Originally Posted by
Ian Liew
It was great fun for me until they added the "special defence wugong" skills - Luoyingshenjianzhang, Xuemokuangzhanfa, Dulongbianfa, Lianchengjianfa, Jiuyinshenzhao, and some other pole-based skill. When those skills came out, they supplanted every single other skill in the game, and the whole game was filled with people using the same martial arts, losing out on the beauty of the world of Jin Yong.
When I first played, it was great. There were so many skills, and although some were stronger than others, the weaker ones went up in level faster, so technically, you could be level 150 in Duominglianhuansanxianjian and fight with somebody with level 100 in Dugujiujian, and you'd both take around the same amount of experience to achieve it. When you meet friends, you can always ask "What wugong do you use?" and they'd answer "Jingangbanruozhang" or "Kuangfengdaofa" and you'd go "Oh, let's duel" and you see your high-level art get whooped because the lower arts have better level.
Then came the Juexue, or the Extreme arts - Xianglong18zhang, Pixiejianfa, Dagoubangfa, Essence of Dugujiujian, Hujiadaofa, Jingangfumobian, Jinshejianfa, Yeqiuquan, Anranxiaohunzhang and Xiduzhangfa (on the basis that XiDu could hold his own using his staff vs BeiGai's Dagoubang, so it should be top-class as well). Those gave great attacking power, but drained your shaqi or "killing aura", so you couldn't really use them for regular attacks, but saved them for that special blow. The result was you learnt a juexue, but kept on practising your regular wugong.
However, when the "special defence wugong" arrived, you used them the same way you used regular wugong. It was much much stronger than the normal wugong and cost so little exp to learn compared to the regular skills that you'd be mad to not learn it. If I was at level 150 taijiquan, and wanted to move up to level 151 taijiquan, the same amount of exp would probably have taken me from level 150 luoying to level 160 or so. On top of that, level 150 taijiquan is about equivalent to level 100 luoying or thereabouts, so there's really no point in learning taijiquan anymore.
All my friends who used to have exotic skills like taijijian, tianshan6yangzhang, xuemodaofa, qianshourulaizhang, dugujiujian, taijiquan, and dozens of others, now were all forced to switch. If I saw somebody with a sword, I know 100% that he would be using lianchengjianfa. He may, of course, opt not to, but then he will die almost immediately. Those skills ruined the game for me completely, and having spent all that time learning an obscure 4mendaofa, I found myself forced to switch to luoying (or do something evil for xuedaomen to learn the xuemokuangzhanfa). After a year or so using luoying, and seeing almost all my friends using the same thing, I threw in the towel. I was no longer a unique individual in wulin, I was just another clone.