There aren’t really as many quests as I generally like, forcing players to spend a lot of time grinding their way up through the levels, but that’s not always a bad thing. The remaining elements of the game, as mentioned above, are comprised of your stock standard MMORPG elements. Yup, Shaiya Ultimate mode has perma-death enabled, and aside from its high level of violence and apparent depravity (I’ve seen no such thing as of this point in time), it’s really the only thing Shaiya has going for it by way of innovation, or creativity. Ultimate mode, reserved for only the most hardcore of players, has no increase in difficulty over Hard mode, but provides players will all-new spells, abilities and equipment not found in the previous modes. Hard mode, while forcing players to level much slower than normal mode, gives access to much more powerful spell and ability upgrades. Normal mode is the standard mode in Shaiya where most players will begin, as players must first achieve level 40 in this mode before they are eligible for Hard mode. The experience gain has been doubled, but the level cap has been lowered to 30 – and no special skills are available at all. Easy Mode has been reserved for the newer players in the land of MMOs, and as such has been vastly limited. You have several of the standard race and class archetypes available to you, such as Humans and Elves, Assassins and Priests – except once you have finished, you will need to decide just how ‘hardcore’ you really are. You begin by creating a character as you normally would in an MMORPG. The most noticeable of which being the simple fact the before you begin playing Shaiya, you are asked to choose your difficulty. Shaiya is more or less your stock standard grinding style fantasy MMO, however, it does have one or two added flavors to spice up the soup. It does draw much of its style from the popular NCSoft title Lineage 2, but not nearly enough for me to be upset by it. To clarify, I’m not having a go at Shaiya. I mean really, how many fantasy RPGs modeled from the same concept do they think we gamers can put up with? We’re going to get tired of it sooner or later… surely they must know this? They do know this… right? My problem with this? Well… I’m starting to get a little bored of it all to be completely honest. Every Tom, Dick, and Harry in the gaming business has been trying their hand at developing the next World of Warcraft for some time now. Yes, I’m taking a shot at the vast overpopulation our beloved fantasy MMORPG genre seems to be experiencing so often these days.

Today we’ll be taking a peek at one of their better known additions: Shaiya, a game of elves and dwarves, magic and fantasy, archers and… well, you probably already know the rest. Chances are you’ve played one of their games by now yourself – hell, with Last Chaos, DOMO, Project Torque, Twelve Sky and the new Megaten acting as just a small few of the games under their over-sized belt, it’s fast becoming hard not to have played at least one of them.

It seems that Aeria Games, a widely successful publisher of free-to-play MMO games these past few years, have their hand in more than one cookie jar nowadays.

Shaiya beginning