The name of the game itself, running in the background, sounded cheesy at first. Then the graphics, slightly only higher than that of Ragnarok Online, aren't exactly appealing either. Yet Magic World Online, or MWO, is interesting enough that I'm still logging in after some weeks.
The game is basically country versus country--Dynasty vs. Empire. Both countries have the same basic, self-explanatory classes--Warrior (Melee), Archer (Ranged), Mage (Nuker) and Summoner (Healer)--which later on go to detailed paths. The opposing countries can even buy each other's goods through the in-game Auction. Customization is also very minimal--only when you chance armor can you look different, and you have to shell out 50k gold to change hairstyle plus another 50k and a bottle of Plant Dye to change hair color. Equipments are also locked to their respective classes, so no Warriors in magic armor for anyone. Pets are available only for the Summoner class, while the mount system is for all classes and gives your character additional attributes once equipped.
As stated earlier, if you are looking for a graphics-heavy game, this game is not for you. MWO is, in a lot of ways, similar to Ragnarok Online: so-called 2-and-a-half-d graphics, grind-heavy in the later levels, and of course, botting. To paraphrase from their website, MWO is the only game that has a built-in bot. Of course this is not the case, since other games such as Granado Espada also have bots. The difference is that in the case of GE, the game would be insanely hard to play if you don't have a bot, since you are in control of three characters. In MWO, you can play it without a bot, only that it takes longer.
The problem with this built-in bot is that it raises some (I daresay) ethical questions in gaming. If technically the strongest contention against botting is that it is a third-party program or it only works when modifying the client, then with this built-in bot, it is made legal since it comes with the game itself. If botting is seen then as cheating--since law-abiding players in other games (where bots are illegal) do not use bots--then by providing the bot to everyone, no one would level up faster or gain the upper hand just because of a bot since everyone has access to it.
However, the drawbacks of botting already show. I can't play my Temple Warrior in MWO as well as my other characters in other games simply because I haven't had enough practice with it. There was once even an issue on Country Chat wherein a player complained of another player KS'ing her; yet since the KS'er was only a bot, no one can do anything about it except wait for the player to return and turn off the bot.
With the bot, too, multiple logging in of accounts are commonplace. In a thread in their official forums, there was a guide to getting rich, which explains how to setup farming characters that can farm at the same time. Since you can easily get rich in the game, the effectiveness of the newly-released item mall remains to be seen, as some item mall items can be obtained through normal means in-game.
MWO's Mount system, though, puts a little bit of manual work back in the game. Since mounts need to be leveled up through feeding before a player can ride it, and the feeding cannot be automated, to get a rideable mount you do need to play (or rather wait for your mount to go hungry). And since the food--or powders--needed by the mount come from item decomposition, which is also done manually, you do need to put in some hard work just to get a rideable mount.
All in all, though playable and quite enjoyable at first, MWO is nothing truly new in gaming; and despite challenging some ethical points of gaming itself, it still does bring some semblance of balance back in the game.
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