There have been a few open betas this weekend and one of them was TERA Online. I tried it out and I quite liked it. It is alot more action-based than past MMO's, but overall it is a basic fantasy world with different races and classes to choose from. The overall experience was enjoyable though and I think I'll get it when it releases.

The thing is with new MMO's, they are all being compared to World of Warcraft which still seems to be the most popular of them all. I've played WoW for a long time, but I quit it shortly after the latest expansion. Though TERA Online is a fantasy world with elements of other fantasy MMO's, such as WoW, it still felt very different from WoW in a good way.

The graphics are amazingly beautiful and the gameplay is, as I said above, alot more action-based. Where many other MMO's goes with the principle of targetting by clicking the one you want to attack and then you push the key which activates an attack, either physical or magical, TERA Online has thrown away the targetting and instead put a crosshair in the mid of the screen which shows which way you pull off the attack. Instead of using your mouse to point and click on an enemy, you simply move the camera the way you want to use the attack. Some powers need for you to target an enemy, or an ally, and you do so by selecting the spell, then points in the direction your enemy is and then it locks onto that target while firing off the spell. That's useful for when you want to heal a specific ally or put a curse on a specific enemy.

The races are also very different from one another to fit whatever the player likes to play as. There are regular Humans who like other fantasy MMO's all look like buffed up steroid macho men and the Human women are pretty, but still curvacious. There there's the Aman, half-dragon people who are big and scaly - The Baraka (yes, there's a race called the Baraka) who are genderless stone-giants - The Popori who are small, fat and furry fuzzballs - The Elin which are the female counterpart of the Popori, except they look like little girls with feline features - The High Elves who are tall, slender, beautiful, the male elves being VERY androgynous and the female elves having overly large boobs - And the Castanic which is a demonic race, the females being very succubi-like and the males being incubi-like. The Castanics are my favourite race. ^^

The lore is about this island which suddenly appears and then the allied races sent off an exploration group who never returned because of the dark evils on the island which are now spreading all over the world. Simple and classic, not that original though, but I like the way it is told through the quests you go through as you rise through the levels. It just sets the standard for the rest to be built on though and since I have only played the open beta, I have yet to learn the full story of the game.

The classes are set in typical fantasy MMO roles: the tanks, the healers and the damage dealers. However, due to the gameplay it is made alot more interesting to do instead of just targetting someone and then spam the right buttons. It has become alot more challenging, because you have to move around to dodge the attacks instead of purely depending on the stats given by your gear which can be compared to games like God of War and Devil May Cry.

I only got to try two of the classes: The Warrior and the Mystic.

The Warrior is a tank, but breaks the typical heavy-armoured shield-wielding tank classes in other MMO's as they are actually depending on their agility and has lot of evasive moves, instead wearing leather-armour and dual-wielding swords like a Rogue-class normally would do. Sadly (in my opinion), there is no Rogue-class, so the Warrior is the closest thing to a Rogue, but it has no stealth or poison to use. It was still quite enjoyable to play as a Warrior though and it has become one of my favourite classes.

The Mystic is a healer who wears cloth-armour, who also has alot of buffs to give to its allies. The Mystic can summon minions to aid him in battle and put curses on the enemy to debuff them. A very versatile and interesting class, in my opinion, but hard to master. It is mainly a buff/debuff class, but can also pull off some damage and heal allies, but it is important to specialize in how you wish to play this class or else he it will be a jack-of-all-trades: Can do a bit of everything, but is no master of anything.

You can read more about the other classes on their web-site.

So far, my main character might be a male Castanic Warrior, but when I get to play the other classes and try out the other races, that might change, but that is how I see it now. ^^

Have any of you guys tried the open beta or maybe just read about this game and might be interested in getting it? What do you guys think about it?