Today it will be more for people already playing PWI because some of the things described are related only to PWI and not to gaming in general.
The more I play PWI and read through forums and various blogs, the more I’m decided that my $50 were the first and the last I invested in the game. Should I invest more to buy some material that has insanely low drop-rate? Because so it seems. Many events in this game are not fun, they are cash shop oriented. Most news are about cash shop, new items, new dress sets. Even patch notes are dominated by events – mostly somehow related to cash shop. OK, I know that money are important for development. But can’t developers fix some bugs and balance the game that even non-paying players can play it normally?
We couldn’t gather this tree root. Cursor didn’t change to gathering function.
Non paying customers are slower, die more often unless very careful, there are tons of differences… why to push players to buy things like this? The whole Archosaur was full of people buying rough fur (of course for 1k or lower 
) and only few of them are selling (5k typically) – luckily the drop-rate for this particular item has changed recently and now it’s OK. The same goes for dragon quests items… my friend went crazy when someone wanted third pack of 10 element fragments in one quest! Element fragment was also my first “stupid quest” with Blobs of rebirth… they dropped it VERY rarely and to get 5 for everyone in a squad was crazy. But Soft fur? No problem, surplus all the time, everybody sells it. Something is flawed in item distribution. In case of materials you can still buy them. It is stupid if you’re willing to grind it – but you simply can’t because of your level – high level means that low level items drop insanely rarely. In case of dragon quest (DQ) items it’s not possible to buy them. Luckily – I’ve read a guide how to get rich (in-game coins, not in real life 
) and one of the important point is not doing DQs at all because you just run around the whole map – or spend even more coins on teleports – and provide DQ items to various NPC. If you just sell it to them you can get hundreds of thousands of coins.
My barbarian LOLs in a very funny way. No facial expression – and his big axe disappears.
There are simply many little things that players should learn before they find out that this and that is complete waste of time and nerves. For example – on level 30 you can achieve Rank I and then you can get rank-1 items from NPC near General Summer in Archosaur. No problem. But on level 40 – when you in theory could progress to Rank II – you will find out that you have little “reputation” which is one of the characteristics. Reputation is gained for quests and you can improve your situation doing cyclic quests (“solo”) or helping with FBs. My situation is that I’m on level 48, I have 800 reputation and need 1000 (I needed it on level 40 reportedly!). Why I’m in so deep… troubles? Well, because I have few boss related quests unfinished. It’s quite complicated to set up proper party to kill really difficult bosses, you want to do it with your friend rather – but 3 is too little and who has 5-6 friends playing the same game with you? Sure, you can enter some faction/guild and they should help you – that’s true. Our faction is friendly – but small. Maybe I will reconsider this later. Sure thing is I’m not the only one having problems with reputation. Rank I things were cool for my wizard, but players report that Rank II equipment is too little too late. But – to be motivated – there are reports that Rank 8 (or whatever the number was) reward is spectacular. But how to get high reputation without leveling? Should I die often to lower my experiences? Then you read on forums that Rank/reputation and (again) DQ are simply badly designed and they are not worth the effort. So… now be smart!
On level 30 you’ll get your flying gear so you can fly even when you’re not winged elf!
Is it really so despairing? Well… no. If you have good solo build you don’t even need friends for normal situations. Wizards and supporting clerics however have hard times beating the monster of equal level and it’s good for them to be in the party. Wizard and cleric together are good enough squad actually because there is no need for tank for most of the quests. Another important point is – have fun. Follow quests, ignore DQs, ignore reputation issues – this all is not the most important part of the game. Rather get recruited by some decent faction and try Territory Wars (TW) – it may be fun. But I have to try this yet. There is also very good way how to get cash shop items without really buying them – simply buy them for coins in-game from other players! Generally $1 is equal to 100.000 coins – which is something you can grind from monsters in 90 minutes on level 40 (maybe more, maybe less, it depends on class/build too). Of course, $20 enhanced jaguar (big black cat that runs fast like hell and you can ride it) means 30 hours of mindless grinding without spending any coins. But it is possible.
