Well a great game that was a big surprise to me! Perfect World, free to download, free to play. Just stay out of that company store ... until about level 70 at least ... which will take a long time; and actually if you get good at farming to buy gold ingame you don't need to do the store then. It truly is free to download and free to play, no glass ceiling, no restricted areas, no second class citizens. This is a game in the genre of WoW, Aion, and Guild Wars; open world with instanced dungeons.
pwi.perfectworld.com and download the client for your OS. Register your Account. All they want is your mailing address and a valid email address. They do not ask for credit card info or any other financial info. About 3.5 gig for the client install.
All you would expect and more from a WoW'ish style game. Three races each with its own starting area, six classes. And an expansion is coming late this year to make that 4 races and 8 classes. PvE and PvP servers, PvE highly recommended. You can have 3 servers, 8 characters per server. Auction House, player consignment shops, flying, swimming, underwater, very high jumping, ingame mail, teleport system, crafting professions, excellent new player intro help, and I'm leaving a lot out. Land mounts. The Apothecary Craft is essential. Learn it right away. Over 5,000 quests, some of them a bit grindy, but most are quite imaginative. Guilds too, called factions in this game. And lots of PvP if you want it, but PvP is purely optional on a PvE server and you do not have to do PvP if you do not want to.
Graphics are lower end than WoW, GW, or Aion. But what they do with those graphics is simply outstanding. Huge beastiary, pleasant environment, lots of "cute" and eye candy in this game. Rather challenging, and a bit "geek." Be prepared to think and learn. http://www.pwdatabase.com/pwi/ an essential resource. Plus the forum for your class. This is not an easy game.
Their marketing model is fascinating. Lots of players like to buy gold online. Way this is setup, PWI are the only gold sellers in town! Ingame, the medium is coins. The Auction House allows you to buy gold for coins, and for players who have bought gold from PWI to sell gold for coins. Players who jump in and buy gold online are those who would anyway, plus the lazy and the foolish; this is about 90% of all players. So, PWI is making out like bandits and able to afford a new expansion to a game that is rapidly growing. It has been out a year now and is well debugged. GM's monitor, and you have no spam and a well behaved community. Very friendly and helpful players.
This is a very large game. After you learn to fly, it becomes twice as large with mobs up there in the air, flying cities and the like. For those familiar with WoW, QuestHelper and Cartographer are built in. Especially after you get flying, for most quest targets and turnins, you just click on the destination in your quest log and your character flies to it. Keep an eye on the sky above, though. Here there be dragons!
All characters can fly at level 30. But the Elves can fly right away, soon as you start your character. The Elven Priest and Elven Archer both rock!
I've played both WoW and GW since their retail release. For a game out only one year, PW is doing very well indeed. Don't feel you need to fully level a character. All levels are fun! Play maybe one of each class to level 20 to see how you like it. And if you get bored, unlikely, hey the game was free and you can come back anytime for the same low low price of free!
The videos do not do it justice. This is a very pretty game, just gorgeous.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkWnq8LxK_0 level 107 Elven Priestess
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HU3PweNZW5A&feature=PlayList&p=76D42233AC036381&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=7 kind of freaky but fun
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHubKf45ihk yes, there are land mounts. And PvP. On a PvE server you can decide when to PvP, on a PvP server it is open PK. Beware.
So, I do not have a new game for you to buy! Get this one for free and be happy!
