Here is my review/my experiences after a week of playing, I plan to play much more:
I've gotta say this is the most realistic "old school" feeling i've played in a while. It's not about pk here, really it's about surviving the world. I've died and had people waste supplies to help me get my loot. I've gone on quests and had random players tag a long to go as well. The bad apples seem few and far between. Death can happen if you aren't prepared, and while i've been lucky enough to not have too hard of a start (1 death so far) it's been really fun exploring and trying to find the new raids e.t.c
The ancient rune system makes farming a bit more enjoyable, and the elite monster's bring an even greater sense of "hell yea!" they don't give too much and they don't give too little. it's a good feeling to run into them (usually XD). I've played other ots with elite mobs, but the ones here just give me such a nice feeling.
The beginning is a little rocky, I do believe the early game without friends is a little bit frustrating in DURA compared to any server. Not "hard" just frustrating. A lot of the beginner spawns are just flat out too difficult to farm for lower leveld players who don't have the luxury of having friends (for better gear). This is so far, from my experience the least enjoyable part of the OT. First level 1-15 levels trying to get your gear, so you can farm a basic respawn.
The hidden EXP quests are a fun reward, I gather my buddies and we go out and look for them. It's a sort of calming, chill, fun thing to do. Just another "something" for players to do if they are tired of the grind. An adventure to look forward too!
The raids bring back the nostalgia, not kidding, I'm now at the level where i can participate so i've been showing up to them and a lot are fun. Couple personal examples:
First raid was greenshore orc raid, thought it was gonna be a small one, with orc warriors and shamans at best. I was a low level. Buddy and I fell down a trap hole in trolls by thais while going to check the raid, got lost/distracted for a little bit, about 9~ mins.. He was saying the orcs are def, all dead people killed them, I said lets check anyways. So i'm walking to greenshore and BOOM. Raids happen 10 mins after the announcement! All the orcs started appearing, zerkers and shamans, in a perfect loop around me. I got surrounded and killed, My only death!
The goblin and troll raid in edron saved me a lot of hassle as a noob. I made 2.2k~ off the small stones and gold from that raid, it pushed me through the early game and without it, Life would have been a lot harder for sure.
I'm now able to partcipate in a bit of the mediocre ones, and a few people had died while adventuring north of carlin. (undead raid, Lots of ghouls, few witches and ds) I helped get the loot back and overall saw about 5-10 others clearing the raid too. All in all it brings back a lot of nostalgia, seeing people clear the raids and people die during them as well.
The gm's are actively checking players for cheating, this is probably the best part of the OT. I've been checked and my friends have been checked quite a few times actually.
One of my favorite moments: scroll down a bit more for my current rating/experience with this server to skip my story
One of my favorite moments on the server was exploring for the noble armor quest. Walked into cyc mountain into a level 20 paladin who -simply said "i'm here." I replied with EXPA QUEST, i don't know why but it's really fun to say, he asked "i can come?" and we said sure. We didn't know if there was actually an exp quest but we had heard there was one from another player somewhere in the cave.
There had been a raid earlier while we were offline where undeads had spawned under cyc mountain. I tell the guy it is going to be hard and we may not be supplied enough to make it to the quest but he didn't seem to mind, he followed us through the mountain into the tunnels under cycs.
After clearing a few vamps and 1 geomancer, we found a spot, a ladder down with 4 vampires and a geomancer and some cycs. You can't simply lure the mobs to the ladder and rope on here, as the holes and rope spots do not always align, this would be my first mistake and a fatal one.
I went down and lured the vampires to the ladder. I didn't pay enough attention to how many I lured. We tried roping a couple times but nothing. I went back down to try to bring them back towards the ladder. I found myself 2 sqm east of the ladder... Two vampires west of me in a two way. I had 1 sqm of space to work with before it opened into a 3 way, so i ran east a tile to lure them away from the ladder so I could squeeze past.
As soon as i walked east and tried to go north i couldn't move.. I was trapped in a corner. First mistake was not remembering the ladders can be displaced with the hole putting you down in a place where you cannot go back up safely. Second mistake was forgetting how many vampires there were originally. One of them had went invisible , so when i walked east they pinned me into the wall.
Buddy of mine and random 20 pally came down and we managed to kill a vampire and I took off up the ladder, My supplies were low and i was not high enough level to be tanking 2 yet alone 3 vampires. As soon as we went up the ladder the random pally typed XD but my friend had roped a vampire..
the paladin forgot to heal and the vampire combod him for 170 damage with a melee and life drain spell in the same tick. He died and my UH went off on him AS HE DIED. (the animation and charge gone.. but he was still dead, that's how close it was) I felt awful. The guy messaged me back "FUCK FUCK FUCK" "VAMPIRE IS FUCK" Haven't laughed that hard in a while, and felt horribly guilty at the same time. I dragged his loot out of the mountain back towards Thais to him. I've got him on my vip with a heart, i'll pay him back someday when I make it big. Anyways here is my rating
The community 10/10
The cheater punishment 10/10
The mapping 8/10 This is a bit bias, but the roofing and some parts of map bother me a lot and look like a lazy job. Just slapping a roof tile to connect roofs. Doesn't feel like a bridge or a link, it feels extremely out of place/abnormal/rushed. I haven't seen too many custom areas, more so just the spawns revamped so I can't fully judge the mapping but off of what i've seen some parts do feel a bit rushed, while others bring the nostalgic feel.
The spawns 7/10 (Need more spawns, more variety in form of custom mid/low level mobs or custom mid/low level spawns)
Nostalgic Feeling 10/10
Roleplaying 10/10 (I got yelled at by a level 50 for littering in Carlin)
Content 10/10 Could be a bit more for mid/lower level in terms of custom things [items/spawns]. but the EXP quests/elites/and new quest rewards are content that i REALLY do enjoy.
Recommendation 10/10 I do think this is a very fun server to play. Casual or not. It's not like the others.
CYA ON DURA!
GM Sraris cancell my perma ban for one day. After 2h playing GM tenzhiro gave me Perm ban again.
