My honest opinion after 200 hours

[Buddha]

So, I've now played the game for around 200 hours and can objectively say that it doesn’t work as an MMO and won’t sustain itself in the long term. The game is fun for a few hours, but you quickly reach a point where it devolves into pure grind, and the daily, repetitive, limited task rotation feels more like work than enjoyment.

But first things first. There is a main story and quests, which are fairly good, sometimes including puzzles, and they provide a good introduction to the game. You also get showered with all sorts of items and resources for crafting and upgrading, giving you a constant sense of progression. This phase of the game is quite enjoyable. However, as soon as you reach level 50 and enter the endgame, the game reveals its true face: monotonous mechanics and a repetitive task rotation, bound to various currencies that constantly limit and restrict you.

The open-world dungeons and PvE content differ at best only visually; content-wise, it’s the same mechanics—usually a series of arena fights against bosses. The group dungeons are also extremely small and simple, usually consisting of a few rooms with a final boss whose mechanics are easy to learn. It doesn’t really matter whether you’re fighting an open-world boss, doing a dungeon with a group, completing resistance contracts, or soloing bosses. Everything feels the same, is quickly done, offers little depth, and serves merely to add some visual flair to the gambling aspect, repeated as often as possible to keep dopamine levels high. Nothing has real depth; everything is highly repetitive because it doesn’t matter why or how you kill a boss or complete a mission. The only thing that matters is the anticipation at the end to see if you get the desired item or not. It’s pure gambling mechanics, like at a slot machine—nothing more, nothing less.

And of course, you never get what you want. When a boss is killed by 150 people but only drops 6 items, with 5 of them always being resources and the last one going not only to just 1 in 150 players but also with a 1 in 15 chance of being the wrong item, you can calculate how long you’ll be killing bosses. That the bosses only appear every few hours and all at the SAME time, so you can only do one boss, I’ll just mention briefly in the context of probability and time factors. For comparison, I’ve been playing for a month now, every day, for 200 hours. I’ve participated in every guild “raid,” done open-world bosses daily, and at least 3 dungeon runs a day, and I’ve never dropped anything relevant to my meta gear. Not a single usable item for me. You also can’t really play freely; you’re constantly restricted by this time system, the currencies, and limitations. If you can’t kill a world boss at exactly 8 PM to take advantage of your 0.0001% drop chance, you’re just out of luck and can try again the next day.

Every day, you grind through the same boring stuff and even feel pressured because if you don’t play for a few days, the currencies you need for dungeons only accumulate up to a certain point and then expire. This creates pressure that needs to be dealt with. Guild tasks, raids, and bosses are the exact same as solo tasks or open-world bosses. Nothing really stands out or provides a challenge. You only occasionally fail a group dungeon due to a lack of communication from teammates. Everything is tied to endless grinding: resources for crafting, items for the lithography book, and whenever you manage to gather something, you realize it’s just a fraction of what you need to, I don’t know, craft armor—only to have luck spoil it because the crafted item doesn’t have the trait you need. Sure, you can change that, but that, too, is tied to endless grinding. I can’t fully describe how deviously long-winded and boring this system is. I hate to say it, but you’d have to be an idiot not to see it—or to see it and still keep playing the game because I wonder where the gameplay or fun is supposed to be here if you aren’t addicted to gambling and can’t stop.

The game is heavily pay-to-win oriented. PvP fans might want to give it a try, but they should know that without spending real money, progress is minimal. In open PvP, like with conflict bosses, a solo player stands no chance, so joining a guild is almost mandatory. In arena PvP, it’s nearly impossible to get by without real money since gearing up is essential to remain competitive. While you can earn in-game currency (which can also be purchased with real money), it takes forever—and I mean forever—and still isn’t enough to make a significant impact. Don’t even try to play as a healer in the arena.

The PvE content feels like pure busywork, grinding PvP gear that you eventually end up buying or upgrading out of frustration because it takes way too long, is the same boring routine, or you just never get anything useful. In the end, everything boils down to repetitive grinding to slowly—very slowly—get stronger. This monotony makes the game unfortunately very boring and frustrating in the long run, especially since it’s the same thing over and over again. The world is small, the dungeons are irrelevant, there are no raids, boss mechanics aren’t really challenging, the PvE content feels like work, and you can tell that the whole game is just about keeping players hooked—to make them addicted and then get their money.