Some places are just so romantic… if you like spiders for that matter.
Also – the events can be fun sometimes. Recently there are snowmen in major cities. Killing them gives you a lot of experiences (especially on lower levels) and it’s one hit kill without any risk. There are some drops that you can… ok, here my knowledge ends, because there are few more NPCs added for this event, it’s a lot of gathering, combining – and because I have bad feeling about most of the events on PWI I simply sell all items and go on with my grinding, life, etc. It’s also no fun to kill some snowman before anyone else does because in such a crowd even ~200 ms ping counts. But it’s funny to see the whole world running around the Archosaur with bows (whatever the class is, all of them ran to their home cities to buy the cheapest bow ).
Dying snowman always says something funny.
Perfect World is far from perfect – nothing can be perfect, right? Every week there is a patch bringing some new item to cash shop, or sale (in the cash shop) or some event (related mostly to cash shop). There are bugs, some of them just visual, some of them really ugly. Player movement is laggy, netcode is pretty bad in my eyes (I think MMORPG should run smoothly with ping ~200 ms), game lacks proper customization but… I still play it.
Gorgeous view across Etherblade city.
While I wasn’t able to overcome missing control redefinition in Sacred, I can in PWI – god knows why. Too bad there are not more bug fixes in every patch and some skill balancing – because now there are some classes with some skills considered complete waste whatever build type you choose. But I have to finish as always – I paid for some games already and most of them had some bugs. PWI has probably a bit more of them, but it looks great, plays OK (if you can live with some issues) and if you play it with friends it can be real fun.
Chris Moran said
Nice writing style. Looking forward to reading more from you.
Chris Moran
virgo47 said
Thank you for comment.
Don’t know why I had to save it from spam – but it’s not my or your fault, luckily I did not delete all spam without going through it. 
PWI_Lulz said
Something to remember, you can’t actually BUY rank 2 equips until you have 60 levels… another reason not to be concerned about your reputation.
Lahara said
Well I think the worst issue with PWI has to be kill stealing, I am constantly 90% of the day cursing to myself about people stealing my kills or at least trying to. They have no honor all they do is run up hit the mob you are fighting and take off to get the loot before you. It isn’t like they do it once in a while but its a constant ongoing thing. PWI needs to change it to whoever hits it first gets it because some classes such as blademaster can’t out damage a wizard. The other day I was on my lvl like 4 blademaster and I had this wizard following me around and every time I got a mob close to half health he would use a fire spell and kill it the rest of the way and then race me for the loots and he always took my kills. It is just insane on how hard you have to fight other players to kill something and to me it is really rude and obnoxious of the players and very ignorant of the developers. I think a game should be something to have fun but in this case I find myself frustrated and like I said it isn’t once in a while it is all of the time!
virgo47 said
Lahara, thank you for comment.
However if you hit the mob first, it’s your mob, it really is like this. If someone else starts, simply let the mob be.
Kill stealing is indeed annoying, but it’s the part of the game. Good ppl tell you sorry and go a bit further, although it’s harder in currently overcrowded servers. Blademaster generally has the problem to do the fist hit. There is also no way how mage can get to the loot first before you when you’re fighting close combat with the mob.
If you hit the first real hit then you:
- have the kill counted for quest purpose, if it’s drop quest than it depends also on the drop rate
- loot is yours and it’s pickable by you only (or your squad) for some short time (but it’s like 20 seconds or so, long enough)
It worked like this for a few months and I doubt it has changed recently.
Lahara said
That cant be true because I got the first hit on my blademaster and then the wizard hit it after and he got the loot, its not that he got to it first he just raced me to get to it as fast as he could and it would tell me I couldn’t pick it up meaning he got the kill even tho I was the first one to hit it for the first 45% of its health.
Lahara said
And it isn’t just once in a while this happens to me constantly, non stop if I play my bf’s barbarian or my blademaster and occasionally my archer but it isn’t like I don’t notice who hits it first because I know I hit it first and then someone else walks up and decides to fight me for the damage done to gain the kill.
virgo47 said
Well, I don’t know, whenever my kill is stolen, it’s when someone accidentally hits my mob first and when I’m not sure, I’ll finish (doing 90% of the damage) and still I can’t get the loot (it’s locked for the other player). So it must work differently for you (strange) – but I don’t wanna argue. Kill stealing is unlucky aspect of the game.
