Three Kingdoms Brawler takes you into the provinces of China where you and other adventurers will explore the environment and slay monsters in various maps. At the beginning of 2D adventure MMORPG Three Kingdoms Brawler, you choose from one of four classes to start your adventure in ancient China. Three Kingdoms Brawler plays a lot like Dungeon Fighter Online, but rather than a generic fantasy world, its based on lore that should be familiar to most gamers by now. There are plenty of quests available to speed up gameplay, but the best way to progress through this heavily instanced MMORPG is with a group of friends. Besides co-op, there’s also a PvP arena that allows players to test out their skills against one another.

The free to play side-scrolling MMO Three Kingdoms Brawler takes place in a real-time battle mode, and players can learn Mana Skills, with which players can fight with each other through a variety of combos. Players in “Three Kingdoms Brawler” role play as warriors, who, after customizing their avatar and profile, battle and fight Chinese historical famous heroes. That is why the Chinese title of Three Kingdoms Brawler is called Three Star.

Recruit powerful heroes and continue to develop their skills. Your heroes will be faced with tough challenges in battles, so you should equip them well. Challenge yourself and brave the bad guys.

Source :mmogamesite

Tera (The Exiled Realm of Arborea), is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game developed by Blue Hole Studios, and published by Hangame Korea. Hangame is also publishing a plethora of other great games, such as Continent of the Ninth.

Much like Continent of the Ninth, Tera is a graphical powerhouse that in many respects raises the bar for MMOGs.TERA is the first true Action MMORPG, providing all of the depth of an MMO with the intensity and gratification of an action game. Players fully control their characters using the game’s dynamic battle system. Player actions can change the balance of power in a world threatened by dark powers as six allied races try to work together to protect their lands from marauding monsters, underworld dwellers, and evil scheming gods. TERA raises the bar, setting new standards in the gaming industry. It is a visually stunning world with graphic quality above all other games in the industry. You will experience a new ground-breaking gameplay system where stereotypes of traditional MMORPGs will be broken. You will have full control over the attacks and the fate of your enemy. No more ‘pointing and clicking’ and playing combat relay with the enemies. Furthermore, not only do you control the action, TERA is also set in a world where the players will dictate the flow of the economy and individually impact the community environment. Tera promises to be a full-on MMORPG, and it’s lack of a lock-on mechanic promises an exciting style of combat.

Source and photo from: tera-online

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The setting of Salem covers America in the time of the Thirteen Colonies. The woods are dark and have a lot of resources to find. At its heart, Salem is a crafting game where players can collect resources to build their colonies. There are a lot of natural resources around the world for players to collect and they can start to build up all kinds of villages, weapons, and supplies. Everything in the game is made by players. Players develop skills like farming, hunting, woodwork, mining, and pottery. The resources in the game can be replenished but it takes time so a careful balance with the game environment is essential for survival.

The characters in the game have access to these crafting skills and more. The stats for each character are: Blood (health), Flem (stamina), Yellow Bile (energy resources), and Black Bile (skills). As players develop they can unlock more crafting skills in the game. For combat, players have access to stances and attacks. They are very basic, with an offense and defense stance. With open PvP being part of the game players can either join each other to create their villages or become the scourge of the forest. There is a catch to PvP that is very critical, the death system.

Death in Salem is unforgiving. If your character dies, that’s it, similar to those early colonial winters. Your character will restart as the rightful heir to your holdings, but your character is starting new again. This way you don’t lose everything you had, but you do lose your character. This death system is something many players will be very careful with. Sometimes adding these systems in makes players team up quickly and form massive groups to protect themselves. The other thing that will occur is that players will begin making throw away characters to use in PvP.

Salem offers a persistent world and expects the capacity to be about 2,000 players per server. This is not set in stone. The game is still in early stages of development. Right now the team is adding content and working on new art for some of the creatures of the forest. Especially the Squonk! This creature is from old lumberjack folklore and will have a fun spot in the game. The team is trying to add as many early colonial elements to keep the theme fun.

Another area that Salem shines is in its interface. The game is browser friendly and the world is easy to navigate. The interface comes up as you highlight over different areas. When you are just exploring nothing gets in your way on screen. Using skills and combat is easy; players are definitely not hindered by a heavy UI.