Speaking of raids. There are raids, but they look exactly like an open-world boss, except that you can exclusively fight this boss as a guild in an arena. But there’s no lead-up to the fight, no old castle, no ship, no enchanted forest—nothing. You just enter a portal and are immediately in front of the boss. Then you fight for 5 minutes, the gambling factor kicks in, because this time you’ll definitely get something, right? Nope, nothing again; quickly move to the next open-world boss. The same clicks as always, nothing dropped again; off to the open-world dungeon. The same mobs, killed the same way, and after 3 hours, still nothing. And that’s the whole day, until your currencies run out and you’re more inclined to buy what you need because you can’t handle the frustration anymore. I really can’t put into words how vile this game is.

I’m just aiming for 100% Steam achievements, as there’s not much left to do, and then I’m uninstalling this garbage. Absolutely no recommendation from me, and I’m not saying this out of frustration but from an objective realization that has matured over 200 hours.

[SweetStarfieldFan]

Just saying.
Nr.2 even when absolute god-tier-popular IPs release their AAA games:
https://i.imgur.com/TyfdPeI.png

[DixIInormus]

İlk olarak Prof.GamePhilosopher tarafından gönderildi:

İlk olarak NotxEevee tarafından gönderildi:

Just because other games have the same mechanic doesn't mean it is or should be acceptable nor that the mechanic is well designed. It's the same re-used excuse that means nothing.

Also there's a difference between being able to queue for dungeons over and over while getting loot and 3 dungeons a day+time-gated bosses with random spawns.

To clarify why Throne and Liberty’s mechanics make sense, let’s break it down:

The grind and progression gates aren’t unique to TL—they’re staples across the MMO genre. EverQuest, one of the earliest MMOs, had leveling that took literal months. In TL, you can hit max level in a day, so the concept that it’s somehow more restrictive isn’t accurate. Limited dungeon entries (like 3 per day) and time-gated events actually help casual players. Without these, the hardcore "no-lifers" would sprint miles ahead, creating massive imbalances. If you work a regular job, you’d never keep up.

This isn’t about “accepting” a mechanic blindly—it’s about maintaining balance in a live game with thousands of players.

This is why I can tell youre not an old school mmo player, MMOs didn't give a ♥♥♥♥ about your RL they only cared about how much time you put into it and the no lifers were king

MMOs kinda related to life put in more hours at work get more money, put in more time into an MMO become stronger. No its EvErYoNe NeDs To Be EqUaL bs.

[Stockwerk 13]

İlk olarak Prof.GamePhilosopher tarafından gönderildi:

İlk olarak NotxEevee tarafından gönderildi:

Completely agree with this post.
I want to like the game and I honestly enjoy its combat, but since lvl50 it's been such a drag. It's like the game actively wants me to quit.
Right now I'm at the point where the only way I can really upgrade my gear is either through dropping items on world bosses (never gonna happen) or by farming Lucent and buying the items I want from the auction house.
It's just an artificial grind to incentivize people to spend money for Lucent. It sucks.

Welcome to video gaming in 2024.
Show me a game that does not use the same mechanic in any similar or slightly different way?

Welcome to MMOs in 2024 too! You must be new here:

Guildwars 2, ESO
both have no gear treatmill, no time gating and only horizontal progression systems
both are amazing MMO's

Albion, EvE Online
both have full loot gear systems
both are amazing MMO's

also FFxIV and WoW while having somewhat time gated gearing progression,
it is quite different than TnL or the typical korean MMO, as both let you do dungeons all day, every day if you want... only raids and certain events (like halloween) are time gated there.

