Ether Saga

Post Date: 20:44 28-06-2010
Rating: 10
Author: kinglale88
Comment: Guys how to get a beta key help pls...

Post Date: 13:19 15-06-2010
Rating: 7
Author: pa_toxin
Comment: Out of experience I have to say that not much actually drags a player into this game, apart from sheer gameplay/graphics/etc. The quest system is either walk/explain about ingame stories/bang those monsters to death. The gameplay is in itself a grind-fest.

Only enough differences keeps this game from being a Perfect World clone, and less than adequate differences to stop players from comparing the two MMOs. Almost completely generic, like all other fantasy MMOs - really. If one is to play this game, then at least have a few friends to play together with.

Positives - Top-notch translations, high quality graphics and pleasing background music (not the ones where you would rather turn off after a few hours of gameplay, and revert to iTunes).

Negatives - Generic gameplay. Generic story. Honestly, people, what more can you expect from an MMORPG nowadays? Apart from taking out unneeded stress on virtual (albeit cute) monsters, or for the point of playing with friends, there really isn't much appeal to solo grind your way through this game. Not to mention that the updating usually requires a manual patch - one thing that's consistent throughout both Perfect World and Ether Saga.

Post Date: 05:20 01-12-2009
Rating: 9
Author: guy086
Comment: Great game, graphics are very serene and pretty. Yes as you may know there is some "engrish" troubles but not anything that is impossible to understand. The skill animations are very colorful, and you get lots of skills, but end up farming spirit in later levels to upgrade skills. Leveling is fairly easy, cashshop items aren't necessary(required) like in fiesta and rohan. The game can be difficult if you go solo only because of dungeon quests which you need help with. Easy to come back to after a while of not playing. People are fairly friendly, servers allocated to pvp and pve which you can enter either or with the same char which is nice too. Money is easy to make in game.

Overall it's a great game, very enjoyable if played with friends, or by yourself. I would recommend it to everyone, but don't go in without a plan, (every mmoer should know that, always have a build that you will abide by, don't go in blind)

Post Date: 02:51 04-08-2009
Rating: 7
Author: jiromaster
Comment: IGN: JiroLand
Server: East Coast (Fort Phoenix)

This is my second online game played, after MGO. This game banner keeps prompting in my MGO forum webby, and thus out of curiosity, I went on to search more on this game. Its trailer do really impressed me, and I like the idea of riding onto a cloud and roam freely in a complete 3D environment. This is simply how I get myself playing this game.

My impression in this game, started with “unbelievable”. The server is excellent, and there are so many people playing in this game. Unlike MGO, this had gone to its downfall, lag server and lesser players online.

I like the idea of ether background story, which is based on old epic story of Journey to the West. This is such a common drama/story that I always been exposed to, ever since I’m young. And thus, this is how players get to choose, which race they wanted to be during the start. Yaoh, ShenZu or Ren. However, to my awareness, choosing either of them as your race will not affect much in your game story. This game provides 6 kinds of jobs for players to choose from the start. Dragoon, Conjuer, Mystics, Shaman, Ranger and Rogue. Each of the job has its own unique contributions towards the game play. No doubt Mystics play the role of healing.

Leveling And Upgrading Skills Using Spirits

I believed most players; carry the objective of playing fun in ever online game. This game provided many quests, which ranged from hero quest to fun quests. You will never be lack of quests to do in this game. Leveling is not a problem in this game. Or to put it better, high level in this game does not mean you are more powerful. Skill is the main feature in this game that determine, whether or not are you powerful enough.

To learn certain skill, you need spirits. And to earn spirits, you need to kill regular monster (Mob) to earn them. More spirits can be earned if you choose to do your training in dungeons, which regular players in this game called them as “instance” (D1, D2 … D7). “Farming” is the common theme using when a playing does his training in instance.

As you go higher level, this function shall become a little annoying, as most of the high level skills required plenty of spirits, which requires you to keep on farming in instance. Imagine I need 256 000 spirits to pump up a skill to the next level, and I can only earn 8 spirits for killing one regular mob, isit that annoying to some of us.

One of the game GMs did make a note that in future perhaps they may introduce spirits pill in cash shop. This means you need to purchase ebucks in order to buy these pills for the spirits. Personally, I don’t like this idea, as it seems that the developers are planning some tricks in calling more players to buy their ebucks. Sad!

EBucks And Cash Items

Now I mention about ebucks. What is ebuck? Ebuck is a currency used to purchase in-game cash items. EBucks can be made purchase in the Ether Saga website. And the currency for the transaction is in USDollars.US$50 is equivalent to 50ebucks. Several modes of payments can be made in buying these ebiucks, and the mode of payment I choose is using Paypal system.

To be frank, cash costume is one of this game features. They are striking and awesome looking. No matter which costume they release, this sure to draw attention to many players in buying them. Not to mention their cash item mounts. Imagine yourself riding onto a huge flying horse, isn’t that sound and look great. Mount is another great feature of this game. For every mount that they released into the game, it will for sure draw great attention. Angel wings and Devil wings are the most popular of them all.

Game Inventory Bag & Banker Bag

One of the items found in the Cash Shop is the Red Yarn. This item cost 3ebucks, which allows expanding your inventory bag by another additional 6 slots. I must agree that the default slots available to the players of the game, is pathetic. It has only 24 slots, and their banker only has 24 slots either. A lot of Red Yarn is needed to upgrade your inventory bag, if you do really wants to enjoy fun playing at the later stages of the game. Imagine if I want to expand my inventory bag to 96 slots, it means I need to buy 12 Red Yarns, which is equal to spending 36ebucks. Wow!!! Isn’t this sound like money sucking game? No! You do not need to expand your bag immediately upon playing this game. You can slowly expand your inventory game as the game goes along. Even if you decided not to upgrade your inventory bag, you can still carry on in playing this game. Many players are also playing this game in such way, so it is not much pretty a issue in using a 24-slots inventory bag. Banker comes with 24 slots as well, and the banker npc is called Stash Keeper, which you can find one in the huge city named Pokari. Cash item Log Of Growth is used in expanding banker slots, and each Log Of Growth cost 2ebucks.

Weapons & Equipment

To enjoy training and leveling in this game, players must have good sets of weapons and equipment. The method used in upgrading equipments in this game, is completely different from my previous game. Weapons & Equipment, labeled with the word diplomatic, are considered as elite gears, and will give better stats.

Imbue & Embed

The necessarily elements needed for upgrading weapons, are gold, ethrelic and godly ethrelic. Just because godly ethrelic are hot items for upgrading gears, their price value had keep on increasing, and it had gone to quite a ridiculous price. It is a complain, but no choice we have to accept it. If we want good gears, either we do constant farming to farm for godly ethrelic, or we fork out our hard earn golds and purchase them in the trading realm. The color grades of the gears are as follow. Green, blue, purple, gold, pink and lastly red. Red stands for ether-touched, which is the best of all colors. Gears can be upgrading with imbue and embed. Imbue is a pure luck gamble, using ethrelic or godly ethrelic, and imbue them at the ancestral forge. A success will increase the level of your gear by +1. A failure can decrease the level by -1, or it can drop all the way to the default. This is a common headache that most players face, as after spending thousands of gold, they still can’t manage to get their gear to an imbue of +5. My word of advice is, if you manage to imbue to +5, and you are satisfied, never go try to make +6 anymore, as you may never knows what will happen next. I had gone broke many times, due to the fact that I hve itch hands, to seduce me in touching my gears to imbue them further. As a result, it fail, I try to make them back, spending all my fortune, and still never get it back to its last best level. Sad! Another method for upgrading the gears, is through embeds. Every weapon comes with a default value of how many times you can embed this weapon. Max embed allowed is 8. Equipment comes with no embed, and if you wants to embed them, you need to add embed slots. Talk to the dusk or dawn npc to do this. Increasing embed slot requires an item call hand drill. However take note that while doing socket, if you fail in increasing the slots, your gears may be destroyed. Thus, to ensure your gears do not get destroyed, it is always wise to socket your gears using a cash item called Lightbender stone. With lightbender stone, your gears will still be there even if your socketing fails. Each lightbender stone cost 0.5ebucks, and a package of 10 lightbender stones cost 4.5ebucks only. Lightbender stone are always hot essential item for imbuing. During imbue, with lightbender stone, your gears will only get its level decrease by one, even if the process fails. Without lightbender, your gear’s level can drop all the way to zero when it fail in the process.

Trading Realm

What is trading realm? There are a total of 15 realms in this game, and you can feel free to choose one realm to play in. Trading realm is the realm, which you will see hundreds of market shops, open by players to sell and buy items. The whole city of Pokari is always nested with many shop, lying on the ground everyone. And I like this trading realm idea. You can find almost all sorts of stuffs from the shops here, from equipments to cards to jade stones to virtue items etc. Of course, before making every purchase, it is always wise to make price comparison between several shops, before you make your decision in buying the stuff.

Clans & Alliances

Every game will sure to have this feature. You can form your own clan, or you can join a clan. An alliance is made up of several clans, and they joined together to enhance their teamwork so as to fend against other clans or alliance. The largest alliance which I know in the East Server belongs to the EpicCute Alliance.

PVP PVE

This is a PVP game. When your character reached level 45, he or she shall be open to this PVP format. While training in the outside maps, you could get yourself attacked by another player. Either you choose to be killed, run for life or fight back. Much that I know, those that get killed by this PVP functions, they will tends to curse and swear to the PKster, and cast nasty remarks in the forum. But let’s just face this. This is a PVP designed game, and we play this game for relaxation, not to make arguments with other players in the game. Just because of some quarrel that may happen from this, it usually leads to clan or alliance war with each other. Huge clan tends to be cocky, small and new clans tend to stay low profile. If you want to stay peaceful life in this game, join a bigger clan or alliance. Smaller and weaker clan tends to get bullied. This is quite a universal rule applying across most online games.

PETS

Lastly, I will like to mention something on pets, before I closed my review. Every player comes with a default pet. They are different, depending on which race you choose to be. And you can only start to catch pet or monster as pet, which you reached the level of 15. I believed altogether there is almost 100 over kinds of monster you can tame as pet. As a low level player, you may not be possible to catch a high level pet. But you can always buy a desired pet from the shops in the trading realm. Pets come with different combat type, and normal is the worst of all. Pets with fierce combat type, tends to have higher HP growth, and they are always the best pet to be fuse together with your character. Pets with cautious as combat type, they tends to have high intelligent, which makes their attack power much stronger. They are more suitable to fight side by side with you while killing regular monster in the outside maps. Bright pets is almost similar to cautious pet, except they can learn this skill call “Heal” which means you can make use of your pet to heal yourself when you HP life is coming low.

I hope I have provided some basic information about this game to new players. And to sum up my review, this game had excellent graphics, and questing. The only disadvantage is, to enjoy great fun into this game; it is not going to be cheap. You need to either spend some real world money into this game to purchase some nice stuff, or spend quite a lot of time to farm for more gold to make purchase.

Post Date: 05:25 03-08-2009
Rating: 8
Author: cookiejarvis
Comment: IGN: CookieGod

Server: East Coast (Fort Phoenix)

Total Rating: 4.231 out of 5 stars (average of all 13 categories)

Overview: Ether Saga Online (known by many as simply ESO) is a Free-to-Play Massive Multiplayer Online Role-playing Game (MMORPG) developed in China by Beijing Perfect World. A global, English version of the game was released on July 1st, 2009 by Perfect World Entertainment. The game is geared towards Teenagers and Young adults. The game features lush, anime-style graphics, as well as remixed, traditional Chinese music in the background. Like many other MMORPGs, Ether Saga has a point-and-click+WASD interface. This means that one can move around using the WASD keyboard keys and target monsters and players using the mouse. ESO has plenty of content and a large community and a multitude of events players can engage in. ESO also features one of the most detailed, if not most detailed Pet systems of all MMORPGS. Players can catch a multitude of pets and raise them as their fighting companions. The Pet System is complete with Pet Skills, attributes, ranking, and leveling. Like many other MMORPGs, ESO also has a leveling system which makes it incredibly hard for players to level if they choose to grind their entire way to level 105. However, this leveling time is countered by the many events which make leveling much simpler. Ether Saga’s major flaw lies with its class system which defiantly could be better balanced.

