By Gravity | 
8 commentsYou should check out Allods. Looking at it from the perspective of a WoW enthusiast, it’s very appealing. Released on Feb 16th in a ‘beta’ which is actually launch. Here’s my mini-review.
There are warrior and paladin tank classes, along with other archetypes such as mage, warlock, hunter, stabby etc. The healer wears plate. The mage has a strange mechanic where you get up to 5 combo points per school of magic cast, which can proc in random good ways. Mage’s slowing spell turns the opponent into an ice statue of sorts, slowing them; so you can do that for a while, then lay in a fireball. The Warden (like a druid with pet) had a lightning spell that reminded me of a DK’s Icy Touch, so I felt at home there too.
One mechanic that confused me is “fatigue”, which is basically exp that is ‘on hold’ until you visit an Innkeeper who converts it into real experience. Another, the pet class Warden has “dismiss pet” which I thought would be like WoW, but in fact it just lets your pet rest and regain its energy bar.
Another difference is there’s no auto-attack, because after L10 or so you don’t need it. You use specials. I read that “When you use a ‘normal’ attack as a warrior for example, you’re using energy from your energy bar. Auto attacks are free attacks that are limited by attack speed or cooldowns, in Allods even a normal attack uses the resources you’d otherwise use on anotherstronger move.”
Quests are the usual type, kill / collect / discover, but it is refreshing to be doing completely new quests and learning a new set of mechanics rather than replaying old WoW content.
After creating a new character, there’s a short tutorial instance. You can’t skip it and if you log out before completing the instance, your character will lose any experienced gained. It doesn’t take long to finish, though.
Your class choices, from a blogger notadiary:
The polish on this free-to-play game is astounding. It’s really well done. Story, art, animation, graphics and UI are of a high standard. They did invest $12M in its development.
It’s UI is similar to WoW so you can get playing very quickly. I adjusted the movement keys to my familiar settings.
To talk, you hit enter first, then /z for the zone (like /1).
I played for just a few hours, watched some youtubes and promo videos. I like the fantasy space opera theme. At high level, you can even buy a cool boat and man it with navigator, gunner, captain and so on.
If you want a game for maintenance nights, or as an alt-game to WoW for a break, can’t wait for SWTOR, etc, then this is really worth trying out. Do some reading prior to it opening. I’m going to probably play it instead of levelling a WoW alt (my druid), whilst WoW will remain my main game.
I’m on the server Nezeb, an Orc Paladin (tank to be), called Gravity. Empire are the bad-ass looking guys, not the cute ones. Say hi. 
Other sites covering it, beyond Official site:
- Novograd Times
- Keen and Graev’s (has forums too)
- tips for new players from a site that also has guides.
- more tips, including that you can buy from vendors items which others have sold, so check the ‘resale’ tab.
- very importantly, the wowhead of Allods, item, quest and zone database.
All reviews I’ve read have been positive too.
There are starter newbie guides which I didn’t need to read at all, but do give some useful tips (including several I contributed).
Here’s a video of a ‘raid’ of them zerging a boss.
Here’s a video of the scenery.
Here is the ship.
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Twitter: Plaguedcandles
Great review. I personally didn’t play the closed beta, but quite a few of my friends did.
I’m definitely giving it a shot to give me some “screw around” time away from WoW. I think I’m going to end up being a Xadaganian Healer.
Twitter: xxiceman720xx
Cool another MMO I don’t have time to play.
I barely have time for 10/25 icc/voa/weekly on my dk and Druid.
I am going to quit wow for swotr: I’m planning on going republic. How about you gravity?
I tried the beta a coupe months ago. Graphically very comfortable with it. The environment was very interesting. Gameplay was somewhat slow compared to early WoW levels. I did make it into town past the intro shipboard quests. There I came across some uniformed guards looking like they belonged in WWII Germany, complete with just-about-SS regalia, and the voice acting that was kind of dopey. Were those placeholder sound files they’ve now replaced?
