Review Submitted By: Curlay
Author Status: Player
Started on Akanbar: 2-2.5 years ago
Submission Date: Feb 5, 2007
TMC Listing: Akanbar
The following review is the opinion of the review's author [Curlay]
and in no way represents the opinions of this website or its staff.
Where to begin...
Akanbar has achieved EXACTLY what it intended. It's providing an
outlet that is not Avalon. Clearly it has some of the basics in common
with Avalon/IRE games, the affliction based combat, the
skills/skillsets, methods of learning, etc. It does excel in bringing
a fresh, new light to this series of games. It succeeds in making a
game that's equivalent to a VERY BASIC version of these other games
with a much smaller monetary requirement.
With that said, however, I believe that it has failed in the following
aspects:
1) Updates. Major updates come few and far between. The merchant
system was introduced after almost a year of waiting, only to continue
to be tweaked and re-tweaked to this day.
2) Merchants. Merchants have a handful of interesting skills, if even
that many. Most of them require completely dull, standing, aliasing,
triggering or mindless command-entering. Luckily, they are good at
making gold. Unluckily, you can't really do anything with said gold. A
merchant pays for guards to protect them, but they could still never
stand toe-to-toe in PK against another non-merchant player. Nor are
the expected to, sure, but when there's nothing else to do, life as a
merchant quickly gets very, very boring, evidenced by the fact that
there are very, VERY few merchants.
3) Premise. The premise is your generic good vs. evil vs. shadow
(balanced). There's no room for growth, no room for anything else.
Good will always be good, and they will always do no bad. Bad will
always be bad, and do no good. Shadow appears to be the place to be,
with the most active players in that realm, and understandably, too. I
believe that it's much better to be able to have a choice than to be
locked into a role, ad perpetuity.
4) Administration. They try, it's clear that they try, and care about
the game, but every new system that they've put into place in the past
few months have led to nothing but monotonousness and repetition. They
arbitrarily decide policy, which of course is their prerogative, but
they never tell anyone besides those who are involved, and it is never
proliferated through the ranks of the other players. Helpfiles are
rarely, if ever, updated and the policy files are loose and left up to
interpretation. Of course, that interpretation could be very wrong and
you will receive some form of punishment from the administration. They
enjoy contradicting themselves, as well. In the new herbal system,
you'll find that all of the apothecarists know what the new herbs do,
but are unable to share. The administrators have decreed that
information is not to be shared between people regarding skills. Being
completely unable to regulate this outside the game, of course, has
diminished the capacity of those who do not talk outside of the game.
It's understandable that they want us to learn, but the system is
inadequate to provide even that without an extraordinary amount of
time and effort. It passes the point of becoming 'fun' and enters the
realm of 'work'. In my opinion, games are more meant to be fun, with
some work, but not from scratch and certainly not with information
asymmetry that affords certain players and even certain organizations
advantages over others. In the new herb system, you don't get a
message if you use it the wrong way, or use the wrong herb to try to
cure an affliction. The only time you receive a message is if you cure
it. This isn't enjoyable, this is a guessing game. There's a large
difference between using logic to figure something out, and increase
brainpower, and playing guessing games. It would seem that the
administration confuses the two.
All in all, Akanbar is a good escape in the short run, but if you
expect to spend any significant amount of time there, lower your
expectations. The players are a good batch, for the most part. You'll
find your occasional fool (but you'll find those everywhere) and
you'll find your gems, and I'd say there's an even smattering of each.
Those gems, however, are what keeps Akanbar running and moving
smoothly.
