Yearly Archives: 2012

LOTRO Launches Shores of the Great River Update

The Lord of the Rings Online Launches Shores of the Great River

 

The Lord of the Rings Online

 

Turbine has launched Update 6: Shores of the Great River for The Lord of the Rings Online, setting forth the path for players to journey to Rohan later this year. This update introduces the following content:

 

 

The Great River Region

Travel along the shores of the mighty Anduin in the expansive new region coming in Update 6! The signs of war are all around you as Isengard and Barad-dûr put their dark plans into motion. Push back the Easterlings, dangerous brigands and an ancient enemy of Rohan, as they gather for an attack on Rohan and Lórien. Explore seven new areas along the upper Anduin including the green plains of Parth Celebrant where treacherous shades roam, unable to rest.

 

 

The Great River region is free to VIPs!

 

 

Epic Story

The latest chapter in LOTRO’s free Epic Story awaits! Travel to Lothlórien to seek Galadriel’s wisdom after experiencing troubling dreams. Investigate the grim tidings along the Great River but be prepared as the evidence may point to a foe more terrible than your darkest nightmares.

 

The Lord of the Rings Online

 

Soldier on Landscape

Get the helping hand you need with LOTRO’s new Soldier on Landscape! This new feature allows you to summon your faithful skirmish companion in the field. Customize your skirmish solider to help you tackle even the toughest challenges!

 


Instance Finder Update

You spoke, we listened, and now we’re making Instance Finder better than ever! Instance Finder will soon allow you to queue for the specific instances and skirmishes that you want to do. You can also choose to change loot rules and remove players with a fellowship vote. The rewards are being enhanced, too, granting additional XP for skirmish completion and scaling currency bonuses for when you queue for a larger range of instances.

E-Sports @ OnRPG: March 9th Report

E-Sports @ OnRPG: March 9th Report

By Umar Farooq (Kluey), OnRPG Journalist

 (Editor’s Note: This article was meant for release on Friday but delayed due to my GDC trip. Sorry for any outdated information or predictions)

 

 

IEM World Championships – Starcraft II

IEM Hanover is the IEM Final championship that includes the top players from each IEM event. The tournament boasts an 83,000 dollar prize pool with $35,000 going to the first player. Of course plenty of drama has stirred up to make things more interesting.

 

 

IdrA had voiced his concerns far better than anyone else in the tournament. According to Greg “IdrA” Fields, all the players were thrown into a youth hostel. I’ve never been in a youth hostel but the pictures looked awfully disturbing. Your bedroom, washroom and living room was all in the same room. The walls have white tiles and curtains have a bland look to them. Furthermore, IdrA announced that he had an entire jar of nutella for breakfast from IEM. Although I am not sure if he is being sassy, if this is true, that’s disgusting. Not only because nutella isn’t even made to be eaten like that but also because IEM isn’t poor. If a $500 prize pool tournament had done this, that’s acceptable. That tournament literally cannot afford a proper breakfast but IEM, without a doubt, can afford it and why they chose to do this is beyond me. Although they did release an official statement, I saw it as an excuse. When MLG makes a mistake, Sundance apologizes and makes up for it regardless of who’s at fault. I’d like to see IEM do this and become a lot more honest to the fans.

 

 

oGsSuperNoVa in his youth hostel provided by IEM.

 

 

While we’re on the topic of IdrA, his tournament results were inadequate. He went 1-4 in his group, taking last place. IdrA is known as a top North American player and this isn’t acceptable. I honestly don’t think he showed his full skill. I think that the entire hostel, breakfast and tournament environment screwed him over. If IdrA has one weakness, that’s it.

 

 

Alternatively, Feast did awesome. He placed first in his group, over two Koreans with one of them being SuperNova. Feast recently had some mentoring deal with Grubby and it seems to be paying off. He wasn’t nervous; he was professional and played his best.

 

Feast owning it up at IEM Hanover.

