MMORPG Reviews

Disclaimer and Update

2009-01-15T10:00:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone,

I have been quite busy lately with school and interviews, thus I'm unable to post anything, but I would like to make a quick recommendation.

Of the recent new games that I have not yet reviewed: Shaiya and Luna Online, I would recommend Luna Online and avoid Shaiya. Luna has a decent stat system, a very good skill system, and an amazing job system. The official website is: http://luna.runup.com.sg/ (there is a North America version coming from GPotato soon, apparently). My only warning with Luna is that the grind can be immense at the higher levels, and the cash shop does contain the stat/skill reset items.

I also wanted to post a disclaimer. I've been reading some of the comments for my older reviews and have seen countless times that people are forgetting the DATE of the review. I have little care for people who comment that the review is "all wrong", when they are posting 2-3 years after the review was written. Games change dramatically in that time frame and thus of course much of the finer details have changed, but at the same time most of the core concepts remain the same. Thus, when reading older reviews on my site (or any other website) I would recommend you focus on the core systems being discussed, and not the minor details.

For those people who dislike reading and only scan documents:

CHECK THE POSTED DATE OF THE REVIEW BEFORE YOU COMMENT ON IT

Thank you.

- Management

ROSE Online: Evolution F2P

2008-07-30T13:49:00.000-07:00

Hello all,

In case you do not know, North American ROSE Online (naRose) switched from P2P to F2P on July 29th 2008 (yesterday). I invite you all to give ROSE a go, as I feel it is one of the best F2P games on the market.

The official website is: http://roseonlinegame.com/

The game client download is around 650mb, with a few hundred megabytes of patching. I noticed I don't have a review for it on my blog (something I'll correct shortly), but I'll list some of the basic features.

Player set stat points
Player set skill points
Crafting
Guild vs Guild
Player vs Player
Intricate quest system (the only quest system that I've actually enjoyed doing)
Movement through cars or flying ships, or, one day, mech-like robots

So if those interest you, give it a shot.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In other news, Florensia Online entered open beta testing a few weeks ago. Give it a whirl if pirate and sea battles are your thing.

It you search my blog you can see a preview for the game, and soon I'll also have a review for the game.

The official website is: http://en.florensia-online.com/

The client is around 1.7gb download with a few hundred megabytes of patching. Don't worry about it being a European version, there is a US server hosted also.

Thats all for now,
-RF

Rohan Online: Blood Feud

2008-06-24T09:42:00.000-07:00

Hey there,

This review is focused on Rohan Online, a new English MMO (translated from an older Asian based MMO of the same name), which just happens to share the abbreviation RO with both Requiem Online and Ragnarok Online. I'll be calling it 'Rohan' instead, to avoid any confusion.

The game entered its Open Beta phase in late May (around the 27th), and shortly after opening the servers were overflowing and disconnecting. To remedy the problem they added 3 more servers within a day, which all but eliminated the lag/disconnect issues: props to them for quick action in solving the problem. The Open Beta phase is free, with no wipe before going Gold (your characters in OB will be playable in the gold version). It is a Free-to-play game with a cash-shop where you can buy skill stones (more about these later), stat/skill resets, and various other aesthetic items.

The fundamentals of the game are akin to its MMO peers; level up through grinding on monsters or performing quests, job change a certain level, etc.. What sets this game apart from many others is the fact that it contains a well thought out status point system and skill system. For each character level you gain one skill point and four status points. The status points can be alloted anyway you choose into 6 potential areas (strength, wisdom, psychic, agility, dexterity, vitality). Each area has no limit, thus at level 99 (the maximum level) you could theoretically have 400+ of a single stat, which leads to a great variety of builds appearing in the game. The difficulty with going for maximum damage (mass dexterity as a ranged character) is that you give up vitality which offers much needed health and defense, thus it is not all about pumping a single stat.

In order to compliment the status system, the skill system uses skills that deal percentile damage, such as 800% of your wisdom as damage, or 250% of your attack as damage, etc.. This means that even the most basic skills will easily scale up and be useful from level 10 to level 99, depending on your playing style and build style. It also means that the way your status points are alloted will be a very large determinant to your success in the later levels and in the PVP environment. This is completely opposite from most of the current MMOs, where your equipment is the sole determinant of your success. The skill system also contains a wide variety of 30-minute long enchantments for every class, this forces you to make a decision of whether you'd like to get all the enchantments for large passive buffs, or pump all the active skills for large burst damage. And of course, to balance, some classes have the ability to remove your buffs, or silence you from casting active skills. Because the skill system is point based (one point each level to invest) there is no need to save up money to buy new skill, and you can truly create individual builds. An addition to the skill system are the skill stones. These stones allow you to upgrade a skill beyond its maximum level, at a random chance. As an example suppose a skill is max level 5 and gives 800% psychic damage at that level; if you used skill stone to get it to level 6 it may do 850% psychic damage, and using another to get level 7 it might do 1000% psychic damage. Most skills have a skill stone maximum though, usually topping out at level 7 or level 8. The stones are incredibly rare, and are generally obtained by fishing (a mini-game) or buying them from the cash shop.

The class system in Rohan is quite similar to most other games, you must pick your races when you make your character and once you reach level 50 you can change into one of two possible classes. As there are 6 races in Rohan, there is a total of 12 end-game classes. They range from the powerful Warlock to the armored Defender. Each class has a skill-tree, including the "default" race class (such as Knight for the Human race which then changes into a Guardian or Defender), so there is a wide variety of skills to choose from. The individual classes are very well balanced in respect to the others, such as the Assassin having the ability to critical for massive damage (420% of their agility) but the Wizard is able to prevent their entire party from receiving critical damage for 60 seconds. Such counter-balances are present in each class towards some other individual class. Because the game is Open PVP, it is very important to level together in a party later on, lest you run into your classes' counter-class and get killed.

Why is the game open PVP you ask? Because certain races (the Dhan in particular) have the ability to gain experience from killing people in PVP. In order to achieve they must change their mode to "Assassination" mode, which causes city guards to attack them on sight, and if they die to other players they have a higher chance of dropping equipment. In order to prevent massive ganking, Rohan has a revenge list feature. Every time someone kills you, their name goes onto your revenge list. At any time, you can click on their name and warp directly to them in order to kill them and seek revenge. You only get one chance though, once you warp to them they disappear from the revenge list. However, if done correctly, you can easily assassinate a higher level player just as they are in the midst of a boss-battle. But don't worry about getting dropped so easily in PVP, because the damage modifier for PVP is 33%, thus any attacks will deal 33% of their normal damage.

The item system in the game is quite well thought out. Every item that drops has completely randomized bonuses. For example, you could get a sword with +4 wisdom and a rod with 2% melee damage, or vice versa. In addition, in order to use the equipment you must meet the level and status point requirements (such a sword that requires level 33 and 35 str, 27 dex). If you don't meet the requirements, you can bring the item to an NPC and get them to downgrade the requirements for you. This works by a random dice roll, if you are lucky the requirement will go down by the number of levels, or stats, you specified (more levels at a time costs more and has a higher chance of failure). If you are unlucky, the requirement will go up by the number of levels, or stats, you specified; but it will never go above the base value you started with. Many people have spent entire fortunes trying to decrease a level 33 weapon down to level 27 so they may use it; it can be quite addicting. But thats not all you can do with your equipment, every piece of equipment in the game is an ingredient to a rare or unique piece of equipment. You make these by bringing them to an NPC so that they can be forged together; there is of course a chance of failure, especially if you add additional orbs that give other bonuses (such as a +5 defense orb). The completed rare/unique weapon will have all of the bonuses that the ingredients had, thus the equipment you find from monsters/quests can be very useful. The game also features an auction house which functions like most auction houses in other games. The item system allows for a huge variety of items, especially once combining, and it is a feature I hope to see in future MMOs.

In order to help you level, or just for aesthetics, there are a wide variety of pets you can purchase and feed/level. Their bonuses range from +30% HP to an ability that allows you to teleport to a set location with a cool down. They are quite expensive however, much like the mounts, thus don't expect to have one of these until you are nearing level 40-50. While we're on the leveling topic, the questing system is very generic. Hunt X monsters, come back for a reward, or go talk to these NPCs then come back. I found the EXP rewards for questing to be quite poor, but the item rewards are amazing, thus I only did the quests which gave me a new weapon or armor that I needed.

One of the more unique features of the game is the M.Kill system (Monster Kill). This is simply a counter that tallies how many monsters you've killed, once it reaches 19 the next kill will give 7x the experience. Once it reaches 39 the next kill is 10x, etc.. until it reaches 99 in which the next kill will give 20x the experience, and then the counter will reset back to 0. This counter only works for solo-leveling, once you are in a party every kill in the party goes towards the party's MKill. The party MKill goes from 0 to 25, once you reach 25 its 5x exp and then resets back to 0. The MKill system is a very nice addition as it makes leveling quite a bit easier and more active as you should use the bonus exp kill on a harder monster. I found that both party level and solo leveling were roughly the same speed, provided you were efficient at both. However, in the later levels the exp starts to come very slowly, taking many hours to to achieve a single level at level 40.

Last but not least, the graphical aspect of the game is nothing to write home about. They are not amazing, even a little choppy at times, but all in all they do not hurt the eyes and there is a wide variety of monsters (each race has their own area with their own monsters) and monster sprites. The sound is also decent, but not amazing. Not really much to say about either categories, you can make your own opinion from the screen shots.

Overall the game is quite enjoyable, especially playing with a group of friends. It has all the aspects you'd expect in a top notch MMO, including good customer service (which is rare for F2p games). My major qualm with it lies in the grinding and cash-shop, but such things are necessities in order to keep the game afloat. The Mkill and item combination features are things I hope to see in future MMOs, along with a more detailed pet system. If you're bored during the summer I highly recommend you give this a shot, but be careful of the boss monsters, just because they are 5 levels lower than you it doesn't meant they go down without a fight!

SCORE:
8.5/10

-cash shop stat/skill reset decreases the allure of a status system
-very very grindy in the higher levels
-poor quest system
++ MKill system
++ item system
+++ status/skill system

ADVICE:
PLAY

-RF

Requiem: Bloodymare

2008-06-09T08:44:00.001-07:00

Hey all,

Its review time for one of this summer's hot games: "Requiem: Bloodymare", published by Gravity Co. and open beta started a few weeks ago. The website is located at: http://www.playrequiem.com/ but there is a caveat; the game will most likely be rated M or R and thus it requires you to be over a certain age to view the content (I believe its at least age 14). It is a P2P game.

So, now that we have the boring details done, what exactly is Requiem? It a MMORPG built on a horror theme, complete with flickering black loading screens, dark colors, blood, gore, and even a nightmare mode. The general premise is the same, be the best possible character in order to dominate in the PVP environment, more about this later. Lets get onto the actual review now:

The visual content of the game is as its name suggests, very gory. With each attack blood is sprayed in all directions and with each death body parts go flying while the corpse slowly falls to the ground and fades away. Not something that many parents, or females, would approve of but it makes combat somewhat exciting. Apart from the gore, the graphics are done in a very "dark" theme, and done well as you seem to get sucked into the moment when playing at night. I even looked behind my back a few times while playing, just in case something was coming to get me. . One note for the male players: Requiem puts a lot of uhh.."attention" on the bums/bosoms of their female sprites, they have gotten many compliments by players in game. Thats all I'll say about that.

The class system works much like the Ragnarok Online class system, with 6 base classes to choose from (two for each race) and then two specialized version of each base class (making a total of 12 specialized classes). If the past is any indication, I'd wager that each specialized class will have another upgraded class to change to in future expansions. I'd rather not list all of the classes, you can check the link for details though there is nothing unexpected, complete with warlocks, warriors, mages, and rogues.

The item and equipment system is done like most common MMOs, complete with randomized stat bonuses, a range of damage, an attack speed, and drop from random monsters. There is also an item enhancement system (much like crafting/upgrading) where one can add abilities, upgrade the damage/armor, or create new items. This works very similar to the crafting/upgrading system seen in other games, not much to talk about here. The only minor difference is that when participating in the large scale PVP battles you can win items/ingredients for use in this process. Overall I'd say the item system is slightly above average because of the wide variety of items, and the randomized nature of them; leading to a very active market place.

The skill system is somewhat unique in that you get skill points for each level, but you must use those skill points to buy a skill; not just select it from your list. This way its something like a cross between a WoW styled "buy this skill" system, and an RO styled "use skill point to upgrade a skill system". I do think this is the best way to do it, as it drains money from the economy, but does force you to think about which skill you want as you cannot get them all (you only have a limited number of skill points). The skill animations are well done and they appear to be balanced (although this can only be proved after a few months), so there isn't anything to criticize here. A bonus is that during the first 10 levels of being a novice character (no specialization chosen yet) the skills you use will be undone when you change jobs, so one does not have to worry about benefit of getting a skill now versus getting a stronger one later (like I did before I found this out).