First touch takes all is used a lot during Wraith attacks, where a lot of ppl tries to get for instance Wraith Soldier Dog Tag (gives reputation). Everybody tries to steal kill there and that’s the only place where I don’t care and as caster I can be extremely successful in stealing. However I don’t approve doing it in normal circumstances on purpose.
Lahara said
Yeah hehe and I can tell you most of the people that do it to me mean to do it lol and with that wizard I was killing the mob and I was watching him to make sure he didn’t steal my kill and he came running over halfway through my fight and stole it thats one way I know its damage based. I don’t steal kills I might accidentally or if someone tries to take my kill Ill make sure to out damage them but yeah it is def damage based which is a horrible way to run an mmo. I have thought about kill stealing since everyone else does it to me but unlike them I actually care about my reputation lol I also found it very affective to say something along these lines if they keep doing it “Wow are you that stupid that you can’t play your class to the point that you have to damage other peoples kills to actually level?” It is really funny how well that works when you call them too stupid to play the game haha. When it doesn’t work then I am just sol I guess but all I know is I hate being frustrated 90% of my day but this game is so fun I deal with it.
big g said
Hey lahara if u hit it first it should be your kill but if the other player has killed 51%of the health its there kill. Whoever kills most of its get more exp and stuff out of it
Ifiwasntfat said
Wow really Big G? Thanks for the help! See yall online i guess!!!! I hate wizards and kill stealing dudes. So what u need to do is*say this is some1steals* wow dude u suck.cant fight ur own battles noob?* Usually they give a comback and run away. If u know there lower then u duel them. they run real fast if u try and u know u can win.
PWI - your searches 3 « Virgo’s Naive Stories said
[...] to say, I’m still low level to know every aspect of reputation. But I discussed it in this post (search the word) and it’s also discussed on PWI [...]
ballwadfag said
Killstealing????
lahara out of all the issues that pwi has killstealing is not one of them. if your a barbar and you get somewhat KS-ed more than others, its your fault cus barbars dont hit for shit until a very high level. So dont complain then. As an elf priest (which get really weak between levels 37-43) being lvl 37 atm i am not doin good, archers and some blademasters kill mosnters faster than me but i almost never experience KS-ing.so yeah that’s that… and btw if ur high enough just PK them lol
virgo47 said
Hm… I have to admit that “first touch” doesn’t work anymore for the kill to count. But I’m pretty sure it worked before. There were forum threads about it, many ppl are convinced about it. But we tried it recently and… they had had to change it – and it’s shame. Change to the worse.
Blade Aether said
You guys are silly, this game gets crazy fun once you hit 79 and get your some of you end game skills and PK like crazy, on top of that, you make great friends on this game, ones that I have met in real life and still hang out with! Also! Past lvl 65, you don’t grind unless you like to waste life, you just do dailies! Which are quick and easy!
virgo47 said
I don’t grind, over 60 I have enough quests with those daily quests that it’s OK. But Head Hunter wasn’t there from the start and doing crazy stones all the time wasn’t my idea of fun. Anyway… once I’ve got to FB59 and noone wanted to go there with me without wine, I decided to quit. FBs in this game are seriously flawed as most ppl rely on hi-lvl help, which is stupid. I don’t care about funny skills, I miss some balance in FBs that are annoyingly difficult, long (takes a lot of time to get back when you die for instance) and you hardly can do it on the level they are inteded for. That’s stupid. I started to play something completely different – EVE Online. It’s not free to play, but free to play games are always the same. Free to play, yes, but paying ppl have advantage and many will spend crazy money to get out of balance – something that can’t happen in serious game – at least not thanks to money. Be it Travian, be it Perfect World, they both have the flaw related to money.
You can make friends anywhere, but yeah, I like this aspect of MMO games too.