.. We are Loving Skyforge!

We are often looking for new games to play -- specifically MMO's (massively multiplayer online games). Occasionally there is a new game that comes out that we play for a few weeks, maybe get to level cap, and then inevitably go back to World of Warcraft. In reality, World of Warcraft gets pretty boring after a while and turns into a huge time sink when you're waiting for queues.

Luckily, the husband reads lots of things on the newest games being released and heard about Skyforge several months ago when it went into Closed Beta for testing. We looked into it and decided to buy early access passes for Open Beta and were able to start playing a week earlier than the general public -- woot!

So far we love this game! Five Reasons Why:
1. Completely FREE to play
2. One Character, No Alts!
3. Immersive Combat
4. Endless Things to Do
5. Complex Talent, Ability, and Class Systems

The story of the game revolves around an immortal on the path to becoming a god in a sci-fi feeling world. Setting feels like Star Wars, which is awesome. The game has depth and complexities to it, unlike a lot of MMOs that are getting more and more simplistic in terms of stats. and talents. My favorite part? No Alts! Every single class can be unlocked on ONE character. You can change class anytime you are out of combat -- no special NPC requried.

Character at 4k Prestige

The combat feels like Tera -- Real-time, aiming system, active dodging. The abilities are complex and involve many different buffs and debuffs, modifiers, and dots. Talents offer a variety of different build possibilities. Abilities and talents are earned through the atlas system over time. More on that later.

The game is a combination of open-world and instanced adventures. The main storyline quest leads you to these different options. The open-world zones are very large and offer lots of quest chains for various rewards. The instanced adventures can be done with 1-3 players, making this game versatile and great for duo-ing, like my husband and I prefer. There are also 5-player dungeons, free-for-all PVP battles, and 3v3, 6v6, and 10v10 PVP battles to choose from. A lot of variety available.

The adventures, regions, and pvp offer a variety of awards, mainly Sparks, Supplies, Gear, and Credits. Credits are the in-game currency used to do things like upgrade gear slots and buy bag space. Gear slots consist of main hand and off hand weapon, four amulets, and four rings.

Unlike most MMOs, you do not earn levels from these adventures, but rather prestige. Every single piece of gear, talent node, ability node increases your prestige. Every single thing you do in the game is to increase your prestige. There is no prestige cap, although the real end-game begins at 30,000 prestige. I hit 4k prestige in about a week, to give that a little perspective.

The Ascension Atlas

Sparks of Insight and Class Sparks are used to enhance stats and  unlock classes. The tree is overwhelming at first and similar to games like Path of Exile. You can spend your Sparks of Insight at different nodes along the path to unlock stats and talents to enhance all of your classes, and eventually unlock additional classes. In the picture above, the golden line is the path I have already completed and the dotted blue line is my chosen path. The large white node is the Slayer class that I had almost unlocked at that point. You can unlock as many or as few classes as you choose. There is no way to "mess up" your atlas since every node offers benefit to whichever class you end up playing. It's a fantastic system. May be overwhelming at first, but simply reading the nodes when its unlocked will help you understand it much better.

Kinetic Atlas

In addition to the Ascension Atlas that has all of the classes, each class also has their own specific atlas. Class Sparks are spent here to earn talents and abilities for that class. The more you play a certain class, the more sparks you can earn for that class, and the more abilities and talents you will have.

In addition to all of the above, there is also an Order system (similar to followers in Star Wars: The Old Republic or garrisons in World of Warcraft) and Pantheons (like guilds, with GvG like Aion) that further provide things to do and progress. I will write more on these later.

I will be writing more about this game as time goes on, since I have mentioned it has depth and complexities. The game is FREE, less than 10gigs, and completely worth trying out if you enjoy MMOs.