Screw it, I'm playing Allods

Character Creation

Gameplay footage of me getting lost in some mines.

Note: I'm a lazy bastard. I know the full title of the game I'm referring to is Allods Online. But come on. It's a fucking MMORPG. Of course it's fucking online. 


If you've known me for a while, then you're aware of the fact that I'd sell my own mother - and all my siblings, aunts, uncles, their cats, dogs and whatever else I can find if the price is right. However, believe it or not, even I have limits. I don't usually sell my dignity. So when I got that phone call offering me a massive special on Allods, I didn't hesitate to refuse. Sometimes that's the way it works, you know - people call me, tell me they need somebody to write about a game and then I say no and they say okay, we're expecting your finished article next week.

Allods and I have a bit of a history with each other. I used to love that stupid game, believe it or not. Loved the graphics, the music, some of the more unique and cool playable races and how the whole thing was basically a really shameless, high-budget Russian WoW clone. Some of the monsters, their animations, the whole look and feel, everything was so blatantly copied straight from Blizzard's monstrosity, if you didn't actually play either one of those games, it was impossible to tell them apart by looking at screenshots and gameplay footage.

Unfortunately, the European publisher got greedy and added more and more pay2win-mechanisms, which made the game absolutely unplayable if you didn't spend any RL money on it - up to a point where you'd spend more on the item shop than you would pay for any subscription-based MMO out there. You wouldn't believe some of the things they came up with to milk their customers! But chances are, if you've ever heard about this game, then you also know the horror stories about the dreaded item shop.

So yeah, I wasn't exactly keen on getting back into the whole thing for my job. I was expecting the worst. And assuming you're not a complete idiot, you've probably figured out by now, that this is entry is gonna be about how most of the crap that drove me away had changed for the better. How the whole thing was surprisingly good and really fun. Up to a point where my job was finished and I've kept on playing just for fun. In fact, I'm still playing right now. But let's start at the beginning.

If this was Age of Conan, at least one of them would be naked right now.

Take the Alliance and the Horde out of Azeroth and put them in Soviet Russia. Rename them to League and Empire respectively, put a pair of wings on every elf and some cyber implants on your undead guys. You can see where I'm going with this. Allods isn't trying to be unique here. And why would they? Being derivative worked for Rift and it's gonna work for SW:ToR. It works for Allods.

But that doesn't mean they're not adding some clever bits and bobs here and there. Take the Gibberlings, for instance. They're a playable race, which faintly resembles antropomorphic hamsters. I shit you not. And since they're relatively tiny and unimpressive by themselves, you play three of them instead of one. You don't get any real benefit from that, the game still controls and feels as though you're playing a single character, but you actually see three guys onscreen instead of one and the way they interact with the world is simply hilarious. Where any other character would draw their bow and shoot a baddie, the toughest one of your Gibberlings will hold the bow in place, another one will pull the string and the third one aims the arrow. Where bigger characters wear a full suit of heavy armor, one of your gibberlings will put on your helmet, the next one wears the pauldrons and a third one dons your cape. There is no micro-management involved, you don't gear up three individual characters and the game treats them as one, but the whole idea behind this is as unique as it is brilliant.

Some will find the setting refreshing and unusual, others will probably be put off by some of the outfits and uniforms worn by the soldiers of the Empire, which look a little too war-inspired and not very high fantasy. You might chuckle at Igor Postov, your local mail-NPC and his traditional fur hat. Or you might find it hard to get used to the many Russian-sounding characters and locations and it might hurt your immersion a bit, when your capital is called Nezebgrad and features a theme song, which is clearly a remix of the Russian national anthem.

Listen to this fun little tune, then compare it to this:

Notice something?

I won't tell you that this game features tons of never-before-seen quests, dungeons, raids or pvp battles, because it doesn't. It does deliver in all those aspects, from instanced dungeons to heroic mode stuff to massive raids and it all works pretty much the way you'd expect it to. Some quests are great, some dungeons are incredibly fun, but there's also a huge amount of your everyday kill X loot Y stuff going on. Content is not better or more exciting than in any successful pay2play MMO, but during its best moments, it's at least on par with those titles and it doesn't cost you anything if you don't want it to. You cannot say that about most other f2p games.

The eight playable classes are nothing groundbreaking, either, but they do provide some fun, unique twists. Healers, for instance, get to use heavy plate armor and polearms, meaning it's absolutely possible to turn them into capable front line fighters. At the end of the day, you're still down to the usual tank, healer, melee/ranged DPS jobs you see in every other game, but if you're the healing warlock type or a lover of battle-clad war priests, then this one is for you.

Those uniforms are sure to rub some people the wrong way.

Surprisingly enough, you even get to customize the game with AddOns, so if you're craving a penis meter, fitting room, crit notifications or most other crap you're used to from WoW, you can download and add it all on Allods, too.

As for the item shop - well, it's still there. You'll level up faster and more conveniently when you buy stuff there, some of the cooler mounts and costumes are cash shop exclusive and you won't be able to avoid using the shop if you want to get married to your ingame partner. Yes, you can have lesbian Elven weddings and you even get special partnership buffs.
But you no longer have to spend any actual money on those things. Mounts and their food are handed out via quests and one of them was given away absolutely free as a launch event for the latest content patch.

And shop currency can be traded and bought on the auction house, provided you have enough gold in your pockets. Naturally, this also works the other way 'round: Sell some item shop money on the auction house and get tons of gold for it. It's like goldselling, but legal. And you're supporting Allods with it.
But prices in the item shop didn't just drop and they didn't just make their stuff available for gold. They're actually giving things away now. Free costumes, free experience scrolls, free buff potions. Every fresh toon ends up with a loot chest in their inventory, which can be opened with an increasing cooldown timer and whenever you do, you get showered with hats, helmets, outfits and god knows what else.

Yaaay, cat mount!

I won't lie to you: You will inevitably reach a point where you end up wanting something from the shop and you won't have the gold to buy it. After using up your free respec, for instance. After running into your first bit of open world pvp and getting your ass kicked by a guy, who has spent a tenner on powerful runes to buff his attack power a bit. But do yourself a favour and don't believe those horror stories from the guy who knows another guy whose cousin's neighbour has a son, who has spent 3000 Quid in the item shop. It's bullshit. Spending some small amount here and there makes things easier, but we're talking peanuts, something you do once or twice and not repeatedly, every single month.

And here's another thing: If you're an incredibly cheap bastard, you do not even have to pay for those things. Because the Allods website lets you fill in surveys and other boring crap for free item shop currency. It's not fun, it's not very entertaining and it won't provide you with virtual riches, but if you're desperate enough, you can get free stuff that way.

This massive astral demon is eating my ship. And that's only the fucking tutorial!

You can play this game for free. It offers all the features and content you'd expect from any good MMORPG and, granted it's not very difficult, parts of it look better than WoW. Allods' Russian flair doesn't appeal to everyone, but some of the cooler-looking races and characters add an undeniable, unique charm to the game. It doesn't really do anything new or groundbreaking, but what's there is mostly solid and entertaining - and if you're bored of leveling yet another Azerothian toon to 85 whilst waiting for 4.3 or even Pandaria, then Allods is just one click away. With its free download and no subscription fees, there is little reason to ignore this one, even if you're just killing time until your next big p2p-MMO-fix.

-Cat