Content (5/5): Ether Saga Online is loosely based off an old Chinese classic known as Journey to the West (or as Monkey in some Western Countries). This story is about a monk who journeys west to India in search of Buddhist religious texts. This monk is Jino in ESO. Very little of the original story line is recognizable in ESO. However, one thing is that the White Dragon (the strongest boss currently) is a monster that the monk meets on his journey to India. Also, many of the maps reflect this story as well. (The information of Journey to the West was found on Wikipedia). ESO features 3 playable races (Renzu, Shenzu, and Yaoh), and 6 playable classes (Dragoon, Shaman, Ranger, Rogue, Mystic, Conjurer). The current level cap is 105. There are three playable regions so far in the International version, the Gaap Lands, Gallio Kingdom, and Ziminian Domain. The Ether Saga world is quite large and is growing quite fast as well as this is a new game. There are many bosses, most of them in the instances (explained later). It is evident a lot of thought went into making this game because there are many player-friendly options in this game. Some of them include auto-routing, a possessor (for legit botting lol), and safety lock (which prevents hackers from doing too much damage). There is also a marriage system so you can show your love and enjoy some benefits from marriage as well. The game is also complete with Clans and Alliances. There are also mounts which are purchasable from the non-player characters (NPCs), or from the in-game cash shop known as the Heaven Repository. There have been complaints however that the content for players that are above level 90 are not up to par with contents for players below level 90. This is expected to be fixed, however, as more and more content comes in from the Chinese version of the game to the International version of the game. There are also a multitude of events, contests, and updates that Perfect World Entertainment offers its players to keep them interested in the game.

Pet System (5/5): Ether Saga boasts probably the most detailed pet system of any MMORPG. This will be evident to players from the moment they make their character as they are given one starting pet based on the race of their character. At anytime, a player can have two pets out. One pet can be summoned, and the other one can be fused with. To fuse with your pet means to combine with your pet so each of you share a half of all damage received. The pet you fuse with will also give you a random bonus. The bonus can be seen under Fusion Bonus on the pet’s description. Any player above level 15 can catch a pet using a pet net (purchasable from an NPC). Although not all monsters are tamable, there are still a multitude of monsters to capture. Pets have many different characteristics that make them all unique. Pets can also get even more powerful than players themselves. Players can meld two pets above level 30 together to make a stronger pet as well. The Pet System is defiantly the defining feature of Ether Saga Online, and most if not all players will use several in their gameplaying experience.

Classes (2/5): The Class system is the one major flaw of ESO. There are six playable classes in the game. The weapon and armor that the class uses is in parentheses.
Dragoon (spears/heavy armor): Their main purpose is for tanking bosses.
Shaman (2-handed hammers/heavy armor): This class is a hybrid tank and healer.
Conjurer (amulets/light armor): This class uses high damaging ranged attacks, but has low evasion, defense, and HP.
Mystic (staff/ light armor): This class has many buffing and healing skills for themselves and their party. They are pretty good with solo fighting again.
Ranger (bow and arrow/medium armor): This class has high damaging ranged attacks (although not as much as a conjurer). However, Rangers have more evasion, defense, and HP than a Conjurer.
Rogue (daggers/medium armor): This class deals with Damage Per Second (DPS), and stealth. Rogues have the highest evasion.
These classes, however, are very unbalanced. This is because the classes of Mystic and Ranger are considered by many. Rangers are able to do a lot of damage with their skills that have little cooldown or cast time. Mystics are overpowered because they have many buffs, and their skills do a lot of damage which reduces the amount of cons with this class. The other classes are simply not able to be up to par with the damage and benefits of these two classes. Also, ranged classes generally do better in player-vs.-environment (PVE) and in player-vs.-player (PVP). However, during the end game the quality of one’s equipment is more important than the quality of the class itself.

Dungeons (4/5): Dungeons, or instances, are special, timed maps that players can enter through the Adventure Dispatch NPC. Normally, an instance has three bosses, each one getting progressively more difficult, and a multitude of minor monsters. Instance monsters are normally stronger than outside monsters but they drop more money, give more spirit, and also have a higher drop rate for valuable items. Instance bosses are very difficult for a single player to build. Often, players will recruit teammates into a party to take on the bosses together. However, some bosses can be soloed through a technique called kiting. This involves hitting the boss, running to gain some distance, and then hitting the boss again. Close range characters can’t use this technique. Rangers do this technique the best because they are ranged and have very fast casting skills.

Community (3/5): From my own personal experiences, I have found much of the ESO community to be quite rude and bitter. This can become quite evident as one plays the game. Some players have a tendency to be very non-negotiating when it comes to selling/buying items, and they will usually demand to buy the item for a lower price than it is actually worth. However, there are some very friendly people on ESO that are more than willing to help new players out and that are well-worth making friends with.

Clans/Alliances (5/5): Ether Saga also has a very good Clan and Alliance system. Players can choose to create a clan with up to 15 other people. As a clan levels up through donations more and more players can be added to it. Clans can also join Alliances, which is essentially a group of clans. Similar to a Clan, as an Alliance levels up, more and more clans can be added to it. An Alliance can go to wars with other Alliances as well. Players have 60 minutes to kill as many people from the opposing Alliance as they can. The Alliance with the most kills overall wins. In the coming weeks, there will also be a territory war system similar to that of Perfect World’s system. Alliances will be able to battle over chunks of land. Each piece of land that the Alliance owns will reward them. This category receives a 5/5 because the Clan and Alliance system in ESO is near perfect in all aspects if not perfect already.

PVP/PK (5/5): The PVP and Player Killing (PK) system is also very good. There is a multitude of ways that a player can test their power against other players. The first method is to do a duel. A duel is pretty much an agreement between two players to fight. There is no penalty for winning and there is currently no reward for winning (only bragging rights =p). The second method is to kill players outside of the safe zones. The towns are considered safe zones and the system will warn you when you are entering or leaving a safe zone. One thing to note is that players can only PK or get PK’d after they reach level 45. When a player kills a player that is white named, they will gain infamy. The more infamy they gain, the more red their name becomes. A player will gain more infamy if they kill players that are of a lower level than they are. The guards of each town will automatically attack players with infamy when they are outside of the safe zone. When a red named player is killed, they lose both exp and items that are in their bag. There is no punishment for being PK’d if you have a white name. The third way to fight other players is through the Warcry. A Warcry is an instance where two teams face off against each other. The battles can be anywhere from 2v2 through 6v6. The reward for killing in Warcry is tokens which can be exchanged for rare items. Soon, ESO will have PVE realms as well, which players can enter if they do not wish to partake in the PK system. Although the PVP/PK system is missing a few things like an unlimited free for all and positive karma for killing red named players, the ESO PVP/PK system is still very good.

Leveling (4/5): Leveling in ESO can be both very easy and very frustrating. Recently, quests from levels 1 through 45 have been revamped so that players can get to level 45 fairly easily. A casual gamer could probably get to level 45 in a matter of 3 to 4 days. However, after 45, the speed of leveling drops drastically. This may come as a shock to players who were not aware of this change after level 45. Most players in ESO usually do quests to level up, as there are plenty of quests available. There are also plenty of daily quests which give a lot of exp to players as well. Through these events and quests, leveling in ESO becomes much simpler than in some other games like Maplestory or Flyff which are notorious for their grinding. However, the quests can get a bit repetitive and in the higher levels there is a lack of quests that give a lot of exp so this category recieves a 4/5.

Visuals (5/5): The visuals in ESO are excellent both in quality and in the fact that they allow ESO to run smoothly on almost any computer. ESO has a lot of beautiful scenery and stunning spell effects as well. The water in ESO is phenomenal at higher graphics because it gives all the effects that real water would give. However, the graphics are cartoony and I would not suggest this game to anyone who fancies more of the realistic graphics. I would also say that the game developers obviously put a lot of time and effort into making the game as architecturally nice as possible. A higher end computer will defiantly enjoy the landscape while a lower end will get much of the beauty as well. This category receives a 5/5 because of how beautiful the graphics are on all sorts of computers.

Sound (5/5): The sounds in ESO are just excellent. This is, however, my opinion. The developers of the game took traditional Chinese music and remixed it with some Western elements to fit the needs of most modern people. The music also does a great job of going along with the location as well, fitting every mood. (I would know I’m an Orchestra student). Anyways, although the sound is indeed geared towards the Chinese medium, I believe that Westerners can enjoy the music as well! There are good special effect sounds as well. Each pet tends to have a unique sound that it makes that distinguishes it from the others. That is why this category gets a 5/5.

Heaven Repository (3/5): The Heaven Repository is ESO’s Cash Shop, the medium in which this game makes money. This game is unfortunately highly dependent on the Heaven Repository, especially at higher levels. At higher levels, it becomes impossible to make decent gear without using some sort of item from the Heaven Repository to increase the success rate of upgrading your equipment and weapons. Ether Bucks are the currency of the Heaven Repository. Each Ether Buck costs $1. Ether Bucks can be bought from other players. Historically, prices for Ether Bucks range from 26-39 gold coins for each Ether Buck. The prices vary depending on simple supply and demand economics. One complaint that is usually received is the price of the Heaven Repository items. Although they are permanent, a suit in the Heaven Repository might cost a player $15-$18. However, there are those who can make it through this game without spending a penny on anything other than electricity bills. This category receives a 3/5 because Heaven Repository items are expensive, but they can be bought with in game money. The suits in Heaven Repository look really awesome too.

Longevity (5/5): As long as the company owning ESO, Perfect World Entertainment, keeps on giving more Events and Contests, I expect ESO to be around for a long time. This game is very content rich and very fun to play. I have played a lot of MMORPGs (Maplestory, Flyff, Hero Online, Runes of Magic, Silkroad, Martial Arts Online, Cabal, Runescape, Perfect World, WoW just to name a few) in my time and I strongly believe that this game has been the most fun by far. This game is a refreshing break from MMORPGs which are continually trying to make their graphics more human like (which I hate). I expect that this game will keep on gaining popularity and continue growing and last for a long time into the future.

Personal Experience (4/5): I started to play this game in early July when a friend recommended it to me. As usual, I read a bunch of reviews and guides before starting the game. When I was reading those reviews and everything I knew immediately I would love this game just for its detailed pet system. I would highly recommend that any MMORPGer at least give this game a chance because it defiantly is one of the top MMORPGs. It received a rating of 8.2/10 on mmorpg.com which is just a phenomenal rating for a free to play MMORPG especially. I settled down and made a Ranger. Currently I am in my upper 50’s. I must say, this game has yet to really bore me. I feel like I’m just getting started and there is a lot yet to come. This is because of all the content that this game offers. I, personally, will be playing this game for at least the next year, probably even more because this is the best MMORPG I have played so far without a doubt.

Post Date: 03:28 03-08-2009
Rating: 10
Author: webber
Comment: I have played Ether Saga since my first review down on the bottom. Instead of being a clone of Perfect World, Ether Saga is a great free MMORPG by itself. The pet system is in Ether Saga is the best that I have ever seen. Pets frequently mean life or death for your character. The graphics, although not for everybody, are very welldone. The quest system is the part of the game i don't like.

Post Date: 02:02 30-07-2009
Rating: 7
Author: eimiiho
Comment: I am in no way a MMORPG expert. However, I am offering a review that is completely unbiased. From Runescape to Asheron's Call, Ragnarok to WoW, Ether Saga Online(ESO) has it all and so much potential worth exploring.


Graphics 9/10: When you first look at this game, you'll be reminded of WoW for the beautiful textures and lush graphics. ESO proves to be a solid performer for today's high end hardware.

