Is the game worth coming back to

[sas200]

Hello L2 community.  Let me start by saying I started playing L2 interlude back in 2004.  I quit playing after discovering the horrible grind.  Then I came back and played the 2nd Chronicle when they introduced Alligator Isle. I got up to level 55 and just couldn't keep up with the grind and inflated prices of everything.

Then I played on illegal servers for a while, but got bored of them as I quickly realized they were unstable and pay-to-win.

L2 went free a couple years ago I guess, and I started again in 2016, but once I awakened I just quit, because it was back to grind-fest.

After reading the forums it seems that in order to truly compete people are paying real world money in the thousands?  Is this true?

I don't want to play if it's pay-to-win, I don't mind buying NCcoin here and there for XP/SP/Drop bonus.  I just got my Yul awakened and at level 85 again, but I'm wondering if I'm wasting my time or if I should play. 

So I'm looking for some straight up honesty guys.  If I want to avoid pay-to-win, should I play classic or live, (or does it matter).  I do not like the grind but will stick it out if I can compete.  If I have to drop thousands of dollars to compete, then it's a deal breaker.

I would appreciate some thoughtful advice and information from the players.  Thank you in advance.

[killerPrice]

22 minutes ago, sas200 said:

I quit playing after discovering the horrible grind. 

I can resume your post here.
Live and Classic are grind based.
You can skip that easily on Live by throwing some money. By some I mean A LOT).
On classic that won't be that much of a case (at least not yet).
But if you deslike the grind, Lineage 2 Official server ( which are considered "retail" or "1x") is not your thing. I know the nostalgia gets the best of us sometimes, but you gotta be honest with yourself: You wil need to play this game A LOT or spend A LOT. Are you willing to?

[CJChief]

Classic attracts people that cannot spend thousands of dollars to compete on live servers mainly because, most of the server here is in c grade so u dont need much to compete. 

So far, in the history of the server, nc soft introduced 1 pay to win item (for me its not a game breaker, for some people it was - thats the reality).

Grind wise - most of the grind if focused around raid bosses, so you join a random party and run after bosses that are announced on few discord channels and leech exp (with 50% exp rune im making around 100kk exp daily on 57lvl, so its quite good).

Lastly, bots are on both live and classic servers. Here they are mostly on low level locations, some people are bothered by this, for me again not a game breaker as on 55+ lvls I can barely see anyone botting.

If you are bored of grinding, and cannot spend around 7-10 months levelling to 76 lvl, probably not a good place to start, but if you enjoy the game on the daily basis and you are not having the illegal server mentality, which is reaching end game content within few weeks, its a good place to play.

 

 

[Tool_of_Society]

22 hours ago, CJChief said:

Lastly, bots are on both live and classic servers. Here they are mostly on low level locations, some people are bothered by this, for me again not a game breaker as on 55+ lvls I can barely see anyone botting.

 

That depends on your server. On mine I had to fight against large numbers of bots to get the second class transfer quests done and they also exist +50...

[CJChief]

21 minutes ago, Tool_of_Society said:

That depends on your server. On mine I had to fight against large numbers of bots to get the second class transfer quests done and they also exist +50...

yeah what i mean is up to 40lvl you have quite a lot of them, but as you progress to higher lvls i barely see bots except mby cruma and EV. Keep in mind, probably making a bot to 40lvl takes one day, so its impossible to fight with this

[Tool_of_Society]

30 minutes ago, CJChief said:

yeah what i mean is up to 40lvl you have quite a lot of them, but as you progress to higher lvls i barely see bots except mby cruma and EV. Keep in mind, probably making a bot to 40lvl takes one day, so its impossible to fight with this

I would assume it takes longer than one day to get a bot to 40. The actual time needed really depends on how automated everything is. Can it automatically run the job quests, get skills, and move positions as it levels up? If so then a 2 or 3 days are possible but otherwise it'd take longer as the owner has to move it and stuff.

NcWest is clearly heavily relying on automated systems so detection time is going to be longer.

Yeah Cruma and EV are basically hopeless to try these days =/

[triptico]

22 hours ago, CJChief said:

Classic attracts people that cannot spend thousands of dollars to compete on live servers mainly because, most of the server here is in c grade so u dont need much to compete. 

So far, in the history of the server, nc soft introduced 1 pay to win item (for me its not a game breaker, for some people it was - thats the reality).

