| Let's face reality: Cheating at L2 = Winning at L2. Thats not good for a game so heavily based on competition.
When someone comes onto a Battlefield 2142 server and uses hacks, yeah it sucks, but the game will be reset in 30 minutes anyway. In L2, the cheaters just keep acumulating power, as they have done for years now. When NC Austin bans a character that does nothing. People work together in L2 to cheat it. If one gets banned, the group of cheaters has accumulated many resources to come back from it. Simply bot up a new toon, and gear it using the ill gotten gains. Bottom line: L2 punishes anyone that plays legit, and hands extreme rewards to anyone who cheats.
IMO L2 is one of the best games ever made (I have been gaming for a long time, and yeah I actually believe this!). But NC Austin has proven entirely ineffective in dealing with the cheating issues over many years. And now, nearly everyone but the cheaters have quit the game on the American servers. Massive, colossal, failure.
Pro's:
- Only real open PvP MMO.
- Extremely well designed, it has no peer. (unchecked cheating has undermined the design)
- True persistent world, (mostly) non-instanced.
- Best graphics in any MMO, past/present/foreseeable future.
- A real challenge, this game is hard, you will need years to master it.
- Free updates twice a year. Great updates to balance and new areas are consistently well done.
Con's:
- Cheating is the smartest way to advance.
- "Anti-cheating" tactics by NCAustin have been subverted by GM's being paid off by players.
- Economy requires you to ebay eventually, unless you bot.
- Worst community, everyone is an asshole, including me.
- Fairly high system requirements, getting worse every time they update the game.
- The game is too hard, nearly everyone that starts... quits within 3 weeks.
- Desolate newbie areas. A new player finds a 15 to 1 bot to human ratio.
Conclusion:
The best MMO available. Wow, that's sad. |