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Perfect World is a Chinese MMORPG, developed by Beijing Perfect World. If you're looking at this page, chances are you're seeing ads for one of their other two MMORPG.

It has been online since 2006, with international servers since 2008, and as of 2021 has sixteen expansions. Its main selling point may be the truly enormous level of customization available: there are five races with two job classes available for each, males and females, completely up-to-the-player stats, and more unique appearance, cosmetic, and fashion choices than most other games on the market. Like most MMORPGs, PW also boasts a huge open world.

As an added perk, all races can fly at level 30 (and one race immediately at level 1). There are also cash-shop items that enable flight from level 20 on, as well as (relatively recent) level-up rewards giving flying equipment around level 15 (but unusable until level 20).

Website found here

Interestingly enough, Beijing Perfect World has a film production subsidiary that has co-produced a lot of Hollywood films, as well as making their own local dramas and movies for the Chinese market.


Tropes Include:

  • An Adventurer Is You: Let's count the ways; you got your fighter with a Knightly Sword and Shield (Edgerunner), your Multi-Melee Master warrior (Blademaster), four Squishy Wizard classes (the aptly named Wizard and Cleric, the latter combined with The Medic, as well as the Psychic and Stormbringer classes), one Glass Cannon (Archers), a Mighty Glacier (Barbarians), three technical classes (Assassins and Duskblades, as well as the aptly-named Technicians who wield a BFG) and a combination squishy wizard/petmaster/debilitator (Venomancers, though all magic classes have some sort of buff/debuff).
    • Lets not forget the the BFS toting warriors (Seekers), and their counterparts the Jack of All Trades, er magical trades that is (the Mystic).
  • An Interior Designer Is You: The Elysium expansion has introduced a Homestead system, accessible to players of at least Level 90 (before first Reawakening) and at least 35,000 Reputation (Rank 6). Players start with only a sixteenth of the available Homestead land accessible to them, and may unlock more land through the use of Elysian Charters. Operations include the ability to buy, sell, and trade varying types of decorations between players who choose different crafting masteries. These crafting masteries are leveled up through daily quests that range from simple treasure-hunting to killing dangerous monsters in both dungeons and the overworld.
    • While Homesteads are mostly for the vanity factor, the practical benefits to building and leveling a Homestead include materials to craft elitist-level weapons, as well as advanced skill books for each class.
  • Allegedly Free Game: While it does feature a boutique (cash shop) it is perfectly possible to play normally without spending real-life money; and there's a way to trade in-game currency with gold (boutique currency) to boot. Granted, this requires a lot of time and effort.
    • These days, it's more "Allegedly" free than ever. To wit, the New Horizons expansion made the following painfully true, at least in its inception:
      • Try playing beyond level 95 as any melee class without getting a pair of claws or daggers and the ability to punch 5 times per second (nigh-impossible to do without a huge amount of cash-shopping, or purchasing the items from those who do), and see just how valuable you are. This includes the tank class, who cannot hope to hold aggro over 5 APS without claws and 5 APS of their own.
      • Please note that everything said here about switching to claws or daggers as a melee class does not apply to the Seeker Melee Class as that job is hard locked into using Swords and as such the only way for it to obtain 5.0 APS in any way shape or form is by obtaining the Rank 8 Recast (upgraded) Sword and getting a success on the 0.13% chance of getting a -0.05 Interval mod at least once, and at most three times. But in effect hoping for that 0.13% chance to occur is really wishing for winning the lottery and will require you to invest a large sum of money into this game. This is especially true when you consider that 15 out of the 16 other possible mods that the weapon can have actually occur at a rate of 6.61% each and the other 1 out of 16 occurs at a rate of 0.66%, so the -0.05 Interval mod has the lowest likelihood of showing up. Far more money would be spent in this way than on a standard Blademaster or Assassin. So in short it is far cheaper to not invest time and energy into creating a 5.0 APS Seeker, or to instead just roll an Assassin or Blademaster if 5.0 APS is what you want.
      • Try playing an archer beyond 95 without doing the same thing (yes, that means trading your bow for claws... as an archer). You'll still be outdone by the melees, but you won't be totally useless.
      • If, for some reason, you do play beyond 95 as any of the above without getting 5 APS, try playing beyond 100 without dropping $72 on Rank 8, during the few times the producers decide to put that into the Cash Shop (alternatively, you could spend full months of your life grinding the reputation, and maybe, just maybe get there). And then still be outdone to no end by those who have 5 APS.
      • Good news: Rank 8 is easier to get to now due to the existence of faction bases, and Wraith Officer's Badges can be obtained from any Watcher of the Earth, provided you have Warsong items to trade. Bad news: there is now a rank 9.
      • Addendum to Good News: You can now upgrade your Rank 8 gear so that it is easily the equivalent of the standard Rank 9 gear. Bad news, this can also be done with Rank 9 gear (twice). Fortunately only the really rich power players ever actually bother to get the Rank 9 Recast and the Rank 9 Double Recast gear (recast is the term used to refer to upgrading certain types of Armor & Weapons)
      • Try playing any caster class, aside from clerics, beyond 95, period. Venomancers may get by with this, due to having a useful debuff for 5 APS characters to take advantage of, and the casters are sometimes viable in PvP, but still, in PvE, you're far from useful.
      • Negated by the fact of later expansions adding instanced dungeons that force players to play their classes as originally intended: Palace of Nirvana later in New Horizons, Quicksand Maze and the addition of a Judgment Mode to Flowsilver Palace in Eclipse, Uncharted Paradise in Elysium, and Dawnlight Halls in Neverfall. There is now a use for almost all of the Non-APS oriented classes within these dungeons so the argument that you cannot play at those levels is null and void. Also the fact that Frostcovered City experience has been nerfed to horrendously low levels means that no one is going to be reaching level 105 anytime soon who isn't already there.