Sound 7/10: The music is well orchestrated with beautiful Asian accents that will keep you in the mood (of the world). It can get a little repetitive but what game isn't? Just turn on some iTunes and you'll be ready for another hour of grinding.

Story 5/10: I find that any MMORPG must have an engaging story. I found that ESO lacks in lore and attempts to make up for it by adding events. You will notice midway into playing, the story is so muddled that you won't care about it.

Gameplay 8/10: You will first notice that this game takes all the good things from WoW and implements them in a different fashion such as mounts and battle style. Battles are heavily dependent on skill usage making normal attacks useless. Skillsets, attribute points, and the like are daunting at first but easily learned from time and experience in game. Because this is 'free to play' ,certain items are purchasable. You will notice in later stages that those who pay a little will have an edge. Questing is abundant, while not as engaging as other games, there is always something to do. With that being said, leveling is a breeze with completion of quests. There is also an Alliance/Clan system, not fully implemented yet (in Open Beta).

ESO is cute, fun and addicting. There are many 'free-to-play' games out there but this a jewel worth a try. You will notice that achieving a full game experience is possible without buying items. Given this game is still in Open Beta, the potential of this game hasn't been fully explored. If you don't find yourself glued to your computer by the first day, you probably should move on. If you're hooked, prepare to spend a buck or two for some cool mounts and sexy gear!

Post Date: 21:39 29-07-2009
Rating: 6
Author: helldelta
Comment: Ether Saga is a MMO that closely follows the classic story of the ‘Journey to the West’. Many of the areas on the world map, or ‘Big Map’ as it is called in game, resemble those from the Journey to the West. The hero (you) follows Jino (Xuánzàng) and his disciples, on his pilgrimage to the west through many quests. The story and characters are tied well in to the game, and it provides a strong basis for an engaging game world.

The game features three races that have very little difference besides aesthetics, and six different classes to choose. Dragoon is the iconic ‘tank’ class, while Mystic is the ‘healer’. While Ranger and Conjurer are both ranged damage dealing classes, and Rogue is the iconic stealthy melee damage dealer. Finally, the shaman fills a hybrid role of ‘tank’ and ‘healer’ with strong spells that buffs his/her party.
Each class is unique in its own way but there is a serious mechanic problem between ranged and melee classes. In essence, classes that cannot do strong ranged attacks are at a disadvantage in both instances and PVP to those classes that can. A Rogue player for example can never attack another target that is constantly running away without the assistance of ‘Nascent’ abilities that slow or immobilize target players.
These Nascent or ‘Birthday’ skills are determined based on your birthday, something that no new player would ever consider when making his first character. The game does not very clearly explain the importance of Nascent abilities before the character is created. It would be very beneficial if players could see what birthday skills they will receive, or select what abilities they want from their birthday while creating their character.

The key detail that separates Ether Saga from most other MMO games is the intricate pet system. Pets in Ether Saga act as familiars whom protect and aid you in battle, and can be the deciding factor between victory and defeat. Pets can be summoned to attack your enemies with you, or heal you as you take punishment from your enemies. Additionally, pets can be ‘fused’ which allows the pet to share punishment together with you.
This review would be too long to go into much detail about pets; however the key thing is that you can tame pets when at an appropriate level. At higher levels, pet melding becomes a valid option to create some legendary warriors to fight at your side. Pet melding requires two pets and can yield a brand new more powerful pet, this unlocks a large potential in creating pets. There are a few issues with pets however, especially healing pets who require a lot of maintenance to keep satisfied. It is understandable to have to feed a pet, however a healing pet can use up to 200 pet foods on an average boss fight. This becomes tedious and expensive to have to keep feeding the pet, especially in middle of combat. Overall the pet system in game is fun and exciting feature of Ether Saga, but it might be necessary to work out a few kinks with pet maintenance.

Quests are the essence of most MMO’s, and in Ether Saga the quest system is lacking. The game features a very ‘grindy’ quest system where the player will kill one type of enemy for at least 6-7 different quests. Now I understand ‘grinding’ is part of any MMO, however the repetition of this scale keeps you from wanting to quest but rather wait for the ‘daily events’. Daily events are simple quests that occur every 3 hours from 9:00 AM EST until 9:00PM EST, and last only an hour. The reward for doing these daily events is a token or two that gives you absurd amounts of experience that would require most people an hour of normal questing. In addition to the daily quests there are invasions events that occur at 7:00PM every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday. These invasions cause extreme strains on your computer as you have to fight with at least 20-40 monsters on your screen alongside 20 other players around you. My recently built computer, with some of the top-of-line parts in the recent 4-5 months cannot smoothly run these invasions on minimum setting mode.
Additionally, recently a patch ‘streamlined’ levelling from 1 to 43. What was ACTUALLY done by the developers was that they added a quest chain for a new player to follow that gave him enough experience to hit level 43 in a mere 2 hours. This nullifies any purpose to low level dungeons below level 30 because most players would be too high level to even care about the items in low level instances (save for an important quest).
Overall, the quest system needs a lot of work, you will have to grow a thick skin against repetition or find a partner who can herd many monsters and kill them at the same time.

The PVP system in Ether Saga is actually a very effective one save for one very important issue that needs addressing. Ether Saga’s PVP system is based on an infamy system where killing ‘good’ players (white named players) will turn you into a ‘bad’ player (red named player). As long as you wear a white name you suffer no punishment from death. However, once you wear the red name any time you suffer death at the hands of another player the items in your possession that can be dropped, will drop and may be looted by anyone. The red name effect lasts 1 hour for every infamy point you get, infamy points again are accumulated as you kill white named players only.
But, the main problem that plagues PVP is that items such as Etherhop Brew or Pokari Royal Wine, allow a player to fully heal himself instantly. This causes the issue of PVP being basically a match of who has the most potions. This mechanic is very boring, and causes players to stand next to no chance against other players equipped with these potions. These potions in my honest opinion should not exist.
The PK system in general though, is pretty fun and rewarding but could use a simple tweak to be a lot more fun.

Dungeons or as I call them, Instances, are another important feature of any MMO. In Ether Saga you can enter an instance through a NPC that will enter you into a ‘queue’ to join the instance. Once inside the instance your party has one hour to defeat the last boss before the timer runs out and the party is forced out. The instances, sadly, are not implemented very well. To simply put it, the key to each instance is to utilize a mechanic known as ‘kiting’. Kiting is the art of killing an enemy slowly, while never letting the enemy get close enough to attack you. The other way to defeat an instance is to wear very powerful gear with high enchantments (more on this soon), which are available to very few people with a lot of gold to spend.
Finally, the armor and weapon upgrading system is something completely new that I haven’t seen before. The way that the upgrading system works, you can visit a blacksmith and with the right materials and money, you can ‘Imbue’ your gear and enhance its stats. Your armor will upgrade by +1 and with each successful imbue it will increase the imbue counter. But, in the event of a failed imbue attempt you may lose 2 or 3 imbues, which will put you back where you started. In addition to upgrading the stats, imbuing will give the armor a new or brighter glow to emphasize its strength visually. This makes upgrading very expensive, but very rewarding too, not to mention that you look very cool when your armor glows a bright red color.

Ultimately, the game features very cute graphics and a captivating story which will appeal to both adults and children alike. As long as you play casually with friends, this game should provide good amounts of entertainment. But if you play the game enough and begin to take it seriously you will quickly realize major flaws that need to be addressed quickly.

Post Date: 14:46 29-07-2009
Rating: 9
Author: Extricition
Comment: Dear reader,

This is my fourth (or fifth) day of playing. This thread will be providing both feedback and constructive criticism, I hope you will enjoy reading and that you will also provide feedback and constructive criticism on what I'm about to share with everyone of you.
I am basing my arguments on my personal point of view, and my years of experience with other MMORPGs. I do not want Ether Saga Online (ESO from herein) to become one of those others, because I have ceased playing those, yet I am still here. ESO is a great, great game. I would rate it a sincere 9/10. Where World of Warcraft only hit a 7.8/10 and other games such as Guild Wars never came past the 8/10.
With great passion I say that ESO is one (if not the) best game I have ever played.
I am 16 years old.

The reason why Ether Saga get 9 out of the 10.
First, let's start with the great and better aspects of the game.
ESO is a game based on Quests, as we all know. It is a game where levelling cannot only be based on grinding and feasting on monsters. Bluntly put, you cannot get 100% out of this game if you don't quest.
This system isn't unique, I understand that. There are several other MMORPGs that share the same system - but I prefer the way ESO handles it.
There's what, hundreds of quests? In comparison to other MMORPGs, that is a sincere lot.
Quests are different than grinding, they make the game more interesting and make sure the user doesn't have to repeat the same actions, every level, until they reach the maximum.

I went from level 1 to level 30 in less than 3, or 4 hours. On my very first character. Mostly because there's quests that allow you to get one level out of 4 steps. You just have to talk to another NPC that's standing 3 feet away from the first one. Which is something that surprised me. Perhaps even amazed me. The first thing that came to mind was "How could they allow players to level this easily?" - of course, later I understood that if they didn't, levelling would become hard, as those quests are sincerely limited. Which balances game play in such a great way. No level is the same! You simply never know how long one level will take you. One will take 20 minutes, another will take you 4 days. It's all about the amount of quests that you've already done, and the amount that's available.

Another reason why I levelled quite fast in the beginning was (and I do believe that I levelled rather fast, but that's my opinion) that the system is simple. The help guide in-game is detailed. If you don't understand something, and you can't find it in the help guide, you can find it on the forums or you can ask a fellow player. Which brings me to the second subject - the Community.

The community of ESO... what can I say? You made me fall in love. The player based community is mature, sincere - fun, happy, social, generous and loving. Sincerely, if I'd start to get bored of gameplay - the community is what would force me to stay. I joined an Alliance two days ago, Mirage. People in it have helped me an incredible amount. I'm curious, and I do not like being a newbie for ever - so I ask about one question every 5 minutes. I understand that that may annoy some people, and I respect that - but the people that have helped me, have done so continuously. Actually, they are helping me as I am writing this.
Also, the generosity. My Lord, I had to upgrade my armour - someone from Mirage - who goes by the name of Vind; gave me 4 stones of peace (which are cash shop items, and cost 1.50USD each!) to let me upgrade my level 45 dragoon armour and weapon to +4.
I was stunned.
I only knew the person for one or two days at most. And that's just one example, someone else gave me an Ethyr skill I really was looking for. Free, no questions asked. Usually I am not fond of charity towards myself, so I decided to pass on the generosity and gave away Cloudwisk Captains to newer players, to balance my karma and to give them something to level for and towards (they needed to be level 42 to use the pets). In the hope they would stay to play this game for a long time.

I am starting to drift from the subject, let's get back on track.
The forums. As you might notice, this is my very first post. I sincerely doubt it will be my last, though.

Well, Cloudwisk Captains are what? Exactly, pets.
Which brings me to the third great, great aspect of ESO. Your loyal companions. Pets are what drive the combat oriented part of the game.
Sure, you can become strong alone. You can fight your way to the top without them, but with them - everything becomes 50 to 99% easier.
You can upgrade pets by teaching them new skills, levelling them and even melding (combining) them with other pets to get extremely strong ones! You can melt yourself with them to share the damage you receive so you can tank double the amount of monsters or last double the amount of time in hard combat which is really necessary when reaching higher levels - so you can level faster and more effective.
ESO just wouldn't be the same without our companions.

Why walk when you can fly, right? Why move on your feet when you can be on the back of a large toad? Why not grow some wings while at it? I understand that for perhaps too many of these items you are required to purchase Etherbucks with real cash currency (USD) - but there's still a pretty nice amount of items you can use to fly around with. Which are absolutely necessary to play this game, as you will spend half your game life travelling around, to complete quests or gather material for your diplomatic level 60 suit, which you've always wanted.
Not only can you travel by mount, you can also engage in combat with them! How's that, sitting on the back of a horse, with your spear - your loyal companion fighting beside you and you hitting the s**t out of that boss! I'll let your imagination do the rest.

