Spirit Tales Online briefs you on the available classes as launch approaches.
Yearly Archives: 2012
Free Realms Celebrates 3rd Birthday
Free Realms Celebrates 3rd Birthday
The fun and celebration continues in Free Realms as Sony Online Entertainment’s (SOE) family-friendly, free-to-play online game turns three years old. To celebrate its third birthday, Free Realms is inviting players across the PC, Macintosh and PlayStation Network to an array of exciting in-game activities including a number of birthday story quests, daily birthday rewards, and an epic in-game world event featuring the return of one of Sacred Grove’s favorite villains, Cakenstein.
Through a truly customizable gameplay experience, Free Realms allows players in an online world to do whatever they want, whenever they want. Players can customize their own virtual home, adopt a pet, play fun minigames or even test their skills on the battlefield against the toughest enemies. Since its initial launch, Free Realms has surpassed 20 million registered users and continues to actively grow. While only a mere three years old, the game already has an arsenal of achievements; from having more than 59,000 in-game items such as customizable pets and unique clothing including the popular “Skeletal Hoodie,” to players starting more than 112.8 million collection quests.
“We are so very thankful for all of our Free Realms players,” said John Smedley, President, Sony Online Entertainment. “We believe our players are our extended family and celebrating this birthday is a great testament to them. As the Free Realms community continues to grow, our goal will always be to find new ways to keep our players engaged and give them fun experiences to discover and enjoy. To further support this goal, in the next few weeks, we will be bringing players an opportunity to go even deeper into the world of Free Realms, and I can’t wait to see and hear their reactions.”
To complement Free Realms’ three-year milestone, SOE will be rewarding all players with a special birthday hat, hosting a number of in-game community events, and offering birthday items for purchase in the in-game Marketplace including a party Piñata pet, birthday furniture, and more.
Dungeon Defenders Aquinos Trailer
Dungeon Defenders reveals the background behind part 3 of their shard hunting series, Aquinos.
League of Legends: Spectator Mode Overview
With League of Legends‘ Spectator Mode on the horizon, Phreak went ahead and broke down its functionality.
Thirst of Night: At Least, No Glittering Vampires
Thirst of Night: At Least, No Glittering Vampires
By Jerrico Tan (JetSet), OnRPG Journalist
Kabam Studios, a leading developer of online browser based strategy titles, has done it again with a new free-to-play tactical browser-based game, Thirst of Night as they now include the world of vampires to their line of successful games (Godfather: Five Families, Dragons of Atlantis and Kingdoms of Camelot). In Thirst of Night the age of man has come to an end.. only to be replaced by an empire of vampires, but to reign supreme one must build an undefeatable empire through building a city, conquering Wilds and joining Alliances.
Before entering the vampire world, players must choose their General who will serve as their guide and quest-provider throughout the game. Later on, players can appoint more Generals as different appointees provide various power boosts for attacks.
Players who have played “Godfather: Five Families” will be greeted by a very familiar sight: a bird’s eye view of the entire map with pretty much the same overall layout, also separated into three categories: City, Resources & World. The entire concept and gameplay is also very identical to the latter and in terms of objectivity and process, it’s all pretty much the same. Not to mention, with the exception of color schemes, the 2D graphics seems even inferior. But thankfully, you can still clearly feel that tinge of darkness all properly put together by a glum visual façade and gothic background music.
First Blood
Since you are initially at the bottom of the food chain, you start off in an empty City with a few Resources. Building your first few facilities kicks you off in the game and Quest Rewards provide you with more Resources to get you going. The higher your level gets though, the longer the time it takes to finish tasks. Upgrading your buildings/facilities provides you with more resources that are required for further constructions. Your primary objective at this time is to upgrade your city towards prosperity, increasing your overall level in the process.
City
Think of the City as your very own vampire fort where you train your troops, research about vampire magic or store your resources etc. Upgrading each building within your City accomplishes a significant amount of things (ex: upgrading the Barracks unlocks stronger troop types or upgrading your Downtown widens your Resource Plots). After the initial 7-day immunity, Cities will become prone to attacks so maximize the use of upgrades early in the game.
Resources
Blood Banks, Steelworks, Crystal Pits and Concrete Plants are the four Resource Buildings that players must build and upgrade in order to have an impregnable empire. Higher-level resource buildings produce more resources within a given span of time, thus more chances to upgrade the constructions in your City.
