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Forums are for QQ: Aftermath of v6

I am pretty much busy with finals and projects until mid next week... so I probably won't have time to really write anything long and meaningful like I have planned. I still do check up on the forums whenever I'm taking a break though. :D

The forums are a mess and I'm tired of going in there and trying to sort things out. I'm in no way affiliated to Gala-net, so any of my "defending" posts I make on the forums are my own thinking. I criticize when it needs to be done, but I defend when too many people are being unreasonable.. which, right now, too many people are. (I have been called a "suck up to the GMs" on the forums now, that's pretty cute - ad hominem attacks are always nice) Sometimes I wonder if I'm digging myself into a hole acting like this... I have been more or less rejected by the 2 big empire guilds on Tensess - but I'm going to wave that around like a trophy.

Quite frankly I am sick of how entitled a lot of people think they are. They are playing a *free* to play game, with the bought items not having a timer until you activate it... or some items like bags will stay with your character forever. Now if it was a subscription-based model, and the servers were crashing and glitchy for several days - I would probably join the masses of unhappy people.. because you know, you're actually wasting money the more days you go without playing. But this isn't the case with Allods. Why do people feel like not playing a game for 1 day is the end of the world? Some people should probably step away from their computers for awhile...

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v6 Manual Patch Download

Hello readers (whoever you are!), if you are looking for a faster way to get the latest patch without waiting for the launcher's torrent... look no further!

I have uploaded the patch on Filefront:
http://www.filefront.com/16303063/1.0.06.36.1_.zip
And Megaupload:
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=CW0IXX39

Includes files for:
1.0.05.45.1 -> 1.0.06.35.3
1.0.06.35.3 -> 1.0.06.36.1

Edit: If you get the launcher error, all you have to do is download and run the repair.exe, which you can download here (thanks Darren/Chomp!):
http://allods-ftp.gpotato.com/repair.exe


Also, I have enabled anonymous commenting on my blog, so people who are too lazy to create an account or sign into one, feel free to post whatever!

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Chilling with GM Chomp

Yesterday I was able to talk to Darren Allarde, or GM Chomp, directly on ventrilo concerning the future of Allods. Darren is the associate producer of Allods, he works for Gala-net and you might have seen him ingame (or just on [world] chat) under the name "CHOMP_". Sometimes you'll also find him on the forums or posting on his developer blog. Novograd Times is doing an interview with him soon and is accepting questions from the players themselves - check it out.

It's always good to hear exactly what is going on from a reliable source, especially since what Allods is lacking most right now (as mentioned in several entries) is information. A lot of players feel like they don't know where the game is going - right now I can say that Gala-net/Gpotato is definitely trying hard to get all our suggestions across to AstrumNival, although I don't think I'm allowed to give out full details. ;) My original guess on why patches are slow wasn't too far from the truth.

One of my friends and I both gave a decent amount of feedback as well as suggestions to Darren, so hopefully our concerns will be heard by AstrumNival and will be acted on accordingly. I'll discuss more about whats in store for Allods NA and EU in another entry, as I also want to evaluate why Allods is viewed so negatively by other sites (I have been snooping around) and what everyone can do to make this a better experience. My previous entry is still worth a read if you want information on common concerns found on the official forums.

Patch v6 at a Glance
A lot of players on both the NA and EU forums were making quite a fuss about FoD being applied when players were resurrected by other players. People's reasons ranged anywhere from: "this is just another ploy to make us buy incense!" to "why bother getting a res skill?"

This has since been removed from the patch notes - I hope people will calm down now and realize that Gala-net doesn't want Allods to sink anymore than we do. The rest of the patch has mostly generated positive responses.

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Analyzing the Present and Future

One can only ignore game imbalances and flaws for so long, and people can only be so patient. It would suffice if the GMs promised balancing patches in the future, but seeing how we get a glimpse of RU patches anyways - the future looks bleak. What's especially questionable is how RU servers are going to add "new content" aka upping the level cap to 42, without fixing all the bugs and glitches of the first 40 levels. Yes bored 40s are complaining, but I think it's in the best interest of the game to, well you know, make the trip smoother before you add more problems to the pile.

