Atlantica Online

Atlantica Online is a Korean MMO from Ndoors. Like many of its kind, it is free-to-play as opposed to the subscription-based hits like EverQuest and World of Warcraft. Centered around the myth of Atlantis, the stage for this unique game is a Crossover Cosmology version of good ol' Terra.

Only three continents are accessible (no South America, Africa (though Egypt is included as part of Southwest Asia), Antarctica, and Australia) and provide various quests and classes based around the respective mythology.

Gameplay wise, it is completely different from other MMOs, instead of controlling a single character, players command up to nine in a turn-based combat system. The main character may choose one of nine classes (largely defined by their weapon) and recruit slightly less powerful mercenaries to fill his ranks. While the classes themselves are fairly simple, the combination and teamwork opportunities make for a deep and varied combat system.

Also, with an update a new combat system, the Turn-Based Strategy was introduced.

Outside combat, guilds can take control of various cities and form alliances.

The game was widely recognized as the most innovative game of its kind the year it arrived.

This game provides examples of the following tropes:

 * Action Bomb: Tons of enemies do this when at low health, especially wild animals. If they destroy themselves in this manner, not only do they do a ton of damage, but they don't count for Kill X quests, nor do they leave a corpse you can loot for your Loot Quest. Casting Silence on suicide prone enemies about to enter their turn with low health or Holy Guard on your front row helps stop this.
 * Actually Four Mooks: Rare MMO example where there can be up to nine monsters in a formation and you only see one before you challenge them.
 * Ambiguously Gay: "No, I'm sure the Cannoneer mercenary is referring to his weapon when he says he likes anything that's big!" (Not that there's anything wrong with that if he is!)
 * Anachronism Stew: It's been done and expected in the genre. Behold the Sheriff in ancient China (at 0:48).
 * Ancient Egypt: Plays a vital role in three major quests: The main story quest involving a feud between Isis and Seth, a sidequest which gives you the Anck Su Namun (Oracle), and Necropolis, which provides the player with a valuable accessory upon completion.
 * Annoying Arrows: There's an interesting combination currently in use in Atlantica Online that invokes this trope. The Hwarang, a bow-user who is weak but does heavy damage; the Prophet, a bow user of well-rounded stats; and an Empress, a mercenary who simply naturally hits often and hard with her bows. Placed together, they have a "firing squad" effect that does extreme damage if they all fire at a single target, due to the heavy firepower (bows are the highest-damage ranged weapon in the game) and potential to hit multiple times per attack (decided at random, helped by the Hwarang's passive magic explained previously).
 * The Princess and Punisher mercenary have magic that severely weakens bows, making them annoying at best if they fire often enough to stun the target.
 * Anti-Magic: Holy Guard. It will also remove any existing effects on the targets, such as Freezing Axe.
 * Anti-Poopsocking: The stamina system, until it was removed. It allowed players a set amount of battles against normal monsters without penalties, but it became marginalized to the point that it was recently removed completely. Instead, there are now various other limiting factors as well as some actions and boni that can only be used a certain number of times each day.
 * All Myths Are True: Any myth mentioned in the game has a quest line devoted to it.
 * Arrow Cam: There's a feature where, at random, the game's camera will get close up to a character as it's attacking or, more often, casting magic.
 * Awesome Yet Practical: This one of the features of item mall mercenaries Christine and Carmilla, they can easily do multiple hits, Christine has an AoE and a lockdown, while Carmilla's abilities all heal her in some way.
 * Badass Adorable: The witch looks so Moe, and yet she can also summon Meteors on your enemies.
 * Badass Army: Technically you can only use your main character plus eight mercenaries, but it doesn't stop people from using mercenary rooms (storing extra mercenaries) and switch them when needed thus creating a sort of army in emergencies or such.
 * Badass Beard: The viking sports a good one.
 * Blind Idiot Translation: "Oriharukon", anyone?
 * Apart from that incredible blunder (considering it's one of the main themes of the game), the translation is mostly fine, if a bit awkwardly worded at times.
 * Black Magician Girl: The witch mercenary with Meteor Strike. Female Staff mains also count.
 * Blatant Lies: The overworld enemy you engage is not always there in the actual battle. You can charge into a Hell Warrior on the overworld map and find not a single Hell Warrior in battle.
