Lineage 2



"Gran Kain shouted with great pride to all the world and instilled spirit into the creatures of his own image. However, the result was terrible. His creatures were weak, stupid, sly, and cowardly. All the other gods despised Gran Kain's creatures. Overcome by the shame of his failure, Gran Kain abandoned his creatures and went into hiding for a time. These creatures are called humans."

But later... "So. Is it not ironic that the lowest creatures of all, the humans, ultimately attained ownership of the land? But that is the result of human will. Even the gods did not imagine that humans would ever become rulers of the earth."

A MMORPG by NCsoft and sequel to Lineage. Not as well known as World of Warcraft but enough to get someone to list its tropes.

The setting is quite original, yet the game is Better Than It Sounds, having started in 2003-2004 and is still going strong.


 * Action Girl / Badass: Seriel, the blonde female elf with the sword in the many trailers for the game.
 * A God Am I - Beleth. Cue the ominous music.
 * Also, Bishops' get Turn Undead which reads "The undead cower and flee as you reveal your divine nature".
 * Alien Sky - As of the latest installment, thanks to the Weird Moon with
 * Anti-Poopsocking - Vitality Points, introduced with the 8th expansion pack... about time!
 * BFS - Two-handed swords
 * Blade Brake - Seen in one of the minimovies / trailers for the game. See here
 * Bishonen - Elves, dark elves, and human mystics are these.
 * Blinding Bangs - One of the Dwarf females hairstyle options.
 * Chronic Backstabbing Disorder - Humans, at least historically. See Humans Are the Real Monsters below.
 * Competitive Balance
 * Glass Cannon—The Kamael and most Dark Elves
 * Stone Wall—Temple Knights and Paladins.
 * Squishy Wizard—Sorcerers, Spellhowlers, Spellsingers, Necromancers, and the three kinds of Summoners.
 * Magic Knight—Mostly Soul Breakers, but Orc mages have a shade of this. Also, see the Magic Knight listing below.
 * Fragile Speedster—Daggers and Archers, and most Kamael
 * Copy and Paste Environments - All castles from Aden look the same, except one. The castles in Elmore, however...
 * Critical Hit - Dagger wielders are based on these, they have passive abilities to increase the chance and damage of critical hits which also affect their main damaging abilities (as they're criticals themselves).
 * Cute Bruiser - Female dwarves and human-summoned cats.
 * Cuteness Overload - Dwarf Females Girls. Especially when performing their emotes. This was deliberate, as NC Soft designed the dwarf girls to appeal to their Japanese fanbase.
 * Dual-Wielding - Fist weapons and Dual swords are always this. Dual swords play this in an odd way; they're a pair of compatible swords that go through an irreversible magical joining process. Besides the fact that they used to be two different swords, for all purposes dual swords are a kind of their own. Anyone can dual wield if they want to, but...
 * It's required for the Gladiator / Duelist and Blade Dancer / Spectral Dancer classes for them to use their skills.
 * Also, Orc Tyrants, as all their skillsets require the use of fist weapons.
 * Dual daggers were later added to the game, and now the dwarven Scavenger/Bounty Hunter classes can use them.
 * Even the Guys Want Him - Male Human warriors and male Dark Elves.
 * Evil Laugh - Male Dark Elves, Male Kamael, Frintezza and Beleth.
 * Evil Tower of Ominousness - Tower Of Insolence, expy of the Tower of Babel. Baium is locked at the top due to his attempted Rage Against the Heavens.
 * Floating Continent - Gracia, thanks to
 * Glass Cannon - The Kamael, and the Dark Elves as well. Somewhat subverted by the ability of the Elder, Shillen Elder and Bishop classes to become living Holy Hand Grenades AND heal (though, not at the exact same time. The aptly named Inquisitor transformation prevents that so it can't be abused -in theory.)
 * God Save Us From the Queen - Einhasad. Heck, she sent fire and lightning to the Titans when she discovered that they began creating new life forms, until she almost wiped them all.
 * Her husband is Gran Kain, the God of Darkness and Destruction, and she is supposed to be the Goddess of Creation. But Even Evil Has Standards and Gran Kain can often be found trying to defend people from her, or calling her out for her behaviour.
 * Hidden Elf Village - Actually all starter towns are hidden villages. Especially Talking Island, where human characters start.
 * HP to One - Lethal blows do this. You'd think they'd be One Hit Kills instead.
 * Humans Are the Real Monsters - After being taught magic by the elves to defeat the orcs, they betrayed them and made them retreat to their home forest where they still live nowadays. Oh, and dark elves are dark due to an incident with a human named Dasparion....
 * Its what they get for enslaving and using them as cannon fodder.
 * Then they did it all over again with the Orc-Dwarf war, betraying the Dwarves to the Orcs, then betraying the Orcs by turning on them.
 * Item Crafting - Artisans, Warsmith and Maestros can do this.