[Stockwerk 13]

İlk olarak Hosenbund tarafından gönderildi:

I had the same experience with mutliple games in the last years, the most recent one being "the first descendant"

Many of these games are highly addicting right at the start, and if you lack a life you may get to 200 hours in a month, and then you start to realize what kind of crap you were playing and question how you thought it was good in the first place, because the red flags were all over the place right from the first hours of play.
So feeling like a game is slowly becoming a chore but telling yourself "maybe its worth it" is the biggest mistake there is

I knew throne and liberty from many,many videos already, so i know how the endgame and many of its systems look like.
After it made a bad first impression on me after 1 hour i decided not to engage with it at all, because i am sure it will die anyways

There are enough good games out there which are not just after your wallet, and dont try to bind players to their game by making slaves of them through the use of dailes and weeklies.
they actually try to be fun and make you keep playing beause of that

^ this exactly

everybody knew what this game would look like, so why waste time?

i dont regret never touching yet another timegated, pay2win korea casino grinder again

instead im currently playing through guildwars 2 storyline
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H47Wx7PodWk
and its the best writing and voice acting i've seen in a MMO, super good combat and mechanics, challenging difficulty (even in the story) and a beautiful artstyle

there are hundreds of hours high quality story content,
a metric shtload of PvE endgame dungeons (fractals,) raids, strikes, etc.
all the content is evergreen, meaning it is all still relevant,
people play 10+ year old content still to this day, there is no "outdated content"

there is actually balanced, gear equalized and highly competetive arena pvp
there are huge large scale PvP battles in WorldversusWorld
PvP has a real high skillceiling and offers huge, skillbased outplay potential:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DvZ88Yr8bU
MANY folks play Guildwars 2 ENTIRELY for its PvP for years on end and i can see why

the best Open World in all of MMOs, indeed
the best Mounts in all of MMOs, for real

there is in depth crafting, a proper, working economy,
endless completionist content and achievements

there are ultimate and long term (years) grind goals like a full set of legendary armor
(which is not "better" than regular gear but looks absolutely stunning and offers much quality of life)

they have mega server technology, which means the game is NEVER offline (they even patch the game while having the servers online, don't ask me how? they just do it) and the game is packed with players in every zone even 3am in the middle of the night since everyone is on the same server

the game is highly polished, almost no bugs and performance is rock solid
the game gets a new 25$ expansion every year, adding tons of features and content

the community is very helpfull, the steam forums are not all hate and whining and there is a suprisingly high amount of females, i mean actual, real girls playing the game

i dont know why but girls seem to especially like guildwars2 and ffxiv for whatever reasons
maybe its the player housing?

whatever, absolutely having a blast with GW2 now and i havent even touched endgame PvE or PvP content much

if you like me and somehow slept on Guildwars2: give it a honest try
it quite possibly be your new MMO home for several years

[Hosenbund]

İlk olarak Stockwerk 13 tarafından gönderildi:

İlk olarak Hosenbund tarafından gönderildi:

I had the same experience with mutliple games in the last years, the most recent one being "the first descendant"

Many of these games are highly addicting right at the start, and if you lack a life you may get to 200 hours in a month, and then you start to realize what kind of crap you were playing and question how you thought it was good in the first place, because the red flags were all over the place right from the first hours of play.
So feeling like a game is slowly becoming a chore but telling yourself "maybe its worth it" is the biggest mistake there is

I knew throne and liberty from many,many videos already, so i know how the endgame and many of its systems look like.
After it made a bad first impression on me after 1 hour i decided not to engage with it at all, because i am sure it will die anyways

There are enough good games out there which are not just after your wallet, and dont try to bind players to their game by making slaves of them through the use of dailes and weeklies.
they actually try to be fun and make you keep playing beause of that

^ this exactly

everybody knew what this game would look like, so why waste time?

i dont regret never touching yet another timegated, pay2win korea casino grinder again

instead im currently playing through guildwars 2 storyline
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H47Wx7PodWk
and its the best writing and voice acting i've seen in a MMO, super good combat and mechanics, challenging difficulty (even in the story) and a beautiful artstyle

there are hundreds of hours high quality story content,
a metric shtload of PvE endgame dungeons (fractals,) raids, strikes, etc.
all the content is evergreen, meaning it is all still relevant,
people play 10+ year old content still to this day, there is no "outdated content"

there is actually balanced, gear equalized and highly competetive arena pvp
there are huge large scale PvP battles in WorldversusWorld

the best Open World in all of MMOs, indeed
the best Mounts in all of MMOs, for real

there is in depth crafting, a proper, working economy,
endless completionist content and achievements

