Tera: The Photo Shoot

I still haven't got a level 20 yet among my vast herd of Tera characters, and am creeping along at a pace considered glacial by those with more time and obsessive compulsive dedication than myself, but I thought I'd post some screen shots of a few of my favorite characters in Tera. For a game with only one starting area, its diverse range of characters and classes is like crack to an alt-addict like myself. It's such a nice looking game, and as I've said before, this is a fantasy realm where they've perfected the art of "pasty technology," something that only strippers use in the real world, but which is commonplace in Tera. So anyway, screen shots!

Kalteros, a lowly human warrior, the most pragmatically dressed character in the game. Standing next to Adria, his boss apparently. She is....less pragmatic.

Scalazar Thane by the fire. Scalazar is a slayer, a warrior who hits things with a very big sword. He's a Castanic, which means tiefling in Korean apparently. Next to him is an elf chick avatar, about to catch a bad cold or get burned by a stray spark from the fire.

Meet Yappatorius the berserker! He's a popori, a kind of animal spirit folk. They come in many animal flavors, but one body type: round.

I wasn't gonna do it but at one point in general chat people were talking up the idea of a elin warrior so much I caved and decided to give it a shot. The end result is Mysterie, the magical Combat Bunny Action Doll! Elins are actually immortal spirit folk created by a powerful goddess, as the game lore explains. I know there's a lot of noise in the webz about them being fetishistic depictions of the Asian male obsession with preteen girls, but honestly they look more like a cross between creepy china dolls and some sort of venus figure that's all hips and no boobs. I don't know what to make of them, but the English localization has definitely made Elin act cute and funny, so you'd have to try really hard to see them as anything other than quasi-androgynous vaguely girlish fairy folk. Especially when castanics are walking around...

My lowest level character, the castanic mystic Eliqua. Mystics have a play style (early on, admittedly) that consists of a "win" button that you spam repeatedly until whatever you're looking at dies. She also likes designer panty hose and cannot run without her dress flaring up and exposing her hiney. It's not her fault, she was programmed that way! Tera is the only game that starts you with clothes and gradually removes them...

Mysterie makes nice with Devil Moose. An interesting feature in the low level area is lots of monsters that act threatening toward you but don't attack unless provoked. It's a little more "organic" feeling than the decidedly artificial way other MMOs handle their low level threat/aggro meters. To counter this, I have noticed that genuinely hostile mobs have a habit of chasing you for a long time, which I experimented with to "kite" foes all the way to town, something I haven't seen do-able since the early days of WoW and EQ.

Yappatorius enjoying his pipe while lecturing the guard about proper armor wear and how she's gonna get a cold wearing that liquid metal suit of hers that was apparently spray-painted on. The popori crack me up, their animations, behaviors and general look is so wacky and yet it fits so well. If they weren't all so rotund one might almost be able to play a Scooby Doo!

If you're wondering if I'm enjoying the game, the answer is yes. I still like Rift just "that much more," but I'll take Tera any day over Diablo III. I'm subbed for the rest of the year so I've got lots of time to theoretically get a couple of these characters to max level.

Now, if you'll excuse me I need to go make a rock dude and a dragon chick to see what the sorcerers and lancers play like!