Grind wise - most of the grind if focused around raid bosses, so you join a random party and run after bosses that are announced on few discord channels and leech exp (with 50% exp rune im making around 100kk exp daily on 57lvl, so its quite good).

Lastly, bots are on both live and classic servers. Here they are mostly on low level locations, some people are bothered by this, for me again not a game breaker as on 55+ lvls I can barely see anyone botting.

If you are bored of grinding, and cannot spend around 7-10 months levelling to 76 lvl, probably not a good place to start, but if you enjoy the game on the daily basis and you are not having the illegal server mentality, which is reaching end game content within few weeks, its a good place to play.

 

 

If you are planning to inform a person who is interested in starting do it properly. Aden/Dion are empty, especially after the fire pendant event, which was a donating fest, you can see in the market server lost a great %, at least in Aden that i play. Prices are way to high, for example if you make let's say an archer-bd-pp setup, haste and dw will cost you a lot of money, cause everything in Aden, is highly overpriced. From early lvl's up to 55 that i am now, each spot i visited as a warlord is full of bots, except dv which i saw only one bot party. The majority of the players pay steadily it's month and the majority of players uses illegal programs to scale. Most of high level players(above 68), if not the 80% the 70% for sure uses illegal programs to scale and pretty much they control the market as well. Such an example, would be a Hawkeye in Aden server, with title "Road to 73". He is a high roller and we rest don't know.  Pure crap in my opinion, i have seen players in clans hitting 1-58 in 2 weeks or even less, full program use 24h tracker.

 Ncsoft doesn't care about those things. Yes you need time to scale and if i was you and i decided to start eventually, i would start on Giran or Talking Island. The other two servers are just empty.

Server problems the last two weeks, still until today ss lag that comes and goes, log in, warehouse not working and you don't see your drops from xp or you can't buy from shops etc.

I assume you are a gamer for many years as i am, so i will continue a little more. This setup is amateurish and it refers to players who can spend money either in ncsof for ncoins or in sites that sell adena. Supports don't exist, which means you will go on your own until a proper lvl to enter a clan. If you are looking for the old days, they don't exist anymore. 

L2 classic is either a good clan which does raids, or daily 4 to 7 hours grind solo to be a normal player, not competitive. Bots hit all day.

Community is low brained, for example i've seen a 73 or 74 warlord calling a 61 lvl player after killing him in a raid fight or something "cockroach".

Cause it's normal to brag about while killing 10 and 15 lvls lower players.

Either you dig your hand in your pocket, or you will be an average player for 6-8 months. Your gear will be low or mid and after days of farm, since drops are pure luck in classic.

If you are willing to contest with players scaling with program 24/7 and paying steadily every month you can start and try to enjoy the game. If you don't  want to be a ghost stay where you are and try to enjoy the game you play. Classic for legit players either is impossible or takes a lot of time. Unless you go to that hawkeye's clan and he teaches you the "road" to 73

150 euro and illegal program use steadily every month, you catch the 60's to 65's in 2 months with 3 boxes. If that's not an option, find a low lvl clan and enjoy a different game play.

Low brain community, not even close to the old days, 150 euro + illegal program monthly to scale, full of bots servers, overpriced items, weak support team.

Your call.

[CJChief]

3 minutes ago, triptico said:

If you are planning to inform a person who is interested in starting do it properly. Aden/Dion are empty, especially after the fire pendant event, which was a donating fest, you can see in the market server lost a great %, at least in Aden that i play. Prices are way to high, for example if you make let's say an archer-bd-pp setup, haste and dw will cost you a lot of money, cause everything in Aden, is highly overpriced. From early lvl's up to 55 that i am now, each spot i visited as a warlord is full of bots, except dv which i saw only one bot party. The majority of the players pay steadily it's month and the majority of players uses illegal programs to scale. Most of high level players(above 68), if not the 80% the 70% for sure uses illegal programs to scale and pretty much they control the market as well. Such an example, would be a Hawkeye in Aden server, with title "Road to 73". He is a high roller and we rest don't know.  Pure crap in my opinion, i have seen players in clans hitting 1-58 in 2 weeks or even less, full program use 24h tracker.

 

How is getting 73lvl after 6 months an achievment?

it took me 10 days to lvl up from 1-64and the only grind i did was 1-20lvl chain quest and started rb from then onwards. I used all the store boosts available, ie rune 50,100% and exp scrolls. In those 7 days, i played around 8 hours a day.

