Yearly Archives: 2012

MEAD: RIFT’s Mentoring System

MEAD: RIFT’s Mentoring System

By Shannon Doyle (Leliah), OnRPG Journalist

 

 

As we get closer to 1.9 (hint, it’s this week!) more information is being revealed about some of the fantastic things we can expect to see. On Monday June 18th more information was released about the Mentoring system which is set to really change the world. On Wednesday, just a few short days later we got to see it in action live via Twitch.tv during a live stream hosted by the loveable Elrar and the lovely Dahanese. Watching it was a bit on the silly side because it really just felt like we were watching someone play the game. Which is exactly what we were doing. The great thing though is we got to see the screen that all the magic happens on.

 

 

So, how does it work?

 

 

Right click on your portrait
Select “Set Ascended Mentor Level”
Put in the level you want to play at.
Play.

 

 

This allows you to set your own level of challenge. Finding something too easy? Lower your level a couple numbers and suddenly everything is a whole lot harder. There is one limitation though. You can only mentor down to a level 5 levels below your current level or further. This means that for now at least the mentoring level cap is set to 45.

 

 

The folks at Trion also went through some extra special effort to make this an easy and painless task. If you’re grouped with someone who is 5 levels lower than you they’ve made it so you can click on their portrait and match their level. In addition if you join an Instant Adventure in a zone that is lower than your current level by five it will, as they say, automagically mentor you down to the appropriate level.

 

 

But how does it actually work? Trion went to great lengths to make sure your gear, stats, pets and abilities all scale accurately to the appropriate level. They did warn that you may still feel a little bit too powerful for the level you’re at. But the great thing about that is you can just drop yourself down a few more levels and magic! Everything is harder.

 

 

Why did they do this?

 

 

Well, there are a few answers to that. But basically it comes down to rewards, content and giving zones that have been long abandoned by the 50 crowd new life.

 

 

How often have you seen Silverwood or Freemarch completely overrun by a zone event that is going ignored except by a few people who are actually at level? How many times have you been standing in the Manufactory and seen that the Meridian Gate is under attack from some planar creatures and just ignored it? Why would you do it? The reward for the time spent is tiny, if you’re lucky you might get 2 planarite and a bunch of lowbies complaining you killed it before they could get there. Well no more! Now you can fight alongside your lowbie allies without frustration and get rewards that are appropriate to the level you actually are. Not the level you’ve mentored down to.

 

 

I can tell you from personal experience that it is impossible to experience everything in Telara before you reach 50. I started Leliah on day one of the headstart, played through the quests, closed a good number of rifts, and took on every planar creature I saw. On top of all that I played the world events faithfully but when it came down to it I ended up having to skip several zones worth of quests just because I was always outleveling things! I found it insanely frustrating and had always planned on going back to the places I left off to finish them. The one thing that always held me back though was the fact that I would be basically wasting my time. There would be no reward for all my hard work. Besides knowing the full story that is. Now I’m glad I kept putting it off! This will give Leliah a new life beyond crafting and the occasional pvp since I’m not into raiding.

 

 

So, since we are all expecting 1.9 to hit the live shards next week this is going to be my final reminder to everyone. Spend those world event currencies! Specifically the Otherworldly Sourcestone, Ancient Golden Dragon Egg Shells, and Rune King’s Seals. The things you can purchase with these will be disappearing from the World Event Merchant and this will make them completely useless. In 1.10 the same will happen with Dragon Tears and Magma Opals. I know, that leaves a few out. Those are the ones that are part of yearly events that will happen again and again. So keep those! The ones to keep are: Unique Snowflakes, Glass Beads, Carnival Prize Tickets and the currency from the upcoming summer event. In 1.9 the world event currencies will also be added to the regular currency screen, making them much easier to manage.

 

 

There you have it then. Everything you could possibly need to know about mentoring before you actually get your hands on it. At this point though its only a matter of days before you can try it out on your own. I’d love to hear what you think of it so head on over to the OnRPG forums and find this article in the Only @OnRPG section and leave me your thoughts!

