Monthly Archives: January 2009

New publisher Uforia launches Nostale in North America

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Uforia, Inc., a new online game publisher specializing in massively multiplayer online games, today announced that they will bring popular MMORPG Nostale: Global to the North American market. From January 2009, gamers in North America can play the free MMORPG by going to Uforia’s website at http://www.uforia.com.

“We are thrilled to be able to bring Nostale: Global to the North American market,” said JK Kim, CEO of Uforia. “Nostale is a unique MMORPG with easy-to-access events which allow players to interact with other players in PvP and survival objectives. We are thrilled and honored that this is our first title as a newly formed publisher.”

“Though they are a new publisher, the team at Uforia has a great deal of expertise and experience to bring to our partnership,” said Kevin Song at Servex. “We have complete faith that Uforia will build and bring a strong Nostale community to Nostale: Global, which will lead us to great success in the US market.”

Nostale is a free-to-play casual MMORPG which takes gamers through seventy exciting levels of the wonderful world of East Mile. Gamers can choose from one of four character classes, each with unique powers and features. The ultimate goal is to fight Dark Horn and his legion of demons in the land of death. On their way to the top, players have the choice of completing a variety of raids and acquiring a large selection of specialty cards which transform your character into one of over twenty specialty classes.



The game has its own unique sense of ownership. Each player has their own Mini-Land with a virtual player housing area where they can build their house, decorate their homes and environments to match their personality, store their pets and items and invite friends over to take a break and visit.



Nostale features a unique character progression system where characters progress to one of three classes and then are allowed to progress to specialized classes through class cards.

The game also includes an attractive set of comic-style characters that range from cute to fearsome. Players can capture monsters to fight alongside them as well as make friends with NPCs that will follow you around and be your ally in battle.

Everquest: 10th anniversay Collector’s Edition book unveiled!

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It has been a decade since Sony Online Entertainment LLC (SOE) rewrote the rules and forever changed the video game industry with its massively multiplayer online game, EverQuest.

To celebrate the historic milestone, today SOE held a private event at the Consumer Electronics Show to unveil the exclusive cover art being used for an upcoming book that recounts how the story of Norrath became a global phenomenon and attracted millions of players.

The art for EverQuest: The 10th Anniversary Collector’s Edition, created by master artist Donato Giancola, shows iconic elf princess Firiona Vie leading a band of adventurers into battle against an evil wizard and his enormous dragon ally in the Swamp of No Hope.

‘We are thrilled that a talented artist such as Donato has created an exclusive masterpiece in honor of the celebration of the EQ legacy,’ said John Smedley, president of Sony Online Entertainment. ‘The cover brings together a special selection of EverQuest artwork and documents the quintessence of an intensive creative process over the last decade.’

EverQuest: The 10th Anniversary Collector’s Edition celebrates EverQuest’s legacy by taking a look at the past, present and future of the brand. The book, written by veteran video game book author Rusel DeMaria, includes essays and photographs of the events, products, personalities and art that graced the world of Norrath over the years. Rich in vivid detail, each page will help tell the story of the evolution and its place in our culture.

SOE will also hold special events around the country in honor of the 10th Anniversary of EverQuest throughout 2009.

The book, published by BradyGames, will be available for purchase online and at select retailers in North America later this year for a suggested retail price of $49.99

Zu Online: Pet MasterÂ’s Private Collection

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In the world of Zu Online, there are tons of unimaginable items. The one with the most rumors swirling around it is the Pet Chests. Rumor says these Pet Chests contain immensely powerful pet-related items, but unfortunately they belong to the Pet Master exclusively. Among all the Pet Chests, the Gold Pet Chests are particularly awe-inspiring.

The Pet Master cherishes his collection very much and has never given even one Pet Chest to a player. So, many people have attempted to steal these Pet Chests and finally, someone succeeded in getting some Chests to be sold in the Pet Mall. Now, if you would like to pay this daredevil some money, you can get a piece of the Pet Master’s precious private collection too.

These Pet Chests contain high level pet equipment, feedstuffs, pet eggs and more inside. If you can get a Gold Pet Chest, you will be able to make your pet much stronger and better looking. It could even make it the strongest one in any battle.

Are you eager to get these cool Pet Chests now? Do not miss such a golden opportunity to enhance your pet’s power with the best chests available!

