I didn't realize that this game died but it makes sense. (Wait... after some research I found out that the console versions are still alive... wow)

It's an old mmo that only had 2 good points: the waifu character designs (which honestly was the only thing keeping this game alive for so long) and the best part of this game: the action combat system.

It's combat mechanics were what kept me playing until I hit max level. I even got the platinum. I played a support character (I believe I was a female high elf priest named Faraine) and carried in every dungeon I played with randoms. I basically played this as if it were a single player game.

Almost every other part of this game was bad and janky. The story missions were boring and repetitive, the cutscenes were awful, just navigating the menus felt bad and the world, while huge and varied, was an empty wasteland most of the time, specially on higher level areas. Just playing the dungeons is the best way to "have fun" with this game, and even then they sometimes glitched out, making them impossible to clear.

This game had potential, and I guess I enjoyed my time with it... though I do have a high tolerance for bad games and this definitely was the worst mmo I've played.

Sit down son, I'm going to tell you a great story.

TERA was a precursor of action based MMOs, ahead of its time, TERA said farewell to the old classic tab target system. Missing or hitting a target wasn't a result of mathematical operations between statistics anymore, instead TERA emphasized the actual skill of players. Spacing abilities, dodging manually in reaction of animations properly synced with hitboxes, using the camera to keep track of your opponent's movement, simply put everything was up to the player, a blissful feeling of freedom sublimed with the absence of GCD.

In other words, TERA elevated PVE to something more than just a knowledge check, learning abilities rotations and dungeons' strategies alone would not suffice. As for the PVP, it was hectic but a lot of fun, one could experience it through a wide variety of PVP mode, and all of them were easy to grasp yet hard to master. Among those, the Corsair's Stronghold is one of the most memorable PVP mode, a 20 VS 20 battleground with objectives and even tanks, but also had the great idea to equalize gears aka ilevel for all participants.

Like any live service which survived this long through time, TERA had multiple era.

Maybe you were a pioneer and you were there during the Argon's introduction leading to the beautiful fight against Shandra Manaya. Perhaps you had the chance to live and experience the 20 men Kelsaik raid, in which you had to switch between ice and fire debuff by purposely getting hit by the right attack. Maybe both Manaya and Kelsaik are just milestones during the main quest, and not the grand fights they used to be, instead, maybe the name Wonderholme rings a bell, I remember the days we used to bet money during the final boss fight, to see which person would fail using iframes in order to dodge the global AOEs one-shot. Maybe you were there when they added the Reaper, Ninja or Valkyrie class.

Or maybe you were more into PVP, from the Corsair's Stronghold, to the 3 VS 3 battles, all the way to the 1 on 1 dual outside Velika at the usual spot (if you know, you know). Perhaps you remember the time we used to have a region based ranking for Corsair's Stronghold, I distinctly remember the day I reached 11th on Europe ranking it filled me with so much joy, eventually they removed it and introduced the 3 alliances, which led to grand scale PVP battles with hundreds of people.

Or maybe you simply didn't play TERA, or not long enough to understand a word I'm saying right now.

The important thing to remember is that, everyone is entitled to an opinion as to when TERA chose the wrong path and eventually died, yet everyone who experienced the gem that was this game will likely be grateful forever. And that's because, talking about everything TERA did wrong would take hours, but talking about everything TERA did great would take days.

To some people it will sound stupid, but in my opinion, between an album photo and a folder full of screenshots, there is no difference. It reminisces me of places I visited, people's face I crossed paths with, looking back on those memories give me a wide range of emotion, from happiness to sadness and in everything in between.

In conclusion, despite what certain private servers or even the so called TERA Classic would say, TERA is dead, and what remains are those memories.

Farewell TERA, we will miss you.