At the current rate, I might actually have to write another review (version 4) to fill in all the changes they have made. Most of them are for the worse in my opinion. Dividing the game into the standard and skirmish was probably the tipping point of the game. You either loved the new system or hated it immensely. It tried so hard to advert pay to win status early on, but with each update, it becomes more and more obvious that it has adopted the pay to win system. Just take a look at how Spelltower functions. Patches are also taking longer to be released. The US version of Atlantica Online has yet to reveal Roro to us. If the US version continues to follow this craptastic path, I'm going to have to do a version 4 and take it down several points to below average.

So not much about the game has changed overall since the last update. However, it has gotten even worse over time. The fight over Oriharukon is still responsible for a huge chunk of that problem. The exception is that there are now Oriharukon mines that the top guilds can fight over so it is no longer just the top 50 or so people of a server. The problem is that it is still available in extremely limited numbers making the top tier gear extremely expensive. On top of that, the items needed to craft them are also shared by some of the lower leveled equipment from 100+ making it extremely costly for lower level players as well because high level players are now also competing for the same items.

The only good feature to come out of this is that many of the instanced guild and nation dungeons have begun to have the level of the monsters scale with the players and it makes it a greater challenge with more rewards. Unfortunately, the rewards for clearing dungeons and the items they drop still suck. All they did was make the dungeons provide more exp. If they could bother to fix it so that they drop level relevant items, then it would be a lot better. Far too many of the dungeons give garbage items in terms of their difficulty and the level of the monsters. The level 125 instanced dungeon for example, routinely drops level 105 gear and the level 121 gear almost never drops. At least level 144 dungeon enemies finally bother to drop level 130 equipment at a 1 in a million or lower rate.

There are also more item mall mercenaries coming with the latest one being a high end spear user with skills similar to the Valkyrie. Odds are that the strength of this mercenary will be extremely high making it essential to your team formation at some point. So that means it will take you $400 or billions of gold before you can even consider doing much of the game. The Sheriff is essential to practically all TBS missions if you want to solo. The Vampire has the insanely powerful column heal skill and magic defense debuff. The Tarkan is extremely powerful in Africa TBS due to self buff and immunity to being frozen or stunned. It is likely that the newest mercenary will somehow become essential in a new part of the game. It has been a few years and there are still no alternatives to getting these mercenaries outside of some ridiculously improbably odds from events. The Korean version already has people able to pay extra money to level up the new item mall mercenary. Definitely pay to win.