WAR: fortresses changes and more!

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Mark Jacobs, General Manager at Mythic Entertainment, has posted the following message regarding the future improvements planned for Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning:

Folks,
The first step in improving the oRvR experience of fortress taking went LIVE across all servers last night. The good news is that there were lots of fortresses captured and defended. The even better news is that there were no fortress-related crashes last night while these battles raged and were completed by the players. Performance in these battles was also improved, but still not where we want it to be of course. While this is a good start, continuing to improve the mechanisms behind these battles remains one of our top priorities now and going forward. Over the next few weeks, we will be working on a number of initiatives that I can now talk about.

First, the team will tweak the settings for the Fortress Lords to make sure that their power is in line with the current numbers of players expected to participate in the siege. Second, the team will continue working on optimizing the code’s performance in large-scale battles so we can increase the population cap over the next few weeks. Third, the team is looking at additional tweaking of the pop cap to ensure that it is where it needs to be in order to allow these battles to be as well-balanced (from a design perspective) as they can be. In the end, it is up to the players to decide to defend and/or attack a fortress but it is our job to make sure that the pop cap is set properly to ensure that the maximum number of defenders/attackers that can *choose* to participate is set up so that if the population hits max cap (and assuming that both sides are equally powerful), neither side has an advantage over the other. Most importantly, the team will also be looking at moving the fortress areas out to their own zones to allow an even a greater of number of players to participate, while also maintaining a high level of performance. While they are doing that, they will also be looking at ways to enhance the fortress areas to take advantage of having their own dedicated zone. This might also allow us to get slightly lower-level players into the action, either directly in the fortress sieges, and/or in supporting roles around the main action. However, we won’t move the sieges into their own zones unless we are sure that we can get either some design and/or performance improvements by doing so.

As always, we appreciate your feedback, suggestions, patience, and participation as we continue to work on these issues and initiatives. What we’ve done so far is only the first step and we have a lot more coming in the next few weeks.

Oh, and expect a major announcement from us at the end of the month regarding our plans for the next few months and beyond. It’s going to get even more interesting around these parts soon. 🙂
Mark

Celestial Destroyer

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Celestial Destroyer is a new free MMORPG with Chinese elements, as it’s based on the Chinese internet novel ZhuXian.

Celestial Destroyer Background
In the beginning, the world of man was beset by tempestuous storms. The thunderous roar of lightning wracked the land and disasters befell mankind. Man lamented his inability to escape death and calamities and throughout the land was heard the wail of despair.

In desperation, man imagined that there were nine heaves above, where mighty gods dwell and nine netherworlds below where souls went to rest in the infernal halls. Thus did man begin to hope for immortality and devoted their worship to the great gods they had brought forth.

Despite the knowledge that death was unavoidable, all that lives, loves life and fears death. Belief in the infernal lands haunted man, and so, man yearned ever more for immortality.

Thus did wise men and sages begin to search for the secrets of immortality. Though immortality was still unattainable, there were some who were well cultivated in the mystical arts that understood the secrets of Heaven and Earth, and even as mortals they had great powers, with various magical weapons they could shake the Heavens and make the earth tremble.

Angels Online: Wave Harbor Preview

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Today, the Angels Online team is giving a brief introduction to Wave Harbor, a new scene for the “Lost Atlantis” expansion.

Wave Harbor is located to the south of Palm Base. Passing through the tropical coco trees and along the endless golden beaches, players will arrive in this mysterious sea area. Because Wave Harbor is a shallow sea along the coast which connects with the mainland, many players choose this place to train their diving skill.

As a small sea connecting the ocean and the mainland, and affected by the warm current from the east, the water temperature here is very comfortable all year round. What’s more, huge creatures such as sharks are unable to come here because of the reefs. So all creatures, whether big or small can enjoy a comfortable life here.

The comfortable weather not only fosters great schools of fish but also a flourishing underwater oasis of marine plant life. Production players may find themselves busy for days if they come and collect materials here. For example, Bloody Alga is a common herb which is necessary to manufacture potions or items with attributes. Many Production players work hard in Eden to try and get some rare Wanderer Den. However, Wanderer Den can be found everywhere in Wave Harbor.