 * Blade on a Stick: The spear main, spearman, spartan, and guan yu all use spears as their weapons obviously applying this trope.
 * Bloodless Carnage: Your Spartan just leapt into the air and drove his spear into the enemy's chest? No blood! A big Scary Black Man with a chainsaw slices your entire party with an AoE attack? NO BLOOD! (The closest the game comes is a status ailment that features red particles.)
 * Averted with the Maniac's Storm Blast ability, which makes the enemy bleed visibly
 * Boring Yet Practical: Healers, you need them, they most of the time are support roles, but they keep your group alive.
 * Boss in Mook Clothing: After a certain level, special enemies start appearing randomly in ordinary groups that are almost as strong as bosses. Unsurprisingly, many players call them minibosses.
 * Breast Plate: Though this is rampant in most MMORPGs, many players are quick to note for some bizarre reason, ONLY the female melee characters are Stripperiffic. Ranged mains have fairly modest armour, and the robes for staff mains cover from head to toe.
 * Bribing Your Way to Victory: As a free-to-play MMO, AO makes money by offering various items that make the game much easier for real money.
 * It's a rare example where it's not game-breaking, though -- many of the cash items are easy enough to obtain in-game or duplicate with character skills, and you still need to be skilled at the game to win since few of the items actually give you the edge in battle. For example, one of the cash items lets you see how much HP the enemy has left, but the Artilleryman has a skill that does the same thing as one of its side-effects, and all enemies have a low health animation.
 * And you can buy these items for in-game money from another player... just be prepared to pay a lot of in-game money due to supply and demand.
 * In-game, there are a few quests where you can either earn a requested item the hard way (killing monsters) or just buy it off a nearby NPC for a steep, but manageable price.
 * Came Back Wrong: There's a sidequest in the Taj Mahal that centers around the NPC's love for his wife and attempts to bring her back to life because, after she died, he was too stricken with grief to live his life. However, she came back as an insane monster who tried to kill him against her will, and he sealed her in what becomes the boss chamber. Your task during the quest is to help him cope with his grief, and finally release his wife from her pain by killing her again.
 * Cap: The level cap is 140. Skills can be raised up to 70. You can do five random guild quests per day. Advanced Mercenaries have a limit of one per group. And so on.
 * There is also a level cap every 10 levels from 19 to 79 until you complete a specific quest in the main storyline.
 * Caps are so commonplace that the game now features a Diary that keeps track of them for you.
 * Capital City: Rome
 * Cast From HP: The Pirate has an attack magic that is cast from one of her companions'  HP. Hwarang and Punisher had such skills too, but this was fixed.
 * Chainsaw Good: The Punisher mercenary and the Powersaw Main.
 * Church Militant: The Lady Knight mercenary, aka Joan of Arc.
 * Combat Medic: Any staff user except the Witch and Elementalist. The Monk mercenary has healing, but he is there for stun prevention more than anything else.
 * Cool Bike: One of the cash shop mounts that can be obtained resembles a giant motorcycle.
 * Contractual Boss Immunity: All except the first bosses (and, past a certain point, mini-bosses) are immune to the Silence and Stun effects.
 * Crossover Cosmology: The myth of Atlantis is the thread that connects all the myths together here. Since mercenaries are also themed after them, a player's formation is often a good example of this, too.
 * Death From Above: Staff Main's Flame Blow, Witch's Meteor Strike, Bow Main's Arrow Cascade, and Punisher's Powersaw Raid.
 * Death Is a Slap on The Wrist: Usually. Before level 120, a player only stands to lose several hundred XP upon death (for reference, your average *attack* is worth more than that, and a kill will easily recover more than enough.) The aversion to this trope, however, is gold. You lose 10% of whatever gold you had on you, so you better not be taking hundreds of millions into dangerous areas. Further averted after level 120, when XP lost goes up over a million per death (much harder to make up at any level).
 * There is also the traveling aspect. You usually revive in the nearest town to where you died, but if you were several floors down a dungeon, it takes a while to go back there without a Teleport License. Worse is, however, dying in specific areas that require a key to enter (every time), which is the case for most bosses after around level 80. Depending on the specifics, it may take several millions of gold or a long time of grinding to get another key. Of course, the harder the boss tends to be, the more expensive the key will be on the market.
