Gala-Net has announced that their MMO Rappelz will be getting a new expansion this Fall. Titled “Epic 7: Awakening”, the expansion will contain new zones and an overhaul to the Guild System.

Epic 7 will see The Veiled Island be expanded to four times its current size. Some of the new areas include the Nanani Breeding Grounds, home to giant killer insectoids, Unicorn Forest, and Dragons Nest. The Veiled Island is the location of the new The Hidden Dungeons, which will hold items and gear for high-level players.

Along with all the new content, Epic 7: Awakening will bring in a complete overhaul of the current Rappelz Guild System. New features and cosmetic changes will be added, along with a tameable Death Tyrant.

source: mmorpg

Stein and his team have uploaded one of their voice actors reading some text to introduce you to the sounds of Divinity’s Reach. It’s impressive and sounds like someone walking next to you while the sounds of the city come and go as you stroll the streets.

In probably the most astonishing sentence in the entire article Stein says, “We’re voicing the equivalent of more than 60 feature-length films.”

Granted, you won’t be absorbing most of this dialogue through traditional cinematics. Instead, we’re evenly distributing story bits, lore, gameplay information, and ambience over hundreds of hours of play. Yes, we’ve got gorgeous, stylized cinematics that will make your jaw drop, but much of what you hear simply happens all around you, or at specific dramatic points in your personal story.

We’re also aware that there can be too much of a good thing, which is why we’ve developed a sound throttling system so you won’t hear the same combat chatter repeated over and over again during fights. Those concerned about the game being diluted with “snappy one-liners” can breathe a sigh of relief. You won’t hear quips every five seconds, and most of them aren’t smarmy in nature. That annoys us just as much as it does you.

Then Stein moves on to a subject that has baffled MMO players for years: WHY does every NPC in an MMO speak in Ye Olde English and in highly formal ways? In Guild Wars 2, NPCs will be less likely to ‘forsooth’ and ‘come hither’ to players. There will be some characters who speak more formally, but not all will. There’s another sound bite worth listening to that illustrates the point from one NPC snarkily talking to another. It’s a hoot!

source: mmorpg

Now that patch 2.1.6 is live, players will finally be able to confront the Demon Lord Sirloth in the Demon Stronghold, a new 12 man instance for high-level players. The patch also introduces a new open combat area, Bloodbath Valley, a new epic quest series, and the Flower Festival Valentine’s Day event.

Read more on Patch 2.1.6: Fall of the Demon Lord here.

Also, be sure to check out this latest trailer featuring the new Demon Stronghold dungeon.

Source:mmorpg.com

One of the biggest problems many games face is providing tools for guild value, guild advancement, and long-term benefits that attract new members. Guilds that don’t have tools available to make their organization valuable will struggle in finding new members, keeping those members and showing those members that yes, you do have an impact on the world you live in. Guilds in Age of Conan have an impact on the world through control and respect. Taking that one-step further, we are introducing a system by adding new mechanics that further promote the value and guild impact while making being a part of a guild more worthwhile than ever before.

Contributing to a larger effort

When asked about the goals, Gameplay Designer and Guild Renown creator Tanya Short said, “The idea was to add extra meaning and fun to whatever you already enjoyed in Hyboria, whether you prefer crafting, questing, or PvP. We wanted players to be able to feel as though they were able to contribute to a larger effort, just through playing normally. Every week, the top Renown-earning guilds also earn bragging rights through a competitive guild rankings system that we hope will encourage players to show how well they really can work together better than anyone else on the server.”

We have seen the impact guilds have in Age of Conan. This impact gives the entire guild a sense of meaning and a sense of accomplishment that is truly epic for everyone who experiences it. Guild Renown is also designed to hone those aspects and further improve the existing guild system by giving guild leaders and guild participants better ways to define their existence in Age of Conan through two important Guild Renown components, “Renown Level” and “Renown Rank”.

Renown levels are attained through individual actions of your guild members in various types of game play. Guild members can gain renown from doing various game-play action like PvP’ing, crafting or killing monsters. Each type of game-play action is rewarded with a certain type of Renown Point called Valor (PvE), Glory (PvP) and Artisan (Crafting/Harvesting). As your guild members attain various Renown Points, your guild will rise in level and contribute to the overall rank of your guild.

Competition and rewards

The best part about Guild Renown are the rewards. There are 20 guild renown levels to attain and each level gives your guild access to certain rewards for your entire guild. The rewards range from new player city decorations to entirely new buildings, from new seasonal social clothing to new pets, and from new guild quests to improved potions for guild members. There is literally dozens of new rewards that help give your guild more value for achieving long-term goals together. How about a gigantic statue of your favorite Hyborian deity placed in the middle of your city? You can get that.