    • The ingame currency got split into silver and gold in 2019. Silver cannot be traded, and can only be used to pay costs and buy vendor items. And some costs don't accept silver. It cannot be traded between players. This means it can't be used to buy stuff from other players. Ingame drops were made silver. Quest rewards were made silver. Gold is only introduced into game by selling certain rare items or exchanging cash shop currency for it, and cannot be farmed for this reason. This makes it much more difficult to buy cash shop items from other players. Gold can be used in place of silver, which removes it from the economy, requiring redemption of cashshop currency to replace it.
    • Note that despite all this, it is still possible to do all this without paying, and succeeding is viewed as a great accomplishment and a badge of honor among parts of the playerbase. This is not true in Forsaken World, which does most of the same tricks, and systematically removes every trick free players figure out to get money, and has paying players tell them to stop whining and pay up.
  • Anti Poopsocking: At some point shortly before the Eclipse expansion, an Earning Time system was implemented to this effect wherein any one player-character may be "active" for an absolute maximum of eight hours per day, after which they stop earning item/coin drops, EXP, and Spirit (used to improve skills). Overworld areas and most low-level instanced dungeons deduct Earning Time only while the player is in combat, while some instanced dungeons deduct Earning Time for any and all movement throughout the dungeon in question. The Endless Universe appears to be the only instanced dungeon that does not deduct Earning Time for player movement or combat with enemies.
    • Examples of instanced dungeons that deduct Earning Time for movement as well as combat include, but are not limited to Twilight Temple, Valley of Reciprocity, Lunar Glade, Warsong City, Eden, Brimstone Pit, Abaddon, and Seat of Torment. These count as an Anti-Grinding measure as well, as most of these instances are "farmed" for crafting materials, items for Genie husbandry, high-level HP and MP potions, and even spare ammo for Archers.
    • In squads, Earning Time limits apply to the entire squad. If one player in the squad is out of Earning Time for the day, the entire squad loses its drops, EXP, and Spirit rewards for as long as they ally themselves with the "spent" player. Squad members' Earning Time states are tracked in the squad roster, with a red chest indicating a player who is out of Earning Time, and a gold chest indicating that a player has 1 hour or less of Earning Time remaining.
  • Apparently Human Merfolk: The Tideborn race.
  • Aristocrats Are Evil: Tons of these among enemy forces, per Authority Equals Asskicking. Khewy the Rattus Lord; Oggo the Quillhog King; Queen of Agony, Xipher; Borobudur Dungeon Lord; Tyrant Prince Mushi...just to name a meager handful of examples.
  • The Artifact: Originally, the game had a monthly fee. For some reason, when they switched to the cash shop model, Non Player Characters who sold boutique items were left in the game, just without a shop.
    • Until the Eclipse expansion, players who wanted to level-up their combat skills needed to visit trainers for their respective classes. As such, class trainers existed in the home cities of the appropriate races: Blademaster and Wizard in Etherblade, Barbarian and Venomancer in the City of the Lost, Archer and Cleric in the City of the Plume, Seeker and Mystic in Tellus City, Assassin and Psychic in the City of Raging Tides, and (most recently) Duskblade and Stormbringer in Dawnglory. In addition, there were once whole "teachers' districts" in northern and southern Archosaur, Silver Pool, Dreamweaver Port, Sanctuary, and the City of a Thousand Streams. Nowadays visiting a class trainer is not necessary to level-up most combat skills, but for sentimental reasons, the home-city class trainers remain where they are.
    • Celestone Fragments were once used to trade for Mirage Celestones at 25 fragments a piece. At some point, the ability to trade the fragments was removed, rendering them functionally useless. However, the item itself has remained in the game, and often appears as an additional reward from quests despite their empty value (compared to Celestones of Earth, Heaven, and Human which can still be traded for Mirages), much to the irritation of many players.
  • Berserk Button: Wraiths apparently hate Duke Blacke's constant yelling.
  • Breast Plate: pretty much all female armor; and some boutique clothes can turn men into a Walking Shirtless Scene.
  • Calling Your Attacks: SUPER POWERFUL MIGHTY WHIRLING SLASH!
    • To clarify: a late-game boss says this before and while releasing an instant-kill area-of-effect attack. It's pathetically easy to avoid, but hilarious and somewhat memetic among the fandom.
    • In Abaddon, the instanced dungeon within Momaganon, players must, among other obstacles, defeat a squad of four "puppet players" in order to weaken Borobudur Dungeon Lord prior to the final confrontation. These puppets will use, and call out the names of, the attacks most associated with their respective classes.
  • Captain Obvious: "Cannot perform this action while dead." Appears in the message window in response to just about everything the player tries to do while his/her character is dead. The only exceptions are resurrection, and extending/accepting invites to squad or faction (or, for that matter, leaving a squad, deserting a faction, or resigning from an officer position within a faction).
  • Character Customization: As mentioned above; you can customize every aspect of your character's face and a general customization of its body; also adding stat points to anything you wish. (For example: it is possible to create a Cleric who only uses polearms and heavy armor, unadvisable though it may be).
  • Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Colors used to highlight the names of monsters and bosses are useful in measuring the threat level of most overworld monsters based on the player's character level, especially in the first cycle of Level Grinding to reach Level 100 and then Reawaken.
    • White: Same level as your character, give or take a few. Can be fought one-on-one easily, with white-named bosses being soloable with a little bit more strategy than simple mobs.
    • Varying shades of green: Lower level, with lighter greens indicating "lower by only a few levels" to olive green denoting "cannon fodder." These tend to die in one or two hits.
    • Pale orange: A few levels above you. Will require you to think before you start fighting, but you can usually retreat to safety if you find yourself in trouble.
    • Persimmon-like shade of orange: Beef Gate that you're not meant to be fighting at that point in time if you're at level 90 or below. Above level 90, you should call for help, especially if a question mark is given in place of a level number.
  • Combat Medic: The Cleric, who starts the game with a healing skill and a magical attack, their latter attacks involve Shock and Awe; Wizards also get a healing spell early in the game.