 * Deadly Upgrade: Monsters in the 120 dungeon, or Saloon as it's called, will get this when being killed for the first time. Needless to say, afterwards it gets... harder.
 * Also applies to the characters on the player's side, as with milestone levels (20, 50, 80, 100, 120, 130), characters have upgrades. Some of them are basic, like just improving stats, while others are gameplay-changing (extending the range of certain skills and/or allowing the class to learn more skills). Also, at level 100, players of all classes gain access to a secondary, powerful skill once they complete a related sidequest.
 * Dodge the Bullet: Can be invoked whenever a gun-class opponent is targeted by a magic that nerfs attack power or accuracy, or if gun-type enemies attack a player using the Deathproof buff (increases the player's defense by 50%; as a side-effect, splash damage nearly always misses).
 * Elemental Crafting: The game is pretty realistic about the materials used, but there is still a distinction of armor types even though they are usually crafted with the same materials.
 * Everything Fades: Enemy corpses stay around for four turns after their death. If they haven't been looted or resurrected by then, they will vanish.
 * Everything's Worse with Bears: Certain bear groups, and the druid mercenary who was the first A class mercenary. He's the little kid with the giant bear if you look in-game. And yes, they're that strong.
 * Everything's Better with Princesses: We have two choices: one is the Princess mercenary, and the other is the Empress mercenary. Can't tell which is the bigger royal jerk.
 * Exact Words: The Carmilla event for the international version. The company promised to give players a way to get the newest player created mercenary as an event. It required a huge quantity of an event item (777 just to get the mercenary with no upgrades or skill books included) that dropped quite rarely during random battles. Also, if players managed to get her books with event items they would be a no trade event item, which means it couldn't be used for anything else and were Lost Forever at the end of the event. Two weeks later, the same mercenary was made available in the item mall... for 50 USD (plus another 100 for the books and upgrade items). Players were, suffice to say, less than pleased.
 * NDoors has had a history of events that promised the chance to get something that can normally only be gotten from the Item Mall... neglecting to mention that the chance was so slim to be completely irrelevant. In many cases, a good chance could only be achieved using items from the Item Mall or buying them off other players. One particular example was the fishing event. Using special bait, players could catch various items, mostly tickets, which in turn could be used for various rewards. The big reward advertised took 1400 tickets to purchase. Without items from the Mall, players could fish for these items exactly once per day.
 * Fetch Quest: Quest NPCs will often ask for more or less common materials to make something, or even ask you to craft them. If you happen to have the materials on hand at the time, all the better. The next town to buy it usually isn't far either. The game even goes as far as asking you to do things as simple as selling an item on the market or looking up information. These quests serve as a reminder of the different things you can do.
 * Gaia's Vengeance: The Elementalist and Druid use the power of nature to their advantage.
 * Glass Cannon: The Pirate mercenary. Dual wielding and speedy AP recovery combined with less HP and defense than a Squishy Wizard.
 * Gone Horribly Wrong: The migration from Ndoors to Nexon was suppose to be "smooth", but as it turns out not the case. To begin around 1/2-6/10 of the people who did this couldn't do so because they never got the verification e-mail, it was resolved later on but the game started to act erratic for things such as missing item mall pickups, dropping down in PvP divisions for no reason, freezing item mall pickups etc...
 * Grandma, What Massive Hotness You Have!: Mercenaries age, but they don't show signs of it. By now if you played back in 2008 and still are then you have mercenaries age 90-100+ and yet...they look like their 20-30s maybe even still mid-late teens or in the witch's case a child.
 * Hand Cannon: The Artilleryman, Cannoneer, and Cannon Main all use literal hand cannons.
 * Haunted Castle: Bran Castle, home to Dracula, as well as the Shogun Castle of Death.
 * Healing Hands: The Shaman and Oracle are designated healers (though they do have other skills); the Minstrel and Monk also have healing skills, but are used mostly for their abilities to remove debuffs.
 * The Hero: Your main character has a pair of spinning circles around him indicating he is the Main Character, or Hero. He/she is a slightly stronger version of a class of mercenary. He tends to be a better fighter, and in most cases, with a good setup of hired support, can even tank under most circumstances, even if he's not a class known for tanking (any non-melee class), though this is risky: If the main character dies, even if other allied units are standing, you lose the engagement and are considered dead.
