Yearly Archives: 2012

C9 Character Precreation Now Open, Early Access Included

C9 Character Precreation Now Open, Early Access Included

 

C9

 

WEBZEN Inc. opened the official teaser site of ‘C9’ (Continent of the Ninth Seal) on June 7th to accept character pre-creation registrations prior to the open beta test.

 

 

On June 7th, the teaser site for ‘C9’ had opened, continuously receiving registrations for character pre-creation. Players who sign up before June 21st will receive a beta key and will be able to pre-create their character, name, server, and class that will remain throughout the commercial service.

 

 

Along with these benefits, players who register before the 21st will be able to participate in the early access automatically, earning the chance to play before the open beta begins. Players who miss the pre-creation registration can still register for early access from the 21st. Users who don’t have a WEBZEN.com account can receive the beta key by simply making a new account.

 

C9

 

Also, WEBZEN will reveal the new class ‘Witchblade’ for the first time. The ‘Witchblade’ specializes in both magic and melee combat with acrobatic movements. This class has been one of the most demanded classes in C9. The 2 advanced classes of ‘Witchblade’, ‘Warden’ and ‘Slayer’, will be available with the start of the early access.

 

 

Jihun Lee, Head of Global Publishing, said, “With the results and feedback from past beta tests, we have been putting our best efforts for localization and adding contents.” Also he said, “We hope players keep their interest and anticipation for the series of upcoming tournaments as well as the open beta test that begins on June 30th.

 

 

Meanwhile, WEBZEN has started an event for the ‘C9’ live streaming VJ recruitment. The selected VJ will live stream C9 with various contents including game guides, beginner’s guide, PvE / PvP contents, and more.

SMITE Closed Beta Impressions

SMITE Closed Beta Impressions

By Jason Harper (Hhean), OnRPG Journalist

 

SMITE is the latest MOBA from Hi-Rez Studios, taking notes from League of Legends and Land Of Chaos Online, rather than Defense of the Ancients. The game’s cast is based on Gods, Spirits and other mythological figures, all fighting in a familiar three laned map with an ancient greek aesthetic. It’s the Super Smash Brothers of the ancient world, with Anubis shooting lazers over the head of Ymir as he crashes headlong into Kali. All while Sun Wukong watches the spectacle with a mischievous glint in his eye.

 

From League of Legends, SMITE uses similar formulas for character stats, making use of Ability Power and Attack Damage rather than the standard Strength, Agility, Intelligence template employed by Dota. This will like be a matter of personal preference for those who are more experienced with the genre. For new players, this does help them know exactly what they’re buying and why, without having to look at the behind the scene calculations on what buying a stat actually does to benefit their character. On the flip side though it does lack the simple goals one can attach to the tri-stat system, where a new player can simply say “I’m a Strength character, therefore I should just build that stat. It doesn’t matter what it does, since apparently I need that”.

 

 

From Land Of Chaos Online, the game eschews the standard isometric camera that has been the standard for the genre, and instead it makes use of a third person camera. This camera angle means that the standard ‘click to move’ control scheme of most MOBAs would be highly unwieldy. Instead the game has you use WASD to move, and 1234 to fire off your abilities rather than the standard QWER.

 

The third person perspective in the game was most likely chosen due to one of the more unique parts of SMITE. All attacks in the game, be they auto-attacks or abilities, are skillshots. For those unfamiliar with the genre, this means that all attacks must be aimed manually, and will never simply hit an enemy after targeting them. This makes the ranged combat in the game feel more like a simplified shooter rather than an RPG, and the melee combat feel like a poor man’s Guild Wars 2.

 

The change of camera angle impacts the game in ways beyond this though, for better and for worse. The lower camera limits your visibility far more than the almost top down view afforded by the Isometric camera. Enemies can easily sneak up on you, abusing your limited field of view. This opens up interesting tactical options, as you can abuse an enemy’s blind spot just as much as another could potentially do the same right back to you. Furthermore, due to the manual aiming in the game, you can’t simply check around you during fights, or else you’ll be unable to deal damage while checking if reinforcements are on their way.

