Community of Lineage 2

Lineage 2's community is its largest weakness, and this resonates through all aspects of gameplay. The game, produced in Korea, expects a collectivist audience with the ability and drive to work together. In the Western world, where we hold individualism above community, players have a hard time meeting many of the game's goals which require teamwork, especially when competing against an abundance of bots and Chinese farmers.

Lineage 2 promotes competition between players and clans, and this intentional strife makes for a cutthroat and dishonorable community. Upper-end items are ridiculously rare, and too many players will scam, hack, PK, and grief to obtain them, or buy adena using real-world currency which only serves to further skew the market.

Where there are buyers, there are also sellers; many farmers, some live and some botted, infect the landscape of Lineage 2, pushing players out of good locations in dungeons and some aboveground hunting locations. Even more traumatic to the game, players barely have a chance to access one of the most important parts of upper-end content, raid bosses, as farmers have them targeted and killed within minutes of their spawn. Poor planning on NCSoft's part, this means that many players cannot progress in key quests that require them to kill or at least attack a raid boss.

Farmers aren't the only ones using bot programs; also due to the difficulty of the game and "the grind," many players set up illegal 3rd party programs such as bots. Many players own two accounts, one account with a damage dealer or tank type character which they play live and one account with a healing and support class which they bot. This method of progressing is the most efficient, as players don't have to share experience or item drops with each other, but it also detracts from the game community and alienates live support classes.