One would think that since Gravity is involved it should include the key feature of their previous games (RO, ROSE): modifiable stat points. But, I was wrong, the game features no modifiable stat points, the only semblance of modification is in the DNA system (much like LOTRO's character traits system). The DNA system requires items to imbue into your DNA, which essentially makes it another piece of equipment that only affects your character. This was extremely disappointing because the game will, in the end, boil down to who has the best gear and thus who has the most time to play. But I cannot be all doom and gloom, the DNA is at least an improvement as it does offer some customization over your class (due to the wide variety of possibilities).

The "selling" or key features of the game revolve around its dark theme. The game goes through a daily life cycle in each game-day (shorter than normal days), complete with night time and day time. Certain monsters will only spawn in the morning or at night, but more importantly, at a specific hour the game world enters into "Nightmare mode". The screen will flicker black for a brief second, the music will get dark and mysterious, and then for the next while Nightmare monsters will spawn in various areas. These monsters are very very strong and require large parties to handle, but the spoils are quite worth it and thus during this time you'll see bodies of players strewn about the ground as they tried, but failed, to kill the nightmare monsters. The second key feature is the DNA system, in which you align your DNA helix(strand) to your liking, giving your strengths in certain areas, weaknesses in others, as you please. It requires DNA items and some in-game currency, but it can be quite entertaining.

The last key feature also deals with the bloody theme; it is referred to as the beast system, or possession beast system. Once you reach the required level, you can perform a quest that gives you the ability to transform into a nightmarish beast. The beasts strengths/attributes are determined by how it was created when you combined various pieces, or stones, of the beast system. There is a vast variety of possible combinations, and the combinations can fail; it is quite a lot of fun to play around with. Also the stones can be sold by other players, so one does not need to grind to eternity in order to find the neccessary pieces. Once you have the beast you want, whenever the hardcore gauge is full (fills by killing monsters) you can transform into the beast for a specified length of time.

The last topic on Requiem is the PVP system. It has an arena/WoW battlegrounds feel to it, as the modes range from 8 vs 8 to 96 vs 96 (massive). The winning team receives awards that are used in the crafting/upgrading system. It requires immense coordination, especially as you go from 32 vs 32 to 96 vs 96, to be successful. Somewhat related to this is the group/party system, where you and some buddies can enter an instanced group-only quest much like the dungeons in CABAL. I wasn't able to try this, so I cant say much on it.

RATING:
-- no status system
+ meaningful PVP system
++ beast system
+ nightmare system
- has a generic korean grind feel

7/10

ADVICE:
PLAY (if you like WoW or Lineage or those style of games)
AVOID (if you like RO or ROSE or those style of games)

-RF

Well well..here we are..a year later.

2008-06-02T11:31:00.000-07:00

Hey all!

As you can see from my previous post, it appears I've spent a little too much time on that hiatus. Summer flew by with no interesting MMOs, then school came around and I was too busy to notice anything exciting happening; to be honest, there was nothing good in the MMO world for an entire year. But..here we are at another summer and this time there has been quite a few exciting MMOs released lately, and I've had a chance to play them. I think its about high time I got back to reviewing, so spread the word!

On this week's agenda: a brief review for Requiem Online and a full fledged one for Rohan Online.

Next week, along with some interesting tidbits about upcoming MMOs, I'll be posting a short review on the Age of Conan.

As an added bonus, I think its time I go back through my review catalogue and see if I can update any of my previous reviews. I'll most likely be doing a brief update for World of Warcraft, Ragnarok Online, and maybe a few others.

Stay tuned!
-RF

Summer Haitus

2007-07-03T13:33:00.001-07:00

Hey everyone,

As it turns out I appear to have less time in the summer than during the school year; thus I don't plan on posting many reviews for the remainder of the summer. It doesn't help that there have been ZERO new MMO releases since May; the industry has run dry for the time being with many releases slated for Q3 of this year.

In generic MMO news AutoAssault has been shutdown less than a year after release due to poor demand and low populations. Also, Fiesta Online is in closed beta testing; I'll try to add a review for it when I get time to play it more. As of now, I'd recommend most of you try it out.

So that's all for now, have fun and feel free to post a comment if you see a new MMO I would be interested in!

-RF

Lunia Online, Darkness and Light update, and more!

2007-05-19T18:23:00.000-07:00

Hey!

Well, I just noticed it was almost a month since my last post! I've been busy inbetween with finals and training, but I'm settled down into my summer job now so I should be able to update more often.

In the meantime I've had some time to look at Lunia Online, a new MMO by GamenGame (do they ever stop publishing?). Its based around an arcade-style RPG theme, complete with scrolling screens and big mean orcs! As a result, the graphics arent anything to write home about. However, they are done well enough to not cause your eyes to bleed, so bonus points there. My first impression of the actual gameplay was "wow". Its riddled with those classic arcade game touches, including mini-cutscenes with 2d anime characters at every "stop" in the mission. Where it improves, is the ability to level up and QUITE an expansive skill system, which albiet has many different builds.

In addition, there is combo moves, such as ->->A or AAS, etc.. that knock enemies to the ground, allow you to lunge at them and so much more. But what would an MMORPG be without items? So, they've got items of all the normal types for each class, which give stat bonuses and hidden unlockable features when upgraded by doing a quest in town. All this molds together to make a rather sturdy MMO basis, with a decent build system, actual player "skill" involved in attacking, and a wonderful story/quest system.

However, there just HAD to be a downside. The controls are done via the arrow keys, which is fine, but they're completely arcade style; if you're not going perfectly left, right, up, or down you've got a problem. The controls are VERY sloppy and moving at angle is quite difficult. To add to that, the graphics are sometimes not in tune with the ground, thus you cant move to some places you would assume you could. Since movement is SO important in an arcade style game, I found it impossible to play for long periods of time, and thus I cant recommend that anyone play this, at least not without a gamer pad.

Rating:
6/10 (movement is too crucial for its genre, and no stat system)

Advice:
AVOID

And in other news, Darkness and Light recently updated to add 4 more classes and a new map. Also lots of balance changes, check out the website for more info.

-RF

Review: Darkness and Light

2007-04-18T11:49:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone,

Well its been a while without a review and my exams are done, so here we go!

The game: Darkness and Light published by GameNGame (and therefore F2P).
The website: http://global.onlinedal.com/default.asp

Lets start with an introduction to the game. For those of you who know what Defence of the Ancients (DOTA) is, Darkness and Light (DAL) plays almost exactly like DOTA. The main difference is that DOTA requires Warcraft 3 and The Frozen Throne to play, where as DAL is a standalone game/client.

For those of you who don't know what DOTA is , I'll explain the basic structure of DAL:
Each "match" is a game played between 12, 10, 8, 6, etc.. players. Arranged into 6v6, 5v5, etc.. teams. Once the teams are finalized and the game is started, each player choose a "hero" character, which change depending on the team they are in. In DAL there is two sides, Darkness and Light (surprised?), both have different heroes but maintain a similar structure. I'll explain more about this later.

Once heroes are selected, the game begins and you spawn in your own "town". Each team has a town, which they must defend with their lives. If the entire town is destroyed, or the temple of the town is destroyed, your team loses. To help you, there is defensive towers and guardians to ward off any enemies. To travel from your town to the enemies town, there are paths cut through the forests, which also contain defensive towers to aid you further. When you start the game your heroes don't stand much a chance against these towers, thus each town spawns waves of "creeps" which are monsters whose goal is to run from your town to the enemy town and attack anything in sight on the way there. By killing these creeps you gain experience and gold, with the former allowing you to level up and obtain new skills and the latter allowing you to purchase items from the item shop.

In order to facilitate dynamic game play there are also creeps that spawn on their own, in the forest, that will attack anyone in sight. You can go and kill these creeps to gain experience and gold also. Of course, while killing creeps you may run into heroes from the other team. You can also kill them for exp and gold, or maybe they will kill you! When you die you must wait for the timer to resurrect and as you get higher level the timer takes a minute or more..so avoiding death is always important.

The main feature DAL has over DOTA is that you can set a time-limit on the game. Once say..30 minutes has expired, a "boss" monster from each team spawns (from your temple) and they both advance towards the "middle" of the map. Once their, they duke it out and the last boss standing wins. Of course, all the heroes are still alive also so they play an important role in who wins. The bosses spawn with a predetermined level (higher level == stronger) which is based on the amount of enemy buildings/guardians your team has killed. It goes as high as 6, and as low as 1. I find this feature VERY appealing because it allows you to sit down and spend no more than 33 minutes on a game (3 minutes for the boss killing), so you never get stuck in a game longer than you wanted too.

So that's the general idea of the game, onto the actual review now. As I mentioned previously, each side has a set of heroes the players can choose from. And although they may seem different, both sides maintain the same structure for heroes. There is a few strength based heroes, a few intelligence based, and a few dexterity based for each team. The characters damage is dependant on the stat they are "based" on. Each hero has 3 stats: str/dex/int, and 6 secondary indicators: def/aspd/running speed/atk/evasion, and of course hp/sp. You can accent your hero by buying items from the item shop in game with the gold you receive from killing creeps. There is a wide variety of items, including healing potions, weapons, armors, summoning scrolls, etc... What adds dynamic is the ability to combine items into "new" items and then upgrading those items further with upgrade stones. There is no shortage of things you can do with money, which I think adds brilliant dynamics to the game and the item shop is accessible from anywhere in the map so there is possibility to change items on the fly.

In order to add the "MMO" title to it, there is a lobby of games to join once you login to the server. Each time you win a game, you get exp points for your account and "cra", which is money you can spend at the "Personal shop". The exp points level up your account, which just gives a general idea of how "good" you are. If you lose a game, you will lose exp (but not cra).
And also, since people leaving mid-game is a huge problem in DOTA, in DAL they are punished by losing 1.5x the exp they could have gained, and getting "dishonor" points. Dishonor points add to your dishonor rank which appears as a huge red strike next to your name and thus its hard to find a host who wont ban you on sight once you have lots of dishonor. However back to this "Cra". You can spend this cra at the personal shop and "rent" items for X amount of days. These items will appear under the "personal" item tab in-game, and thus still require gold to buy. None of them are grossly overpowered, and I think its good motivation for people take games seriously, as cra is a hot commodity.

Overall I find the game very enjoyable and easy to get the hang of, yet hard to master. The community is a lot more "forgiving" than the DOTA community and thus its a lot easier to get started in DAL than it is in DOTA. The only real qualm I have with the game is a few balance issues, but since its still in open beta stage I have may faith things will change. There is also a Korean version of the game which receives regular patches for balance/tweaks, and the GM'ing of DAL is done quite well especially for a GnG game, which are notoriously bad for there customer service.

The game offers a good 30 minutes (or longer if you'd like) of enjoyment and pits you and your team against other players for PVP/PVE style warfare. There is also a new guild feature, which is still infant, but allows for guild communication channels and an emblem to proudly show which guild you're in. A great game for those casual gamers who cant dedicate hours a day to a standard MMO. But, since its not a TRUE MMO in my mind, it has to lose some points on the ratings.

Rating:
8.5/10

Advice:
PLAY

-RF

Darkness and Light | Laxe Lore

2007-04-02T22:04:00.000-07:00

Hi,

I've been super busy and will continue to be until end of term (2 weeks), so bear with me.

Only decent news I have is two new MMO's.

First one is called Darkness and Light (published by Game'n'Game):
http://global.onlinedal.com/default.asp

It apparently plays like DOTA on WC3. Just in a slightly more MMO sense. I haven't had time to try it yet, but its a 130mb download and of course, free to play. Give it a try, and write your review in the comments!

Second game is Laxe Lore Online (created by the makers of Priston Tale):
http://www.laxelore.com/

It looks alot like priston tale...so I'm not sure what to think yet. Download is 382mb, and again if you get to try it, write your review in the comments. I know that is has a stat point system, which gets me a little interested, heh. The servers appears to be having some difficulty however..so I'm not sure if you can get in or not. There is more info on their website forums.

That's all for today.
-RF

Acclaim's TOP SECRET Project

2007-03-27T22:30:00.000-07:00

As many of you already know, Acclaim has opened up the floor for ANYONE to register for their TOP SECRET Project and actually design an MMO. With the entire community participating (25000+) the mmo will eventually be fully designed, and their programmers will create it and publish it. There is various job opportunities if your designs are selected, and lots of industry eyes on this one. I don't have time for a full post, but here's an example email from them I received:
-------------------
Hi team,

Thanks for being patient, we are ready!!!

The TOP SECRET forums are now open. The project is a go!

I just checked the sign-ups and today we have over 23,500 people on this team, making it the biggest team in gaming history! Yeah!!!

If you have any talented friends that you want to work with, go ahead and have them sign up. We do allow partners to win, however you will have to split the prize.

