This month some of the staff and I have been participating in the closed beta of Allods Online. Allods is an MMORPG designed by GPotato. Like most MMOs out there it has its two choices of factions, in this case the factions are League and Imperial. We have focused on the Imperial faction as we liked the look of the races better.

The faction is composed of three different races; these are The Arisen (a robotic Egyptian lookalike), The Xadaganians (a human looking race) and The Orcs. One thing about this game is that only certain races may choose certain classes. The classes are Mage, Healer, Summoner, Warrior, Scout, Paladin, Psionicist and Warden. So far the classes I have tried have been the Scout, Mage and the Paladin. The scout is a ranger style of class, unlike in other MMOs where the scout may be both rogue and ranger. This put me off the class as I prefer melee dps. The mage class was my next choice because it had been a while since I played a caster type in an MMO. The class has quite strong dps (damage per second) but if you do not enjoy casting times you may find yourself rerolling like I did. At the moment I have settled on the Paladin class. It has strong melee dps while receiving little damage from mobs due to tanking ability. It is a good all round class and have stuck with it so far.

The game itself can be compared with many other MMOs out there but for a game that will be released for free (no subscription or purchase fee) I believe it has a lot of potential. The graphics are good, questing is fun and the play style is really enjoyable. We all had a good laugh at the Arisen due to its /sleep emote. Not going to spoil the surprise there, if you want to see it check the game out.

Closed beta continues till the 3^rd of February and I am sure that the open beta will follow close behind.