  • Combat Pragmatist: Towards endgame, many bosses have frontal area-of-effect strikes (physical at close range, or magical at both close range and long range, the latter usually represented by a cone-shaped illumination), that One-Hit Kill all classes caught in them except Barbarians. (In a handful of cases, system messages will explicitly states that only Barbarians can bear the brunt of the attack.) When facing one of these bosses, attacking from behind or at range is almost always a necessity.
  • Continuing is Painful: Played with. Regardless of means of resurrection after death (returning to the nearest village, being resurrected by a Cleric or Mystic in the party, or reviving oneself via a Resurrection Scroll in one's inventory), the revived PC starts out with barely any HP or MP (though these may be restored to full in seconds via equipped Guardian and Spirit Charms), Chi is reduced to 0, and all buffs are removed. From Level 10 onward, each death results in a loss of EXP, which increases with character level. On a PVP server, or if one is in PK mode on a PVE server, a slain player risks dropping any item whose description does not explicitly state, "Doesn't drop on death," creating an opening for Ninja Looting. This is especially true if the player's death was at the hands of another player - and even more so if the slain player has infamy from engaging in PVP, denoted by the player's name being any shade of red or coral-pink. Gear may also be shattered, rendering all its protective properties moot until the shattered gear is repaired at the appropriate specialist for a cost in Chi stones as well as coin.
    • There exist consumable Guardian Scrolls, mostly available in the boutique (although some may be event rewards) that prevent slain players from losing EXP, dropping items, or having their gear shattered.
      • Some of the most difficult instances in the game suspend the Guardian Scroll requirement for EXP loss prevention. Chief among these are Warsong City, Flowsilver Palace, Uncharted Paradise and Dawnlight Halls.
    • Weekly events that suspend the usual PVP rules for the duration of the event (PK'ers don't gain infamy, and killed players don't lose EXP, items, or Guardian Scrolls) include the Territory Resource War (between player-created factions) and Mayhem in Morai (between the Three Orders of Morai). Both events also have PVE activity.
      • Events explicitly stated to be purely PVP, such as the Arigora Colosseum, Nation Wars, Territory Wars, and Theater of Blood, also suspend the "random PK" PVP rules.
  • Contractual Boss Immunity: Bosses in all areas of the game tend to be immune to Freeze (prevents movement), Silence (prevents attacking), Stun and Paralyze (these do both), and usually also Knockback. Many of them, especially in endgame, have special attacks whose channeling cannot be interrupted. The Harpy Wraith, an extremely tough Midlands overworld boss, is one that has a buff that gives her the ability to use all her attacks with absolutely no channeling and thus no room for the player party to use its interrupting moves. (Luckily, so far, she's the only boss with this particular talent.)
  • Convection, Schmonvection: Taken to the logical extreme in all overworld areas; not only are players unfazed when standing near lava, they can lie on top of it and not be harmed either.
    • Played straight to a more reasonable degree in the first boss-battle room of Flowsilver Palace, the final room of the Uncharted Paradise, and throughout the Dawnlight Halls. In these places, there exist safe areas to stand above or next to the lava, but falling in equals One-Hit Kill. (Fortunately, Dawnlight Halls is the only example in which anything has a knockback move that would throw players into lava, or a mechanic that raises lava up to the players' level. Otherwise, lava is fairly easily avoided.)
  • Cooldown Manipulation: Used by Belle Leun, the Mad Princess of Flowsilver Palace, and by Kailia the Otherworldly of Dawnlight Halls' "dice" middle path, with both bosses increasing skill cooldowns by up to two full minutes. In the former case, Belle Leun uses it as a desperation move, and it expires after a few seconds. In the latter case, however, Kailia will use it any time the party fails to roll the correct number on the puzzle die - and on top of being combined with Status-Buff Dispel, the debuff increases the cooldowns of the next FIVE skills, including Genie skills, that affected players use and CANNOT be dispelled through the use of debuff-removing remedies.
    • Apart from timing your use of invulnerability spells or remedies just right in order to prevent it, the only way of dealing with Cooldown Manipulation on the enemy's part is to know which skills can acceptably be sacrificed.
      • Or to flee the battlefield and come back after Kailia has cast her debuff-and-purge, in cases where the player knows his/her party is going to fail the die-roll. In Dawnlight Halls' Deicide and Judgment modes, however, this is an extremely risky tactic, as Kailia will constantly launch One-Hit Polykill attacks covering a quarter of the battlefield, entirely unrelated to aggro (moving clockwise in Deicide, moving randomly in Judgment). Should you be in the hallway leading from the dice-game board to the battlefield when her death-quadrant strikes one of the two front quarters of the battlefield, Kailia WILL strike you dead, even if you're on the supposed "safe" side of the hallway.
  • Does Not Like Men: Mistress of Endless Night from Morai's Endless Universe, according to her War Avatar flavor-text. Specifically: "The beautiful but capricious West Sovereign of Morai. Sometimes, she is sweet and mild. Sometimes, she can be quite cold-blooded. She hates men very much, but she obeys Emperor Aohe's every word."
  • Dual Wielding: Barbarians can dual-wield axes & hammers. Seekers might dual-wield either of two different flavors of swords. Blademasters can do both of the above. Assassins dual-wield daggers.
  • Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: a pretty large part of the magic damage system, especially for Wizards (who can cast three of the five elements) and Edgerunners (who can enchant their swords to inflict all five elemental damage types, as well as physical damage). To wit, the system is based on the "destructive" portion of the Chinese Five Elements concept: Wood separates Earth, Metal penetrates Wood, Fire melts Metal, Water smothers Fire, and Earth absorbs Water. Bosses, and other creatures marked as non-elemental, will generally not have weaknesses to specific elements.
  • Elite Mooks: The mobs in instanced dungeons are quite a bit tougher than their levels imply. For instance, one can take more damage from mobs in the level 59 dungeon than from level 101 mobs on the world map.
