First Impressions: Allods Online

I've managed to crank a nice chunk of time into Allods over the past couple of days, and while I haven't seen all aspects of the game yet I might as well talk about what I've gotten to experience so far.

The game has two factions, each with three races. The League is comprised of the Kanians, which are one of the two human races in the game, Elves, and Gibberlings, which are gnome-like creatures that come in a pack of three. On the Imperial side we have Xadaganians, which are the Empires humans, Orcs, and Arisen, which are Allods form of Undead. The game has eight archetypes which are Warrior, Paladin, Healer, Scout, Warden, Mage, Summoner, and Pscionicist. While every archetype exists on each faction they do all have unique names and little quirks depending on which faction you choose. For example a Kanian Paladin is called a Crusader, while a Xadaganian Paladin is called an Avenger. Allods actually defines these into their own separate classes.

The character customization is pretty much your standard fair. It's pretty easy to use and offers you general options like hair style, skin color, size, features, etc. The one complaint I do have with the customization screen is that when viewing it your character is dressed in what I assume is some high level gear. The problem with this is that on many of the models the gear covers what you’re trying to customize on your character. While there is a button to unequipped the gear and see your toon in the buff it makes me wonder why they would include such bulky gear knowing that you can't see your character all that well because of it.

Once you create your toon and get into the game you'll find yourself inside of an introduction instance. Here you'll carry out a little scenario that'll teach you the basics of the game. I have to say that the scenarios are very impressive, especially when you compare them to WoW's starting zones. Both factions introduction scenarios generally make you feel like a badass once you complete them. The Empire's intro in particular is very well done in my opinion and even gives you a glimpse at the Astral Monsters and Astral Ships, which supposedly make up a huge part of the end game.

What will first hit you no matter which side you start out on is just how beautiful the effects and animations in this game are. While the rest of the game is as visually amazing, I can say that the effects in this game top just about anything else I can think of. They are very well put together, and so far I haven't seen any two moves that look the same.

One complaint I do have against the game is that it really gives no back-story at all when you start to play. Unless you've delved into the Lore of the game online somewhere, just playing it doesn't tell you anything about what’s going on in the world around you. This is a missed opportunity in my book, because while not incredibly original, the Allods world does have its own mix of interesting possibilities. Take the undead race for example, the Arisen. They are not just your typical undead, in fact they are more of a machine race than anything else. They seem to be corpse being held together by machines; there’s even Arisen making comments of losing oil when taking damage in the introduction. But the game never (or at least it hasn't so far) offers an explanation or history as to how they got that way. As a Lore buff myself, it's a glaring missing point that should be discussed somewhere in game.

Moving on from that once you exit the tutorial the game turns into your standard fair. Kill 10 rats quest, FedEx quest, etc are all there. The EXP system seems to be very wonky in the game. Levels 1-5 go very quickly inside of the instanced tutorial but 5-6 hits you like a brick wall and the time needed to level nearly triples. Whether that’s intended because of the low level cap in the beta or if that’s really how the game is I have no idea.

All in all while Allods definitely qualifies as a WoW clone, I'm pretty impressed with it thus far. I'll make another post in the future discussing my experiences with specific classes in the games. As for right now, I'm off to play more Allods. =)