The booth for TERA Online felt a little lonely, small and innocuous and off to the side of Harmonix’s giant hall. It was a simple four-walled structure with five computers all closely packed and a reception desk. One wall featured the trailer seen below, which caught the eye of more than a few passersby. The game is pretty, the trailer shows this and my own time with the game certainly didn’t refute the fact. The real question is: Is there room for a self-proclaimed action-MMORPG in today’s saturated and dominated market? En Masse Entertainment hopes there is, and I can certainly say after my own demo that it plays differently than any MMO I’ve had experience with.

As soon as I was ushered into the dimly-lit booth of TERA, I was told to pick a character and have a seat. They had four computers set up with both keyboard and mouse configurations and a controller available. A cursory glance around the room told me I wanted to play as the dual-wielding warrior, a staple of my own MMORPG experiences as I can’t get enough of swinging around a pair of blades. The race I was playing as was one of the lumbering Aman, a race of former slaves who value freedom and self-sacrifice and who look a little like man-bears. The Warrior class is one of pure damage in TERA, with other classes providing the tank roles veteran MMO-players might be used to associating with a warrior. After a few introductions around the room, we were told what our roles in this demo would be. The Berserker character, a dainty elf to my right, was oddly enough the tank of the group. Across from me were a Slayer, a 2-handed damage dealing class, and a Sorceror, your standard spell-slinging role. The demonstrator took the lead as a Priest in order to keep our inexperienced selves alive with healing magic.

The area we began in was a beach resting aside a forest. The basic mechanics of the game were explained as soon as we’d unloading off the dock. TERA Online is an action-rpg, meaning it does not rely on turn-based combat nor does it feature an auto-attack of any kind. For the demo, we had a regular attack mapped to the left mouse button, and a stronger attack mapped to the right. I assume any skill can be mapped to any button, but for the demo these two worked out fine. Players fight by moving a reticle, something new to MMOs, over an enemy and clicking away in true Diablo fashion. I’m not sure how spellcasting or healing works as I only watched my own screen, but I’d assume it’s not too much different and much of the time our healer was hitting us with area-of-effect spells that covered a portion of the ground rather than a target anyway. There are other skills we had access to via the number keys, but for now all we needed to do was button mash those mouse buttons and attempt to stay alive.

At this point something humorous happened to me. I was told that as a warrior, one of my main skills was the dodge-roll. As I’ve said in other previews, I love to dodge. I prefer it to blocking in most cases. Generally, online games do not feature anything like this, and in this game there are only a few classes allowed to perform it. it also costs mana for them to do so. Mana in this game is a pool below the health bar that any skill used will pull points from. It is regenerated by attacking an enemy. The faster one attacks, the faster the bar rises. Dodging takes mana, but it also renders a Warrior or Slayer invulnerable to any damage they may otherwise have taken. I like this mechanic, having historically played melee characters who tend to be frail and of low healing priority. It’s refreshing to be able to use one’s own reflexes and skill to avoid said damage. Naturally with a mana bar depleting, one can’t continually roll around like a hyperactive acrobat, and rolling deals no damage, but it’s very useful nonetheless. Our first few battles saw me rolling and slashing and assuming I was doing a fine job. Then I got hit once and died, and the presenters embarrassingly came over and switched my character to a level 33 Warrior instead of a level 3 Warrior. Yes, I had somehow been loaded up with a character 30 levels too low for the area we were fighting in. I maintain that for a level 3 Warrior, I was kicking ass.

After this mishap, our party made its way down the beach, killing giant crab-like beings and in general being merry. We were given explanations on a few more of our skills not long after. As a Warrior, I had access to a point-blank area stun. It had a cooldown and required mana to use, but it stunned anything within a 10 foot radius of me. Anyone familiar with MMOs will know just how useful such a skill is, particularly in PvP. The other classes had similar signature skills, such as the priest’s ability to regenerate his own mana with a concentration spell.

Before long we came to an area full of centaur-like creatures, and our task was to find and slay their leader. I love a good boss fight, so this was right up my alley. It was in this area that we were told to start acting more like a team. We needed to let our tank establish aggro (the MMO term for getting one person to focus an enemy’s attack upon themselves), and use our defensive capabilities to stay alive. We all passed these tests with flying colors, and for a bunch of random guys (and one girl) who’d just sat down to play a brand new MMO, we did surprisingly well together. I blame myself for my outstanding stunning skills and smoking damage capabilities. I’m also an expert dodge-roller, as I think I’ve mentioned. Anyways, we eventually we reached the centaur boss, and despite some massive damage being thrown around with hoof-stomping and charges, we downed him to the cheers and applause from our presentation team.

I walked away from the TERA Online booth feeling fairly good about the game. It’s difficult to break in to the MMORPG market, particularly for a smaller studio like Bluehole. They’re walking into competition with companies like Blizzard and BioWare and Square-Enix. To carve a place for oneself amidst such giants is intimidating. However, the action-rpg niche is one few other games fill. Age of Conan attempts something similar, but isn’t nearly as fast-paced, and I’ve yet to see the reticle style combat in any game (I know one other had a reticle, but my brief time with it was quite awful and I can’t even remember its name). TERA is entering its first phases of beta right now and doesn’t release until 2011, but it’s shaping up nicely. It doesn’t seek to break any new ground in setting or story, it’s still a fantasy MMO, but it looks very pretty, runs smoother than most online games I’ve played, and has the potential to be quite fun. I’m personally sick of the auto-attack mechanic seen in most of these games and welcome anyone who looks to break that mold. Check out the trailer below for a taste of what’s in store for PC gamers come 2011.

Tags: bluehole studios, e3 2010, En Masse Entertainment, MMORPG, tera online

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