Latest News - Mabinogi Preview

By Michael Justice

Our dear friends at Nexon decided to pick up this little MMORPG called “Mabinogi” and translated it, mainly due to the fact that it received staggering amounts of popularity in Japan. While many of Nexon’s faithful fans were fretting over the cute graphics and daily adventures with Lorna and Pan, I was simply skeptical about it, like I am with most new MMORPGs now. I love trying out new MMORPGs, for one, but I never try to put my expectations too high, in terms of a complete beta MMORPG experience. I was, however, very pleased to what I would soon find within the world of Mabinogi.

Upon creating my character and entering the world, I met Nao, who is the official “mascot” of Mabinogi. Her large, round eyes really made me feel welcome to this whole new world. The tutorial is quite extensive and it really lets you explore and learn about all the features there are. It’s very hard to choose to do one of the many things in Mabinogi there is to do. Unlike other MMORPGs, this one focuses less on “hey here are all these rats, go kill them so you can level up” and more on the entire MMORPG experience, which is mainly interacting with the community as well as taking a role in fantasy world as an adventurer. That is something that is vital to a good MMORPG and Mabinogi really brings it out into the spotlight.

As I stated before, Mabinogi has features galore. It really does seem like there’s something for everyone. You have an extensive, rock-paper-scissors combat system, for the fighters, a detailed craft system, for the various artisans and several other things that I could go on and on about, it even has an aging system, where you get older every earth week and you also acquire stats after you age. If you take all of these things and combine them, you can be entangled in the world for hours on end. I remember after I first started out, I did some dungeons for an hour, some quests for a half hour and then I sat around a campfire for three hours. Its simple things like this that makes Mabinogi amazing. Sadly, everything isn’t always perfect, much like life.

You’re probably thinking “wow this sounds great, there is so much to do!” well, you’re right, there is so much to do, however, you can only take it so far before you collapse under the symptom I call “Idonthaveenoughskillpointstodoanything fever”. You see, while Mabinogi does have an extensive free-willing character system, it also has one of the most notorious game-spoiling system to go along with it.

Yes, I’m talking about a skill point system. In Mabinogi, you can do some fighting, then do some magic and then do some archery, but you might find yourself struggling with everything whereas there is this other person who just focuses on combat.

There is no class system, so there is no designated tank, nor is there a designated healer, nor is there a designated nuker. Some people frown upon this and some people rejoice upon it.

I personally don’t have a preference, because I usually find a way to manage, one way or the other. Now, while you’re thinking “well hey, that’s ok, I can just level up my lightening magic and then I’ll do some crafting”, well, you might also want to reconsider that. You’ll be weak in lightening magic if you level up some blacksmithing, and vice versa. As you can see, the entire system is essentially, pointless. People are pretty much forced into playing as a tank or playing as designated healer. There is no point to a free willing skill system if you’re going to limit people so that they are forced into playing just one role, whereas they could be playing multiple roles at the same time. That is probably the only downside to the real Mabinogi system I have, unfortunately, it is one of the biggest problems and will probably never be solved.

Skills aside, there are other features to Mabinogi such as the ability to interact with the community around a campfire, sharing food, getting fat. The occasional person with a lute comes by and plays some song from “Final Fantasy VII” and the other people also get out there lutes and do the same. We all have a good laugh, it hardly gets old (well ok the song gets old, seriously, I can only listen to “One Winged Angel” enough…). It’s fun, wow, shocker.

Who would have thought that a Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game would actually involve the community while having fun at the same time?! A group of friends and I would head down to the ol’ dungeon and fight some Goblins and a big mean Golem.

After we all have to use phoenix feathers 50 times over, we finally get our reward and head out to the campfire again… and we eat again… and I get fat again…someone plays that stupid song…AGAIN… To be honest, there is not much that a group can do besides sitting around a campfire and killing stuff together.

There is plenty of stuff to do by yourself, such as crafting, questing, etc. however, when it comes to group play, there just isn’t a lot we can do before it gets old. We might head off to the arena for some PvP or go kill a field boss nearby, but those are pretty much static, and don’t happen very often.

The last subject I dread talking about as I type will be the cash shop… It’s a very touchy issue that disturbs me greatly and I don’t like discussing it simply because it makes me sick. It really makes me nauseous thinking that there is this beautiful game, full of possibilities and potential and that while some of it is restricted naturally, there are some people who can simply throw some money at the problem and make it go away.

This is the case for most MMORPGs with cash shop, and I am repulsed by the idea. I would sooner pay the full monthly amount of 20$, than watch as some rich, spoiled kid spends $200 on items from a shop to increase his game effectiveness than another kid who works hard and earns his items by nothing but pure in-game work. Cash items that bolster a user’s game playability are simply bribes, nothing more, nothing less. Bribes to get better at something that is meant to be equally shared between people who get a chance and work hard.

Mabinogi offers items in their cash shop that allow users to expand their horizons with customization when making their character. This means that when you make a character with a regular card, you will only be offered around 6~ styles of hair, 6~ styles of eyes, etc.. With a premium character card, you are allowed probably five times the amount of hair styles, colors, etc. To me, that is simply a restriction of creativity and pettiness on Nexon’s behalf. I could deal with anything else (well ok maybe not the next couple of things) but restricting how your character looks compared to people who can spend money to get more flexible and unique looks comes close to breaking the right of free speech, in my opinion. It doesn’t stop there, however, oh no. You can also buy pets to help you in combat, buffs, etc. I am not sure how pets work exactly, apparently they have a “summon time” which I’m not sure if that means they stay alive for that long and then disappear or perhaps you have to wait for them to get rested before summoning, I don’t know. The fact that they would put restrictions on something that is already restricted is just a rip-off.

The last couple of things I would like to graze about the cash shop are the premium services they offer. You can pay around $15 to get a full premium wave for a month which includes the Nao service (which is free in the Japanese version, by the way) which lets Nao help you in various ways like revival from death, etc. and she even gives you presents and stuff every week (which isn’t free in japan), isn’t that nice? It’s kind of like a virtual hooker. The premium $15 thingy also includes the Advanced Item service, which is basically items that are unattainable through regular means which have a much better effect than a regular item would. Like the “advanced phoenix feather” lets you resurrect anyone in the world, anywhere, you just type their name and boom, and they’re alive. I am unsure if this is useful or not, due to the fact that you get one of each item in alternating days, and that I do not know if this is real earth days, in which case that would be pointless, or in-game days, in which case that would be way overpowered.

You also get a storage boosting thing which lets you switch storage between characters (because you know people who spend money to make more characters need to have access to the storage of their other character!); lets you put up a shop, expand your storage and inventory space. It also lets you create a Guild (which I also, believe is free in the Japanese version). Premium character cards (close to $10) also let you rebirth your character, so that after you hit, oh, the age of 25 (25 earth weeks) you can restart as a kid and get even more stat points than if you were an old geezer like that free player over there who is 52. Just face it, Nexon gets good amounts of money from all of this, they know they do from Maplestory (dear lord millions just from “gachapon”) and they are simply going to do it with every game they can stick a cash shop in. It is the most disgusting thing I have seen that is relative to MMORPGs, it’s like tying rock sacks on a cat’s feet.

To sum up Mabinogi from an optimistic viewpoint, it has an amazing combat, skill and living system with a few kinks that can’t be helped, and it also makes up for it by having a nice interaction with the community and such. From a pessimistic viewpoint, it is, in its true form, a caged bird that will never be able to fly due to the fact that someone chopped its wings off to sell to foreign traders.