Bosses? Yes. Instance bosses. ESO also has a vast and interesting instance system. Much I cannot tell you about it, because I honestly only have been inside such instance for perhaps two times at most. Which I have never completed in a proper manner, for that matter. I can just recommend you to try it out and see it for yourself.

As you're looking around these forums, you will see perhaps 30% of all threads being about imbueing and upgrading. Yes, I too am not very fond of this system - and I too think that it should be improved. It's simply too hard to upgrade - everyone knows that. I believe that you are going to do something about it. I trust you will.

The Cash Shop is another thing I am not completely fond off. I have purchased 30 e-bucks (30$US) over two days. I have purchased Angel Wings, and some expanding stash item. That was it.
If you think that isn't much, you're very correct. It's absolutely not much. 30 bucks for two or three items - I understand that one of them was among the most expensive cash shop items, but still; it's pretty expensive. Don't let ESO and Perfect World Entertainment turn into Gpotato and their game Flyff. Please just don't.

Also, the bad and stash. For the size of the game, they're too small. Which is an understatement. Way too small.
Perhaps let the size of bags increase over levels, and make the cash shop items able to expand them sooner so that low levels won't have to wait until they're higher? I truly believe that that will be a good solution, if I may say so myself.

Well, I'd hate to end with something bad - so I'll just state another epic sized bonus.
The size of the world and the graphics. The ESO world is huuuuge for a free MMORPG. I thought the one map I had was already extremely large. Until someone told me there's not one, but two (!!!) more regions like that!
What?!?!
Also, the variety of the map - the structures in it, the monsters, the water - it's all so very detailed. It's magnificent! I don't have any other words for it.
But also the graphics of the game itself, they're beautiful. Especially for a game with these computer hardware recommendations. It's detailed, yet simple. Which is, great, great, great!

With that, I would like to end my feedback and constructive criticism.

If you believe I have missed something, or I said something that you absolutely don't agree with - tell me! Reply to me! I want to know what you think, so I can discuss it with you - so we can talk about our differences.

Oh, I'd also like to mention that I'm Dutch - so my English isn't fluent. I thank you for your understanding :)

Well, that's about it!
Thanks for reading!

Sincerely,

Extricate/Talipes/H.

Post Date: 08:40 27-07-2009
Rating: 10
Author: minigates1
Comment: i love this game

Post Date: 21:24 25-07-2009
Rating: 8
Author: salkan
Comment: In the six months that I have spent playing Ether Saga, I have grown to really like the game. Although it is my first online RPG game, in my eyes it has most of the things to be quite successful. The game itself is rather addicting, especially if you meet other players to play with. As a free to play game, I went in expecting to have to do the same tedious task over and over again and was rather surprised. From all the fun events, to the contests as well as the pvp function, the game definitely offers plenty to keep you entertained. The characters are quite adorable and have a lot of detail to them, as well as the outfits they wear. One thing I really like about the game is the fact that anyone can be successful. The imbue system, which you use to upgrade your gear and weapons, is based on luck, so it goes the same way for the rich as well as the poor. Therefore, the players who pump the most money into the game are not always the ones coming out on top. Some things that can be improved include a balancing of the classes, more things to do with your alliance and perhaps improve the availability of GMs and Moderators when issues arise. However, I did read on the forum that they are planning to balance the classes as well as include territory wars for alliances, so we shall see how that goes. Overall, I rated this game an 8 since it does offer hours upon hours of fun-filed gameplay that keeps you coming back day after day.

Post Date: 01:10 17-07-2009
Rating: 9
Author: Soleii
Comment: I have played many MMORPG games in the past, most of which dwell on the cutesy side, like MapleStory and FlyFF. Ether Saga (ESO) is similar to FlyFF in its animation style, but the characters in ESO move more smoothly and the gear suits them more than the gear in Fly (which i will refer FlyFF as). This MMORPG also gives yu the ability to fly, and upgrade your armor through the Imbue and Embedding system. You can further upgrade weapons with Spirit points, gathered by killing monsters. Spirit points are obtained simply by killing, and according to your levl, you will gain more or less. Spirit can also be farmed in instances, or dungeons.
The full review of every aspect of Ether Saga would probably take far too long, and become quite useless, so I will cut it short. Try out Ether Saga, it is definitely a game I enjoy. The graphics are cute, and not choppy, and there is a button to temporarily reduce the graphics to make it smoother for crowded areas. The music is also nicely made and every realm has different songs—in the beginning of the game, I actually went to every possible area I could by teleporter, just to listen to the songs that played.
Although there are few faults to the game, you must remember that it is fairly new, opening in the US in January and late March, it opened up to open beta, and just recently ad July 1st, it opened up to a full version. If hourless grinding is your type of fun, it might be a little hard on you, considering that every monster your levl gives less than .01 in later levls. In FlyFF, grinding was the only way to levl, making it boring and repetitive, but ESO gives you a chance to talk to people and quest together, making grinding not as important.
There are 6 classes, the rogue, ranger, shaman, dragoon, mystic (yay thats me. :D) and the conjuror. There is a wide range or customization available, especially with your birthdays. i blindly went in and chose my actual birthday--before i knew that your birthdays gave you special skills. (ohmg, nowayyy.) Check out the birthday skill charts to chose the right birthday for you :D.
a basic summary of each class:
rogue, fast, shortranged
ranger, long ranged, shares equipment with a rogue
dragoon, tank, spear, medium ranged
shaman, tank(ish) can heal, and res (like a mystic), uses a hammer--kind of a cross between a dragoon and a mystic, shares clothes with a dragoon
Mystic, healer, light armor, buffer, support character that can solo as well, recieves a skill that increases a VERY important afinity, Unda, early on in the game
conjurer, shares gear with mystic, long ranged, a LOT of damage, little health (like most mages or magicians types)

Personally, I like the community of ESO. Many people complain, saying that everyone is rude and calls people noobs—but I have never seen that before. Rather than hating the questions, it might be because they tYp3 LyK3 tH!$ @Nd !t !s H@rD t0 Re@d. Or LyKe ThIs. Or annoy people by constantly asking for money, but really, in ANY game you go to, if you ask ANYONE for money, they will surely not like the idea. The community is very fun to me, and I have gotten very close with my clanmates, and I would help them out—but many of them are all higher levls than me, so it is usually me that needs the help, and they are sweet enough to help out. The fact that it uses bells to communicate to the World is very useful—one so someone can not just bell useless things , but think about using it because it costs money. And so there is no spamming in World Chat.
The skills are also very pretty. I know it sounds like a weird way of expressing my love for this game, but it really is. I was used to the simple purple dash of color and a *woooooop* noise that came with the skill in Fly, but ESO has intricate spells that look like works of art. They also have HAND MOTIONS to go along with it. Their fingers move really quickly like ninjas, and is very detailed and beautifully animated.
ESO was a little boring at first because I knew almost nobody, but sooner or later I found some great friends that I cling to. Really, I cling to them and I hold on reaaallllyy tightly cos I don’t wanna let them go. Once you start playing ESO for a few days, you’ll realize that I am not exaggerating about the clan-bonds, the friends, the extreme happiness from imbuing to +5, and the near-heart attacks right before you click the “imbue” button, the pretty animations, the beautiful landscape and intricate system that is easy to learn for both newcomers to MMORPGS, and veterans of them. I’ve been playing MMORPG’s for a really long time, and I’ve never felt the need to play a game more than I do with ESO—it is addicting, fun, breathtaking, heartbreaking, sweatmaking, teardropping, laughmachineing, and interesting until the end—even having something to do once you cap at levl 105…play the imbue game!

A further look at the system (sorry about being long, I tried to keep it short like a normal review, but it turned out to be more of a guide. Unfortunately, I realized this too late and felt like a waste to delete everything, so I just left it as is. Hopefully you might like the ideas presented, and join in on the fun and very cute community):
IMBUE AND EMBED:
imbuing and embedding is the upgrading system of ESO. Imbuing requires an ethrelic for normal weapons and armor, or a condensed etherelic for starred armor which naturally glow green, and godly ethrelics, or godlies, for diplomatic weapons and armor, which naturally glow a light cyan blue. At the bottom of each weapon when you scroll over it, it shows what you can obtain from imbuing, usually intellegance or both intelligence and strength in diplomatic weapons. The lower levl requirement for your gear, the harder it is to glow.
-normal gear: Starts out without any glow. Requires usually a +3 to turn into a green glow.
-Starred gear: starts out at green, and at levl 30 gear, as soon as you hit +3 ibue, it turns to a light cyan. It then turns into a dark blue/purple, yellow, pink and then red.
-Diplomatic gear: Has higher stats than regular starred or normal gear for its levl. Diplomatic weapons start at levl 30 and can be upgraded every 5 levls until levl 50. Your next diplomatic weapon comes in at levl 60. Diplomatic weapons for 60+ start out a cyan color, and at +3 turns a deep purple, and +3 imbue and +4 embed, it turns into yellow. However, diplomatic weapons at levl 30 glow like regular starred gear. These diplomatic weapons are extremely sought after and much better than the regular weapon. They can be made by crystals, or farmed in River Temple 1 for levl 60 weapons. The only thing you have to be careful of is the Bind on Equip warning. As soon as you wear your diplomatic weapon or armor, you can not trade it, drop it or sell it. You can socket and break it, and you can turn it into soul stones for virtue or for your clan/alliance, but it can not leave your inventory or stash other than when being imbued, embedded or socketted.
EMBED:
you can not fail at embedding. When you chose a jade, (raw>crude>fair>refined) and decide to embed it in your gear, you can only put in other jades of the same type, (Fog, wind, cloud, earth, water, rain)and the same levl, (raw, crude, fair, refined) in. THis however costs gold, or treasure according to your weapon or gear levl.
SOCKETTING:
sockets allow embedding. Socketting CAN FAIL. and when it does, your item dissappears. To protect your item from being destroyed, you can use a LIGHTBENDER STONE from the cash shop. This increases odds by 5% and your item can not be destoryed by socketting. THe maximum sockets for a weapon is 8.

IMBUE.EMBED. AUX. MATS.
LIGHTBENDER: lightbenders, or LB's as many call them, are pink crystals that increases both imbuing and socketting rates. a fail in imbuing does not destroy your gear, but can bring the imbue down to +0, where using LB's only lets it drop 1. Example: Weapon at +4 imbue failed without LB, it can go down to +0~+3, and rarely not go down and stay the same. WIth an LB, it can only drop to +3.
ANCESTERAL CRYSTAL:
Increases your chances to resonate your armor. TO have a resonance, you must have +6 imbue, and levl 45+ armor. Resonances give certain bonuses depending on what affinity you resonate with.
ETHERLACED:
Increases your chances of imbuing or socketting by 15%. If you fail socketting with this, you WILL LOSE YOUR ITEM.
STONE OF PEACE:
2ebucks in the cash shop. No fail up to +4 imbue. Can be combined with another STONE OF PEACE, money, and other CS (cash shop) crystals for a STONE OF PEACE with a triangle next to it’s name, which has a +5 imbue max.
VOID STONE:
Increases socketting chances by 20%. If it fails, YOU WILL LOSE YOUR ITEM. Combine 2 VOID STONES and 3 ANCESTERAL CRYSTALS and 100g for a VOID STONE with a triangle next to its name, where you can socket up to +4 without fail.

