Many new MMORPGS are bringing innovative ideas to the whole MMORPG genre. However, there's always the thought that after a MMORPG goes live, it will literally stop being popular when many people try it out and feel that they played it before. Anyhow, it's certainly true that when a new MMORPG adds a at least one new appealing feature, even when it has the same concept than the rest of MMORPGS, it will have some kind of hype and popularity for a while.

That's why, there are some online games that are trying be a sort of different, by the addition of a new feature called 'living skills', which are a mix of real life abilities and gaming skills. This introduces a whole brand new concept of online gaming which is followed by another feature like the fact that classes or professions do not exist. Plus, these games give us the option to choose what kind of abilities and skills we want to train. Practically, after this brief introduction, it's pretty much noticeable what games are we talking about. If MABINOGI and N.E.O online came to your mind, then you weren't wrong .Being both competitors in this life skills battle, we will try to show which is better when it comes to games which offer freedom and many customization options. So, let's have a deep look into this life skills review and see which of these games, is the worth to play.

Mabinogi: Fantasy Life

Weaving, fishing, mining, playing a music instrument, and many more actions are part of Mabinogi: FANTASY LIFE, a game which gained popularity thanks to all the options of skills customization that we could choose, and also a beast system which was surprisingly fun and challenging to get. Plus, the anime and cute graphics make the game even more popular than it already was at the moment of the official launch. So, we can say this surely looked like the big yummy piece of cheesecake everyone wanted to eat but with some disgusting flavors .And, this is meant to be a real reference to the IP restrictions that this game imposed when it was launched on March 5, 2008.

Primarily, this happened because DEVCAT which is the developer of MABINOGI LIFE and NEXON which is the company, who got the rights to publish it, stated they had contract restrictions. This meant they could only provide their service to certain areas, so when it comes to the North American version of MABINOGI, only North American gamers can play this game. Hopefully, the game is expanding to other territories like Europe, which finally got its own version a few months ago. Anyway, it's time for looking to other MABINOGI features:

The Mabinogi Races:

In the early Mabinogi's development stages, there was only one accessible race: the Humans. As the game started to get updates, two more races were introduced: The Giants and the Elves. All these three races have their own story and specific race skills .In fact, there are races in this game that will fit certain skills, that's why it's a must for every newcomer to read guides, so we won't screw up our character's build.

The Leveling, Rebirthing and Ageing System:

The Mabinogi Leveling System is as simple as any other kind of MMORPG. However, it's not a main factor that influences on how powerful a character can be, since we are able to select our character's age and rebirth in a determinate time. Evidently, if you are new to the game, you might be wondering what these systems are about. So, let's do a brief introduction for both: First off, The Age system is a unique feature which changes our appearance every time we age in the game, since the older we get the taller we can be or the more we eat, the fatter we will be. As for, once we are about to create our avatars, we are able to select if we want to start in a child or an adult form. And, this is when we must decide if we are looking for free rebirths (by choosing the adult form) or if we will be able to purchase some character cards to rebirth (by choosing the child form). In this way, many people decide to be an adult, so when their characters are 20 year old, they will be able to get a free rebirth. To sum this up, the age system is an essential feature which allows us to gain more AP( Ability points) to make our characters skills stronger ( for more info about rebirths and age system, you can visit the Mabinogi Wikipedia).

On the other hand, it must be said that none of these systems can really provide us of big powers since the character skills are the only ones which make us strong, as I already said. Then this means, the rebirthing and aging system will only help us to increase our skill points, so that it's necessary for us to rebirth in order to get high ranked skills. Plus, the leveling system just provides us of one skill point per level which means it's a must do for us if we want to be strong in this game.

