I’m playing a lot of Tera right now. This is always when I regret playing a beta as I push through all the content I already saw. I’m playing a Sorcerer now though which is a change and that takes some of the sting out of doing all the same quests again. As of last night I finally hit the point that I got to in the beta (around level 18).

I’ve had the opportunity to play some high level content at various events and I’m really excited to get to that point with my own character. Something about the combat in Tera just really scratches an itch for me. The combat in games like WoW or even SW:TOR is sort of like old naval warfare. Two big ships sidle up next to each other and just unload. At the end of the day you just have to hope you survive it. Tera is much more action oriented. Enemies give you tells before they attack and you need to move out of the way. You need to be actively blocking and dodging if you want to survive some of these fights. Spells and arrows have trajectories and if you move out of their path you don’t get hit! No more fireballs that track you as you dodge out of the way. So when I have some NPC telling me to go get ten serrated fangs, I’m actually excited because it means I get to go play.

And trust me you will be asked to collect ten thingamajigs. Tera is a strange case in that way. For all the innovation they’ve packed into the combat, the quest system is a classic MMO grind. In SW:TOR I wanted to complete quests to see the next part of my character’s story. The planet Taris was a ridiculously boring slog but I pushed through it because I loved the story. With Tera I don’t give two shits about the story, in fact I’m not even reading most of these quests. I click accept and then check the map to see where I need to go. I do the quests because I want to fight. I want to kill stuff and so a quest that tells me to kill stuff is actually exactly what I’m in the market for. In SW:TOR I put up with the gameplay so that I could get the story. In Tera I put up with the story so I can get the gameplay.

So how long will I stick with Tera? It’s hard to say. If you count my time spent in the beta I probably played SW:TOR for about 5 months before I got tired of it. Honestly in my opinion that’s a pretty good investment. I can’t say right now if I’ll still be playing Tera in September. At the very least I think it’s worth a purchase. Give it a month and see what you think.

-Gabe out