yeah that sounds about like every single MMO since the dawn of time ~.~ whats your point ? anyhow story quests all dumb down to one of three flavors, Kill quest (Kill X giant rats), FedEx (take object A to NPC Z) and FedEx killquests ~.~ (kill mob A until it drops rare object N which you take to NPC Z) Oh yeah guess its four, I forgot flat out collection quests which are like FeKill quests but with less killing and more clicking on stuff =P

everyone whines about grind but if you remove it whats left in an mmo ? an expensive 3D chatroom ? Its the grind that keeps you coming back for more as much as you hate it, well that and the all consuming drive to seek out phat loot!!!1!

The quests in this game are no more of a grind than WoW's quests. If you consider questing as grinding then i guess it has grind since this is a quest-based leveling game. But grinding in the more traditional sense of f2p's - without even having quests to fill your xp bar (forcing you to only kill mobs) is practically non-existant in Allods untill the mid thirties level range (and i hear that is fixed as well).

Also, there's plenty of quests with much more flavour than the usual Kill/Collector quests. Seriously - level your toons untill after the Igsh Military District in the Empire and you will see the quests have a lot of variation.

Plus there's special quest series called "World Mysteries" that span through several areas and when completed give you a Ruby to use in the grid system (the equivalent to WoW's talent system).

However, if you are burned out of the traditional leveling system of questing then this game isn't for you because it is quite traditional in that sense: you need to read the quest text to know what you are doing and if you don't read you won't be immersing yourself as much as you could in this game.

The amount of whining about FoD has now reached epic proportions. It's called 'beta testing' for a reason. I'm in the beta, have been since CB2, and it's my opinion that a great number of people who are in the beta shouldn't be. They aren't interested in 'testing' anything, they're interested only in playing the game for free and whining to get what they want.

They are trying out ways to have PvP and PvE co-exist with a death penalty that is, essentially, a sub-fee for both PvP and PvE. The difference is that you only pay when you play as opposed to paying on the 1st of the month.

As for the severity of FoD, that's what testing is for, to tune it, or its replacement, to optimize the fun for the players vs. revenue for the company. Most of the complaints about it are from people who cannot fathom having a PvP system where dying is little more than a 60 second trip to the 'timeout' corner. I can see that kind of system in a battleground environment, but in an open PvP environment like 'the Astral'? No, there should be consequences, even if that consequence is just spending $0.25 (or whatever the fee is) before you decide to raid someone else's hard-earned Astral Ship. It's like listening to people complain that they didn't get free sex to go along with their free steak.

It's retarded.

Ta,

@Tom Luongo

Beta testing isn't merely for "testing". It's also for players to give feedback. You, sir, are whining about legitimate feedback.

"It's like listening to people complain that they didn't get free sex to go along with their free steak."

So i assume that you usually pay for sex? Well, i never paid for that and i don't intend to pay for it inn the future.
And in case you don't know, the Beta testing in the US and EU is behind the Beta testing in Russia. And guess what? Fear of Death wasn't changed there either! In fact there's a lot of russian players in the European Beta server that ran away from the Russia version because of the Fear of Death debuff (i've spoken with some and that was the reason they gave me).
And trust me, the russian players have complained a LOT about the FoD debuff.

I can see where you are coming from, but there is several f2p's that didn't implement a system like FoD and are finantially successful. Allods with its amazing quality is almost certain to succeed as well. But the FoD as it is severely impacts the enjoyment of a lot of players, especially when there's so many other options to get money from people in the item shop.
And let me just tell you that by the quality the game has shown untill now i am more than willing to spend 15$ per month in it.

But if they wanted to create a system for players to spend money on the game in a constant way, why not give the option of paying a sub fee?

None of the discussion about Rus. vs. EU. vs. NA beta testing is relevant until and unless the FoD system goes live. If it does and it's as big a turn-off as it has been reported to be then it will be an issue then. Until then, beta test and give feedback (I never implied that giving feedback was wrong, only that quitting beta testing over this was childish... you are beta testers, not paying customers) as you will

"But if they wanted to create a system for players to spend money on the game in a constant way, why not give the option of paying a sub fee?"

I think a system of regular payment for cash shop currency would be an excellent idea. Turbine does that with DDO, players get Turbine Points each month with their sub-fee. If they spend them on consumables, that's their prerogative. In that game they are content-restricted, so those points could be used to eventually have the sub-players 'buy the game' and quit their sub. In Allods, there is no content-restriction, so paying for something has to occur. And, novelty items will not pay the bandwidth charges.

So, paying for pots and perfumes for PvE and PvP seems, at first blush, to be a reasonable way to go.

Ta,

That's because y'all have been conditioned to think that death in PvP doesn't matter. That it's a big joke and a time-out before zerging back into battle. Why am I not shocked that trying to tie world PvP to some kind of consequence has caused a huge uproar with the PvP'ers.

@ Zelius: I'm not whining about legitimate feedback. I understand the frustration some feel over this. Is there a better solution to this? Probably. Has the cash shop been opened up to figure out how much of an inconvenience all of this truly is? No. Are many of the people complaining (or quitting, if the reports of the Russian beta are true... 7 servers b4 FoD, now only 2) simply because they don't like the idea of something different?

It's been my experience that people are more interested in whining about that than engaging in any kind of rational analysis or providing thoughtful feedback.

Ta,