Ether Saga Online

We've been used to seeing loads of free insipid asian MMORPG released every two months. Sometimes, one game steps above the others. The previous one that attracted my attention was Holic Online. Now it's a Chinese WOW-like named Ether Saga Online. It seems really pollished and complete. Though, be aware that if you're allergic to kawaii mangas, you'd better not look at following screenshots :)

Character creation screen

The character creation is quite simple, WOW-like, with 3 races and 6 classes. Though, note some interesting features :

• first you start directly with a pet (ok it's a pink cat, but it's still a pet!)
  
• you enter a birth date and an astronomical sign that will give you special feats

Main game screen

As you can see, it's definitely not a quick and dirty MMORPG. 3 actions bars with bindings to either 1..7, Alt-1..Alt-7 or F1..F7 keys, a pretty complex minimap with autowalk feature to easily follow the path to a far destination. Even the characters widgets are far from basic, and look at the pet widget. The pet is definitely not some kind of foil that can only follow you. It has his own stats, actions and RPGish evolution as seen on the detailed pet screen :

Pet screen

The crafting system, while not as rich as star wars galaxies or Ryzom, seems to be interesting too. You can add new sockets to your gear and embed gems in them to improve their characteristics.
You can gain skills either through Ethyr (artifact you get from quests or monsters) or Nascent skills (when you level up) depending on your birth date.

Skills screen

Another interesting feature with skills is that you can automatically chain skills by saving the sequence in a macro. You can also gain transformation cards that allow you to transform into a wide list of pokemon-like critters...

So if you're interested go and try it. It's free !