 

 

GSL Code S Finals

People don’t realise how epic these games were. Genius made some sick decisions and had some poor mistakes that no one would make. He forgot warp gate for a few minutes on the Antiga Shipyard set and got overlord dropped on the Entombed Valley which was the ultimate hard counter to the stargate play. I don’t usually have criticism for GSL but, they totally screwed over MLG. MLG players had Code A on the day they came back and DRG had minimal time to prepare for the finals. GSL has done this before and it seems like the Korean E-Sports are very business orientated. Most tournaments will do things that are for the better of E-Sports rather than only themselves. GSL seems to put their tournament on the spotlight and every other tournament in the dump. They have given out Code A spots because foreigner competition in the GSL brings in the viewers. GSL took away the Code S seed from Naniwa even though MLG had been told that Naniwa would receive it.

 

 

IEM World Championships – League of Legends

To be quite honest, League of Legends hasn’t had an IdrA-upset or Feast-beast mode. All the teams that were expected to go through to the playoffs had made it. I guess Solomid not making it is a disappointment though. They have a gaming house and all the players are really talented. I’m not sure what went wrong this tournament for Solomid.

 

 

Phreak and Demon casting some League of Legends.

 

 

As for predictions, I think it will be either CLG or M5 vs. Dignitas in the finals. My heart says CLG but brain says M5.

Meta’s Verse: Matt “Positron” Interview

Meta’s Verse: Interview with Matt “Positron” Miller

 

 

A heroes work is never done. This week marked the launch of City of Heroes Issue 22, Death Incarnate. With all the features and changes that come with a new issue, and all the earth shaking changes from the death of Statesman, will Positron and the Freedom Phalanx be up to these new challenges? I sat down with the man behind the mask to find out the answer to this question and many more.

 

 

OnRPG: Issue 22 has been in beta a long time now. Has this brought about new difficulties with keeping things a mystery until it goes live?

 

Positron: You may be shocked, but surprisingly few players actually participate or pay attention to betas. Even with the amount of time Issue 22 has been in testing, we’re pretty sure that most of our community still has a lot of surprises in store for them. We like long betas because not only does it allow us a good amount of time to squash bugs, but we also get some time to act on feedback about the various features that our players give us.

 

 

OnRPG: With 56 zones spread out across Paragon City, the Rogue Isles and Praetoria, why was Dark Astoria picked as the zone to get revamped for incarnates?

 

Positron: It was a very underutilized zone that was much beloved by our veteran players. It had an air of mythology about it, and really fit the theme of what kind of threats Incarnates will be facing on Primal Earth, since up to this point the Incarnate powers and trials have been entirely Praetorian focused.

 

 

OnRPG: Adamastor is quite tall, how did he manage to get past all those new people in Dark Astoria and get into Talos?

 

Positron: He must have purchased the new Panther Stealth transformation power and used that to sneak into Talos. Seriously though, we know a lot of players would be up-in-arms if that giant monster (and the badge associated with him) was now relegated to level 50 content, so we came up with the idea of being able to summon him on command just outside the zone so he remains more level appropriate to his original incarnation.

 

 

OnRPG: With Dark Astoria getting love now, and Atlas and Mercy getting their facelifts with Freedom, what other revamps or tech like Phasing have you planned to breathe more life into the city of Paragon itself?

 

Positron: We plans to redo a couple more Paragon City zones, but we first need to “finish the fight” in Praetoria. Phasing is a tech we love, but we need to use sparingly because while it’s excellent tech to tell stories with, it’s actually pretty terrible in promoting the social aspect that MMO’s thrive on.

 

OnRPG: Diabolique is a Praetorian, what is she doing in Dark Astoria? What does she think of the budding relationship between her primal, Numina and Positron? To that end, what do you think of the relationship?

 

Positron: We’re still telling the story of Praetoria until Emperor Cole, aka Tyrant, is defeated. So even in a Primal zone like Dark Astoria there is still going to be some Praetorian influence in the story. She has plans that involve Mot, the god worshipped by the Banished Pantheon, and the Incarnate trial revolves around that plan and how you stop it. The end of that trial is actually a huge realization of how you can eventually take down Tyrant.