I have observed the forums for quite awhile now, and I see the same responses and the same inquiries by many players... I'll be looking into both sides' defenses and their imposed changes.

Lots of text ahead!

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Psi Psi Psionicist!

With the right build and playstyle you'll dominate any other class, but getting up to that level takes a lot of trial-and-error. - Trauma
What do psionicists do, and why would you play one? It's hard to describe exactly what a psi is, especially compared to WoW, because there is no copy. The closest thing I can find is: CC like a frost mage with spells that look like a mix of arcane mage + shadow priest. Choke reminds me of mind flay. ;)

How come we're one of the most wanted classes endgame? Well every heroic group needs a player to CC - psi's really shine in this. Mages are another class that can CC, but we bring more utility. Our CC chains take longer to set up, but we have a melee buff (Rapid Metabolism) as well as a caster buff (Disciplined Mind) - not to mention if specced right we can also give our mana to other users. If we pick up the ruby talent Fear of Failure and spam shock, our whole group gets up to a 9% damage boost on a target. We're just an all around utility/support class that provides CC.

Then why are there so few of us? It might be because the psi class takes awhile to learn, or because we are darn squishy, or because it takes too long for us to set up to kill anything. Most fights start out with casting mental link + mental twin - which might feel a bit unnecessary to players who just want to run in and start smashing things.

In pvp we are alright solo, but we shine the most in group pvp. Others can watch our backs while we orchestrate control from a distance - we can disarm players, knock them down, disable 1-2 players completely from a fight, pull them into a group to be aoe'd, etc.


Read on for input from 2 level 40 psi's who really enjoy their class.

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Progress Report!

Amount of crying and whining over the new patch notes is making me stay away from the forums, which is also making me not generate any new ideas for content... :P Next post will probably be a Coba Plateau rep guide, but I haven't even found the rep quests yet so...

My latest article is an interview with Lockness, an Empire summoner on Tensess. He's the second player in open beta to have reached the max pvp rank, you can read about it here.

Now that I have spectral assassin and will suppression, pvping as a psi has become a lot more interesting. My psi is currently level 33 and I healed my first legit Xaes run today on my healer. :D It was fun! Although really slow...

That's all for now, until next time!

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Reputation: Eljune Forestfolk

If you've endured the reputation grind in Asee-Teph - I applaud you (just the thought of that keeps me far away) . The grind in Eljune is a lot easier in terms of not having 40s 1-shot you every few minutes, however since Forestfolk is a neutral faction, you will most likely run into the opposite faction. If you like avoiding pvp - I'll promise you, at times you'll really wish you had a war banner...

(click for larger version!)

Anyways, welcome to Icemirror Lake - your new home until you hit the default 25k rep for Respected! I started my rep grind when I was level 30 with approx 6k rep from questing beforehand.

The 2 best ways to get rep are:
  1. Repeatable quest, which involves killing 6 Huge Pike (weird fish things in the river/lake) and collecting 6 River Fish from the nets along the lake. (1,000 per turn in)
  2. Killing Lake Lizard Warriors. There are quite a few different types of lizards in the area (female and fighter) but only the warriors will give rep. (varied amount)
Warning: This place can be relatively quiet, or it can be packed. People tend to warbanner here so they can get rid of spawn competition and/or earn some combat glory vs similar level players.

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Gpotato and Cash Shop

Since we are getting a new patch within the next few weeks, a lot of players are speculating about the "hidden" changes, and other players are upset about the future of cash shops. Although NA servers have Fear of Death, and are not changing it for awhile... our Allods friends in Russia have voted it away, to be replaced with a "cursed" item system. This has caused some unrest in the forums, but no one seems to know for sure exactly how often items will be cursed upon death.

Of course along with cursed items comes with cash shop items to prevent and/or remove these curses. Allodsfan.com has a few articles about translated patch notes and RU's new cash shop system. Their new shop seems to be a type of indirect subscription model (with future xp scrolls), which I have mixed feelings about... at least the prices are very affordable.

