TERA was released in Europe in 2012 and has been continuously expanded since then. Since its release, new classes, areas, level caps, and much more have been added to the game. As part of Find Your Next Game, MeinMMO author Alexander Leitsch took a closer look at the MMORPG and spoke with Joe Tang, the Product Manager of TERA at Gameforge, about it.
The action MMORPG TERA has been Free2Play since 2013 and is among the free MMOs that we at MeinMMO recommend. In the game, you can expect tons of quests, diverse and challenging dungeons, as well as raids and PvP battlefields.
Although TERA shows its age a bit, due to its action-packed combat system, it still ranks among the best MMORPGs in 2020. Moreover, the game receives new content almost every month. It is one of the few Asian MMOs that mostly dedicates itself to PvE.
There’s plenty of reason to take another detailed look at the online game and present it to you thoroughly.
This is TERA
What’s in the MMORPG? TERA offers you 7 playable races during character creation and 13 different classes. However, some classes are subject to gender lock, meaning they can only be played with a specific gender. This applies, for example, to the Moon Dancer, which can only be played as an Elin or female Castanic.
With your character, you will plunge into the game world of Arborea, where you can expect not only quests and stories but also genre-typical content such as
- varied dungeons and raids
- various PvP content
- crafting skills
- side activities like gathering reputation and fishing
- collecting companions with useful functions
- and events for special celebrations.
All this is particularly fun due to the action-packed combat system.
In combat, you must constantly keep moving, actively target enemies like in an action RPG, and dodge or block their abilities. TERA is a feast for fans of dynamic combat.
Moreover, it is unusually tactical for an action combat system with its combo system in the endgame. It is a constant assessment of when and in what position specific skills need to be triggered against the opponent.
Otherwise, your character will quickly end up in the dirt because you couldn’t use a skill that had a cooldown during a burst phase where a lot of damage must be dealt to the boss. The bosses’ abilities are so well-tuned to the skills, like in no other action MMORPG. The boss phases partly include puzzling mechanics that need to be cracked. All this strongly resembles WoW – just adjusted to an action combat system.
Not only the bosses are among the best in the genre, but also the dungeon design, which offers a variety of modes. For example, tower dungeons have been introduced that become more difficult from level to level. Or competitive instances with a point system, where players optimize for perfect runs to land at the top of PvE leaderboards and claim better rewards.
What’s the catch in the game? TERA is an Asian MMO that one must appreciate for its aesthetics and has some years under its belt. TERA still runs on a 32-bit client and therefore struggles with performance issues (the transition to 64-bit is finally within reach).
Since the release, the developer has further focused on the endgame. This means: new dungeons, raids, equipment options, and so on. And a lot is being adjusted for the classes. Regularly new skills are introduced, and classes are expected to receive a temporary, power-enhancing god form in the future.
One should be the type of player who primarily focuses on the endgame and is motivated by a hard grind for the best equipment for TERA.
Through the enchantment system, with which you can upgrade all parts of your equipment to plus levels and receive special effects in stages, you have plenty to do. But also sometimes frustration when luck is not on your side. The RNG factor has been reduced in recent years.
This does not sit well with every player, but it only affects newcomers after many hours of play, in which you first have to explore the world and manage other tasks.
In short: what players already appreciated about TERA has been expanded over the years and complemented by new features. However, the weaknesses remained. Although the quest system, especially in the later stages of the game, underwent major changes, they are mostly standard fare, i.e., collect this and that tasks. This can sometimes lead to players getting stuck in the leveling phase.
Some players also complain that the difficulty has been too geared toward casual gamers over the years, and hardcore gamers have been shortchanged.
What about the PvP? Upon release, TERA offered PvP everywhere in the open world and separated into PvP and PvE servers. This has been significantly restricted over time. Nowadays, PvP mainly takes place in the instanced battlegrounds.
This also has an understandable reason, as Joe Tang mentioned in the interview:
We have experienced that our players prefer PvE above all. Our content is also more focused on PvE, like the new dungeons.
Of course, there are players who would like to have more PvP content, but the majority of our players are very satisfied with the PvE focus we have.