 * Jerkass Gods - Gran Kain is the God of Darkness and Destruction who once upon a time had a relationship with Shilen, his own daughter; he is the reasonable one. From his point of view its just his job to be something of a dick, but he has to restrain his wife Einhasad- The Goddess of Creation- in particular from her jealous fits of rage that tend to result in an awful lot of smiting the innocent. Shilen, who bore the brunt of her mothers hate for the incest and was banished (over her dads protests, no less), is about as messed up as you'd expect and is probably more of an actual threat to the world than her dad (though maybe less than her mum).
 * Kill It with Fire, Kill It with Water and Blow You Away - As part of a theme, Nukers and Buffers get fire, water and air themed abilities; that is, the human classes Sorcerer and Prophet get fire, the elven classes Spellsinger and Elder get water and the dark elven classes Spellhowler and Shilen Elder get air. Naturally, the Squishy Wizard's abilities are these.
 * Left Justified Fantasy Map
 * Level Grinding - Present in this game. Specially in earlier versions.
 * Mad Scientist - The Giant race were implied to be this, performing experiments on the lesser races  and the use of Magic From Technology to turn most of them into cyborg-like creatures. There are quite a few of the Dwarves who are also this, notably the aptly named Dr. Chaos.
 * Magic Knight - Blade Dancers, Dark Avengers, Paladins, Shillen Templars, Soul Breakers and Sword Singers. The Elvish Temple Knight was originally planned to be something like this, but it just didn't happen.
 * Also achievable by some of the Summoner classes, and weirdly, a few Elven Elders have been known to do this, wielding daggers or dual swords, meleeing outright, then stepping back to heal. A certain Elder once of Kain server was particularly known for this.
 * The Prophet class tries to be the classic Magic Knight (Being the one class in the entire game with masteries for all kinds of armor, including heavy) with shades of Church Militant but fails because they have no attack spells. Played somewhat straighter, by a number of the Warlock class, and some Elven Elders, as noted above.
 * Magitek / Magic From Technology - The lost technology and skills of the Giant race, its' remnants, and the Dwarvish attempts to rediscover Absolute Geometry.
 * Ninja Run - Dark Elves running animation.
 * Ominous Latin Chanting - Featured a number of times throughout the game, becoming more frequent with the game heading toward the Not surprising given the composers for the game: Bill Brown, Inon Zur, and Jaime Christopherson.
 * Some of the tracks of the game even have metadata, revealing titles such as Apocalyptic Divine Evil, Fury of the Victims and Divine Right of Demons.
 * One-Winged Angel - Subverted at least in name: The Kamael race are one-winged all the time, until they obtain their Final Form and grow the other wing.
 * Orchestral Bombing - Especially fighting Valakas, and even more literally since the Gracia installments.
 * Our Dragons Are Different - Though they are generally Western in style, there is a large variety of them and they have some Eastern influences, with different dragons being tied to certain elements of nature. The most well-known one, Antharas the green earth dragon, is one of the end-game bosses.
 * Our Dwarves Are All the Same - Male dwarves, anyway.
 * Our Elves Are Better - Only in their Glory Days. Nowadays, They have no problem marrying humans and having children with them. Actually, Heine is supposed to be populated mostly by Half-Elves.
 * Our Orcs Are Different - and how!
 * Patchwork Map - Seriously, just look at this.
 * Petting Zoo People - As if the 6 playable races weren't diverse enough, there are several types of Lizard Folk, ratmen, lion people, hyena people, and a tauren-like NPC race.
 * Apparently, the cute cats that the human Warlocks summon are also a race, and their capital city is called Arcan
 * Player Versus Player - Works like this:
 * A player's name is white (default), purple or red.
 * Attacking a white or purple player makes you purple. Attacking (or even killing) a red charater does nothing, but there's a reason to attack one besides the thrill of battle, see below.
 * killing a purple player simply increases your PVP counter and not much else.
 * Killing a white character causes you to turn red (no, not that trope), increases your PK counter and increases your karma meter (normally it's 0, and increases even if you were already red), as long as you have karma you'll be red, you reduce your karma by gaining experience from monsters or you die, the amount of karma you get increases as your PK counter increases.
 * Most importantly, as long as you're red (and, as of Chronicle 3, have a PK counter of 5 or more) you have a chance to drop any of your items (equipable included) if you're killed by players (and increased chance if killed by monsters). This more or less makes you into a piñata for other players to bash. There's a quest to reduce your PK counter which provides an useful safeguard against this.
 * Power Floats Will be available to casters of all types after the Awakening. Video examples here, here and here
 * Prestige Class, called second class transfer, then there's third class transfer