Salem looks like great fun. Fans of games like Minecraft who want better graphics and the chance to fight it out in the New England forests will truly enjoy the game. The art style is fun, even if seen as a little cartoonish. Overall Salem has the opportunity to be a brutal PvP game along with some serious crafting and world building. Players who get in early and start their villages can really build up something. Having the sandbox style will appeal to many old school MMO players who dealt with the likes of Ultima Online back in the day. Keep an eye out for Salem when it comes to Paradox’s line up.

source from: mmorpg

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Aaron and Linda started by saying that this content update is something they really wanted to give players to help tide them over until the launch of Isengard later this year.  For a long time during the switch from the subscription model to the freemium client, there was a feeling that Turbine was losing steam on its much-loved free updates but the team assured us that now that the F2P LotRO has established itself they can really get back to dishing out the content on the regular.  Update three comes packed with a whole new series of quests to progress the story, but players will most likely be more interested in the two brand new skirmishes and three-person dungeons being added in this update (which each bring with them new items, deeds, and so forth).

First we started with the one of the game’s new skirmishes “The Icy Crevasse”.  This one’s story is all about some nastiness that’s going to come pouring out of Forochel unless we Free People step in and intervene.  It’s a more offensive Skirmish, so you move from point to point capturing posts and defending them from counterattacks.  The coolest feature, besides’ LotRO’s excellent ice effects in DX11, are the steaming vents littered throughout the landscape.  Basically, everyone in the skirmish receives a significant boost to their damage (including mobs).  The cold is making them “hardy”.  But if you step over the heat vents, the buff changes from one of damage to one of healing.  So it’s up to the players to both use these themselves and to know when to drag the enemy’s agro over them or away from them based on the situation.

The whole thing culminates in one of the biggest mammoth fights I’ve seen in a game… and I don’t mean “mammoth” in terms of size, I mean you actually fight a mammoth.  Again, there’s a lot of positional strategy in this fight, and even though Aaron and I had our developer “immortal buffs” I could tell that it’s going to be a challenge at any group size.  We were set for a duo version, and I just can’t for the life of me figure out how two people would manage that fight.

The second skirmish is called “Attack at Dawn” and has players venturing back to Dol Dinen (yes that place which drove you crazy with orcs who killed you repeatedly).  Your goal is to invade the camp and stop the orcs from spreading news of the location of a secret Ranger base.  It’s another offensive (READ: fun) Skirmish, and the whole thing will have you dodging fire from catapults until you make your way up the mountain and disable them.  Once you’ve done so comes the big boss fight inside of the head orc’s tent.  Here you’ll be treated to a chorus of dancing sappers who constantly rain down bombs on your head that can kill you but not the orc chieftan.  So while you’re fighting him to stop the spread of intel, you’ll be dodging tons of fireballs and occasionally changing targets to a scout who tries to leave the tent and deliver the intel to Saruman’s forces.  The whole thing is a riotous and fiery affair, and probably one of the more fun boss fights I’ve seen in the skirmishes.  It seems with each new release, the content team for LotRO is upping the ante, but that’s the idea right?

Finally we ended our Update 3 tour with a glimpse at one of the new three-person dungeons: Inn of the Forsaken.  As you can probably guess, this takes place at the Forsaken Inn… or rather below it.  Apparently the innkeeper is reporting that there’s some strange noises coming from below the inn and so he tells you to come back when it’s dark and try to see what’s shaking.  You’ll make your way to the basement of the inn and find a secret passage that leads to a system of caves below the Forsaken Inn.  There to meet you is a suspicious man who will interact with you throughout the adventure.  You can stop and ask him questions about what he knows of this place, and depending on where you are he’ll give you different answers.

The whole instance is set up in a very intriguing fashion that will immediately remind a lot of people of the classic movie The Goonies.   There are booby traps like spikes in the floor that you’ll want to find ways to disable or avoid, giant obelisks that stun the undead, and clues all over the place that fill in the back story of the place.  There are riddle-protected doors throughout the dungeon which must have their questions answered correctly before you can move past them.  In total there are 83 riddles the team wrote for this mechanic, and if you fail to answer each one three times a new one will be given to you.  But basically you’ll be given a cryptic riddle that corresponds to one of LotRO’s many emotes, and using those emotes will be the key to unlocking the doors.  It’s a very cool and refreshing addition to the standard dungeon crawl.  And while eventually you’ll have seen all the riddles, it helps with the replayability to have so many available.