 

This tighter field of view enables some interesting play, but it also causes its share of problems and limitations. The camera’s position can make gauging a character’s range difficult, which in turn makes juking and positional play much harder. Precise movements are often used to force an enemy to whiff their attacks in most MOBAs, but SMITE makes this element of play difficult to perform reliably. Compounding this issue is the slightly floaty controls, exacerbating an already troubling problem. Hopefully this is an issue that will disappear as players get more familiar with the way the game plays, but as of right now this is a real issue with the game.

 

While the ‘all skillshots, all the time’ cornerstone of SMITE’s design was clearly made to increase the game’s skill ceiling, the rest of the game seems to conspire against this central idea. A good deal of these things are clearly intended to help a new player get familiar with the game, (and by extension the genre itself) but a number of these design choices make the game more shallow than its rivals.

 

It’s very hard to combine the different abilities in a character’s kit due to long animations, both for spells and auto-attacks. This is further compounded by the lack of animation cancelling, which is a trick in most MOBAs that allows a player to reduce the time between spells or auto-attacks by using other attacks or moving. The only way to get a character’s full combo off is for other players to lock down targets for you, so you can deliver your key attacks. While this was likely added as a means to encourage teamplay, it is highly frustrating that you can’t play a character to their maximum capacity without others needing to pin the enemy down for you.

 

SMITE’s gameplay is by far the slowest paced of all current MOBAs. This may be a good thing for new players, but it’s certainly surprising when put side by side with Hi-Rez’s previous effort, the blisteringly fast paced Tribes: Ascend. The laning phase in the game can be a bit dull as a result, but team fights don’t become as chaotic as in other titles, allowing you to see what’s going on far more easily.

 

The long animations wouldn’t be so bad if they had any weight to them, but they all feel a bit limp wristed. There are no crushing blows or satisfying thrusts in this game. Just the usual flopping about with a weapon clutched in hand. This issue might not be so bad if the sound design itself didn’t feel almost non-existent. The various gods and monsters have very little dialogue between them, and some only have guttural noises to break the silence. This does make a good deal of the cast feel like they’re lacking personality, despite the rich source material that they’re based on.

 

If you thought the long animations, floaty movement and aimed auto-attacks might make last hitting far harder than it needs to be, then you’d have thought correctly. Last hitting, the practice where a player gets the last hit on a minion to get the gold from them as they die, is thankfully not a required skill in SMITE. When a minion dies, it simply donates gold and experience to all nearby players, regardless of whether they killed it or not. The only reward for getting the last hit on a minion is you get a small amount of bonus gold, roughly an extra fifth or so of the minion’s worth. While this is clearly to help compensate for the control issues, and not punish new players too much, it can make laning a bit strange. The only way to prevent an enemy from simply riding the gold and experience train to victory isn’t to simply harass them, but to outright drive them from their lane by either forcing them to run back to base or kill them.

 

Itemization in the game is streamlined in a way that takes away the interesting choices found in other games of this type. Rather than building smaller items that combine with one another to form larger and more powerful items, SMITE has items that start weak, but can be upgraded twice, often with an added bonus for having the item reach its third tier. While this is no doubt a design choice made with new players in mind, it denies some of the interesting decisions that can be thrown at a player when building their character on the fly. Do you go for the weapon that slows your enemies, or the equipment that will give you some defenses? Both would build to that lovely end-game item you want, but the order can often be critical to success.

 

In SMITE, this choice is denied you, as all items merely give stats until their third tier, so extra bonuses are never an option, and they all give the same stats that they would give at any tier of the item, just with lower numbers. Health or damage? You don’t get to choose, you get a bit of both.

 

One excellent feature for newcomers is the auto leveling and auto-itemization. At the start of a game, players can choose to have the game automatically build the recommended items and abilities for a given character. While these are good crutches for new players, they don’t allow for the flexible counter-building that is key to success in MOBAs. Furthermore, the auto-itemiser won’t allow you to purchase any of the abilities that can be gained from the game’s store. These abilities are somewhere between the activatable items found in most MOBAs (Which SMITE has none of), and the summoner spells found in League of Legends. These are mostly utility abilities to add some minor trick to your character’s arsenal. The effects include gaining a movement speed boost, becoming invulnerable for a couple of seconds (at the cost of being unable to move or attack), and removing all crowd control effects on your character.

