What is TERA? A Retrospective

TERA, also known as The Exiled Realm of Arborea, is one of the best free to play games. Having ascended past the traditional tap and target system found in most free to play games (i.e. Aion), it allows you to actively dodge and aim. This allows for a satisfying and intuitive experience. The game allows for both player versus environment (PvE) or player versus player (PVP) modes. When playing PVE mode, there is equipment that will drop that allows for game progression. Through playing the PVP mode, you can get special costumes for each respective class.

Classes

There is a multitude of different class types, some of which are gender locked or class locked. Some unique characters exist, like reapers. Reapers are class locked for Elin and gender locked as female. You can create a reaper once you level up a character to level 40 on the respective server. Reapers will start at level 50. The classes fall into one of the following categories: defense, melee offense, ranged offense, and support. First, the defense type classes include the Lancer and Brawler. Secondly, the melee offense types include the Berserker, Slayer, Warrior, Reaper, Ninja, and Valkyrie. Third, the ranged offense type consists of the Archer, Gunner, and Sorcerer. Finally, the support type consists of the Mystic and Priest.

Economy

The in-game currency can be used to buy mounts along with various costumes. Sometimes, there are events that will give costumes or mounts for participation. For example, TERA did a collaboration with Kritika Online open beta. In this collaboration, getting a character to level 20 in Kritika by a certain date allowed users to get a pink spirit wolf mount called Lady. Yet, if a user got a character in Kritika to level 60 by a certain date, they acquired Ladylove instead. The mount shown above restores health points (HP) and mana points (MP).

Final Impressions

The free to play nature of the game serves it well. By making it available to a larger audience, it has allowed for the community to thrive. TERA is downloadable via the Steam launcher. It is definitely worth a try if you like fantasy massive multiplayer online games (MMOs).