A few things to keep in mind: since we are only on version 0.6 and this is in 1.0+, we will probably not get these changes for quite awhile. Gpotato has shown us in the past (and present) that what the Russians get, isn't exactly what we get. I hope Gpotato will make the right decisions to keep this game popular in NA (and for all the international players too).

Have you made any cash shop purchases? When I first joined I was awed enough by the game to state that I would "pay a subscription for this game" but seeing how those who run the NA servers do not have direct connection to the developers (Gpotato = middle man) and thus cannot hotfix aspects of the game, I have become a bit more hesitant. :)

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The Other Faction?


What I love about faction games is that you can end up really cheering for your own faction. Now, this can go wrong when your own faction has inner disputes and/or players start acting too personal and too insulting towards the other faction (but perhaps some people like this?) I felt like WoW made this work out very well - with catchphrases like "for the horde/alliance!" that you can yell while running into battle. It makes the game just a wee bit more interesting!

Does anyone else feel the same about Allods? Do you have an allegiance to your own faction, and despise the other? Or are they all the same to you?

Or are you like me and can't bring yourself to even level an opposite faction?

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Support PVP Healer

(screenshot from Novograd Times - healer casting circle of healing)

If you've ever visited the healer archetype forum on the official Allods forums, you'll notice that the majority of the threads are about melee healers. Well, what about the players who don't want to play melee healer? Occasionally you'll also come upon a few threads discussing pve healing... but what about people like me who want to heal/support in pvp?!

As a huge fan of disc priests on WoW - who were useful mainly for their utility and mix of offensive and defensive spells - I'm trying to make Allods' healers fit the role I want to play. Which is not standing in the back lines healbotting, but not in the front lines smacking people's faces in. If I wanted to do that I may as well roll warrior! I like healers that are mid-range players... you're close enough to annoy the enemies, but far enough to not get trampled over. This requires a build that can tank multiple targets while pushing out spot healing and dispels.

Due to the lack of information, I ended up playing around with the talent calculator and made my own build.

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Socializing, Group Dynamics

(I don't have a cool Allods guild screenie yet, so I'll leave you with this instead)

I'm not sure how many people read my blog, since a lot of the newer comments I've been getting are guest posts... but how are your all's experiences with the social aspect of Allods? Have you joined a guild? Did you start the game with a group of friends? Did you make some friends along the way? Or maybe, you're just a solo person?

What brought about this topic was a thread on the forums commenting on how they could not find enough players to run heroics... there would always be a certain class/role missing. Now I figured if you were in a guild, and you made friends while leveling up, you wouldn't be as likely to run into this problem when you hit cap. After all, this is a massively multiplayer experience - the social aspect of mmorpgs is half the fun! Feeling like you're part of a community tends to make players stick around longer than if they did not participate in such social endeavors.

You want to find a group/guild that...

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PvP "Skill", Guilds

Yes, a lot of my entries will be discussing pvp... because I like pvp, but I don't like Allods pvp.



I love how much e-peen waving there is on the forums right now about pvp. Specifically certain guild members vs other guild members of another faction. I can't believe people are already using words like "skill" and calling other players bad. I'm sorry, but if WoW arenas was viewed as one of the least skilled mmorpg pvp-types (why yes, it is an e-sport), then Allods isn't even on the meter. Currently there is way too much imbalance between the classes... that's right... I called it out! CC lasts for way too long, a certain class can attack while bubbled, too much rock, paper, scissor-ing.

Since there are no battlegrounds or skill!rankings, I'm afraid you can't single out players as being better than another. Ultimately it's up to groups of players, in this case: whole entire guilds. But how are you going to measure that? One side will always think they are better than the other... and no one will admit defeat. Alas, I believe the e-peen threads will live on. Perhaps the better question is, why does it matter? So what if a League guild lands in Yasker's Tower? Cool story bro?

I wonder if guilds understand that their forum presence actually affects how other people view them. Although, if their original plan was to look like elitist jerks, then kudos to them. I'm all for competition, but not of the insult-throwing kind... and with my experience in mmorpgs, the people who need to talk down / brag to other players are probably some of the worst players. And if by chance they are good, they have a personality that you'll get tired of quick.