 

Accounts can be leveled, but these levels don’t seem to do anything to benefit the player beyond gaining access to higher level matchmaking queues. There’s no out of game progression like in LoL. If anything, there’s actually a downside to this system, as once you’ve gained access to the higher level matchmaking queues, you cannot go back and queue with a lower level friend. If you’re a more experienced player, and want to group with your newbie friend who’s checking out the game for the first time, you’re flat out of luck. This one fault seems to go heavily against the rest of the game, which near bends over backwards to be as inviting to new players as possible.

 

SMITE is, in its current state at least, a bit dull. It’s entertaining enough while you’re playing it, but feels lacking in both depth and personality. This might be a good game to get friends involved in the MOBA genre, before moving them on to meatier titles. Both due to it using a camera angle MMO or shooter players may be familiar with, and its host of options clearly intended to smooth out the learning curve. Similar things were said about League of Legends in its early days though, and it is now considered a game worthy of some of the fiercest tournaments in gaming. Perhaps the release day SMITE will have more to offer in the future, or great minds will set to work on uncovering previously unknown depths. As things are right now though, it’s a bit of light entertainment that might hold your interest for a few hours before you move onto something more interesting.

Rise from the Ashes with Shaiya Phoenix Update

Rise from the Ashes with Shaiya’s Phoenix Update

 

Shaiya Phoenix

 

Take flight anew with the spectacular Shaiya Phoenix from Aeria Games, a leading global publisher of free-to-play online games. Shaiya Phoenix is the newest addition to the Aeria Games catalog, offering the core features and amazing gameplay that made Shaiya a rousing success in 2008, but reimagined with rebalanced game systems and a fresh economy structure.

 

 

“Our effort to revitalize a truly beloved IP is one that we’re confident our fans will appreciate,” said Executive Producer Spencer Tucker. “In Shaiya Phoenix, players will engage with a plethora of familiar characters and environments that are seamlessly integrated with a host of new elements. This new epic experience truly carries the legacy set by the original game.”

 

 

The fresh, unconquered territories in Shaiya Phoenix give players the ability to start from the ground up and play at their own pace. Both old and new players alike will be able to make their mark on even footing in a new Shaiya world brimming with endless possibilities.

 

Shaiya Phoenix

 

Key features of the exciting new world in Shaiya Phoenix:

 

Relive the Glory Days: Experience the world of Shaiya from the beginning alongside your peers

Newly Rebalanced: Exciting gameplay and thrilling PvP on equal terms

Fresh Economy: No gold inflation or market imbalance

Play at Your Own Pace: Battle casually, or grind for real power

 

 

As an added bonus, the first 25,000 players to enter the game will receive a special exclusive welcome package that includes a free mount and powerful items to assist players early on.

 

 

Like all titles published by Aeria Games, Shaiya Phoenix is free to download and play. For more information on Shaiya Phoenix, please visit AeriaGames!

Web Koihime Musou Cosplay Contest Final Reveal Preview

Web Koihime Musou Cosplay Contest Final Reveal Preview

 

 

With the big final reveal less than a week away, we have a special preview of the girls and their weapons to show today. Voting will likely begin next Tuesday and we’re counting on you guys to show your support. Now let’s take a look at the metal.

 

Ryubi’s Hair

 

Ryubi’s Sword

 

Sonsaku’s Sword

 

SoSo and Ryubi’s Weapons

 

SoSo’s Sickle Close-up

 

 

Group Shot on the Photo Shoot

E3 2012 Closer Look: Age of Wushu Feature Breakdown

E3 2012 Closer Look: Age of Wushu Feature Breakdown

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

 

 

In yesterday’s article I broke down the theoretical history and eight diverse schools behind Snail Games USA’s upcoming epic MMORPG, Age of Wushu. Today I’m getting down into the details to explain why this title is so different from the dozen other F2P “martial arts” titles on the market today.

 

 

The Flexi Engine

The key defining feature that makes Age of Wushu able to break all the normal barriers is the Flexi Engine. R&D began on this engine as far back as the year 2000, with an earlier version known as Voyager being the backbone of many of Snail’s previous titles like The Chosen and Voyage Century. But now the engine has evolved even beyond the reach of the Voyager and the engine was reclassified as Flexi, a fitting name due to the amount of freedom the engine offers lower end PCs.