Waren Story Enters into CB Testing

Closed Beta now available for PvP-Focused MMORPG Waren Story

 

Waren Story

 

 

Take on legions of rival players in ferocious large-scale battles in Waren Story, the latest MMORPG from Aeria Games. The company announced today the beginning of Closed Beta testing for this highly-anticipated fantasy adventure filled with breathtaking visuals and engaging PvP gameplay.

 

 

Waren Story features spectacular graphics and animation, four distinct classes, and ten captivating PvP modes to foster competition between players and guilds. A variety of battlefields set the stage on which skilled gamers can vie for supremacy—and each other’s precious honor points. An ultimate battlefield also awaits for the bravest and most daring, pitting teams of up to 100 players against each other in a titanic clash. But players must take heed, as dying there means forfeiting experience points to the killing player and possibly losing valuable items!

 

Waren Story

 

 

The game also offers several methods of guild vs. guild conflict for large scale rivalries. Guilds may simply declare war upon each other and attack opposing players anywhere in the world, or enter the exciting Siege War mode for a more organized approach to wholesale slaughter. An invading guild must lay waste to a castle with weapons including cannons, catapults, ballistae, and of course, traditional PvP combat—while the defending guild must hold them off and protect their guild stone.

 

 

Not only does the winning guild in a Siege War gain additional treasure, they also get a ticket to the weekly Conquest War, a highly prestigious affair in which five guilds housed in five separate castles fight in a free-for-all battle royale. The winning guild receives major spoils, the ability to set tax rates on NPC vendors, and of course, supreme bragging rights for the week!

 

 

With its robust PvP systems, awesome visuals, and vast fantasy setting, this is one story that MMO fans won’t want to miss. Players can participate in Waren Story’s beta by signing up and downloading the client at http://warenstory.aeriagames.com. Like all Aeria Games titles, it is free to download and play.

Waren Story

Intense PvP Warfare – Gather your forces, and then lead the charge to obliterate the competition. Rage through fierce battles in ten challenging PvP modes or power up your character with PvE and guild alignments. Guard your guild stone, occupy enemy castles, and destroy any guilds that dare to stand against you.

 

Riveting Animation – Each skill offers new ways to eliminate your enemies in glorious fashion. Unleash a hail of arrows, cleave through them with your sword, or demolish them with your fists alone. Conquer the opposition, and become the champion of the battle grounds.

 

Intricate and Deadly Equipment – Don the armor of Waren’s legendary heroes, then take up your bloodthirsty blade and set out into the wild plains. Waren Story’s customizable gear is as elegant as it is lethal.

 

Four Dynamic Classes – Will your weapon of choice be a great sword, a bow, or your own bare fists? Choose from four power-packed classes: Warrior, Gunner, Archer, or Brawler. Develop an arsenal of skills and shape yourself into a nimble assailant or fearsome berserker.

 

Robust Support System – Waren has become a dangerous place since the Great War. Hire a variety of allies to support you on your quest to save your homeland. Recruit up to four mercenaries, ranging from soft spoken Elf archers to rowdy Dwarf warriors.

 

Item Upgrades – Craft and assemble powerful equipment, or break down your scraps for valuable materials. Gain rare, unique, and artifact-level items by improving your equipment through the use of special crafting materials.

DayZ: Proxzor Impressions

DayZ: Proxzor Impressions

By Remko Molenaar (Proxzor), OnRPG Journalist

 

 

If you haven’t heard about DayZ yet, you must have been laying under a stone for the past month. This game is like the next big thing, or at least people on OnRPG forums certainly think so. Imagine a game just like the tv show The Walking Dead with guns, vehicles, more zombies, helicopters and explosion. Put all of that into a blender and voila! You will get DayZ. The game isn’t a stand-alone game since it is a modification for the popular Military Simulator ArmA 2. In a month’s time the game garnered over 260,000 players and it is still growing! Since the game is still in alpha testing and nowhere near release everything can change and you can easily expect a lot more content in the future.

