It's looking to be f2p, but there's still no word. Personally, I wish it becomes pay-once-play-forever with expansions, because f2p games never, ever get enough money to actually add any content worth a damn. And subscription models all fail because effectively no one wants to pay monthly for these types of games anymore.
RO was a game that was pretty cool. There's too much to say about what it did that others did not nor have done since. But essentially, it was a game with enormous, out of this world PvP, and playing was actually fun because it didn't have the whole, rotation and cooldown thing. Skills also had real power. It also had a sexy branching class system and branching skill trees you could invest skill points into. You also put points into stats. And equipment could be customized with different abilities as well. Just.. so many decisions you know. And everything has real impact. There's no hurr 3% more damage with X skill for the most part.
And there were no walls separating players, which is actually the best part. Even max level characters would come to low level zones because you always need something from some monster and befriend newbies. No auction house, so people would actually talk to each other and ask around for items. Though one class type, the merchant, could open up a player shop much like what an NPC would have, so you'd have large shopping districts in the heart of towns with tons of merchants selling their wares.
Anyway, instances? Didn't exist, everyone ventured through the world together. And because of how a large part of the game involved hunting monsters of all kinds all over the world, everywhere you went there were people playing. No "dead maps" where there's nothing of value so nobody goes there. Dungeons were lively as hell, you'd make so many friends as a newbie too right away because of it. Many times you'd end up with a big friendly party, and because people would spend so much time in the same place instead of just wandering along quest lines, groups became easily semi-permanent even with differences in time zones, rate of play and schedules.
Tree of Savior 101Simple, isometric action gameplay a la Diablo
Keyboard / Gamepad input, no mouse (but can be used for interacting with menus)
Eighty (!!!) classes at launch, many of which have unique features you wouldn't expect
For instance, Alchemists can open up portals and enter the inner world of items, clearing challenges to unlock the items potential and strengthen them (Yes, like Disgaea)
And the Centurion can create various infantry formations with his party members and actually control their movement alongside his own as if everyone was one entity.
The Squire can set up camp sites for his party to use as a base out in the field which boosts the effect of buffs, has a storage, can be returned to at any time, etc.
The Sorceror can insert cards dropped from boss monsters into her Grimoire, and summon the boss as a minion.
Which can also be mounted to tear shit up face-to-face.With 80 classes, you have pretty much every type of character ever represented (even odd things like a wood carving class, a shepherd, a taoist priest, puppeteer, an astral projector, pirate, it goes on and on and not all is revealed yet). And if not, you might be able to create the type of character you want to play anyway because...
Multiclassing! You can be up to a ridiculous 10 classes simultaneously I believe. You get to pick a new class every 15 levels, or you can pass on that and advance in your current class instead to unlock a few more skills, and increase the amount of points you can invest in the older skills to make them more powerful. However, you can only advance in the same class twice. So even 'specialists' in this or that class will end up with multiple classes around it.
You can allocate points into stats and skills as you level up
Little instanced content, seems like the majority is open to all simultaneously and bosses free for all
Sandbox exploration play viable alternative to quests / not all quests will even give you experience
Party oriented without the shitty dedicated tank-dps-healer trinity of roles nobody ever asked for.
Items have sockets + crafting system to customize your equipment
Pets can be used as mounts (reminder: mounted combat is a thing in this game and there are classes who specialize in that) or act much as a party member or suit other yet announced purposes.
I believe it was said there'd be 50~ bosses at launch.