Life skills:

This is one of the best features we will try, besides other nice systems we will discover while exploring the immense world of Mabinogi. Since, we know skills are important for the complementation of any game, Mabinogi has plenty of them. As it's known, this game has no professions and classes as we already said, so this means we will have many options to choose from. However, differently from any MMORPG out there, we will be able to find Living and battle skills. First off, we will talk about Life skills. Perhaps, you are wondering what those skills are about ( If you've never played this game before). In fact, these skills are special abilities that can be learnt through the game by reading books or doing special quests. These skills are pretty much different from the battle ones ,since they mostly focus on real life actions and activities like : fishing , cooking , collecting , mining , weaving , blacksmithing , playing an instrument , etc . Nevertheless, these skills also have a leveling way, being that they will affect our character stats when they have a high rank . In fact, to get them into higher ranks we will have to level them up , so they will be more effective and stronger than they used to be.

Available Life skills:

Combat skills:

Once we give a step to the Mabinogi world, we will be able to choose what paths we are going to follow. Since, Mabinogi is a game in which we are allowed to distribute and match our skills as we want, that's why there are no professions or classes in this game , so this means we will only find classify combat and live skills. Both include a wide variety pack of abilities which will be available as we level them up. Since, we already talked about the Life skills, this time we will have a look on the combat ones. In Mabinogi, the skills which are going to define our character's power are the combat skills, which consist in melee and ranged paths as we already said. The melee skills are composed of physical and close-ranged attacks like: Charge, Combat Mastery, Taunt, Wild Guard, Wildmill, etc. All of these are warrior-alike skills which we must select if we love a face to face fighting style.

On the other side, we have the Ranged skills which divide into Magic and Archery skills . In the magic path , we will find skills like: Icebolt, Firebolt, Fireball, Healing, Thunder, Lightning bolt, etc.And, in the archery skill tree, there are skills like :Arrow Revolver, Mirage Missile, FinalShot, etc. In addition, there are many things we will learn in our adventures like the fact that some of these skills must be unlocked by questing. Finally, there are important things we must take care of after choosing a skill path or mixing them with other abilities because we won't be able to change them but just by rebirthing our characters. In every way, we will find ourselves trying to figure out which skill builds are the best , but as we go on and find out many more MABINOGI fighting styles ,we will see that many people prefer to be totally hybrid when it comes to skills.

The transformation system:

Let's say we reached level 22(or more) in the game, so this has a big significance in the Mabinogi world mainly cause, it's possible to take the transformation quest at this stage. The transformation system is a functional feature that allows us to get into powerful creature form, and this includes a bunch of skills with cinematic animations. However, as we know there's got to be a challenge in every game, and this means we will have to do big and long quests to get our desire transformation skill. To sum up this whole system concept, there are some things that must be cleared like the fact that it only works for an amount of time and that ,every race has its own kind of transformation which implies different kind of skills for each one.

Other features that weren't mentioned:

• The Crafting System.
• Mount and Pet Systems
• Dungeon system
• Guild, chat, friend and family systems
• Weather system.
• Alchemist skills and features

New Era Online (A.K.A: NEO ONLINE)

New era online , a.k.a " N.E.O online " is an online 3D Cartoon MMORPG that was introduced to the North American market on January 28th, 2010. As it's already well-known for many gamers, this game has many look-alike Mabinogi features, since it almost offers us some of the current Mabinogi features we were used to. However, we can't deny it's not a good game since it had many closed-beta testers when the game started to its first server test.

New era online is a new game brought by OMG, even when the game still doesn't have lots of content, it still has many fun features to enjoy.

Unfortunately, the game didn't have as much hype as other games and after it went into an Open beta stage, the whole game population reduced. This was followed with some problems that the game had, like bugs and mainly the blackmailing issue, which was one of the main reasons why a considerable amount of players left the game. Being that, OMG entertainment which hosts this game, had to shut down for a temporary period of time the registration applications till they could resolve this problem, so this sure means that OMG is still trying to get all their old players back to the game. On the other hand, even with the issues that this game had, it's features are still interesting since we will find things as: Weather changes that inflicts in all the game's creatures, Rewards once we reach certain levels, A non blocked IP game so no matter where we are because we all are allowed to play without any restriction, A simple Crafting System, and some other features that we will find familiar when we try the game out. All in all, there are many positive things we will find in this game which was developed by SONOV. Here, some of the primary features, we will find in N.E.O Online.

