Perfect World is a free MMO that has a million subscribers in the US. That probably doesn't sound like a huge deal if you're an MMO player and know that World of Warcraft has something like 12 million subscribers worldwide. Clever readers will already notice that I'm comparing apples to oranges, so that I can lay the whammy on you and say that according to John Davison, Perfect World has 50 million players worldwide.
I always suspect numbers like that, and you should too. But it's probably safe to say Perfect World has well more players.
But is it as good?
From as far as I've played (level ten), not really. The auction house was a joke. In fact, it was practically empty. But that's partly because you can buy a money cat, stuff it with crap, and leave it in a public place.
It does make the frame rate drop pretty significantly in town, but you can just hit CTRL+F9 to switch to low detail mode. Overall I'd say the art design is a little less cohesive than WoW, but the graphics are technically a bit more impressive. Case in point.
Mostly check out the top of the picture. I think the trees seen through the water refraction is technically impressive. But even with the higher res textures and fancy effects, the environment design has nothing on WoW.
It's still simple geometry plus texture plus objects. It's not nearly as bad as Shin Megami Tensei Imagine, but it feels fake compared to WoW's environments.
All right, all right, all right. The mandatory images are out of the way. The big question is "is it fun?"
I enjoyed levels 1-10 enough that I might keep playing a while longer. Considering how much I hate MMOs, that's huge.
It's got crafting that looks to be worth doing. I like playing as a panda man and seeing people flying around on psychedelic manta rays and giant swords. I think one guy had a giant snake for a mount.
The combat is fairly dull, but it's also pretty easy, so I can just zone out. The music sounds like something played at a Chinese buffet. It's relaxing.
And the relaxed feel seems to make other players less jerky. The worst problems I've had in the game were one guy who sent a duel request without asking and some occasional fighting over who got to kill a particular monster. And on the other end of the spectrum I had a person come up and cast a bunch of beneficial spells on me for no reason, letting me grind turtles like crazy. That reminds me of another really bizarre aspect of the game.
People leave loot lying around. Maybe it's just higher level players who are farming some low level material to get their crafting up. I don't know. What I do know is that I've seen small piles of coin and once in a while even magic items just lying around. In fact, there's one quest I'm on that requires a special kind of animal skin. I've never seen it drop from anything I've killed. But I found a couple just laying about. Three more and I'll have completed the quest. :P
Long story short, Perfect World is not perfect, but it has plenty to do and is relaxing fun. I'm thinking I'll start using it before bedtime.
Due to a typo, this post didn't actually appear until late Sunday night. My bad.
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