Now, let's make something very clear. The game needs to have low system requirements in order to function properly, as battles will eventually become very, very large. This is not why the game's graphics are 'meh'. World of Warcraft and Warhammer: Online both had relatively low system requirements when released as compared to the available technology at the time. However, the way they depicted their characters, the landscapes, the spell effects, was very original, and relevant to the world they were basing the game on. Atlantica Online just seems to have copied and pasted a combination of Lineage 2 graphics, with Sword of the New World graphics, and other eastern games. That's harsh, perhaps, but it seems to be the way the game wants to be treated. "Old MMOs not 'WOW'ing you?" it proudly boasts in its advertisements, suggesting that they have something new and refreshing to offer. It certainly isn't in the graphics department.
Gameplay/Chat/Community: 5/10 - 'Who's my special little boy?'
This section of my first impressions review will not focus on the combat aspect of the game. That's a separate aspect altogether as they seem to want it to be. As soon as you start playing, the game will assume that you don't know how to use your mouse or keyboard and will simply 'lock' you to the tutorial NPC. It will explain the world to you a little bit, and how to get started on completing your Atlantica Gold first quest. This is where the game also makes another assumption: it seems to believe that you're too dumb to find battles on your own, so it will go find them for you. That's right, there's an 'auto-move' option that will automatically move you to your active quest's objective. From there, all you have to do is either talk to NPC X or kill monster Y.
Perhaps an aspect that the tutorial should have expanded on was how to use the chat interface. I kept seeing only one person in my chat log, and they seemed to be talking to themselves. Not in the sense that there was no one else for them to talk to, but in the sense that they seemed to be answering questions and holding a conversation while there was no one else in the chatroom talking. Maybe I didn't know how to use the chat, or maybe the game packs an auto-ignore feature that will ignore people it knows you won't like automatically.
