Silk Road Online - a free MMO actually worth playing

[extarbags]

So I spent some of last night and today playing Silk Road Online (http://www.silkroadonline.net/), and I have to say, I'm pretty pleasantly surprised. If you haven't heard of it, it's one of the Korean MMO's that free to play, and supported by sale of in-game items. What makes this one a little bit different is that it's actually... pretty good.

The game is premised on the Silk Road, which apparently was an important historical trade route in China. So they took that period of history, added magic and monsters, and there you have it. It starts out being similar to WoW or any other MMO: you run around killing things, or you get in a group and kill things, or you do little quests, whatever. And I guess you can keep doing that, but the unique part of the game is what goes on with the trade routes. Starting at level 20, you can start being a merchant and running shipments of goods to earn a living, or a theif, who (you guessed it) sacks trader caravans and makes off with the phat lewt. Or a hunter, who hunts, I guess, and I think can also arrest theives. I don't know. I'm not level 20 yet.

But! I will be soon, because levelling has been really fast so far. In around six hours, give or take, I've gotten to level 12, and that's counting the time spent with the growing pains of getting used to the interface and layout of the game, and so forth. The acheivement curve is rewarding without being punishing, and the world is creatively conceived, with interesting monsters, good enough looking environments, and just plain rad 2 tha max combat animations.

The other thing I'm really enamored with is the character system. There are no classes, and you're free to level up whatever skills you want. It's simple-yet-deep, and it's nice to be able to construct whatever build I desire.

It's not without it's problems, of course. Like all Korean MMO's, there's very little in the way of character customization (although not as bad as in some others that I've seen), and the localization is truly awful, though I assume they're working on that. But those aren't too hard to get past, and what can I say, I'm really, honestly enjoying the hell out of this one so far.

I strongly urge you to check it out. If you do, you may feel free to join me on Olympus server. My character's name is Fish_McGish. I'll be happy to answer any of your questions as best I can.

[MatthewF]

Site doesn't load under firefox. Game over man, game over!

[extarbags]

It loads in FF for me. Make sure you allow it in Noscript if you're using that.

[MatthewF]

I'm actually using vanilla Bon Echo (firefox 2 beta) although it's a little silly that it wouldn't load under that. It redirects me to a page saying it's "Optimized for Windows Operation Systems and Internet Explorer 4.0 and above."

[extarbags]

Well I don't think it's totally fair to slag the game for the site not working in a beta of Firefox. Do you have any other thoughts?

[Nellie]

Downloading this now, wow is starting to get on my wick and I'm ready to try soemthing different for a while.

[edit] That it's supported by the sale of in-game items, does this mean that at some point you'll hit a limit of what you can do before you have to spend £10 on a sword of +3 levels or something?

[extarbags]

[edit] That it's supported by the sale of in-game items, does this mean that at some point you'll hit a limit of what you can do before you have to spend £10 on a sword of +3 levels or something?

From what I can tell, the in-game items are mostly vanity items. The exceptions are the pets, which come in two varieties, which I'll call inventory and combat. Inventory pets are only available for rent (around three bucks a month) at the premium shop, and they basically pick up loot and store it for you, which saves you time and adds inventory space. Combat pets come in two functionally identical forms: White Wolf and Grey Wolf. The White Wolf is purchased for like four bucks from the premium shop, and the Grey Wolf is purchased for one million gold in-game. They fight beside you, hence the name.

The other items are, I think, purely cosmetic. There's no equipment for sale, although there are alchemy ingredients which may have a substantive effect (I haven't really delved into the alchemy system); however, from what I understand, the premium shop does not carry items that actually affect gameplay that are not also available in-game, and may not carry such items at all.

[Aeon221]

The engrish is hurting my brain. Other than that, looks pretty awesome.

[Nellie]

Found my way onto Olympus, and spent 5 minutes getting all the buttons wrong. looks pretty good so far.

[Warning]

I tried last night but the lag was so bad. I could barely move past the sea of other players. It does look really pretty for a free game.

[Tyjenks]

Crafting?

[Slainte Mhath]

The trade routes thing sounds ripe for really frustrating PvP ganking. Add on the fact that it's a Korean MMOG and they're infamous for rampant ganking, farming and exploiting and it sounds worse.

It looks nice, and sounds like it could be fun if implemented well, but I'd hate to invest the time and effort getting to 20 only to find the economic ubergame a big letdown.

With that in mind, has anyone experienced the trade routes thing yet?

[GrinR]

Woo hoo!!! You win!

Silk Road = my first Vista Bluescreen. It's likely a testimony to how good of an experience I've had so far that it came as a surprise.

[extarbags]

The trade routes thing sounds ripe for really frustrating PvP ganking. Add on the fact that it's a Korean MMOG and they're infamous for rampant ganking, farming and exploiting and it sounds worse.

It looks nice, and sounds like it could be fun if implemented well, but I'd hate to invest the time and effort getting to 20 only to find the economic ubergame a big letdown.

With that in mind, has anyone experienced the trade routes thing yet?

I'll let you know when I get there, but I will say that I see merchants riding into town and successfully fending off attacks in the wilderness all the time, so it's not a big enough problem to make trade impossible.

One issue related to this: I did just get ganked by one of the NPC thieves that the game spawns to attack merchants. Usually they leave me alone, though, so I'm not sure what the deal was.

[extarbags]

http://xs309.xs.to/xs309/06475/big_bumpin_front_cover.jpg

So, I'm going to be playing this again for a bit, looks like. Free LOTRO has whet my appetite for some MMOing, but thinking about it, as good a job as that game does with the setting, it really isn't as good of a game as Silk Road.

So this is another open call for people to come play with me.

[RedTide]

Could you tell us some more about the game? How's the combat? WHat have they improved on in the last few months? Thanks for any info.