 

 

Background

For the people that aren’t familiar yet with the game DayZ is modded from I’m going to give you a quick debrief. ArmA 2, made by Bohemia Interactive Studio, is their latest game that tries to be the most realistic and best military simulation game ever. As you can expect, the game already offers a great variety of guns, vehicles, and aircraft, setting the perfect stage for DayZ to thrive on. Dean Hall, lead designer of DayZ, started working at Bohemia Interactive early this year and has been a big fan of the franchise. He has made quite a few mods with DayZ being the most recent. When the game went into alpha testing it caught the eye of many people and through word of mouth grew into a huge success. It was such a huge success that Bohemia Interactive decided to take Dean Hall off all his projects to focus his full attention on building the mod. This will undoubtedly mean that the game will get the full support of Bohemia Interactive which is exciting news with the launch of ArmA 3 on the horizon!

 

 

Gameplay

So now that you know the backstory behind the game, let’s discuss the concept of the mod itself. Zombies are everywhere; there is no place of absolute safety unless you live the life of a hermit in the hills or forests. But what do you actually do there? There isn’t much that you can do except for making a fire place and finding wild animals. No what you really have to do is survive, so you will have to go into the town or cities that are scattered around the 225 km2 open world post-soviet state of Chernarus. The infection hit the state and it has wiped out most of the world’s population. It is up to you to survive and meet up with other survivors to work together to live the longest life possible. But since the rules of the Wild West are in place in Chernarus, you can also get shot by the same survivors that have their main goal as surviving. These conniving rogues are called Bandits. Although are they really evil? That’s the question… is it just survival of the fittest or are people actually afraid of others to shoot so they will open fire first? There are so many questions you will have to ask yourself while playing this and meeting up with people.

 

 

The goal in this game is very simple as stated above, you will have to survive. But how are you going to do that? You start off at the coastline at random locations all over the southern and eastern part of the map with nothing in your possession. Before the player would start with just some small firearms with a pistol called the Makarov. Since one of the newest patches however Dean “Rocket” Hall decided to make the game a tougher challenge. Meaning you would have to struggle more at the start. Basically every new player starts with a flashlight, one bandage and some food. You will have nothing else to aid you in your journey to find a real weapon. Of course this leads to the challenge of sneaking into a nearby city unarmed in the hope of finding one before the zombies find you. Luckily a recent patch introduced melee weapons that can help tide you over until you find an actual gun. This was quite an update as ArmA II doesn’t even have melee weapons so we are already seeing signs of Bohemia stepping up their support and programming mechanics exclusively for the mod.

 

 

Once you find yourself a suitable weapon, the game really begins. What would you do with your weapon? You don’t want to get the attention of zombies so you should stay low for a while and try to get more supplies and equipment. You don’t want to come in contact with any other person as well so never fire your weapon unless you have to. You will have to scavenge around town trying to get some canned beans and some soda or water. When you have enough supplies to live off of you should start to find yourself some bigger guns for when the need to survive far outweighs the need to lay low. Having a heavy hitting automatic weapon can be the difference between life and death when surrounded by a horde of zombies or cornered by a gang of bandits.

 

 

Since the new players start off with only a small rucksack another major goal you will need to look into is finding a bigger backpack. Also keep your eyes open for some useful tools so you could make yourself a fire place, have a map to look at and pinpoint your location, a watch to look at the time and a compass to find your way better around. The point of the game is to make your own story and life with your character as if it was really happening. The more tools you collect the more likely you will survive to tell an epic tale.

 

 

Graphics

The ArmA 2 engine which is called Real Virtuality 3 really offers high quality graphics to set it apart from others that have tried doing zombie mods in the past. Since the engine is originally used to make the best military simulation game possible, the DayZ team had plenty of textures and backgrounds to work with. Hopping into game you immediately have the feel that you’re living in the end of days as a result. The map that is used for the DayZ mod is called Chernarus and fits perfectly into this genre. Beyond the setting and background you will find many props scattered around the world like broken Humvees and other cars that people tried to flee in while being chased by the zombies.