 

As for Numina and Positron, that started out as a piece of web-fiction I wrote when we had plans to introduce a new armor model for Positron (plans which we have since abandoned). Many of the team liked the idea of the pairing that they started slipping hints of it into content in the game, and then I wrote more of it into another web piece for the 7th Anniversary event that did see publication, and it’s now part of the official story in-game.

 

 

OnRPG: Being in charge of new systems and with the zone revamps and new trials that each issue brings, how challenging do you find creating new challenges for the players?

 

Positron: Making challenges is easy, making challenges that don’t infuriate our players? That’s the trick. We want players to go “yeah! We beat that!” but we don’t want that experience to come at the expense of hours and hours of frustrating failures because of some random element that was beyond their control. Everything we do we try to put a counter into the hands of the players. The Keyes Island Incarnate Trial is a great example of this; there are several mechanics that are meant to be difficult and they can be insurmountable if you ignore them, but none of them are based on pure randomness.

 

 

OnRPG: The cat is out of the bag about the cats, wolves, hawks, bees and dire wolves. Will we get to embrace our feral side during issue 22?

 

Positron: Beast Mastery is a power set that will be released soon after Issue 22 launches. This is a Mastermind set that greatly utilizes our “four legged rig” that we developed alongside of Freedom. As you mentioned there are wolves, lions, and dire wolves as your summonable pets, as well as other fauna used in many of the attacks. It’s something we’ve wanted to do ever since Mastermind was conceived as an Archetype, and I am happy we finally got to see it done.

 

 

OnRPG: Darkness in City of Heroes has always been about skulls and tentacles. Why has Darkness Control gone away from that look to the new sleek look? Are there any plans to make customizations for either Darkness Control or the older dark sets to give them a more unified look?

 

Positron: We really wanted to update and give Darkness Control a unique look, to make it more special. We do not have any plans to update the older sets, but we’re always listening to feedback.

 

 

OnRPG: How many martial arts movies did you and the animators get to watch in the name of research for Staff Fighting?

 

Positron: Tons, along with many YouTube videos of authentic staff maneuvers from various martial arts. We took many of those and translated them into the game. I did want some moves based on “Star Wars kid” but was overruled (and rightly so).

 

 

OnRPG: The changes to Stalkers and Gravity control seem to have come out of nowhere. What inspired these changes to be made?


Positron: A combination of Community feedback and People championing those changes in the office, generally. I know that the players have long had issues with these two items, Stalkers vs. Scrappers/Brutes and Gravity Control. Some people in the office made some great proposals on what can be done to better these, but even then it wasn’t overnight. I think the Stalker changes had to wait several months because we just didn’t have the bandwidth to do the changes needed AND launch Freedom with all it came with.

 

 

OnRPG: Through doing tip missions we find out that Frostfire has started the rise from being a villain. Will there be more story advancement like this in the future?

 

Positron: We love playing with existing characters in new and exciting ways. We are always combating the problem of “game time vs. character time”. We try our best to make sure that a character levelling up through the game gets to see a constant progression of stories and characters, but sometimes certain things are so significant and universal that it transcends this. Things like the “death of Statesman” happened across the entire game.

 

 

OnRPG: There are several MMOs with a feature similar to the team up teleporter that offer extra incentives for using the feature. Will we see anything like that in City of Heroes?

 

Positron: I think those incentives come because the system is not being used (or used in a way that is what the designers want). For us we added the Warmth of Prometheus buff for doing Incarnate Trails with a random group, to compensate for the lack of coordination your League might have.

 

 

OnRPG: Will player efforts in the Drowning in Blood trial be reflected in the Bloody Bay zone? Do you have any hopes that it will make Bloody Bay more popular?


Positron: We did the story of Drowning in Blood because there was the unanswered question of “why are these Shivans different than the ones we know from Bloody Bay?” Bloody Bay will remain as it is to give some grounding for the story of Drowning in Blood to make sense.

 

 

OnRPG: The player summit is coming up and with it are plans to hear ideas from the players about zone revamps and costumes. If you could pick a zone you’d like to revamp which would it be? And if you could design any costume set what would you like to see in the game?