We're also signing up moderators right now. These are the people who will help keep everything running smoothly. (These are the people you want to hire as producers down the road.) Our moderators are allowed to join into the competition, as they're not judging any winners.

So know that the moderators are just cool people trying to help out, so please give them respect, and if you think they're doing a good job, give them some reputation points.

The highest ranked moderator at the end of the project will get a special prize.

If you have spare time and would like to be one, here's a direct link to the details: http://phpbb.acclaim.com/topsecret/viewtopic.php?t=81

The first challenge (MILESTONE 1) is to work out the world the game takes place in, meaning the universe, the look, the style. So if you have any ideas, once we decide that, we can start working on characters, vehicles etc.

Oh, one other thing, as this is all about exposing talent and making games, I'm going to personally hire someone full-time right out of the forums, in the first week!
I've posted details of how to be spotted.

See you in the forums!
Here's a link: http://phpbb.acclaim.com/topsecret/index.php

David Perry
Director
Project Top Secret
----------------

So there you have it, see the website for more details, and get your creative juices flowing!

-RF

Granado Espada: Great? I think nada.

2007-03-20T15:43:00.000-07:00

As promised, here is my review for Granada Espada (the SG version). The Closed Beta ended yesterday (March 19th) and the Open Beta is expected to start in the middle of May. Without further a due, lets get to it.

Granado Espada; developed by a world famous MMO designer, winner of the 2006 Korean MMO best game award (those things come from the government of Korea!), and quite frankly seemed to be the only decently designed game in to come out this year. So naturally, I expected the most from it. I'll break down the review into sections, as per the norm.

Graphically, the game is very well designed. You get the look and feel of the post-colonial days. Not only is the atmosphere good, the graphics themselves are quite stunning considering the requirements. They are very crisp yet not too detailed as too distract the eye. And the character's clothing fits the era. I did not run into any graphic glitches during the beta, and overall though the graphical side was executed well.

The selling point of GE lies in the Multi-Character Control (MCC) system. It allows the player to play more than one character a time. Therefore each player creates a "family" of at most 3 characters. (You don't NEED 3, but its highly recommended). In order to prevent insane micro-managing, the game also comes with an "Auto Attack" feature, where the characters will attack anything that comes near them(scouts will auto-heal in this mode). And also an "Auto Loot" and "Auto Defend", much like the average Real Time Strategy game. Each character also has one row of the keyboard for skill slots, allowing effective micro managing. In order to cast a supportive skill, each player can be targeted with F1,F2,F3 respectively. The control system is very well designed and allows for quick and easy management of three characters.

Each of the characters in your family contain the same features you would expect a single character to in a normal MMO. Each has a class (fighter, scout(healer), musketeer, elementalist, wizard) and skills, with a mini-skill tree. They also have stat points, but they are unmodifiable (more on this later). And of course, each has separate equipment, but they all share one inventory (which appears to be limitless in weight).

The second claim to fame of Granado Espada(GE) is the Stance System. You set your character on a particular stance, which offers bonuses to attack speed, etc.. Each stance has a set of skills for it, and each stance level (exp gained from killing monsters), grants you some skill points. (It increases as you go higher). So now that you understand a little more about the system, let me tear it to pieces!

The MCC system, due to its "Auto Attack" mode is basically a bot. You can leave it on auto-attack, come back 6 hours later and have gained a level or two. I'm sure this wasn't the intention, but its the reality, and something that needs to be drastically changed. The only two "efficient" methods of leveling are "botting" and mobbing/AoE. Both of which get incredibly boring incredibly quickly. Instead of choosing to have the maps filled with a few hard monsters, they loaded them to the brim with monsters that die quickly. And to add it to, the monsters re-spawn at incredible rates, thus making it easier to bot/mob. The Stance System is not without its flaws either. I'm not sure why they went through the difficulty of making skill trees, and various stances, when in essence you can level all of them up to the max. And you're almost guaranteed to have enough skill points to max each skill in each stance. Thereby COMPLETELY removing the skill-build aspect of the game. Combine that with no stat points, and you've got a bunch of cookie-cutter characters running around.

To add onto that note, there is also RNPC's (Recruitable NPC's) in the game, which you do quests for and they become part of your family. (Ie, you can create a new character like them). Many of these RNPC's are ridiculously overpowered in comparison to the base classes and thus you are almost "forced" to have them in your family if you wish to stand a chance at PVP. Thereby reducing the possible family-build. This results in everyone playing very similar characters near the end, which completely removes the point of having such dynamic family possibilities.

However, I do feel that one part of the game needs positive mentioning. And since we've covered graphics, core-game system, and skills; it must be items! The item system is GE is easily THE BEST I've ever seen. First off, items drop from monsters onto the ground, so you don't have to right click to pick up things. Secondly, if its a "rare" item (ie, weapon/armor), it makes a soft "ding" sound when it hits the ground, and glows red making it almost impossible to miss. And in the spirit of Diablo 2, you can press a key combination to see the names of all items on the ground, a feature every MMO needs. Following with that theme of Diablo 2 it seems that ANY monster can drop ANY item, and each item has RANDOM stats. For example:
I found a level 36 elementalist firestorm bracelet with +22% aspd, +20% attk. And in the same 5 minutes, from the same type of monster, I found another level 36 bracelet with +98% dmg to demi human and 5% chance to cause terror.

Too add onto this, there in an enchanting and enhancing system. Where you can upgrade your weapon by enhancing (give money to some NPC and it upgrades safely to +4, past that its a risk, much like RO), and you can enchant your item with enchanting chips. These stones are gained by placing 3 "rare" items into the enchantment chip maker, where it spits out a random level enchanting chips. You then apply this chip to a weapon and it will add random bonuses (such as the ones mentioned above). This system offers AMAZING dynamics in the weapon/armor areas, and a wonderful siphon of money from the economy through enhancing(very expensive). So not only can you find random goodies, but you can also make them from random not-so-goodies. It does not require any extra skill or benefit, just need to talk to an NPC.

The quest system in GE is pretty generic, except that it involves a lot of instancing, and the rewards aren't too bad. They are generally EXP Cards (cards that give EXP to a character and can be used at any time), or RNPC Character Cards (required to be able to make the RNPC character described by the card). There is also your generic hunt/kill X amount of this monster, if that's your thing. Overall I'd say the questing system was done well, nothing to cry about, but nothing to brag about either.

One quite generic feature is the party system, otherwise referred to as "Squadding". The squads work like any other game, where party buffs can be applied, and you can see squad members on the mini-map. One of the nicer features in the AI is that your squad member's scout heals your characters automatically, therefore allowing only 1 scout to suffice for a party of two characters. However, I feel that the party system failed in the core idea of a party; you only get an EXP bonus if two people hit the same monster. And because the monsters are relatively weak, this rarely happens. Combine this fact with the "botting" technique, and you are basically just a collection of "botting" players that are sharing exp, with no bonuses to do so.

One feature, which I do think should be adapted by all future games, is the Warp Point feature. Each family has 5 warp points, which they can set at anyone point in the game by simply clicking "Save" in the family menu. It will save that location to the list, which they can return to easily by using a warp scroll, which opens a gate to go back there (just like Diablo!). This is an incredibly useful feature and saves a lot of the pains of walking, and the scrolls aren't "cheap" so its an excellent money drain.

Another interesting feature for an MMO is the auto-resurrect part of GE. Whenever a character dies, it will simply resurrect in X seconds. If your whole family dies, they will still resurrect after the given time has passed. This works in PVP also(next topic), but if your entire family dies in PVP its over. So long as you keep one character alive, you're good to go! It really encourages more "exciting" game play and allows for interesting things to happen, such as every dungeon having a nasty "mini-boss" that pops out at random times in random places and kills you!. It doesn't get you very mad if you know you'll simply resurrect in a minute or two. So you're probably wondering, how do you get back to town!? Well, if you go back to character select, you can set where you want to start from, either your current location, or your save point (town).

Lastly, I'll discuss PVP. I will not be discussing the Faction vs Faction content, because I did not get to experience it and I've been told it will be getting upgrades/changes in the next update, so I don't want to make comments on something that's not finished. As for the PVP system, I don't think its even worth mentioning. When I discussed "botting" earlier, it involved setting "auto-attack" and going afk. However, when someone asks for a dual, the game will auto accept after 30 seconds of no response. Thus a lot of the "botters" get killed in PVP, which sends you back to town. However, this is a double-edged feature. If you sat down and ran to the bathroom, by the time you got back someone may have dual'd and killed you, sending you back to town. It gets very annoying quite quickly, and is a poor solution to the "botting". Other than dualing, there is arena's for PVP in the towns, but that's about it. Its not a large focus of the game (similar to RO). The FvF content did look good, but we'll have to wait and see.

Overall, I feel that the game failed in some of the core components of an MMO, although it does have a lot of new concepts and new ideas which I think could be modified to create something truly amazing. I could not envision a better item system, which is a huge factor in the game. If you are currently a WoW fan, or some other stat less/skill less MMO, then this game is for you. It is by far the BEST game of the "build less" variety that I've played. If you arent, keep looking, because unless there is dramatic changes in the future I feel it'll just be another game where you get to be a clone of someone elses characters.

Rating:
7.5/10
-bonus marks for originality and masterfully implemented item system
-deductions for core game design

Advice:
PLAY
I feel the game has alot of potential, and in the coming updates things may change for the better. I'll definitely be trying it out again in open beta.
-RF

Scions of Fate Review: Painful.

2007-03-09T10:17:00.000-08:00

Hello!

(I'll be adding screenshots later)

Scions of Fate is the western version of the hit game "Yulgang" in asia. Yulgang boasts about its 70 million registered users (free-to-play). So naturally, I had to try Scions of Fate (SOF) when it came out. So, after waiting through countless delays and tolerating bad community management, I finally got SOF downloaded, installed, and ready to go. And its all downhill from there..

Lets start with the graphics:
As Yulgang is a little old, the graphics are not at their highest potential for a "new" MMO, but nevertheless they are easy on the eyes. There was a few graphical glitches, but the visible distance was quite large, and it was still open beta; thus nothing was too bad. The graphics get a "meh" from me; as they are functional but not breath taking.

Moving onto to the core game play. This is where my enjoyment of the game went to zero. The game play is UTTERLY boring, with no innovation, and a horrible rendition of even a crappy standard MMO. There is no stat points. Infact, the levels in the game DO NOTHING but give you a wee bit more HP/SP. Woohoo! And every few levels you get to go back to town and buy store-bought gear. Woohoo! There is literally no purpose in leveling other than to get the next skill in your tree (I'll talk about that later), or to buy the next ungodly expensive weapon from the store. A total flop.

The character classe.: The game contains 5 base character classes: Swordsman, Bladesman, Spearman, Bowman, Healer. As you can see, the first three are essentially copies of each other, just change the weapon they can use. Whereas the Bowman has incredibly range, and with the proper running tactics, can never be hit. An important imbalance in PVP. The good part is each of the base classes can choose between one of two paths at the first class change. (There is 4 class changes total). For example, the healer can choose Holy Physician or Dark Physician. Which is a system I do enjoy.

To add insult to injury, the item system was poor at best. The items dropped from monsters almost a full second after you killed them, so it was common to walk around and see items all over the ground. As people killed mobs, they would run onward thinking nothing dropped, when something does indeed drop 1-2 seconds later. To cap it off, the idea of customization in the game was the dropping of "rare" gems. Sapphire, Ruby, etc.. Thus, you would commonly have to turn around and check if your monsters dropped anything after you left! You then used these gems at the local blacksmith to "upgrade" a weapon/armor. They did offer a wide variety of customization in the equipment, but they were limited due to the expensive nature and unpredictable results. Since many of the gems sold for incredible amounts of money to NPC's, it simply is not affordable to enchant every time you get a new weapon. (The weapons are purchased based on GOLD ONLY, so if you're level 1, you could have an insane weapon provided you had the gold). But, in SOF's defence, the enchanting/enhancing process offers customization and a semi-build for your character (since they have no stat points.) Although it makes the game far too item-based (IGE anyone?).

The skill system is almost the poorest I've ever seen. You get a new skill every 5-10 levels, and its generally incredibly stronger than your previous one, so there is basically 1 skill you ever use; depending on your level. That aspect of it gets very boring, very quickly. For example, by the time you were a level 60 Beast Slayer (After 2 class changes from swordsman), you would have a TOTAL of 9 skills (8 being useless). That is if you could afford to/wanted to purchase them. There is really nothing more to say. It is simply the worst skill system of any MMO I've ever played.

