TERA

"The Valkyon Federation was created to defeat the argons, because if we can’t win the war, our world is doomed. What we need to remember, though, is that if we win the war but can’t win the peace that follows, the federation itself is doomed."

—Fraya, Allemantheia Commander

The Exiled Realm of Arborea, or TERA, is a Korean action MMORPG by Bluehole Studios. Built on the scrapped source code for what would have been Lineage III, TERA uses a real-time battle system instead of the standard MMO fare of a plethora of action keys. Players can Hack and Slash, Cast Magics, Dodge, and Block, all in real-time and with no breaks.

A millennia ago, the two gods Arun and Shara met in the void and fell asleep. As they slept, they dreamed, and as they dreamed, the world of Tera was formed. First came twelve gods, who all battled fiercely for control of Tera. Born into the conflict were the mortal races, dragged into the divine wars and ever at the heels of the gods. The divine wars lasted for centuries, and took its toll on mortal and god alike.

The divine wars ended with most of the gods dead, imprisoned, or diminished. The remaining mortal races took over control of Tera, and with the recently formed Valkyon Federation, old wounds are finally starting to heal. But in this peace, trouble has arisen: to the north, the metallic race of argons have surfaced and threatens to terraform the world to their liking, and the mysterious Island of Dawn has suddenly risen at the center of the world.

The Player Character enters this world to fight these mysterious menaces. Players can choose from one of seven races, eight classes, and explore the world either alone or in groups. The game was released on January 25, 2011 in Korea, August 18, 2011 in Japan, and is slated for a May 1 and May 3, 2012 release for North America and Europe respectively. Other markets planned for release are China and Thailand.

Tropes used in TERA include:

