No you just go through the intro/tutorial mission as level 20 then you start in a normal starting area at level 1 afterwards.

Saul Tigh (from BSG) does the voiceover at the end of the prologue. Yus!

Played a berserker during closed beta, seemed kinda boring. Played a few classes today, priest is pretty fun! I like being able to heal and not having to click targets or lifebars.

Just finished playing a Mystic for the last couple hours up to level 7. Meh. It's a very pretty game. Reminds me a lot of Aion. Guess it's the typical korean feel.

The combat doesn't seem anything special though. Instead of locking onto your target (like wow, etc), you just mouseover it. So your abilities can miss, but there doesn't seem to be any benefit to targeting a mobs head vs legs vs body. So I'm not impressed. It's Aion with mouseover targeting. I agree with you Rotten, that healing is more interesting like this though.

The questing is your typical "go kill X mobs" crap like every other mmo. Nothing original there.

Overall, Tera isn't a game I'd pay for. It's very pretty to look at for a weekend. But there's really not much new here.

So Tera has been pretty fun so far. Today is the last day of the head start before tomorrow's official GA. They're having extended maintenance from midnight last night until 1pm today, so this is a good time to come up for air.

I still stand by everything in my last post. But I will say healing in this game is the most fun of any mmo I've played.

All the bosses I've seen so far have mechanics that force the entire party to move around, so everyone is constantly jockeying for position. The way healing works (at least for the Mystic class) is you select the spell you want to cast and then "paint" your targets by mousing over them. If they're in range, a green mesh-type graphic will overlay on their character indicating they're locked on by your spell. You can usually do this to 2-3 players for the spell. Once you've painted your targets, you hit your spell key once more to actually cast the spell. It sounds clumsy and slow, but it's really not in practice. The result is position matters a *lot*, and you're never looking at unit frames (since a players hp bar is shown over their head). Instead, you're focused on the action just like everyone else. If a player has been debuffed, their hp bar turns from green to purple so again, I know they need a dispel without having to look at unit frames.

Tera is far from perfect and I've only seen the first 35 levels so far, but I can definitely see this action-oriented gameplay becoming more common in future MMOs.

I am really intrigued by this game, i would really love feed back from others who are playing it as i have to for sure so i can justify 50 bucks out of a tight budget.

Good stuff so far Gogan, let me know if you have any other updates you would like to show.

Path is the only other person I know playing this, so maybe he'll weigh in.

Honestly though, I wouldn't recommend buying it if you're on a tight budget and intend to play D3 or MoP. If you're not that into D3 and won't be playing WoW, then it's a tougher call. I'd need to play GW2 first before recommended Tera.

Apparently there are no raids in Tera, and no plans for any. All the end-game PvE content is 5-man. So if you have your heart on WoW-style raids in your MMO, Tera isn't for you.

Yeah it really brings a lot to combat, especially grp combat. The questing is bland but as I said to gogan, it makes me want to go back to the EQ days and just go and find a grp and chill out and kill mobs. I have no idea about end game and would not recommend buying any new mmo if you are on a budget, it has great potential for a niche game.

If you are on a budget give it 2-3 months and check back. GW2 is still 4-5 months away and WoW is 4 months. So, if those are in your interest I would not go with tera unless the combat really interest you.

I will add I am really enjoying the game.

That's a downer. :(