This game also focuses on a quest system. There are invasions that happen on MONDAYS, TUESDAYS, THURSDAYS, and SATURDAYS at 7pm EST. these give 2 event tokens per wave, and depending on your levl, you get a certain amount of experience. These invasions are easy for anyone, (maybe not levl 1s…) and the monsters deal 1dmg, receive 1dmg, and you can only receive 1dmg as well. Other quests happen every 3rd hour, ex. 12, 3, 6, 9…etc. These quests also give loads of experience. At levl 60+ you can do the 15 minutes stand where very powerful monsters attack you, you will not be able to use potions or skills during this event. You may only purchase the tickets for 5minutes between 8-8.o5.
You also receive 2 vocations. After reaching levl4 in either, you may do a quest where you get a title and +5 in any affinity. These vocations include scoutcraft (rogue and rangers) gaurdiencraft (shaman, dragoon) and arcane craft (mystic, conjuror) and herbalism (health pots) and cooking (mana pots) petcraft (pet bells) and foraging, woodcutting and skinning, (all gathering skills to get materials to craft something.) You can craft anything that you have a recepie for.
PETS:
Although I do not focus on the pet system too much, there are many people who do and understand the complex (to me) ways. You can level your pet like you levl yourself, and you can fuse with it. When fusing with it, you can share the damage between you and your pet. PET MELDING is also a useful part of the system where you combine pets to create an even better pet, although there is a chance of it mutating. I am sorry that I can not inform you too much about this unique pet system, but there are MANY people in the ESO forums that have created awesome and amazing guides on what pets are good for you.

i just can't wait for the rush when i reach 105. :D

Have fun with ESO, and I hope yu enjoy it as much I do.

Post Date: 09:08 16-07-2009
Rating: 9
Author: krazykawai
Comment: Ether saga online(ESO) is a free chibi anime styled mmorpg that came out this year (2009).
First thoughts: there are alot of character combinations. First choice is race: Shenzu, Ren, Yaoh. Then one chooses class: Rogue, Ranger, Shaman, Dragoon, Mystic, Conjurer. Then one can customize their character by changing hair styles and faces. Then one chooses their birthday (this becomes relevant later ingame with the use of nascent skills).
An essential part of a successful mmorpg is being able to customize one's character to fit one's taste. ESO has a fair amount of character customizations. One does not feel completely overwhelmed with specific details when creating one's character. If a person loves to customize then that person can delve further into this by buying the Cash Shop items. There are several fashion outfits and plenty of special limited edition ones come out w/o long waiting periods in between. If one desires, one has the power to create a fairly unique character.
I like the concept of being able to have the choice to be a fashion diva or just play the game. Downside is about classes. Although all classes are fun to play, later ingame one finds out certain classes are often left out of the dungeon instance. Dragoons and Rogues are not quite as useful after the 3rd dungeon. However, doing instances are not a requirement and a player can continue on and play with the other aspects of the game. (Although it is a little difficult to farm spirit w/o doing instances)

Graphics: The graphics for ESO are pretty good. Not as good as the newer games like Aion, but is really good considering the circumstances. Ether Saga was released earlier and is a free mmorpg. It is perhaps one of the best for chibi-anime based free mmorpgs that i've played. It's maps are vast and load time between maps is very short. There are also a wealth of emotes that one can utilize for one's character, chat, or even one's pet. There are also several spots on the map which have beautiful scenery, a variety of monsters to fight which each have a unique look, plenty of different skills/ethyrs which look cool when executed, a few dances incorporated into the gameplay (different dances are obtained through fashion from the Cash Shop), and, as mentioned earlier, several ways to make one's character look fabulous. I also love the fact that a person can change the interface's size to fit one's needs. I often squeeze the window to fit only half of my moniter so that I may chat using an IM program on the other half.

Community: I personally love the community in ESO, although I know many will disagree with me. In every game there will be jerks and immature players, but that is that individual player and it can't be helped. Most of the players I have met have been kind and fun to play with. The GM Events are always fun to me as well. First GM event I participated in was the Riddles of Hodgy event, and I found it was fairly fun. The GMs didn't just set up a stall and go afk, but interacted with the players and answered any questions a player had for them if they were able to answer them. I remember at the end of the event the GM and some players were having a light and fun conversation about the Dance Event and were joking around with each other about perhaps a PK GM event? =p. Also with the Bake Sale, players gathered around Misty and Loonie and would joke with one another and fight for the player's affection and choice for the goodies. The GMs are friendly and willingly interact with the players when they are present.

Pets: pets are become more important later ingame. One can capture a pet, buy one from other players (the the npc but their pets are no good =p), or obtain one from certain quests. Pets are captured from the majority of the monsters one kills during gameplay (currently Aerax, Florax, and Hauten pets are uncatchable, but a few players have obtained these types of pets through events), but a net is required and can make it costly to catch them(can be boguht from trainer in pokair). One can summon pets to fight, heal, or do support damage for them (having a pet tank is usually not advisable unless maybe you have a godly pet =p). The other choices are to stow the pet (which is simply putting it away) or to fuse with the pet. Fusing with a pet is recommended because the fused pet will take 50% of damage received and helps alot when fighting bosses and such. One can have only 1 pet summoned and 1 pet fused at a time. A pet must be fed to use certain skills (Mood or Bond as it is called now using cookies and such), to heal it health (using beans), and regain part of it's life (not really needs to be kept up with as much but you don't want your pet to die :) ~ uses like noodles and such). Food is purchased from the cook in Pokari. There are 4 types of pets Normal(low stats on everything), Cautious(attack pet), Bright(healing pet), and Fierce(good for fuse pet) and more attitudes arise from the latter 3 types through pet melding. One can meld a pet up to 10 times but that pet can then be melded into another pet and so on. It becomes costly to meld and there is chance of failure (however, 1st meld is 100% success rate and it goes down from there but rates can be increased by buying a item from Wehn, a npc in Pokari, but from like 5th? meld on it's not 100% rate of success). A pet must be at least level 30 before melds but the higher level a pet is the better the resulting pet will be. Also bells can be equiped to pets to help increase their stats (I've found a bell helps alot with the higher level pets). Bells can also be melded and their stats will also increase. A pet is also given a set of emotions it can perform which is a cute little addition to the experience.

Upgrading: Gears and Weapons can be upgraded through the ancestrial forge. Imbueing gears increases the stats of the gears/weapon. A gear can be imbued up to +20, but it has yet ot happen and is very unlikely to. Getting past +4 is very difficult and usually requires the help of AUX from the Cash Shop (i.e. Lightbenders, Etherlaced Crystals, and the new Stone of Peace). Also if one managed to get +6 they can then try to element their gears (not weapons) using affinity scrolls. Doing this has a high chance of destroying one's gears so it's recommended to use the Cash Shop item "Ancestrial Crystal" when doing so, but even then there is a chance of breaking one's gears. Elementing adds bonuses to one's gears (bonus stat varies depending on class and level of the gear). Imbueing gears/weapons help significantly in my opinion and can become costly but is fun and thrilling to do so :). Also one may socket one's gears/weapons (which has a chance of breaking it unless an etherlaced cystal is used as well), and then with the socketed gears/weapons can be embeded using jades (jade of fog = +int, earth = +def, rain = +str, etc..). The amount of times a gear/weapon can be socketed varies. The jade that can be inserted into the socketed piece of equipment can be upgraded as well. From raw it can become crude to common to fair to refine etc... This can become a costly process as well. Also note: nothing is 100%, even with AUX the success rate is increased but will not be 100% either. Also with the amount of times a gear/weap is imbued/embedded it changes color of the glow :). Oh and also, every 5 levels for up to i think maybe 15 levels? one can upgrade their weapon to their level by using spirit.

GamePlay: For the most part a person has to complete quests to level up for at least the beginning phases of the game. It is very difficult to level by simply grinding on monsters. Soon though, players are allowed to enter dungeons and find out very quickly a party is probably the best way to complete the dungeons. Teamwork is very important for the beginning dungeons and to solo them is nearly suicide (if you plan on defeating the bosses inside the dungeons as well). I've found that if a member of the party becomes astray and does not work with the party, that member will often cause the failure of the whole team. That is a major downside, but then again with the more parties you participate in, the more people you meet and you meet some really good players. Working with players who actually listen and play correctly makes a significant difference and if you also are that type of player then forming a party together is ideal. One can accomplish nearly anything with the right party and members of that party become good friends and special bond is created. I like the teamwork in play in this game and that a person generally isn't just a loner (cause let's face it playing a mmorpg with noone but yourself isn't very fun :) ). However, there are still several things one can solo if they don't feel like partying. Several quests one can solo, but could be more fun or faster with a party. There is also the ability to fly ingame. There is a cap as to how high a player may go but it is broad enough so that for the most part a player doesn't need to go past that cap. One is given a "cloud" through a quest around level 12, but if he or she desires to he/she may buy a flying mount from the Cash Shop. Flying mounts include wings and pets and are more fashionable and faster than the typical cloud. Unfortunately, a player cannot fight while on a cloud or any of the current flying mounts. However, there are ground mounts which are combat available which help alot for ground movement. Another feature in this game is the use of transform cards. By transforming into another type of creature one can gain an advantage on one's opponent (i.e. Beastkin < Humanoids, Humanoids < Hauten... etc.). These cards help alot when dealing with bosses. There are also flying cards which are combat available. These cards prove to be very useful in PvP and when running away from or trying to stay out of reach from mobs while still being able to use one's skill (good for mystics/shamans who do this, so that they may heal themselves). Also another feature I like about this game is the use of possesors. It is a bot incorporated into the gameplay of ESO. The only downside to this bot is that it does not pick up items (but a jadeon which is obtained from Wehn may be used, but it only lasts 3 hours a day). Due to the possesor, a player does not have to always be present to play. ESO must have realized that players are humans to and have other matters in real life that they must attend to as well ^.-. Although, possesoring is not as fast leveling-wise and often more costly than being present and aoeing the mobs, it is a great alternative to use when an emergency comes up, or when a player has to work or study for real life matters.

Crafts: crafting in this game is not a neccessity. There are several crafts one can learn and each one requires a gathering craft to obtain the materials to craft items first. It is difficult and tiring to gather the materials and very time-consuming. However, there are rewards for leveling one's crafts. At level 4 for crafting, one has a choice of which affinity bonus they want (+5 unda/pyra/erda/oora/widu). At level 4 gathering, one is given a different kind of bonus depending on which gathering craft they chose (i.e. Foraging = +500 hp, Woodcutting = +5% crit strike... i think... etc.). At level 6 crafting/gathering, one has the ability to mine the Tales Of Wells which gives a LOT of exp to one's pet (i think it levels a pet from level 1 to level 90). However, there is competition for the Wells and if one does not have a really good strategy it is nearly impossible to obtain ^.-.

PvP: This game has open pvp from level 45 and higher. Although it can be a pain at times, like for instance when one is in the middle of a timed quest or is possesoring, it is still an eseential part to this game and makes it exciting. In my opinion (although several others complain it being the opposite), there isn't very much random pking going on ingame. I only remember being randomly pked once when I first became level 45. (when I say random pking that does not include wars between alliances ~~ those people are being specifically targetted for being in such alliances and therefore, it is not random) The pk system also makes it exciting when trying to gather the banner for the Tales of the Wells, tryign to kill a world boss, and makes a fitting punishment for a person who is being annoying on purpose (i.e. bad-talking, or ksing). When one kills a person though they will gain infamy and turn red, exposing them to the punishment of other players until the infamy wears off. This probably is one of the main reasons why there isn't very much random pking. The greater the level difference the more infamy a person will gain from killing another (this is to prevent high level players from going around pking low level players). Also, there can literally be wars between alliances. A challenge can be sent to another alliance and if accepted it is a free for all (besides within towns) for the participating alliances within a set amount of time. The winner is then announced and the war is over.