I won’t spoil anymore of the story, but suffice it to say The Inn of the Forsaken is likely going to be a very popular new dungeon for LotRO.  The mix of clever puzzles and truly engaging and difficulty encounters is going to go a long way with players and I hope it’s a sign of more stuff to come from Turbine.  In fact, it’s not at all unlike the design of dungeons for DDO, and I’m glad to see the same principles being instituted in Middle-earth.  If this is a taste of the kind of compelling stuff to come with Isengard later in the year, count me in.  We’re finally getting to the more dramatic parts of the books and it’s going to be interesting to see how all of us players factor into it all.

source from: mmorpg

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ArcheAge seems like a pretty standard Fantasy setting, with your basic MMO controls.  It’s plain to see that the team knows their audience, and doesn’t want to scare them off with something too alien.  That said, I found the UI and the controls both responsive and easy to delve into even with the language barrier.  Most games that allow click to move controls usually have terrible WASD controls, but I’m pleased to report that it’s not the case here.  But let’s back up a bit.  Character creation is standard fare, from picking a race (I stuck with the Nuians/Humans because cat people and elves just aren’t my thing) to picking hair, colors, and facial markings.  Right now at least there’s no super in-depth character modeling to be done, which is a bit saddening.  In beta at least, everyone pretty much looks the same unless you’re one of the few who actually chooses the Heath Ledger as the joker face make-up for your character (I’m not kidding).  I suspect a lot of the face options are just placeholders, or I hope so.

The real icing for character creation isn’t in the looks; it’s in the class system.  Basically ArcheAge is broken down into ten categories of Abilities.  As a player you’ll select three at character creation which will determine what kind of class you are.  For an example a standard “Warrior” is composed of the abilities Fight, Adamant, and Will.  Meanwhile a Priest would have Will, Romance, and Love.  You can pick from pre-determined mixes like this or you can mix any three to create your own unique class.  Each set of abilities determines what skills you’ll have access to, so it’s entirely feasible to make a class that’s part warrior, part healer, and part mage.  I can’t tell from my few hours of play, but it seems like any combination would be viable, though obviously some would be better suited to certain roles.

Once in-game it becomes immediately apparent that the tried and true quest design of ?’s and !’s is alive and well in ArcheAge.  This might turn off some, but I suspect that it was done again with the idea of giving players something familiar that’s proven to work.  You’ll collect things, kill things, deliver this and talk to this person.  It’s all very standard.  But there’s also quests which trigger well animated cinematics, and I’m pretty sad that I don’t understand a lick of Korean because they’re fully voiced.  One was pretty cute in that I came upon a child who was climbing a tree far too tall for her.  She fell, I talked with her, and was convinced by her cuteness to climb it myself and grab whatever glowing thing she was clamoring for.  Another had me conversing with a ghost about his past life and the betrayal that caused him to lose everything.  He even pointed his murderer’s face out to me, and guess what I got to do?  Kill that SOB for some healthy comeuppance.  Not all quests are triggered by talking to NPCs as you might expect.  It seems that some come to you just by exploring an area.  A little dialog box will pop over your character’s head and you’ll be prompted with a new quest, like thinning a herd of wild animals that may be plaguing a town or something along those lines.

One of the more interesting aspects ArcheAge, if not its biggest selling point, I was only able to barely delve into: the crafting.  Basically it looks as though players will be able to truly change the landscape of the world, both by cutting down trees, planting new ones, picking away at rocks, building houses, and even massive ships to sail on the oceans.  In this way, it seems like ArcheAge is really blending the traditional quest-based MMO with the free-form player-run worlds we’ve been craving.  I wish I could tell you more, but I did little else besides cut down trees and the like.  You can read some basics on the game’s official English site.  There’s a whole lot of stuff that goes into building houses and the like, and because of a sort of “crafting mana” called Labor Power players will have to work together to accomplish big goals, making crafting a truly social thing.  Of course, you could always whore yourself out and ask to be paid for your work, and there’s nothing wrong with that… unless it’s a guildie you should be helping for free.

Then there’s the horses.  Very few MMOs give you a horse early on, and even fewer allow you to use it for anything but running places.  ArcheAge does both.  Your horse has levels, gains new skills, and can be equipped.  It also has health, can be used in combat to boot enemies, you can swipe down at people from it and cast spells on its back, and oh yeah… it can die too.  But fear not, you just visit a local stable and resurrect the poor beast for a fee.  Not enough games give this must attention to mounts, and I’m glad to see that players will be able to become attached to their transportation as well as ride into battle upon them.  One other person can even hitch a ride with you on your horse, which is pretty handy at times when you find someone who might have killed theirs and you feel like being a good Samaritan.

There are a few important things that I took away from ArcheAge’s CBT3.  The primary one is that I can’t wait for an English release, because I’d really like to see it in action on more familiar terms.  But I also now know that the game looks great, runs well (despite heavy latency being so far from the servers), and has a considerable amount of depth to pour into.  The world seems massive, and I was very glad to have a horse, and to see that mountains and the like can be climbed often so there are no real artificial barriers to exploration.  I was also pleased to see trees fall after I cut them, watch players plant new trees, and see rocks crumble when I mined them.

