Dear Diary: Nostalgic for the good old days, I decided to reinstall the Korean MMO Lineage 2 after a few years of absence, in order to see how the game has changed, especially in light of it recently going free-to-play. I logged in and found all of my characters completely stripped of their gear, items, and money. Anything that could be traded or sold from my characters was gone, leaving with me with nothing but useless junk items. So I submitted a support ticket to customer service, and eventually received a full set of equipment for each of my characters, which averaged out to being about as good as what I had before.
Except I was still left with zero money, which is as much a termination sentence as the previous lack of gear, since I can't afford to teleport or buy any of the supplies one needs for ordinary gameplay, and I have no way to gather an income without already having some money to invest in the first place. I couldn't even farm money the old-fashioned way (by killing enemies for random item drops) because all of my characters are too high of a level to get drops from the low-level enemies surrounding the towns in which I was left stranded.
I've learned, however, that the various changes have made it quicker and easier than ever before to reach the end-game content from a new character. Supposedly you can go from level 1-85 in the span of a month with only casual play, or within one week of hardcore sessions. In contrast, it took me 2-3 years to get from 1-79 on my primary character. So I'm pretty pissed that all the time and effort I put into my characters has now been rendered obsolete. Even if I hadn't lost all my stuff, I still would've been better off rolling a new toon from scratch, thanks to the unique benefits new characters get these days.
I think that puts the final nail in the coffin of my Lineage 2 chronicle. I just don't have the motivation to get my original characters back into the game, and I'm not very pleased about essentially scrapping all the work I put into them in favor of starting up fresh. If I were to start from scratch, I'd rather just play an entirely new and different game. Hell, I'd probably have more fun with Star Wars: The Old Republic, a game I didn't enjoy very much, than I would lingering on in L2. Here's hoping Guild Wars 2 will be worth the wait.
