Was looking into this game and was looking for help from some existing players. How does this game compare to Aion or WOW. Personally after playing Aion WOW is....WOW bad. Any opinions welcome....TY
The main difference to Aion is that to get to a level where you can be competitive in pvp, it takes ages at this stage of the game (I'd say about 9 months+ if you do not have any help via equipment or powerlvling - if you find a clan which helps you lvl, it will be quicker, but then you will have problems getting equipment appropriate for your lvl). Also, making money is FAR harder than in Aion. While in Aion you can do quests which give you viable equipment for the lvl range, no such quests exist in L2. You cannot rely on item drops either because the drop rates are abysmal. You have to craft/buy everything, and the money you make while you are out xping is not enough to afford consumables AND save up money for better equipment. So sometimes you have to put in "money making" days, e.g. doing bad xp repeatable quests for the quest rewards, or lvling up a crafter alt to craft/sell etc. Generally, I'd say L2 is "harsher" than Aion, but at the same time if you find a good clan, it is also more rewarding. I have made more friends in L2 than in any other game.
I think one reason for this is that this is not a game where you can do anything meaningful if you solo all the time. While in Aion you can go xp and do quests solo as pretty much any class except for the party instances, in L2 you NEED support classes for buffs/healing. The classes are more specialized than in Aion - DD classes can do damage, but have no (good) self-buffs. And buffer/healer classes can do buffs/heals, but no damage. That's why teamwork is much more important in this game.
Right now starting playing L2 from scratch could be really frustrating, most people is high level, so find a big group really active in all levels is not possible, maybe after servers merge. The buff dependance is very high, so if you dont have friends, you will be mostly in open field, killing easy stuff. After a point it will get very slow.
Questing is almost not an option, since most part is ****, almost everybody just kill monster, so the grind is the rule. People here enjoy this, but others hate it to hell. Having the proper class, friends, buffers, etc is the key to get to it, if you are going to like it.
I think the proper time to start is with the merges. Actually community manager said there are no plans for a new brand server, but i have the feeling this could change soon, so check this site weekly for more info.
aion and wow are quest-guided games .. theres a kind of path to follow.
Lineage 2 was more the sandbox-kind of game. Almost everything was based on decision of players. A Player could become a famous healer, a well known crafter .. a battlefield hero, a thief and griefer, an outlaw, a king .. etc ...
Sadly the developers thought that players of l2 dont want that and made that kinda unique feature of l2 less and less important .... and now there are still some remains of the old concept .. but there is much more "the-guided-path" in this game then it was in the begining. The old sandbox is gone.
And to make it even whorse, this is the most cheated game in the world.
Wow, Aion is quest to level...LII is GRIND your way up one mob at a time. The quests will not boost you like in the latter two games.
So yeah tenacity, endurance is LII plus be sure what path you go political wise or you could end up being very lonely in this game. Hope you can stand cheaters (as some already pointed out) for this game has many of them in various ways.
So if you like long winded paths to walk and strole you might be happy here. If you prefer to move up faster like wow and Aion allow then I fear LII will not suite your gaming way. :) I'm sure that all the other info you may need is searchable on these forums ;)
IMO from the 3 games you state, LII is still TOP 1 game in the graphics (without bloom, HDR (which can be switched on and off) and doesn't look anime) and it's open pvp system. Pve it's pretty much the same as the other two (kill kill kill).