I decided to wrote up a quick review, while I'm drinking my coffee and backing up everything because my PC is on the fritz..

It's been a nice week actually, the start was hazey and I had issues with actually making an account, I got the game in-store, and it said 30 days of gametime, so I was like sweet! -- I made my account and was eager to make my first toon and play the game all night. However whenever I tried to log-in I was hit with a message informing me to set up a subscription, I was furious because I thought I had 30 days gametime, a few words to Customer Support, words that I fully regret, in the end I was given a free one day gametime sub to activate my service, mind you, each reply took 7 minutes. Mind you only the first reply was copy and pasted, the rest where done by hand.

Actual game play, like all MMO's you have to plan, my original plan was to be a stealth DPS, NB fit this, however I made it too level 9 and realized this isn't what I wanted. Remade my character, and made it a Sorc, focusing on healing.
This worked out good, because everyone always needs a healer/tank, most MMO's have a DPS overflow.

I made it to around level 10 in a day, didn't take long, the game had me locked in, no one could talk to me, all they got was 'ok' as a response, fully in the zone, I started my first dungeon, nerves were raising, I didn't want to disappoint my team, I informed them I was new to the game and they said it's alright, we pushed through the dungeon slowly, they kept waiting for me and asking if I was okay/doing fine etc.

We only wiped once and that was because my mouse died, haha. I've been in groups on other MMO's where one wipe = leave.This group however laughed it off and we attempted it again! - Since I got the game, I have played it daily for at least 5+ hours, while I'm still not max rank but I'm around 31, so almost there! I'm enjoying every minute of the game.

As for the bots, every MMO has them, it's not a new thing and Zeni has done nothing wrong about them, it's a costly and a lengthy process to get rid of them. In fact, the bots don't effect me that much, maybe because I can throw a heal on them and I get the exp and drops for the mobs they kill, so yeah.

But excessive complaining about the botting issue isn't going to make it just disappear; I can assure you, Zeni is working on it. It'll just take time!

Now the last thing I want to address the general community, while there is some good, theirs more bad. I have seen people cancelling subs because something was nerfed.. really? Its an MMO, things will be nerfed all the time, they also get buffed, you have to suck it up and find a new playstyle, the main complaint is about the Nightblade, you have an assassin class, it's going to be the main target of nerfs because an assassin instantly deleting another class is anti-fun.

I'll give a brief rating on core things, then in general.

Gameplay: 4/5 -- You can do almost anything you want, I'd love to see the anchors being buffed so they're not soloable. Neds more group play.

Audio: 4/5 -- Everything is voiced, that's amazing! However the issue is that somethings have a large radius, it's clear in Rivenspire. You can hear each Dolman pop, the quest about Ranser pop and other annoying things. (yes.. while over the otherside of the map too.)

Cities: 2/5 -- Copy and pasted, I hate it. While some are unique most towns/villages/cities are carbon copies of another! Roads, houses and inns are all the exact same, inside and out.

HUD: 5/5 -- You only got 5 because you allowed add-ons, without that I'd drop you to a 2 as it's terrible.

That's all I'll touch for now, as the thread is getting large, and I doubt most people will even read it, however I highly suggest you don't cancel your sub because of a change, no matter what MMO you play, changes will happen.