The original Lineage was released in April 2004 and wasn't very user-friendly for Western gamers. The lack of many quests and the slow leveling of your character made that many people quickly left the game alone and due to that the game was almost only played by people in Asia. After the launch of World of Warcraft and the accompanying success it became clear that also in the West there were plenty of people that liked playing MMOGs.

The Chaotic Throne – The Kamael, is just like the previous expansion a free addition to Lineage 2 and builds further on the previous improvements. Although the game has doubled in size compared to the original, you shouldn't expect the leveling to have become any easier. While in World of Warcraft you'll get to the maximum in no time you'll be busy for months here. Some people may think that "end-game" is the only thing that counts in a massive multiplayer game but this slow leveling shows they're wrong. You'll spend more time with fighting monsters halfway the game than killing the same boss and monsters all the time at the highest level.

As I said in the introduction, there's a new race added which makes that you can now choose out of six in total. These are Human, Elf, Dark Elf, Orc, Dwarf and now also the Kamael. Many options to change your character, however, are still not present. The good news on the other hand is that they're beautifully implemented and the female characters are certainly worth looking at, as we're used in Asian MMOGs.

As the Kamael are at the center of this expansion we'll focus on this race and not the olders ones in this review. Their appearance is like a fallen angel thanks to their wings and looks. In the beginning there are only two classes to choose from, fighter and mystic. Later on you'll be able to specialise these in a certain direction and at level 75 more subclasses will become available to offer you the necessary variation as player. A difference with the other races is that they also much earlier can absorb souls from defeated monsters which can then be used for all kinds of attacks. Finally, the Kamael also have the possibility to transform normal weapons to Kamael arms with additional possibilities.

As with other MMORPGs the quests in the game are a story where you have to kill X amount of monsters or bring a certain object to someone. Don't expect too many of these though, especially not compared to the competition. The advantage of quests is that they help break the daily routine but most of the time you'll sadly enough have to grind.

The PvP part is still very important in Lineage 2. Compared to other MMORPGs you're never safe, not even in the starter area. This makes that you're constantly on guard and when suddenly a level 70+ player enters your area you won't be tempted to tell him where you are. For that it's also advised to quickly find a guild to join so that you can grind/quest together as the saying "the more the merrier" is certainly true here.

If you thought that PvP ends with this, you're wrong. In the world of Lineage 2 there are many castles that can be claimed by guilds and if you conquer one, you have power in the nearby surroundings and can get taxes. This makes them very popular and you'll often try to rush one with over 100 people.

While Lineage 2 isn't exactly a PvE game due to the small amount of quests, there are many raid bosses in the game. Giant dragons or undead warrior lords... they're all waiting to be defeated by a group of players.

You would think that over the years Lineage 2 starts to look old but with this free expansion NCSoft really surprised us here. The new city for the Kamael is a beautiful piece of architecture and the several new zones are a feast for the eye. You immediately notice that NCSoft takes their job very seriously with their top title. Also with the sound everything is quite alright, with atmospheric music and decent effects.

The in-game community is very friendly, players would give me items for free and whenever I had a question it would soon be answered by other people in the zone. Of course there are bastards that prefer nothing more than to constantly kill new players, but this you'll just have to live with if you play in a PvP-dominated world.