Recent reviews by Teyla Emmagan

If it were not for mods, which in turn break getting achievements, this game would not be playable. Even still, the amount you need to make it a playable game is ridiculous... and tedious, at best, because of remapping controls is the worst part. It is really disappointing for a game in 2023... just another pathetic console port because PC is an afterthought in game studios.

Played this game a lot with over 900 hours now, but I only see bots, posts about bots, queues, and general piss-poor management from AGS/SG. I started on an EU server that had long queues and AGS made a new region for us to go to... now there are no queues on the first server, but I spent 900 hours on the new one with few players and they have no way to transfer accounts to more populated zones. It is starting to be noticeable when I cannot find groups in the middle of the day on a weekend to do content that we are forced to play to progress.

They consider classes content and are releasing them as slow as they can, meaning a lot of us are not seeing classes we want to play until next year, at the earliest, when they already exist in every other region the game is out in. What other content there is is only eight-man stuff where you are going to have to deal with seven other players, many of which are not that great, so you need a static to get far, meaning you need to schedule your life around the game, not the other way around. All group content in the first half of the game is equally dead because people already got to the end and have no incentive to revisit low-level areas. Add to it that co-op content in open world is set at specific times of the day & week, so if you work different hours, you are never going to get to do it.

To make it worse, if you join the wrong server, you are unable to join a friends guild because they are server-locked, instead of region... and if you join the wrong one, you are punished if you leave or get kicked with an increasing lock-out timer (one day, three days, a week, a couple weeks, and then even a month without being able to join a guild). Not that guilds give you anything but bloodstone because they are character-based instead of per-roster... so if you have a bunch (I have eight now) then you need to put them all into one, taking up places if you are not active on all of them. There is little-to-no social interaction with guilds and you are better off using third-party tools like Discord if you want to talk to friends in any meaningful way.

Not even getting into the obvious fail of the engraving system that, if you do not participate in the "meta" you get locked out of groups for having fun because people can inspect your build and deny you joining parties (equally bad to dps meters, which will get you banned for using). Want to change your build or class you main? Expect to shell out thousands of gold to swap accessories, tripods on gear, and buy engraving books. The system is not made for casuals, either, as the only content at the end game is increasingly difficult eight-man raiding. As far as you can get, comfortably doing solo and four-man content is 1370 before you are forced into eight-man to progress (current max is 1615 in Korea).

tl;dr: Do yourself a favour if you are looking for an mmo-arpg and wait for Diablo 4, which has finally been announced for next year.