    • Encountered very often in the overworld throughout the Neverfall expansion's Western Steppes.
  • Energy Bow: Clerics' starting attack.
  • Face–Heel Turn: War Avatar flavor-text describes this as the backstory of each of three bosses that are cultivation-quest targets in the Seat of Torment, for players choosing the Sage cultivation path: Rancid Venerator, Infernal Spikewing, and Torturess Venerator. "One of three Fallen Celestials, [boss] was once a defender of Lothranis. Tempted by the evil power in the Seat of Torment, his/her body deformed into that of a hideous beast."
  • Fairy Companion: Players may raise Genies of four types (Infliction, Discipline, Longevity, and Zeal), each variety having an inherent affinity with a certain attribute. The Genies can learn a variety of helpful skills depending on Lucky Points and assigned affinities to the five elements.
  • Flying Seafood Special: The default flying mount for the Untamed is a manta ray. Earthguards get goldfish and a shark with a propeller as the more expensive mounts, although both are technically kites.
  • Four Is Death: Par for the course for a game of Chinese origin; there exist bosses that are fought in four phases before they finally die. Notable among these are Mistress of Endless Night in the Endless Universe, Aurogon, the Dragon Emperor in the Advanced Endless Universe, and General Wurlord in the Twilight Temple (Act II: Symphony of Fate).
    • Heavenfall Temple, in Lothranis, has a group of four bosses appearing on its ninth and eighteenth floors: Marei Sekh of the Howling Sea, Marei Ciah of the Glacial Waste, Marei Tsou of the Noxious Swamp, and Marei Hrul of the Scorching Peaks. The player must defeat them one by one, but even after being defeated, the "defeated" ones continue launching their heavily-damaging area effect strikes as the player fights the next boss in the lineup.
    • Kailia the Otherworldly has four rounds of her dice-rolling game. For the first two rounds, the player party must roll a random number (move the robot to fix one of the layers of the seal around Kailia), then a five or six in the third round, then a six in the fourth and final round. Each failure to roll the correct number is punished with a Status-Buff Dispel and Dark Curtain debuff, and Kailia gains a shield equivalent to a percentage of her HP (10% in Normal mode, 20% in Deicide and Judgment modes) that must be battered down before she takes any more real damage.
  • Gameplay and Story Segregation: Happens in-between the Royal Sky V and Royal Sky VI story quests out in the Western Steppes. After the player character has killed a small group of monsters for the village of Dalmoor, an "Old Villager" serves the PC a cup of hot tea in apparent gratitude. After the PC has drunk the tea, he/she starts feeling unwell - at which point the Old Villager laughs and gloats that the bad guy you're chasing, ironically named Goodhill, has ordered her to poison the PC. As the name of the next NPC who needs to be addressed, a "Mad Pastor" who lives a few houses down, appears in the player's quest tracker along with a timer, the camera starts spinning to illustrate that the PC is dizzy from the poison's effects. The Mad Pastor doesn't have a proper antidote for the poison, but only gives the PC a stimulant to fix the dizziness (which ends the shaky-camera effect). The poison is not truly neutralized until a point in the Royal Sky VI phase, but the player is under no real pressure to level up his/her character's Vitae in the meantime.
  • G-Rated Sex: Public-display-of-affection actions ("Embrace," "Show Affection," and "Adore and Love") may feel like this due to the fact that they are meant to be performed with opposite-sex player characters (with "Show Affection" being the only one that same-sex player characters may perform) and have the practical benefit of mutual Chi gain. While the game features a system that allows player characters to marry one another (thus enabling a daily "Marriage Quest" for a bounty of EXP and Spirit), it does not disallow PDA's between a married player character and someone other than that character's in-game spouse. As with all interactive actions, PDA's don't happen unless both would-be involved players agree to them, but some players do feel the need to observe partner-selection rules when engaging in these actions, such as avoiding married partners unless they really need more Chi, or choosing friends or faction mates as partners first when running instances or events in a Pick-Up Group.
  • Grim Up North: Personified in Gorath, the Worldrender, one of Aurogon's three Wraith Generals met in Morai's Endless Universe. War Avatar flavor-text describes Gorath thus: "The miserly North Sovereign of Morai. Gorath is despised by Aurogon because he is a greedy coward. Aohe drew Gorath to his side, valuing his powerful strength. Gorath will betray anyone as long as it's profitable to do so."
  • Guys Smash, Girls Shoot: Player-character gender is almost purely aesthetic, i.e the Untamed race alone hard-wires all its men into the warrior class and all its women into the mage class (Barbarians and Venomancers, respectively). Most of the artwork (loading screens used throughout the Eclipse and Elysium expansions, class-trainer NPC sprites and War Avatar illustrations), however, follows this trope, depicting males as physical damage dealers and females as magical damage dealers.
    • Played straight with the two new classes in the Wings of Rebirth expansion: the Technicians are an all-female class of Human fighters who use BFGs, and the Edgerunners are an all-male class of Winged Elf fighters who wield the Knightly Sword and Shield combination.
  • Heroic BSoD: Dizzy, after Goshiki's death.
  • Holiday Mode
  • Humans Are the Real Monsters: Conversations with the Untamed and Elves about their previous encounter with Humans strongly implies this.
  • Humanoid Female Animal: The females of the Untamed race, in comparison/contrast to their males.
  • "Instant Death" Radius: Probably the best-known example lies in Dawnlight Halls. There, immediately before fighting Natya Veda, the Great Advisor, players must run a gauntlet consisting of a narrow stone walkway over deadly lava, with five aptly-named Death Wards that will One-Hit Kill any player who steps into their auras (and an invincible "Inevitable Nightmare" that will chase the player party down the passage and kill any player whom it catches from behind). As ranged classes break the Death Wards one by one, melee classes must use stuns and interrupts to crowd-control the "Augmented Dark Knight" and "Guardian Statue" mobs, the latter of which have knockback moves to throw players into any and all One-Hit Kill hazards mentioned above. Only when all five Death Wards are broken and the "FMI Summoner" that called the Inevitable Nightmare forth is dead will the player party be allowed to fight Natya Veda. Should the Nightmare reach the Summoner, or the nearest unbroken Death Ward, the entire gauntlet will reset itself.