Twitter: gravitydk
@Ten, I know what you mean abuot the daily/weekly quests. My situation is a little different; I raid once a week without interruption from my wife, and the rest of the time I just fit things in here and there. Sometimes I’ll PUG a few raids whilst on a work teleconference, or 5-mans. Other weeks I get no play-time outside the raid. I am really looking forward to Cataclysm though. I’ll check out SWTOR for sure, but I doubt it’d make me leave WoW. I like fantasy a lot more, which Allods has in a fresh way with its sci-fi setting.
@Kin, I didn’t notice any bad voice acting but wasn’t paying so much attention to that. A lot of time I was panning camera and marvelling, or reading quest log to get an understanding of the game lore.
Thanks for sharing this, Gravity. I come here for the DK stuff, but I always enjoy when bloggers talk about some other things that might be a shared interest. I’d likely not have heard of this game at all otherwise.
I’ve got an Orc Warrior on Nezeb at the moment. I might try out a Paladin as well, their barrier system sounded interesting (though I couldn’t find a really good explanation of how it worked). Are you going to let us know what your character name is so we can find you? I’ll certainly understand if you don’t want to get too many in-game tells.
Twitter: gravitydk
I’m on Nezeb too, and my character will be called Gravity. I’m not sure yet to be a Summoner (party-heals and dps, good for solo and instances), or a Warrior (tank ftw, my favourite role, but I don’t enjoy melee dps much when solo) or a Paladin (tank, or healer, or melee dps, great versatility with a respec). I don’t think I’ll go Healer because I imagine their dps when solo, in end-game healer-spec, will be painful, but then again they wear plate and that’s cool and can respec into ranged dps…
I’m honestly still not sure which one to focus on, but he’ll be called Gravity.
The barrier system, as far as I can tell, simply defers damage by holding it in a barrier. I don’t know if you can then make the damage vanish, but what I’ve read indicates you cannot, so the Paladin I guess can then choose when to take the damage, rather than it killing him (ie. stagger it), which is why people are saying Paladins will be ideal boss-tanks.
My thinking is that AO will follow the same development-progression as WoW, if it remains financially profitable, and they’ll balance the two tanks to both handle raid bosses, and balance the healers to all be valuable, even if they’re not like that now.
I know the starting zones are absolutely chockers full of new players, and there isn’t a system where mobs spawn in relation to the density of players, so there’s some waiting, but… did you see this? People are queuing for mobs! That has got to be the most mature behaviour I’ve ever seen on an MMO.
I actually found a pretty good post today explaining the barrier system. Paladins do have several tools to manage the damage stored in the barriers.
Tenacity removes a set amount of damage from the first barrier and moves it to the third barrier, resetting the timer. You can use this skill the basically rotate the damage stored in your barriers indefinitely, taking a bit off each time until it is gone or is replaced by a higher hit.
Overcome allows you to reduce the damage in your first barrier by 50% or so + a set amount, but applies the rest of the damage immediately. So you can turn 20k damage in a barrier into 6k damage when you hit it. Also keep in mind that doing this means you have an empty barrier, so the next swing will be absorbed as well.
Purge Pain allows you to completely negate the damage in the first barrier, 1 minute cooldown.
I’ve seen multiple names for the next skill, but basically it equally distributes all barrier damage evenly and reset the timer on all of them. From tehre you have to use tenacity to rotate the damage or all three barriers will break at the same time.
The major selling point for the paladin is that they can take large damage spikes without being insta-gibbed.
I’ll be on Nezeb as Seethe, maybe I’ll see you around.
Here’s the post I read: http://allods-forum.gpotato.com/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=7294
Twitter: gravitydk
Oh wow that’s really interesting. Kind of sounds fun actually. Whereas, warriors in AO, as tanks, are more traditional (I see they have parry, block, avoidance, flat damage reduction).
I’m hoping to get online and play a bit tonight, if I’m not rostered into ICC10.