Immune’ appears above all the NCPs (non-player characters) sandwiched in the small village. I have heard people luring Zhang as far north as City of Ethersword (the human novice area) and as far south as ADC west (the greatest gathering of players anywhere in the game).
ADC west is the place to be for many reasons. Nearly everyone sets up shops there. This can be nice if there is some hard to find item that you need (or you could also try the auction which is also there). It can also be annoying when you are trying to wade through the sea of cats (your avatar becomes this weirdly-stuffed-bright-colored-cat thing when you set up shop) to get to another part of the city. The NPCs that give out the daily quests are also here. Since you must wait 10 minutes before you can claim your quest reward, there are usually many afk (away from keyboard) players hanging around–some right on top of the NPC you need to talk to! It is safe to say that the lag can be impossible for some computers in this location. I heard from one player that it took him 1 hour to get out of ADC.
Random Encounters: MMO Players (Part Two)
What follows is a list of creatures you may or may not encounter if you ever play Perfect World and other such MMOs. They are the ‘advance nussiancry’ of evil MMO players.
NAME: Newbies
DEFEAT/DISABLE: There are too many of them!
EXPERIENCE: Tolerance to the nth degree (if you’re lucky).
WEAKNESS: The ability to give up easily at any point during newbiedom.
ABILITIES: Question, Random Party Invite, Random Friend Request, and Avatar Hop.
ITEMS DROPPED: <Insert worthless item here>.
DESCRIPTION: Newbies on their own are seldom evil; it is in great numbers that they can do you relative harm. Furthermore, there is little you can do about their numbers. Most take a page out of the book of tolerance. Even then, patience tends to fail. After countless silly questions, random party invites and friend requests, who would not be sunk? Avatar Hop is the best skill they have, allowing thing to make new character after new character without ever leaving newbiedom.
NAME: Noobs
DEFEAT/DISABLE: Find the loop hole in their reasoning.
EXPERIENCE: You will often feel like you are special after dealing with one of these.
WEAKNESS: Circular logic.
ABILITIES: Brag, Proclaim, and False Reasoning.
ITEMS DROPPED: Parchment of Self Proclaiming
DESCRIPTION: Noobs set themselves apart from their genuine newbie counterparts. They often proclaim that they are not newbies at all, bragging that they know everything there is to know about the game. Noobs will go on about this or that managing to say very little of anything. If they do manage to, it is usually untrue. There is one way to stop them in their tracks. Simply say, “Prove it,” and watch them tear their previous statements apart with circular logic (this is actually quite unnecessary as the majority of the statements they make are outrageous).
NAME: Gumuz
DEFEAT/DISABLE: Veto.
EXPERIENCE: Carpal tunnel from fast typing (or red in the face from shouting if you have voice chat).
WEAKNESS: Blatant stupidity.
ABILITIES: Facade, Mislead, and Misdirect
ITEMS DROPPED: Honorary Bush Medal
DESCRIPTION: Even though gumuz can easily lead you into a situation similar to what an agroer can do, they are so much worse. Gumuz are only ever leaders of parties, guilds, ect; therefore, they can get you into even more trouble. Their facade will lead you to believe that they are competent leaders right up until the moment trouble strikes from misleading commands or misdirection in the field. Be prepared for failed mission* after failed mission if your gumuz is tolerated (this has happened to me). The only sure way to deal with them and their very bad leadership ability is to vote them out immediately.
*can be replaced with quest, scenario, dungeon, ect.
NAME: Leetists (1337ests)
DEFEAT/DISABLE: Do not feed the ego.
EXPERIENCE: A mix of entertainment and irritation.
WEAKNESS: Lack of people to impress.
ABILITIES: Extreme <insert activity here>, To the Limit! and Ego Blast.
ITEMS DROPPED: Gold Earnings
DESCRIPTION: Leetists constantly push the boundaries of the game and will typically outrank you in every way. They are the ones with all the flashy gear, the ‘cool’ names, and other fancy stuff. Sure, it’s great to watch them pull amazing stunts like run to Droknar’s Forge (it’s like running a gauntlet a mile long) or take on 20 enemies at once. You might be saying to yourself at this point, “Well what’s wrong with that?” It’s their ego, and they get paid for it. How do you think they got all that flashy gear? These people pride themselves on being the best at what they do, and will even throw in a freebee to prove that they can do it from time to time. Having them power level you or run you to places that are hard to get to for a small fee may seem reasonable, but it feels like cheating to hardcore gamers like me.
NAME: Cyberers
DEFEAT/DISABLE: Block or mute.
EXPERIENCE: Visions of pink bunnies and bouncy things dancing in your head.
WEAKNESS: Anything revealing or anything in a skirt.
ABILITIES: Cyber.
ITEMS DROPPED: None.
DESCRIPTION: Cyberers do show up from time to time in highly populated areas. It may be that they go for the nudist mosh pits made of dancers and air guitar musicians or the nudist botters roaming the landscape. Either way, they are attracted to showing epidermis like sharks are attracted to surfers. Consequently, eventually you are going to get bit. Their calls range from, “Any1 here a girl?” to strait up, “Do you wanna cyber?” More often then not though, they are content to join the nymphomaniacs at the local mosh pit and, thus, out of your hair.
NAME: Rpers (Role-players)
DEFEAT/DISABLE: If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.
EXPERIENCE: Geek senses tingling; you might find the geek inside of you (or lose all interest in gaming).
WEAKNESS: OOC conversation.
ABILITIES: Role-play, Dice, and God mode.
ITEMS DROPPED: Character Sheet
DESCRIPTION: …
