I have been playing TERA for the last week or so. Because of course I have.

Before I begin with my impressions, I think it’s time to have a frank discussion on how miserable a job game designers do in terms of opening presentation. For example, right out of character creation, this was what I was presented with:

Wut.

I’m not even talking about the large advertisement for “Elite Status” or whatever. I’m talking about how I cannot even see my own character. Yes, I closed and resized as many windows as I could immediately afterwards. But… really? Do the designers ever actually look at their own game a few years after it goes live? Or do they (or executives) just mandate more and more bullshit that slowly fills the screen and call it a day? TERA is not unique in this regard by any means, but come on.

One of the reasons I made myself a note to try TERA at some point was its much-lauded combat system. “The best combat system in any MMO” was a frequent refrain. Monsters have collision, you have to aim your skills, “Big-Ass Monsters” are known as BAMs in-game, animation locking and canceling differentiate the boys/girls from the men/women,  and so on.

My reaction after hitting level 28: shrug.

It’s entirely possible that TERA got caught up in the same general early-game nerfing that seems endemic in MMOs. At least, I’m assuming that you are not supposed to be one-shotting most normal mobs with low-cooldown attacks as a Gunner. Or easily collecting the “relic” weapon pieces such that you end up running around with the equivalent of an epic weapon for each new area, rendering all quest reward weapons as vendor trash. My first encounter with a BAM was a Basilisk that I had not noticed was a BAM until it survived three entire attacks. “Oh, this is new… nevermind, it died.”

Actually, I am pretty sure this is exactly what happened to TERA. Around level 20, I got a “call to arms” quest to play in a Battleground. A win awarded 850k+ XP, which got me three entire levels at once. I doubt that was in during launch.

By the way, that BG? Some crazy-ass nonsense where you play as baby giants in diapers. Ask me if I’m kidding. I dare you.

I wasn’t kidding.

It’s an interesting phenomenon, now that I think about it: how pretty much every MMO eventually drifts until it becomes a caricature of itself. For example, from what I understand, TERA has always had a “sexy” element to it, in terms of female armor, the loli Elin, and so on. Then the next four classes that the designers introduced were female-only, including two Elin-only classes.

I’m not sure when stat underwear was introduced, but I imagine around the same time:

Hard to tell if that description is intentionally ironic, or…

I suppose such mission drift is perhaps inevitable. After all, it seems silly to criticize a company for producing something its audience wants to buy. I have the utmost sympathy for those members of said audience who were originally sold a much different good, before the, erm, “invisible hand” took the wheel. Game designers presumably must cater to the audience they have at that moment, and not some hypothetical audience that fits the original artistic vision. It’s easy to pontificate when it’s not your own dollars at stake.

That being said, I don’t think TERA is for me. I can appreciate a good pair of Firemane Leggings as much as the next guy, but I feel like this game is way off in (or on) the weeds at this point. Even in the “serious” parts like combat, I couldn’t help but think that Guild Wars 2 did it better. Maybe not collision-wise, sure. But at least GW2 presents itself as including an actual world and not a series of shadow box corridors carved with invisible walls.

And GW2 is, you know, much more pleasant to play.

I dunno. If you had some other kind of experience with TERA, I’d be interested in hearing it.