In a few hours the latest Lineage 2 expansion Gracia, Final will go live. Untill then a short rant from our side and a few Gracia Final related guides.

It’s sadden to see that the majority of text and translation issues will not be fixed (once again). So good luck to everyone having to deal with (but not limited to) Item, NPC, Description, Quest, … inconsistencies. Prime example here might be the name for one fo the 2 seeds on Gracia: Seed of Immortality, Seed of Infinity … while the correct translation would have been Seed of Eternity.

The poor quality of the translation and overall lag of any QA makes us wonder in what shape this company is going to deliever theyr next MMORPG Aion.They have stated to ‘westernice’ every text related aspect of the game and start with a realy polished version. We shall see …

Read on for Quest Walkthoughs, Elemental Test and more

Just 2 weeks after the PTS for Lineage 2 Gracia, Final came online we gonna see the latest expansion hit the live servers. Remains tobe seen how much of the Text, Translation and other bugs gonna make it to the live servers. But if the games Associate Producer is even to lazy to copy&paste&forward any bug reports to the QA team:

Thanks for the good bug list, but please remember to submit these via the in game petition client as well. Our QA team directly checks this and they do not always make it to the forums to read issues here. The quickest way to get it looked at is in game! Kinslon

there is much hope to find your favourite bug on the live servers next week.
Wonder if they even noted that a) theyr ingame petition system wasn’t working most of the time, and b) within a petiton you get asked to open a ticket on the official ticket system to report a bug …

So fare also no Gracia Final launch events, like they had in Korea.
Gracia Final Launch Announcement & 5Th Anniversary Event Details

After getting beaten by any other Lineage 2 instalment worldwide (including the just recently started russian Servers by 4game) NCwest’s Associate Producer ‘Kinslon’ posted yesterday:

Please note that effective 5:00pm CDT the Lineage II PTS server will be taken down in preparation for the Gracia: Final publish. Please stay tuned as we will be announcing the Gracia: Final PTS schedule soon.

So get prepared for the next round of ‘Lost in Translation’ and later on finding your favourite text- and translation-issues making it onto the live servers.
Sorry, but if my business involves a major translation part, i make sure to hire someone being fluent in the products original language and context and my targeted audience language. Hiding behind lame excuses like:  ‘Our texts & translations are based on gibberish machine translations’ (very loose quote of a NCwest employe’s forum post) is nothing but a lame excuse.
Gracia, Final PTS Server goes Live April, 16th 2009

Lineage 2’s long rumoured April Fool’s Event has finaly got off, even tho with 1 hour delay due to ‘technical difficults’. The Event runs from April, 1st untill April, 7th and is split into 2 Parts.
Attention! Spoiler Warning - This post includes details for the 2nd part of the Event

Spring is once again in the air. And as the weather turns sunny and warm, the inhabitants of Fantasy Isle are preparing to hold their yearly Spring celebration.

The playful residents of this strange and wondrous land have spread Treasure Sack Pieces across the globe. And they are waiting for you to find and collect these special items. Collect enough, and these pint-sized occupants will exchange your pieces for rare and precious prizes, including S-grade armor, high-grade Soul Crystals, shadow Agathion bracelets, and more!
Read on for the full Event Rules, Prices and Schedule

With Valentine’s Day ahead Lineage 2 gets its next event: The Valentine Event. I think, in the history of Lineage 2 NA/EU that is going tobe the 1st event ever wich will be in sync with the korean Lineage 2. Anyway … farm on.
Full Valentine Event Description can be found here

First of i thought the ‘Love your Gatekeeper’ event might be something good, that also the non-boting player might enjoy. Having the chance to rise your Vitality Level when you find the time for and benefit from the increased XP/SP-rates.
The event items can only be purchased during that 1 week the event NPCs are up. But why do they have to remove the items from the game the day the event ends? To actualy benfit from the ‘Love your Gatekeeper’ event you are ‘forced’ to play and use the event items this week. Bad luck if your real life shedule curently does not allow you to spend as much time needed to event use your vitality, so you could rise it again with the help of the event items.

Long story short … the boting majority of the Lineage 2 players, might actualy make the most use of this event. A characters vitality will also rise as long as you get XP while being transformed into a gatekeeper. So leeching away in a group will do the trick. If you haven’t starting boting yet, its obviouse a waste of time waiting any longer. The event items are shadow items, bound to 1 char, not tradeable. Would it cause any harm allowing players to use it any time later this year? I think not.

Lets have a look to Korea, where they are running a 4 weeks ‘Welcome New Year’ Event. Besides other things you can enjoy 4 weeks of 1 hour per day, not loosing but gaining vitality. Also the ‘Love your Gatekeeper’ Event has been run there already several times in the past. Obviously even NCsoft seams to admit that Lineage 2 is actualy the hardest grind-fest under the mmopg’s currently on the market. So to make it at least somewhat better they introduced the Vitality System. But even then the majority of non-boting players will ever level past lvl 80.

So why not using some common sence and set every characters Vitality Level to 4 during every weeks regular sheduled maintenance?

It’s been a while …
Read on for Fortress and over-enchanted Armor informations

Lineage 2 – Gracia, Final will go live in Korea on November, 26th. NCSoft Korea published a detailed Launch Shedule and also a new Gameplay Movie.
To celebrate the launch of Gracia, Final NCSoft Korea will hold ceveral pre- and post-launch Events:
Read on for Event Details and a new Gameplay Movie

The korean PTS for Lineage 2 – Gracia, Part 3 is still under way. Unlike any of the other PTSs this one actualy deserves the name Public Testing Server – changes getting tested and adjusted if needed. It seams also much easier to test certain aspects of the game, wich are next to impossible to test-run on a live server.

There has been a small test run on the korean PTS to figure out how the increased element values for weapons and armor influence inflicting and receiving damage.
Read on for the Element Attribute Breakpoints