 * Hopeless Boss Fight: Several times, NPCs will send you into boss fights without the necessary Nerf items you need to beat them. You can tell when those are because the Quest Log says "Battle With X" instead of "Kill X". The most egregious example is the Punisher quest, which pits you against a Level 199 Enraged Frank Reade (the level cap is currently 140), outfitted with extremely good armor and weapons. You don't win that one; even if you can withstand his devastating physical attacks, his Power Saw Raid cuts your entire party to ribbons, ending the fight on the second turn.
 * There is one exception with a repeatable quest (in order to obtain a mercenary, it has to be done twice) which involves merely fighting a boss instead of killing him. The boss *is* beatable, but chances are you are a good bit too weak the first two times around. Eventually, the same boss has to be killed during the main storyline.
 * Horrible Judge of Character: The player is this, willingly performing quests for anyone who asks, no matter how shady.
 * And unlike other MMOs, we can't snark back at the NPCs.
 * Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: Female mercenaries tend to be smaller than males, though player characters of either gender end up in the middle. The most extreme examples are the bulky Viking and the Token Mini-Moe Witch.
 * The new Punisher Mercenary is even bigger than the Viking.
 * Internet Tough Guy: It's the internet; practically a given.
 * Item Crafting: Atlantica Online offers a large number of different crafting skills. Guilds can also set up guild crafting, which allows all guild members to work on an item (or several) together. The crafting process is presented by a workload attribute. Workload is created primarily through combat.
 * Immune to Bullets: There are a few enemies, such as the Ruler of Evil and Chief Prison Guard in Devil's Forest, that are inexplicably immune to basic attacks from guns and bows (but not cannons). Also, the cannon is the only non-melee weapon unable to hit flying units with its standard attack.
 * Keystone Army: Bosses and main characters (both have a special circle around them) act like this, with any remaining units either running away (PvE) or dying instantly (PvP) when the leader goes down. Also, most Turn-Based Strategy missions are accomplished by killing the enemy boss.
 * Oddly enough, averted for players in TBS mode. Some missions have you protect an NPC or building instead.
 * Kill It with Fire: Flame Blow and Meteor Strike are the best and second best magic in the game in terms of sheer damage.Add to that that in TBS all Fire magic turns the tiles the enemies are standing in a damaging fire tile, and you have yourself a One Hit KO.
 * Leaked Experience: While new recruits start out at low levels, this trope comes in various forms. Group play causes all experience to be divided rather evenly over all combatants, and new people arriving in a guilds town reward experience to all guild members formations. Quests also award experience evenly when completed, regardless of whether the active mercenaries actually had anything to do with completing the objective.
 * Level Grinding: As stated above, new recruits always start out at lower levels and require some training (or experience by other means) to catch up. Otherwise, completing quests too fast may require a few extra levels of grinding before you can continue with the main quest line.
 * Made interesting by the fact that you and up to eight (not counting inactive ones) mercenaries have separate EXP bars. All newly-hired mercenaries start at level 1, meaning not only is it possible that your team is going to not be the same level across the board, it's extremely likely. This is okay, to a certain extent, but if a player lets his team levels vary too wildly the lower levels will get butchered in combat. The interesting part is that it inspires a careful balancing act, making sure never to deprive any one mercenary of kills/EXP for too long. It also forces careful consideration before adding a new mercenary later on, especially more than one at a time.
 * Light'Em Up: Staff main's Evanescent Scud, and Lady Knight's Light Slash.
 * Loading Screen: Get ready to see this a lot; every area requires a loading screen upon entry.
 * Loads and Loads of Characters: Basically every few months we get one more mercenary, that most people might just add to their formation just for the hell of it.
 * The Mafia: Paganini, aka the Minstrel mercenary, was formerly a member of the Detroit Mafia. You also fight Mafioso in the Detroit area itself as monsters/bosses.
 * Mana Drain: The Witch's mana drain.
 * Memetic Hand Gesture: The Druid gives his bear a bro fist.
 * Mighty Glacier: Vikings and Punishers in build and stats (though both are weak against magic). Most sword-users in stats, but not necessarily size.
