A few questions

[Gryphon]

One thing stopping me from actuially trying this out. PvP.

Is it open PvP? or are there specific areas to for PvP? Or are we limited to (sighs) Duels?

Player versus player is always a fairly large part of an MMO experience for me, while I would rather die than maintain a CS kiddie attitude, I do enjoy testing myself against real opponents, who react differently every time, as opposed to rehearsed PvE rinse and repeat tactics.


Also - as a sideline, can anyone tell me about tradeskilling, as in how complex it is? I prefer complex tradeskilling over simple,

My biggest bugbears are knowing every recipe right from the get-go. I'd rather obtain recipes as loot, or research them myself. I alos prefer a wide variety of ingredients as opposed to a limited selection. It makes tracking down ingredients, and also dealing in them a lot more worthwhile.

In short, challenging tradeskills turn me on

The biggest issue - as with any MMO. Community - that makes or breaks a game for me. Can anyone give me any insight?


Cheers!

Gryph

[Inquisitor]

PvP is very restricted.

Couple kinds of "PvP" in the game.

Conquest: This is a larger, faction versus faction context, that persists throughout the game, Basically, it's PvE with faction consequences. You kill mobs in an area, and get points for it, so the faction with the most activity in anyone area can "own" the area. This in turn makes certain things available from that area from merchants in the home town. Also, some items have bonuses if you are in an area your country controls.

A very passive "PvP" though.

Ballista: For REAL Player versus Player, there are organized matches called Ballista where factions or individual players compete against each other. These only happen in specific areas, and you have to "sign up" for them as scheduled events. These can be groups or duels. I understand the Ballista system is pretty deep, once you start doing it. I don't do it.

It's a very PvE focused game. You have to actively seek out the PvP experiences and elect to be part of them. You can even choose not to particiapte in Conquest.

Tradeskilling: You learn recipes from in game guild folks and other players, and some recipes require you to have a certain skill level in the craft in question. But you can "know" them all from the get go. Ingredients are varied, almost infinitely, and usually in limited supply, making it attractive to go farm your own. Tracking down specific mobs for specific ingredients is part and parcel of this. You CAN buy most everything from other players. You can craft just about everything you need in the game, many people who play rangers level woodworking to make their own ammunition, for instance. I understand it's also a pretty deep system, though I personally find the act of crafting mind numbing.

[Inquisitor]

If you decide to try, tell me, I will get you a world pass onto Asura, where I play. I can at least make the learning experience less complicated

[Reeza]

Tradeskilling is a absoloute money burning grind.

Finding the items yourself is pretty good but can take a long time and the chances are it will take you far to long to gather enough to actually skill up much.
Also a large amount of the time your synth will fail and the result is that your crystal blows up and usually takes a random amount of ingredients with it... not bad early on but when you loose a Ore worth 250k gill its very painfull.
Also it sometimes can take several synths to gain 0.1 of a skill point, also very annoying when your spending thousands of gill per synth.

I have a 78 fisherman with a rod that took 3 months of solid fishing to get (rod is worth millions at least) and 60 cooking which took a long time and 58 odd alchemy which rinsed gill.

and yeah recipies arent learnt you just have to figure the right combo of ingredients to synth most use allakazham and the like