NCsoft has announced that it will be celebrating the fifth anniversary of its stalwart MMO Lineage II with a new free expansion.
Gracia Final, as it's called, will introduced the new continent of Gracia. Players will be able to fly there using aerial transformation skills.
Raid bosses are easily in my opinion the most important aspect of MMORPGs. Games that fall into a different genre may be more dynamic, but only here will tens and sometimes hundreds of players need to come together and work together to defeat an epic boss in a raid. Just simple getting together as many players as possible is not enough to determine your success. Players usually need to use trial and error with a number of different strategies before they can actually take down the boss. All this is done in order to test the weaknesses, come up with an effective approach and correctly coordinate players in the raid.
Over time, the concept of an “epic boss” has become rather blurred. Colossal monsters, the destruction of which requires a long preparation time, and then became just another episode from grandma’s fairy tales. Some raid bosses have already gained the “cult” status, and veterans of MMORPGs could tell you a dozen stories about those legendary fights. Fextralife's author tried to select the most powerful bosses who once upon a time, caused a burning sensation and will certainly awaken stirrings of nostalgic feelings from experienced raiders!
Haha, yea that's why I had to quit FFXI in the mid 2000s. The game had so many ridiculously long raids and fights. Not to mention the long ass NM camps w tons of gold selling bot users waiting to snatch the kill. So frustrating bc they were always there. Some were close to 24 hour camps if I remember. Some shorter. I loved the game & community, but had to walk away. Too demanding. Pandemonium is after my time.
New updates can change an MMO beyond recognition. This is exactly what happened to Lineage 2. Old school players may surely remember the heyday of Lineage 2 in times of C4 – Interlude Chronicles. Today, you will find only the outlines of that game, if you will look at the main version – Lineage 2: Orfen. The original concept of the game has been completely redesigned.
At some point – and I wonder how this happened – hardcore MMORPGs began to protect players from any gameplay difficulties. Key items that were previously difficult to receive or were made by heavy dwarvish work, became available in regular stores. The developers introduced countless instances, thanks to which players could no longer strongly influence each other. Lineage 2 has lost what made it unique – an open hardcore world in which you need to fight for any content. Moreover, the game has switched to a free-to-play system. This was the last drop for many players. Lineage 2 completely changed its audience as a gaming product.
The previous hardcore players audience hasn’t gone away. NCSOFT (the developer of the game) decided to return to what they once started. Lineage 2 Classic was released like a kind of tribute to all the good things in the game. It is not the old version of the game, but its complete rethinking with the old school mechanics and borrowing modern developments of the last years. There is nothing surprising that Blizzard took over this experience and is now developing World of Warcraft: Classic. After all, everything new is well forgotten old.
Oh! Now it all becomes clear with the WoW Classic. Nice to see good ol' hardcore making its way back into mainstream MMOs!
Personally I'm a fan of different massive online role-playing games games, but Lineage 2 might seem kinda not that old good Lineage that many people used to play ten years ago. However, its Classic version is developing and surprisingly still alive and pretty popular among NA and European players.
Lewterslounge: "This winter I found myself alone at the party: two of my best friends got children in 2017 and were busy with their families, whereas my romantic partnership wasn’t promising at all, as my fiance left for Bolonge for studies. So I decided that nothing can cheer me up better than long winter evenings spent in a fantasy world, and that is why I started looking for an MMORPG to play. I was nostalgic for the old Lineage 2, like C4 Interlude Chronicles. So I browsed through the options."
This needs to be released on the PS3!
Hmm, Always wanted to at least try Lineage 2 for a short time to see if it would be worth playing [Still playing FFXI because of the ability to change jobs whenever I want :)] Yet, Lineage II still looks interesting.
Yet Baka-AkaB made an interesting point about bringing up Soul blade which I probably should wait for..