Thursday, March 31, 2022

Venomancy in Perfect World -- In and Out of the Tutorial

So, my friend Tessanna from Runes of Magic really loves Perfect World, and since it's a game I've never tried, I decided to give it a go. The TL:DR is that I've been wanting to like this MMO, but so far . . . it's been a real battle for me to fall in love with it, and it hasn't happened for me yet. 

Why haven't the McElroy bros done PWI for Monster Factory yet?

It might just be that I'm tired of old MMOs after Runes of Magic to be honest. While playing this game, in the back of my mind I kept saying, why would I play Perfect World, when I could just as easily play Swords of Legends?

I mean, the double jumping with no fall damage, the flying dragon mounts, the quest flow, the NPC camera shifts during dialog, and just the overall Eastern MMO vibes . . . it all just seemed to be done better in a more modern MMO, and that's Swords of Legends.

Flying around on the back of a weird fish dragon is pretty epic

Also, you know what I hate? I absolutely hate gender locking class choices in MMOs. It's an immediate turn off for me. Out of all the classes available to me in Perfect World, the one that matches me the most seems to be the Venomancer. Right?  1- It's a pet class. 2- It's all about poisoning your foes. 3- I could be The Friendly Venonmancer!  It just makes sense.  The part that doesn't make sense is that I have to be female.

On my way to becoming a Demon?

It shouldn't bother me. I mean, it doesn't really bother me in the Diablo series, but then again there's a difference between Diablo where I'm taking an avatar's journey through a story and an MMO where it's my customized avatar taking my journey through multiple stories.

As for the Perfect World tutorial, it does its job.  By the time it's over, you'll have fought several cool looking bosses, flown on the back of a dragon to travel around a map, gained your basic skills, and will have been introduced to how to complete quests and follow POIs. 

Perfect World's tutorial was perfectly fine . . . other than really making me feel separated from the rest of the game. It was very much a solo game experience. I ran into only maybe 3-5 people while I was logged on? One guy was endlessly farming mobs afk.  Everybody else was just seen in passing. Nobody was sync'ed up with me on my quest path, so it all felt a bit empty and void?  That's typically the problem with older MMOs: Where's all the people?

Death to Drunk Monkeys!

I wish I would have fallen in love with my character by the end of the tutorial, but I didn't. The monkey pet that the Venomancer gets is pretty good, and it holds agro super well against the big bosses.  Outside of the bosses though, your pet seems lame.  

Also, because I'm a Venomancer I can turn into a fox?  I should love that since I spent so much time in Project Gorgon as a fox, but honestly I didn't even see the benefit of doing so.  Two shots of poison killed pretty much everything that wasn't a boss while being a fox just seemed to hamper my dps and put me in harm's way.

There also seems to be some method of taming new pets, but I couldn't figure it out. There's just something I'm not getting about this class yet.  I probably should go read a whole bunch of guides, but why does that not sound fun like it usually does? I think maybe I'm just not in the mood to learn a new, um, old, MMO right now.

If you've got some thoughts that would change my mind, I'm listening!

Happy Dueling!

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