    • Frequently inverted, i.e. the yellow dome/blue flower/etc. is the ONLY part of the battlefield where players are safe from a Total Party Kill strike, in endgame boss battles.
  • Intimate Healing: Apart from HP and MP, characters also have Chi, which basic attacks and some skills generate and other skills consume (particularly high-level skills). The "Embrace" function, which may be performed by any two opposite-sex player characters and is represented on-screen by the man involved holding the woman in a Bridal Carry, allows both parties to gain Chi over a period of time.
    • As of the Neverfall expansion, public-display-of-affection actions that may be performed with other player characters for mutual Chi gain now include "Show Affection" (pair stands or sits close together, resting their heads against each other, and initiator wraps an arm around receiver)note  and "Adore and Love" (pair stands hugging each other, passionately kissing). "Embrace," however, is the only action that allows the couple to move around while gaining Chi (movement direction is up to the man involved).
    • While all of the above PDA's are typically allowed in overworld areas but disallowed in dungeons, examples of instanced dungeons that allow PDA's for Chi gain include Quicksand Maze, Flowsilver Palace, Undercurrent Hall, Uncharted Paradise, and Dawnlight Halls.
  • Item Crafting: Arguably the best way to get good equipment, or you can search at the auction for items other people have crafted.
  • Kamehame Hadoken: While many of the classes have attacks that could arguably be personified by the Kamehame Hadoken Trope it is the Mystic Class that seems to have the most obvious example of this in the form of the Absorb Soul Spell whose animation is almost identical to the Power Up and Firing of the Hadoken or Kamehame attacks.
  • Kill and Replace: The modus operandi of the Changelings, introduced in the Neverfall expansion as the chief enemy of the Western Steppes denizens.
  • Marathon Boss: The five Elementalists that players performing Level 6 (Professional) workshop quests for their Homesteads must defeat in order to gather Elemental Crystals. All of them have area-of-effect strikes, and each one has a different debuff used periodically throughout the fight: Steady Earth Elementalist fires off a Stun, Gigantic Wood Elementalist reduces magic attack power, Gilded Metal Elementalist slows channeling, Blazing Fire Elementalist reduces physical attack power, and Flooding Water Elementalist slows melee-attack rate. Even among endgame players with Nirvana T3 gear (best gear available without cash-shopping) it is not advised to approach any of the Elementalists without a squad of at least four players.
    • Thankfully you don't always need to fight them. Once an elementalist is defeated, a system message saying, "Gather the Elemental Crystals quickly!" will appear all over the server, and the dropped minerals from which Elemental Crystals are extracted (using single-use "Elemental Borer" tools) remain on the ground for approximately five minutes.
  • Multi-Melee Master: The Blademaster class. This class can wield all four class-interchangeable types of melee weapons with proper distribution of attribute points. Listed in order of required Strength/Dexterity ratio: Axe & Hammer, Polearm, Blade & Sword, and Fist & Claw.
    • Arguably, however, the one skill that makes Blademasters most useful to their squads is Heaven's Flame, an area-of-effect Axe & Hammer skill that inflicts a potent Damage-Increasing Debuff on all targets that it hits, lasting several seconds.
  • Multi-Ranged Master: The Archer class is able to wield bows, crossbows, and slingshots. All three weapons have the same maximum attack range, but while the slingshot has the smallest interval between hits and the most consistent damage range, the crossbow has the largest hit-interval and a high maximum damage but low minimum damage. The bow, meanwhile, is considered mid-range on all of its performance aspects.
  • Mundane Made Awesome: Type "Perfect World" into Google Image Search and the top line of results will give a screenshot of a character riding on a tiger riding on a giant eagle.
    • Unfortunately this image has been demoted to roughly the sixth line (depending on screen resolution) of said image search as of 12/24/2012.
  • Nature Hero: The Earthguard race, both classes.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: The entire Morai main quest line is a fiasco of this nature, thanks to Chigo, the Serpent Emperor pulling the strings so that everything you do only makes things worse. When you find the body of a murdered child, named Little Yetz, at the bottom of a lake, your attempts to identify her killer and bring him to justice breed discord among the Three Orders that hold power in Morai: Corona, Luminance, and Shroud. Those Essences of the cities in Perfect World that "Glory" called on you to bring to him so that he could "save Morai from the Wraith invasion"? Chigo, who has murdered the real Glory and now impersonates him, uses them to activate the Undying Dial on behalf of his boss, Jian'rin the Wraithlord in order to take over Perfect World and Morai alike. You must make several trips to Morai's Endless Universe to retrieve all the Essences after unwittingly handing them over. What's worse, he killed Little Yetz because she was no longer useful to him after being the only denizen of Morai able to harvest the coveted Immortality Fruit.
  • No-Gear Level: More like a "No-Buffs Level," but when you enter Heavenfall Temple (a 108-floor solo instance accessible from Level 89 and Aware of the Myriad/Aware of the Void cultivation), all buffs that may be in effect when you enter are dispelled, and your Guardian Charm, if you have one equipped, is disabled while you're in the instance. Means of getting around the buff-dispel and disabling of your Guardian Charm exist, but they may fail you if you're fighting something especially nasty.
  • Non-Combat EXP: When obtaining materials and crafting, you get a small dose of experience. Obtaining materials affects one's overall level, while crafting only affects one's crafting ability.
  • North Is Cold, South Is Hot: Largely averted. While the main world map does include a large frozen region in the northwest corner and a desert region near the southwest corner (though not in the very south-most part of the map), the overworld has no definite pattern as to which types of environment and climate appear where.
    • Played straight during the Nation Wars PvP event: the home base of the Frost Nation is located in the far north, while the Flame Nation base lies on the south-most part of the map. Light Nation and Dark Nation make their base-camps in the far west and far east, respectively.
