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When going to sites where on-line game design is being discussed one of the principle complaints is that developers spend too much time on "eye candy" and not enough on game play. Yet when a game comes along that offers some innovations in how it is played, but does not have spectacular graphics, people stay away in droves. That is the case with a game that is doing very nicely despite of its problems. The game is called Lineage the Blood Pledge and is published by NCSoft. You know them right? They are the ones who just went into partnership with Richard Garriott of Ultima fame. I have been playing Lineage for over two months now and continue to enjoy it. The game is based on a comic book series that was popular in Korea. These comics, it is my understanding, have never been translated into English. They were in the anime mode and told the story of royal lust and betrayal and the deposition of the rightful king by an evil usurper. You arrive in the land while many princes and princesses roam the lands trying to gather forces to regain power and authority. In many ways, Lineage is a social experiment much like the original Ultima Online was. But instead of a story that included a good ruler who ... well ... just sort of checked out of his kingdom, you could take power yourself. In fact, you can choose to present your self as one of the royal lineage and gather forces to make an impact on the world that is Aden.

Lets talk about the game play. First of all the use of magical travel is restricted. There are some places where you can teleport from town to town, but it is expensive. Those who can practice magic do get an emergency teleport spell but it often leaves the person stranded in some other dangerous area. You can also purchase teleport home scrolls and those will take you to the nearest town or to your castle if your pledge owns one but again, they are not cheap. Very rare and sought after is the ring of teleport control. This allows you to teleport to spots you have book marked. Other than that, you are on foot. I have read some criticisms of the fact that you cannot run, and outrunning some monsters is impossible. My opinion is that this is a good thing rather than bad. The world of Aden is made larger by this fact and you do not have people teleporting from the bank to some spawn point and then back again leaving the rest of the territory void of people. And a high level spell called haste can also help your feet move a bit faster.

Much also has been made about pvp as a focus of game play. If you are totally set against pvp then Lineage is not your game. There is lots of it in Lineage. The whole theme of Lineage is to regain rightful thrones from those who have usurped power. To that end anyone who thinks that they want to hold power in Aden must become the weakest character that is available. It should be hard and rare for someone to be able to pull together a disparate group of people into a fighting force. Like chess, the prince or princess is frail and must be protected. The death of your prince/ss in any conflict means that your side has lost. Blood Pledges quickly gain reputations in Lineage. Every pledge member wears the emblem of their clan and can be identified. Not only do pledges have reputations but names are unique and people soon will be known as villain or hero. If you meet someone who is being a jerk, you can have a talk with his or her pledge leader about the problem. People do tend to sort themselves out given the chance.

There are currently two servers for available for western audiences. One is full pvp and the other is called a non-pvp server. The non-pvp server prevents people from attacking each other except in designated areas. When a siege has been declared, flags appear to designate the area where one can be killed. Other places where pvp is possible is at any choke point in the game. This includes at town entrances, in doorways, on suspension bridges etc. If you did not have this feature you could end up with those people who simply like to annoy other people stationing themselves in front of entrances to block the way. There are also pvp arenas where people can spar with each other.

Castles in Lineage are like nothing you have seen in other games. They are walled cities with their own vendors etc. The Windawood castle has its own dungeon. Kent Castle holds sway over the town of Kent and the main city of Gludio. The orc fort gives the pledge that owns it a percentage of the slime race profits. Castles are very faithful to historical castles both in aspect and in operation. The Prince or Princess of a castle determines the tax on the people in the surrounding area. They can employ mercenaries and make them available to members as bodyguards. The farther away from hearth and home the more vulnerable they are which also leads to moderation of behavior towards others. If you come from a pledge that is perceived as evil you will have a harder time of it than if your pledge has an honorable reputation.

Those who chose to play the insane murderer are both helped and hindered by the fact that as they become more chaotic, they risk losing good items when they die. They also will be shunned by vendors and can be attacked by guards that roam the countryside for a time after they murder someone. In the next update, the gods will intervene in cases of exceptional mass murdering and the killer will be sent to hell. This will not be all bad. There are some mighty fine creatures there that might have a rare item. However, dying in hell is your only chance to come back to the real world of Aden. So... if you want to go to hell... are you feeling lucky? Weapons and armor in Lineage are varied in their ability to inflict damage. Additionally, one can enhance armor and weapons by using enchant spells on them. Each successful application of an enchant spell will raise the AC of the armor or the damage of the weapon. But with each application of an enchant spell you risk the loss of the item. Also, enchant spells can only be purchased in the depths of a dungeon or as rare drops from some boss creatures. After the next update some will be able to be purchased in the new city, but they will still be very expensive.

