Tera, the new swords 'n' sorcery 'n' tiny-beaver-people-for-some-reason MMO from En Masse and Bluehole, has been out for a bit over a week now. I've been putting its high-octane (for an MMO, anyway) hack 'n' slash through its paces for review, but obviously, one week on live servers isn't even close to enough time to render a final verdict. However, for those of you having trouble resisting the siren song of a subscription right this very second, here are some early thoughts.

The Good

Mobility in battle

This really is a game-changer for MMO combat. As someone who's never quite been able to shake a World-of-Warcraft-born case of “been there, done that, bought the Horde hoodie from Hot Topic,” I've still found myself utterly ensnared by Tera. The plot and quest structure are hardly original (more on that in a bit), but battle's satisfyingly meaty sights, sounds, and high-flying dodges exert an almost primal pull on me.Standing still is akin to being a deer in the headlights of an oncoming 18-wheeler. In other words, it's probably not the best strategy. As a result, timing my warrior's double-bladed attacks perfectly and then leaping out of the way at the last second provides split-second, hair-splitting thrills. In most MMOs, combat is a means to an end. “Press button, receive loot,” basically. In Tera, though, I'll sometimes even hop off my mount mid-quest and cannonball into a small army of unrelated enemies simply for the pure joy of, you know, hitting stuff.

The prologue

Yes, this is in the correct section. While many prologues end up as bulbous, fat-stuffed bellies covering the real meat of an experience, Tera's kicks off the proceedings in a nicely intelligent fashion. Sure, I scoffed at the dime store high fantasy novel plot and climbed ladders at a speed that could charitably be described as “not in cryogenic stasis,” but I was also level 20 for the entire 30-minute-or-so duration. So basically, I was able to test drive each class' more potent powers, which proved essential in deciding which monster mashing rhythm suited me best.Ultimately, it came down to the warrior's roguish charms (and roguish speed and roguish love of dual-wielding and roguish everything else, oddly) versus the slayer's larger-than-life-sized cleaver. I picked the rogue warrior (oh god, not that one ), but it was close. Happily, most of my time was spent deliberating – not leveling a character for 20 hours only to realize that they didn't fit my playstyle. If, however, you think you've got everything all figured out, the prologue becomes optional after you've run through it once.

The little things

Combat might be hogging the spotlight, but Tera also nails some finer points of MMO design shockingly well. I'm an especially big fan of being able to click on an enemy type's name and have its stomping grounds immediately highlighted on my minimap. In that respect, Tera's well aware that carving up Mother Nature's most regrettable mistakes is its biggest draw, and it wastes little time in getting to that particular point. Meanwhile, a functional group-finding tool and other MMO mainstays – bafflingly absent from recent titles like Star Wars: The Old Republic – are present and accounted for here.Similarly, you get a variety of tiny combat buffs (brief regen, for instance) for gathering resources like herbs, minerals, and crystals. As a result, gathering's become a natural part of my combat rhythm. Instead of cursing my clumsy fingers every time I take a headlong dive into the unpleasantly sharp bits of a sabertooth cat monster's face, I simply sniff out a couple crafting materials and – between time spent and the resulting buffs – I'm ready to leap back into the fray before I know it.

Boss fights

I've only encountered a few biggie-sized battles so far, but Tera does them up in style. Environment-roaming Big Ass Monsters (yes, that's the actual in-game term) toss an especially large boulder on the tried-and-true level treadmill, and you can tackle them as you please. I took on a lumbering rhino tank of a basilisk while in a group, and its sky-high leap and flame breath forced everyone to stay on their toes or become equal parts flat and aflame – perhaps the grimmest of all possible fates.All the repositioning, dodge rolling, and, er, giant-ness made me feel like part of an (admittedly easier) Monster Hunter battle. Sadly, in my experience, BAMs don't start showing up until around level 20, so you'll largely be better off soloing up until that point.