 

Positron: If I were to revamp any zone I’d probably do Kings Row. Right now the level progression once you get out of Atlas Park is a bit too jarring for my taste, as Kings Row has dramatically older content than the new Atlas Park shows off.

 

If I were to get any costume set it would be a Japanese anime-style mecha suit, that sort of angled, venty, armor that was big in the 1980’s and 90’s.

 

OnRPG: At the last player summit you got a lovely haircut done by a player. Have you been growing out your hair for round two?

 

Positron: If you remember, I was supposed to cut HIS hair, but he happened not to have any. We came up with the idea of him cutting mine as a contingency. Fortunately we don’t have any insane contests like that for the next player summit (but we still have the FlowBee here in the office).

 

 

OnRPG: Finally, is there anything you’d like to say about Issue 22 that you just can’t keep contained anymore?

 

The issue itself is pretty well summarized (as well as having been on beta for a while), but I do know about an upcoming item on the Paragon Market that will summon a flying transport to take you and your assembled team straight to your mission door that we call the “Team Transporter”.

 

 

OnRPG: I’m looking forward to playing with this new issue and all the new features we’re going to be expecting in the future. A big thank you to Matt “Positron” Miller for taking the time to chat with me. And an even bigger thank you to the entire dev team for making Issue 22. I’d also like to congratulate Melissa “War Witch” Bianco on being promoted to Lead Producer.

 

Don’t forget Double XP weekend is coming up March 16th to 19th!

 

 
The Spring Player Summit is coming up on April 28th. Tickets are on sale already so get them while you can!

 

And last but not least the Weekly Strike Target is: Terra Volta (44-50) and Tree of Thorns (44-50).

 

I hope you all enjoyed the interview and come back again next week when I sit down with the one and only Samuraiko to talk all things video.

GDC 2012 Day 1: TERA

GDC 2012 Day 1: TERA

By Darren Henderson (DizzyPW), OnRPG Editor-in-Chief

 

 

 

En Masse, the classy folks that they are, had a private room at the back of the show room floor so we could enjoy their demo in peace. And what a demo they had in store for us. I never tire of laughing at the people that have only played through the first 15 or so levels of TERA and complain that the game is too easy. Any of the press that have experienced the end-game dungeons at E3, PAX Prime, Gamescom, or GDC know what a laugh it is calling this game easy. But before I get on to talk about the Temple of Temerity, let’s discuss some of the fun changes being made in the game in preparation for launch!

 

 

First up is this weekend’s patch that I missed while covering the show! At long last we have red names on the PvP servers! But even more exciting is that the red names only mark people as having killed players 6 or more levels lower than them and has no intrinsic penalty on their stats or death penalty. Therefore this is merely a way of marking the troublemakers like myself to the rest of the community so that they can deal with us how they see fit (or die trying).

 

 

En Masse, Frogster, and Bluehole have all been putting a major effort into giving the community what they want and the overall gaming experience is getting better as a result. They’ve added rest experience, achievements with matching titles, and an improved broker system to help players sell their goods to a larger audience. A lot of new quests have been added as well and soon we’ll be seeing reputation quests that allow players to build up respect with 6 different forces, resulting in unique force based rewards. They also spoke of breaking the currency down into gold, silver, and bronze as it can be a bit overwhelming considering how much money you have when all you see is millions of gold in your inventory.

 

 

The level curve has also been adjusted to never make players feel like the game is too grindy. One this note they also added a major bonus to party questing so that you will have incentive to do the unthinkable and team up with your fellow gamers. It sounds like the LFG system is on the way as well, which is a mixed blessing in my opinion. I don’t like the thought of my enemies sitting in town queuing for dungeons but with how busy my life is I’m sure I’ll be thankful when my time comes to get a quick group together.