Joe Tang in an interview with MeinMMO
Thus, TERA distinguishes itself in a world where many MMOs such as Black Desert, ArcheAge, New World, and Ashes of Creation have come out or will come out with a significant share of PvP content.
With Elyon, we reported on the upcoming action MMORPG, a new game from the creators of TERA will be released next year. However, this one focuses heavily on PvP.
How does a new MMORPG fit into TERA? It seems that Bluehole wants to split the focus issues that a jack-of-all-trades brings into two MMORPGs, each specialized for PvE and the other for PvP fans. The concentration on target groups facilitates the continuity of content supply. Therefore, TERA will also strategically hold an important status in the future.
How does TERA fund itself? TERA is Free2Play and relies on a cash shop and a premium membership for funding. In the shop, you can purchase the following contents:
- costumes
- skins for armor and weapons
- XP boosts
- recharging experience gold required to enter dungeons. However, as a “normal” player, you should hardly benefit from it, as it takes time to reach the weekly cap
- access to the premium membership
The membership, in turn, gives you daily login rewards, various boosts, 33% less fees in the auction house, and free teleportations.
These bonuses lead to discussions among players about whether TERA is now Pay2Win or not. Many players report in forums and also in the comments on MeinMMO that they have played for years without investing a cent and without feeling disadvantaged.
The development of TERA since 2017
TERA is currently receiving a content update almost every month. This is also the claim that the developers themselves have, as Joe Tang, the Product Manager of TERA, revealed to us in an interview.
The game has changed over the years. We have summarized the biggest updates:
- In 2017, the new class Moon Dancer was released. It was the most recent class that the action MMORPG received.
- In April 2018, TERA was released on PS4 and Xbox One. Currently, the game lags behind in updates on those platforms. In 2018, flying mounts were also introduced to the game.
- At the beginning of 2019, the level cap was raised from 65 to 70. In this process, 3 new skills were added for each class.
- In May 2019, the partner system was introduced, which was even expanded with the latest patch from June 16, 2020.
- The update “On to Exodor” in October 2019, which brought a new continent, new quests and story, as well as new equipment with special stats.
- Overall, the amount of updates for an MMORPG from 2012 is remarkable. Even in 2020, the update streak isn’t letting up. Players have already received over 5 major updates, and a battle pass has been introduced that is renewed in cycles and for which rewards are obtained step by step for specific tasks.
- In 2020, about 10 major content updates will be released, supplemented by many smaller ones.
- It is striking that, unlike other older MMORPGs, it is not just “more of the same”, but new features are still being introduced today.
- Among the new features are, among others, the aforementioned partner system, new class forms, or the fishing feature with its own progress system, where you level up rods and baits to catch bigger fish.
Joe Tang also told us that many systems in TERA have been improved and streamlined over the years, including the equipment enchantment system. In addition, the leveling curve has been slightly corrected downwards, allowing for a faster reach of the highest level.
TERA has multiple publishers – This even led to unique content in Europe
TERA is managed and distributed worldwide by several companies:
- For the PC version in Europe and Russia, Gameforge, a German company, is responsible.
- The American version, on the other hand, is managed by En Masse Entertainment, which also takes care of the console versions worldwide.
- However, the game is developed by Bluehole, a South Korean company that also released PUBG.
Due to this constellation, it can happen that some updates are released at different times or even with slightly different content.
In Europe, for example, there are Nightmare Dungeons. These are an extreme difficulty that was designed for an event and does not exist in any other version:
I mentioned the Nightmare Dungeons earlier. This is something that basically only exists in Europe, and it’s something we did for our players.
I know other regions have tried them, but not to this extent, it is only available to us.
Joe Tang in an interview with MeinMMO
Other regions have made adjustments to the monetization or other game systems as a trade-off.
New update expands companion system and brings training dungeons
What’s in the latest update? On June 16, update 95 named Kalligar’s Martial Arts was released. It brought to the game:
- The new dungeon “Commanders’ Lair” for an item level of 456 or 470 in hard mode.
- Training dungeons that you can enter for free, where you can try out boss monsters and track your DPS.