 

 

The Flexi engine is all about lighting, realistic dynamic shadows, depth perception, water animations, and freedom. Through it you will be able to see shadows rendered in real time as a breeze blows through its branches, causing it to sway. You’ll be able to see distant mountains hidden by mist and run to them without any form of loading required. Light that hits the water will appropriately bend and refract as it naturally should, and ripples in the water will demonstrate realistic physics as your character runs and does battle on top of its surface. Flexi even goes as far as to offer multilayered space. Have you ever played an MMORPG and been smacked by a monster on a lower level than you in an unrealistic faction? This is due to a major limitation in current technology in which technically all levels of a dungeon exist within one plane. Flexi breaks this limitation by rendering different levels as separate fields of spacing, allowing large PvP battles in a four story castle without any oddities or lag.

 

 

The Flexi engine also ensures player on player real time collision detection to further improve the realism of its martial arts combat. Players in team battles will be able to body block enemies to protect weaker allies, and plenty of collision based blow-back skills combined with the amazing sound system in-game will give you a real sense of power behind each swing of your blade and blow of your bo-staff.

 

 

Telling a Tale by Story Not Levels

Beyond the Flexi Engine, it’s the design philosophy of the Snail Games team that really sets Age of Wushu apart. They sought to create a game where a players’ power could be described in words rather than stats. To do this they set up random instances and encounters that one must seek out after completing the basic and intermediate training of a skill in order to reach expert levels. For instance a nearly unnoticeable sweeper in an obscure Buddhist temple may turn out to be the sole teacher of the deepest secrets of the Buddha Palm technique. Or a reclusive mountain lumberjack may know a technique to push your Duoming Sword skills to master levels. Only through exploration and luck will you find these chance encounters, and each player’s story of how they mastered their art may differ from the next. In my mind that’s certainly more interesting then telling people you grinded the level 50 boss 10 times until you got a lucky crafting drop to make the Robes of the Master.

 

 

So what is the secret behind making this system work? Players will have a Emotion System tied to their character based on actions they’ve taken, NPCs they’ve befriended (or angered), schools they’ve joined, and events they’ve participated in. Only if the conditions come together will certain events happen. And sometimes there is more than one path from point A to point B.

 

 

The Connection Between Schools, Guilds and Fame

So in my last article I went over the importance of schools in the game. But in many ways they almost seem to run into the normal function of guilds. So how do the two combine and work with the Emotion System?

 

 

Well for one, each school has its own requirements you must meet before having a chance of being accepted to study there. For instance the Beggar’s Sect won’t just let a wealthy businessman buy his way in unless he’s shown dedication to the art of begging. Likewise the Royal Guards are self-serving and ruthless and won’t be willing to accept you unless you hold a position of power in society or can offer a unique rare art that creates value for your person.

 

 

Now to be a successful guild you need to align yourself with one of the eight schools and take over territory near the school to keep in good standing. This presents a unique challenge as players won’t be able to recruit just anyone to their school. You’ll need people of similar mindsets and playstyles to join together to be a guild strong enough (or rich enough) to own and maintain land in the presence of a school. Of course you won’t be the only faction vying for control of a school so expect fierce competition, including guild territory wars, to be a regular ordeal.

 

 

Players seeking to steal your land from you to remove your position of power can initiate a TW war. These take place on your own guild lands and involve a point system in which the attacks must burn buildings, kidnap maids, and destroy stone beast statues to disgrace the occupying faction into surrendering their flag. Meanwhile the defending guild can carry buckets of water to extinguish fires, kill those kidnapping their maids, and station guards at their symbolic statues to maintain presence.

 

 

Guilds in high standing with a school will want to take their power to the next step by taking over the school itself. Each school is run by a Headmaster and his assistant, 3 Elders, and 3 Deacons. Each week 50 players will gain the right to challenge each other in a deacon or elder war in which they fight in an open battle  lasting 20 minutes. The 3 challengers with the highest number of kills will pass into the next round where they will take on the current 3 residing deacons/elders. The last 3 men standing in this battle will become the new deacons/elders for that week.