 

 

One of the really cool reveals that I hadn’t heard about prior to GDC was the Nexus public event system. Essentially it works in the same way as RIFT’s system in which random Argon dimensional portals will open up and players will need to rush to repel the invaders out of Arborea. How this will play out is 3 increasingly difficult waves of Argons will spill out of the portal destroying all in their path. Each progressive wave will hit harder, move faster, and have larger health pools than the last. Don’t expect this to be a casual event either as they were talking about hour long gauntlets to close the portal for good. Special reward items only available from Nexus events will be available for players who succeed in trashing the Argons.

 

 

One point of interest Chris Hager mentioned they are working on is improving support for controllers. Currently the option is there but it’s definitely inferior to keyboard controls so hopefully they can pull off a better system with more testing.

 

 

En Masse was also concerned about the difficulty scaling of content since most end-game dungeons in Korea were designed with a level cap of 58 in mind. Since TERA will be launching with a level cap of 60, they are moving some of the dungeons placement in the storyline around and rebalancing them to still be plenty challenging for a party of level 60s. They are also moving and rebalancing some of the less challenging dungeons down to lower levels so that the path to level 60 still offers plenty of new content for players to experience on the way to the top. And for those who have quickly master end-game dungeons, they will be offering ‘hard mode’ with some of the most keyboard smashingly difficult dungeons you’ve ever seen in an MMO, along with rewards to match for those who manage to overcome them.

 

 

Temple of Temerity

The actual gameplay demo they had waiting for us at the event was a new dungeon balanced for level 60 players. The Temple of Temerity stands as a final test handed down by the Goddess Kaia for Arman wishing to prove their worth among their race. 5 players must team up to defend a crystal point for 20 minutes against a seemingly endless wave of hardy foes.

 

 

The key to victory isn’t just to distract the mobs away from the crystal but to also kill them as quickly as possible. Doing so unlocks special buffs and bonuses like instant revives and HP regeneration for the crystal you’re defending.

 

 

I thought we would have no difficulty going into this mission with our all-star line up of players including Producer Chris Hager (call him Chager) on the lancer, Associate Producer Stefan on the priest, Ben of Ten Ton Hammer and myself on Sorcerers, and a writer from G4TV on the Berserker. However the very first wave caught us with our pants down and our crystal was already down to 30% HP. This is when Chager mentioned that they had groups of press party wipe so early in this dungeon that they had enough time between meetings to try again. Game-face mode activated.

 

 

The first 10 minutes was pretty touch and go with Chager and our berserker both nose diving into the dirt. However the power of 2 level 60 Sorcerers focusing amassed groups was more than enough to keep us in the fight. The sorcerer class is surprisingly good at kiting at max level, with plenty of slow skills and dodge skills in addition to an aoe slow/dodge skill that I kept accidentally casting while running away, resulting in me rave diving right into the middle of a riot of pursuing monsters.

 

 

With 11 minutes left on the clock all hell broke lose as monsters from both entrances to the room swarmed us. Stefan was shouting orders and forcing us to group together for heals to keep things stable and our crystal once again was teetering on the verge of destruction. This is where I found just how important the two active buffs on the sorcerer are. One buffs your next attack by a large margin and the other massively boosts your attack speed. I would unleash a hail of ice with my charged attack active and then switch to the faster attack speed buff to focus down larger foes with a barrage of auto attacks and fast cast spells.

 

 

Just when we thought things were under control a new wave of monsters that looked like organic tanks (i.e. Urgot from League of Legends) appeared in our room. The clock counter hit 10 minutes left and Stefan ran to the side of the room to activate one of our traps. He hit the ‘oh shit’ button and a massive tremor shook the room, killing all monsters on screen. I never got a chance in the chaos to see what this button looked like but I’ll just assume it was a Super Mario Bros 3 POW block.

 

 

From then on the waves became more fierce but we had environmental traps at our disposal to deal with it. Activatable spike traps positioned at both entrances allowed us to snare and damage each wave as it entered the fray (making our jobs as sorcerers so much easier). Exploding barrels also popped up randomly that would 1 shot any nearby mobs when triggered. This made this rather challenging as improper use of the exploding barrels was game over for the crystal, so each aoe had to be well placed to not blow up our last lines of defense. Faster smaller monsters also began entering the fray at this time, quickly scuttling to our crystal so fast that we could hardly target them. It was up to our berserker to cut them down, and since he was dead most of the time, our crystal was feeling the pain.