there are ultimate and long term (years) grind goals like a full set of legendary armor
(which is not "better" than regular gear but looks absolutely stunning and offers much quality of life)

they have mega server technology, which means the game is NEVER offline (they even patch the game while having the servers online, don't ask me how? they just do it) and the game is packed with players in every zone even 3am in the middle of the night

the game is highly polished, almost no bugs and performance is rock solid

the community is very helpfull, the steam forums are not all hate and whining and there is a suprisingly high amount of females, i mean actual, real girls playing the game

i dont know why but girls seem to especially like guildwars2 and ffxiv for whatever reasons

whatever, absolutely having a blast with GW2 now and i havent even touched endgame PvE or PvP content much

if you like me and somehow slept on Guildwars2: give it a honest try
it quite possible be your new MMO home for several years

Agreed. I actually also played guild wars 2 way back when it released, it was great
Tried to get into it again last year but didn't manage.
I may try again at some point. Mainly playing ff14 when I play a mmo currently

İlk olarak Stockwerk 13 tarafından gönderildi:

İlk olarak Prof.GamePhilosopher tarafından gönderildi:

Welcome to video gaming in 2024.
Show me a game that does not use the same mechanic in any similar or slightly different way?

Welcome to MMOs in 2024 too! You must be new here:

Guildwars 2, ESO
both have no gear treatmill, no time gating and only horizontal progression systems
both are amazing MMO's

Albion, EvE Online
both have full loot gear systems
both are amazing MMO's

also FFxIV and WoW while having somewhat time gated gearing progression,
it is quite different than TnL or the typical korean MMO, as both let you do dungeons all day, every day if you want... only raids and certain events (like halloween) are time gated there.

Also agreed, plenty of good mmos out there, I don't think TL will manage to keep a fraction of the players of most of those games, but we will see that over the next months, right now it looks like it is going down fast, just like any new bad p2w game

[Lightning]

yeah, they either have to up drop rates or remove daily caps tbh and let people play for however long they want.

[SweetStarfieldFan]

İlk olarak DixIInormus tarafından gönderildi:

İlk olarak Prof.GamePhilosopher tarafından gönderildi:

To clarify why Throne and Liberty’s mechanics make sense, let’s break it down:

The grind and progression gates aren’t unique to TL—they’re staples across the MMO genre. EverQuest, one of the earliest MMOs, had leveling that took literal months. In TL, you can hit max level in a day, so the concept that it’s somehow more restrictive isn’t accurate. Limited dungeon entries (like 3 per day) and time-gated events actually help casual players. Without these, the hardcore "no-lifers" would sprint miles ahead, creating massive imbalances. If you work a regular job, you’d never keep up.

This isn’t about “accepting” a mechanic blindly—it’s about maintaining balance in a live game with thousands of players.

This is why I can tell youre not an old school mmo player, MMOs didn't give a ♥♥♥♥ about your RL they only cared about how much time you put into it and the no lifers were king

MMOs kinda related to life put in more hours at work get more money, put in more time into an MMO become stronger. No its EvErYoNe NeDs To Be EqUaL bs.

Welcome to 2024 where games not only look how much you play and put gates to that, they even monitor how much you move your mouse over a certain item in the shop.
Your comment is quite funny when you consider that even WoW does not release all content at once and keeps it gated over several weeks and also limits how many tokens you can earn per week.
Really funny.

İlk olarak Stockwerk 13 tarafından gönderildi:

İlk olarak Prof.GamePhilosopher tarafından gönderildi:

Welcome to video gaming in 2024.
Show me a game that does not use the same mechanic in any similar or slightly different way?

Welcome to MMOs in 2024 too! You must be new here:

Guildwars 2, ESO
both have no gear treatmill, no time gating and only horizontal progression systems
both are amazing MMO's

Albion, EvE Online
both have full loot gear systems
both are amazing MMO's

also FFxIV and WoW while having somewhat time gated gearing progression,
it is quite different than TnL or the typical korean MMO, as both let you do dungeons all day, every day if you want... only raids and certain events (like halloween) are time gated there.