Inflated egos != skill.


In other news, I plan to roll League (melee scout) on Nezeb sometime in the future. I've reserved the name Akrios (I like him better than Neilyo!). Cookies if you can guess the reference.

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Endgame PvP Debate

Before anything else is said, here is a shameless plug for the Novograd Times - I will be starting up a "guiding new players" column on there soon. But no worries, all my opinionated observations and such will still be posted on this blog.


There is a thread on the forums asking about the possibility of including battlegrounds or arenas in Allods. The replies are fairly interesting, some people agree and others disagree. It seems like most players who are against it believe that battlegrounds/arenas will kill world pvp, while the opposing side thinks organized pvp is a great way of obtaining the currently almost-impossible at 40: the Judge/Juggernaut rank. This rank unlocks the special third ruby, one of the very last ruby for any player to get.

The first thing we need to get straight is: Is Allods a pvp game? Some people will say yes, other people will say no. It seems like the game itself has confusing goals, as it includes some heavy pve elements (unflagging yourself, best gear obtainable through pve content) as well as some heavy pvp elements (quests that flag you, war banners, pvp ranks) that intertwine with each other. The game can go either way, but to have pve AND pvp be equally important... well that's a balancing feat that even the WoW-gods have issues with.

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Observation: Server Delay Issues

If you have played a caster, you will notice that sometimes your cast bar will go to 100% but your spell will not cast (especially if you are getting hit by a mob/player). Spell push back is a good mechanic, but is fairly useless when your cast bar does not work properly - all you can do is guess when your spell will actually go off. This happens to other classes as well, such as scouts not doing the correct damage until their second shot (according to a friend).

Aside from classes, there also seems to be a glitch with players' hp bars. Sometimes you will get hit for damage that won't show on your screen and won't update your hp bar. The only change is in the numbers on your bar, but honestly, who really pays attention to that all the time? In most of these situations, you won't even be aware of what is happening until you are dead.

Unfortunately this also affects global cool down and cast cancellations. Its lag that doesn't really exist, but is probably caused by information delay from the game client to the server. For me, sometimes it feels like the ghost lag gives me an extra 200-400ms of ping.

I don't believe its the servers, but rather how the client actually deals with sending information packets. Hopefully it will get fixed in a future patch, but we'll have to wait and see.


As for my character progress, I have arrived in Eljune at level 28! This place looks rather cold and gloomy though. :(

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Asee-Teph: Day 3

Pardon my earlier rant, we'll now return to regular posts. :D

As of this moment I'm not far level 27 - where I will finish up some key quests in Asee-Teph and move onto Eljune. Overall, my experience in this zone was good; the ganking didn't see as "game-breaking" as many forum posts suggested. However, I do agree that there are a lot of things in the area that make pvp less fun than it ought to be, and these should be fixed as soon as possible for Allods to lose less players. I'm hoping my second round here will be better, as I'll be playing my healer who won't be as squishy as my psi. This is from a solo point of view, as I rarely grouped with people.

Here are three changes I personally would like to see:
  • Fix glitchy NPCs. It might be intended, but the high level NPCs guarding the spawn points shouldn't aggro from 3 miles away. Ironically, I'll get killed by a League Defender before I see him, yet when I respawn the Empire NPC just sits there while an equal level League player stares at me from a few feet away. It seems like guard npcs are hit and miss when it comes to helping a fellow player escape mobs.
  • Change mob stuns. Seriously, who thought of this idea? Not only do mobs knock you down and stun you for 2 full seconds, there is no diminishing return so they can literally stun you to death. The proc rate seems unusually high, and all mobs run as fast as the player (or if there is a space discrepancy, they will knock you down).
  • Nerf pets. I know the distance change is coming soon, but pets really shouldn't take 3 years to kill. Sure some of them can act like tanks, but nerf the damage then? They shouldn't have the ability to tank AND do good dps at the same time. Or maybe I'm just bad because I don't have much to prevent spell pushback when a pet is chomping on me while his owner pewpews as well.
The flagging system (minus the glitches that are getting fixed next patch) is fine, and so are war banners. The world pvp flagging system works like it ought to, the problems lay elsewhere... Although I'm sure pet classes and people who hunt players will disagree with me. ;)

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Rant

Putting it under a cut because it is wholeheartedly ranting, mostly about game mechanics. Call it whining if you want!