Overall: Overall, I enjoy this game. It becomes funner and more addicting as one becomes higher level. I have made it as one of my goals to have captured and created through their pet melding system a godly pet, and to imbue gears and weapons to high levels for major pwnage ^.-. Hopyfully other current/future players can/will enjoy this game as much. :)

Post Date: 06:40 15-07-2009
Rating: 9
Author: WeTissues
Comment: Long story short-getting inside ESO

Hello, my name is Martin and my task is to bring you a little bit closer to Mmorpg called Ether Saga Online (ESO from now on). In the very begining of the game, you might be dissapointed as there is no pure hunter class (pets specialist), so if you like ranged combat with something infront of you , you will be ... SURPRISED! because everyone in ESO has pets. And also everyone can tame pets of different types, sizes, genders and levels. There is no real tutorial in this game, just training quests and pop-up help, which in my opinion is annoying (but it can be turned off). Training quests ensure you levelling from 1 to 40, which will get you really deep ingame. As for the leveling, your pet levels along with you, but there is fixed amount of stats that it can gain, this amount raises dramatically when you squeeze two pets togather. You and your char can choose from 5 different stats. Every 5 levels you get 5 points to spend on those, but beware , it greatly affects damage of some of your spells (read spell descriptions!). What else to say? Enviroment is really bright, animations arent that bad at all, pet system rox, and thing that im giving this game 9/10 for is the cash system. You will recieve alot of "treasure" to upgrade, buy pots etc, then you have regular gold and silver, and Ebucks (cash shop currency) which can be traded for gold. And that is A W E S O M E. It seriously is a must-try game, and if you wont be stunned by graphics (in not the really good way, hey its kiddish after all) , you will surely like this game. -Fin

Post Date: 21:05 11-07-2009
Rating: 7
Author: CildruDyathe
Comment: I'm Kiwi.
I'm not going to lie about how I feel about this game. Feel free to yell and call me an idiot about anything I say, It's my opinion and it's not changing.

Ether Saga is a good online game. The graphics are great the gameplay is good, and with the new updates the economy has been getting better I'm not gonna say this game is "OMG YOU NEED TO PLAY THIS ITS SOOO GOOD" It has its flaws and its good points.
Flaws:
The community:
I'm sorry, but the community that I have seen in this game, is not that great. Most higher up players have serious ego problems and need to learn that its a GAME. People level 70+ killing level 45's doesn't show you are strong it shows you are a jerk and coward. There are hardcore farmers who got pissed and annoyed because the creators decided to limit the amount of times a person can enter a dungeon if you are over a certain level. >.> This actually helped the horrible economy get better, but they don't care. They want to farm hardcore. New people who ask questions always get either, yelled at, called noob, or just plain ignored.
Newbie friendly would never describe this game.
Prices:
My lord, this game's prices on some of the Cash Shop items, is ridiculous. If you screw up a Affinity point or your Birthday, you have pay 20$-40$ to reset. Or at current prices for E-Bucks in Ether Saga, 30g=1 E-buck, 600g to 1200g. That is a lot of gold, and not easy to make. Marriage, is also pricey, its 30$ for 1 set of marriage stuff. You need 2, 1 male and 1 female. So it costs around 60$ to get married in this game, or 1800g. You could donate 50$ to this game and it would be gone within minutes. I know this is FTP. But seriously? 50$ gone in minutes? |: That's like 3-5 months of a PTP game that could give you a seriously large amount of better fun and items.
Cash Shop:
People will say that you don't NEED cash shop items, its a lie. You do. You will get no where with your upgrades with out stones from the CS. You can say "Oh well you don't need to upgrade much to do stuff in this game." It's true, if you are a PvE player. And since this game is PvP you need to upgrade to get better. When you hit max level, you aren't going to PvE, you are going to PvP cause there is nothing else to do. :| This games chance of upgrading, forging, and doing anything to be honest, is LUCK. Luck. It's a load of crap. You can fail 10+ times at 0 going to +1 on an item. Does that sound right to you? I don't think so. Expanding stash and bag is a CS item, they need to have quests for people that can't afford to spend money on the CS or raise enough gold in game to get those extensions. You run though money like crazy on this game. Though they have added a quest for newbies that gives you 1 bag extension, its not enough. This game has your holding onto items like a pack rat, you end up making tons of mules to just hold the stuff you need. i.e upgrading material, crafting material, pet supplies, jades, Etc.
PvP: PvP In this game is non negotiable. At level 45 you are a target to any jerk who decides to kill you, outside of towns. I like PvP, but I don't like not getting a choice in the matter of wanting to be in it at a certain time. I'll PvP, but I want a choice of turning it off so I can do my darn quests without fear of being killed by jerks. |:

Other than those things the game is great, It's fun to play of you are a questing type person, Lol trying to grind your way up past 45 will not work. Not only cause PvP is free for all at that level, but because exp from monsters does not that great. xD The graphics are amazing for this style and quests and storyline are awesome. :} You can fly for free in this game, which is pretty awesome, it may not be fast like CS flying items, but it is fast than walking. xD

Post Date: 18:57 10-07-2009
Rating: 9
Author: Angel015
Comment: Hi, ESO creators,

My name is Angel, and my screen name is STLAngel. Well, overall I think the game is great. To be honest, it was a little confusing at first, but I got the hang of it eventually -_^ lol. I also like the freedom that we have in what we can say and what we can't, like how you don't allow that many bad words but I guess you allow the less harsh ones. Another thing is the graphics they are amazing! the landscapes and surrounding environment in the game is fantastic! I love the way the characters look and the actions that they can do, like dancing or crying. The spells and attacks look really cool and so do the pets. One thing I don't really like is the process of getting gold. first you have to get 100 bronze to get 1 silver, then you have to get 100 silver to get 1 gold. Don't get me wrong, I can buy a sufficient amount of stuff with 8 gold, but its the items in the Heaven Repository that I can't get. I know that I could buy e-bucks with regular money, but I don't have any extra to be spending on e-bucks. Other than that I can't think of anything else that’s wrong with the game. Like I said before, I think you guys did an amazing job with this game, and I think it deserves the rating I gave it.
Also, if my review is to long or to short I'm sorry. Here is my e-mail address: [email protected]

I really hope you pick my review, I worked hard on it and I meant everything good I said in it. Thanks for reading my review, bye!

Post Date: 21:38 09-07-2009
Rating: 10
Author: caminante27
Comment: I have played many online games but definitely ONLINE ETHER SAGA is the best.

The quality of graphics, gameplay and other aspects make this game the best game online!

I play about 8 hours a day and I am not tired of playing.

congratulations to the team PERFECT WORLD towards this wonderful game!

the only downside is that in my country I could not charge zen

But in general it is a fun game and good

Post Date: 02:43 09-07-2009
Rating: 7
Author: weeks2
Comment: Ether Saga is slightly different than any other free online game i've ever played before, its another one of those great games from Perfect World Entertainment. This game has so many creative emotions in it and lots of cute and fierce pets.

This game is always fun to play since there are a lot of things to do.

A key point of Ether Saga is that you can transform yourself into different creatures in order to defeat your enemy quicker, this is definitely an advantage to the games game play. Pets also help in this. Pets don't have the ability to use transform cards like Humans do, but they have their own attribute. So even your pet can be the weakness of your enemy making a whole new twist on the game.

Flying is a neat feature in this game aswell, and since you are given a cloud at around lvl 10 it makes it easy to go just about anywhere as long as you have enough mana to take you there, but you could always spend real money and buy a land or air mount. Like Wings, or a Papa Charger Mount (Big bunny). These are faster than the cloud but you have to spend real money as a price to get it.

However, there is a negative to this game that was just recently added. Low lvl people are now able to get rare items and can lvl much quicker than all the other people because of the new patch that came out. So instead of people running around as lvl 10-20 asking for help, we have a lot of lvl 45+ asking for help because they weren't introduced into the game properly and now since the lower lvls get lots of items and the high lvls don't. The low lvls get Player killed when seen because some of the higher lvls hate the fact that they aren't able to get some of those items unless they spend cash straight out of their pocket. This is a real flaw in the game and i hope Perfect world fixes it.

without that negative i would've gave it about a 9, but that patch made a huge influence on the game play and had made many mad. So end result is a 7.5 but since that isn't an actual option, a 7.

Post Date: 19:25 08-07-2009
Rating: 8
Author: haseodestroyer
Comment: Ether saga online, is a total new experience brought to you by perfect world entertainment. featuring colorful skills, vivid landscapes and an incredible variety of quests and pets for you to collect, but Ether saga is not much about leveling and competition among players, but the unique and most important faction of a mmorpg, this is the interaction between people around the globe, through their diverse set of events they promote friendship among players and most important, promote the ability to help others. with Ether saga you will learn as you play, thanks to the tittle system, since you will earn tittles by answering questions of actual historic facts. with 6 classes and 3 races for you to choose from, ether saga becomes a second home, lots of fun await in the world of Ether saga, so what are you waiting for? Ether saga is waiting for you...

Post Date: 10:13 08-07-2009
Rating: 9
Author: lendario
Comment: A game full of emotions and lots , LOTS of things you can do like marrie , hunt the most maqueavelic monsters with your magic known has skills being almost 100 differents skills that you can make or simply upgrade between all 6 "profections" , a rogue to archer , a draggoon to a shaman , a mystic to a conjurer , each one with a special abillity to defeat or help companions.
But there arent only professions there are even sub-profections whenre u can lern how to make ur own gear your own potions and even to make your own food for you most trusthfull companion you pet , yes actually your pets are almost the same of you they can heal you and atk and if u need they will die for you.
So what are you waiting to play this game you have a HUGE map and 2 secondary maps that you can go so its impossible to get bored with this game.

review made by Lendario
e-mail: [email protected]

Post Date: 07:49 08-07-2009
Rating: 8
Author: Eve
Comment: Ether Saga Online (ESO) is the new MMORPG from Perfect World Entertainment. Although still young, its population keeps growing steadily as time passes by.

ESO is mostly played at the third person mode. But, you can also play at the first person, which can be quite enjoyable as well.
The interface looks quite complicated at first sight, with lots of options all over the screen. But it is in fact quite simple and easy to use after just a few hours in the game.
The game contains a lot of informations and tutorials in itself, teaching you almost everything that one has to know, little by little as you level-up.
There also is a system to move your character to a destination point by himself, which is very handy for both new and older players.

There are 3 races and 6 classes in ESO: Ranger, Dragoon, Conjurer, Rogue, Shaman, and Mystic. Each class has its pros and cons, some are better for farming, some are better for support, defense, etc. Although, no class is to be underestimated because its skills will always balance it overall, on both the offensive and defensive part. Work still has to be done to make each class perfectly balanced compared to the others, but the ESO team is working on it everyday.
Talking about skills, let"s detail this part a little bit. Each class has its own and specific skills, and then other skills, which are common to all classes. Some skills are obtainable through quests, and other are determined by the birthday date of your character, which you can choose of course. It"s quite a unique system to build your own character, either for PvP or PvE.

There are countless quests in the game. The first ones will allow you to level up quite fast and enjoy the depth of the game within just a few days. As times goes by, it will take you more time to level-up, but you will enjoy many things on the way, such as daily events, instances to play with team/clan/alliance members or alone, and even player-made mini-events which benefits newcomers (items/pets giveaway, for example). Lots of monsters can be tamed to become your pet and fight with you. The pet system is complex and allows you to customize your fighting partner to a large extend.

Now, as you know, this game is free to play. But you also have the possibility to buy items with real money to help you out in the game: fashion items, upgrades, etc. Most players fear this system because it unbalances the game. Although this is true, ESO still allows you to buy the items from other players. It may not be cheap, but there are many ways of farming money in the game, and you can always get what you want if you are patient enough for it.

As for the graphics, you "dive in a colorful world": Very flashy and relaxing environment, a pleasure for the eyes. This is definitely a point that strikes your attention when you first enter the game. Characters are good looking, clothes have a lot of details/glowing parts which makes them "cool" regardless of your class/gender.

An important point to remember is that the server is in open PK (player kill) mode when you reach a certain level, which means you can actually get killed by players outside safe areas. But fear not, there are only a few PK"ers in ESO. If you dislike PK, chances are that you won"t get into trouble 99% of the time. You can still duel people in town (but they have to accept).

Last but not least, the ESO team has made a lot of effort to hear the players" opinions and change the game accordingly. A "Question & Answers" session was made on IRC (Internet Relay Chat) for players to discuss with the Ether Saga staff members, ask questions about the game or the staff itself. It probably won"t be the last one!
The staff has also elected a few players to create "the Player Council": A few players (one from each class) are chosen to talk with the staff about the problems their class encounters, and what the players in the game are asking for, either for their class or for the game in general.
This is definitely an important point for those who like to involve themselves in order to create a better gaming experience ofr everyone, especially experienced "elder" mmo players.