- Partner adventures
- A new PvP zone.
- Further minor changes that you can find in the official patch notes (via Gameforge.com).
Especially the PvP zone was explained to us in more detail by Joe Tang:
The new zone is a PvPvE area. All players who enter the arena are automatically registered for PvP and can attack each other. There is no safe zone there.
To earn points, you can kill monsters, and when a high total score has been reached, particularly strong enemies will spawn again.
Since we significantly restricted open world PvP in TERA years ago, this is a way for players to enjoy PvP content if they want to just dive into the free-for-all.
Joe Tang in an interview with MeinMMO
How do the companions work now? Another major change in the update was the partner adventures. You can now send up to 3 of your NPC companions on a journey lasting between 8 and 12 hours, and when they return, they will have items and rewards for you.
Joe Tang compared the system to the assistant service from Final Fantasy XIV.
TERA plans for years – Something big is coming in 2020
How is TERA doing 8 years after release? Joe Tang revealed in an interview with MeinMMO that the player count of TERA is “very healthy”. There are always players coming and going, which is nothing unusual for a Free2Play game.
In fact, the player numbers for Gameforge almost doubled this year, partly due to the fact that they recently took over publishing in Russia.
TERA is also among the MMORPGs which have seen significant growth on Steam recently due to the coronavirus. In April, the game achieved numbers as good as it hasn’t seen since 2018. The game boasts a remarkable 81% positive ratings in the last 30 days. Most players, by the way, play via the in-house client.
What’s next for TERA? In the coming months, further updates are to be expected to expand the game. The next update will bring one of the biggest changes technically, as TERA will switch from a 32-bit to a 64-bit client, which is expected to bring many improvements, including the visual graphics of the game.
The 64-bit client has been one of the most frequent requests from players, as 32-bit applications cannot fully utilize the RAM that players have in their PCs today, which has led to some issues in the past.
According to Joe Tang, the developer Bluehole and the publisher Gameforge plan for many more years with the MMORPG. This update is supposed to show that the developers are committed to supporting TERA in the long term and continue improving it for all current and new players.
To underpin this, an update is also planned for this year that is supposed to fall out of the “normal pattern.” It is also to be interesting for newcomers:
One of the updates this year, which I can’t reveal anything about yet, is something we hope will attract many new players. It will not be a “normal update”, but something different that will appeal not only to existing players.
Joe Tang in an interview with MeinMMO
Previously, the Product Manager revealed that new classes or new level caps are usually of interest to newcomers. Since the last class was released in 2017, there might finally be a new one this year?
Who is TERA interesting for?
Whoever seeks an action-packed MMORPG that offers exciting boss fights and tons of content should definitely take a look at TERA. With the grind for the best equipment and the exploration of countless dungeons, you have plenty to do.
The MMORPG is well-suited for console players, as the controller control is intuitive and quickly learned despite much action. The PC version also offers controller support. Those who want to play on PS4 or Xbox One under publisher EnMasse will have to settle for a slower content cycle and inferior graphics.
However, the disadvantages of the game include high RNG for equipment, gender/race locks for some classes, and costumes that are sometimes so crazy that they can break immersion.
Is it worth starting in 2020? Those who start in TERA now benefit from the adjustments to the leveling curve. Additionally, there is access to plenty of content that has been added to the MMORPG over the years.
Joe Tang recommends newcomers to first experience the main story and familiarize themselves with the combat system and equipment. You should also reach out to players in-game with questions or find a guild.
Potential: Good prospects for the future
TERA caught my attention in 2012 mainly thanks to its action-packed combat system. That has not changed after years, and through new classes and skills, there are even many opportunities to fall in love with the game again.
It is also positive regarding the attitude towards the community and the corresponding focus. While many new MMORPGs focus on PvP and sandbox elements, TERA is a reliable title for fans of dungeons and classic theme park elements such as quests and story. These are also regularly available in updates.
With the new 64-bit client, general patches, and the hinted new update that should deviate from the norm and appeal to new players, it sounds like 2020 could be a really good year for TERA.
Alexander Leitsch
Editor and MMORPG expert at MeinMMO