I think that there will be a few folks who are disappointed by the standard quest-based PvE, but hopefully the crafting and other aspects will shine through.  The PvP is still up in the air, as I got nowhere near that part of the game in my short time, but if this game is from the man behind Lineage I expect we’re in for a treat.  This doesn’t appear to be your typical Asian MMO which won’t appeal to Western audiences.  And while I’m not prepared to call it “The Next Big Thing”, MMORPG fans have ample reason to look forward to this one.  I just hope the same level of quality I saw in the first few levels carries on into the whole game.

source from: mmorpg

Developed by relative newcomers Notorious Games, Xsyon: Earth 2012 – The Prelude (to give it its proper title) is a sandbox, build-‘em-up, open world PvPer with lashings of crafting and a hefty side-order of community. Taking apparent influence from likewise genre titles such as (the vastly underrated) A Tale in the Desert, Wurm Online, and evenMinecraft – Xsyon can conjure hours of entertainment and tales of survival.

It is not all positives however, while the title certainly has oodles of creativity and unique gaming, it is also mired with indecision and ultimately a lack of what could be termed as actual gameplay. What should be a ground-breaking MMORPG is something that with the right care and attention could be great, but at the moment sadly falls a distance away from the mark.

Cataclysm

The world is wiped clean by an unknown maelstrom, the only known survivors are huddled around and about Lake Tahoe; enduring by living off the land and picking up the remains of human civilization that has apparently emulsified into brown piles of plastics, metals, and cloths. This is where you come into it all.

Character creation is common faire, an avatar must be sculpted and the normal array of beards and shaggy hairstyles are on offer – Notorious have even added an age range so the ability to play both old and young hermit are options. After completing an on-screen presence, the next step is picking which abilities to begin with: these can range from logging, hiding, fishing and so on. Basically these starting skills dictate what tools/weapons are in your inventory to begin.

The biggest problem I found with the aforementioned system is that Xsyon is at heart a complex game. A newcomer who simply gets excited at the prospect of selecting a shaggy beard will be stumped at which skills to initially go with. I restarted characters countless times because I was so unsure of which skills to pick, and as the items you receive are so important if you wish to “go it alone” for any length of time, the right tools are essential to the experience.

And this is the worst feature of Xsyon. Aside from searching forums, the game offers no real guidance. There is no hint toward a proper tutorial system or slight helping hand. Those who have not been involved in the online community side of things will simply have no idea how to progress away from wandering the land in search of answers. Most people will find themselves pawing at the opportunity of a “tribe” and help from others, and while this encourages the sense of socialising most online games now sorely miss, it does make the game feel a little too dependent on others.

So after searching far and wide for the type of skills and inventory you desire, it is time to begin your adventure. Choosing from a number of starting locations, players will find themselves thrown out into Lake Tahoe with none of the helpful “!” signs or nudges telling you that you “are all special and about the change the world”. Refreshing ‘aint it?.

A lot of gamers will love the non-linear atmosphere to Xsyon, and why not, but for anyone looking for a structured game, Xsyon isn’t going to be your first port of call. Essentially Notorious have taken the mantle of “sandbox” so entirely seriously that players can start to shift and mould the world in any way they see fit, and if this is your type of thing, this is where the real fun starts to begin.

The Virtual Sandbox

Xsyon is all about building and crafting. Everything that exists aside from natural resources are generally crafted by players and this can span from weapons and clothing to buildings and manmade mountains. The world is your oyster to create and let your imagination run rampant, and the tools on offer make this fairly easy to accomplish.

Like any MMORPG, the game centres on certain skills. To build a small tent a player will need proficiency in “architecture” along with certain building materials. To maximise the number of things that can be built within the skill sub-category, players need to engage in that certain activity – so a pretty standard formula of grind. The greatest success of Xsyon is that the amount of skills on offer are not limited by a traditional class system, so you could effectively become a combat fisherman if you felt a divine calling for such a vocation.

The creating aspect of the game is fairly impressive in itself. The aforementioned skills such as “architecture” allow players to place fully persistent objects upon the world and with “terraforming” it is possible to sculpt the land around you: resulting in moats, manmade rivers, and so on.

The building portion of the game is Xsyon’s most developed aspect and major draw. Most people playing will spend hours at a time trying to flatten a small patch of tribal land or even creating a small fort in which to house their storage baskets. The only real problem with this is something that comes back time and time again within Xsyon: just what is the point?

