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Rappelz - Oh how thou hast disappointed me...
crying
For those who don't know, Rappelz is one of the newest and most addicting games brought into this vast world of MMORPG by the GPotato team, the same people responsible for FlyFF and Space Cowboy.
They started off fairly well. There were quests galore, beautifully made characters, an enjoyable skill system that allowed full mastery of all available skills, and most if not all characters were able to solo fairly well (even the stereo-typically fragile Clerics and Mages). Within months however, the system went downhill, and a supposedly 'free' game wasn't so 'free' anymore...
Mistake 1 - Epic 3
Rappelz 'expansions' come in the form of epics, 1-3 and so on (coming up on Epic 4 at the time of this journal entry). Prior to Epic 3, the system was slightly more grindy. After Epic 3, the exp rates were almost doubled and attack speed was greatly enhanced. Initially, the Rappelz community rejoiced; this made soloing much more effective and long-term rewarding, particularly because of a system called 'Stamina'. Stamina would recharge while offline and, while you had it, you would gain double exp/jp (job points for leveling skills) until your stamina ran out. With a max level of 300, even with stamina your solo leveling became slow and unrewarding by level 50, but the stamina helped. However, stamina was done away with, to a larger extent. After Epic 3, stamina would NOT regen while you are offline unless you buy a Hidden Village Pass or a Tent from the Cash Shop. Otherwise, you had to stay online and sit in a town for it to recover, at a rate of about 1 point of stamina per 1 minute. Mind you, when killing a monster of your own level, you lose about 50 stamina. The other option is to (yet again) buy Stamina Savers from the Cash Shop, at about $2 per stamina saver. They last for 1 hour... After level 70, it's ridiculously hard to level without the help of a stamina saver. By level 90, it's not even possible. This well be explained further down the line.
Mistake 2 - Stamina Savers
This was a bad idea from the beginning. Stamina Savers allow one to level much more effectively, though one will likely start going through about 5-7 per level from lvl 80 onward. At $2 per Stamina Saver, this can get very expensive. Alternatively, you can buy Stamina Savers for 250k+ from players with in-game Rupee (the form of currency). This, as you can imagine, has completely destroyed the Rappelz economy. Because money has begun to flow freely from people buying Stamina Savers with Rupee rather than money (at $2 per SS, it's very expensive), only those people who have spent REAL money to earn in-game Rupee can now afford the majority of the game's better items; pets, equipment enhancing cubes, etc. Inflation kicked in, and now common pets, who's one-time price was about 3-4million, have sky-rocketed to about 40-60 million for a tamed pet, 15-30 for a non-tamed (which can fail). It is almost impossible, if not entirely, to make this kind of money without spending some real-life cash. You are also forced to get your hands on Stamina Savers, in one way or another, otherwise your leveling will grind to a slow and inevitable halt, leaving you in the dust while other players rocket past you. Unless you can regularly drop real-life money, you'll find all your friends and once-regular Dungeon Party-ers are leaving you behind in levels and can no longer be played and/or partied with. Doesn't that sound like fun? Oh, and by the way, if something happens and you can't play that hour your stamina saver lasts, or your party sucks (you WILL be partying, there's no other way), say goodbye to your $2/250k rupees. There's no way to pause it or turn it off.