 

 

DayZ also features a simplistic clean UI that gives you quick access to everything you need without being too intrusive on the experience. On the right side of your screen you can basically see everything that’s needed. You can see if you’re hungry, if your character would like to have some water, your temperature, and you can even see if you have enough blood flowing in your body. There is currently also a ‘Debug Monitor’, I have no idea if this monitor will make it into the final game but I’d say this is as important as the icons under it. In this monitor you can see your stats, how much blood you have, how many zombies you have taken out, and a precise blood level. As I always say when it comes to graphics, it doesn’t have to be complicated and advanced if a simpler cleaner UI setup can function just as well. Though be warned that the smooth graphics and textures in this title come at a heftier computing cost than most games I have reviewed.

 

 

Minimal PC Requirements

CPU: Dual Core Intel Pentium 4 3.0 GHz / Intel Core 2.0 GHz / AMD Athlon 3200+ or faster

RAM: 1 GB

Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 7800 / ATI Radeon 1800 with Shader Model 3 and 256 MB VRAM or faster

OS: Windows XP

 

 

Optimal PC Requirements

CPU: Intel Core 2.8 GHz / AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ or faster

RAM: 2 GB

Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 8800GT / ATI Radeon 4850 with Shader Model 3 and 512 MB VRAM or faster

OS: Windows XP or Vista

 

 

I wouldn’t say you will need a killer computer for this but it still requires you to have at least a proper processor with video card. If you have no idea whatsoever about computers and you have no idea what the above requirements mean, I’d think that everyone who bought a computer in the last 3 to 4 years is able to play this game.

 

 

Conclusion

The player makes the story in the setting of an absolute sandbox. Even if you’re not a zombie fan this alone should get your attention if you want to play a game that breaks the current typical mold. In many MMO’s, and yes I will compare this game to a MMO since it basically works the same, you will have a main objective like leveling up and training some skills. That’s not how it works in DayZ; at one moment you might be running around with your favorite weapon and set of tools and a minute later you may be lying dead on the floor because you weren’t careful enough. Once you die, you will have to start over and that’s what makes this game so perfect. The thrills of being alive and having your favorite weapon in your hand with a lot of good supplies and seeing another survivor is immense. You will ask yourself many questions while playing this game, and you will seriously have to think twice about your actions because one wrong turn means lights out. Currently the game is still far from complete and it will still be in the Alpha phase for quite a while. Still I seriously had a blast and have been playing it almost every day for the past month, and I am far from bored with this game. Personally this game is already my game of the year even though it isn’t even released yet.

 

 

And if you haven’t seen already, DizzyPW has interviewed Dean Hall at E3 about the future plans of DayZ! Also stay tuned as next week I go over my second attempt at life in DayZ!

Faithless is He: Silence is Golden?

Faithless Is He: Silence is Golden?

By Jonathan Doyle (Ardua), OnRPG Journalist

 

 

 

Everyone who plays games has their own preferences. The music has to be just so, certain playlists may even be compiled for particular activities. Chair, drinks, snacks, add-ons…. The list goes on and on. Everyone likes things the way they like them.

 

 

One thing I have never understood however, is avoiding the general chat.

 

 

Oh don’t get me wrong, I have a healthy disdain for some of the nonsense that people talk about in general chat in any game, but it’s never really been something I make sure is completely out of sight.

 

 

Playing music instead of listening to your game, I can understand that. Using add-ons and map packs to get more out of your games, I can see why you might. Admittedly I am strange in that I almost never modify the basic UI of any game I play. But avoiding the presence of other people in the multiplayer game? No.. that never made sense to me until quite recently.

 

 

I started to grasp why anyone would do this when I read through Pete Smiths blog Dragonchasers on how he was playing Star Wars. When your game is leaning heavily on story, it makes sense to avoid the spoilers. It’s like watching trailers for movies; either something is going to lie to you or something is going to spoil the big surprise.

