I think I tried Mabinogi back when it was in OB in the US, and again maybe... two years ago? I remember there being lag issues that made anything combat that involved anything more than trading blows impossible and, the second time, it felt very grindy and showing signs of abandonment. Would you say that things have changed since then and it's okay for a semi-casual MMOer?
Okay, for the lag? You'll probably have to disable the Nagle Algorithm. Pretty much everybody in our guild has done it, and unless you are on a VERY limited bandwith cap, it's probably not going to do a thing to your internet, except imrpove the speed. A guide is
here. I personally have done it, and have reported no ill effects. It's not as vital as it used to be, but it's still a good thing to do. The recent combat update also made combat a little less lag critical, as load times are very quick, so if you briefly lag while something is running at you, you can still get a defensive skill off. It's possible that some of this was also a sign of not being familiar with the depth of the combat system, which is not very well explained at all. I'd be happy to help with that, along with most other people in the steam chat. I'd say it's a decent casual MMO? You can basically leave it alone and still progress, as you get AP, so if you have to go and do something else for a week, you can at least come back toa bit of AP. And more importantly, since the beta, free rebirths are an option, which makes it far less grindy. It resets your level, and allows you to gain more AP from it. My advice in general, however, is to not get too worried about having an amazing character, because that'll just happen once you get familiar with combat, along with over time. It is a grindy game, but it's not like.... agressively grindy I guess? You can get exp doing pretty much anything, so you just go around and... do stuff you wanna do. If you try to min-max the game, yeah, you'll end up bored.
EDIT: Oh also, most dungeons are fairly long, so you should expect that if you wanna do more then one. If you're only gonna be around for a short period of time, you probably should check the length before you jump in. And if you have any more specific questions, hop in the steam chat, I'm in there a lot of the time, because I spend too much time on the internet.
Watching this thread keeps making me want to play Mabinogi again D:
How can I unsubscribe? T_T (looks at updated topics list) There's no way~
Do iiiiit, ya know you wanna.