 

 

To take over the position of Headmaster however, you will have to go beyond the call of duty and rally your guild to support you in the hostile takeover. First you need a player in your guild to reach the status of Elder. Then they must announce their challenge for the headmaster, and battle the other 2 Elders of the school in a last man standing free for all. The winner of the 3 elders will then face the headmaster in 1 on 1 combat. Following the match, all members of the school may vote democratically on who they wish the new headmaster to be. If the results of 1 on 1 combat and the vote are different, a tie breaker battle is initiated in which the headmaster and challenger may rally any willing to fight for their side to kill the other. The first headmaster to fall in this massive brawl will forever be disgraced, and pass leadership of their school to the rival. Once your guild controls the headmaster position of your school, you control the region itself.

 

 

So now that you are Headmaster, what’s the next step? Why proving your school of Martial Arts is the one true Wuxia of course!  This is where you can challenge one of the other 7 schools to an all out battle for dominance, fame, and perhaps even to steal hidden arts from your enemies. Or maybe just to put them down because their headmaster disrespected you. The reasons are endless but let’s breakdown the format.

 

 

School Wars require confirmation from both headmasters before they are initiated. Though you may look like a weakling if you turn down a challenge, you can do so with no tangible penalty. Once the war is initiated, the headmaster can send our a request for aid to all their school members to defend/attack in the war.  After all school members have confirmed or rejected the request, any remaining openings can be filled by any eligible players looking to hop into battle. Other schools can also choose to join as spectators to witness the battle first hand.

 

 

The School War battlefield is far more complicated than even Guild Territory Wars. Players can compete for buffs, NPC soldier reinforcements, revival points, secret routes, and boss spawns on a large palace map designed to give defending players a slight elevation advantage. Each time a boss is defeating by the attacking players, one of various beneficial buffs/bonuses will be unlocked to help them in their conquest. If they kidnap or kill the headmaster or vice-headmaster during this battle, the player can earn school fame items as a mini-reward. The ultimate goal is for the attacking school to infiltrate the Purple Cloud Palace and kill the defending team’s boss NPC. If they can do this within the time limit, the rewards are great. However if the defending school can maintain their line of defense for the time limit, then they reap the rewards.

 

 

Life Outside Combat

In a game without levels like Age of Wushu, it only makes sense that you need an above average profession system to keep players interested. Age of Wushu answers this call with 17 professions (I believe during my interview they said each character can only learn 1) broken down into 4 categories. This creates a large amount of optional sidequesting to improve your professions while also creating a bustling marketplace where multiple players must come together to create final useful products.

 

Collection:

1. Miner: Miners both gather ore and smelt it into raw metals for use in forging quality equipment and select items.

2. Hunter: Hunters kill animals for pelts, fur, and skins which can be use in the production of equipment or passed to a chef as cooking materials.

3. Farmer: Farmers of course grow crops used in cooking. However you may also learn to raise silkworms to create raw material used by tailors.

4. Woodcutter: These lumberjacks gather wood used for quality weapon crafting.

5. Fisher: Unlike most MMORPGs, fishing is quite an active sport and great benefits are involved for catching rare and elusive fish.

 

Manufacture:

1. Tailor: Tailors meticulously put together cloth to make basic armor. A true master can even imbue bonus attribute points to armor.

2. Chef: Chefs are multi-talented and can create dishes to relieve your hunger and offer status buffs, as well as sharper the edge on your weapons.

3. Poison Maker: This devious profession involves cultivating special herbs and grinding them into weapons to be used as poisons in food or coating on a weapon.

4. Craftsman: Craftsmen are to accessories what tailors are for armor. With increased skill they too can imbue extra bonus attributes.

5. Blacksmith: Forgers of weapons and collection tools, true professionals can even reinforce equipment and add extra attribute points.

6. Herbalist: For fast acting benefits, herbalists are the profession to seek. They offer pills to dispel disease or strength your health.

 

Culture:

1. Musician: Musicians can aid their allies in battle by lifting their spirits, or cultivate the forbidden techniques of the Scholars to deal hard to cure internal damage to their foes.

2. Chessman: Masters of tactical combat, chessman can properly organize your battle formations and bolster your team with their leadership skills.

3. Scholar: Masters of the mind, they can produce beautiful and inspiring calligraphy works as well as help fellow travels decrease the cultivation time required to master internal skills.

