The game-play of the game (abilities based on equipment and combat,) is great! If you enjoyed Runescape and or League of Legends you'll likely enjoy how this game plays. However accessing most of the content as a NEW player is not easy.


Group content is hardly accessible (with low IP (item power)) through in game interface/chat, you generally have to depend on third party programs in order to actually form a group, i.e. discord and maybe twitch, which may not be a problem for most since these apps are common among people who play games. On the other side you have solo content, consisting of; open world PvP, solo dungeons, corrupted dungeons, and gathering/crafting (I may be missing something but that's all that comes to mind for now.) Most of which is enjoyable for a good amount of time until you realize it takes a lot of time to reach the point where it's profitable. Corrupted dungeons for example, you have to at least reach the soft cap of IP in order to enter the "Stalker" preset (the first accessible setting where it's full-loot,) in order to stand a chance. Gathering takes an exorbitant amount of time to progress to the point of profit that most people recommend saving up a form of currency generated by 10 per day after collecting the daily bonus (free to play,) or 20 per day without collecting the daily bonus (paid premium,) to spend in order to reach the higher tiers. Then there's solo dungeons which you can grind all day with a variable margin of profit, higher profit from higher tier zones.


Since the games economy and loot is player driven and controlled where large numbers usually prevail, there is a minor monopoly on this system by an Alliance (group of guilds) know as "ARCH". Through playing the game you will more than likely become familiar with the group whether it's through the unanimous abhorrence towards the group, or because of personal experiences with them throwing your arena matches, or simply seeing the tag EVERYWHERE. Which has pushed a lot of people to the mentality of "can't beat 'em join 'em," thus growing their numbers in the process. Mostly an observation but I feel it's a sound theory.


The community (not ARCH) is relatively enjoyable though. Streamers/Elite players are more than willing to assist/interact/advise new players on a regular basis. I've talked in twitch chat with numerous streamers ranging from rank 1 Claymore player in CD's (corrupted dungeons,) to ZvZ (zone vs. zone(large scale PvP)) leads, and have had nothing but nice experiences when it comes to wanting to know more about the game. (I recommend w0n23, blackbob_69, aistisslayer, and fakturka.) The elite is a tight knit community that's hard to become apart of because end game boils down to time played which is a bummer for people wanting to go hardcore, but it's not impossible if you're skilled enough!


Lastly I would like to address the server (not too knowledgeable on the technical side.) The game plays on ONE megaserver, meaning YOU are playing from Canada and the person you're potentially playing with/against is playing from Korea. This is kind of nice due to server placement being optimized to give most regions playable ping (40-170 I'd say is the average range.) It also keeps the game alive at all times of the day which is great for an MMO atmosphere! However this means there are hardly any dead times, so times where newer players would be "safer" in Full-Loot zones (if you die in these zones you lose all items on your person,) essentially don't exist. Not everyone likes high risk high reward game-play so you can entirely avoid this, but you are severely limiting your characters progression in the long run.


Overall the game feels unwelcoming to new players and hard to get invested in, so despite it's fun game-play elements and relatively enjoyable grind (if you're into that) the game lacks the ability to bring in and KEEP new players. So I can't recommend this game for the average person. If you didn't get into the game early, you hardly stand a chance at accessing the vast amount available content.