When I first leveled my frost mage in World of Warcraft, a typical fight consisted of frost bolt, frost bolt, frost bolt, monster dead, target new monster, bolt, bolt, bolt, and so on, pretty much forever. In Tree of Savior, a new MMORPG by IMC Games in Korea, I went in with similar spammy expectations when it came to leveling my cryomancer, but was pleasantly surprised to find a far more exciting combat system—one which a lot of other MMOs would do well to learn from.
A typical encounter in Tree of Savior goes something like: Aggro five enemies, ice bolt, run, ice wall, ice bolt, run, earthquake, watch my enemies explode into a million pieces as the earth launches them into orbit. Seriously, sending monsters careening through the sky and then seeing them explode feels awesome when you’re only level seven. Another early fight had me running from a monster the size of a house. After dodging and kiting to stay alive for several minutes, my final blow caused it to burst into money. I hadn’t even hit level 10.