Silk Road Online

[Azurel]

www.silkroadonline.net

Silk Road Online is a free MMORPG. For your lack of money, you get an MMO focusing on the trade route between China and the Middle East. This is another game that allows you to choose your profession after you hit level 20, however, you can begin training your skills you'd want to use from the start.

The professions in this game are: Trader, Hunter, and Thief. The job descriptions are simple. Traders make money, and ultimately power, by buying regional specialties, travelling cross country, and selling them for a higher price in another place. Hunters are the good-hearted mercenaries. They are warriors that travel with traders and protect them from enemies; creatures and people alike. The last profession, Thieving, has the most rewards for the highest price. By preying on traders travelling the Silk Road, Thieves get an instant profit. However, killing another human being is not something that goes unpunished. You are labeled as a murderer. And, the more strikes against you, the rougher life becomes. For your crimes, the penalties of death are raised such that you lose more experience, you have a greater chance of dropping your items, you lose money, etc.


Ok, background out of the way:

It's not the worst free MMO I've played, but it's not the greatest either.

The community, as I've noticed it so far, is not very active. Almost everyone under level 20 is soloing. When they do want to party, it's only because you're killing enemies in 5 hits compared to their 10. I've had many party requests, but I've only been talked to once. Most of the time people see you fighting in an area you are and just pop up with a request without talking to you at all first (which bugs me). I imagine, as I have yet to hit that point yet, that once you earn a profession, the chatter will increase.

The graphics are pretty well done. Softer, duller colors than most of the MMOs out today. Based in China and the Middle East, it's got its own look to it. Many of the enemies and items are very stone-like in the beginning, even when they're listed as copper and bronze. The more advanced equipment keeps to the area's look and feel all the way through.

The game does little to emerse you into its world. I've yet to come across any other quest than "kill this many of these enemies" or "kill these enemies til you get this many items from them." Another issue with emersion is that this game was made in another country (I think Taiwan, but I don't remember) and it looks like they did their own translating, which came out in some very broken english at times. Most of the times you can read it and figure out what they mean. Some things take some time to figure out.

For those of us that can't or don't wanna throw in 12 bucks a month, I'd say this is a nice check out. It's got its highs with the standard free MMO lows.

If anyone starts playing, I'm Azurel on the Athens server.

[Robb]

Hmmm, looks interesting, just started d/l =)

[RuneLateralus]

The trailer is pretty, that is for sure.

Too bad Korean MMOs are stereotypically crap. Plus after WoW, you get spoiled.

[Robb]

[Shurikane]

Let's get straight to the serious questions, shall we.

How much grinding?

[Azurel]

-shrugs- as much grinding as any other MMO.

[Robb]

Just hit lvl 3, quite interested so far, gonna play it more later tonite, only on a lunch break at the mo =(


But, I like it so far

[Azurel]

What server are you on?

[Robb]

Athens

[Xirtam]

I've come to the conclusion that all free MMO's are rubbish. The first MMO I played seriously was PSO on the DC, when it boils down to it, the game was one big grind. However there was a good community, well half of it used gamesharks, but the game was focused on working together to reach the goal.

I followed that with RO, which was another essentially grinding game, grind monsters to level up, grind monsters for items, but it was quite fun, the graphics were quite nice and the music was great. WoE provided a fun endgame but I felt the fee was a little harsh.

Next was World of Warcraft, this one turned into more of an online life for me, with the whole raid schedule and commitments I had to my guild. However when it boiled down to it, farming endgame everyweek is really just grinding in the end.

Recently we decided to take a small break, and as a result I gave guild wars a try, it was fun to begin with but I think you really do need to get a bunch of close friends to play with to get the full amount out of it.

Hit the level cap and began to get bored, so started to look through the free MMO's.

MU-Online - Grind
Martial Heros - Grind
Rose Online (now p2p) - Reminds me of RO / Grind

Every mmo seems to end up as a grnd in some place, the free ones tend to have cruder graphics, sound and a much more limited array of classes and choices.

Although I shouldn't say this, I found the best MMO free games are private servers like the millions of RO servers out there, however most of them have some kind of contribution scheme to keep them running and the payers will sometimes get an edge because of this.