    • One of the alternate planes which high-level players visit, called Morai, appears distinctly warmer overall than the main overworld. There is a Lethal Lava Land (per se) crevice, called Burning Scar, in the center of the Morai map, and much of Morai is covered with either desert or jungle, with no distinct cold region notable.
    • The Primal World, which players must Reawaken in order to visit, has a cold East region, with a frozen country called Luneska in the northeast, and an underwater kingdom in the southeast borders both Luneska and a temperate southwestern map.
    • Neither Lothranis (heaven) nor Momaganon (hell) show any extremes of temperature. Lothranis has an overall "always sunny over green fields of paradise" feel, while Momaganon is largely a wasteland under a twilight sky.
    • Appears to be played straighter in the Neverfall expansion, according to promotional materials. "The Midlands" is the main map with which players are already familiar, and the mostly-undeveloped expanded map boasts a huge frozen region called the "Northern Wastes," while the "Southern Reaches" appear dangerously hot (including being home to a large active volcano). The "Western Steppes" (the only newly-developed continent as of early 2017), however, appears to follow the Midlands' model of random variations in environment.
  • Not the Fall That Kills You…: Apart from instanced dungeons where falling into lava or poisonous water causes instant death, player-characters are completely immune to falling damage.
  • Officer and a Gentleman: General Summer, known among denizens of Perfect World proper as the Iron Fortress of Archosaur. Always personable when dealing with the player character, no matter the quest.
  • One-Steve Limit: Averted. In regard to character stats, "Spirit" refers both to a point score that works similarly to Attack/Defense Levels, but only applicable in PvP (raises damage that the player character inflicts while reducing damage taken) and to the points earned from completing quests and killing monsters (at a rate of 1 Spirit to 4.5 EXP on average) and spent to improve skills.
  • Our Zombies Are Different: Wraiths. Imagine the story of Noah's Ark, except all the drowned sinners came back. And started possessing corpses. And are currently trying to murder everyone and everything.
  • Phlebotinum Overload: Tyrant Prince Mushi, Flowsilver Palace's final boss, has a battle mechanic that will cause everyone's Chi meter to instantly fill up to its maximum capacity once every 30 seconds. Players must regularly "spark" (i.e. use Celestial/Demonic Eruption to consume all three Sparks and gain a measure of health, greater attack power for a few seconds, and a very brief invulnerability) or use Chi-costly skills to keep headspace in their Chi meters at all times while Mushi is on the battlefield, or this move will One-Hit Kill them. (1 Spark=100 Chi)
    • Blademasters are best equipped to take advantage of this maneuver, as their four skill-tree branches give them the widest array of Chi-costly moves, including three debuffs and an elemental attack that cost two Sparks each. Wizards come in a close second in this regard: they have three elemental skill-tree branches (Fire, Water, and Earth), each with one two-Spark-costly skill.
  • The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: Assassins fight with daggers and rely heavily on stealth and finesse as one might expect, but confine their killing intent to Wraiths and other creatures that are the collective enemy of the universe's denizens.
  • Portal Network: Perfect World proper (divided into the Midlands and the Western Steppes), the Celestial Vale, Morai, and the Primal World (and to lesser degrees Lothranis and Momaganon) each have a separate one, operated by aptly-named Teleport Masters for fees ranging from 200 to 8,000 coins per teleport, with fees increasing if one wishes to go to a location that requires multiple teleports due to the Teleport Masters' limited knowledge. Originally, to access the teleport service, players had to enter a town on foot for the first time and speak to the local Teleport Master. No later than Level 30, however, players are issued a "Geographic Map" that instantly unlocks every teleport point. In addition, teleportation tools, most of which are single-use, are legion:
    • Teleport Incense works just like the Town Portal skill: as an Escape Rope to the nearest village. These take a few seconds to activate, but may be used to escape combat unless the enemy uses an interrupting move.
    • Teleport Stones teleport players from anywhere to a selected active waypoint on the Perfect World Midlands map.
      • The Neverfall expansion introduced Perfect Teleport Stones available in the boutique, allowing users ultimate freedom to teleport from any map to any point on any other map. Later, the Redemption expansion introduced Storm and Lightning Teleport Stones, which give 7 and 30 days (respectively) of infinite Perfect Teleport Stones in one inventory slot. Teleport Stones of any tier cannot be used while in combat.
    • Teleportation Scrolls with specific target destinations may be bought in select locations, or may be offered as event rewards.
  • PVP Balanced: oddly handled; there are 5 PVE servers and 2 PVP, though anyone in those 5 servers can enter PK Mode if they want to; and due to the game's system each class can be built to be competitive in PVP or to work better in parties.
    • At about the time of the Eclipse expansion, certain servers were merged with one another to make a grand total of 4 servers, all of them PVE by default (though of course players who wish to do so may enter PK Mode).
  • Randomly Generated Loot: When a player crafts an item it uses a template with randomly generated stats.
  • Resting Recovery: Meditation doubles the player's rate of HP and MP regeneration, and may be done anywhere that there is solid ground to kneel on, and anytime that the player is not in combat. Being attacked will, of course, remove the player from meditation status and put him/her in combat mode.
  • Reverse Grip: Assassins wield their daggers like this.
  • Royals Who Actually Do Something: Implied with Light Empress Althea, who is frequently seen in whichever NPC position may be considered "the front lines" for players working their way through the Western Steppes main questline.
  • Satanic Archetype: Hellfire Abomination, lead boss in the Nightmare Gate region of the Seat of Torment. Ruddy hair and complexion, glowing red eyes, bat wings, the works. War Avatar flavor-text describes him thus: "He once lived in Lothranis but was exiled to the Seat of Torment due to his cruel ways. The agony in the Seat of Torment intensifies his hatred for the world." In battle, Hellfire Abomination calls lightning down on players and summons nigh-invulnerable Minotaur Demon minions that can only be killed by luring them into a trap that appears on the battlefield.
