Quests

Silek arrived in a town in the next zone to the south. He was battered,
and I suspect his duster was splattered with chunks of gummy fruit. I
saw dozens more tents here. And players buzzed about from the
hut-houses inhabited by the non-player characters (NPCs). I followed my
most recent adventurous inkling and entered a hut at random. Inside,
three bandits accosted a young girl and an elderly woman. A prompt
appeared on my screen, asking me to choose to interfere or to walk away
from the scene.

style="margin: 10px; border-collapse: collapse; float: left; width: 148px; height: 185px;"
border="1">

href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/30426"> style="border: 2px solid ; width: 200px;" alt=""
src="/image/view/30426/preview">

Some scenes in style="font-style: italic;">Wonderland Online
get their own full-screen art, much like an anime movie.

I was low on hit points, but I couldn't stand by and let the owners of
the house I'd just wandered into be robbed. Battle began with Silek
versus two bandits and their leader. I could not afford to take many
hits, so I unleashed everything left of my spell points and one-hit
each of the bandits. Then I wore down the leader. I had just learned
that even "safe" areas in WL could provide adventure.



I would go on to pick up quests from the village chief, who sent his
daughter with me to search for a scroll of some sort. In the field in
the zone to the south, I ran into the bandits from before and rescued a
young maiden who was lying unconscious near a tree.



The
maiden joined
my team, replacing the chief's daughter. I later discovered that I
could switch between the girls any time I wanted. This opened up a new
depth to my game play, as one character seemed to rely on magic while
the other was more proficient at melee combat. I could instantly see
the greater ramifications for higher levels.



Lost in Translation

After
wandering around a bit, I was low on health and returned to the town. I
had been steadily looting bits and pieces of my enemies. Inspecting
them in my inventory revealed that each restored some amount of hit
points and/or spell points. I ate some chocolate and some bits of
starfish or something and went back to the hut with the old lady and
the young girl. Now the old lady had taken ill. I helped her, and she
rewarded me by sending her granddaughter with me. She told me, "Xaolan
asked me to lood after Xaolan. Now help me do it." Yes, lood. I was
charged with looding after Xaolan. It sounded somewhat kinky, so I went
for it.



This wasn't the only poor translation I encountered,
sadly. When the old woman had thanked me for saving her from the
bandits, she'd commented that I did not "look like local person." I
know the phrase technically needs just an article ("a") to make sense,
but it'd be an awkward euphemism even then.



The award for most
confusion translation of the night came when I played around with the
social panel. At one point, I got the following message, reproduced
here letter for letter as it appeared on my screen:

I
have passed that phrase around to several people to see if anyone could
figure out what was going on. The best guess so far has come from our
own Shayalyn, who thought I was getting a message that my inventory was
full. In truth, I had entered my date of birth and was being warned to
be sure I had the correct information before the game awarded me with href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/30424">a graphical
treat.



Parting Thoughts

Translations problems aside--and they were disappointing, indeed-- style="font-style: italic;">Wonderland Online
was a fun experience for me. I could tell that the game tucks plenty of
things to do into every little corner. I had not even scratched the
surface of the item and crafting system, and being able to trade out
party members implies a certain amount of strategy to be enjoyed as the
game progresses.



I didn't
really experience any
bugs on my way to level 5. I eventually wandered into the cave to
retrieve the scroll for the chief and learned that the game may have
random battles, too. It was hard to tell because I could see some
enemies on screen but would go into battle without being near them. I
logged out of the game with a distinct impression that WL invites
players to have fun and just explore. At the end of the day, that's
almost everything a free-to-play game should be. I just ponder whether
English-speaking readers would be willing to overlook the shoddy
translation.

---

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