Moving onto the general game atmosphere, such as quests, leveling etc.. The quests are poor. No other way to say it. You go out and kill X monsters, return to Y NPC, receive Z award. Most of the monsters they ask you to kill are in obscure locations, and thus you need to keep the website open to search for them at each quest. There is nothing innovative, nothing exciting, and definitely nothing fun. I already did my rant on the leveling system, but I'd also like to say that the grind is too hard for the first few levels. It should take minimal amount of time to get to level 10 and get into the game. Past that, I'm fine with increasing leveling time, but at the start, things should not take long. In SOF, it takes a while. And to finish off this segment of the review; the pet system. I WOULD use the pet system as an interesting feature of the game, but its horribly explained in game; and as it turns out, the Cash Shop (real money for in game items) is the prime way you get pets. And not to mention, the Cash Shop causes other broken features.
Such as:
"Gold Supremacy Charm: lasts 30 days"
1. 20% increase in the experience gained by hunting.
2. 150% of the Ki points from hunting.
3. 120% of gold gathered from hunting.
4. You may participate in premium quests.
5. 1% decrease in the experience you lose from your character dieing.
6. You may save up to 4 locations on your Charm of Passage.
7. 120% of the gold from selling items to NPC shops.
8. 5% increase in item enchantment success rate.
9. 5% increase in item strengthening success rate.

As you can see, that's grossly overpowered. Most importantly the "premium quests" which offer godly rewards and can be repeated as many times as you'd like. Essentially FORCING you to "pay" for the game if you want to play competitively.

Overall, I have to say the game is a total flop. With the only interesting part of the entire system being the item enchanting/enhancing. I'm losing faith in F2P MMO's quite quickly. Into the MMO Trash bin you go SOF.

Advice:
AVOID

Rating:
4.5/10

-RF

Granado Espada Singapore Version (English)

2007-02-28T12:53:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone,

Sorry for my absence of late, I had a week of midterms, followed by a holiday, followed by a week of midterms! And in my few spare moments I've been playing Granado Espada (GE).

I definately recommend you check it out at http://granadoespada.sg its in "Closed Beta", but pretty much everyone who applies gets accepted. Its a different spin on an MMO, and quite enjoyable.

The Closed Beta ends March 19th, afterwards it shuts down for 2-3 weeks to upgrade to a newer version of the game. Which then leads to pre-open beta sometime in Mid-April. There will be a character wipe between closed -> pre-open. But there will be no wipes after pre-open beta. I'll have a in depth review up after it closes on the 19th, for those who didn't get to play.

If you are playing, drop your family name in the comments below, and maybe we can duel! Hasn't been much else for news in MMO industry since, other than Acclaim's "Top Secret" project, where they are selecting members of the community to design an MMO that they will then produce. But there is no details on that yet, so for now we remain in the dark.

As always, enjoy!
-RF

Lord of the Rings Online: Review

2007-02-06T18:37:00.000-08:00

Hey all,

As many of you know, I've been in beta for LOTRO for a few months now, and after the stress test last weekend I decided to write a current review on the game.

So lets get to it!

Lord of the Rings Online has been in development..for almost 6 years publicly. It started as "Middle Earth Online" being produced by Vivendi Universal. However, after a few years, they decided (not sure of the reason) to pass the game onto a company called Turbine. Turbine had
previously made and managed Ascheron's Call 2. So, after almost 6 years the game finally entered into closed beta Q3 of last year. It's advertising points being that it stayed as true to the
books as possible and offered an exciting MMO experience.

Now that we've gotten that covered, lets get into the actual game itself. I of course like to start with the core game system. For those who like to speed read, LOTRO can be descried in one word: WoW. The game systems are eerily similar, almost to the point where it should be a copyright infringement. The characters have no modifiable stat points, ie, each level you gain does absolutely nothing for you except the possibility of learning a new skill if you've reached the next level threshold. In fact, the skill system appears to be an exact replica of WoW. Once you reach level X, you can buy skills W,Y,Z..etc. Therefore, I was EXTREMELY disappointed in that aspect of the game. As for the stat system, you can modify them through your equipment, and something called "Traits". You gain traits by completing "Accomplishments"; exploring, doing the lore, and just plain grinding. For example, if you kill 1000 goblins, you may become
"John the Goblin Slayer", which is simply a change of title. But, if you find all of the 7 ancient stones in a particular area, you may gain a trait that gives +1 to int. These traits can be applied to your character by talking to the town's Bard, who will set them into one of your trait slots(you gain more as you get higher level). They can be switched out at any time, so it does allow for a slight bit of difference between characters, but you need to have alot of time on your hands to get the various traits. Traits would be an excellent compliment to normal stat system; but if they serve as the only means to differentiate yourself, they become more of a time sink.

Moving onto the graphics. As Turbine has been known to produce some good graphics, I was expecting the very best when first signing into LOTRO. And I was not disappointed. With graphics settings on max, the game looks absolutely stunning. From the life-like water, to the facial design, to the details of the buildings, everyone was done to perfection. My only qualm is that the overall graphic style and especially the fonts, look EXACTLY the same as WoW. If you changed the name and put the graphics on low it would be very hard to tell the difference for a novice MMO player. Irregardless, Turbine did an amazing job on the graphics (6.8 gb client!) and I'm sure as they near closer to release they'll only get better.

Now, getting to the classes. The current list of 7 includes: Champion, Guardian, Captain, Minstrel, Hunter, Burglar, Lore Master. The first question you might ask is "Where is the wizards!?". Turbine decided not to include the Wizards because it would go against Tolkien's Lore, as there were very few wizards in the books. But, nevertheless, the Lore Master serves as a pseudo-wizard for those who desire Magic. The rest of the classes are the standard run of the mill classes, so I wont say much about them. There are also 4 races, Human, Elf, Hobbit, Dwarf. With certain limitations on what class each race can choose. For some reason, they decided that you should not be able to play the evil races from the lore, I'm not entirely sure what sense that makes.

Moving onto the Combat system. The combat at ground level is very similar to WoW. Well, to be precise, its exactly the same as WoW(Starting to notice a theme?). Regardless, there is some
details that you cannot see without actually playing the class. First and foremost is the combo'ing of skills. If you were a Hunter, you could fire a "Barbed Arrow" which would cause the target to bleed and run slower. Once you caught up to the target (or they to you), you could slash them with your dagger, aiming for the wounded area by using the designated skill, and do a large amount of extra damage. This is just one of the simple combos present in the lower levels of the game. They get far more complex later on. The most exciting of which is the "Group Skills", which allow a "Fellowship" (party) to attack in unison doing many complex combos. It truly adds to the group-based combat and is a fantastic idea. I'm not entirely fond of the solo combo skills, because they are powerful enough that they become the only skills you use, making the other skills grossly inefficient and therefore useless.

Next we go to the environment of Middle Earth. The world itself is massive and quite well detailed. The mapping system is again very similar to WoW, and travel can be done by foot or through renting/riding a horse. Guess what? You need to be level 40 (or was it 30..) to purchase a horse, and it costs an arm and a leg. You can rent a horse to go from area to area, but it follows a designated path. But you can jump off the horse at any given time, which is nice. However, most of the game before level 40 you'll be walking, so prepare for a lot of walking (hrm..sounds like WoW). There is also an auction house in every major town, which works the exact same as WoW's does, so nothing too exciting there.

Going onto what is pretty much a standard system in MMO's these days; crafting. The different professions of crafting are: Prospector, Forestor, Scholar, Cook, Weaponsmith, Woodworker, Metalsmith, Leatherworker, and Jeweler. Its obvious to see which ones are denoted as "Primary" and which are "Secondary". The primary crafts, or rather the collection crafts are very similar to WoW. You gain a skill that helps you locate your respective resource, and then you go and collect that resource by equipping an axe, or a mining pick, etc.. Once you've collected from one resource (ie, a mound of copper, a branch of rowen), it disappears and you go off to the find the next one! When you've gotten enough of the resource, you go back to town to turn it into something useful with the secondary professions. You may whittle the wood into a bow shaft and then into a bow. After doing this so may times, you advance the craft and get to go collect the higher-level resource and do fun things with it. As I'm sure you've noticed this is almost identical to the WoW system. The items you make are useful, and usually stronger than what you can buy at the NPC's. But it takes a significant amount of time to level it up enough to keep up with your level. So I wouldn't rate it as anything amazing.

Nearing the end now, we get to the Questing. Questing is the basis of LOTRO, you actually start the game in an instance quest, and then once completing that, you enter a pseudo-instance world. Where all the new players exist, but once they complete the quest they are warped out into the "real world". Questing is where one of my biggest complaints with the game lies, so I'll try to be as unbiased as possible. The basic system is again similar to WoW (or any other MMO), you go kill X monsters and you'll receive Y money/exp/items. Or, go find the NPC named John and then return to me with what he says, etc.. Again, nothing is new. But, the annoying part is the absolutely massive amount of exp/money you receive from doing a quest, as compared to just grinding. You may get 1-3 exp for killing a wolf, but get 800 for killing 10 and completing the quest. It makes absolutely no sense to "grind" in the game, and thus the rather boring questing is forced upon you. Some of them require a group to go kill boss monster X, which is NOT instanced. This leads to a lot of spawn camping (even in closed beta) that makes it not enjoyable.

Lastly I'm going to skim over PVP. There is no PVP in LOTRO. Turbine decided that it was against the lore to have humans fighting hobbits (so why didn't they enable evil races, I asked myself). Thus the current implementation of PVP is going to an NPC where you get to take over a mob and fight other players with that mob. I really don't have much experience in the matter, because quite frankly it sounded boring and there is level restrictions on it. If anyone actually did try it, please post in the comments a little review and I'll add it if its appropriate.

To sum it all up, I'm quite disappointed with the overall features of LOTRO. My belief is that when it started, these concepts were all new and quite enjoyable, but after the years of development, they are now antique, with the exception of the graphics. I do feel that with a modifiable stat system and a slightly better skill system the game would be top notch, as it does contain many good MMO features, and some new ones (group combos). With that said, I think it will steal alot of players away from WoW, because of the obvious similarities and the fact that its simply a new game in the same genre. And because they followed the lore so closely, even in the quests, it will attract a lot of Tolkein fans. We'll see what new content Turbine thinks of after the inital development phase is over. But for now, I would avoid any high hopes, as there are other better games already released, or being released at
the same time as LOTRO.

Rating:
6.5/10

Advice:
AVOID

-RF

LOTRO Review

2007-01-29T13:38:00.000-08:00

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

2007-01-25T17:59:00.000-08:00

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

2007-01-13T15:36:00.000-08:00

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

2007-01-10T20:59:00.000-08:00

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

Happy New Years and Florensia Online Preview

2006-12-29T15:42:00.000-08:00

Hey everyone!

Sorry for the long time between posts, I'm at home for the holidays and its been quite quite busy. But without further adieu, I'll get to my next preview. Its for a new MMO called "Florensia".

Although there is little info on this game, as its still in development, they do have many of the game's features up on the website: http://en.florensia.co.kr/ . The basic premise is similar to Pirate King Online (which is posted in my archives); as the game has a pirate theme, complete with town siege and becoming a merchant.

As for the core systems of the game: there appear to be at least nine classes, ranging from:
Explorer, Voyager, Producer, Manufacturer, Merchant, Shipbuilder, Soldier, Mercenary, and Pirate. It is important to note that this is pre-liminary information, and the list may be much longer or shorter. It appears that the Explorer and Voyager explore both land and sea to find new islands, treasures, and write maps to sell to other classes. Whereas the producing classes deal with city development, such as building/developing cities (and their defences) and trading with other cities..etc. Which is a marvelous idea in my opinion as it adds a new perspective to the game. Goonzu has a similar system (see my archives).

The last batch of classes, the "warrior" style classes, deal with all things piratey, including commanding your fleet of mateys, laying siege to other cities, defending your own city and all things in between. From the sounds of it, they have a class to satisfy everyone, and enough action to keep things exciting for quite some time.

The graphics appear to be using the Unreal 2.5 engine and thus are very similar to RO2 (both games are anime based) from the looks of the videos. The equipment is rendered on each part of the body and didn't appear choppy, so nothing to fret about in this department.

Although there is little info released, if the current ideas are developed properly this could be a massive hit. Yet, we must always remember the problem with false promises (see Dark and Light), so I'm not getting too excited about it. But this is definitely a game to watch out for, I'll keep you updated if they post any information about the core system (character development).

Link for a video of the game on YouTube is: http://youtube.com/watch?v=-uRC1Msneag

Advice:
WATCH

Also, Cabal Online Closed Beta ends on January 2nd, if you have any thoughts on it, please feel free to post in the comments, I read them all.

Thats all for now, have a Happy New Year everyone!
-RF

Cabal Online Closed(open) Beta

2006-12-14T17:24:00.000-08:00

Hey,

First things first. My LOTRO beta friend key is now gone, sadly no one posted in the comments except for one person, whose email was invalid.

Onto to actual news:
Cabal Online is going into the final stage of closed beta. There is a twist, anyone who gets an invite gets to invite 5 other people, whom also get to invite 5 other people...etc. And since I have an invite, if you post your email address in my comments I'll work on getting you an invite also, so that you can come back here and invite more people!

