A simple enough MMO. The occupants were friendly and the action was fun.
"Argh" I said, pulling out what little hair I have left. Damn Funcom! Damn NCSoft, neither of which seem to want to take my bank card as way of payment for their MMOs, so Tortuga will have to wait for the arrival of a new barbarian and Paragon city will have to suffer the evil machinations of villans for a while longer. That leaves me searching the internets[sic] for something else MMO wise.. delving once more to the realms of Free MMOs. I have already commented upon RF Online and will not sully this piece with any more related words. Cabal Online, which, in my opinion, is not a bad little game at all, more directed toward the casual MMO market. So, onwards we go to pastures new.
One thing I bear in mind with a free MMO is my eleven year old boy, he does enjoy the adventures we have as a team so the game has to at least make a nod to being kiddie friendly. Holic Online (http://holic.netgame.com/) is the one to which I was drawn this time. It has an incredibly cutesy graphic style which is appealing to kids and really gives the world a clean, crisp look. Classwise there are 6 character "Jobs" as the game calls them; warrior, priest, mage, ranger, rogue and monk. Now the interesting thing to know about Holic Online is that it allows a multiclass system, in that you can switch to a second class at the touch of a button; once you reach level 10 or so, a visit to the relevant trainer opens up your second class slot, which, from what I have seen in game, can be changed with another visit to the trainer. The character switch can be done at any time (even during combat) but it does have a one minute cooldown so flipping like a crazy thing between rock hard warrior and a buff-o-matic healer priest is not really going to work (Boo!).
There are two races to choose from, the Seneka which are human looking and the Koshare who are like a big eared cutsey gnome/hamster cross (Give some Spock ears and a sword to Richard Hammond and you're about there). Quests are denoted by the standard warcraft "?" above the head of an npc and so far have ranged from the kill so many X monsters, get X loot and get to npc X within a time limit variety. One thing to note at this point is that the English used in the game is sometimes painful, but can be understood with just a little thought, for example instead of "Continue" on one of the option menus it says "Continuing" so, mostly grammatical errors are to be found.
The combat itself is fast and fun with lots of sparkly effects and the occasional satisfying stream of damage. The game also has a combo system which can offer even more damage when used correctly. There are several damage types with different monsters being more resistant to certain types of damage.
There are mounts,there is crafting, elite monsters and, from what I saw, a fair few zones to explore too.
So, overall then, from my experience of ranger fun, I'd say this one is worth a look, its pretty, glitzy and fun, you can't really ask for much more than that from a free game now can you?