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Asee-Teph: Day 2


Making speedy progress, I'm actually halfway through level 25 now. :) I spent a good hour grinding out about 40% of a level, then grouped up with a player I met in Dead Sea and knocked out about 10 quests. Fortunately, we didn't run into many league players! But lots of thanks to Teggycon the summoner for helping me with my quests even though he had already finished them.

Anyways, grinding is not bad at all on Allods! And at times I would rather do that then die repeatedly to level-??s with war banners. This is how I grind:
  1. A good pace for me is having mind link / mental twin up every time I kill a mob, unless I know it does not hit hard (does not get me below 75% by the time it dies). If it takes longer than that, it's not worth it. If it dies quicker but doesn't hurt, I will use twin every other mob. For the mobs that I don't link, I use mental pulse to preserve some hp and buy some time.
  2. My spell rotation, after setting up ML / twin, is mindfire -> choke -> psi shock til dead. If it takes more than 2 psi shocks after choke for the mob to die, it takes too long to kill and is not worth it. Ideally it will die after choke.
  3. I have little if any downtime, usually I will heal spam with Mental Cleansing and then Trance to get rid of overload (saves money on food!). With the gear from Lab13, AT, and rookie pvp rank, I have enough faith that my heals hit for 600-1k.

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Basic PvP Survival


There's an excellent post on the official Allods forums giving some tips on surviving in a pvp environment. Here are my additions:

  1. Be aware. In most mmorpgs, basic player awareness will keep you alive a lot longer. This means panning your camera around every once in awhile to know your surroundings. Better awareness is usually something good pvpers have, and will also aid in pve. In AT, make sure you keep an eye on unflagged players of the opposite faction, who knows when they will change their mind and pop a war banner? Use line of sight, and even mobs, to your advantage.
  2. Memorize safe routes and safe places (since we have no minimap), grinding isn't as bad as it seems, albeit boring. OP has already covered this so I'll leave it as is.
  3. Think out of the box when using some of your skills. Remember this is pvp, not pve. Players aren't just going to stand there and let you wail on them - learn to properly fight back. This doesn't mean panicking and hitting all your buttons at once. You can practice mobility and flexibility on normal mobs, or even CC + escape strategies. Not everyone is (or can instantly be) a pvp pro, you'll win some you'll lose some. Accept that, learn and move forward.

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Asee-Teph: Day 1

Well, I'll just start this off by saying I died... a LOT. And today is only my first day in the notorious Holy lands, aka Asee-Teph! Did it take me a long time to finally ding 24? Yes... yes it did. Was it THAT bad? Nope.

Several times it was my own fault (man those League Defenders have a huuge aggro radius, I got hit for 87k by one before I even saw him on my screen) for running around with my flag up ;) but it was good fun and I racked up about 50 combat glory without actually seeking pvp. A guildie and I literally died 6+ times within maybe 15 minutes because a huge group of League were waiting right outside for us. FoD at this level is still almost negligible, and running back for me was fairly easy due to psi speed buff + how close most spawn points are. I didn't die very often when my flag was down though, but one should always keep a wary eye out in case that unflagged dude near you decides to pop a war banner.

When things got bad I just ran off to a fairly isolated area, turned on my flag for extra xp, and grinded about 25% of the level. Time of day seems to affect how often you'll run into the other (and your own) faction, so I will probably be making most of tomorrow's questing progress early morning, and finishing up with grinding in the evening. Seeing as how Asee-Teph quest taper off at level 27, I'm sure I can survive another 3 levels of this, even if it takes longer than usual.

Things I'm most looking forward to in the v6 patch:
  • Flag will be lowered upon entering purg
  • Shortcut to respond to whispers
  • Flag will no longer be refreshed due to certain self buffs (watching my timer go down to 1min + refreshing rapid metabolism = ffff)
  • Empire incense daily will be fixed! Yay!
Not going to comment on the endless debate about ganking ruining the game until I'm out of Asee-Teph.