 * Puny Earthlings - Elves were created by Shilen, from water; Orcs were created by Pa'agrio, from fire; Dwarves were created by Maphr, from earth... and so on. Humans, on the other side, were created by Gran Kain, God of Darkness and Destruction from the leftovers of other races: stagnated water, unfertile soil, ashes and violent winds. Really.
 * Of course in the end, the humans are on top.
 * Purely Aesthetic Gender - Subverted by the Kamael race, whose females got different base stats.
 * Quad Damage - Soulshots and Spiritshots, the former for Physical attacks and the latter for magic, they're divided by grade and consumed depending on weapon, though people may b buying them in the thousands.
 * Rain of Blood - As of the latest installment, every night. Followed by a Fog of Doom. Caused by
 * Ridiculously Cute Critter - Any of the Baby Pets, Hatchlings, Cat Summons, and even the little dinosaur pet. The Dwarf females are this as well.
 * Really Seven Hundred Years Old - Female dwarves. Some of the female dwarf NPCs, who look somewhat more mature, but still don't look much older than twenty-ish. Any of the other races are also implied to be this, but it's outright stated by the Elves and Dark Elves.
 * Jewel, a Dark Elf NPC, recalls once dancing with the Elves under the starlight  - which can be anywhere from hundreds to thousands of years ago. And then there's the elf, Lilith, on Talking Island, waiting for her lover Teon. After a thousand years of waiting, she learns that he died only a few years ago, living in the human town just a short
 * Scenery Porn - Ivory Tower, Rune Township, Aden Castle, Hellbound...Anywhere in Lineage II's world, really. Even late newcomers to the game are astounded at the sheer amount of detail that was put in, both in the costumes and the landscape.
 * Shoot the Medic First: The mobs have a aggro engine that determines if a player character is the active healing support of an party, and usually go for them, ignoring the damage dealers.
 * Players usually kill the enemy healing members first in a PVP.
 * Soul Jar - a literal item for use by the Kamaels (who use it to power their skills and magic), the subject of a few quests otherwise.
 * Starter Villain - Nemertess and Sakum.
 * Super Soldier - The Kamael race were created by the giants for this purpose.
 * The Scourge of God - Einhasad, Goddess of Light, punished a human who befriended a dark elf by turning him a hideous demon. Take That, power of friendship.
 * The Scrooge - Dwarves
 * The Medic - Bishops, Elders and Shilen Elders.
 * Secret Test of Character - Various parts of Class Change quests are this.
 * Status Buff - Many classes get this, but Prophets, Shilen Elders and Elders are classes specialized in this, in that order of specialization.
 * Stripperific, Ms. Fanservice, Breast Plate - Female Dark Elves. And to a (much) lesser degree, female Elves, Orcs and Kamael. The higher the levels you go though, the more true this is for every female type. Especially noticable for the Human females and the Noble Vesper and Moirai heavy armor sets for the dwarf girls.
 * Summon Magic - Elves summon Unicorns, Dark Elves summon Demons and human summoners can summon... cats.
 * Human Necromancers summon undead.
 * Turns Red - Some warriors have a passive skill that increases their attack when at low health points.
 * And most epic bosses.
 * Also, various "critical" abilities from weapons net you bonuses at low health.
 * The Underworld - Prior to  The increase of the population of the dead during the Great Flood increased her dominion.
 * The Unfavourite - Shilen, goddess of water, was exiled when her mother Einhasad found out that she was pregnant due to a secret affair with her father.
 * Volcano Lair - The Forge of the Gods, where the Fire Dragon Valakas resides.
 * You Gotta Have Blue Hair - Chronicle 2 introduced these for Elves (blue and pink, actually), human mages (green) and female Dwarves.
 * Walk It Off - How much you regain depends on wether you're running, walking, standing still or sitting. Some abilities also change this.
 * Warp Whistle - Scrolls of Escape. Also the Return and Party Recall spells. Summon Friend and Gate Chant for the Summoners and the higher level Orc Doomcryers will teleport one character holding a Summoning Crystal, and a full party, respectively, to different places on the whole map.
 * We Buy Anything - Anything which isn't a quest item or a newbie item.
 * Weird Moon - The usual moon becomes red and has a burning eye open if the Servants of Dusk win the twice-weekly battle for the Seals of Shilen; when Dawn wins the moon turns green and the eye is visible but closed. joined permanently by the
 * What Could Have Been - The hot new P2P MMO TERA Online was developed using what would have been Lineage 3's source code, apparently by a group of devs who split off from the company. While the release build of TERA has keyboard hack-and-slash gameplay it's hard to determine if L3 would have gone that way or stuck to the series' roots.
 * Wretched Hive - In-story, Floran Village is this (although it looks more like a ghost town). Red players go here when they respawn, there's no gatekeeper in town and none lend here.
 * Your Soul Is Mine - Kamael have the ability to take the souls of monsters they kill, using them to power their abilities.