4. Painter: Masters of the ancient art, painters are capable of interpreting obscure and advanced manuals.

 

Marketplace:

1. Diviner: These master fortune tellers can increase the conversion rate between experience and cultivation by revealing important future events to a client. They also can acquire bonus treasure chests that hold mysterious items.

2. Beggar: Beggars are a common site in the marketplace. Some say it’s good luck to give them money, but if you want something more tangible they can sell you treasure chests or test your fortune.

 

 

Those seeking to make it big in their chosen field can even bid for ownership of shops in town. Shop owners can place items for sale that will be visible to anyone passing by in town. You can even hire an NPC to sell items while you go out adventuring and cultivating your arts. It’s worth noting that your skills and talents can even be cultivated while offline depending on where you log-out, so choose carefully to maximize the rate of growth of your character. Also be sure to stick with friends as your character is vulnerable to kidnappings and worse while you are offline!

 

 

With so many arts to follow, schools to run, and guild land to build up and manage, there is enough semi-sandbox elements to keep you busy for a while. But rest assured a series of epic storyline quests exists for those seeking a more narrated tale with tangible rewards. All in all Age of Wushu is shaping up to be a game for the ages and I can’t wait to sink my teeth into the full title at launch!

WoW Wednesday: Talentless in Pandaria

WoW Wednesday: Talentless in Pandaria

By Meredith Watson, OnRPG WoW Specialist

 

 

There are many changes coming with Mists of Pandaria. Blizzard is giving its World of Warcraft players new zones, a new race, a new class, and more raid and dungeons, but one of the most significant is the revamped talent changes.  It isn’t so much that they are revamping the talents as doing away with them completely and instead we are left with a handful of perks.

 

 

Blizzard has always been full of noble intentions when it comes to giving their players want they want or trying to improve the game; however, they admit themselves they fell short with the 41 talent revamp.  Their goal has always been customization. What they hope to achieve with this talent revamp is to give the player more customization and putting the choices in the player’s hands. Often times, they hope, those choices will be difficult yet interesting to make. Blizzard wants the player to make apples to apples decisions about their character’s talent choices.  This new approach is a lofty ambition by any stretch. If history, where Blizzard and the World of Warcraft are concerned, has taught us anything it is that Blizzard struggles with getting the balance right and its players’ desires.   Already players are taking sides being for or against the changes. There are plenty of forum posts about this topic spread over many sites. This undoubtedly will continue to escalate once the Mists of Pandaria talent changes go live which will likely be sometime shortly after Mists of Pandaria gets a release date.

 

 

The players that are for this change are excited about having all the class abilities while being able to access abilities from other specs.  For example, all rogues can have shadowstep not just subtlety rogues or any spec of druid can have Force of Nature. So called useless talents have been removed and the idea of changing talents on the fly is very appealing for those that are fans of the new talent trees.  It does seem to be that the pro change players are in the minority.

 

 

At the other end of the spectrum are those players that are adamant that these changes are destroying their classes and encouraging cookie cutter builds even more so than previous expansions.  There is concern that players are losing any individuality when it comes to their character’s builds. There is also concern over pigeonholing due to some talent tiers seemingly being PvP versus PvE. The biggest argument continues to be that this talent revamp is a continuation of the dumbing down of the World of Warcraft.

 

 

“The new “talent” system is a joke. It has effectively made every toon of a specific class a carbon copy of each other. The “choices” you get to make levelling up aren’t really all that great anyway and they really don’t have an impact on how the character plays. My assassin rogue is now identical to every other assassin rogue in game except for the six meh choices in the “talent” tree.”- Recoan, 85 undead rogue




What we need to do is look at the same class in both expansions to illustrate the differences with regard to talents and spells. As of Cataclysm, the mage, like all classes, gets a new spell every two levels.  In MoP beta new spells come anywhere between two and four levels with a talent point every 15 levels.  The Cataclysm mage before level ten has six spells learned with those six being integral to the mage rotation for levelling (or should be if you are playing a mage correctly). So by level ten the Cataclysm mage player has essentially learned the basics of the class and everything else is added on top of the fundamentals.  The Mists of Pandaria beta mage starts with one spell and that is frostfire.  By level ten the mage has acquired four other spells: frost nova, counterspell , fire blast and blink.  Level ten sees the Mists of Pandaria beta mage has learned to spam frostfire and hopefully use frost nova and blink to get away.  Sound like fun?