And? I don’t see your point here. Exceptions exist for everything, but it seems you missed what I was getting at. I’m not excusing the mechanic—just saying time-gating and gear grind are standard in most modern games, especially Korean MMOs. Listing 10–15-year-old games and saying 'Welcome to 2024' is, ironically, a bit outdated. Nice try taking my comment out of context, though. Try again.

[DixIInormus]

İlk olarak Prof.GamePhilosopher tarafından gönderildi:

İlk olarak DixIInormus tarafından gönderildi:

This is why I can tell youre not an old school mmo player, MMOs didn't give a ♥♥♥♥ about your RL they only cared about how much time you put into it and the no lifers were king

MMOs kinda related to life put in more hours at work get more money, put in more time into an MMO become stronger. No its EvErYoNe NeDs To Be EqUaL bs.

Welcome to 2024 where games not only look how much you play and put gates to that, they even monitor how much you move your mouse over a certain item in the shop.
Your comment is quite funny when you consider that even WoW does not release all content at once and keeps it gated over several weeks and also limits how many tokens you can earn per week.
Really funny.

İlk olarak Stockwerk 13 tarafından gönderildi:

Welcome to MMOs in 2024 too! You must be new here:

Guildwars 2, ESO
both have no gear treatmill, no time gating and only horizontal progression systems
both are amazing MMO's

Albion, EvE Online
both have full loot gear systems
both are amazing MMO's

also FFxIV and WoW while having somewhat time gated gearing progression,
it is quite different than TnL or the typical korean MMO, as both let you do dungeons all day, every day if you want... only raids and certain events (like halloween) are time gated there.

And? I don’t see your point here. Exceptions exist for everything, but it seems you missed what I was getting at. I’m not excusing the mechanic—just saying time-gating and gear grind are standard in most modern games, especially Korean MMOs. Listing 10–15-year-old games and saying 'Welcome to 2024' is, ironically, a bit outdated. Nice try taking my comment out of context, though. Try again.

Was gonna respond but saw you got banned. Makes sense. Keep simping for time gating.

[Xash]

I agree with most of the things OP says.

I mean, just look at the events happening every few hours as an example:

- kill wolves and turn in at different places until only one is left
- kill goblins and turn in at different places until only one is left
- kill basilisks and turn in at different places until only one is left
- kill some orcs and turn in at different places until only one is left

wtf?!

Dungeons not taking forever is a good thing though, imho. These short and rather easy encounters make for less leavers mid way if something goes wrong.

PvP though? Well, what PvP tbh?
Arenas? Can't even buff yourself with food!
Open world PvP bosses? Why even bother wasting so much time for a small chance to get what you want when it's easier to spend that time farming, gaining lucent and then just buying the thing you want from the auction house?

There is no real PvP like in eg Aion on WoW. This is a pseudo PvP game with pseudo PvE content.
Absolutely beautiful but even this is only on the surface. There is no real exploration reason besides some scattered books or collections. No small beautiful corners that are just there for the sake of it. It's totally generic.

The game is fine as it is but i am sure, OP, me and many others expected way more.

Maybe castle sieges will at least stir up some things and PvP will actually have a reason and get people engaged. Seeing how the 3 top alliances on my server are already gone with roughly only 10 people left in those guilds, i doubt it.

[Buddha]

İlk olarak marsHm311oW tarafından gönderildi:

Seems like another was banned for saying the game is bad.

The official reason for my ban was this: ‘This post contains content that is inflammatory and likely to create arguments, rule violations, and other non-constructive replies. This type of content is not allowed on the Steam Community.’

So yes, I was banned because I expressed an opinion that, at least at that time, led to discussions, as you can see in this post. I wasn't banned for any clear rule violations, but simply for the fact that people reacted negatively to my opinion.
basically, you can be penalised on steam for expressing your legitimate opinion and someone disagrees with you. the goal is to apparently find out what people want to hear and post that and only that. just not your own thoughts that could lead to controversy.

Oh yeah, and I also got banned from the Dragonage Failguard forum for using a medically correct term, a single word that is listed as the correct term on wikipedia and in every medical book. This word COULD be perceived as discriminatory, which lacks any rational explanation and you get yourself banned. Steam has become an absolute joke and not only is there no free expression of opinion here anymore, they also act completely arbitrarily and without justification.

[Magnus]

L2 is better than tl.