Race and Character Creation Options:

Regrettably, N.E.O ONLINE does not reckon with available races as for, it was recently launched to the market. Nevertheless, the game still gives a charm feeling of freedom since it has tons of unlimited creation options for free to play gamers. This implies, character's face, eyes and hair can be freely chosen without paying for a specific hair styles or eyes color. Perhaps, most of us love to look unique from other players; this means we will be able to do it, being that in N.E.O online, there are good customizable options for those who love to distinguish themselves from the rest.

Leveling and Questing:

Unlike Mabinogi , N.E.O ONLINE considers the level of our character as a fundamental characteristic, which is going to set our powers above other players. As for, it's necessary for us to do as many quests as realizable, since that's going to be a fast way to level  our  characters up. But Quests are not the only of leveling up, mainly because we can kill creatures and gain experience (grind for exp). However, our journey will be easier if we keep questing instead of grinding, since there are many great rewards for every quest we complete so think twice before quitting one.

Living and Battle skills:

N.E.O Online is set with a bunch of interesting character skills. These divide into Living and Battle skills. Living skills are abilities which simulate real life actions, so we will have to learn many of them in our adventures to complete quests or to go on with the game's story line. There are several kind of Living skills like: Collecting, Mining, Cooking, Blacksmithing, Weaving, Crafting, Begging, Fishing, Etc. And from all the skills we have listed, Begging is the weirdest one because in order to level it up, we have to ask for money to all the NPCS at any in-game town, being a weird and funny skill at the same time which might seem useless in any sense.

Just as living skills, the battle ones also have a primal and an essential place in N.E.O ONLINE. As for, they will increase our powers, so we won't be beaten by any the creatures surrounding the N.E.O world. Consequently, in the combat skills list we will find Ranged, Magic and Melee abilities. The ranged abilities are focused on Gun weapon usage whereas magic skills are meant to be special skills with natural elements like Fire, Ice, Etc. Anyway, all the skills are available for any kind of built, but they can only be gotten by learning them. This entails every skill has a price, so we will have to spend in-game currency to buy the books in order to learn them.

Weather and Chaos system

The N.E.O world is constantly changing and we will feel these effects at hunting or grinding for experience. Significantly, we will be able to see how the world goes from a sunny morning to a dark cloudy day. At this point nothing would be different from any other MMORPG; if the chaos system wouldn't be involved with the whole game environment .The chaos system is one of the defined features that we can find in N.E.O online. And, it's a well detailed, amazingly and greatly developed system, which allows the player to have control over the game scenarios, affecting primarily the creatures which will appear in bigger forms and being a lot more aggressive when the chaos mode is active. In other words, the chaos system will affect the weather changes, since we are going to notice many environment alterations like a red sky with foggy clouds around.

These weather alterations will affect our experience and drop rates, so when the chaos mode starts the bigger the monster is the higher experience and drops we are going to get .Nevertheless, we must be careful at trying to defeat any monster when the chaos mode is on, due to the augmentation of the monsters powers which means they might knock us out if we aren't strong enough to fight against them.

Funny gifts and Customizable Clothes!

Sometimes nothing really matters to any of us but the great rewards that we can get for free in a MMORPG. Mainly because, it's a real way to motivate people who keep playing online games, so who doesn't really love to get free expensive items, anyway?. Although ,it's known this is nothing else than a smart strategy made by every brand new company to keep their gaming population, and to increase their player base by making these events which will keep the game fresh and attractive. True or not, gamers love to get unique items that will make them look as the coolest character in the whole game. Therefore, that's exactly what N.E.O Online is offering to all their players. And these items can be premium or expensive like mounts, weapons, etc. Obviously, they can only be obtained at certain level which signifies: we must level hard to get them.

As it was stated above, N.E.O Online offers us a wide range of customizable options. Since, we can dress as anything we can think of, from fashionable cowboys to heavy armor warriors, and what is great is the fact that these items are not premium which means we can buy them with in-game currency or just craft them.

Other features that weren't mentioned:

• Friend and guild systems.
• Mount system.
• The PVP system.
• The PK system.