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I have just finished out my second questing zone in Allods Online. I'm on the cusp of level 15, and though I'd share some further impressions.

The second zone, called the Training Camp, was a lot of fun. There was an interesting story about a rivalry between the red team and blue team running through the zone. And a lot of the quests had some humor to them, the quest writers (or perhaps translators for the English client) have really continued to deliver.

Due to the fact that I got really anal about doing all the group quests in the previous zone, I didn't get any gear upgrades until my second to last quest. It was a quest to take down a roving raid mob called the Zombie Destroyer (he bears an uncanny resemblance to a Big Daddy from Bioshock). Right after I logged a pick up raid was getting together to do him. I quickly joined, and all seemed to be going well at first. However when we had him down to about 10% (after five minutes or so of twelve players wailing on him) I managed to get aggro for an instant. He one shotted me before I could do anything about it.

I rezzed as quickly as I could and ran back, to find that he was dead and I missed the kill. Not pleased would be an idiotic understatement (I'll admit I had a brief attack of "sailor mouth"). It worked out ok in the end, however. About an hour later I got into another PuG that took him down with ease.

The final quest in the zone is a real oddball, but fun. It's a repeatable rep quest that you need to do enough times to get your rep up to respected, which unlocks some badass blue gear. Depending upon how anal you were about doing every quest in the previous zones, you'll need to do it somewhere between six and a dozen times to get the rep you need. The thing that's unique about it is that pretty much everyone in the zone will end up doing the quest before they leave. Because of that, there is a pick up raid farming the mobs for the quest night and day. All you have to do is show up ask in zone chat and you'll get an instant invite (at least on my server).

After that it's a solid hour of you and ten or so random players killing mobs for the quest as fast as they pop. It sounds mindless, but I really had a lot of fun. It was a little like the olden days when you mainly grinded at camps to level, save that it was utterly disorganized. Everyone was running around randomly wailing on anything that moved.

Finally, the goldspam in zone chat has really calmed down the last few days. Nothing has changed in terms of game mechanics. I suspect that the GMs have kicked up their banning efforts a notch.

I'm headed off to my final pure PvE zone tonight. I hope Allods doesn't turn into "Wishing for lube, the MMO" when I hit the first PvP zone in another few evenings, because I am thoroughly enjoying it right now.