Guild Renown would not be complete without some good healthy competitive game-play additions thrown into the mix. We are also including Guild Ranking for guilds to show off or brag uncontrollably about their progress together and as individuals. As you attain more and more renown points, you will be able to see your own progression and other guilds progression in the most Valor, Glory, or Artisan points in any given period. Rankings are updated only every seven days, allowing the top guild at the time to enjoy their rewards for a full week before competitors can take it away from them.

Individuals who progress the most will be granted with special titles for whatever renown specialization is the highest. Those titles will be shown in game with special highlighted names or symbols on their characters as they play in Age of Conan.

“Players who have otherwise used all of the game’s content can continue to strive, as some rewards are dependent on retaining the top slots on the server. No player can ever think that their guild will always be the best, because if they sit back and stop playing, another will take their place,” says Tanya Short, Game-play Designer and Guild Renown creator.

Battle in the social PvP arena

The last and most important part of Guild Renown is the new PvP Social Arena’s attached to the system. PvP Social Arena’s allow guild members to dual and even form their own PvP tournaments with each other without having to drop out of their guilds. The gives you a more controlled method of organizing fights regardless of the server rule set.

“Before the introduction of these arenas it was quite simple for a player to intervene in the outcome of a fight, for example they could group up with a healer and get some buffs. Players had to put in some effort to make sure the fights were fair. Now they have a system that can take care of this for them. When a fight is in progress, no outside sources can influence the outcome of fights. It’s also a safe way to observe without getting the risk to get attacked like in places such as Kheshatta,” says Tim Dunks, System Designer and PvP Social Arena creator.

The arenas contain two objects where members have to choose a side. When all players have selected a side, they must relocate to the center of the arena to begin the match. The system is fully automated and will be able to detect when sides are ready to fight. As you players die in the arena, they are teleported to a preparation room where they are silenced from doing any abilities until the fight has ended. The locations of our new arenas are located in Kheshatta and Khemi with access granted to only those guilds that have attained the appropriate Guild Renown Level.

More robust than ever before

With these additions in Update 6, the guild system in Age of Conan is more robust than ever before. Not only do players have access to a streamlined and powerful interface, with the Guild Renown feature there has never been a better reason to socialize with your fellow players, join a guild and show off what you’re good for. Funcom will continue monitoring the performance of the Guild Renown feature, and hope to expand and improve upon it in the future. Right now we’re just looking forward to what effect this will have on the political environment on each of the game’s servers!

Source:mmorpg.com

So why is it, with bitterness practically our every out-breath, we rush with excitement and joy to the launch of a new MMO? We can lay our cynicism thicker than Marmite, but on launch days, suddenly the thick distaste for the state of the genre has turned into a light, sweet tone of hope. It’s a phenomenon that happens with almost every MMO launch, be the game free-to-play or subscription based; from an independent company or a gaming Goliath. The red carpet rolls out, as do the exclamation marks (“This game is so awesome!!!”) and praise from people who haven’t even played the game yet, or at least certainly not long enough to form a long-lasting opinion. We turn from critics to hypocrites.

This week saw the launch of two MMOs: Global Agenda and Star Trek Online. The latter has, by its own nature, seen more hype. Global Agenda has, however, been one of the most talked about independent games, and relatively anticipated among those who enjoy shooters. Early feedback from players is full of praise for the game, and it’s fair to say that Global Agenda had a good “launch day rush.” The FPS and TPS MMO-sub-genre have been sparse with game population, so Global Agenda is taking a spot that is relatively unchallenged in the MMO world.

Yet Global Agenda’s launch day fanfare is relatively mute to the heraldry that brought in Star Trek Online the day after. The games media has been hyping STO since before Cryptic launched Champions Online, and its launch day began with virtual fireworks displays and practical advertisements telling players to buy STO. The mentality behind the hype seemed to be “It’s a Star Trek licensed game – it can’t be bad, right?” And even those who admit it may not be innovative, or even good, will admit that because it’s Star Trek, they’re going to play. In fact, I’m betting that my own father, who has sworn off MMOs dozens of times even though he keeps coming back, is probably playing right now, savoring the Trekkie goodness.

I don’t have a problem with Cryptic, or Star Trek Online, but both have had a history of negative feedback tinged with the classic MMO community cynicism. Despite those woven threads, Star Trek had a happy launch day. Players I’ve known to be cynical about Cryptic’s abilities to make a good MMO have practically worshiped it since they started playing, a shock to me given the amount of negative feedback I’ve seen in forums about Star Trek Online.

