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“Lineage 2 meets World of Warcraft”

Everyone has their favourite games, the ones that you play for months at a time. When your playing them, you rarely want to play anything else. They have the best memories, the best groups, the best weapons, and you tell all of your friends to come and play with you because they clearly don’t know what their missing out on. For me, these games were Lineage 2, and World of Warcraft. Discovering shortly after logging into Rohan that it was the perfect mix of both of these games, I started to feel that favourite game urge rising once again.

Logging into Rohan for the first time was an interesting experience, mainly due to it’s massive popularity the servers crashed seconds after opening. With hundreds of thousands of people trying to log in at once it was a very difficult start. Fortunately it wasn’t long until the admins had added a new sever and most of us were able to log in successfully. There were some lag issues, and the servers crashed occasionally, but a few hours later everything had stabilised and it was time to play. Naturally, the first thing to do was to choose a class, thankfully Rohan has plenty of variety:

Human Knight: This is your warrior class in the world of Rohan, with skills trees suited to attack and defence. Higher level characters have the option of changing into either  a Defender or a Guardian. Defenders naturally boasting the high armour and tanking abilities, and the Guardian focusing more on attack.

Elf Healer: The Elves of Rohan specialise in healing, and as such have the option of changing into either a Priest, or a Templar. The Priest naturally focuses mainly on Healing, whilst the Templar on damaging spells.

Half Elf Archer: Naturally, Archers specialise in ranged combat, and at later levels can choose between becoming a Scout, which focus on attacking multiple foes at once, or a Ranger, high damage crossbow users.

Dekan Dragon Fighter: The Dekan are one of the newer style classes than can be found in Rohan. Boasting the ability to transform into a Dragon at whim these are naturally one of the more popular classes in Rohan. Higher level Dekan have the option to change into a Dragon Knight, allowing them to focus more on their dragon side,  or a Dragon Sage, capable of large AoE type damage. Dekan in Dragon Form are the only class in the game capable of going in water.

Dhan Assassin: The Dhan are the Rogues of Rohan, being able to deal high damage in bursts and stealth when needed. At later levels Shan are required to choose whether they would like to focus more on stealthy one hit kills with the Avenger, or fast damage output with the Predator.

Dark Elf Mage: As always, mages are your class cannons. They have extremely high damage output and low defence. They are given the option of becoming either a Warlock or a Wizard at later levels. Warlocks specialise in weakening the enemy before the battle even begins, whereas Wizards are much more suited to AoE style combat. Both are most useful in groups.

Once you have logged in to Rohan you are taken to a Tutorial Zone, and it is here that you will be spending the first hour of the game. The tutorial is amazing, covering most of the useful aspects of the game without boring you too much. Some of the information is rather standard though, and some players will be tempted to leave it early. Don’t, as not only will you reach nearly level 10 during the tutorial, you will gain many useful items and tips. 

Upon completing the Tutorial you will be teleported to your respective starting zone, and can begin questing. Most of the beginner quests are similar to the Tutorial quests but help to solidify your understanding of the game, and make you feel very much at home. After another hour or so you will have learned much more about forging new weapons and many of different and new features that Rohan has to offer. I’m going to explain a few of the main ones here:


M.Kill:

Another of the new and exiting features packed into Rohan is the M.Kill system, which allows for an EXP bonus after killing a certain number of enemies consecutively. For example, after killing 19 consecutive enemies, the 20th monster killed would award 5x the normal XP, so make sure than enemy is a few levels higher than you. This increases with 10x XP awarded at 40 kills, 13.5x at 60 kills, and so on. This feature is also used when partying with other players, and works in the same way but with different bonuses.

PK:

PK, or player killing, plays a large part in the world of Rohan. Similar to games like Lineage 2, players are always able to kill another player whenever they choose,  provided they are not in a ‘safe zone’ such as town. For every three hours of game time players are allowed to kill 5 other players without the risk of any penalties, but if that limit is exceeded then the player will be branded as a murderer and when killed will suffer a large EXP loss and have an increased chance to drop their items alongside no longer being able to enter towns for fear of being eliminated by the guards on sight. Once branded a murderer you will stay that way for 15 hours of play time, causing you to choose your targets carefully.

