After a couple days with the game, I'd say to buy the $6 base game or the $18 Traveler's pack. I have a hard time saying that the $30 Explorer's pack is worth it or that most people would really get the money's worth from it. And the upgrades from Traveler's to Explorer's (permanent horse whistle, inventory expansion) are for a single character anyway.
My impressions are that combat is fun but, just shy of level 40, I still have yet to die or be challenged in combat. Often I feel as though I could get through just holding down the left mouse button and mainly do all my special moves just to mix stuff up or take down a pile of mobs at once. From what I hear, in the mid-40s you hit a wall where enemies become more difficult.
I played during the extra xp weekend and there's temporary Steam-only servers with xp boosts to get people caught up but I'm almost more interested in leveling my new character the slow way. I feel as though I haven't seen much of the world and out-leveled large portions of it (both mobs and quests). I haven't touched tradeskills yet and keep telling myself that I'm going to but then find myself running quests/grinding mobs (often the same thing) instead of figuring out how to plant corn or cut down trees. I have what feels like (to me) a stupid amount of money with over 6mil silver banked and decked out armor and weapon worth another 12mil. I'm sure that's nothing at the end game and I could blow it all on one or two tchotchkes for my home but I'm not wanting for basic resources or needs either. There's stuff like a conversation mini-game to raise approval with people and unlock store items or quests or a whole "node" trade system of unlocking regions and even a little stock market to play with. I've had fun with the conversation game and it plays to my style since it rewards exploration and talking to bunches of people (NPCs you've met are essentially your 'cards'). Basically everything you do is linked to some sort of reward, even running around, so you're constantly getting deluged with extra points here and there or little xp rewards or other stuff. It's a bit overwhelming and addicting and probably ties into its F2P Korean origins where the cash shop is more heavily promoted (apparently they dialed it back for Western audiences and went with a base cost instead).
The game does try to pinch you a little to encourage use of the cash shop. Inventory is limited although you'll get an extra slot here or there through quest rewards and other bonuses. But I've filled up my bags in the field and a little button pops up in the corner "helpfully" linking to the +inv items in the store (it's not obtrusive but it's there).
I haven't tried PvP and don't have much desire to. However, it sounds as though
the risks are relatively mild (I grew up in Everquest where you had massive xp loss, naked corpse runs and PvP corpse looting) unless you lower your karma to criminal levels which I don't intend to do.
Game looks nice and it's been fun in a casual grindy way. Despite the "Overrun" status on servers, I haven't felt crowded out yet although I've had to share quest/spawn areas a handful of times. I feel there's a lot more to the game on the non-combat end to explore and I could spend as much time as I wanted to and not run out of things to do for a long, long time. I'll get bored or itch to play another game long before that happens.
ed it up. Took a full reinstall of the OS and problems still persisted, and I heard similar stories from multiple people about updates inexplicably screwing things up on a semi-regular basis.
