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A Perfect Chinese World
Feb. 23rd, 2009 11:06 amI have been looking for a Chinese-flavored MMORPG for quite a while and I think I finally found one that's playable. It's called Perfect World and it was written in China (they got good translators, thankfully). It's a "free MMO" (meaning you pay for in-game extras rather than by the month). Your class is determined by your race and gender, but a single character can have all the crafting skills (which is a big thing for me - I get annoyed when I need 5 alts just to be able to make stuff).
So what makes it distinctly Chinese? The starting human city has pagoda roofs on everything and large natural stone pillars with glowing red Chinese writing on them. One of my characters is a humanoid giant panda that beats the snot out of things with a huge poleaxe, another is a wizard who casts spells by throwing pieces of paper. Every once in a while you need to quest for greater degrees of spiritual cultivation to access better skills (it's awesome that Enlightenment is *not* the top of the progression, although it is up there). Most monsters have an elemental aspect which is one of the 5 Chinese elements (fire, earth, metal, water, wood) and strength/weakness follows the controlling cycle (e.g. wood is weak against metal and strong against earth). There is a Master of Kung Fu in each town, who sadly doesn't do anything in this version of the game (at least not yet). Best of all, none of this is even vaguely explained except as it applies to the game - you either recognize it or you don't.
I am a happy camper.
So what makes it distinctly Chinese? The starting human city has pagoda roofs on everything and large natural stone pillars with glowing red Chinese writing on them. One of my characters is a humanoid giant panda that beats the snot out of things with a huge poleaxe, another is a wizard who casts spells by throwing pieces of paper. Every once in a while you need to quest for greater degrees of spiritual cultivation to access better skills (it's awesome that Enlightenment is *not* the top of the progression, although it is up there). Most monsters have an elemental aspect which is one of the 5 Chinese elements (fire, earth, metal, water, wood) and strength/weakness follows the controlling cycle (e.g. wood is weak against metal and strong against earth). There is a Master of Kung Fu in each town, who sadly doesn't do anything in this version of the game (at least not yet). Best of all, none of this is even vaguely explained except as it applies to the game - you either recognize it or you don't.
I am a happy camper.