• Absolute Cleavage: More outfits than you'd think
• A Taste of Power: After making a character, you play as them as level 20 to get a feel on the gameplay of the character. After the prologue ends, you start at level 1.
• An Axe to Grind: The Berserker class wields axes of the ridiculously big variety.
• Anti-Poopsocking: Hourly notifications of your playing time, the standard Rested EXP system to encourage logging out, and a new stamina system that enforces down time -- although not necessarily logging out while you're taking it. The game takes this seriously.
• Badass Adorable: Poporis and Elins.
• BFS: Not just the swords. All weapons seem to be appropriately scaled for the towering Amani and Baraka, so they are over-sized for smaller races including humans. The tiny Elins' and Poporis' animations show them having trouble with their weapons' momentum!
• Bag of Sharing: You have one bank for all your characters on a server.
• Bishonen: High Elf males
• Bottomless Magazines: Archers. Justified in that the arrows are magical.
• Bowdlerise: The US and EU versions of the game censor the Elin models. Compare the differences here. Considering that the other races kept their Stripperiffic outfits, this might be due to Lolicon fears.
  • Incidentally, the censored armors are also very cosmetically glitchy. None of them react properly to dyes (the new elements aren't included in the diffuse layer), some have clipping issues, and most of them have some manner of issue with the tail holes in the Elin armor -- depending, they forgot to add one to the new design, they forgot to leave a gap in the midriff cover so the tail isn't magically sprouting out of cloth, or the shorts ride too high in comparison to the tail hole in the outer armor, so the tail is improbably close to or even sprouting partially or entirely out of the shorts.
  • For added fun, only PC Elin armors were edited. Not only are there Elin NPCs that have outfits that would be censored if they were on Elin PCs, but there are actual children of other races who have outfits that would be censored if they were on Elin PCs.
• Chainmail Bikini: A lot of the female (and some male) armors are very revealing.
• Charged Attack: Several classes have these, most notably Berserkers and Archers. Charging determines the power or the number of hits.
• Continuing Is Painful: Between the huge hit to Stamina and the chance to lose an enhancement crystal from your equipment, an EXP penalty would probably be less painful. Try hard not to die or fail timed instances. There are potions that restore stamina if worse comes to wear.
• Cute Bruiser: Choosing Popori or Elin and any melee class results in this.
• Dual-Wielding: The forte of Warriors.
• Dude Looks Like a Lady: High Elf males
• Exponential Potential: Sorcerers pretty much use nearly every spell they get.
• Fantasy Character Classes: The available PC classes are:
  • Archer
  • Sorcerer
  • Slayer
  • Berserker
  • Lancer
  • Warrior
  • Mystic
  • Priest
• The Seven Races: The available PC races are:
  • Humans
  • Amani
  • Baraka
  • Castanics
  • Elins
  • High Elves
  • Popori
• Fashionable Asymmetry: And lots of it.
• Fetch Quest: Quite a few of them.
• Ghost Town: Several have been overrun by monsters but there are hamlets scattered here and there that are completely empty of people.
• Glacier Waif: See Cute Bruiser above.
• Hack and Slash: This game is the poster child for the new action-based trend in Korean MMO design.
• Helmets Are Hardly Heroic: There isn't even a slot for a helmet, though there are hats you can wear.
• High Fantasy: At first sight, delve into Dark Fantasy with surprising ease.
• Impossibly Cool Clothes: Yes.
• Impossible Item Drop: Ever see a piglet drop a huge two handed axe?
• Improbable Power Discrepancy: There level 1 piglets and level 60 piglets.
• Jiggle Physics
• Jousting Lance: The Lancer's Weapon of Choice, taking after the Monster Hunter treatment with an accompanying tower shield.
• Legal Jailbait: The Elin, who are nature spirits that live for thousands of years. That doesn't stop them from looking like 10 year olds in Stripperiffic outfits.
• Magic Skirt: Human Females. Despite wearing on average, the shortest skirts in the game, they never flip up.
• Mass Monster Slaughter Sidequest: All of the suppression quests that give vendor token rewards.
• Mighty Glacier: The Berserker class.
• MMORPG
• Money Spider: Pretty much everything you kill.
• Our Giants Are Bigger: Or arguably smaller in this case. The Baraka are claimed by lore to be one of the giant races that abandoned their peoples' battle lust (and escaped divine judgment for that) but they are scarcely a few heads taller than Humans. They also have body proportions that make them resemble overgrown Dwarves. The only slightly smaller Amani are not called giants for some reason.
• Panty Shot: The skirts of High Elf females flip up regularly while animating. The Castanic Females can't even be bothered to cover their underwear most of the time.
• Randomly Drops
• Random Number God: Pray when enchanting a piece of equipment. At least in the western version you can never have a Critical Failure.
• Same Content, Different Rating: EU version got slapped with PG 12, while even middle-game content clearly does not match.
• Scenery Porn: Most of the landscapes in the game are brightly colored, absurdly detailed and screenshot-worthy, and you'll have no choice but to take them in when you get on a flying mount (which have fixed routes as the game's fast travel system).
• Sexy Backless Outfit: Nearly all High Elf outfits are these, but particularly the robes, which are essentially cocktail dresses and evening gowns.
• Spin Attack: Many classes have gratuitous spinning in their attack animations, while most 360 degree AoE attacks have at least one full spin. The Berserker's is particularly noticeable as the class can choose the number of spins by charging the attack.
• Stone Wall: The Lancer class.
• Stripperiffic: The majority of female armors in the game (along with Combat Stilettos), as well as a few male armors. Castanics tend to get the most revealing outfits, but even Amani and Elins get a few as well.
• Sword Beam: The Slayer can fire them off during some attacks.
• Taken for Granite: A rare beneficial version: the Sorcerer class learns a stoneskin spell that makes them immune to all attacks. They can't do anything while petrified, but they can cancel the spell early.
• Take That: On their New launch Features page, they promise you wont have to kill a thousand Furbolgs just to go through a tunnel.
  • These patch notes state that they're changing the LFG channel limit to one message per minute. Their reasoning for doing this is because "It's not Barrens chat." EME seems to like poking fun at Blizzard.
• Teleporters and Transporters: The flying mounts enter some sort of wormhole for longer travel distances.
• Thriving Ghost Town: All of the smaller towns.
• Thong of Shielding: Castanic females
• Twenty Bear Asses: Many of the quests are like this.
• Underground Monkey: Again, level 1 piglets and level 60 piglets.
• Walking Shirtless Scene: Certain armors for High Elf males and Castanic males.
• Welcome to Corneria: NPCs have a very limited number of spoken lines, limited to what race/gender they are.
• What Could Have Been: As mentioned, this game could have been the third installment of the prestigious Lineage series but what it's actually become has been well received.