Frogster screw up - TERA sneak peek delayed

Frogster Interactive, the EU publisher of TERA, had scheduled a sneak peek this weekend. Two nine-hour sessions with thousands of players. Unfortunately nobody were able to access the servers when they opened yesterday, "due to the heavy load". A few hours later Frogster announced via their facebook page that they were busy working on their hardware as well as database upgrades. So, a day and a few "we don't know when we'll go online"-posts later, Frogster posted this:

The sneak peek event planned for this weekend unfortunately has had to be cancelled. As we currently cannot foresee when we will be able to guarantee a smooth running of the event, there is no new date as of yet. We're working closely with the TERA developers at Bluehole to fix the remaining issues.

The cancellation was not due to load problems caused by the large number of potential players. Player numbers would have given us a look into possible issues within the scope of a stress test. Due to unforeseen reasons, problems arose already during the entry into the game world.
As soon as we have new information regarding a rescheduled event planning and once all technical issues have been resolved we will inform you on our website, in the forum and via the usual social media channels.

We apologize for the cancellation of the event and assure you that we are doing our utmost to provide all players access to TERA as soon as possible. We thank all TERA fans for their patience and understanding and hope to have positive news for you very soon.

This is certain to create some negative opinions about the company. Shit happens, of course. But Frogster had control over the number of players this time. They knew the maximum player count in advance and still screwed up. TERA isn't even the first MMO they're hosting. So one would think Frogster were fully prepared for this event server-wise.

Confusingly enough, the above quoted post contradicts their previous statement that a heavy server load caused the problem. Bad attempt at saving their reputation? Or maybe they're just telling the truth, and can't elaborate "unforeseen reasons" due to it being a complex issue. Let's hope they straighten things up come closed beta.

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TERA's release date announced

Finally the EU release of TERA has recieved a release date. The day to mark in your calendars is the 3rd of May this year. The game will launch with both a boxed verion and as digital download. As of now there are no details on what other goodies, apart from the game itself, will accompany the different versions or what bonus you get for pre.ordering. When will we know? "In the near future".

Source.

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TERA Beta Testing

Bluehole Studio is now allowing gamers curious about TERA to sign up for an upcoming beta. Interested? Just head on over to the official homepage!

I myself have had the pleasure of trying out TERA on several occasions. You can read what I thought about the game back in April, 2011 in this post.

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TERA = awesome

As I wrote in this post, a Community Play Event for TERA was held last weekend. I'm disappointed to say that I didn't have as much time to play it as I'd wanted.  But no matter. I promised to write down my thoughts about the game, so here it is.

Interface
Nice, convenient, and not too much clutter. Check out the screenshot. (If you think the text seems small or unreadable, that might be because the screenshot has been scaled down from 1080p) Points for being highly customizable. You can move around and resize every object of the interface.

As you can see, there's two mini maps. The one in the middle marks out camps, quests and other points of interest in your current area. A nice touch is that you can change it's transparency. In the upper right corner you have a kind of battle radar that displays primarily two things; a light cone that show your visual field, and circles that mark out the different ranges of your attacks and skills. Simple but oh so useful. Especially since this game is so action oriented, making it really important to know the distance between you and your enemy.

Combat and camera
Dynamic combat system - check. You really do have to move around during battle. If you just stand still like you'd do in a "regular" MMORPG, expect taking some heavy damage. Most enemies vary their attacks. So you have to constantly pay attention and look out for signs of bigger attacks. Many have the ability to knock you down, punishing you greatly for an idle fighting style. So basically, if you have the skills, you can avoid taking damage at all. This is a fresh breeze indeed for MMORPGs. It certainly makes it more interesting and kills off some of the repetitiveness you get in your standard game of this genre.

I didn't do any PvP at all so I can't say anything about it really. And En Masse excluded a lot of the PvP content, having only duels available. Not sure if I would have wanted to do PvP anyway because of the small bit of lag I had. But that was to be expected, since the servers are in the USA and I was playing from Sweden. From what I saw though, 1 on 1 battles seems to be fairly balanced between the classes.

Camera control is a bit more advanced than just zooming closer or further away from your character. Zooming has 3 stages. The first one has your character in the middle of the screen, with the crosshair above his or her head. As you zoom in close enough the camera shifts its position slightly to the right of the character. I think it is meant to look something like a Gears of War style over the shoulder view. This would have been really neat for rangers, if it didn't do it so poorly. The character still feels in the way. This could easily be fixed if the camera just positioned itself even further to the right. As you zoom in even further the camera turns its focus right on the character. This stage is purely for checking out your awesome character in detail. It ranges from a view of the full body to a close-up of the face.

Graphics
Oooh pretty Unreal Engine 3. And as you can see on the character design this game is Korean. Meaning women with perfect curves and jiggle physics. Yeah...

The environments of TERA are stunningly detailed. Impressive for such a huge world. It has that handcrafted feel instead of that "generated world" feel that plagues some games with a large world like this. Unfortunately I didn't play enough to leave Newb Island. I would have loved to share some screenies with you of the world outside, just to show how huge and free it is.

I don't know if you notice in the screenshots below, but the game currently lacks an option for anti-alias. What's up with that? Great way to ruin such beautiful graphics...


Summary
So is TERA something I want to play when it's released? Yes. I love MMORPGs and I've played my fair share of 'em. But eventually, as with most games, you become bored and hunger for something new. I feel that TERA has the potential to become a really great game and satisfy that hunger a bit. The action-based combat system will definitely bring in a lot of players. That alone might not be enough to make them stay. But TERA seems to have some more tricks up its sleeves, like the political system. Innovative or not, the general feel of the game is currently enough to keep my interest. I'm also hoping for a roleplay server. A game like this is great for it.

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Testing TERA

Around December 2009 I was lucky enough be chosen for the English focus group test of TERA. I had a blast playing it with some people from the official forums. Only a tiny portion of the game was being tested, but it had me entertained the whole weekend. And that's a bit rare in MMORPGs nowadays. So what's special about TERA? Here's a quick explanation from the official site:

TERA is the first true Action MMORPG, providing all of the depth of an MMO with the intensity and gratification of an action game. Players fully control their characters using the game's dynamic battle system.
Player actions can change the balance of power in a world threatened by dark powers as seven allied races try to work together to protect their lands from marauding monsters, underworld dwellers, and evil scheming gods.

I love you too, random female human.

If it's the first I don't know, there are a few others floating around (like Vindictus). But the part about "true action" is all but a lie. Click your mouse button, your sword swings. If you miss, you miss. No target select resulting in you being able to hit someone even if your weapon is off visually. It's all about hitboxes and a dynamic combat system. Being a pretty Unreal Engine 3 game doesn't hurt either.

Anyway!  This weekend En Masse Entertainment (the game's North American publishing company) are holding a Community Play Event. Everyone from the focus group tests are invited, as well as some people from the community. This time around we will be testing an English translated version of the client, more or less identical to the Korean release client. And unlike the FGTs, players won't be under an NDA. This means that we will be free to spread any screenshots and recorded footage of the game we get during the event.

I'm kind of excited to see what has changed since 2009. I spent a lot of time during the FGT just exploring the world. It was quite refreshing having such a huge and open world that still had a lot of detail to it. But back then I only got to see a few areas and most of the world was empty and unfinished. Hopefully I'll have time to both explore and try out PvE with all the classes.

So look forward to some screenies and hopefully a couple of videos, as well as my impressions of the game this weekend/early next week. And if you want to read others impressions and thoughts you should check out the Comunity Play Event forum over at the official site. Only participants can post, but the board is open for anyone to read.

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