 * Monster Compendium: The game practically has an in-game library of everything. The monster part is interesting in that fighting a particular monster gives you a chance of receiving part of its Info, divided into General, Location and Items. Parts can be traded between players and can be required for a quest. Owning complete information allows you to get extra items from slain monsters of that type. Monster information also allows you to deal extra damage while taking less damage from monsters.
 * Now there is an even further, 4th Origin Info for monsters.
 * Multishot - The Empress has an attack animation that shows her shooting two arrows in rapid succession; it only counts as one attack, but it looks really cool.
 * Murphy's Law: For every new patch that adds content there are always somethings that will go horribly wrong; the community seems to have adjusted to this.
 * My Death Is Just the Beginning: Staff mains and Shamans can learn Noble Sacrifice: When below 35% health they can sacrifice themselves to do a heal over time (and defense boost) for three turns to an entire formation. Works great sometimes for shamans... for staff mains its either this or most of the time this.
 * The Hwarang has Hwarang's Fury, an offensive version that boosts attack power instead.
 * My Rules Are Not Your Rules: Monsters tend to have zero to one special magic per variety, so to even the odds, the game gives the AI some special powers. Different monsters have access to magic that the player does not, or if they have familiar magic, they get bonuses to it. For example, it takes the player three turns to charge up Brutal Will or Seth's Will, magics that your healers can cast that increases the attack power and combo rate of mercenaries affected, at the cost of lowered defense and being unable to control where they attack. Many animals, however, can use that magic on their first or second turn, giving them a distinct advantage in combat.
 * There are also cases where the very nature of certain monsters is strange, hindering the player's ability to fight it. For example, there's a high level monster that is treated as simultaneously an axe-wielder and a ranger, allowing it to strike the middle row of the player's formation, and strike the entire row; however, it's immune to the Elementalist's magics, which target melee characters. (Axe-specific nerfs do work, however.)
 * All bosses (and some other monsters) are also immune to stuns and freezing and mostly ignore the rules concerning action power, enabling them to act pretty much every turn if alone, even with poison affecting them.
 * New Game+: After hitting level 100 with a character, the player has the option to create a level 1 chainsaw character with many strengths and no apparent weaknesses.
 * There is one small weakness that they do have, and that is that their weapon, a Power Saw, does not come naturally from boxes. Therefore, they must be crafted or bought, which can cost quite a bit of money.
 * They're also weaker to magic attacks than other physical classes, but their high HP tends to make up for that in the long run.
 * No Arc in Archery: Played straight; arrows fly directly to the target, through other (unaffected) enemies in the formation, if need be.
 * Noob Cave: The short non-returnable Dream's Other Side is a tutorial level. After that is the returnable Forest of Spirits, which is a warm-up dungeon proper complete with a warm-up boss.
 * Older Than They Look: By now most people should have mercenaries and characters who are stated in-game age to be 60+, they still look the same as the day you recruited/hired/bought them.
 * There are also items that decrease the age of the user.
 * Handwaved away by stating that the main character, being an Atlantian is somehow immortal, therefore your mercenaries are immortal as well.
 * Also averted at the same time in the fact that mercenaries can be sent into retirement once they hit a certain level while still exchanging items with the main character via mail. Once old enough, the letters simply stop coming.
 * One Man Party: Played in both versions; it's entirely possible for a single unit, or type, to either rocket ahead or fall behind in XP. There are ways of correcting it, but depending on the severity it can be rather expensive.
 * Player Mooks: Mercenaries hired by the player.
 * Pop Quiz: There are quests that requires you to answer about some of the game's features as well as background. Albeit many of the keywords are highlighted in different colors or said by the previous NPC they spoke to, many of these questions are still often asked in peer or guild chats by new players.
 * Also, wealthy players may create quiz rooms to share some of their riches with whomever gives the correct/wittiest answers.
 * Power Glows: Moderately enchanted weaponry glows orange. Highly enchanted weaponry glows blue. Maximally enchanted weaponry glows red with some other special visual effects.
 * The Power of Rock: Two things. One, you can choose a musician class when you roll a new character, a class with low attack power and defense but music-themed magics like Ravaging Melody and Requiem. The guitar weapon sounds like an electric guitar when attacking. (The Minstrel has similar sound effects, but the Vampire merc subverts this by making it sound like a more acoustic instrument.) The second example is the combat music; there are six music files pertaining to combat. One plays at random when a fight begins. At least two of the six feature guitar-heavy rock numbers.
