Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMO Gamers to the Next Level!

Ten Ton Hammer’s Why Not YNK? Giveaway just ended on February 15, 2009, but I was intrigued by their titles. I had already played and mostly enjoyed Rohan, so Seal Online seemed like a safe bet. I understood that Seal is a completely different animal than Rohan; the former uses stylized graphics to please the younger crowd while the latter employs realistic graphics to draw in older gamers. Once I played Seal, I discovered other differences that took me by surprise.

The surprises didn’t come with character creation. Seal uses the typical setup of asking players to select their gender and allowing them to make a few customizations to try to look different. Gamers can choose their class at creation or pick a generic type of adventure to explore with first. The idea is that the generic adventuring class will give access to skills from each of the other classes and permit the player to choose based on which skills fit his style best. The real classes include warrior, knight, mage, priest, jester, and craftsman. The first four classes were standard fare, but the last two at least sounded different, which drew my interest. The craftsman turned out to be a sort of hard-hitting melee character that could blend in some spells. I went with the jester because sounded a bit like a bard from EverQuest.

After creating a character and picking a class, gamers must choose where to start. Choices include some starter cities or a tutorial camp. The in-game screens don’t really offer any assistance with this decision, and it seems it does matter. Cities have trainers for a handful classes but not all of them. Of course, I learned this the hard way. I went to the tutorial camp and did a few quests but quickly grew bored. When I spoke to the transporter NPC to join the “real” world, I received no advice on where I should go as a Jester.

The tutorial camp in Seal turned out to be a waste of time for me, which stood in stark contrast to my experience in Rohan. I didn’t learn how to play the game even though the NPCs had some basic quests to teach me how to move, manage inventory, and fight. The quests gave ambiguous descriptions and I was unable to complete one quest that asked me to gather components from crates because I couldn’t find the crates (and the quest description gave no hint to their location). My tutorial experience baffled me because Rohan held my hand through each quest and really taught me about the gameplay. I guess it is fair to say that my positive experience with the tutorial in Rohan built an expectation that I’d get equally thorough treatment in Seal since it seems to cater to younger players who are likely to need a good walkthrough of the basics.

One mental note I made during the tutorial was that I visited a special NPC who dispenses jobs whenever I needed a quest. Seal reminded me a bit of my experiences with Florensia and Sword of the New World in that respect. That was okay for a tutorial area, but I was disappointed to see an identical NPC in the city once I teleported. It’s hard to feel excited about the lore of a world and feel connected to any character (including my own) when I constantly get quests from a lady who runs odd jobs for the whole world. 

Parting Thoughts

Ostensibly, Seal is about the battle between two factions of gods as it is manifested in their chosen races. One side of the battle has disappeared and no one knows why. I didn’t play long enough to see if this real story emerges. The quests I saw were like day labor activities. Seriously. Again, this was different from my positive in experience in Rohan where the story was very strong early in the game.

The few quests I did run sealed (oh no!) the deal and ensured I’d not be playing Seal Online more than once. One quest asked me to collect 30 pieces of wool from rabbits (wooly rabbits, okay?). I romped through the cutesy world until I came to a field clustered with the critters. I slaughtered one, wincing at the odd chirping noise it made when I threw my knife at it and the even more peculiar death rattle it issued on the last hit. The sound was annoying, but at least I—what the hell? It didn’t drop a piece of wool? It was then that I figured out that killing quest mobs did not guarantee quest drops. I killed over a hundred of these squeaking, hopping, noise-making bunnies to get my wool for that quest. The sound effects had driven me crazy by then, and I might have drooled on my shirt a bit. It’s a little hazy now.

Memories I wish I could suppress aside, Seal has at least one feature worth mentioning. The world is divided into zones like many others, but the cool part is that players can see the levels of the mobs in each zone from the world map. I imagine that is a handy feature for anyone who does a couple more of the wooly rabbit quests, turns into a zombie, and plays into the high levels in the game.

Finally, I should mention that the name of the world is “Shiltz.” I avoided naming it all this time to resist the obvious jokes, but my inner jester got the best of me in the end. Seal Online is a colorful world that may appeal to some young gamers, but anyone who plays for a couple of hours won’t give a Shiltz.