Ooooh, Shiny! ...and "Eden Eternal" Closed Beta

Brand new blog...looking kinda bare. I guess I'd better get a post on it, so it's not so noobtastic.

So, my latest adventure is the closed beta of a new MMO called Eden Eternal published by Aeria Games. This is a free, "item-shop" based game. I lovez me some free games because I can try as many of them as I won't without the commitment of giving out my CC for subscriptions.

Character Creation: Meh...it's fairly limited...like many free games. Currently, the only race available is Human, however, there are four more potential choices, which I suppose will be implemented as beta wears on. You can be male or female and get a smattering of face types, hairstyles, hair colors, skin tones and eye colors to choose from, or you can get a random look.

Within the Character Creation screen is a preview for Class Outfits. Outfits in this game are set by class and level of class. If you start as a Magician, you get a magician outfit...the same as every other magician, but I'll go into that more later. The preview feature here, allows you to see what the outfit for your chosen class will look like at it's highest level, so it can be mildly entertaining to see what all the high level outfits look like. What?! I'm a chick. I like clothes!

Class Selection: On the Class Selection screen, you get two options of a starting class: Warrior or Magician. This sounds very limited, but it opens up a LOT later. I, personally, really dislike playing melee classes, so I chose the Magician. Next, choose a "Heroic Trait" to help define the strengths of your character.


Note: Something important to realize is that in this game...one character fits all. You can literally be ALL classes in one toon. My magician only started as a magician. As she leveled, she got more and more classes which opened up to her. Here is the complete list of available character classes:

• Warrior - Knight - Templar
• Thief - Martial Artist - Blade Dancer
• Hunter - Engineer - Ranger
• Cleric - Bard - Shaman
• Magician - Illusionist - Warlock

Notice how the classes are grouped in threes. The first class in each grouping is the primary class, the others are sub-classes in the menuing system, but are each entirely separate and able to be fully leveled.

The reason, I bring this up, is that choosing the right Heroic Trait for your intended "main" class is important. Take a moment to look over the classes and heroic traits and choose the trait which best defines your class and play style.

For my magician, I chose the Heroic Trait "Apostle" which grants INT +10 and M-ATK +5%.

Game Play and UI: Yay! It's not one of those games where you can't adjust your camera angle. I HATE those! Eden Eternal allows your full camera movement and the controls feel smooth and fluid. Bonus! ALL elements of the UI are moveable! Nice! Multiple actions bars are available and they can be locked if you have a bad habit of click-dragging spells off at inopportune moments. On the downside, the action bars are numbered 1 thru 0. I'm not a fan of this, as I have a Razer Naga Gaming Mouse that uses buttons 1 - 12. Two whole buttons I'm not utilizing. Boooo! What can I say? I'm spoiled.

Right-clicking an objective in your quest tracker auto-routes you to the objective whenever possible. This feature is awesome for those of us who like to get up and make a salad while we're running off to the next quest area. If you don't like auto-routing, you just don't hafta right-click. Opening your map with the "M" key and left-clicking where you'd like to go will also auto-run you to a destination. Yay!

Battling and questing are pretty standard, so I won't bother going into that. Early on in leveling, you're given a quest reward of a little pug pet which loots everything for you and doesn't aggro mobs when it runs up next to them. Yay! Looting made easy! At level 25, you're given a quest which allows you to train your pet to help you fight as well. Kinda nifty. You just have to keep its durability up by feeding it when it's hungry. Not as annoying as it sounds...and even if you don't feed it, it still loots for you.

I'll go more into the game in my next post, but overall first impression is really good. I'm enjoying myself playing this game! Alas, now, I must tend to real life for a bit. Later! :-)