Generally a more varied and vibrant game experience than anything else I have played. I first caught wind of their Kickstarter over a decade ago. I am not as frequent **** as I would like to be, but when I have time to game I come back to SOTA time and time again. It is more immersive than most games even attempt. The one real downfall is the loading screens between instances. I do not mind the cash store at all, as it is entirely vanity items. Nothing gains you an advantage in game except your own investment in time and effort, as it should be! And the time a developer spends to create new in game assets for us players should be compensated fairly. You can purchase many things from pieces of outfits to armor styles, and dyes for equipable items, special character emote effects, lot deeds and different house styles, decorations and furnishings for your home. Travel is more realistic than most games even dare to dabble in. And we have mounts now! The ability to travel the entire world map with just a few instanced choke points and the occasional boat ride strikes a fair balance between immersion and tediousness. I LOVE the diversity of things I can do here. I love having a home that is a persistent part of the game world, where I can chill or socialize, where I can display and organize my game assets (not just the bank) to my hearts content. I can also collect rares or not so rares, I can craft, I can cook, I can grow and harvest crops as well as harvesting crops in the world at large, gather resources, I can TAME creatures, I can hunt and battle NPCs, solve and complete intricate quest lines (which are not just "Go get me 3 frog legs" kind of crap quests) I can train any skill wish, and untrain a skill and regain experience to apply to a skill I prefer to train. The entire game is vast and wide, with much opportunity for cooperative and social game play, including raids and one can have or participate in large player devised and hosted gatherings (especially centered around various holidays) including dance parties. The developers interact with the players in their forums regularly, and also have live streams monthly. In my opinion, the best thing about SOTA is their NO botting/macroing policy (unlike sooo many games that are ruined by such.) I love that we can customize our characters so thoroughly not just at creation, but if one changes their mind, a character can be modified in game for a small in game cost. If you want, there is a single player mode, as well as the MMO world, which is vast, and mirrored in the single player. Some aspects are a bit grindish as crafting requires time at a crafting bench of various types for each step in an item's creation.

Twenty years a ago it would have been a great game, maybe. Laggy servers and such would have been worse then, but maybe one could have taken the graphics as state-of-the-art. Would should I say what hasn't already been said? Clunky controls, clunky combat, indiscutable interaction. An unfinished game, and ghost towns created by early backers who preferred not to play anymore.

I played probably roughly 1,000 hours. I was able to max out an Archer character, start a new player guild, and reach the highest forms of PvE. This game is inventive, and the crafting system uses crafting tables and the like for the first time. The graphics are reasonable, and the players I encountered were friendly and helpful. However, this game was full of bugs. The game was largely unpopulated. It is pretty taxing on your computer system; you have to have a decent GPU.