World
Once you have enough troops to dispatch, you can go to the World map and attack Wilds. Every conquered Wild gives a substantial amount of EXP and the higher the level of the defeated Wild, the better the rewards. Potential rewards are also indicated on every Wild so you will know which Wild to attack should you need specific items or resources. One must always be careful in attacking rival vampire Wilds though because enemies from different Alliances could spot you and just put you under their radar. Once your battle is done, you will be sent a Battle Report to inform you of your victory or defeat and your surviving Troops will be sent back to the Barracks.
Gargoyles
Think of Gargoyles as Thirst of Night’s summon monsters that players can raise and use in combat. To dispatch a Gargoyle together with the entire army, players must complete its Armor Set (can be collected by defeating Redblood Camps) and meet other specific requirements. Collecting its armor could be tedious though so if you’re feeling impatient, you can always spend Rubies to get your Gargoyle dressed up instantly for combat.
Alliances
Creating your own Alliance or joining an existing one is a dire must if you want to survive in Thirst of Night. Together, you can invade and crush enemy Cities to get a hold of delicious loot while defending each other’s Cities from foreign attacks. If all your fellow members cooperate, your Alliance could just get to the top of the weekly-updated Leaderboards and everyone can get a taste of exclusive rewards.
Reigning Supreme
Thirst of Night’s battle system could be tricky, especially since it’s a number’s game where the one with the bigger digit almost always wins. Sending out Spies before you attack a Wild could be helpful but the best way to achieve victory is to keep your City busy with Tasks. Waiting for these tasks to be finished requires patience but there’s always a way to speed up the waiting time. Players who log in everyday get a chance to obtain speed-up items or bonus resources etc. but if you just can’t wait, you can always buy Rubies in exchange of real cash. The sense of satisfaction in playing does not happen overnight but rest assured, once your Vampire City reaches heavenly abundance, dispatching 10,000 troops on an attack is just next to normal.
Lilith gives you a daily taste of Ruby items by dealing you cards.
Conclusion
Kabam Studios are, without a doubt, authorities in empire-building browser-based games. But perhaps it’s time that they set their graphics a notch higher to accompany their brilliant concepts in tactical gaming. With a number of browser-based games in the market today, uniqueness in presentation can make a whole lot of difference. Having said that, Thirst of Night excels in online gameplay but because of similar concepts with other titles, better graphics would really set them apart. Play Thirst of Night now and quench your empire-building thirst today.
Graphics 3/5
Controls 4/5
Features 4/5
Customization 3/5
Community 4/5
TERA Race Spotlight: Human
En Masse has released their 6th installment of the TERA Race Spotlight series, this time focusing on the Humans.
TERA: Inside TERA EU – Race and Class Discussion
The Frogster group behind TERA EU offers up a dev diary discussing the little things that make each race and class so unique.
Brick-Force Best of Closed Beta Recap
Infernum shows off some of the most creative and fun maps build in Brick-Force‘s closed beta.
Guild Wars 2 Digital Edition Sells Out
Guild Wars 2 Digital Edition Sells Out as Major Beta Weekend Begins
Feel the Rage Procrastinators!
News was posted earlier this morning that Guild Wars 2’s North American edition has officially sold out of their digital copy. It’s arguable whether this is more due to a marketing scheme or the rush to gain access to upcoming beta tests but one thing is for sure, it makes for some good bragging rights! Also for those lucky enough to get into this weekend’s test, you can rest assured that it will be a smooth and lag free experience thanks to ArenaNet’s foresight into their server capabilities at this time.
Speaking of this weekend’s beta, our own Hhean, Mikedot, and Spunkify will be chilling in-game preparing videos and write-ups of their impressions of the game. If you’re looking for people from the OnRPG community to partner up with, be sure to visit our IGN thread and start making plans!
TERA Head Starts Begin This Weekend
TERA Head Starts Begin This Weekend
Soon the long wait will come to an end. A few hours ago Frogster opened up the early start for TERA EU at 3pm CEST after taking part in the pre-character creation event. TERA NA players will be joining them shortly as the stateside servers go live at 8:00am PDT Saturday the 28th.
No matter your server, head starters can enjoy the release version of the game up to level 38. The access to the head start will end on Monday, the 30th of April at 11:59 pm in each respective time zone. From Tuesday the 1st of May 12:01 am the EU servers will go offline in order to prepare the launch. NA launch will officially begin at 12:00AM PDT.
If players would like to participate in the head start they still have the chance to secure their copy in the official Frogster and En Masse shops.
The launch for all EU players will be on the 3rd of May at 12:00. At this time the level cap will be removed and pre-order as well as normal players will have access to all available servers.
Along with the head start a new video series called “Inside TERA” begins today. In the first episode Frogster employees share their impressions of the game by talking about their favorite races and classes.