There are trades of a sort in Lineage. Elves have the ability to combine different materials to make objects. You do not have to practice and practice to become better at your craft, but you do have to gain more rare items in order to create the more highly coveted items. This has spawned a thriving barter system and further tends to strengthen the bonds between people in a pledge as they pool materials to help each other. There are other aspects to the game that I like. Archery depends on having a clear shot at your target and learning to lead it. Arrows follow a straight path and do not defy physics. As you gain experience you do become more successful at whatever combat skill you choose. You can tame companion dogs that will help you fight or purchase them. Taming requires some actual practice as you nearly have to kill it before it will accept meat from your hand. Keeping your dogs healthy and happy is a skill as well. All monsters gain experience from being in battles and this goes for dogs as well. Someone with the ability to keep dogs until they are in their high teens can sell them for a lot of money. You can tame other monsters, and with a spell or a wand of polymorph you can too play a troll or a bugbear. The effect lasts for about a real time hour.

Lineage has its down side too. To begin with, in Lineage everyone looks the same. From my perspective having been involved in all three MMORPG's out there (Ultima Online, Everquest, and Asheron's Call) it matters a lot to the gamers I hung out with. Some have characterized this as the western value of rugged individualism over the eastern value of groups over individuals. Whatever this is, it is a big drawback as you try to sort out the people around you. While there are minor differences in appearance depending on the things you wear, armor does not show and if you carry a bow it looks the same as a crossbow at least while it is equipped. Some weapons do have different animations, but a morning star looks like an axe to me. On the good side of the graphics equation is the fact that like Ultima you did not have to look in a chat window to see what people were saying. It took me a long time to get over this difference in Everquest and it was worse in Asheron's Call where you did not have the person's name over their head to identify them by. In Lineage, when someone speaks it comes out as text over their heads and in a chat window. I used to get actual headaches when I was trying to sort out who was saying what in both EQ and AC because I was shifting my field of focus from the screen to the text window all the time.

The view in Lineage is overhead orthogonal. There is no map view as there is in Ultima Online that you could have on the screen to guide you. While Lineage is not an immense world, it is easy to feel totally disoriented to east west north and south if you do a random teleport to get out of trouble. You can purchase maps for different cities and the surrounding areas and when you open the map you will see your location indicated by a small shield. However, this map obscures a good deal of the view and if you are in an area where there are hostiles, it is not wise to keep it open. As to the art, I find it acceptable. It is slightly oriental in feel, and the detail is good. Some people have complained that it is pixilated. However, I have not noticed that on any of the monitors I have used to play it. In my view, creature graphics are excellent. From the lumbering bugbear that looks like a bleached sumo wrestler wearing a loincloth, to the cute little beagle, all the monsters are well executed. And since you do not have 3d to worry about, there are no polygons and their attendant idiocies like swaying hips but feet that do not move in EQ... to the most unattractive faces that have ever disgraced a computer game in AC. Music and sounds are less than stellar but you can put in your own .mp3 files or cds and run lineage while listening to Bach or the Beasty Boys. Lineage also follows the "kill stuff to get levels so you can go out and kill other stuff" method of character development. Due to that fact, there are not a lot of people who actually role play, and the game attracts a lot of people who like mechanics rather than drama. But, that is ok to me if it is fun.

There are several updates to Lineage planned for the future. These involve enlarging the land mass and individualizing characters. There are also two more character classes that will be released. These are the thief class and the engineer class. Details about the classes are sketchy at this point. There have been rumors of having mounts but nothing specific. On the other hand player houses will be available for purchase in June.

Lineage is available for downloading at the official site Lineagethebloodpledge.com. You do not have to purchase the game to play. You can play for 5 days free. After that it is $15.00 per month. However, you can purchase packages that bring the cost down to equivalent levels of the other games mentioned. If you like backgammon or chess and the kind of games that look simple on the surface but unfold slowly like the petals of a rare flower, you probably will like Lineage.