The actual beta starts on the 18th. However, with some nifty tricks you can play right now:

http://cabaldatabase.com/index.php?x=4
You can download the client at the above link.

http://www.cabaldatabase.com/BBS/viewtopic.php?t=486
How to play right now!

Time to give Cabal that last try, since my previous review didnt get to cover the entire game (level 50 max), now it is level 150 max; so we shall see if things have changed.

As always, enjoy!
-RF

LOTRO Beta Key

2006-12-11T20:11:00.000-08:00

Sorry for the lack of updates of late, but I've been busy with school. I do however happen to have a Lord of The Rings Online closed-beta key to give away. And since you, my faithful readers, care enough to venture to my little blog, I feel it should go to one of you.

Leave your email address and reason for why you should get the key. It HAS to be activated by tommorrow at about 7 PM EST, so if there is only one comment by that time, you'll get it!

On other news, CABAL goes open beta on the 18th (this is from gamengame.com's forums, I'm not sure if its "official" so dont hold me too it!).

And thats it for now, the MMO industry has been VERY quiet lately. Only other rumours around revovle around Darkfall finally entering into beta stages sometime next year.

Thanks!
-RF

Updates: Short One

2006-12-05T22:09:00.000-08:00

Hey,

Sorry for the delay (again), but one more day until the term is over! Woohoo! (Then 7 days of hell, then finals).

As for any updates. I'm still waiting on CABAL Online (www.cabalonline.net) to go open beta. It is supposed to be "sometime in December"; so lets keep our fingers crossed.

Also, I'm gonna try and compile some information on Lord of the Rings Online. My initial thoughts on it are not very flattering for Turbine (LoTRO producers) so I'll try and get more info before posting a preview.

Lastly: DELAYS.
Almost >every< single MMO in production has been delayed 1-6 months. I've got no idea what the industry is up too but its making for a very sad state of games during christmas break. CABAL is only remaining option.

Hope I do well on my finals!
-RF

Ragnarok Online II Preview!

2006-11-23T19:32:00.000-08:00

Hey everyone,

Sorry for such a long time between posts, but dear lord I've had one busy week. Now that midterms/lab exams/stress are finally over for a few weeks, figured I'd post this length preview of Ragnarok Online II(RO2).

The most obvious difference between RO2 and RO is in the graphics department. RO2 was designed from the ground up using the Unreal 2.5 engine. This results in breath-taking 3-D graphics, and most importantly, every piece of armor/weapons/headgear has their own graphical display. Resulting in almost 1000 different pieces of equipment to make your character's sprite unique. But as I'm sure everyone knows by now, I care little about graphics, so lets get to the core of RO2's design.

RO2 is designed around 3 basic races. The Dimago, Normans, and Ellrs. Little is known about the Dimago, but the Ellrs appear to be magically inclined; and use magical stones to battle. The Normans however have the most information, and will be the main focus of this preview. Every Norman starts off as a novice class (similar to RO) and at the appropriate base/job level they are able to change class into one the current 5 other classes: Swordman, Enchanter, Recruit, Thief, and Clown.

Now this is where Gravity put a creative spin on things. Each character may change classes an infinite amount of time. Whenever you change to a new class, your job level goes back to 1 and you are free to learn skills from the new class. If you wanted, however, to change back to your old class; you will still have the skills and job level from before.
As an example: If you were a level 30/25 (base/job) Recruit and wished to change to an Enchanter, you would then become an level 30/1 Enchanter. However, if after a few weeks you decided to go back to Recruit your level would again be 30/25.

What use is this, you might ask. Not only did Gravity allow for job changing, they also allowed the use of skills from all of your previous classes. Of course, you cannot level these skills without changing to the appropriate class, but it presents a lot of possibilities for builds. This would mean unlimited skills, but that is not the case. In order to use skills of another class (called 'specialty skills'), one needs to place them in their specialty skill grid. A 4x4 (at max level, it grows as you leve) grid which you can add skills to. Some skills may require 3 'blocks' of the grid and some may require 1. This makes the skill system much more exciting than RO's current system.

Some of you may be wondering, "but what about our stats! my enchanter is useless with strength and vitality from a swordman!". Gravity also thought of this, and reduced the stat 'system' per say. In RO, the current system is 9:1 (9 stats for every 1 "job level stat boost"). In RO2, the system is 2:3 and the stats have more widespread effects.
Take the example of Wisdom:

Increases melee physical attack speed
Increases ranged physical attack speed
Increases hit rate on spells
Increases minimum spell damage

As you can see, that could be beneficial to EVERY class at varying degrees, and thus stat builds have evolved into much more than the generic "pump all int/dex for mage". This also opens the doors for battle priest-style characters.

Now surely, this is incredibly exciting and you want to already play; but wait! There is more!

To further increase the character customization(build wise), Gravity has added more features, the most impressive being the equipment system. If anyone has played Secret of Mana they will be familiar with parts of this system. The basic premise is that two types of equipment exist in RO2: 'leveling' and 'non-leveling'. The leveling type speaks for itself; it gains experience and levels and has stat points the same as a character does. They are bound to your character. The non-leveling type are the more common MMORPG style equipment and they are not bound, but they do have random stats (think Diablo). As exciting as random stats are(I love the system), I'm going to talk more about the leveling-type.

The leveling type weapons are broken into three classes (think Lineage 2).

A-class: Max level 20
B-class: Max level 20
C-class: Max level 20

Once your weapon reaches max level, you must use a special combination item to upgrade it to the next class. Each time your weapon reaches max experience, you must take it to a blacksmith (think Secret of Mana) and have him upgrade it for you. Each weapon has a "growth" rate, in which its stats increase randomly based on that rate. For example:

The C-weapon 'Ellr's Knife' has high growth rate in both melee and magic power. Once it is upgraded into B-weapon 'Kris of Thorns', its growth rate changes to critical attack. So every level, the critical attack will "grow" faster than the other stats. As you can see, this leads to some very interesting builds also.

A few final features of RO2 that many people have been asking for are:

The ability to swim, jump, and move via WASD (keyboard). Also, the path finding has been improved so you do not run into walls when clicking around sharp corners.
Loot will be collected from a corpse's body (removes looting, which plagued early RO)
Facial expressions instead of emoticons.
INCREDIBLE sound track, composed by Yoko Kanno (google her name for some of her work), she composed over 90 songs for RO2.

Overall, I suspect RO2 will be a mega-hit. The character customization is amazing, and the various builds..are limitless. It will be quite exciting indeed. Currently Korea, Japan, Brazil, Taiwan, Thailand, Malaysia all have licences purchased to host the game in their respective languages. No official word on international RO2 yet, but I assume its tied closely to the Korean version, as iRO is a subsidiary of kRO. Open beta is slated for December/January in Korea, and the other countries should not be far behind.

Note: I did not discuss PVP, WoE, etc... because there is no info on them currently. We have been assured it will more exciting than RO's current implementation.

Advice:
WATCH

-RF

Guild Wars - A niche market.

2006-11-13T11:33:00.000-08:00

Hi guys and gals!

I know this is a little overdue, but I'm reviewing the first Guild Wars. I'm only doing the first one because I don't have extensive experience with the expansions; and they maintain the general game design of the first.

I'd first like to point out that I am a hardcore MMO player, as opposed to the casual 4-6 hours per week type.

The basic premise of Guild Wars is about removing massive grind (PvE) and replacing it with a wide variety of PvP. Although they did keep some PvE in the game, its limited at best; the PvP is not involving enough to warrant playing for 6-8 hours daily. Thus this is not a game for hardcore players. However, due to the lack of a monthly fee, its a very viable option as a "second" game you can play when taking a break from a primary MMO.

On that note, the most enjoyable concept of the game is the skill/PvP system. Each character chooses a primary and secondary class. With the main focus of the stats orientated for the primary, yet gaining the skills of the secondary. Each class has roughly 100 skills, making for a total of 200 skills for each character. These skills must be either purchased from an NPC or stolen from a monster using specific skills/items. The exciting part is that you can only ever bring 8 skills into a PvP match (PvP games are instanced), and you are always warring with a guild or party or random collection of people. Thus coordination, teamwork, and quick wit become very important aspects of the game.

The stat system is unique in that it adds specific bonuses to various aspects of your damage or character abilities; such as an "increase fire damage" stat for a Elementalist. The nice part is that these stats can be modified almost daily, to reduce one, or add to another. This is required as your "build" or "strategy" of skills you bring into battle may change, and thus you may want to increase lightning damage instead of fire damage.

As you can see, the coordination of highly skilled guilds will dominate the GvG scene. And there is many tournaments/rankings in this area to encourage such competition. Also, the PvP comes in a wide variety, from a variation of capture the flag, kill all the other team, various "castle siege" styles. And even surviving onslaughts of NPC's; with I'm sure many more varieties offered in the expansions. They really focused on PvP and made sure it was enjoyable.

The PvE aspect of the game is almost entirely instanced, as you start doing basic "instances" of quests with 4-6 party members. You can hire NPC's if you wish to do it solo, but the party members are generally easy to find. It is in the PvE that you find much of your rare gear and you can "steal" monster's skills. In addition to the instanced PvE, there is an actual "world" also, where you can explore, find monsters, and find gear. It is quite large and has many hidden bosses (big arse dragons), however its not very populated by anything but open space and monsters. And with a level cap, it takes at most 1-2 weeks to reach it through conventional grinding.

I think the game is done brilliantly well, with the only exception being limited PvE, and thus a lack of hardcore players. But with the current business model of zero monthly fees, you just purchase the game, it offers some competitive entertainment for the casual and hardcore player alike. If you like for PvP, this game is your holy grail.

Rating:
9/10

Advice for casual gamer:
PLAY

Advice for hardcore gamer:
keep it as an option

-RF

Rappelz Review - Ugh.

2006-11-08T14:36:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone,

I know I said I wouldn't even be trying Rappelz, but I figured that's not fair to my readers that they should not get a review just because I find concepts of the game bad. And a friend asked me to play, so I had to! So lets jump straight into the review:

My expectations going into the game were low, as it does not have a stat point system. But nevertheless, it is possible to make the game fun and require 'skill' without a system, just much harder. So I decided to make an Asura race character, and go for Strider or Sorcerer class. So when I logged in, first thing I noticed was the graphics. They are done well enough as to not make it an eyesore and still impress me, so it gets a passing grade in that department. However, the next thing I noticed was the movement, which is point-and-click via mouse. It simply wasn't smooth. If you were running and decided to change direction, it takes your character about 1 second to realize that you clicked somewhere else, which is really quite annoying. Especially since you can be walking towards an NPC, and talk to the NPC whilst walking, and when you leave the "range" of the NPC the chat closes.

Aside from the response time issues, the beginning of the game is rather standard. You spawn, are asked to kill X of monster Y and do this a few times, then move to the next set of quests that asks you to similar tasks and so on. By the time you are level 10, you are complete the "training", and can change class. (Each race has 3 possible classes, with 3 races, meaning 9 total classes). By this time you've learnt a few of the more interesting aspects of the game, such as summoning a creature(to ride or fight with), upgrading armors (similar to L2), and the use of force chips (use one, weakens the enemy for a few seconds). Which is all fine and dandy. But, while I learned more about the game, my opinion of it began to quickly fall.

First off, the skills. They use a job point based system, where each kill gives you X experience and Y job points. You use these job points to either level up a skill or level up your job level. This is not explained very well at the beginning of the game, as many people waste their job points in beginner skills when it requires base level 10, job level 10 to change class. And although they offer "mastery" skills for almost every weapon in most classes, they remove any and all "skill" required to play the game through their system. This is done by not capping job points(jp) earned. So with an unlimited amount of playing time, you can have every skill for your class at max level. Couple that with no stat system, means that as soon as you find some interesting strategy to kill monsters/players with, using a combination of skills; someone can simply copy it since they have all the skills you do. The only limitation in the amount of skills you have is the amount of time you spend leveling, which is a system to base a game off of.

I can give it props for the potion system, as they either heal instantly(with a cool down) or heal over time (with no cool down), so there is no pot "spamming". I also found the camera slightly annoying, as you can scroll out a long ways, but cannot adjust angle of viewing very much without zooming back in. Lastly, I found the PVP poorly thought out, I believe this problem is only for first class characters (they have second class planned), but if you're a melee character, fighting a ranged character, the ranged need simply to walk in zig-zags while attacking and your character can never respond fast enough to hit. If this was meant to be fixed through the second class skills, they should have included second classes in release.

Also have to give it another point deduction for its system, or lack thereof. The monsters drop no rare items except for cards and cubes used to upgrade a weapon. Anything else they drop can be purchased from the store. Thus you cant even find a "rare" weapon, unless you purchased it ingame or used the cash shop to buy upgrade materials for it. Truly disappointing.

