Ah, the daily grind. We deal with it every day in work or school, and it wears us down. Do we really want to deal with it in our games, too? Of course not, and that's why Lineage II has announced an update which will make leveling faster and easier. You can visit the preview site for the update here .

One of our greatest assets is our fantastic group of players, who are a very dedicated, hardcore bunch that spend a lot of time and effort building up their characters and battling each other in big player vs. player (PvP) fights like castle sieges. However, the process of building and leveling characters can be a very long and frankly tedious process in Lineage II, which may serve as a barrier for letting a much larger group of potential customers to fully enjoy our game. While in the past the developers in Korea have continually built the game with this hardcore mentality firmly set, with the release of Gracia, they've completely changed the rules and made Lineage II even better and a lot more fun.

The big change is that leveling a Lineage II character is now extremely easier-and we say "extremely" in a fairly conservative manner. A normal new character that goes through the beginning quests can gain a few levels in just a few minutes, and players should find leveling now quite easily, all the way up to level 60 and beyond. Players that could spend several months of hardcore grinding to get up to a competitively high level will now be able to accomplish the same feat perhaps a month, if not less. They'll also be able to get to their occupation changes a lot faster, so developing a selection of specialized characters is a much more realistic option. Building characters is now a lot fun and easy to do, rather than a long-term activity many players would rather do without. This drastic change in leveling is due to several factors.

Lineage II sat down with some of the game's biggest clan leaders and chatted about their personal experiences.

Friday 27th June/... NCsoft Europe presents an exclusive insight into the thoughts of some of the most highly profiled clan members within Lineage II. Hardcore PvP is one of the big draws to Lineage II, and the bulk of the intense PvP action takes place with the game’s castle sieges and the recently introduced fortress battle system. We asked several prominent clan leaders about their PvP experiences in Lineage II and what they’d like to see in the future.

What’s the most fun you’ve ever had in a Castle siege?

FeRsT ~ Kain ~: That would have to be when we took Rune on Kain from Teamjesus clan and Darkside/Ur/Bregan alliances. They had been zerging the server, outnumbering us to PvP, and we proved to them that with we could compete with equal numbers (about ten clans combined for the siege). We took them down from their status of server kings to show them that all they can do is zerg, and that was by far the best thing, especially seeing it was Fraps’d by Repsol, who is by far the best movie maker in Lineage II playing currently.

This just in from the Lineage II team: Enhancements to the pet system that will become available with the Hellbound expansion (coming this month).

 

"Lineage II players absolutely love their pets. They are useful companions in the lands of Aden, able to conduct a varied series of attacks, use special skills, and more, all in aid of the player. In addition, pets can go through a series of evolutions, earning new abilities and becoming much more powerful with each step…With the release of Hellbound we've expanded the pet system even more, with benefits that will help most players in one way or another."

-- Lineage II development team

Make sure to check out some of the pet screenshots in our Lineage II screenshot section and keep reading for the full writeup about the pet enhancements in Hellbound.

Lineage II has announced the first expansion for their Kamael release, The Kamael: Hellbound.

Explore the biggest features of the next Lineage® II update, The 1st Throne - The Kamael: Hellbound™, by checking out the new preview site! Read about the increased level cap and new high level skills, powerful new transformations, enhanced pets, new hunting areas and raid bosses, and more!

The video on the preview site has an awesome look at what we can expect to see!

Lineage II has announced the winners of their recent movie contest.

The Lineage® II Replay Movie Contest has come to an end and the winners have been chosen! Congratulations to 9v9 of Bartz, Amberdrake of Kain, and DarkSeeker of Bartz! Thank you all for submitting such action-packed siege Lineage® II Replay Movies!

We’d like to thank everyone who participated in this contest. The winning Lineage® II Replay Movies will be available for download tomorrow (March 18, 2008) on the L2 Fun section of the Lineage II web site!

That's right!  A new European server for L2!

NCsoft® Europe, the world’s leading publisher and developer of online games, will soon be launching a new European server for its hit massively multiplayer online PC game, Lineage® II.

Since its worldwide launch in late 2003, Lineage II has been an unparalleled success, reaching more than 17 million players worldwide and gaining a reputation as the gaming market’s premier player-versus-player (PvP) MMOG. Following the December 2007 launch of Lineage II’s latest expansion, The Kamael, which added a staggering gigabyte’s worth of new content to the game, demand for European server access is running at an all time high as new players rush to join long-time fans. By launching a new server, called Luna, alongside the existing European servers Franz and Teon, NCsoft Europe has quickly moved to ensure continued, instant access and smooth online gameplay for new and current players of Lineage II.

The new server, named Luna, is scheduled to launch at the end of April.  In the mean time you can check out Lineage II in just about any country you'd like.

Lineage II has announced their new character transfer service as well as a possible European server!

Producer Tim Tan had this to say:

I am pleased to announce that character server transfers are now live. Full details on how to purchase this service can be found here.
At this time, players can transfer to any of the ten servers. We will be monitoring the transfers closely to ensure that none of the servers become too overloaded. It's our goal to make sure all of the existing players on each server have the best gaming experience possible. Because of this, we may have to turn off transfers to specific high population servers at any time.

We have also been discussing the possibility of a new European server. I want to stress that there is no guarantee that this server will happen, nor do I have a time table for a server, but I wanted to make sure that those players thinking about transferring know this and can keep this in mind for the future. Once a character is transferred, there is a cool down period before that character can be transferred again. I wish everyone who chooses to use this service happy adventuring in their new home.

And of course sales tax applies in Texas, California, Minnesota, and Arizona!  Check out the character transfer page for information, costs, and details on how to begin the process!

Lineage II's new expansion, The Chaotic Throne - The Kamael has reviews up all over the place!  Take a look at a few of them!

Play™
HEXUS
PC GameZone

In case you're not familiar with Lineage II, be sure to check it out, as it's one of the most popular MMO's, with 610,918 unique users a little less then a year ago!  If you want more in depth information, check out our gameslist entry!

Lineage II has extended their New Era Event!

As a result of a couple mysterious missing letters, we will be extending the A New Era Event. The event did end at the scheduled time today, but we will be reactivating it for another day and a half.

The event will be reactivated on Tuesday, November 27th at 12:00 PM Central Time (7:00 PM GMT +1) and will end on Thursday, November 29th at 12:00 AM (7:00 AM GMT +1).