Now, for the marks:

Graphics: 9 (A pleasure that doesn"t fade away as time goes by).
Interface: 7 (It takes too much space on the screen, different interface sizes would be appreciated).
Gameplay: 9 (Because nothing is perfect)
PvP: 7 (Open PK may not please some people, although it"s quite a reasonable part in ESO).

Overall rating: 8

Post Date: 07:27 08-07-2009
Rating: 9
Author: Gibbz
Comment: Getting Lost in the Immense and Magical World of Ether Saga

It hasn’t been long since I started playing MMORPG’s. In fact, ESO, is the fifth one I’ve tried among the countless f2p (free to play) games out in the market right now. Most of them I tried for an hour or two before I deleted them from my hard drive. That being said, I wrote this review in hopes of reaching out and relating to “newbies” or new players out there.

Let’s move on to the different aspects of the game.

1. Character Creations: With a total of 3 races and 6 classes, ESO gives a lot of room for character customization. The 3 races namely Renzu, Shenzu and Yaoh have unique and distinct appearances. You can customize the face, hair and the gender of your character. The race that you chose in the beginning of the game will ultimately decide the storyline your avatar will participate in. The 6 classes namely Dragoon, Shaman, Rogue, Conjurer, Mystic and Ranger have their own different skills, strengths and weaknesses. Dragoon and Shamans are the strong “tanks” of the game that can withstand great damage. Mystics are the healers and the game while the Conjurer and the Rangers are the long range damage dealers. Creating just one character is not enough. You’ll find yourself creating different characters and testing out their different skills.
2. Gameplay: There’s just so much to do in the world of ESO that you can’t explore all of its features in a day.
a. Battle System: Like with other 3d MMO’s, you can command your character to attack monsters of different kinds to fulfill quests, obtain treasures, gold and experience points. Each class has different skills they can use to dispatch monsters. These skills are visually pleasing. Talk about eye-candy. Aside from these skills, there are other skills such as Ethyr skills (equippable skills) and nascent skills (birthday month skills) that players can utilize and customize their characters with. What sets ESO apart from all the other games out there is its intuitive pet system. You can capture pets in the wild, tame them and use them in battle. You can either summon these pets to attack monsters or fuse with them to strengthen you own parameters. The pet system of ESO is quite realistic in the sense that if the pets are not looked after, they might die in battle, and that they have to be fed to keep them in tip-top shape. As you proceed farther into the game, pet melding becomes available. Pet melding allows you to increase the parameters of you pet by combining it with another pet. With over a hundred pets to choose from, you will definitely find one that fits your taste and personality.
b. Graphics: The visuals of ESO are bright and colorful. In contrast to the gloom and the dark environments of Requiem Bloodymare, the environments of ESO come to life with the use of soft, pastels colors that are pleasing to the eyes.
c. Leveling Up: Leveling up for newcomers has been greatly improved. You can literally reach level 40 or higher in a day if you wanted to. Experience rewards from lower level quests have been increased. This gave new players a lot of incentive to invest time in getting to know more about the in and outs of the game. As your level increases so does the experience you will require in order to level up but ESO has made leveling up easier by conducting daily events in the main city of Pokari. Players of all levels can participate in these events/quests for easy experience.
d. Dungeon Instance: Once in awhile, the player will receive quests that can only be fulfilled by going to a dungeon. ESO has made it easy for players to participate in dungeon instances. Each realm has an allotted instance for a specific dungeon that can accommodate a single party of up to 6 players. If your current realm is undergoing an instance, you can simply join that instance or change your realm and enter an available one elsewhere. There 15 realms in ESO including a Trading Realm that allows players to set up show and sell their loot. Dungeon difficulty has also been improved allowing players to chose easy or hard mode depending on their preference.
e. Vocation and Crafting: In the world of ESO, your character can learn different kinds of vocation. These vocations will enable you to do a lot of things from brewing potions to crafting weapons and armor for you and your pets. These vocations level up so the more you use them the greater your proficiency in that vocation becomes, allowing you to make better items and equipment. Your weapons and armors can also be strengthened in the game with the right tool and materials and wit h the help of the blacksmith.
f. Transportation: The game allows for easy movement from one place to another through the use of cloud teleportation services located in every main city for a small fee. Early on in the game you will also be given your very own cloud which allows you to fly anywhere in the map but if you want to travel in style you can buy your own mount. Different kinds of mount are available which can be purchased from NPC’s (nonplayable character) or the cash shop. These mounts can range from giant bear cubs and bunnies to angel/devil wings.
3. Community: ESO has great community building features such as the formations of alliances and guilds as well as a PvP (player versus player) feature called the PK system which becomes available to all players at level 45 allowing players to engage one another in combat outside safe zones.
4. Closing: Ether Saga Online has exceeded most my expectations. I’ve been looking for the ideal f2p MMO to spend my long, hot summer with and I can honestly say that I have found it. The game features are top-notch and are of high quality just like the P2P (pay to play) mmo’s out there. I would definitely recommend it to my friends and I hope you would give it a try because, I must admits, that you can get lost in the immense and magical world of Ether Saga Online for hours and hours.

Post Date: 07:11 08-07-2009
Rating: 9
Author: Promises
Comment: Ether Saga Online is one of the best mmorpgs I have come across in a long time, the storyline of it makes for a very
interesting an mind twisting game with some exceptional new ideas to the mmo society such as~

Auto routing - Being able to go into your quest log, clicking on the quest you want to do and going there automatically by clicking over the highlighted text.
of course there are some flaws, such as getting stuck on mountains, stopping at things in your way, running through mobs and aggroing them if you’re not careful.
But this is, I have to say, a very original idea and saves a lot of time making gaming life a lot easier.

Flying/Mounts - Although not many games have made it so you can fly it is actually a good idea and I like it a lot, getting to places a lot faster. You obtain a cloud in the starting phase
of the game at around level 15-18 I’m not sure as it was a long time ago for me! As well as flying you have ground mounts, meaning instead of the slow paced running to places you can
actually hop onto one and get there in half the time, as well as being able to fight on it! Unfortunately ESO has not yet added flying combat available mounts which would be a good addition
in my opinion later on in game.

Possessor - Again another unique nifty tool I’ve never come across before, in a lot of games players get bored of grinding and look around for something easy to pass the time, leading to
illegal activity in the game causing a lot of trouble for the legit players, making servers busy, causing a lot of lag, kill stealing etc but with the idea of the possessor it’s actually a bot in the game
that’s fun, easy and friendly to terms of conditions. With a simple setup of adding your own skills, pots an even something called a Jadeon which auto picks items up for you, when you’re done adding
those things in, you can go to the settings and set everything to suit yourself!

Pets - Aha, pets! something everyone’s is always bothered about in mmo's for some reason, I have come across a lot of games where only certain classes can obtain pets, or they cost a lot
of in game gold, or there just not there. I love the pet system in ether, being able to go out into the wild finding a creep you want and just catching it with a net! Of course it’s not as simple
as it sounds, here is a lot of confusing things you have to work through, and it can be hard for first time players. Things like, having to be the right level to catch the pet, having to buy
the nets that can be quite expensive if you buy in bulks, and also the high chance of the pet 'escaping' But once you've found that perfect pet for you there is a wide variety of things to do.
ESO pets come in 4 different natures, Bright, Cautious, Normal, And Fierce, as well as having all different kinds of looks, types, stats, & skills. For those who really want to get smart with the pets
there is something called melding where you can create the perfect uber pet for you at a price of course! Unlike most games where you can only have 1 pet, eso lets you have as many pets as you want
but only 2 out at a time, one for fusing your character with to share the damage an add stats to yourself, and one to summon to fight beside you or help you heal yourself and team mates, the possibilities are endless.

Your Character - Seems simple, but is it? is it really. When you explore into the game closer you'll see a lot of hidden things that you really just can’t explain, and I’m pretty sure even the GMs of the game don’t fully
know what yet. Things like depending on the race you pick the quests vary, the birthday you pick get you hidden skills at level 10, 30 and 50 called "nascent skills" that can help you later on in game if you chose wisely
there is also a zodiac sign to pick but no one quite knows what this is for yet. Something called affinity’s too, which is the base of your build, deterring everything about your character, there are 5 to choose from with 6 different
classes all using at least one as their main for example, rogues using oora as their base to attack stronger and boost their main skills.

The list is endless of all the advantages of ESO but those are just a few of the new features that it brings to the gaming world, there is a lot of pros an some unfortunate cons, things such as the cash shop being
very expensive for young & poor players, and the fashion items you buy from there are bound to that one character, I would suggest making either a NPC to unbind those items, or having a separate compartment
in the stash box to hold cash shop items, speaking of stash it is very small and yet again you need to buy ether bucks with real money in order to expand it, or be lucky enough to have a lot of gold in order to trade
it with players in the trading realm who bought the items from the cash shop. Also the PVP side of the game, every mmo has one, and although eso put it into their system it doesn't seem very beneficial, there’s not
really any incentive to want to do it, all you get from it is a red name an infamy? So I would suggest that, making a player vs. player realm, similar to the trading realm but from level 20+ you can enter, with the rules
being you are allowed to have your own armour and weapons but they cannot be dropped if you are killed or you kill another player, just a town with all players running around having all the fun killing each other and having
some kind of NPC where you gain rewards from it. That realm being the only realm you can PVP in, or something similar to that idea. Something else I dislike in the game is the imbuing side, being able to make your armour
better is a great idea! but when it costs you thousands of gold you grinded an worked hard for just to de-level your item or even destroy seems really pointless, I’m aware eso is trying to fix this problem but it seems
to just be getting worse, surely you can come up with something more. On the bright side, they had another good idea of being able to interact easily with other players in game, by making something called the moon/star
quest, where you would have to find a partner of the same level, opposite gender to trade with and speak with, thus gaining gold. Also, something called 'Instances' where you have to party up to get through some tough
mobs and even tougher bosses, making it so the players form tight friendships and actually use their brains to think up strategies. As a whole, ether saga is very well thought out, of course with the odd crease here and there
but what can you expect from a new game fresh from open beta, nothing is perfect but you can see they are trying to make it as much fun and entertaining for their members as possible, and I for one am proud to be part of that
community, everything about the game is new and unique taking gaming into a whole different level. I rate this game 9+ with outstanding graphics, audio, interacting, and general all around awesomeness!

Post Date: 07:08 08-07-2009
Rating: 9
Author: kltrolo
Comment: Ether Saga is a game everyone can enjoy, Ether Saga is always keep things fresh for their users with all its unique features such as daily events, dungeons, jobs, quests, and pet taming system. Best of all starting the game simple. Choose from six classes, Dragoons which use lances to pierce through their enemies, Rouges which use daggers for the fastest kill with devastating damage, Rangers who use bows to lock on to their enemies and finish them before they know what hit them,Mystics who use magic to heal their comrades and give them strength power ups, Conjurers who use spells who annihilate their enemies, and Shamans who wield hammer to pummel anything in their way. After creating you character and choosing your class you start in a dreamy environment with beginner quests explaining all you need to know about the game, and if you have any more questions Ether Saga has included an in game guide to answer all your questions!

Now that you know how to start lets talk about pets, That's right pets! You begin with with one pet when starting the game, but you can as you continue leveling you can capture you own pets. Make you favorite monster into your loyal companion in battle of fuse with them to give you an extra boost in your power, or become a master pet catcher and meld your pets to create the most beautiful and exotic pets to show off to your friends.

Ether Saga also provides a job system allowing you to craft your own weapons, armor, or potions with superior quality giving you the advantage over your enemy. Sell or trade your crafts with other players and become rich. Take it to the next level and upgrade your gear to make it shine to prove you are truly a master at your craft.