 

 

At this time boss monsters began to spawn. Team CC coordination was vital to dealing with these behemoths and unfortunately, we were anything but coordinated. Every attempt to sleep the boss would fail within seconds as someone on the team would accidentally bump them to wake them up. We managed to get through one of them via the POW block but the second boss rampaged unchecked. With only 3 minutes left on the clock the two biggest waves yet made their way through both doors simultaneously. Chager and I took up position on one side with the other 3 at the other. Things were going smoothly for about a minute but then our berserker went down and Ben took too much agro to stand his ground safely. Chager was forced to charge to the other side to provide back-up and I was left to solo the impending wave of doom.

 

 

Despite our auto revives and valiant effort to slow and CC the mobs, there was simply too many and we were all out of our traps. With 1 minute and 29 seconds left on the clock, our crystal exploded and we failed the mission. We joined the ranks of 5 other groups of press to have failed this dungeon at GDC. Be sure to check out this trailer to give yourself a visual of the Temple of Temerity.

 

 

If you haven’t had a chance to try this game out despite my constant badgering then I don’t think you really like MMOs. But fear not because in two weeks OnRPG will have 50 keys ready for the fourth closed beta test on the North American servers. Your chances to try the game for free are dwindling so be sure to subscribe to our twitter or facebook to be in the loop when I start handing keys out! As for the rest of you already enjoying TERA, I’ll see you on North American Valley of the Titans server later tonight!

GDC 2012 Day 1: Forge of Empires

GDC 2012 Day 1: Forge of Empires

By Darren Henderson (DizzyPW), OnRPG Editor-in-Chief

 

 

A lot of people think of Innogames and imagine one of the front runners in the browser strategy industry. However you don’t hear about them in the news as often as some of the bigger companies out here in the US. I got to chat with them at GDC and discovered that their founding came about under pretty unique circumstances.

 

 

Innogames was actually founded in response to needing the infrastructure to run and expand their first title, Tribal Wars. For the developers this was more about helping their community in Hamburg have a good time enjoying their game rather than making a dollar (or Euro) off of their product. Well they struck at just the right time in the development of the F2P industry and have now pooled together the resources to come out with a monumental browser game called Forge of Empires.

 

 

To describe this game in one word I would say Civilization in a browser. It has most of the concepts behind Sid Meier’s successful series but simplified for casual enjoyment in a browser setting. Players progress at their own pace from the stone age to the future age (currently only up to the late middle ages is developed) while fighting NPCs and other players and micromanaging their capital city into a glorious hub of commerce. The key factors that make this possible are population, production, and happiness.

 

 

City Building and Micromanagement

I could tell the developers put a lot of love into the city building aspect of the game. Players can completely ignore the military aspects of the game and still have a good time if you’re into this type of gameplay (it’s also a viable tactic!). As the beginning you have very limited space and must carefully plan your city to maximize its efficiency. Anyone who has played games like Civ and The Settlers know how vital the start of your game is so do some research and don’t mess this up!

 

 

Every town is built around your Castle. Roads must connect your production, military, and housing buildings to your castle in order to utilize their abilities. But without a booming population you can’t build an empire so the first order of business is building a residential zone. Once you have a bunch of lazy bums sitting around your town, you can send your tax collectors out to start getting your ‘fair share’. With this you can set up butcher shops, metalsmiths, and all kinds of other buildings to utilize your resources and feed your people. If at any time you decide you want to switch up the layout of your town, you can pick up and move any buildings to any open spaces on the map at no extra cost. These shops must actually be managed by your population so you will have to assign the lazy bums to get a job!