Overall I give this game a dismal rating, as it tries to be like Lineage 2 or WoW but simply doesn't compare in any aspect. I would recommend almost any game over this one, including WoW. The fact that it is free does not make up for its flaws either. Lack of a stat system, horrid skill system, poor response time, poorly developed PVP, countered by only a few good concepts makes this game a prime candidate for my newly developed MMOTRASH bin.
In it goes.

Rank:
3/10

Rating:
AVOID

-RF

Short Blurb on Infinity, Monato, Goonzu

2006-11-04T18:57:00.000-08:00

Hey everyone,

*Finally* done my midterms for this semester, just a few projects to get out of my way and I'll have this week off of homework. Woohoo!

Onto more important matters. During the past few weeks I've tried the various open beta, and to sum it up nicely, have been disappointed. I'll start with Monato Esprit.

To identify the game in one acronym, it be WoW. It is essentially a clone of WoW, except of course its from Korea. The graphics are done well, but it gave me the eerie feel of WoW with a little anime thrown in. The game content is the same, with the generic quest NPC's in town and quests progressing as you go on. The most important aspect is the stat points, or the lack thereof. Overall it felt like I was playing WoW. If I had desired that I would simply have played WoW instead.

So this one gets an:
AVOID
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The next game I tried was Goonzu Online. I'm going to warn you beforehand, its not 3-d, and the graphics are very "simple", but I found them done well enough to enjoy it regardless. The most exciting feature of this game is the stat system and market system. Player guilds control towns, taxation, which NPC's set up shop in their towns, and the town's dungeon which was fascinating as a "goal" for a guild.

The economy and market system was VERY well though out. Every item is sold at the "market" price to an NPC. If there is increased demand for that item, price goes up, and thus so does selling price to the NPC. The only items ever in the the economy are those players sell, thus the market system works brilliantly for controlling inflation and such.(Exception of healing potions of course). Also almost every dropped item in the game has some sort of purpose; whether it be a questing, crafting, or feeding your pet, everything had a value.

Next is the skill system which is also done nicely, increasing your levels in a skill by learning from "books" which are sold to the market from other players and thus you can buy them. Goonzu also has various crafting books in everything from armors and weapons, in what seems like an endless amount of them. These require ingredients, such as steel, coal, silver..etc which are made from other crafting skills. Thus you can see how every item in the game is used someway or another. Lastly, another exciting feature was the pet/summon system. Once you reach a specific level you get a "pet", a very weak low level pet which helps you in battles. As you level, so does it, and once it reaches certain levels it has the opportunity to evolve. You must buy special tickets for this evolution to happen and sometimes the results are unpredictable, but this evolution can occur hundreds of times. Thus leading to a very wide variety of pets and when you obtain a "legendary" pet its announced server wide as an accomplishment. And on that topic, there is also a market for horses, which level up as you feed them/use them to gain faster speed and weight, however they eventually get too old and leave you for "retirement". The game does contain a lot of walking if you are going to high level dungeons so having a horse is quite useful.

Lastly, the stat system is a standard 5-6 different stat points and they affect your characters damage, attack speed, health..etc. Which is almost a requirement for me to play an MMO. However, the reason I'm not playing it right now is.... no PVP. Absolutely none, there is no way to fight against other plays shy of KSing them on monsters. They went into each aspect of gaming so detailed, I was so happy, but they failed to address the most important part of MMOs.

Thus this game gets a:
MAYBE

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lastly I'm going to review Infinity.

Initially I thought a system of skills involving mouse click combinations would be a good thing. However, in practice, the system is poorly designed and results more in "random clicking" that actually performing various skills. I also found the character movement to be horrid and almost "choppy". I was initially lead to believe it would be an MMO style, but it turned out be a "GunBound style" where you join a game room and complete the mission in that room. There was also PVP rooms but they were nothing more than complete chaos of people hitting random buttons hoping to get combos. Overall its poorly designed and horribly implemented. Without further ado:

Rating:
AVOID

That's all for now folks, hope to get Spellborn open beta soon or a few other games, right now none have caught my eye. I'll keep you posted as usual. Also as a note; I will not be reviewing Rappelz, or even downloading it, as it has no stat system and is a clone of L2 in almost all aspects.

-RF

Upcoming Betas

2006-11-01T21:43:00.000-08:00

Few open betas coming soon I'd like to make everyone aware about:
-(shorts posts because I'm busy this week)

CABAL ONLINE

http://www.cabalonline.net/
-You'll see a rather scathing review of it in my review list but that was the first 50 levels only (closed beta limit), so I'm hoping to at least try up to level 100 before I make a final decision. Regardless; to each their own, it may just be the game you're looking for. Currently in closed beta.

9DRAGONS

http://9dragons.acclaim.com/welcome.htm
- Currently in closed beta also. Has a good stat system with a unique skill development and overall character development system. I've yet to experience the PVP or Guild vs Guild modes. Might be something to look out for in terms of game content.

Priston Tale 2

http://www.pristontale2.com/
- Should be open beta soon(previous pres release said November 06). Warning: it pushes Unreal 2.5 engine graphics to their limits, might want to check system requirements before you get too excited. The first one was very well designed, just had a few problems with the grind and loss of experience from death(you could lose whole levels). And this one has been in the making for quite some time, so I expect great things.

Thats all for today.
-RF

Taking Guest Submissions and A Question

2006-10-26T20:11:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone,

*edit* Not a single submission yet, or even a comment on which game to review! /sob
I have a heavy workload for this week, so hopefully friday afternoon I get another review up *end edit*

I've decided to take guest submissions of an MMO review, you may email them to fagnanus@yahoo.com (yes I know it sounds like a stupid email, made it just for this purpose years ago)

I'll read them all, and post a few of the best ones. Try to do it on a game I've havent yet reviewed, but that has some interest, or a preview if you want. You can also do it on a game I have reviewed if you feel I didnt do it justice. I'll give you until November 7th to get them in!

Aside from that, I've tested both Infinity, 9 Dragons, Monato Esprit and Goonzu recently. I dont think they all need a review, but I'd like to know which one you want, or if I should do them all in one post.

-RF

"Vote" in the comment below!

The Design Dilemma: What is the MMO industry doing?

2006-10-21T22:02:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone,

Today's post is about the current MMO industry, their successes, and their failures.
Going to start this off with a little rant about game mechanics and content design, or lack thereof.

The recent games have been well, pitiful. They entirely focus around leveling, without giving a real purpose for it. In many of the first MMO's, gaining a level meant getting these lovely things called "stat points" to distribute into your stats in any way you choose. Giving you the freedom to design your character a build, and gives you a purpose of getting the next level. Now fast forward to current MMO's. The only purpose of leveling, since almost all of these games have no significant stat system, is to be able to equip the next set of gear. What a privilege, except for the fact that everyone else is aiming for the same thing, and in the end you're all just clones.

Which takes me to my next point: character development. I don't understand both the current new gen MMO players, or the new MMO developers. They seem to enjoy creating/playing games with no actual purpose other than a massive time sink. What happened to having pride in the fact that you were smarter with your build, your skills, or combination of the two. Now the common theme seems to be finding the best gear possible through hours and hours of farming, to prove you're "superior". To me, the difference between superior and inferior in an MMO is that what your character does, no one else can do, or will be able to do. Not, what your character does everyone else's will do in 2 months. Time should not differentiate good from bad. It should to an extent, but not as a sole factor.

Another point to rant about, is originality. I understand making monster sprites is not "easy", but if you're going to go through 3-4 years of developing a game, at least try. Having 15 monsters use the same sprite, and just naming them "Angry Bear", "Black Bear", "Young Bear"... shows a lack of attention to detail. In order to fully submerse a player into your world, you need to address small issues like that.

However, with that thought, comes the opposite rant. I do not want a company to spend 3 years designing every inch of each piece of armor sprite wise, just so I can look pretty in it. Its not like my gear will change everyday, and after 5 minutes of staring it, my eyes will phase out what it even looks like. So if you have extra time for your graphic artists, sure, make they all pretty, but it should not deter ANY time from the game content design, as it serves no real purpose to the gamer.

My last rant point is about content and PVP systems. If you're going to develop a game, at least give things for the players to do, other than quests to kill X monsters, or go walking for 10 minutes. Create new tasks, such as how crafting was introduced during 2nd generation MMOs. Or mini games, or politics, or exploring. Give them something, but make sure it still relates to the game and has a purpose for the core of the game. People don't play mini games just for the sake of playing mini games - give them a purpose. More devs need to use that little thing called creativity, something I thought game designers would be ripe with, but apparently not of late. A good option for this is generally organized PVP of some sort, or even better yet Party vs Party, or Guild vs Guild. I don't mean the open PVP style either, that's fine and dandy, but its very difficult to make it enjoyable for all periods, for long lengths of time - most of the time its just annoying. More people need to study Guilds Wars system for Guild vs Guild: there is lots of variation, competition, and tons of strategical skill required. Make it about more than just who has the highest level characters.

note: I am very critical on the stat and character development systems, as these are the core of any game and directly effect every other feature of the game.

Taking a little of this advice, I think most MMO's can be highly successful. However, fail on even one of these major categories, and you might have a flop on your hands. The market is very picky, if you don't make it perfect, why would they pay for it?

-RF

Short List of Free/Beta Games

2006-10-17T12:18:00.000-07:00

Hey,

*edit* I'm aware some of the pictures dont work, it seems to vary user to user, try refreshing, it solves the problem sometimes *end edit*

I have a bunch of midterms this week and next, so instead of making a long winded review of some game, I'd rather just post things for you guys to play. For those that are bored, here we go

Rappelz
http://rappelz.gpotato.com/
-open beta started October 2/06
-much like Lineage 2

Monato Esprit
http://global.monatoesprit.com/
-open beta started October 16/06
-feels a little like an anime version of WoW
-no stat point system, so thumbs down from me

Infinity
http://playinfinity.net/
-open beta was supposed to start October 13/06, has been delays
-very unique skill system, uses key combos to cast them (kinda like street fighter moves)

Warrock
http://www.warrock.net/
-indepth review already posted, check history
-its free and in open beta I believe

Trickster
http://www.tricksteronline.com/
-free to play
-review already posted, check history

Nostale
http://game.nostale.com/
-free to play and in beta I believe
-no stat system, so thumbs down
-interesting pet system though, you can become your pet

Knight Online
http://www.knightonlineworld.com/
-pvp focused MMO

Gunster
http://gunster.ijji.com/
-2D shoot em up game, much like soldat, but has an MMO aspect
-open beta and free to play

That should be enough for now, i'll post screenshots later today, this computer is quite slow.
Enjoy!

-RF

Taking Requests

2006-10-14T14:30:00.000-07:00

Hey,

I've got a few more games to review, but I'd like to take a few requests on game previews, or reviews. If you have a game you think I should preview/review, just post it in a comment, and say why you think I should review it!

Thanks!
-RF

The Chronicles of Spellborn: A Preview

2006-10-09T16:34:00.000-07:00

Hey,

Today's preview is about a unique upcoming MMORPG called The Chronicles of Spellborn(TCoS).
Their website is: www.tcos.com

The game is set in a post-apocalyptic dark fantasy world, where the Ancestoral world was destroyed and the knowledge/artifacts of the past were locked away within it. The Oracle is said to know all that happened, yet will share with no one. And so on. There is a VERY detailed story, ways to interact with the story(through scroll on their webpage), and alot of story discussion in the forums. Definately the perfect game for any RP'ers.

Aside from the story aspects(not very important to me), one of the most exciting features of the game is the unique combat system. They blur the line between MMORPG and MMOFPS, as all skills and attacks require aim, via a cross hair. Now initially this may seem to be annoying, but through the combination of their skill system (explained next), it becomes a very active game, requiring both skill and tactic: something few of the current games accomplish.

The skill system is one of the first I've seen to actually make using skills more than just a point-click system. It consists of a "skilldeck", where you select which skills you place in each Tier. Then as you're in combat, the skills rotate on a cylinder, as you choose which skills to use, and through this, you can make starting combos, finishing combos, and all sorts inbetween. This is where it can get interesting, as at each position on the skill selector (the cylinder), you can only choose from those skills listed. So preparing a versatile skill deck is very important. Think kinda like Guild Wars, where you can only bring X amount of skills into battle. Combining this with an FPS aiming style, the game adds a whole new level of "skill" required, and decreases the advantage of playing for 20 hours a day.

Aside from the combat changes, the game also follows the road less travelled in other areas, such as character development. When you create a new character, you can choose anything from wearing armor only on certain parts of your body, tatoo's, about a billion faces and so on. There was extensive work put into this part of the game so that there are essentially no two people alike. You'll notice I said armor, which is an important aspect of their system, your armor has LITTLE to do with your actual character, but more based on appearances. The game strives away from grind as much as possible, while still keeping enough to attract hardcore gamers. Take armor/weapons for example, they do not drop from monsters themselves, instead broken pieces do, which you can turn into a weapon via NPC. I would prefer a system of rares from mob drops, but I can see the advantages of their current system.