Not everything in Wave Harbor is calm, peaceful and relaxing. Because of the special frame of Atlantis and the rocks that dot this shallow sea, it is not as peaceful as it seems. Many ships have been known to knock into the reefs and leave their scattered remains just below the crashing waves.

There is an explorer called Eye Eric in the top right corner of the map. He has lived here for a long time, but now finds himself trapped by a group of Mermaids. Eric may ask Level 75+ players for help, and players can obtain abundant rewards by defeating the Mermaids and rescuing him. If players would like to enhance their rank, it is a good idea for them to accept the quest repeatedly.

Apart from the Mermaids, there is a group of evil, fierce Scale Fish covered in thick scales. These scales give them high defensive abilities. Be careful! The deadly spell attacks from the “gentle” Bal Jellyfish may hurt players as well!

Gold Farmer Bounty Hunting: The Newest Innovation In Player Moderation

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By Rick Charbs, Onrpg writer

Gold farming has been an issue in MMORPGs since the very beginning of online gaming. Players who offer real money in return for in-game currency quickly unbalance the economy within the game, resulting in a harsher difficulty to retrieve items for the average player. Something has yet to be done to completely demolish this common, yet obnoxious issue although I have some interesting news to bear, and with that you can ask yourselves whether we are seeing any progress towards the disappearance of gold-farmers everywhere or not.

If you have been following the Free MMORPG scene lately, you may have come to realise the new features companies are beginning to implement, as the demand for them is soaring up high. Although 2008 was a slight disappointment in the field of MMO innovation, thing are starting to improve; slowly, but surely! Despite these innovations, we are still lacking to see completely unique elements in an MMORPG. Of course there are exceptions, but frankly the appeal to new F2P (free to play) MMORPGs is dying out.

Luckily for us, some F2P MMO companies are still focusing on the community and their game rather than revenue. Granted, they still need to make some money in order to be able to host their game and profit, though their priorities are much better organized than the majority of game companies. An example of this I have stumbled upon recently is Ingle Games Ltd., publishers of the MMORPG recently released in closed-beta, Chaos Online. I won’t be getting into details of this game’s function and such, though you can view the Chaos Online review here.

 

So what is so special about Chaos Online?

Without much knowledge of the game, you may be asking yourselves this very question. Well, first of all, as far as my personal opinion goes, I did not enjoy the game. It was decent in general, but it was definitely not made for me. It is special because of the continuous support and surveillance offered by Ingle Games. Various ongoing activities and events revolve around how players want the game to be; how you want your personal experience in the game to resemble. As farfetched as this may seem, they have accomplished just that. Without the use of a player-moderator system, Ingle Games has found many ways to ensure player’s aid in making the game enjoyable for everyone. The most interesting one that I have discovered is undoubtedly the gold farmer bounty hunting.

Basically, any player that locates and successfully reports a gold-farmer within the game, he or she will be awarded with 10% of the gold acquired by that particular gold farmer (…and the gold-farmer will clearly get banned). Now, 10% may not seem like such a large reward, but considering the fact that they are hired as gold collectors, they will have quite the sum in their inventories. With such a simple system at hand, almost everyone can take part in this bounty hunting, and this will ultimately result in the disappearance of gold farmers and of hackers within the game. We can only hope so, but it is a great step forward for free MMORPGs. What can be better than gathering riches from hunting down the rule breakers?

 

Final Note

With gold farming being such an annoyance these days, I personally believe even an innovation such as in-game bounty hunting isn’t good enough to get rid of the industry. I don’t believe we will ever see F2P MMORPGs without gold farming influence. In countries such as China, gold farming is a large business, and a simple game company will not bring them down. Even so, I am very glad an MMORPG company has finally decided to offer rewards for helping their game reach a cleaner and more appropriate status for everyone to enjoy, and for that I give them my thanks. Gold farmer bounty hunting is a very creative idea, and I am sure it will catch on in many other games to come. That being said, P2P MMORPGs also have a long way to go, only that it is more likely they will be able to diminish gold-farmers faster than their free to play counterparts.

Chaos Online has brought a whole new standard in player moderation, and I hope this will teach other publishers out there that their loyal players are able to make a difference within their game. The one problem with being human beings though, is that we’ll probably be expecting something in return.