  • The Savage South: Personified in Locen, the Emperor of Flame, a denizen of the Advanced Endless Universe particularly despised among the player-base. War Avatar flavor-text describes Locen thus: "The bloodthirsty South Sovereign of Morai. To him, there is no greater pleasure than in killing and pillaging. Leaving fire and destruction in his wake, Locen truly is a monster."
  • Say My Name: GOSHIKI!
  • Sex Sells: Pick an ad. It probably has a Stripperiffic, angelic looking female on it. Perfect World indeed.
  • Shoot the Medic First: Comes into play in Abaddon, Uncharted Paradise, and Dawnlight Halls:
    • In Abaddon, two of the three potential four-man puppet squads to which Borobudur will lead you each include a Cleric. All the puppets use only a handful of skills from each of their respective classes, but the Puppet Cleric's skill-set includes the squad-heal Ironheart Blessing.
    • Exaggerated in the Uncharted Paradise's Trial of Reflection, which forces the ten-person player squad to fight up to twelve Nightmares (souped-up versions of puppets that use a wider variety of class skills, hit twenty times harder, and have much higher HP) at one time. You'd better believe that the Winged Elf's Nightmare (Cleric doppleganger) and Mystic's Nightmare are priority targets whether they appear in the Trial of Reflection itself, or whether the Lord of Paradise summons them onto his battlefield in the final fight.
    • For Dawnlight Halls squads fighting the Fireforged Changeling at the end of the "cages" middle path, periodically the boss will vanish from the battlefield, and while the melee classes are fighting to destroy the Lava Triggers in order to reveal her, in Deicide and Judgment modes, Flame Elementals will appear around the edges of the battlefield, and they will heal the Fireforged Changeling if they reach the center.
  • Sky Surfing: How Humans and Nightshades are able to fly. Human flyers are usually giant swords or magic carpets that, functionally, best resemble surfboards. Nightshade flyers consist of twin spheres of energy, one in front of the other. By contrast, Winged Elves and Tideborn have wings that extend from their backs while in use, Earthguard flyers are kites from which the user hangs down, and the Untamed ride oversized winged creatures (or creatures with fins large enough to resemble wings).
  • Stripperiffic: Pretty much every female armor or fashion set. What could be more practical than sending warriors out to fight in metal bikinis, with the heart and all internal organs uncovered?
    • For the record, there is only one combination of boutique items that will allow you to fully cover (or fully clothe?) your female character and give her sensible low heels, and that's a combination of items from several sets— not just one set.note 
  • Stupidity Is the Only Option: One of the tasks required to increase your Spiritual Cultivation (increasing it unlocks new abilities for your class) has you meeting with a ghost spirit, but before you can do so, you have to have died at least once, and fairly recently at that. Luckily the website's guide advises to do this portion immediately after leveling up for less EXP loss.
    • You could also dump any experience you have into your Genie to ensure that it goes to a productive purpose.
  • Super Not-Drowning Skills: All player characters are able to remain underwater indefinitely and take damage only when attacked. Strictly speaking, only Psychics and Assassins (members of the Tideborn race) should have this ability.
    • In terms of Non Player Characters, the only ones that can communicate with player characters while underwater, indicating either ability to breathe underwater or lack of any need to breathe, are sentient ghosts and Tideborn.
  • Superpowered Evil Side / Helpless Good Side: Borobudur Dungeon Lord has a variant on this as a battle mechanic: he will frequently challenge the player party, "Can you tell between what is good and what is evil?" as he spawns one of two adds (appropriately named "Borobudur - Good" and "Borobudur - Evil"). If the squad kills the Good add, or fails to kill the Evil add within ten seconds, Borobudur will gain more attack power. Unfortunately for the player party that all too often collectively spams its area-of-effect skills, the Good add is significantly more vulnerable than the elemental-immune Evil add, due to having less HP and no immunities.
  • Sword Beam: Several Seeker's skills. Staggering Strike, Battousai, Heartseeker, we could go on.
    • The Blademaster's Drake Ray, as well. Within their weapon-specific skill-tree branches, Blademasters also have Spirit Chaser (for swords) and Farstrike (for polearms).
      • Addendum: As of the Wings of Rebirth expansion, Spirit Chaser no longer functions as a ranged skill. Almost all universal (usable with any melee weapon) combat skills for Blademasters, however, have been modified to grant extra range when polearms are used (with the apparent sole exception being that the area effect skill Army Crusher is still strictly a melee attack).
  • Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors: Present in PVP, for endgame players who utilize the Glyph System introduced in the Neverfall expansion. For all classes, a select handful of skills fall into each of three glyph-bonus groups: Dragon's Might, Martial Prowess, and Tiger's Rage. The player's bonus will depend on which group the majority of skills that have glyphs attached to them for enhancements falls into. Players that attach glyphs to an equal number of Tiger's Rage, Dragon's Might and Martial Prowess skills will not activate a bonus. Glyphs, and the skills to which they are attached, may be changed at will any time that the player is not in combat mode.
    • Dragon's Might players inflict 15% more damage on Tiger's Rage players.
    • Martial Prowess players inflict 15% more damage on Dragon's Might players.
    • Tiger's Rage players inflict 15% more damage on Martial Prowess players.
    • Any of the above inflict 5% more damage on players who do not activate a glyph bonus.
    • Players with the same activated glyph bonus experience no damage modifiers when engaging each other in PVP.
  • Timed Mission: The Icebound Underworld (open to twice-reborn players of Vitae level Shifting Sky I and above) is the only instance of its kind, lasting 999 seconds (16 minutes and 39 seconds) from activation by the squad leader and spanning up to nineteen boss-battle waves. Players need only defeat up to the tenth boss, however, to complete the daily quest and the Master Bounty Hunter quest associated with the instance.
