TERA Time – From P2P to F2P to P2W (Part 1)

In our last TERA Time, we discussed how Rising‘s free to play switch wasn’t the devil and about the perks of being an Elite member. While all of that is well and good, how has the game actually changed now that we are almost 20 days past TERA: Rising‘s launch?

We haven’t seen any big shifts in the game play experience aside from early Lumbertown leveling and the enchanting grind at 60 — but it has had an effect on a lot else.

As active and actual players, what has changed between F2P and P2P?

Enchanting

Pre-Rising launch, En Masse claimed that enchanting would be easier. Some players disagree, claiming that the new percentage-based correction that is visible upon enchantment failure is a placebo. The fact is that T14 enchanting is still a massive money and time sink — whether or not it’s more difficult boils down to luck.

Finding T14 fodder in dungeons is still the same, but getting those ever-valuable alkahests is a challenge. The few masterwork alkahests you get from dungeons are simply not enough to live off of, if you hypothetically had no access to the trade broker.

I am convinced that without the cash shop, no one would be able to enchant all of their gear without grinding dungeons for weeks at a time. I would be inclined to say that this makes TERA pay to win, but the fact that extensive alkahests rain so freely from cash shop purchases keeps me from going that far. Extensive alkahests can be sold on the trade broker, of course — which in a way, puts a damper on those crying “Pay2win!“.

(More on the P2W issue in Part 2)

Even if we can’t go so far as saying that you do have to pump real money into the cash shop in order to succeed at endgame, there is simply no denying that enchanting as a whole has gotten to be a bigger pain than it has ever been. It’s better than something like Aion‘s manastone system where you lose all your progress if you fail, but that doesn’t mean that pumping literally hundreds of thousands of gold into repeatedly enchanting equipment is all right.

Community

If you played TERA before the game went free to play, I probably do not need to tell you about the significant decrease in community quality. I’ve addressed how I felt about the community in a previous TERA Time, but now after the influx of new players I’m not sure if I can be so positive about the people who enjoy the game with me.

The problem doesn’t lie in Global chat. The decision to keep Global was a good one, I feel. The issue is that new, younger players who join the game and see the garbage people word-vomit all over Global seem to think that the standards chat sets are how they should act with other players in /area, /LFG, and even /s and /p.

In short, the game is currently flooded with teenagers trying to be 2edgy and they are unbearable. I thought the flood of people stuck at 28 before Rising launched were bad enough, because many of them had/have no idea how to play properly. These new people with newly found in-game confidence and absolutely-zero courtesy are a thousand times worse.

Someone who isn’t great at the game can be taught with patience. Someone who is just a butthole can’t be fixed. There are still a lot of great and friendly players out there, but you sadly aren’t going to be seeing them before you hit 60 and you’re going to have to stick your neck out there to find them.

We’re not done yet! Head on over to TERA Time – From P2P to F2P to P2W (Part 2) for more on the inflation due to the cash shop and the direction the game looks like it’s going.