Beta Impression: Dream of Mirror Online

I’ve played a number of different MMOs over the past ten years. It’s been hard for me to get into the Asian ones, and Dream of Mirror Online was no different. So, if you’re like me you most likely will not enjoy this sort of game. If you do enjoy Asian MMOs, then this game is not unlike many of the others, featuring cute characters and a colorful cartoon art style.

Dream of Mirror Online is about a mirror that reflected the real world, creating a second, parallel world, which twelve Mirror Kings watch over. When the mirror goes on the fritz (someone get some Windex) and starts creating distorted versions of humans from the real world, many of the Mirror Kings begin to disappear. Now the remaining Kings have begun calling real humans into the mirror world to help solve resolve the crisis.

First I must warn you this is a beta, and therefore an unfinished game. Any problems I mention may or may not be fixed by the time it goes live. I kept an open mind, even after seeing the cute little pig icon (the game calls them Pupus) the game placed on my desktop.

So, upon clicking the pig, I went on to create my character. My choices were the Felin, who are a race of aggressive humanoids with tails, normal humans, the non-warrior like race called Sylphs, and a child-like race called Sprites.

I created a Sylph and proceeded to enter the world. I was met with a landscape very reminiscent of a Dragon Ball game, with vibrant colors and cartoony graphics. The art team certainly won’t win any rewards.

After taking in my immediate surroundings I began to look for someone who could explain my sudden appearance in this strange new world. This is where my first complaint comes in: the controls are entirely point-and-click, with no WASD movement at all. This isn’t a horrible thing, a lot of games use this, but when the path finding isn’t all it could be it’s a problem.

Your character doesn’t always take the direct path to where you want them to go, they tend to zigzag. If you are taking an obstacle free path there is hardly a problem, but, if something is in the way they go all over the place.

This is a quest driven game, but it’s harder to find them than it should be. There aren’t any markers on screen to show who may have one. You pretty much just have to walk around until you find someone who has one.

The banking system is fairly interesting, and in my opinion more games should use it. In order to access your bank you need to enter a pass code of six numbers. I’m not sure why they did this, but I can see it helping against account hackers. They won’t be able to access any valuables you may have stored in your bank without the code.

There is the ability to create guilds, once you reach level 20. You must form a team (6 members) and, with 40,000 gold, you can start one. Guilds give you access to guild feeatures such as a cottage, bank and chat.

Combat is pretty straight forward, and consists of point, click and auto attack. Nothing outstanding. In fact, in the early levels you pretty much don’t even have to worry about dying, unless you purposely set out to.

There is a crafting system in place that consists of using supplies dropped by monsters or from the six professions. The six professions are: Animal Breeding, Farming, Fishing, Forestry, Meditation and Mining. From there players use recipes and can create new equipment and weapons.

The server seems stable and I was never dropped from the game, and, even though I’m in the U.S. and was playing on a European server (only one available) there wasn’t any noticeable lag.

For a free-to-play game, Dream of Mirror Online isn’t horrible. But, in its current state it doesn’t provide enough to make it stand out in the flooded market of MMOs. With bland graphics, and a ho hum fighting system, this game needs more time in the shop.