As the game is open PvP, there is a certain element of sticking to others for safety, but the game’s guild system of tribes is based around the notion that tribal land is exempt from being ganked by other players. While this is a welcome relief, the idea that players are building huge military compounds surrounded by moats is an odd one- they will never be needed or used.

It is apparent that most of the content within Xsyon is mostly unstructured busy work. The creating element is fun, but there is no progression or advancement above and beyond creating buildings and sculpting land. It is a neat idea but at the moment Notorious haven’t got enough content to have wandering traders, mass-tribal warfare or any other little cool game play elements. It seems as though very isn’t really a “game” in Xsyon, rather just a nice set of building tools with a post-it note attached marked “potential for greatness”.

source from: mmorpg

Developed over the course of a decade by Jagex Studios, RuneScape is the one of the world’s most popular free to play online game. Boasting a player base that would make any of its peers blush and packing more content than you could shake a stick owned by Henry Content at, there is little wonder why this game continues to go from strength to strength. Recently the developers of the game decided to bring back the Wilderness and Free Trade, so in turn MMORPG.com has decided to give this online-’em-up another look-in.

Born to be Wild a Baker

In almost every MMORPG you would expect your first dozen or so hours in-game to be a mixture of killing tiny rats and listening to booming voices proclaim “you are the chosen one!” – RuneScape decides to take a different route to all of this well-trodden nonsense. Oh sure, we have rats to poke at, a goblin or two to bother, and even half-a-dozen cows to slaughter, but that’s not all. Jagex’s game is essentially one of many different avenues to explore, and while combat is high on many people’s priority list, this is not all you can expect to achieve within the game.

I am going to be honest with you readers; I spent the first ten or so hours in RuneScape perfecting the art of baking bread. I’m not entirely proud of it, and I’m not bragging, but while others were butchering various life forms, I spent my time jogging merrily to the fields, picking half a dozen pretty plants, and finally delivering them to the mill to be transformed in flour. And do you know why I decided to choose the life of a simple farming-chef? Because I damn well could.

Like any sandbox worth its beach-based resource, RuneScape is a game without classes and to follow this, character creation is nothing more than choosing the color-scheme of your avatar and deciding which beard would best suite your features. Only when in the game do players begin to sculpt and mould exactly what their path will be and this is done in the form of the 25 skills that are on offer, of which some are excluded to the members-only side of things.

Of course I have already mentioned my love of the cooking skill, but within this browser-based title are a dozen or so choices that will sap your attention for some time. One of the more interesting elements is that players can mine for ore, and further craft themselves a set of armor fit for early exploits in the wilds; and this can all be done before even thinking about being involved in any kind of combat. It is this kind of approach that really endears RuneScape in that you do not have to be the all conquering warrior/mage but instead an industrious civilian.

And to further the aforementioned role of the pacifist crafter, trading also plays a big part in proceedings while not essentially being a skill onto itself. A broker house is available in the game by the name of the “Grand Exchange” and interestingly rather than being more WoW-like it shares similar traits with Eve Online’s system of supply and demand. Being a lowly miner, players can offer their copper ore for a guided price and then put their goods on the market; and this is either bought by those with buy orders in place already or by waiting a few hours until someone comes along to purchase.

While we have seen trading in games before such as this, there is a real sense of player-driven commodities that never falls behind to a top-heavy community or players underselling each other. And the Grand Exchange isn’t the only place where  bartering occurs, as it is not uncommon to find a crowd of players in the centre of any town pimping their wares to anyone not wanting to take the trip to the bigger cities.

It is easy to see why this element of RuneScape is one of its driving successes, and this is also helped in that there isn’t one firm server/realm that players choose to play on. Upon entering the game, you have the choice as to which location you wish to play and these individual “worlds” can range anywhere from trading or RP specific. By allowing anyone to jump in and out, the population essentially opens up to the 200,000+ that play each day, and with the trade system integrating into each, it’s simple to see why this works so well. With this element in place, bartering with other players becomes one of mass-audience supply and demand and this makes trading a very valuable and easy to approach aspect of game play.

So with all these directions and avenues of play-style, there is little wonder why RuneScape has kept an active community for near-on a decade. There just seems so many layers to the game and the various forms of ‘fluff’ (ranging from skills or user made activities) lends to the sense that this is a real fantasy world that you are inhabiting – and this is one thing that many games, at current, simply lack.