 * Powerup Mount: The thoroughbred horses.
 * PVP-Balanced: Some skills which are essentially useless in PvE are given massive nerfs in PvP because they would be too powerful. Additionally, the damage done by skills and attacks in ranked PvP is very different from that done in war PvP.
 * The Quest: And how. The game is primarily quest-driven, which thankfully reduces (not eliminates) the need for painful grinding. Also, many side quests can be reset with the proper License, which provides extra XP, or something to do to keep your mind off of grinding at least.
 * Rebellious Princess: The Princess mercenary.
 * Revive Kills Zombie: Enemies of the "Cursed" type get hurt if hit by healing magic, and regain health if hit by dark-type magic (Silence, Dark Seed, Hex and such). The secondary effects are not reversed; Silence will still prevent them from casting magic and so on.
 * Riding Into the Sunset: The main character does this at the end of every quest line. In the case of the main story, it's off to the next quest and NPCs, with side quests it's left open as to where you're going.
 * Scary Black Man: The Punisher mercenary, who is 7.5 feet tall, carries a BIG chainsaw, and is quite resistant to physical damage. Nothing scary about him at all.
 * Related: Frank Reade, the Punisher, is implicated in a murder he didn't commit.
 * Shield-Bash: The Odysseus mercenary can perform this as a magic skill. It incapacitates one enemy for a set period, acting similar to stun effects.
 * Shoot the Medic First: In both PvP and PvE, it's either this or keeping them silenced/sealed.
 * Stripperiffic: As guilty as any other MMORPG. Just take a look at the default armor and Divine armour for females... and that's just the start.
 * Tournament Arc: Every Saturday, there's a weekly tournament where the strongest PvPers from your server duke it out. On Sunday, it's in Titan where the strongest from all servers duke it out.
 * Token Mini-Moe: The witch mercenary. Subverted in that this cute, high-pitched merc has two distinct advantages: She can fly, making her impossible to physically attack with melee characters, and can drop meteors on the enemy formation.
 * Turns Red: All fighters, both humans and monsters, start to stagger or otherwise show signs of weakness when they have less than one third of their HP left. Many skills can only be used in this state, and bosses tend to spam their most powerful magic when under 50% HP.
 * Twenty Bear Asses: As an MMORPG, this is standard fare and expected. Non-quest specific items are sometimes asked for so it crosses over with Give Me Your Inventory Item.
 * Violence Really Is the Answer: A side quest in the Yggdrasil area features a Technical Pacifist as the go-to NPC. During one quest, she tells you that "too much violence has occurred already" and "she doesn't want to do more harm... would you please persuade the gnomes to go home?" What do you have to do to complete the quest? Kill 40 gnomes.
 * Wake Up Call Boss: Boss monsters after the Bran Castle stage stop being vulnerable to stun or freezing, which prevent it from moving. Bosses after Yggdrasil become immune to regular silence (target can't use magic) as well, making it more difficult to prevent them from using their more powerful skills against you.
 * A far earlier example could be the Hellish Fairy at the end of the first dungeon. Up to that point, you could probably just continuously attack and win. The Hellish Fairy has a powerful magic attack that targets the entire party. If you don't take her down fast, she can easily wipe out your party. She can be taken down quite easily with Scrolls of Vortex, but new players likely won't think of that.
 * White-Haired Pretty Boy/White-Haired Pretty Girl: Due to the new pegasus equipment, your character's hair acutally turns white now.
 * You Have Researched Breathing: After some quests, you are awarded the ability to sit down and rest. A bit later, you gain the ability to command all your active mercenaries to search for loot with one click, rather than ordering each one separately.
 * Also the ability to Auto-Craft, as opposed to generating workload through combat.
 * Younger Than They Look: As per the Older Than They Look trope up top, there are other times when mercenary ages do not match, such as how a monk is always an old man in appearance, but sometimes the age setting says they're 15-22, depending on how long he's been in the party.
 * Zettai Ryouiki: Most of the female mercenaries, especially the basic Archer mercenary.
 * See Also: Lady Knight, Elementalist, Gunner