Also, there is little hunting for rares involved, with the exception of a few runes you can place into slotted weapons to gain a benefit. So as you can see, the game is much like a hybrid of FPS/RPG, taking some excellent features from both. Also, from what I've been told their is little "leveling" grind, as the game is riddled with very complex and interesting quests, some include going back into time (instanced) to modify history.

The game offers a few more interesting features, such as the Deadspell (the world between Shards) And the ability to join one of the High Houses, which can conquerer new shards located in the Deadspell.

My outlook on the game is uncertain, as I'm not sure just how much grind is in the game. I believe that every game requires a little grind, if not its hard to keep people playing for long periods of time. But I do find their skill system very impressive, and I can see alot of crazy tactics being developed for PvP or PvE, which will be quite exciting. The only thing holding me back from a complete rave preview is the delays its experienced, was supposed to be out some time ago, and open beta has been delayed a few times. But I have faith that they are working hard, and there is VERY good community support. Including an IRC room at irc.tcos.com #spellborn. I encourage everyone to give it a glance, its certainly not for everyone, but if you're looking for a variation in the genre, stay tuned for Open Beta (supposed to be soon!).

Rating:
WATCH

-RF

Delays...and Pirate King Online

2006-10-03T12:55:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

Very sorry for the recent lack of posts, I've been swamped with midterm projects, those should come to a close this weekend and I can resume posting as normal.

First off, as I stated before, I'm currently playing Pirate King Online (www.piratekingonline.com), its in open beta phase and will not be wiping after open beta. It is also a F2P game (Free to play), which means it comes with a cash store. But this is one of the few games out there where the cash store does not create imbalances, just saves a little time, and it allows us to play for free, so its a good trade off.

Basically, the thing that got me playing this game is the stat system, its very similiar to Ragnarok Online(RO) with the exception of the luk stat. They function in almost the same way, and they affect your characters abilities deeply, and no one build appears to dominate. Thats my little checklist on stat systems, and its passes thus far.

There is a newbie class, which goes to 4 first classes, and then onto second classes (much much like RO, some classes can become 2 different second classes and so on..). The game very easy to start initially, and you can quest until (Ingame ship, being attacked by defender)
your eyes bleed if you wanted too. The combat is again much like RO, point and click, same as movement. Skill use is the same also, however you must buy skill books (like WoW) to initliaze them, then you may level them up to 10 with your skill points (one per level).

Aside from the character development system, the forging and compounding system is quite deep also, including sockets (like RO again) and using gems, which you can find, buy, create by compounding other items, and so on. Also, there is a basic "life skills" system, including mining, fishing, wood chopping, sailing (Character ingame, wearing "costume") (Yar, Pirates!).

The unique and intriguing parts of the game include buying and equipping your ship (used to navigate the seas, and other tasks, such as war). And the guild vs guild system is quite interesting, from what I've read and heard (have yet to participate in one), its much like a DOTA from Warcraft 3, yet it includes the sea also. The goal is to destory the opposing guilds base, through land and/or sea attacks (landing your guildies on the oppositions island is a good idea in general). However, there is buildings such as towers that will try to stop you. These can be both damaged and repaired (using materials you find off of local monsters, along with temporary buffs they drop). There is also a gold wager involved, so it should be interesting.

Thats all I have to report on for now, until I get higher level, currently not even second class (evil school), but I'll try and keep you updated!

No rating yet, not a final review. All I can say is give it a try.

-RedFlame

Update:

2006-09-26T16:46:00.000-07:00

Sorry I've been quite busy lately, so many assignments due.

Regardless, in the meantime I'm playing Pirate King Online

www.piratekingonline.com

Its in open beta right now, the stat system appears to be similiar to RO and the guild vs guild system looks quite exciting. Give it a try!

-RF

That Tricky Trickster!

2006-09-14T20:43:00.000-07:00

I try to follow up on my promises, so:

Game: Trickster
Website: www.tricksteronline.com
Status: Open Beta
Feartures:
-2d anime style graphics, similiar to maple story graphics.
And more, I dont want to make this list too long, cause I consider features different than some

Game break down:

Well, first off, it has stat poits, which are modifiable and are the main driving force in the game, so thats a huge plus for me. The skills work similarily, and the game is almost entirely skill driven.

For initial entry into the game, the tutorial walks you through the game nicely, makes sure you know all the important aspects. And there are quite a few quests at the start to do, enough so to almost totally hide the grinding fact. Since some of them include drilling (yes, drilling is like..drilling for random items from the ground), just running, finding NPC's, talking to them, and so on. So for that aspect its not bad.

However, the same point I blessed above, now gets cursed.

The stat system, is completely biased. First off, when you pick your class, you have a type (sense, charm, power, magic), this assigns your "growth variables". Note: (only 4 main stats: sense, charm, power, magic). This growth variable is assigned by your type, so you get "4" for it in sense if you're a sense type. You can then allocate 6 more growth points. What these points do, is every 4 levels, you get that many stat points. So if its 4, you get 1 stat point in that stat per level. This is in addition to the 5 stat points you can distribute every level. These "growth" stacks affect the game as it goes on longer, as you can tell.

This system is quite smart, and brilliant almost, but it forces your sense type to have 4 in its type, limiting character dynamics. Also, to further make their stat system worthless, each type has basically only one skill path you can go down. And these skills are completely dependant on your main stat. Basically, if your sense, you pump your sense stats (there are 4 sub stats for each main stat), and your build is therefore as similiar as everyone elses.

If you try other stats, you get no benefit from them, and all your skills are based off ofthe same "core" stat, therefore, they dont even need a status system. The concept of a dynamic character is mocked. When trying to use other stats than your main ones, it is slightly effective for the first....10 or so levels. But you quickly realize without any skills to use, your life becomes limited to hitting things for..miserable amounts of damage.

The game also contains a card system, where you battle with cards (much like war, highest card wins, but difference in card types mean different rules). The system is..unique. At the start of a server, it seems quite nice, although the exp rewarded from it is pitiful. However, as the gap in levels becomes more apparent. You realize the higher the card power, the better chance of winning you have (cards drop from monsters, their power is equal to the monsters power), and thus you get destroyed by anyone of a higher level.

Also, at the time of release there was no PVP system. Something I found quite depressing.

Overall Rating:
2/10
-no features to be desired, no stat system, no pvp

Advice:
AVOID

Wondering Why: World Of Warcraft

2006-09-11T09:29:00.000-07:00

Hey folks,

This will be a lengthy review, which I wont have time to complete in one sitting, so bear with me.

For WoW, I dont think I need to list the features, if you dont know:
Website: www.worldofwarcraft.com

A little history on me and WoW, I played both Closed Beta, Open Beta, and bought the game the first day it came out. Prior to buying it, the highest level I achieved was 23.

At the beginning of the game I was very impressed, the quest system was quite massive, as I normally played Korean MMO's and thus questing in general was new to me. The graphics seemed not be choppy, and were well detailed(which is not a big factor, but if they arent done well, I find them hard on the eyes), and there seemed to be many possibilitlies.

We'll start with the positive aspects:

The questing system is quite good, and bad at the same time. In the beginning it hides the fact that your grinding, and this continues for quite some time. However, as the game progresses I found the general goal of the quests didnt change, and they became harder, spawn wise. Such as trying to kill the Princess at the beginning of a server, its well..impossible, unless she happens to spawn on your body. But I will give them credit for the questing, because not only did it hide the grinding, but it also spread it other games, which can improve upon it, and in general has benefited the MMO genre.

The crafting system, is for me the pinnacle of WoW brilliance. Not only was it brand new(a few other games had crafting, but none to this extent), but it gave optional things to do than grind, including hunting for materials, selling your goods/services, and training your skills. It is very well thought out, takes a decent amount of time to master a craft, and most of the crafitng skills have their uses at some point or another in the game. Also, by having the chance to pick multiple skills, you could benefit from one skill by using another and so on. Again, this aspect has spread to almost every MMO now, and has been improved by some for the general betterment of the MMO genre.

The Player vs Environment; this is another prime aspect of WoW, which thus far has one ofthe best PvEs of any MMO. The environment is intelligent, with camps attacking you, changing, immense, and the balance between instanced and non-instanced is near perfect. This is the feature that initially convinced me to buy WoW after the open beta.

Lastly, the market/mail systems were another stroke of brilliance which has been, or will be, copied by most other games. The ability to auction goods IN the game, as opposed to on the forums of other games, greatly increases the "experience" of playing the game, and keeps the economy quite healthy. You dont have to run around town to town asking to buy something, when you can just check the market. Only thing I could see them improving upon, would be the ability to become like a wandering merchant selling wares off the market. And the mail system that allows transfer of items to and from users without them being online as something desperately needed and again maintained a "real world" economy.

Now..its time for the bad parts:

Before the battlegrounds, the open PVP world, and raids were the method of PVP. It saddens me, because something this integral to a game was given little to no attention. The open PVP is quite stupid frankly. Not only are some quests required in areas that there are bound to be enemies there, but unless you have 20 hours a day to play, someone is bound to be higher than you. Getting jumped by level 60's when your a level 30 is QUITE common, and in normal games, this would already mean instant death. But WoW goes one step further, not only can be you jumped by people higher level, and in places you need to be, but if you tried to fight back, they would resist all your attacks. Because it seems the higher up in level they are relative to you, the MORE resistances they gain and thus you essentially can do nothing but die. If they then choose to camp your corpse, you are required to spend the money to repair your armor afterwards. Overall, the open PVP is a pathetic, and horrible attempt at PVP with little to no balance, and favours the "no-lifers" entirely. Had their resistances been lowered, or at least remained the same, one could have a chance of defending by calling a few pals. But as the system stands, its impossible. The battlegrounds are an improvement on PVP, but too little too late, and many current players agree they should just be removed.

Although PVP is integral, it is not nearly as important as the characters themselves. The characters in WoW have NO dynamics. There is no way to modify your stat points, unless using equipment which mostly everyone of type X class has. And most of the "desired" equipment simply requires more time or money to buy, relying little on skill. The skill system itself requires nothing but again, money, as it can be bought, then "reset", and bought again; provided you have the funds (nothing ebay cant solve). This makes the characters in WoW, skill less, any 4 year old with the ability to control a mouse could create a character far superior to yours just simply by playing longer. Had Blizzard put in that extra step, and allowed the player to allocate stat points, they would have been closer to a brilliant game. (Although that would require balancing, which blizzard is horrible at)

Finally, we go to cost. This is GENERALLY not an issue in any MMO, but Blizzard has been pushing the boundaries. Not only was their game quite expensive, but they charge a premium monthly fee, and from what I hear, the expansion will be around $70-80 CAD also (same price as the full game). I understand the business side of making profits, but this is milking their users for as much as they can before they realize the shallowness of the game.

I'd also like to make special note of the "shittyness" of the WoW community general.

Overall Rating:
6/10
- their additions to the MMO genre saved them from an abysmal score.

Advice:
AVOID

-RF

MMO Industry Rant: Feature Dark and Light!

2006-09-10T14:37:00.000-07:00

Well this is essentially a rant about the MMO industry, and how developers are slowly killing a genre.

First Thing, in accordance to some comments I received. I'll just be listing off the features of a game, one by one, and saving paragraphs for an actual review.

Best example of the industry to date is Dark and Light, so here's the info.

Website: www.darkandlight.com
Country of Origin: Madagascar
Features:
- "Largest MMO", massive world
- You can fly on dragons around the world, where you control the dragon.
- Lots of modes of transportation, including snowboarding, gliding, riding tamed monsters, dragons, air balloons, swimming, and so on.
- Guilds design, and build their own fortress, with the ability to seize other fortresses
- Political system having a heirarchy, and voting, set taxes and such over the land.
And more information can be found at the site.

Now, from reading that list, and the FAQ on the site, one would consider this the best game in existence. covering all aspects of a character, from fighters, explorers, economists, and politicians. However, this is where the rant comes in. This was all promised to be in the game in roughly 2000-2001, when the game was conceived. It was promised to be released Spring 2003, and quickly it had a following of roughly 500,000 users on the forums. But as that deadline neared, and very little had been heard about any sort of beta, the community was a little anxious. A news announcement stated it would be delayed, which it was. And then again, and again, and again. Until FINALLY being released February 2006, this of course was after 6 months of beta testing, where during the first 1-2 weeks, the server crashed non stop.

Finally upon release, there was utter disappointment, roughly 10% of the features promised were implemented, there was still errors, and most of the community soon after abandoned the game. I'm not sure how many play now, but albeit very few. Had I not been following it since 2001, I normally wouldn't even bother posting it, but..There is a pattern to be seem.

I'd say roughly 50% of the current MMO's in production, have postponed releases and removed features (see Spellborn preview, coming soon, for more evidence). Either the developers and game designers aren't aware of what can be done programmatically; or they are rushing games to try and get them out as quick as possible. Both of which are severely hurting the MMO industry. We are not only getting less game now, but its not even going through the proper channels of production to ensure it is sustaining, competitive, balanced, and profitable.