On to the Stabby Stabby

But for all of the many and varied pursuits on offer in RuneScape, we come back to that old curmudgeon of the genre – combat and wildlife genocide. This element of the game follows the traditional physical and magical abilities and in turn, both are governed by a single or handful of skills. Starting with traditional weapon-based aggression, this is achieved by progressing your Combat, Defence, and Strength stats, all of which are furthered by dealing horrific blows to an opposing creature.

I feel that this element of the game is one of the shortcomings of RuneScape in that it just feels rather bland. There is a combat menu tab that allows for one of three actions to be performed which usually falls within “offensive” “neutral” and “defensive” and while this offers a certain amount of interaction, the addition of hot bar abilities would not be a miss. In fairness, battles never take too much time to complete but the genre feels slightly passed clicking an enemy and watching two swords clunk mercilessly into opposing body forms.

The magic on offer in the game does take a turn for the better as spells are governed by using the titular runes. Essentially, in order to cast a spell, a certain element-based rune is needed, and these are collected from monsters and gained in various ways. The spell list is fairly comprehensive and it does feel a lot more interactive than the physical combat, but again, there is a feeling that perhaps there could be more specialised paths through this aspect of the game.

In all, combat feels like one of the least developed systems, while the skill list can excite anyone towards the glee of collecting cow hide and turning it into leather, the systems for violent advancement do feel a little archaic compared to the rest of the ensemble. But in fairness to Jagex, this is just one small portion of the game and while it isn’t entirely impressive, it is functional and does the job.

source from: mmorpg

Earthrise is the debut Sci-Fi MMORPG from small indie developer Masthead Studios. Boasting free-form and sandbox gameplay – this online-‘em-up conjures images of Star Wars Galaxies and Anarchy Online, but sadly fails to measure up to the aforementioned in either ambition or design. Where we should be playing a refined and immersive title, we find a hollow, rat race for grind, gear and cash.

Arizona Bay

The world has been ravished by the inevitable race for dwindling natural resources. In a global game of one-upping, governments have unleashed their fury in the form of nuclear missiles and everyone has danced a merry jig into death – except a (un)lucky few. In their infinite futuristic wisdom, brainy scientists have created a DNA database which allows clones of the deceased to be recreated instantly if they happen to be set upon by a gang of mutated, post-apocalyptic bastards. To run alongside this marvellous breakthrough in god-denying, is the struggle between an over oppressive surviving regime and a resistance group: this is where you come in to carve your name into the forehead of the refreshed world.

Breaking from the standard formula, Earthrise only offers one playable race, boring Humans, and spits in the face of those other science-fiction formats with their exotic and varied body-forms- get your cloak and hat other bipedal, extraterrestrial races: you are not welcome here. Like many a sandbox, from the start the player is called upon to direct what their initially blank avatar is going to be in-game as the character creation process only calling upon the decisions of the time-honoured Mr.T style and a bushy moustache or too.

Only once entered into the game world, players are able to begin shaping their character in whatever way they see fit. The skill menu is available from the UI and calls forth a frightening amount of choices, and using earned battle points and crafting points, this is where the majority of development comes from. The only problem with this sandbox style approach to class is that nothing new or particularly exciting ever comes from it. The class-barrel has been well and truly scrapped clean over almost four decades of Dungeons and Dragons – Earthrise offers nothing particularly new as the game will only ever call for a Tank, a Healer, a Support, and the ever-green DPS. Allowing players to pick and choose suitable abilities is only really giving the illusion of choice.

Of course the tools of the classes in this MMO are distinctively futuristic: instead of traditional blades, hammers, and staves, we have rifles, flame throwers, and mounted gauntlets. This does add a degree of variation but the RPG genre has never comfortably or convincingly integrated modern weapons such as guns. The developers of Earthrise have taken a huge gamble in adding a manually aimed system with these weapons and while it is an amiable attempt, neither the client nor the server performance is adequate enough to pull it off. The game also adds a degree of magical ability in the form of ‘Psonics’ but this is nothing inventive or noteworthy. It should also be mentioned that weapons, and armour, effectively dictate your level so those with the highest damage per second rule the roost. This a slightly more emergent system but slightly fails when someone butchers  you, claims your items, and sends you back to square one.

To also go along side the skill/class system (which also encompasses crafting) is the faction system. Like any MMORPG worth its goblin-scented salt, every title in the genre must now include two opposing groups despite its value to the ensemble as a whole – and within Masthead’s title it does seem like a needless addition with the sole purpose of adding PvP.  The fun and adventure in the game comes from the sense of an unexplored and remerging world – forcing two pre-existing sides into this segregates a budding player-driven community, and also drives away the notion that said community is building the society and ideologies of the place.