[extarbags]

I'm redownloading the client now, so I won't be able to report back on what's changed/improved in the six-odd months since I've played until probably tomorrow or late tonight, but I'll tell you now that I loved the combat before. It's similar to WoW's, but with much more visceral animations and (I think) faster-paced. Now that I think about it, it might be more of a cross between Guild Wars and WoW, combat-wise, because it's functionally more akin to the latter but the pacing is closer to the former. It's also helped by the sweet-ass character system, which eschews rigid classes in favor of letting you derive your own build from whatever skills you want.

[barstein]

All right, I'm pretty online focused for gaming right now so I'll give it a whirl. Might see me on tonight. Is there a guild system, or something?

[extarbags]

Sweets. In case you missed it in my ancient OP, I'm on the Olympus server, char name Fish_McGish.

[AaronSofaer]

I played this back when it was released. Ice was really overpowered and healing and grouping were both sadly pointless.

Fun game, though.

[extarbags]

Ice isn't overpowered for non-dedicated casters anymore (or as of six months ago). It's really good, but from what I remember reading, the best melee damage builds used fire mainly, and I know from using it that thunder is really good as well because of some of its non-damage abilities.

I don't think grouping is pointless (you can get done quests twice as fast with two people), but this is definitely a less group-focused game than most MMO's. I don't think I've run into a quest yet that I couldn't solo.

[AaronSofaer]

Hehehe.

Let me put it this way. Back when I played, there were no quests.

I might pick it up against to see what's changed. It sounds like a lot of stuff has been improved.

[extarbags]

Ha, wow. Then yeah, you should give it another shot.

[Mind Elemental]

What hours are you guys normally on? I might give this a shot, but my schedule is sufficiently wacky that I can't make any promises.

[extarbags]

I'll be on at various times through tonight, and probably most nights, as well as some weekday afternoons (mainly Tuesday and Thursday).

[Myth]

I went to the download page and it said:

"Sing up for Silkroad"

Unfortunately I am unfamiliar with the tune. Anyone care to hum a few bars to get me started?

Thanks for the link extrabags, looks pretty interesting; anything free is worth a try.

[extarbags]

I'm logging in now, if anyone else is going to be on.

[barstein]

I'll be "newbing around" on and off tonight and tomorrow night and so forth as I also have an erratic schedule. I joined extar's server and created a spear-carrying character named Belboz. Guess by picking the spear I have selected the "Force" path, which I assume is more or less like a magic user class.

Kudos to extar, my brief peek into the game (leveled to 2) revealed something very familiar (interface) but aesthetically unique (imagery etc.) as compared to other mmo's. Charming game. I love getting caught by surprise like this.

Now excuse me while I go get a hamburger and make eyes at the irritated waitress.

[extarbags]

Guess by picking the spear I have selected the "Force" path, which I assume is more or less like a magic user class.

You're not quite right about this; I'll break down the skills here in brief because it can be hard to find well-translated information. The top level skill categories are WEAPONS and FORCE. Force is magic, and weapons are... well, weapons. Beyond that, they break down into:

WEAPONS
Sword
Spear
Bow

FORCE
Fire
Ice
Lightning
Healing

Now, you can put your skill points into whatever skills you want, but they progress linearly, so if you're level 50 but don't have any points in Ice, you can't learn the highest level Ice spells. Also, you basically get more skill points in combat if you don't have your skillls levelled up as high as you could for your level, so one way to potentially min/max is just stockpiling your skill points and not spending them till you have a load (though I wouldn't recommend that you start doing this until the early teens at least).

So ok, the first thing to know is: it does not matter what weapon you pick at the beginning. All that that really determines is the weapon they give you to start. So you picked spear, they gave you a spear, and that choice has no further consequences. You can switch to swords if you wish, or you can focus on magic and be a pure caster if you want, or whatever. So sell your spear and buy a sword if you want, it's up to you.

Also, there are only three weapon skills, but there are five types of weapons, the other two being Blades and Glaives (which the game actually spells Glavies), which share the same skills as Swords and Spears, respectively. The main difference is that Blades and Glaives are higher damage than Swords and Spears, but they have a lower magic damage rating, which means that if you're going to be a pure caster, you definitely want either a sword or a spear equipped (but probably a sword so you can also use a shield). As a melee, I've found glaives to be better than spears, even though I constantly use the lightning elemental buff on my attacks.

That reminds me: if you're going for melee, also pick an elemental magic skill to level, because the elemental buffs basically double your damage output. Fire has the most sheer damage, Ice does less damage and has a chance to freeze the enemy (which is useful), and Lightning is in between and has a chance to lower the enemy's evasion. Lightning is the weakest, probably, because the evasion down is far less useful than the freezing, but it's still very much worth considering because it also contains the "Grass Walk" and "Ghost Walk" abilities. Grass Walk increases your running speed significantly, and Ghost Walk is some kind of teleportation, I guess. I don't have it yet.

Also, you'll want to learn at least a few levels of the self-healing skill, for sure. You can also learn to raise people if you want to be a super-nice guy.

[Kunikos]

I'm actually using vanilla Bon Echo (firefox 2 beta) although it's a little silly that it wouldn't load under that. It redirects me to a page saying it's "Optimized for Windows Operation Systems and Internet Explorer 4.0 and above."

i'm guessing you meant firefox 3 not 2.

also, i played this game for a little while... it was boring as hell, just non-stop grinding, jerky animation, terribly boring quests, and click-to-move. ugh.

[SlyFrog]

I was kind of thinking about it, but I heard the developer is planning a server wipe to be followed by a Pacific WWII MMORPG. Is that true?

[extarbags]

Haven't heard of it!

Anyway, this seems to be the same game I left sixth months ago.