  • Total Party Kill: Pathkeeper Bajan, first boss in the Uncharted Paradise, is extremely fond of this trope, as he has numerous battle mechanics to this effect. If any player steps outside his arena while the fight is going on (including returning to the instance entrance after being killed), or if one of his elemental avatars, which spawn around the edges of the battlefield, is allowed to reach him in the center...the squad feels this trope in full force. Bajan also does an attack that reels everyone in and causes One-Hit Kill circles of death to appear around him, but players who know when to run (and when to stop running) can usually manage to avoid these.
    • Most TPK moves by endgame bosses are instantaneous and can be safely avoided with a seconds-long invulnerability potion reserved for emergencies. Natya Veda, the Great Advisor, Dawnlight Halls' final boss, is the exception - she launches an Oblivion attack three times (at 70%, 40%, and 10% of her HP) that becomes progressively longer (22 seconds, 24 seconds, and finally 30 seconds) each time she launches it. The only way to survive Oblivion is to kill an add called the "Soul Vessel" and hide inside the barrier that the "Lantern of Hope," which drops on the Soul Vessel's death, provides.
  • 20 Bear Asses: Tons of quests like these. One good thing is that all the immensely-low-drop-rate one-item quests consist of getting a magic item, an important military document, or something else a Wraith would actually bother stealing.
  • Two Guys and a Girl: The three allied Non Player Characters that assist adventuring player squads in fighting three powerful Wraith Emperors, one of whom (randomly determined at instance start) will stand in the players' way of fighting their commander, Aurogon the Dragon Emperor, in the Advanced Endless Universe.
  • Unidentified Items: There are items that can have "Unidentified" as a random add-on, mostly obtained as mob drops and occasionally by crafting. These items can be used as normal, but the "Unidentified" add-on does not provide any bonuses until identified at an NPC available in most towns for a symbolic sum of 100 coins. For example, a dropped chestplate may have "MP +10" and "Unidentified", and will add 10 MP when worn. After identifying, it might become "MP +10" and "HP +10", and the HP bonus will apply now as well. The actual add-on is determined on identification and not on drop, though.
  • Villainous Second Wind: Appears about half the time in Flowsilver Palace's new Judgment Mode, when the party is fighting Belle Leun, the Mad Princess. Once Belle Leun is down to about 40% of her health, she will cry out for her husband, Tyrant Prince Mushi, to intervene on her behalf: "Mushi, my love! Save your princess from these intruders!" When Mushi re-enters the battlefield, he behaves exactly as he did in the previous fight (the throne room) in terms of battle mechanics, but only has a third of his normal HP.
    • Alternately, when Belle Leun realizes she's in over her head, she may yell, "Lord of Lava! Help me vanquish my enemies!" to summon Skyscreamer, a nerfed version of a now-extinct boss called Yelling to the Sky. In either case, while the Mad Princess's chosen interceder is on the field, Belle Leun herself is immune to all damage until the intervening mini-boss is defeated.
  • Voluntary Shapeshifting: Venomancers can turn into foxes, and Barbarians can turn into tigers.
    • Certain one-use pills temporarily shapeshift the heads of humans and elves. This doesn't change stats or gameplay, but it can be amusing.
    • The Tideborn classes (Assassins and Psychics) can turn into merfolk.
  • Weapon-Based Characterization: again, oddly handled; since you need certain stats to wield certain weapons you can find mages with giant hammers, or Barbarians with magic wands; however, classes won't be able to use their skills if they're not using weapons made for them.
    • Blademasters in particular will find themselves switching weapons frequently for this reason, as from Eclipse onward, endgame Blademasters are expected to use debuffs and other tactical moves from all four branches of their class's skill tree.
    • More traditionally handled in the later expansions:
      • From Genesis onward, Seekers can only use swords (probably to prevent the trick of switching to fists and punching everything endgame, regardless of class, that became popular shortly after the inception of New Horizons) and Mystics can only use magic implements.
      • When the Tideborn race was introduced in New Horizons, it established daggers as Assassins' weapons, and Soulspheres as the same for Psychics.
      • Eclipse, introducing the Nightshade race, similarly limits Duskblades to sabers and Stormbringers to magic scythes.
      • Wings of Rebirth adds the BFG-toting (their weapon is officially called a Firearm) Technicians to the Human class roster and the sword-and-shield wielding Edgerunners to the Winged Elves' list of classes.
    • Only Archers can use crossbows and slingshots, though. Everyone can use bows, oddly.
      • Everyone except Seekers (And possibly Mystics as well) that is. Seekers can use swords and only swords, probably as an attempt to save the weapon class from disuse. Duskblades and Stormbringers are similarly banned from using bows.
    • Wands, Magic Swords, Glaives, and Patakas are magic weapons interchangeable among the Cleric, Mystic, Venomancer, and Wizard classes for all intents and purposes. These become differentiated, however, when caster classes go for full Rank 9 gear. Rank 9 Clerics wield glaives, Mystics wield wands, Venomancers wield patakas, and Wizards wield magic swords.
  • Winged Humanoid: The Winged Elves.
  • You All Look Familiar: There aren't very many different NPC models. The mob models are also somewhat reused. For example, there's many different versions of those Skelrelic creatures - Geisha, Ossein, Skeleranc, ect. Geishas have red scarves and carry swords, and have brownish skin. Osseins and Skelerancs can be either archers, swordsmen, or casters and have a more greenish coloring. Some models are reused more often, but it tends to make sense - there might be like 20 different kinds of wolves but they are all the same "family" of creatures. This seems to affect aggro mechanics as well - creatures sharing the same base model tend to aggro in a group no matter whether they are all the same creature or different ones. One of the low level dungeons has 3 different bosses, all surrounded by mobs. With 2 of them, it's perfectly possible to aggro the group to leave the boss standing (but not vice versa unless special tricks are used), while with the remaining one is difficult to pull out even with tricks. It shares the model with its adds. So does one of the other bosses, but that seems to be an exception to the rule. Ultimately, however, palette swaps are the norm, and there's rarely anything special to distinguish one model from another.

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