And at heart the faction system within the game simply feels like a tacked-on addition. Aside from small dialogue between two NPCs in the tutorial stages, players will find scarce mention of it until they come across larger settlements which gives the distinct feeling of poor execution. Killing a certain player will shift your alignment and rarely will anyone pick a certain side out of anything other than blind PvP and progressing through the game.

This is all comes back to an element which reoccurs within Earthrise – nothing is explained well enough. There is a common misconception that sandbox games are some kind of higher spiritual being within MMORPGs, and that they harken’ back to a time when Ultima Online and EverQuest purposely threw players through the school of hard knocks. If anyone played a decade previous they will know that this is wrong; older games didn’t guide or tutor players simply because of the shortcomings of an emerging genre. This notion of allowing players to stumble blindly through a game is not one inherent to the sub-category of ‘Sandbox’ but one tagged to it by those who have missed the point of earlier games. The difficulty comes from mastering the elements within, not by poorly explaining the basics. And while there is a welcome page and tutorial, neither are sufficient in explaining a great deal about the mechanics and the tutorial area itself is nothing more than an exercise in what different firearms are on offer.

source from: mmorpg

Almost a decade ago, Firefly Studios released a game which chronicled the plights of medieval England. From marauding wolves, to rampaging rabbits, and further to annoying voice acting which littered every phrase with “M’lord” – Stronghold is a game which deserves your attention and the attention of our Nostalgia Series.

Need More Wood M’lord

Today I find myself engulfed in a fog of flu. Like any self-respecting male I have taken to moping around the house, blanket cloaked upon my delicate shoulders, a small mug of steaming medication-laced lemon drink clutched in hand. I am feeling sorry for myself, I am broken, a husk of my once glorious-self that just days previously spent an entire hour, arms aloft, singing at my new iPod dock. Now I can scarcely bring my vocal chords to summon my ever-doting girlfriend to fluff my pillows and check for the impending signs of death about my face.

As many gamers will know however, there is something that can remedy the most toughest onset of plague. There is a magical elixir of a genre that requires naught but a left-clicking finger, and an eye for detail.

Struggling to my feet, I shuffle towards my elaborate shelving system, I scan for the titles beginning with “S” and make my selection. Fifteen minutes later and with a bowl of chicken soup for company, I begin my journey – I can feel myself getting better already.

There really is no better cure for a case of man-illness than spending a dozen or so hours with a base-builder such as Stronghold. I originally picked up this title in 2001, the year that terrorism got “big”,  this game came out at the tale-end of a golden age of likewise games: we had Caesar and Pharaoh, The Settlers, Cultures, and many more. Being an 11 year old boy with an eye for history and wasting time, I snaffled up Stronghold with a verve that said “I don’t like homework”.

For those unaware of Stronghold (an offence that should be punishable) it is a base-building strategy game set in medieval times. The game play ranges from collecting resources, to mustering armies for defence, and to laying siege to grand castles. Its charm comes from the amount of tasks on offer, and for those that enjoy “old school” micromanagement, it is a gem of the genre.

Things start small within Stronghold, the story introduces elements of betrayal and loss, all of which are played out in talking head cut-scenes, and then the game throws you into various tutorial stages – collecting wood, food, and fending off a small group of bastard-wolves.

Jumping the shark a little, they just don’t make ‘em like they used to. Stronghold is all about micromanagement and attention to detail, it is finicky and elaborate in its design; want to create a bow man? This is a combination of wood, which is fletched into a weapon, and then an idling villager is needed to fill the roll. While later years have seen this sort of gaming decline and fall to the way of “refinement” there is something intrinsically entertaining and enjoyable about the production lines the game offers.

While there are two campaigns modes within Stronghold, peace or war, I always finding myself opting for the chance of military action. The missions get slowly tougher with each new challenge ending with some sort of offensive obstacle, whether it means collecting a large number of archers to see off a small army or rushing a castle with your best pike men. The ambition and scope of the game is fairly impressive in that base-building is just one facet and some of the best moments of the title come from simply defending an under-siege town from an invading force.

Even in my sore-throated malaise I can still see the charm and value of a game such as Stronghold. While the 2D graphics have dated, the animations are still nice, and unlike primitive 3D titles, these games still become a joy to anyone that owns a Netbook or wishes to relive the past.