For the record, I did give STO a little try during open beta, but it just wasn’t my style of game, so I have no personal judgment on its quality. My experience with Star Trek involves casually watching it while doing homework as a kid. That, and meeting up with an EverQuest guild in Quark’s Bar in Vegas; an interesting experience to say the least as the party got itself drunk on Warp Core Breaches while a guy dressed up as a Klingon sang. It’s these experiences that shy kids off of classics, I’m telling you.

I think Star Trek Online’s launch this week provides a great way of looking at this phenomenon of casting aside our communal doubts for a few days of exultation. It isn’t that we’re optimists; it’s that we will buy into something we like even if our predictions are bad. Licensed games are especially notorious for this; you can count on the initial success of games like World of Warcraft, Warhammer Online, and, yes, Star Trek Online on this tail-chasing. Not many people could envision the transition of Warcraft’s multi-player RTS style to an MMO like EverQuest, but people came anyway because they thought that the Warcraft universe was awesome. It’s like offering a kid candy on the condition he does his homework; the homework may suck, but at least he got sugar. This week’s fuss over Star Trek Online is no different. Whether you listen to the hype or the critics, ultimately it’s a Star Trek game, and Trek fans are going to buy it en masse.

There’s also something in our veins that tells us that no matter how bad or dull something may be, we’re willing to try it once. This is our discovery mode, that one small grain of optimistic sand that says we might just find a diamond in the rough. So some of us will chase down and try that exotic Russian import that’s only half-translated, play dozens of buggy games, and become beta-junkies in search of that spark we once felt that made us fall in love with the genre in the first place. Let’s face it, even when we’re dying our virtual hair black and proclaiming that the MMO is dead, we love it. We write dark poetry in the form of hopeless forum posts, because we’re smitten with the idea engendered in the MMO. For some reason, we cannot divorce ourselves from it.

So is it hope that turns us into virtual cheerleaders every time an MMO launches? Sometimes, it is. We hope to recapture the special feelings that MMOs once made us feel. We hope to see innovation. We hope to find something surprising and different that makes us pause and take a little more time to enjoy the game. So we’ll put aside the negative feedback, the criticism, and cheer on another new contender in the ring, no matter how ugly or outclassed it is. Sometimes, though, it’s blind faith that guides us into a trap of believing all the PR, all the hype, and thinking that a new game can’t possibly be so bad as to deserve a silent welcome.

Of course, there are many among us who aren’t cynics. Some are rookies to the MMO genre, inexperienced either in time or in games under the belt. These players ignore the predominant glum in the community and continue to enjoy new games as they come out. Others may be veterans, but are too stubborn to believe that every game is a poor clone of another, and press on. A precious few are true optimists who are happy to see the genre growing, no matter game quality or producer, and reassure the rest of us that one day, the right MMO will come along just for us.

As for me, I fall somewhere between the extreme lines of cynic and optimist. I believe every new game has something to offer the MMO community as a whole, and that every new game strives to be at least a little different in the crowd. That belief, though, is tempered with years of experience, years of seeing the same patterns repeating themselves from one game to the next. I remain open-minded, and while I may not get the cheerleader pompoms out very often myself, I’ll give a little “here’s hoping” every time an MMO server opens its virtual doors for the first time.

After all, one day, that special MMO is going to appear, on sparkly clouds and pulled by six unicorns, and offer to sweep me away to a land where everything is just as it should be.

Source:mmorpg.com

Check out the official Earthrise website, here.

This music trailer for Hello Kitty Online features the debut of a new theme song, “The World is Saying Hello” by The Sanrio Digital Frequency featuring Chantal, with music by Greg Chun and lyrics by Jason Mayland.

Also shown in the trailer are the different maps of the Sunbright Express train station, the game’s farming system, house building & customization, multiplayer Flash-based minigames, as well as avatar customization and items.

Watch the trailer here!

Source:mmorpg.com

Watch the trailer here.

Source:mmorpg.com

NBC Universal’s SyFy Network has teamed up with MMOG developer Trion World Network for a unique project involving a new TV show and MMOG that are set to “co-evolve” together. The project, which is currently known as “One Earth,” will reflect developments in the game world within the TV series and vice-versa.

This deal was made possible through an investment from NBC Universal and GE Capital’s “Peacock Equity Fund,” which is a digital-media focused venture capital fund.

Find out more about the new project at the GEReports blog, which part one of a video series entitled “Gaming the System.”

Source:mmorpg.com