This pattern has outright killed many games, see Wish for an example, Star Wars Galaxy for another, Shadowbane, Horizons...list goes on and on. Companies are promising ANYTHING to get a little piece of the "hype" market share, knowing outright that they cant deliver on their promise. So they put the community through delay after delay after delay, while slowly removing features. The industry seems to believe they can make money on hype, maybe they do in preorders. But lets do some quick math:

1x Pre-Order = $60.00
- comes with 1 month free.
1x Box Set = $70.00
1x Month Subscription = $15.00

So instead of making a decent game, albeit taking a wee bit more time to make it, and getting the box price, of $70.00, plus the countless months said person is going to play for at $15.00, most are choosing to abuse their hype and collect the $60.00 one time fee from a user who is probably going to quit in the first 2 weeks from such a low quality game. And it doesn't help that most of the pre-orders are refundable. Does this make sense to anyone? Its a damn good way to go broke is what it is.

I'm hoping, after countless "big hype" games fall victim to this, the industry will smarten up and start giving real deadlines, with real features, so we can all stop getting our hopes smashed.

Stay tuned next time for my second rant, focusing on MMO design.
-RF

CABAL Online: A Post Look

2006-09-08T09:36:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone,

Got some time between classes, so here we go.

As always, incase you havent noticed a pattern, I try to start every review with some info on the game for thos who arent yet aware. CABAL Online (English site) can be located at www.cabalonline.com, and has just recently debuted in North America. It is already released in Europe and has been in Korea for quite some time.

The basic premise is your standard MMO, with a gaining levels, and "owning" up PVP being your goals. Unlike many common MMO's however, Cabal has a max level of 300+ (may be 400 now), and thus it takes a LONG time to beat the games PvE content (Player vs Environment).

An immediate plus you'll notice is the questing system, uncommon in many Korean games, Cabal offers quests at every level, and if you arent super lucky and speed through them(IE, find the super rare you need in the first kill), they generally fill up your entire level. These quests are a little deeper than standard MMOs though, because they follow a VERY WELL planned storyline, give the obvious gold and exp, but also give honor. Honor is gained from quests and killing people in the "war" server(open PVP, with no names on players), and honor is lost when crafting something difficult and failing, or killing random people in a non-war server.

The main focus on the quests of course is to progress through the story and get honor, as you can only start crafting at honor level 1 (about level 50 after doing the quests). The crafting system is quite nice, as EVERY weapon/equipment that drops (there is no shortage of these), can be turned back into the material used to create new weapons. Each of these crafting techniques have multiple levels of excellence, and give multiple bonuses. Such as creating a new helm that gives +3 exp per hit, or 1% life steal, and so on. So I'd have to give it an A+ in crafting, as its truly an addicting and rewarding part of the game.

Not only does every player craft, but there is also NPC alchemists, which add "force cores" to items with slots in them. These force cores give some random effects (some not so random also), and can greatly increase the use of a weapon/armor. Another exciting aspect of the game.

However, its time to get down to the not-so-nice aspects. First and foremost, the game has adjustable stat points(something VERY important to me in an MMO), so as to differentiate your character from the others. Yet, in what seems to be a contradiction, the game also has required stat points to "advance" a rank. (Every 10 ranks for the first 50 levels give you a special bonus, I'll talk about those later) These required stat points are so strict, that essentially everyone of the same class type has the same stats, making the stat point feature quite useless IMO. I did notice that it started to ease up a little at lvl 50+, (50 was the max level of the beta I participated in), but the first 50 levels easily ruined it for me.

A unique feature of this game is the fighting styles. Every class type has hte ability to combo (you recieve it at level 11), and provided you have enough skills, you can combo forever, unless all of your skills are currently delayed. The useful part about combos is that when using skills in combo mode, they have no after cast delay, and thus you can kill things very quickly. Each time you combo, its uses some of your combo points, and thus if you reach 0, you must gain more back. This can be done by hitting enemies normally or with skills. I mentioned before about every 10 levels granting you a new ability, well everytime you fill up your combo bar (up to 5 full bars at one time), you can activate these abilities, and they turn you into a killing machine. The archer for example gets to wield 2 guns and shoot 2 targets at once (quite neat). These modes keep the grinding fnu as you can always switch into "aura" mode and deal out some quick damage when in need.

This is an excellent feature for PvE, and one would consider it brilliant strategy for PVP. But..then comes the potting(using healing items). Not only do healing items heal instantly, they heal for a retarded amount of HP, and thus in PVP, as long as both parties are potting, the battle could go on for hours...until someone runs out of pots. Its not strictly pot's fault, the level of defence towards attacks is quite severe. Critical Hitting a monster may have done around 800 damage for my force archer, but deals a measly 76 on a human in PVP. And with pots healing for 400+ you hardly have to mash them to stay alive. So I'd giving CABAL's PVP rating a 2/10, as its absolutley pointless.

Last but not least comes skill points. These are attained ONLY through using the skills, which take MP, and they can be gained from hitting anything. One of my biggest complaints was the skill training, which is basically jamming your skill key in the keyboard down and hitting a training dummy all night(training dummies take 1 damage and days to kill). Thus when you wake up in the morning you have lots of new skill points to use. And there is no level requirement for using these skills. So you could have a level 30 character with "Grand Master" skills, something I assume was reserved for at least level 100+. To make matters worse, even WITH these grand master skills you still cant kill anyone in PVP.

Overall I'd give CABAL a rating of 5/10, from the brilliant PvE and new combat techniques, paired with a wonderful crafting system. It suffers dramatically from forced stat points, horrid PVP, and skill point abuse.

Rating:
5/10

Advice:
AVOID

More To Come!

2006-09-07T13:28:00.000-07:00

Dont have time to post a full review today, so expect a few more on the weekend. I plan on doing WoW, a preview for Spellborn, and a review for Trickster.

Ragnarok Online: An Indepth Study

2006-09-06T09:28:00.000-07:00

I know lots of people are eager for a WoW, but not yet, maybe tomorrow during my break from classes.

So today I'm doing Ragnarok Online(RO), one of the first MMORPG's(Ultima Online and Lineage were the first mass marketed). If you haven't heard of it, you've been living under a rock. It was, and I believe still is (don't quote me on that), the largest MMO in the WORLD. WoW holds the title for North America, but not for world. The last graph I've seen RO was 17 million subscribers. And to get back on track, the website is of course www.ragnarokonline.com And it is available in many languages/countries.

To answer a question most people have, yes there is private RO servers run off code stolen from Gravity (Company that makes RO), but they are not nearly the same in terms of size or content of the real severs. I have played both, and I highly advise everyone plays the "real" server before passing judgment on the game.

Diving headfirst into the review now:
First and foremost, RO is a game about a balance between time and skill. Lke any massive MMO, it requires time to get anywhere, but I feel this is where RO beats 99% of other MMO's. If you have the "skills" in building characters, you can shave off time required to level to almost 10% of other players. Because it is heavily status point orientated, and less so equipment orientated, your characters "build" makes a VERY large difference in all aspects of the game.

Also, by forcing characters to make their own builds, one can make many max (level 99 advanced) characters and still enjoy the game. As playing a mage with int and dex is far different from a vit/str swordman; which inturn is different from a agi/str swordman. Its the careful balance of the 6 status points (str, agi, vit, int, dex, luk) that truly define what your character is. There is "cookie cutter" builds, which are generally used, but every so often someone comes up with a build that redefines a class and because its uncommon is usually quite successful in PVP/WoE (War of Emperium, the guild wars feature). If you've played the game before, builds like agi/dex hunter(way back in beta 2), agi/str knight, natural crit sin, and so on are types of these builds.

The game also contains skill points, used to get skills, and although every class type generally uses the same skills, its those last 5-10 points and how you use them that differentiates between ordinary and extraordinary.

In terms of content, I'd rate the game 8/10, as it has a wonderful PVP/WoE, large selection of monsters and bosses, ever expanding world, and a very good storyline (for those who bother to read it). It lacks however in the new constant questing craze, which means there is quite some grind.

In the gameplay area, it easily gets a 10/10, as its implementation of the status point and skill point system is far superior to any other game. The controls are easy to use, basic strategies easy to understand, and it leaves lots of room for customization. I cant think of anyway to penalize it in this area, sheer brilliance many other MMO's should emulate.

The community aspect gets a 7/10, due mainly to the existence of various "bots" that play your character for you. It is much better today, but was extremely bad in the early days of RO, which hindered its growth significantly. The guild and party system however is easy to understand, and promotes the community aspect of the game, as you get better experience in a shared exp mode party, and you cant participate in WoE without a guild.

Graphically, I would personally give it a 8/10, although many people disagree with me. Its a 2d character in a 3d world, which some people don't appreciate. It has an anime feel to it, and the graphics are done very well, including animations, but the growing 3D only world would punish it for its 2d characters (the game is almost 6 years old, give it a break:P)

Overall Rating:
9.5/10
-with its only minus being amount of grind

Advice:
PLAY

*gone to class now, sorry if its a bit short, enjoy!*

A Look To The Future

2006-09-05T11:51:00.000-07:00

To get this blog rolling, in the coming days I'll be posting reviews for WoW, RO, and Trickster. Expect the first two to be quite long, as I've had ample experience with both. I'll also be posting my list of games to watch for, and games to dump. I might just throw in a rant about the industry and production of games too!

Enjoy your gaming!

A First Review: War Rock

2006-09-05T11:28:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

Well I figured while playing Warrock I should write a review for it. So here we go:

First off, for those that don't know: www.warrock.net Its a halfMMO style FPS currently in open beta testing. First impression was "wow".

Its similar to BF2 in that it has the plane, tank, and infantry fighting, along with a capture the flag style infantry mode. However, it also has a CS style mode, which includes laying and disarming the bomb.

In order to give it that MMO feel there is level ups, which currently give you 5000 dinar(money), and that money goes towards renting (3-30 days) new weapons. None of which are any less or more overpowered that the starting weapons (balance is very important to me), just differ in accuracy, recoil, and so on.

So, onto the review part. The game is well designed for an FPS, including recoil, requiring stamina to jump (prevents bunny hopping). Also includes crouching, rolling, and crawling. Therefore I give it a 9/10 for an FPS, with its only fault being a few minor glitches in the walls.

However, I feel it suffers in the MMO aspect. The level ups come from exp, which you get from kills and depending if you team wins or not. Yet all they grant is more money, something you get every round also. I feel level ups could be given more of a purpose, but for now, it suffices as an FPS.

Graphically its fine, looks much like most current FPS' do, with exception of maybe HL2 and FEAR. And it has a large player base, so finding a game is usually quite easy. Lastly on long term play, it has been given constant updates, included new weapons and guns regularly, and if that keeps up I see it being very sustainable, as they plan to add a lot of exciting features.

My Final Rating:
7/10
-for not being a real MMO.

Advice:
PLAY

A Little History

2006-09-04T12:39:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone, and welcome to my blog.

Lets get things started with a little history about myself. I'm 19 year old male, living in Alberta, Canada and have been MMO'ing for well..6-7 years I figure. I'm a computing science student at the University of Alberta and an avid gamer on all fronts, but most specifically the MMO scene.

I started my online-gaming with some text based games, some of which I still play. Mainly www.the-reincarnation.com and Vagabonds Quest. One day when "blitzing" with someone in VQ, he said I should try out this new game, which was in beta testing at the time. It's name? Ragnarok Online.

And lets get this out there right now, I think RO is one of the most brilliant games in existence, with its only fault being that its a little old and graphically weak compare to the more modern MMO's. But regardless, its an absolutely amazing game. I played that until the end of Beta 2, in which the game went Gold, requiring me to pay monthly. As I was only 13 at this time, I wasn't about to pull out a Credit Card, so I went adventuring on the new looking for new games.

I've been to just about every MMO site on the web, and looked at pretty much every MMO that has been coming out, or is out, since that year. So my first "find" was Priston Tale, another beta game. I played it for quite some time, but as this was early on in the games history, dying at level 50+ meant losing more than a level, and I wasnt too cool with that. So again, I moved on. Needless to say, I participated in betas of most of the games currently released, but couldn't quite find my niche. Thus when RO announced it would be releasing Second Classes, and plans for a PVP system, I was all ears. And with the help of some friends online and my brother, I got an account on the gold version.

I have been playing that entirely, with the exception of various beta's here and there, for about 5 years now, and eagerly awaiting RO2. I've also played the likes of WoW, EQ, Lineage 2, Auto Assault, and most other large MMO's(and lots of smaller ones too!)

So now that you know my history, I hope to give you a unbiased reviews of most of the current MMO's and future MMO's, so we can all enjoy a little gaming now and then.

Thanks!
-RedFlame