As an interesting twist, Rohan has included a revenge system in the game, allowing you to teleport instantly to a player that has killed you and extract your revenge. This can only be done once per player, and can also be done in groups to take down a higher level foe causing havoc in the area. This, alongside all of your other PK battles are recorded in your Hit List, which will keep track of your last 50 fights and their outcomes.

Aside from randomly killing players at your discretion, Township Battles can also take place. These battles are large scale war type scenarios, and  must be predetermined by a guild leader. A guild must have more than 30 members all above level 30 to take place, and is charged 50,000 crones for the battle, but with rewards fit for a king. Without actually playing in one of these battles it’s hard to say exactly how they play out, but they definitely seem to be worth the wait.

Assassination Mode:

Assassination mode applies only to two of the classes in Rohan, the Dhan and the Dekan, and is a very interesting addition to the game. Basically, as an assassin you can go to town and speak to a persona switcher, who will change your stance to assassination mode. Whilst in assassination mode your name will be hidden, and any PK’s you make will not count toward your counter. This makes for some very fun carnage sessions for those that enjoy this sort of thing. However, if you are killed whilst in assassination mode you stand to lose more EXP than normal, and have a higher chance to drop your items. There are more features to this little trait, but I’ll let you discover those for yourself.

There are literally hundreds of other features in Rohan, and I could very easily spend the next 40 years of my life explaining them. But I need the next 40 years of my life so I’m not going to. I will however brush over a few things that help make this game so great. Things like the Prison system which allow you to report players botting, giving them a random question them must answer in the allotted time. Failing to do so will send them to Prison, where they will have to wait a certain amount of time to be released. This begins at 10 minutes, and ends at 1 year. Harsh but fair I say.

Other features include the standard Quest system, which while not as in-depth as WoW, is far more fleshed out than Lineage 2, giving a much needed break from the grind. Also similar to Lineage 2 is the Shop system, allowing you to set up a shop and sell your goods wherever you like. There is also a forging system, allowing you to combine older weapons and armour together to make newer better ones. There is of course a chance of failure, but the rewards are fantastic. There are also over 24 different mounts with different run speeds than can be obtained in Rohan, this is something I’m very much looking forward too as I’ve found you can die very easily in this game if your not prepared and walking takes a long time.

Then of course you have the skills system. I know many of you have been waiting to learn more about this system for some time, as have I, and I’m happy to tell you that it’s great. Again very similar to WoW, each class has 3 different Talent Trees in which they can place the points they receive each level. It does work slightly different that I thought though, with one of the trees being for level 1~50 and the other 2 trees being for your sub-class, meaning that you will only be able to choose 1. Fortunately though, there are heaps of skills to choose from, and all of them can be levelled up 5 times, meaning that nearly every other person you bump into will have a different skill set-up than you, making PvP very interesting. Aside from the skill point you receive each level you will also receive 4 points to add to your characters stats, things like Str, Agi, Dex and the like. This once again adds a huge amount of diversity to building your character, and making them exactly the way you want them.



The last really important thing I should explain about Rohan Is of course the graphics and sound elements of the game. Thankfully, there really isn’t much to explain, they are both fantastic. Just by looking at the screenshots you can see that the graphics are spectacular, and it wont take you long to fall in love with the sounds either. The worlds are large and beautiful, I haven’t yet seen much outside my starting zone but if it’s anything like where I am now I can’t wait. The animations are spectacular too, my little assassin is every bit of the ninja I want him to be, and some of the other class jump around in a similar manga themed style. Its brilliant.
 

I really could go on forever with the things that I love about Rohan, but I really want you to see them for yourself. This game is a gem, and should be tried by anyone even remotely interested in the MMORPG genre. With superb graphics and gameplay, enough features to keep it fresh for months, and no price tag forever, I honestly think this game is going to be up there with the greats. That’s it for me now folks, I’m off to play. Level 20 here I come!