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Difficulties in (legit) Lab 13

Today I logged on happily to idle in Nezeb, typing "/z lfg lab13" every couple of minutes in hopes of starting a group. Fortunately the party filled up quickly, and we all teleported down within 20 minutes of the party creation. I felt like I was blessed with patient players, as my previous attempts at creating a legit instance group failed miserably. Everyone was nice and understanding (in our noob ways) and we helped each other finish the pre-dungeon quests before actually heading in...

What awaited us was NOTHING we expected.

We figured that since the instance is level 22, the quests are 22, and our whole group was 22 - we would be fine right? WRONG. Our first 3 pulls proved very difficult - the healer would pull aggro with a single heal, no one seemed to focus fire (wtb raid marks), and the mobs hit HARD. Every pull resulted in at least 2 party members dead. The one time I pulled aggro, the mob crit me for a whopping 4.7k. Needless to say, I was not pleased... when you have a group of the right level players, why is it still so difficult? Someone ended up leaving, I went back to town, defeated and begging for high level help.

This issue seems to be a glaring problem, it's as if Allods is promoting players to get run by higher levels. Here are some fixes...

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Layout

Alright I just spent the last few minutes looking over templates and tweaking things, I'm not particularly happy with any of these pre-set themes so it'll be awhile before this blog gets its correct look.

I'm trying to search for a template that is simple and will actually allow minor changes without causing headaches. :) Hopefully I'll find what I'm looking for before the end of today.

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Holy Lands

I've officially reached the much anticipated Holy lands, and in my first 10 minutes I've already seen 3 League players, 2 of which were labeled as level ??. I figured questing during the mornings would be fairly quiet, but I guess I'm wrong! Unfortunately I'm still 20% away from level 23, and have not run Lab13 yet, so I will be enjoying a few days idling in Nezeb until I ding before I continue questing. In the mean time I've decided to change my primary alt to a healer, who I will slowly be working on...

In the past few days I've befriended 2 players through group quests and ended up applying and joining a guild (TSW). Although it seems like most of their members are doing endgame content (read: Astral ships) it's nice to have green text pop up once in awhile when your questing zone is completely silent.

One thing that really makes the game not-as-fun-as-it-could-be is how huge a difference 1 level can make. I'm used to pvping on WoW and being able to kill players up to 5 levels higher than me out of sheer skill, but it looks very very unlikely on Allods, as a 3 level difference could mean 2-3 shotting someone. Another thing that bothers me, after lurking (and posting) on the official forums, is the lack of endgame content. The game seems really unfinished - even if astral ships are built it looks like people can get a ship full of epics in one day... and then what are they going to do? There is no real incentive to pvp as the pve gear is far better. There is only 1 raid boss and there are no battlegrounds, I'm quite afraid the game will be short-lived once the goal of 'endgame' is attained.

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Introduction

Hello! This is Lunith from Empire on Tensess... This blog will just be a recording of my adventure on Allods Online.

A little about my gaming past:
The only other mmorpg I played for an extended period of time was World of Warcraft. I joined during the 1st expansion (Burning Crusade) and played on and off all the way until Wrath of the Lich King. I did a fair share of raiding (from casual 10mans to serious 25mans) but my love of the game focused on pvp, specifically arena. I quit for good halfway through season 7 because I had attained my pvp "goal" and because arenas were declining and the future looked grim. My other favorite genre of game is FPS - I love competition. After reading about "decent" pvp on Allods, I decided to give it a try.

A little about my Allods characters:
Lunith, Xadaganian psionicist, is my main. As I am writing this, she is halfway through level 18. My plan for her at endgame is half pve and half pvp.

Stiq, Orc brute, is my primary alt. She hasn't even hit 10 yet! But she will be my full-time pvp character.

My favorite race on Allods is actually Arisen, but they do not offer any classes/archetypes that I want to play. I chose Xad psi over Arisen psi due to their racial (10sec physical dmg immunity).


Hope to see you ingame! :)

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