Lastly we have the mounts, buy a horse,rabbit,polar bear or frog to get you where you need to go and if riding isn't clouds and wings are also available! Enjoy the ride as you go through beautiful scenery and environments while making friends on the road!
Conclusion, Ether Saga is a game for all players any ages with plenty of things to do all the time. With daily events and a nice community Ether Saga provides infinite opportunities for players to interact with one another and make new friends. If your looking for a good game with nice graphics and a nice community join Ether Saga.

Post Date: 06:35 08-07-2009
Rating: 8
Author: portgas
Comment: Ether Saga Online is a decent game to play. It has some extraordinary features that are not available in many other online games. Those features would include the ability to fly, combat-available mount, auto-route, "bot" (auto-kill), transform to monsters, etc. They also have regularly scheduled events everyday, which make the game not monotonous. The world of the games is widely explorable. The monsters to kill are also unique to each other. Dungeons are available for more advanced and motivating monster killing. The cash-only items can be traded from other players with in-game money. It also has the alliance system so that clans can unite together as one. The classes are relatively being balanced, so people can choose a class based on preference, not advantage. It also has a dance feature which is very unique and interesting. For beginners, the system also has a lot of very useful in game tutorials, although are often skipped by some people who will eventually look at the tutorials anyway at some point. Last but not least, the maintenance is done effectively and quite regularly at a time that should not affect people in PDT zone significantly (midnight).

Patching and screen loading are relatively fast. The setup for the game is quite flexible. The users can modify the setting precisely and effectively enough.

The PK and PVP systems are not very different from those of other games. The chatting, vending (including buying and selling), trading, hotkeys, and general quests systems are fairly intuitive.

The background graphics are fine. The graphics for NPCs, players, and monsters are also fine. The animation is a bit too stiff on character's face, which can be obvious when a player's face turn from over-emotional expression to a plain emotionless expression when using action features. Other animations, such as movements, are good.

Unfortunately, this is not a game I'd die for. As said before, it has many extraordinary features that have been longed by gamers. However, those features are somehow still fatally flawed. For example, auto-routing may stuck somewhere, especially when flying.

Some of the user interfaces are not user-friendly. They are sometimes confusing and misleading. The 'Help' feature may help, but user interfaces still should be intuitive to users.

Refining success rates are also problems for some people. It is true that refining system is to be unique for any online game. It is also normal that refining system of an online game may be stressful for users. But the refining system of this game has reached a point where it can easily irritate users much into an extent that it makes many users quit, or at least feel like quitting the game.

All in all, I'd give 8 for this game's rating. Here is the breakdown of the rating:
GamePlay (quests, PVP, PVE, refining): 8
Internal Quality (relatively bug free, working fine): 7
User Interface (in-game features and help function): 8
External Quality (graphics, animations, music, sfx): 9
GMs' Quality (efforts and proficiency): 8

Post Date: 06:10 08-07-2009
Rating: 9
Author: agmonsta
Comment: ESO, other wise known as Ether Saga Online, Is in my humble opinion the best i have ever come across in the MMORPG till date.

Fantastic gameplay factors:
Quests list goes on and on for various levels where there will not be no quest for you to accomplish. Treasure systems enables players to purchase NPC items for own consumption, where Gold is used for other purpose like trading and forging items.
Alliance and clan systems, allows players for form clan and alliances bestowing titles and position for others to undertake in the alliance. everyone plays a part to make their alliance become the best out of the best. The Cream of the Crop is the description for such goal in the alliances.
Possessor System prevent players from engaging in auto botting through hacking the systems of the game. i would say this is a wise choice made.

Graphics are fantastic, but if there is a little more zooming capabilities, it will be perfect. Rendering is very well done.

Graphical Rating: 9
Gameplay: 9
Overall rating: 9

Post Date: 06:06 08-07-2009
Rating: 8
Author: sakura035
Comment: PROs: Get to meet a lot of different people from different parts of the globe
Dungeons are challenging and fun and requires teamwork
Updates are frequent, giving players something to look forward to
Skills animations are cool

CONs: PK system -High levels bully
The customization of the char, a lot of ppl looks the same
Slightly expensive Cash shop items
Drops and imbue rate are crappy

Post Date: 04:31 08-07-2009
Rating: 9
Author: theafroking
Comment: Ether Saga Online is the best MMORPG I have ever played. Its very easy to level up in this game with all the mini in-game events. Also, quests are very easy to do. If you don't understand what to do, you simply need to click on the green letters and it brings you to the place you should be. Just perfect for those who don't like to read the descriptions. You get a free pet when you start and you can also capture wild monsters later in the game which is wonderful. Wold map is very large and beautiful with great music to fill up the atmosphere. Around level 14, you get a magic cloud to fly with and enjoy all this awesome world ESO has.

Post Date: 04:21 08-07-2009
Rating: 9
Author: aaddron
Comment: Ether Saga Online is what I would call a “jack of all trades”. Whether your first time, casual or hardcore MMO player this game will appeal to you. For first time MMO players and first time ESO players the game features a deep and vary well done guide to teach you the basics of MMOs as well as all about the various features and things to do in ESO, the guide is always one click away making this one of the easiest games to jump into. ESO also features one of if not the best auto pathing system in any MMO to date. The traditional auto pathing system will auto run in the direction of a set point of where you want/have to go, while this works great there is one big flaw if anything blocking that path you'll run into it and have to readjust the path. This is where ESO shines it's auto routing system will avoid this obstacles automatically getting you to your destination with one click of the mouse, every once and a while you might get stuck on something but it's pretty rare. The auto routing is also tied into quests, the days of wondering around for ages looking for the creatures you have to kill for quests are over. If you can't find a monster simply open your quest log and click it's name and the auto route system will take you to the creature eliminating a lot of frustration and making the game a lot easier for casual players and new players alike, of course if you'd like to find the creature on your own you still can.

The amount of content in this game is huge. The game boast over twelve thousand main and side quest as well as a huge game world that's sure to keep even the most hardcore MMO fans entertained for months. So I bet your wondering ok... it's got a great guide and auto route system but what sets this game apart from the many other Free MMOs out there? ESO has a unique pet system. Every player starts out with a pet. This pet levels and grows with the player. Pets can be normal pets like in any other MMO or they can be fused with you to give you special ability's. Pets are a big part of this game and add a lot of depth to it. Almost every creature in the game can be turned into a pet which almost creates a whole other game within ESO. Trying to find that perfect pet or just trying to collect them all is it lot of fun. Having all different kinds of pets for different kinds of situations is a long but fun and rewarding experience.

To sum it up ESO is a game built for everyone and is a game that's as sallow or deep as you want it and that's the beauty of this game everything seems to fit into one motto it's easy to use difficult to master, in my opinion that line can even sum of the whole game... it's easy to play but difficult to master. ESO does a great job making complicated things easy on the surface without sacrificing the deeper hardcore experience underneath.

Post Date: 03:22 08-07-2009
Rating: 8
Author: Collussus
Comment: Ether Saga is one game that has to fight to survive between thousands and thousands of look-a-likes out there. The game features seperate story lines for whatever race you choose to be, one even whackier than the other one. Where one race seeks to capture an Evil Demon General transformed into a pig, the other tries to collect fragments of a chalice that someone was so stupid to drop.

When you play the game you find yourself in a dreamy environment. Everything seems to be designed to be as cute as possible, with an evil twist to it. You start out at your race their hometown. You meet what the different NPC's are for and find out the basics of the game. The more you level you get more tips of how to get further in the game, all accompanied with a friendly and easy to use interface.

When you get used to the game you are introduced to the Cash Shop. While this game is free to play, it also has a shop where you can buy premium items. This gives paying members just the advantage they need to get better at the game, but also gives you the possibility to get custom clothing to show off to their friends.

For the players who join games just for the trading, almost everything can be traded and is traded for profit. Even Cash Shop items are traded for gold, and this is done by alot of players. Once every while limited edition items get released, which makes the trading once again more interesting.

Quests are sometimes irritating when you need to do the same thing over and over, but every quest description is almost always giving some good laughs. The quests are nicely layed out, with an auto-walking feature so you dont need to look on a map where you have to go. Normal quests can be done in a party with higher level friends, but important quests have to be done with friends on the same level (or even alone). A nice questing system that everyone can enjoy.

The PVP in this game is purely for the people who believe they're the best, and really the best. There's a chance you lose your precious gear when you die, so trying to pvp a high level player "For the fun of it" is not something you can afford. The good part is that when someone kills another player their name will turn red, making it possible for other players to see when they have to run away.

The gameplay of the game is perfectly thought out. Zooming out to see what's going on around you. Or going in to First person (Yes FPS fans, an actual first person) to play the game as if you were actually the character. The movement is easy and there's automatic walking to wherever you click on the map. The spells and skills are easy to use, and have good descriptions on what they are (With a few skills and spells that no one understands, not even the creators). Overall a great gameplay.

Graphical Rating: 9 (Not much improvement can be done, just small details)
Interface Rating: 7 (Needs option to change the skin)
PVP Rating: 5 (Not enjoyable for lower levels or casual players)
Dungeons Rating: 8 (Good dungeons, having to purchase access to them, not so much)
Quests Rating: 9 (Much laughs from hilarious quests, sometimes very confusing though)
Gameplay: 9.5 (Sometimes needs some more zoom out, and little details. Near perfect)
Overall rating: 7.9 (Rounded to 8)

Post Date: 02:58 08-07-2009
Rating: 7
Author: after8sg
Comment: ame graphic is simple and great. Game event gives player extra EXP. I like the idea of organizing a couple of skills into different combo set which simplify battle control. The only downside in this game is too highly dependent on healing class for bosses. If other class players can purchase via repository or pick up drop from subboss instance superior weapon that yield high dmg to boss, the team may compose of lesser healing class.

Post Date: 23:00 03-07-2009
Rating: 10
Author: Jolop
Comment: EtherSaga is better than Perfect World imho. Instead of being an Asian version of WoW like PW, Ethersaga is something special. Shame on people who don't like MMOs because of the manga graphics. I didnt notice much lag but i have an ultra fast connection. Long live Ether saga. 10/10.

Post Date: 18:05 17-06-2009
Rating: 8
Author: nipnipnippy
Comment: A pretty good game i liked it.
Not much games that i like. 8/10 :l

Post Date: 23:06 10-05-2009
Rating: 5
Author: MisaChan
Comment: I think it looks like i might tr it one time!

Post Date: 17:34 20-02-2009
Rating: 10
Author: kayasha1
Comment: Enter a world of Fantasy, where a strong Manga concept is used. Races as for told have a rich background. the Renzu, humans with high technology, the Shenzu, Half god with a nice touch of spirituality and finaly the Yaoh, a Race once animals but now acknowledged. As for the classes, a nice diversity with a "ummm" what is this "Dragoon". Ether Saga personalized the names and content of the classes to fit well with the environment of the game. This games if there for friends and to have fun then again if you want to strive for power and lvl, that is achievable with hard work.

Post Date: 21:33 16-02-2009
Rating: 9
Author: awesomedrako
Comment: i'm currently beta testing this game: its a good game, but it has bad translation currently, and also, since its in closed beta there aren't really any players about, and also, it suffers the same flaw as perfect world, HUGE lag on when attacking and talkign to npcs, don't know why, it just happens, ive got broadband and a good computer as well, it would be a 10/10 if not for this flaw

Post Date: 17:54 09-02-2009
Rating: 9
Author: webber
Comment: Looks like a winner. It doesn't hurt that ES is from the company as PW. Every player starting with a pet should be fun.

Post Date: 01:30 07-02-2009
Rating: 10
Author: bugmenot
Comment: Truly awsome. The graphics look like they were designed by a genius. Anime is great.

Post Date: 17:21 06-02-2009
Rating: 9
Author: arch1
Comment: I normally don't like anime games but this looks cool. If its half as good as Perfect World count me in.

Post Date: 23:18 04-02-2009
Rating: 10
Author: Pad
Comment: Looks awesome! I can not wait until the closed beta starts. I wish it would start now!