 

 

Why expose yourself to that?

 

 

Why in your wanderings around Kingsmouth would you give yourself the chance of having all the little secrets and answers handed to you?

 

 

Well… admittedly some people just prefer that.

 

 

There are times though when cutting yourself off from the voices of the players is a bad idea. This time especially is one of them.

 

 

Funcom continues to run Alternate Reality Games tied into The Secret World and we’re in the midst of one right now. If you go to www.funcom.com and press 33 on your keyboard you’ll see what I mean. (editor’s note: mind=blown)

 

 

Fansite CryGaia has a fantastic write up of the ARG and the ones before it. I myself have been playing along. I have had my emails from the Black Watchmen. I voted to glorify or punish the traitors amongst the userbase. What I have not done however is found it easy or straight forward. Perhaps it’s a matter of practice; perhaps it’s a matter of ability.

 

 

I like to think though that it’s one of those things that will forever bind this community together. Solving ciphers and cracking stenography isn’t the work of just one person. It is a true community effort, a common cause and a common goal. It plays perfectly with Funcom’s desire to blur the lines between the real world and the game.

 

 

So even if you feel the need to hide from spoilers, to avoid what inevitably gets spread around general chat… don’t forget the community.

 

 

Want any more reason beyond the satisfaction of knowing what the answers are? Funcom is giving away virtual goods at the end of the current ARG. http://www.thesecretworld.com/news/countdown_for_last_seal Ending on the 28th with the opening of the final seal, players will have the chance to get their hands on some in game wear and those in the community who have worked the hardest and contributed the most will be up for the chance to win a lifetime subscription.

 

 

Not bad for solving puzzles right?

 

 

For a full break down on the current ARG, visit http://wiki.crygaia.com/index.php?title=Latest_ARG and don’t forget to give Amelia your thanks for all her hard work on putting the guides and walkthroughs together.

Red 5 Studios Announces Mobile Gaming Unit Premier at Anime Expo

Red 5 Studios Announces Mobile Gaming Unit Premier at Anime Expo

 

 

Red 5 Studios announced today that it will unveil its state-of-the-art Firefall “Mobile Gaming Unit” (MGU) during this year’s Anime Expo (AX), at the Los Angeles Convention Center, June 29 – July 1, 2012. AX attendees will be the first to see Red 5’s epic creation, can register for Firefall’s exclusive beta, and will get to meet its heroes, Typhon and Mourningstar, who will be making live appearances throughout the show.

 

 

Brought to life by the talented team at West Coast Customs, the MGU is a massive 48-foot-long gaming tournament on wheels that features a unique aesthetic design pulled straight out of Firefall’s sci-fi world. Planned to tour the country later this year, the MGU is equipped for top-level eSports play with 20 AMD powered gaming stations, Razer peripherals, support for 1,000 person LAN parties, and even a shoutcaster podium with full live streaming support.

 

 

“Anime Expo is the perfect event for this reveal because Firefall’s rich sci-fi universe is something that anime and manga fans are going to really appreciate,” said Mark Kern, CEO of Red 5. “They’re the type of gamer that pays extra attention to the lore and story; they enjoy interacting with it outside of the medium. We’re delivering that interactivity in a huge way.”

 

 

Attendees will not only find Red 5’s new Mobile Gaming Unit at the event, they’ll also meet professional cosplayer, Crystal Graziano, and actor, Lee “Hawk” Reherman, who will bring Firefall’s heroes to life in futuristic hand-crafted “Battleframes”. In addition, fans can read the recently released Firefall Affinity online manga, written by Orson Scott Card and Emily Janice Card, which will flesh out the backstory and characters from the game.

 

 

OnRPG’s DizzyPW and Kitty Mach will also be in attendance in cosplay so keep an eye out for them as well if you want to get included in this year’s Anime Expo round-up!