Fact here, it would be impossible to do, even with bot running 24/7 by grinding on spots, simply impossible. Exp here is not a real problem, the issue is with adena. On normal classics, you would lvl up by killing raid bosses and then spent 1-2 hours on some spots to get money for shots and ports, whereas here, spot farm is putting you behind with adena as well and on top of that horrible spoil rates.

 

[triptico]

6 minutes ago, CJChief said:

How is getting 73lvl after 6 months an achievment?

it took me 10 days to lvl up from 1-64and the only grind i did was 1-20lvl chain quest and started rb from then onwards. I used all the store boosts available, ie rune 50,100% and exp scrolls. In those 7 days, i played around 8 hours a day.

Fact here, it would be impossible to do, even with bot running 24/7 by grinding on spots, simply impossible. Exp here is not a real problem, the issue is with adena. On normal classics, you would lvl up by killing raid bosses and then spent 1-2 hours on some spots to get money for shots and ports, whereas here, spot farm is putting you behind with adena as well and on top of that horrible spoil rates.

 

Tell me more, i'm interested. Class, spots, supports etc. And the total budget in the end.

[deadlygr]

Compared to live servers the game is not considered p2w grind can be quite easy if ur willing to spend few bucks on runes and xp stuff for me by far the biggest issue has been the server perfomance that has been getting worse and worse worse every day mass dcs every day ss lag mass increase of ping suddenly is on the menu allmost every day also its annoying af how the game breaks constantly like when ur 3 boxing and running somewhere and all ur 3 boxes go white screen and lose autotarget theres been server issues for months and nc havent given a single bleep to fix em  theres bots on live servers but for sure its not the main issue anyways the game can be fun if u can take all the bs working i wouldnt recommend considering how poorly is optimized but up to u to decide

[Roflcopter]

Maybe they will add soon a item in cash shop so you dont get dc 

[mmm]

i expected nothing and still i was let down for the second time never again with L2, but the good old days were a lot of fun. It does not make sense to play a game where i have to use Bot to be remotely competitve. Btw my VIP lvl 4/4/3 . bye bye L2 for good. 

[best_singer]

On 4/9/2019 at 8:17 PM, CJChief said:

How is getting 73lvl after 6 months an achievment?

it took me 10 days to lvl up from 1-64and the only grind i did was 1-20lvl chain quest and started rb from then onwards. I used all the store boosts available, ie rune 50,100% and exp scrolls. In those 7 days, i played around 8 hours a day.

Fact here, it would be impossible to do, even with bot running 24/7 by grinding on spots, simply impossible. Exp here is not a real problem, the issue is with adena. On normal classics, you would lvl up by killing raid bosses and then spent 1-2 hours on some spots to get money for shots and ports, whereas here, spot farm is putting you behind with adena as well and on top of that horrible spoil rates.

 

Leveling around server launch is not comparable to leveling now. As long as you're level 20 and have a cmg you can go smack 60+ raids and get stupid amounts of xp. Obviously this was not a thing the first 2 or 3 months of the servers. There also were no 100% runes or scrolls, I think just 30% scrolls and maybe not even the 50% rune at the beginning unless you bought the pack before server launch(can't remember for sure). Not to mention the 6x dailies weren't in the game until a few weeks ago.

So yeah, I'd say 73 playing since October is pretty good. The only people I know of that are much higher than that either do raids with cdlers(one of the parties we play with did this and run boosts as well), bot, or aoe heart.

I do agree that adena is the issue now even more so than it was on release. Same with sp depending on class.

[Muramasa]

On 8/4/2019 at 9:08 PM, killerPrice said:

I can resume your post here.
Live and Classic are grind based.
You can skip that easily on Live by throwing some money. By some I mean A LOT).
On classic that won't be that much of a case (at least not yet).
But if you deslike the grind, Lineage 2 Official server ( which are considered "retail" or "1x") is not your thing. I know the nostalgia gets the best of us sometimes, but you gotta be honest with yourself: You wil need to play this game A LOT or spend A LOT. Are you willing to?

You won't get a better answer, so right now is like you can play on classic until it becomes same thing as live servers and you will need a whole lotta money or x10 more time than rich people to have a decent char.

[Treyvn]

i think its worth to come back for those left for many years, just dont get your hopes too high you might get disappoint 

[Aly]

No. 

The major problem is: it seems the designer of this classic version was thinking everyone would be hardcore and want to spend some big amount of money on the game. Unfortunately, at least most of the real players now play causal and want to spend only something on par of the ticket price of a good film.

We are not back to challenging BOTs.