RF Online - Not New, Exciting, or Interesting -A Veteran MMORPG Player's Review-
As a veteran MMORPG player, I have played just about every MMO out there. Everquest, Everquest 2, Anarchy Online, Planetside, Lineage 2, World of Warcraft, Guild Wars (if you choose to classify this as an MMO), Dungeons and Dragons Online, Star Wars Galaxies, and Dark Age of Camelot.
I played all of these games for a significant period, enough to experience the game as a whole. Of course I didn't have max level characters, but I played for long enough to get a handle on the inner workings of the games.
I can honestly say, RF Online is absolutely nothing special. The game is divided up into three different factions, the Accretians, Bellato, and Cora. In each faction there are 3-4 different classes, Fighter, Ranger, Specialist (Crafter) and Spiritualist. In the game, you can use swords as a Ranger, or ranged weapons as a Fighter, but the different classes get skills to use their specific weapons. Too bad you only get 3 skills as a ranger, until you hit level THIRTY. Only ONE of those skills is active, the other two are buffs! If you like auto-attacking monsters, using one skill for 30 levels, then this game is for you.
"But this game isn't for wussies like World of Warcraft, this game is hardcore!"
This game is one of the easiest MMORPG's I have ever played, let alone games in general. Considering Potions have a cooldown of only 2-3 seconds, you can literally spam them so you never die unless you are 1-shotted by a monster or player. They should rename this game "Potion Spamming Online." A tedious grind does NOT make a game hard, or make the players Uber who decide to waste days of their lives spamming potions against monsters MUCH too hard for their intended level.
Let me repeat this again, a long level grind does NOT make a game hard. RF Online is NOT hard, you do not have to time the use of your abilities just right, or specifically use the right skills against different monsters.
The group system in the game is flawed, as to get credit for a monster you need to kill for a quest, you have to be the last person to hit the monster. So with 3 people, you have to kill 3x the monsters, making sure that the person who needs to get the kill is the last one to hit the monster.
The character diversity in the game is absolute trash. Everybody looks exactly alike, there is 1 set of good armor for your level, and that's it.
I played in the Beta of this game for quite some time and I had two characters on two of the different Beta Servers, a Cora Fighter and an Accretian Ranger. The PvP in the game was mildly amusing, the chip wars (battles for resources) are a cool idea, but the execution of these things was flawed, much like the rest of the game. The fact that it takes 5+ people to bring down a single opponent is ridiculous (because you have to kill them in the 2 seconds it takes for their potions to cool down). If you want a similar game (same crappy customer service with the same grind), with more heart pounding PvP, you might as well check out Lineage 2.
If you have any questions, feel free to private message me about the game.