Lineage II

Lineage II is a fantasy 3D MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) and it launched October 1st 2003. The game was developed by NCSoft, which is a company based in South Korea. They are specialized in creating and publishing MMORPGS, mostly on the asian market though. Lineage II serves as a prequel to Lineage I and is set about 150 years before the events in the first game. The first game was made in 2D and the North American servers were shut down in June 29th 2011 due to being unprofitable, it is however still active in asia.

Playing the game required you to subscribe to a monthly fee of about 15 dollars a month, but the game went free to play on November 30th 2011. It now sustains itself on sales from their so called “cash shop” where you can buy items that boosts your stats and experience gain, making you level up faster. You can also purchase different vanity items such as mounts and gear, and much more. The game has been played by over 14 million people over the years that Lineage II has been active.

In this game you create your own character and you can choose from 6 different races and a total of 36 classes, with subclasses included. Races are: Kamael, Dark Elf, Human, Elf, Orc and Dwarf.

You start out at level 1 and your character is virtually powerless with a small amount of abilities, skills or spells. The world is an open world where you can go wherever you want, it is not set in a linear path. However if you travel to zones where the enemies are too high level you will probably die. As you progress further, you get more powers and become stronger. You become more powerful through defeating NPCs (Non Player Character) in a PvE (Player versus Environment) setting. Killing an enemy grants you experience points, and once you’ve reached the experience needed, you are granted a level up which increases various aspects of your powers, such as your stats or abilities and spells. The current level cap as of writing this is (February 2012) is 99.

PvP (Player versus Player) where you battle other real players is also very prominent in this game. Killing other players out in the open world can be very risky, because when you’ve killed a lot of other players you enter a state of “Chaotic”. If you are killed during a “Chaotic” state you can lose both experience points and items that you hold. Certain areas in the world are however sanctuaries where PvP is not allowed at all. Players are also allowed to initiate a duel between themselves, without the risk of suffering any kinds of penalties. There are one on one duels, and also a party vs party duel option, although to start a party vs party duel there are several requirements you need to meet. There are a lot of more PvP content such as: Territory Wars, castle and fortress sieges, different arenas and coliseums.

Lineage II also has PvE raid bosses that you can kill. You band up with other players, usually a lot of players, all the way up to 100. Although some bosses requires just 7 players, with the occasional solo bosses.