I always found the more enjoyable aspects of Firefly’s game in the base-building itself. Taking a morality system that had been publicised by Lionhead’s “Black and White” the player could be a kindly leader or tyrannical overlord that places dancing bears around the settlement. It lead a depth and complexity to proceedings, that while didn’t impact the game as a whole,  added something in the way of fluff and more content.

Of course the biggest attraction for most gamers at the time was the castle building. These fortresses could span from tiny island defensive positions to sprawling citadels of stones and blood. There is something genuinely exciting about rushing a position with diggers, ladder men and swordsmen that have the strength to knock down small towers. It was ambitious and well designed, and most importantly, it was damn fun.

If anything, the game makes me wish for other games that are like it. While I am sure dazzling HD base-builders are now available, I disconnected with such games, it just didn’t feel right without an isometric 2D viewpoint.

With Stronghold 3 on the horizon, those with an eye for nostalgia can look to the future with hope, but for right now, I can make do with this game, now if you excuse me I have an illness to destroy and a dozen or so more logs to chop.

source from: mmorpg

Lord of Ultima doesn’t stray too far from the proven formula of gathering resources, building cities, recruiting troops/armies and attacking your neighboring players with said armies. You have four resources to collect: iron, wood, stone and food. Iron, wood and stone are ‘gathered’ by buildings like the woodcutter’s hut and food is ‘produced’ by farms. As you get more and more powerful, you can recruit ‘Barons’ which can be used to settle new cities in unoccupied areas, or to take over an opponent’s city during a siege if you’ve “castled” your city. “Castling” a city simply means you’ve built a castle in it. Castles flag cities for PvP gameplay; cities without castles can only raid NPC dungeons and pillage other player’s cities, stealing resources but not actually capturing the city.

Graphics are what you’d come to expect in a browser-based strategy game. Overhead view of the world map shows the assorted cities spread around the different continents, as well as the randomly spawning dungeons, dragons and such for raiding. Depending on how powerful the cities are, they have slightly differing images on the map. When you zoom into your city view, you see the city split into five zones populated with assorted resource nodes, lakes, forests, etc. Placing a resource gathering building near its appropriate resource naturally increases the amount it produces. Placing cottages near them also increases their productivity while also increasing the overall build speed of the city. For most of the game’s life it was actually more effective to remove/clear all of the resource nodes from your city and following one of the “grid layouts” that people have worked out to be the most effective use of space. This led to everyone who wanted to be remotely competitive using exactly the same layouts in their city. Eventually EA addressed this issue by increasing the amount of bonus production the resource nodes granted.

It all seems well and good so far right? Well, that depends on how competitive you want to be. And by that, I really mean how much money you want to spend. Lord of Ultima uses an item shop setup. You use real money to buy ‘diamonds’ and then spend those diamonds on in-game bonuses. You can buy anything from bulk sums of resources to construction speed bonuses, etc. One purchase that is pretty much required to be competitive is the Ministers. They provide passive bonuses like allowing you to have 16 items in your construction queue instead of 5. Same with the troop recruitment queue. The Defense Minister will also alert your entire alliance (guild) if one of your cities comes under attack while you’re not online. You can buy them individually or as a package deal either for short term, or up to 30 days at a time. Unfortunately there’s no real limit on how much you can spend, leading to severe cases of ‘he who has the biggest wallet, wins’.

As if the amount of money needed to remain competitive wasn’t enough of a hurdle, the amount of time required is even more of a problem. The more powerful you want to be, the more cities you need. Each city has its own building and recruiting queues. There are resources to move around from city to city, troops to keep fed, dungeons and NPCs to raid for artifacts, etc. It’s all very slow-paced and casual in the beginning, but once you get more and more powerful, it definitely starts to get overwhelming. Before too long, you feel like it’s almost a second job just to keep up with all of your cities. I had just shy of 200 cities when I reached the ‘overwhelmed’ point. There was someone in my alliance with 400. I can’t imagine how he managed it all.

Disclaimer: I started playing LoU about a year ago shortly after it first launched. I initially started on World 2 or 3, but due to having a slightly late start there, I moved to World 5 when it opened. I stopped actively playing a couple months ago when it got to be too time consuming for me. I’ve been following the updates since them hoping to see something that would bring me back, but it hasn’t happened yet.

Pros:

• Great number of different building and troop types.
• Good levels of strategy and fun gameplay in the early stages before it gets overwhelming.

Cons:

• Items store leads to people buying their way to the top.
• Very time consuming at later stages if you want to be competitive.
• Little to nothing to do with the Ultima series.
• New Worlds (Servers) open often enough that it’s entirely too easy for people to just jump ship if they feel they can’t win on their current server.

source from: mmorpg