LOTRO Review

Oops,

I wrote up a rather lengthy review just now, but upon reviewing my terms of the NDA with Turbine I must wait until it goes into open beta before I can post it, so it'll have to wait.
In other news:

Granado Espada, the winner of the 2006 Korean Game of the Year Award is being brought to the US and Europe by K2 Networks (same people as WarRock). They plan for a summer release and it will be Free-to-Play with a gold package of Buy-to-Play (no monthly fee). I'll be writing a preview for it shortly!

-RF

LOTRO Stress Test Weekend

Hey everyone,

Since there is ABSOLUTELY no news in the MMO industry of late, except for something I'm currently writing a preview for. I figured I'd post this little update(thanks for reminding me evanio).

Lord of the Rings Online will be having a stress test this weekend. You'll need to have gotten an email from Turbine if you wanted to participate. I'll be writing a review for it after the stress test is over. So stay tuned for that also.

That's all for now,

-RF

Corum Online Review

Well I've had some time during the weekend to play Corum Online. I cant say that I played it very long (that's how truly horrible it is), but I played enough to write a review.

I'm usually not picky about graphics...but I have one requirement: that they don't hurt the eyes to look at. Corum breaks that requirement. The graphics look like they've been created in MS Paint and animated with PowerPoint, very poorly done would be an understatement. (The screenshots don't do justice to how bad it really is).

Now that I'm past that, lets discuss the game play side of things. Upon previewing the game, I saw that it had stat points(Ego, Dex, Str, Vit, Int) which generally excites me as they offer good character dynamics. Sadly, upon gaining a few levels I noticed that the stat points system is elementary at best, and really offers nothing to the game. Str simply adds attack damage, Int adds SP...etc. They all do one thing, nothing more, and the game itself offers little for you to modify. The only visible data the game shows you is attack damage, accuracy, dodge. Basicaly giving the game absolutely no point for a stat system as its quite obvious each class levels the same thing. Especially since int only affects the amount of SP, not the magic damage.

Lastly, the controls are awkward and dragging skills onto your "hotbar" is not done the way you would expect. When attacking a monster, your character has a delay, like its trying to figure out what to do. And my last rant has to do with the class I chose, the hunter, whom for the first 15 levels of the game gets a healing skill. Whoopie.

This is the second game published by Gpotato that I can say is horrible (at best), and thus my faith in them is falling quite quickly. I will not be holding my breath for the next game they publish, if their past two are any indication.

Rating:
0/10 (you couldn't pay me to play this game)

Advice:
AVOID

Good day!
-RF

Corum Online -> Psuedo-Open Beta

Hey all!

Long time between posts of late, I'm finally back in school and on a normal schedule again, so hopefully things should go back to normal. The MMO industry has been pretty quiet for new releases lately, it seems everything is getting pushed back, so hopefully they give me something to work with.

Todays preview is on Corum Online, a new game by Gpotato (publishers of Flyff, Space Cowboy, and Rappelz). Webby is http://corum.gpotato.com .

The basic points of the game are pretty standard; it has six classes: Fighter, Ranger, Sorcerer, Priest, Summoner, Hunter. They each specialize in a certain area, which is rather obvious from their class names. The website causes unneeded confusion because it names each classes "sp" differently, such as the Fighter's version is called "Aura", the Ranger's is "Chakra", etc... Aside from that, it appears there are 5 basic status points (immediate bonus to the games rating for me!), EGO, STR, DEX, INT, VIT. I've no clue what Ego is centered around, but the other four are quite obvious.

A notable difference from other games in regards to the priest class, is that it is ranked 3rd for physical combat strength, meaning it may make for a decent solo class. Also, the sorcerer has the ability to cast multiple spells at one time, such as; targeting one monster with a simple spell while casting a complex spell to deal with a mob of monsters. Downside is that this practice drains SP faster, but its decent trade off in my opinion. And lastly in this odd-ball category, the summoners text says "If the summoning power of a summoner reaches the extreme, then characters from other servers can also be summoned." I've no idea what that means, but summoning characters from other servers sounds pretty funky.

Moving onto some of the game's systems. There is large scale PVP, small scale PVP, and 1 vs 1 duels. The large scale PVP can be classified by a type of guild wars, in this case called "Dungeon Siege". You can take control of a dungeon, and have a guardian protect you and the dungeon produces equipment when it levels up (which happens naturally over time). The system sounds VERY similar to Ragnarok Online's War of Emperium (Guild Wars) feature. The game also has an alignment system, chaotic good, chaotic evil, etc... but that's all the info that was released about it.

The Open Beta (as long as you have a GPotato account, which is free to register), starts in 2 1/2 hours from this post time, or 24:00 PST. I'll be trying it first, then writing a complete review. For now, the stat system and guild wars feature will be exciting, and I'm always curious to see how each game implements questing and equipments etc.. See you all!

-RF