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A Rapid Descent

Ten Ton Hammer Reviews Rappelz

By Cody “Micajah” Bye

July 9, 2007 - When you were growing up, did you ever fall in love with the vision of a person? If you were like many of us, you were swept off your feet by this person’s beautiful body and dashing good looks. Yet when you had the opportunity to really get to know them, you discovered that they were a bitter pill to swallow; someone who really doesn’t care about anyone outside of their own personal bubble of influence. They stepped on your heart, crushing it from the outside in.

This sort of callous activity was what occurred when I began my play experience in gpotato.com’s MMOG, Rappelz. Originally attracted by its strange name – cliff descending anyone? – I soon fell in love with the world I saw in the screenshots provided on the website. Here was a style of art that was appealing, a combination of anime-cartoonishness and realistic human figures. Mounts and pets were an added bonus, so the game was quickly installed on my computer and I fired it up to see what the gpotato’s world consisted of.

Even from the outset of Rappelz, players will begin running into trouble. While the installation and patching went rather smoothly (albeit slowly), and I eventually began the character creation process on the single PvP server gpotato.com boasts for Rappelz. Entering the character creation screen, I began my process by selecting from three races in Rappels, the Deva, the Asura, and the Gaia. However, while each of these races were displayed, there was not information anywhere concerning whether these races began with a selection of classes, whether they were forced into a class, or if the class could be selected later.

In reality, I was forced to do a general information search on the Internet to determine which race began in what class. It turns out that essentially each race begins in a particular class: The Gaia start as Rogues (more fighter than thief), the Asura as Steppers (agile swashbucklers), and the Deva as Guides (Paladin type). At level 10, players are allowed to specialize into a more exact profession, and each race gets three options to choose from typically between a warrior, mage, or pet summoner. I eventually wanted to become a Fighter (and I needed that all important red hair), so I put my selection on the Gaia race of people.

After my race had been documented and recorded in the server, I scrolled through the selection of customization options that were available to me. Like most of the Asian free-to-play games, the character customization portion of the game was rather lackluster with only six facial and hair options, and two choices of clothing styles. Truthfully, there were only three available hair styles, with each style coming in two colors. To any Western MMO gamer, that would be a very poor selection to choose from.

Slowly Moving Down

In Rappelz, you have no idea what your race can or will become, at least at the character creation screen.

Even though the character creation had a few hiccups in it, I was more than content with my selection of character and reasonably happy with my overall look. As I entered the world, my naked character stared back at me, totally devoid of his clothes that I had just selected for him! If any females had been running around, they certainly would have enjoyed the view of my rippling abs…. I quickly popped open my inventory and found my starting sword and set of clothes inside, and I donned them both in a hurry.

Finding my first starter quest was fairly simple, as he was right in front of me and had a huge yellow lightning bolt over his head. Rappelz uses gold-silver-gold quest signifier system somewhat similar to World of Warcraft before it, . If an NPC has a quest you can pursue, they have a glowing yellow marker above their head. Once you receive your quest, it turns silver, and when it is finished it returns to a gold color.