Mistake 3 - Drop System
Arguably the WORST drop system I have ever seen implemented in any game, anywhere, EVER. Basically drops are shared by everyone online at the time. What does this mean? Well, grasshopper, this means each and ever single drop, from rare equipment/pets or common scrolls and potions, are being competed for by EVERYONE ON THE SERVER AT THE TIME. Monsters do not have a set chance to drop items. It seems to be based on a fairly random factor and then spread between everyone online, farming/killing at the time. Can you imagine sharing the chance of a drop with thousands of people at once? I made 6 characters in order to try out the majority of classes. They're all 50+, with one close to 80! Best drop I've ever gotten? A skeleton card, used to tame skeletons and turn them into a pet. It failed to tame, by the way...I got lots of return scrolls though. About 4,000 total. It's the one item that drops frequently. sweatdrop
Mistake 4 - Cash Shop
Touched on above, the Rappelz Cash Shop is made to greatly enhance the Rappelz experience; or so that was the plan. Instead, it's more of a necessary one. Now, while I understand the need for a 'free' game to use a Cash Shop in effort to make money, what I don't understand is how a company feels it is fair to make the game relatively unplayable without it, then market its product as free. I will silly enough to spend money in the Cash Shop, $50 actually, before I realized that the more I played Rappelz the less I liked it. $50 would have gotten me several months on a P2P game like WoW with a large community, friends that are already playing, customer support, and an even playing field. No one with some super spiffy item or awesome leveling gear they payed $30+ a piece for. My mistake. Lesson learned. The Cash Shop is pure greed for the developers of Rappelz, as can be seen by the measly headbands that add animal ears to your character's head. They cost $20. Twenty bucks for a few pixels that I doubt took 20 minutes for them to make.
Mistake 5 - Updating
The website hasn't been updated in MONTHS. MONTHS!!!! Or, wait, no...I take that back...They just didn't update the site to show new fixes, patches, information, job info, art work, etc., etc.,....but when they add items to the Cash Shop for people to spend money on, they make sure to add that bit of information to the website. Nevermind that the site itself is so devoid of character information people are forced to resort to fan-sites to see skills, equipment, screenshots, etc. The forums? A joke! GMs almost never, ever reply. Several GMs, dozens of volunteers and hundreds more willing to help if given a chance, and they don't even have full skill trees listed yet. Promises upon promises of 'more info' in just one or two more days, though. Days, weeks go by, and nothing. Nothing! Not even a 'hey, we're still here, just backed up!' to let players know the game isn't being given up on, nothing to let paying players know their money isn't being wasted. Nothing. At. All. The forums have also had a bug since practically the beginning creation of the site that ruins posting and sometimes doesn't even let one log in thanks to 'debug' errors. Therefore, even if the GMs ~did~ respond to help requests, people usually can't log in or post them to begin with.
Mistake 6 - Epic 4
As above, updating is slow. Very, very slow. So slow, in fact, that the updates they've been promising would come since February are still being 'tested'. The Korean version of the game, mind you, is fully implemented. Us Americans just have to wait for the devs to get their lazy butts in gear, I suppose. Oh, get this! All updates that were promised, all sneak peeks at future job trees, the idea behind pet leveling and skill gaining, everything....IS BEING SCRAPPED! Yep, they let us play a game, spend money, etc., etc., then one day decided 'Hey, we're gonna keep the name, but everything else is gonna change. Don't like it? Screw you!" in so many words. Isn't that nice of them? Of course, with the changes, comes even more delay, because now they have to test those things too. You're supposed to be able to change into your new class at lvl 50, job 40. Everyone has been waiting to do this, because we've all been playing with novice skills waiting for the real stuff to come (they're not implemented yet. They've been promising this since before Epic 3). Has anyone ever played an MMO and tried getting to lvl 50+ with just your most basic skills? Not fun, is it? Then comes lvl 60...70....80...weeks, months of playing, and no new updates. Then, GMs finally post a due date of April...yay!!! April comes and goes....May, yay!! May comes and goes...Now, supposedly, June, possibly July. scream in frustration!
Sadly, this is just the tip of the iceberg. There is so much more that makes this game the greatest piece of frustration available since oil-based lube. It is to be avoided, at all costs. Do not be taken in by its prettiness! It's fun until you get to about level 30, that's when the frustration comes into play. I'd get into the Dungeon Grind (oh, the humanity!), the Pet system (existing pet owners getting screwed), the new masteries for classes (and all the existing people getting screwed when their weapons are no longer specialized for their class, a la Maces and Kahunas), the lack of events to make the time waiting for Epic 4 to come, the blah, the bleh, and the argh! Find a different game to play.
In fact, sign up for Granado Espada. It will be much more worth your time.
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