 

 

Things improve slightly at 85 assuming the player has the patience to get there with the minimal motivation that is now being offered in Mists of Pandaria.  Our arcane mage has a couple of nifty frost spells that she wouldn’t have had access to in Cataclysm but that isn’t the only change.  How has the lack of real talents versus the new perks affected our level 85 arcane mage? It isn’t pretty.  If we take our two mages and strip them of all of their gear but keeping their talents (for the Cataclysm mage this means a standard arcane spec with a couple points  in frost and a couple points in fire) what we see is surprising.  Base crit is significantly reduced in Mists of Pandaria while mana and combat regeneration are significantly higher as well as mastery.  Is that important in the grander scheme of things?  Only time will tell. At any rate, the changes in our classes will be significant.

 

 

 

There are those that love nothing more than number crunching their talents just as there are those who prefer the standard cookie cutter builds (created by the number crunchers no doubt) and with that in mind it is concerning that Blizzard is taking away that choice as to how a character is built.  It is clear to see what Blizzard is trying to do but at this point it doesn’t seem as if it will be the solution they are hoping for. The talent revamp feels nothing like freedom, customization and making choices. It is uninspired at best and a disappointment.  Is it dumbing down the World of Warcraft? In a word, yes.  There is no real thought involved when deciding what talents to choose. Even if the player did choose badly it is easily corrected much like Blizzard corrected Wrath of the Lich King mistakes with Cataclysm and surely how they will fix the mistake that is the talent revamp of Mists of Pandaria with a future expansion.  No harm, no foul right Blizzard?

TERA Launches Free Trial Program

TERA Launches Free Trial Program

 

 

En Masse Entertainment, a player-driven publisher focused on delivering fun and innovative online games, celebrates the launch success of its award-winning action MMO, TERA™, by offering a free seven-day trial to new players. TERA sets a new standard for MMOs by delivering true action combat for players who want a more exciting, skill-based alternative to conventional online RPGs. Newly revealed game data shows that players are averaging more than four hours of play on a daily basis. Their enthusiasm makes this the perfect time to expand the game’s audience with a downloadable trial for new players to sample the game with no financial commitment.

 

 

“We are thrilled that the unique experience of TERA’s true action MMO gameplay is resonating so strongly with our players,” said Chris Lee, vice president of publishing at En Masse Entertainment. “Now we want to open up to new players curious about the game with a free one-week TERA trial, as we’re confident if you play, you will stay.”

 

 

Some facts and figures from the first weeks of play since TERA’s launch:

 

Players have killed nearly 22 million (21,986,108 to be exact) of the game’s signature BAMs (big-ass monsters).

 

TERA players have traveled a total distance of more than 227,328,053 miles in the game. That’s far enough to walk to Mars.

 

Players stick around to savor their action experience, averaging nearly 4.5 hours daily per player. That’s more time than the average American spends watching TV each day.

 

 

The recipient of multiple industry honors and accolades, including “Best PC Game” and “Best MMO,” TERA is a new breed of online game. For the first time, players can get the best of both worlds: the depth of a traditional MMO combined with the visceral gratification of an action game. In TERA, players actively aim, dodge, and block, as the game’s real-time combat system takes into account player skill and position as well as stats. After creating a character, players will join in an alliance to save the world from ravaging armies who threaten to destroy the very gods who hold the world together. TERA also introduces a revolutionary political system in which players wield power in their province based on their in-game political prowess or player-versus-player combat skill.

 

 

The TERA trial is good for seven calendar days from the time a player enters the trial code. Players can level up to eight characters to level 23 on one server during the trial. There are some additional restrictions—trial players cannot vote in TERA elections, for instance—but for the most part, players can enjoy the full benefits of the game during their week of free play. All players need to join the world of TERA is an En Masse account. Then they can enter the code “TERATRIAL” to download and play TERA.

 

 

Love TERA? Be sure to check out our Game Profile to follow our weekly column “For the Federation” that follows a Popori Lancer whose fate is tied to a much larger battle than he ever imagined. Season 2 premiers next week so don’t miss it!