Tera: a belated first look

[loquat]

So, I finally got around to trying Tera. That's the MMORPG with the ridiculously scanty costumes, if the name doesn't ring a bell. You have almost certainly seen the promo pictures featuring a devil-girl wearing thigh boots, long gloves, and very little else. So the first thing that surprised me was that many of the men are also scantily clad. The devil-boys look like they're on their way to a gay fetish modeling competition, the draconic males frequently insist on showing off their scaly abs, and, most disturbingly, both the draconics and the all-male living statues have several outfits that wholly lack groinal coverage. To be sure, neither race possesses external genitalia; the living statues are carved stone and don't need it, while the draconics have scales covering the area and can be presumed to be doing the retractable-penis thing. In short, if you want to guarantee that your Tera character will never ever show skin, you're pretty much limited to human males.

For the sake of the sheer awesome that is the draconic females, I would overlook all of this - were it not for the lamentable* decision to make all but the most ludicrously expensive armor dyes wear off after 1 to 7 days. Tera has this whole complex dye system where you can gather dye components and blend them together to make exactly the color you want and then do it again every time it wears off. For this alone, I may never play the game again.

When it comes to MMOs, I am a petty, petty individual.


*Yes, I know it's an F2P cash grab. That doesn't make it fun.

Comments

[virtualvoyages]

I'm much less put off by scantily clad women in games when the men are also scantily clad - it may be selling the sexy, but at least it's selling the sexy to everyone. I'm okay with that.

The armor dye thing is boggling. 1 to 7 days? WTF? They really want their cash grab, don't they.

[loquat]

Well, it's time in game rather than time in the real world, so if I dye something today it won't wear off tomorrow unless I decide to crack out and play for 24 hours straight. But yeah. The permanent dye - which also lets you pick literally any shade you want, this thing seriously gives you RGB sliders so you can fine-tune - is about $3 in the store for what seems to be one use and there were a couple on the auction house for like 3000 gold. (It's fully tradable, like many other cash shop products, presumably so prospective goldbuyers can have a reputable alternative to sketchy farmers.)

[virtualvoyages]

Okay, game time makes it a little better. But only a little better.

*shakes head*

And I thought making the FTPers pay for the ability to hide headpieces and make their (and their companions) armor match on SW:TOR was a mean sort of cash grab. At least you just buy those once. (Or once per character... I'd probably remember these things better if I weren't still a subscriber.)