 

 

The production system is designed to give hardcore players a slight advantage while still making casual play viable. Whenever initiating a build order you will be given multiple time frames for the shop to enter construction of the item. If you choose a short amount of time, you will get the highest resource per minute ratio, but it has the downside of you having to actually physically click the shop at the end of the build to collect your resource. So if you intend to sit at the computer for an hour straight micromanaging your empire, this is for you. If you just intend to drop by twice a day, you can set your shops on long build orders and then return 12 hours or so later to collect your goods and start new build orders. Something to note is that not all resources have long shelf lives so if you want your butchers to prepare a feast, don’t return a week later and expect your food to still be tasty.

 

 

Speaking of which, managing the happiness of your citizens is vital to maximizing their productivity. Acquiring or trading for rare resources is one way of doing this. You can also ‘waste’ some of your city space to build parks and monuments that improve national pride. Once you have an established crew of players you trust, you can even petition for their help to build World Wonders in your city that greatly improve your citizen’s happiness as well as providing other bonuses. On this note you can also visit other players to help give buffs to their production and happiness as a sign of friendship and proof of the strength of an alliance.

 

 

Military Conquest

If you aren’t satisfied with your current city size or want to obtain some of the more rare resources (currently 24 total) without trading for them, you’re going to have to march your armies on your neighbors. This is all about risk reward and the first trade-off you will experience is the size of military buildings. They are bulky and building soldiers is a major drain on your supply of lazy bums. So don’t intend to build military just for the sake of parading the troops around your castle. Once you have an army you have the option of assigning each soldier to your offensive and defensive army. The defensive army is what will come running if anyone attacks your city. The offensive army I what you need to capture new territories on the world map.

 

 

By capturing NPC controlled territories you will expand the number of tiles you can build on in your capital and bolster your resources useful for getting unique tech tree research (discussed later) and building new units. This is done through a turn-based hexagonal system akin to the Fire Emblem series. Various tiles will give your units defensive and offensive bonuses and each unique has its own attacking range, movement range, and power. Various water tiles and impassable terrain will set up choke points that can change the course of combat if used properly.

 

 

If you ever find a battle is going unfavorably for you, it’s rarely a good idea to fight it out to the end. Soldiers are incredibly costly to rebuild after all. You can choose to retreat and preserve your remaining army, though they will have to return home and heal for some time before they are viable in battle again. While healing they are automatically added to your defending army.

 

 

Remember earlier when I mentioned that it was viable to just focus on your economy and not on military? Well if you don’t have a strong enough army to take these NPC controlled territories by force, you can actually purchase them. That way you’re never weak and vulnerable to attack after a hard fought invasion and your entire army can stay on defensive duty.

 

 

When wanting to attack (or trade) with other players, you will be able to look at your neighborhood. Your neighborhood consists of 80 other players selected based on starting time and current technological era. This is done to ensure that knights don’t come raining down on bronze age spearmen in unfair confrontations. Should you choose to challenge another player in combat, they will be given the option to accept if they are online. Players will then battle it out in turn-based combat until one surrenders or one’s army is completely destroyed. If you choose not to fight, the AI will defend your city on your behalf. However if the defending nation losses, a number of resources will be pillaged from their resource supply and some buildings may be randomly damaged. Rebuilding a damaged building is much cheaper and much less time intensive than building it from scratch, but it’s still enough incentive to have a strong standing army to protect your homeland from invaders.

 

 

Although not added to the game yet, Innogames is developing a system called Battlecards. You’ll be able to complete quests to earn a deck of cards that can be activated during battle. Up to 3 cards can be used in each fight and they are a mix of both active and passive effects. No word on if using a battlecard causes it to expire or if they are reusable.

 

 

Technology Tree

The part of this game that had me most excited was the humongous tech tree already in-game. Players start in the stoneage and then have many options as they progress up the tech tree. Researching each techonology unlocks everything you’d expect including new military units, new buildings, new resources, and new ways of making your people happier or expanding your city tiles.

 

 

Each technology has its own cost including a variety of resources. You will also need a special technology resource called Forge Points that are acquired once per hour. You’re only able to store 10 Forge Points total though so if you want to research at max pace you’ll need to log in at least every 10 hours.