It's fast

Korean MMOs have a rather dubious reputation for grinds that span lifetimes, going so far as to be ritualistically passed from father to son for generations in some cultures – at least, until a new WoW expansion comes out. They're slow, is what I'm saying. Tera, though, hit the ground running and never really looked back. I made it to level 10 in about five hours, but even after that – all the way up to 20 so far – the pace hasn't really slowed down too terribly much. Maybe that'll go swerving into a Grand-Canyon-like timesink abyss before it's all said and done, but for now, I feel like I can make tangible progress in 30 minutes or so.New skills, meanwhile, spring up every couple levels, so my combat style keeps changing to accommodate them. My warrior began with a basic twirly bladed ballet combo, but after a couple levels, he added a rangy AOE spin strike to his repertoire. Before long, a few more levels incorporated offensive and defensive stances, a fast, furious, and thankfully Vin-Diesel-free flurry attack, and a stab that does more damage based on how much health I'm missing.

The Not-So-Good

God of War, this ain't

Make no mistake: Tera is still an RPG. You have an ability tray, and it's loaded with a colorful assortment of squares linked to hotkeys of all shapes and sizes – as is this genre's custom. The way some players have been talking about it, you'd expect Spartan Demigod to be a playable class, but Tera feels a lot more like Diablo than it does Kratos' battle against his own inner demons (and a whole lot of Greek mythology's outer demons). Don't get me wrong: I still love it, but it's not as much of a step off the beaten path as, say, Nexon's Vindictus – which also incorporates throws, wall attacks, and physics-based environmental objects into its action-based combat.Moreover, it looks like skill progression nearly stops at around level 40, and while I'm still a ways off from that point, I'm curious as to how the game will keep progression engaging beyond that point – especially as leveling inevitably slows at least a teensy bit.

Questing

Tera's quests steal a page from WoW's voluminous volumes on the subject, but therein lies the problem: evidently, Bluehole only took one page. Sure, WoW overindulges in the kill, collect, formula, but constant tweaking and tinkering have turned the thing into a perfectly oiled machine. Tera, meanwhile, feels laughably clumsy in comparison – like a step back to vanilla WoW's comparatively creaky heyday. Quests frequently fail to link together, resulting in a general feeling of disjointedness where modern WoW might have you completing three quests at once in a single, satisfyingly snappy swathe.Meanwhile, quest text and the plot lines that push it forward are generic at best and laughably incomprehensible at worst. “Maybe you could be the next Elleon,” some grizzled military leader told me, referring to the world's most revered hero. Then he pointed a sword at me and told me I smelled like a pig. I, er, OK then. Please don't hurt me.

The first area

I won't make any bones about this one: Tera's first post-prologue hub, the Island of Dawn, is a total slog. There are far too many “Go waaaay over here to talk to this person; OK, now run all the way back to the first person to begin the part where you actually fight” quests, and it constantly reuses really basic enemy types. Did you have fun fighting those slow-as-molasses-at-absolute-zero tree monsters? Well, now you're gonna kill ten of a slightly higher-leveled version with all the same attacks. Hooray!Meanwhile, as I alluded earlier, Big Ass Monsters aren't even in the mix yet, and you don't gain access to a mount until you've vanquished the Island of Dawn's biggest baddie. Admittedly, it was still entirely bearable the first time I ran through because everything – especially Tera's lightning-quick combat – was new to me. But now that I'm messing around with a sorcerer alt, I've found myself uttering exasperated cries of “Oh man, not this again” all too often.

Launch problems

Given the MMO world's vaunted history of rocky starts and apologetic refunds, Tera's launch could've been a whole lot worse. After some pretty serious errors on day one, things seem to have mostly cleared up. That said, there's still a pretty major subscription error plaguing people's valiant efforts to give En Masse money, and I can say this from firsthand experience: it's a gigantic pain.Basically, En Masse has an overly strict third-party company handling credit card payments, and it likes to just randomly deny subscriptions – resulting in a wonderfully vague “Payment authorization failed” error. Because this is happening to so many people, customer service is swamped 24/7. I ended up being put on hold for an-hour-and-a-half before the automated service abruptly hung up on me. Then I waited another 40 minutes and finally got an answer. Thankfully, a very polite support rep granted me a week of free playtime, but – as of writing – my subscription still hasn't been approved. So that's a very obnoxious problem.

Female character designs

Why is no one wearing pants? Should I also perform death-defying feats of heroism sans any protection besides a frilly metallic undergarment? Does that somehow demoralize the enemy? Are bunny girls in skirts the length of the average napkin the key to defeating an encroaching apocalypse? Anyone? Please? I demand answers.Seriously, though, this is embarrassing – not to mention equal parts insulting and alienating. Gee, doesn't really make sense any way you slice it, now does it?