Swords of Legends Online Review (Screwed)
I've been playing this game since the start of the first beta, so I am very aware of how Sword of Legends Online managed to come this far. I never make serious reviews unless I care about the game and I also have over 1500+ hours in the span of 168 days, so I would consider myself as a “regular player”. At the very start, I randomly stumbled upon this game on steam and was unsure if I wanted to play another “Gameforge” game, as we all know their reputation and what things they are known for, but I really missed playing mmorpg’s, so I decided to give it a try and it looked promising during the betas. As of right now, the Gameforge employees speak highly about the game, but they do not realize the state the game is in, which is saddening, because the game that was developed by Wangyuan Shentang Entertainment, is one of the most refreshing and beautiful mmorpgs that have I encountered so far. Almost half a year later and the game is still full of bugs, bugs such as text, that is easy to fix, just by changing a line of text, but no. Not to mention, Gameforge doesn’t invest in advertising the game and is relying on the same very loyal players to gather more people. I am still shocked, how the game is still running. I remember when the game had 10000+ players online and was forced to create a second server, as it was not expected to be that popular. Now, the players online count is at 350 and the players from the second server are leaving their character to play on the first server, as it is very empty according to them. The game is the typical “look good on the outside, but ugly on the inside” and I would highly recommend you to look for another mmo and save your time from buying this game.
You don’t have to grind for your whole life in order to achieve better gear, prestige or cosmetics such as titles, accolades. There are some things that may take more time, but there is no “extremely hard” grinding needed, which is nice, because that means you don’t have to play every single day.
However, the missions (daily and weekly) are very repetitive and there is no big progress except you getting a few different currencies in the game.
The game is behind compared to the chinese servers. The game was released about 4 years ago and we’re at the phase where it all started for the first time on the chinese server. This is fine with me, however, the content is not being pushed fast enough and as of right now, max obtainable gear score is approximately 105 which can be obtained rather quick, but once you are at this score, you are left with nothing, to do until next patch that may reach the game anywhere from 2 weeks to 2 months. The raids/dungeons are also very repetitive, the dungeons only unlock hard mode, which contains higher damage numbers and maybe 1-2 extra skills from the boss, but it is pretty much the same as the previous dungeon.
So why not just do some PvP instead? Well, the PvP got its first update after 5 months? The whole PvP thing is not being favored, but little do they know, the ones that actively are pvping, are actually the ones that are the most loyal to the game and have brought multiple players to the game.
TL:DR: PvP is dead - queue times minimum 30 min. per game. The bigger PvP events queue pops, if one of the few remaining guilds are queuing all together versus players that are playing alone and the result is that queue only to allow yourself to get farmed. The 3v3 event also could make use of some major changes, such as punishing players that stay afk or afk in the leaderboard, as in getting a lot of points and enough points to not play at all. We see these kinds of things in every game, but not in solo, and if it was supposed to happen, then Gameforge would have to inform the chinese devs and god knows how long we would have to see the light of a change.
My heart goes to the players, they've tried really hard, but the longer it goes, the more obvious it is, especially when they are the ones that say: Well, if marketing doesn’t want to advertise, then we are not going to do anything about it. https://imgur.com/a/xZ0rTJF. The players deserve a better publisher and I hope they eventually see the truth and look somewhere else.
Had I written this review before December, I probably would have left a Recommended review with some caveats. The support and moderators are also incompetent and seem to be very rude, especially on their discord server. but it is pointless as the moderators as well as the support are incompetent and sometimes I wonder how old some of these guys are, here is an example: https://imgur.com/a/yWxJ90n If you present a game/company, you should at least be able to take feedback and not say “I have been with the company many years, therefore you are wrong no matter what you say”. I think the person that started the conversation/report had a valid point, so I kinda disagree with how this moderator responded to this. There are more examples, if you skim through their discord.
The game is not P2W at all, which is a nice plus and cash shop items are pretty expensive, but you are not forced to buy them. Many players are trading gold for items from the cash shop, so it is a very nice alternative or nice way to buy items that are usually impossible to get without having to swipe your card.
I love the core game to death, it has just the right combat system and gives you the feeling of a nice chinese mmo. The graphics are wonderful, but slowed down by the havok engine (even newest graphic cards will not make the game look any better), minor bugs and the very poor localization. At times, you would have to guess in order to complete a certain mission.
Frankly at this point I don't recommend playing the game. People tell you this game isn’t as bad as it is, but once you get in, you will realize how bad it is. I'm here to tell you that you should find a different game to play. If you play this game, you'll be playing just to get mad at a system being completely backwards and inconvenient, yet keep playing anyway because "maybe they'll fix it soon, they just fix X system last update, give them some time" and/or "if I don't play right now and get these stuffs I'll have to spend astronomical time for it later when it's not naturally obtainable anymore". If you really REALLY want to play the game, go ahead, but I wouldn't recommend investing too much of yourself into this game.