 

 

Thankfully the tech tree has tons of branches and not all techs lead to further technologies so you should see plenty of differentiation between nations in the same era based on what they prioritized in their research first. In addition, the tech tree unlocks upgrades on preexisting buildings. Innogames thinks it’s pretty unrealistic that in most games like this when you enter a new era you’re entire nation instantly evolves to take on a new look. They’ve resolved this problem by giving players the power to upgrade each of their buildings individually at a cost.

 

 

This isn’t a simple ‘do I have enough resources?’ decision though. As you upgrade a building into your modern era, you gain a lot of bonuses but sometimes lose out in other areas like happiness. Players will have to look at the overall picture of their civilization and decide if their resources are best spent upgrading their buildings or saved for other endeavors like building up their military.

 

 

As I mentioned earlier they have implemented up to the late middle ages in game so far. However shortly after launch you can expect to see updates introducing the Renaissance and Colonial eras.

 

 

Beta

The game is currently in limited CB testing in Germany. But keep an eye on OnRPG as we’ll be partnering to announce global server stability tests in late March. By late April/ May they will also be introducing dedicated US servers and more languages to cater to a larger audience base in Europe.

GDC 2012 Day 1: Wakfu

GDC 2012 Day 1: Wakfu

By Darren Henderson (DizzyPW), OnRPG Editor-in-Chief

 

 

The adventure began at what looked like an abandoned industrial section of downtown San Francisco. After cluelessly standing in front of the entrance for a good 20 minutes, I was finally directed by Square Enix into the building where they had all the major upcoming games sprawled out like Wakfu and Final Fantasy XIII-2.

 

 

One the demo started I got to check out the new introduction to the game in which players are dropped from the clouds above but hijacked by Ullu, a mechanical avatar of the gods that looks like a 1970s Television Set with wings and a robot face on the screen. The main owl tries to protest the kid napping saying it’s pointless for a noob like you to challenge the mighty ancient Ogrest living at the top of Mount Zinit but Ullu thinks you can handle it. Well if by handle it Ullu means get 1-shot for 99,999 damage then he’s spot on!

 

 

After you get rescued you’re dropped into the neutral center zone of the world as players are already familiar with. But now in addition to choosing your nation you can also help feed a scraggly crew of sailor cats (if cats hate water, then becoming a sailor shows these felines have nerves of steel!). One you help the kitties out they will offer to sail you to Mount Zinit to get your revenge! This begins chapter 1 of the new NPC driven main storyline they have added outside of the normal sandbox world initially offered.

 

 

Chapter 1 is a solo only mission that’s ideal to challenge at level 4 or 5. It’s heavily cinematic focused and offers very animated NPCs that will move around and change forms as the story progresses. The production value of these missions is high so don’t expect to run into recycled monsters from the main world. Chapter 1 culminates in an epic battle with a water dragon that drops some loot to help you stand above your peers in the early levels… assuming they all aren’t wearing the same gear as you.

 

 

Of course that big ogre doesn’t just sit on the mountain all day waiting for challengers to get to him. His tears will continue bringing down great disasters randomly on one of the four nations, causing monster outbreaks and destroying workshops and other useful features on the landscape. So expect to constantly be banding together to combat Ogrest as you wait for future storyline chapters to unlock getting you one step closer to the top of the mountain.

 

 

Now is also an exciting time in the game world as they just held their first post-commercial launch elections, and the four nations are in an unsteady neutrality that could break at any time. Some things I didn’t know about the political system before GDC is that if you vote you can actually rate your nation’s governor in real time through your state menu. If enough players approve of their job, a statue is constructed in their honor. If enough people oppose their leadership you can get them impeached before the next election.

 

 

Overall there is a lot of hidden content and secret dungeons inside of Wakfu, and I definitely will be checking it out in greater detail when I do my write-up on politics in MMOs in 2012 in the near future. If you want more info on the game be sure to check out JamesBl0nde’s impressions video! I’ll also be revisting Square Enix in the future to discuss a new online multiplayer Internet connected dungeon crawler on the 3DS they have in development… just as soon as their NDA lifts!