Monthly Archives: July 2007

Trickster Review

Trickster Online is a free to play MMORPG from Ntreev USA (http://www.tricksteronline.com/). It can best be described as a 2d game done with a very anime-like style. To be very honest it is very, very unique and not like any other MMO on the market. The entire premise of the game is that the incredibly wealthy founder of a game company has passed away and left his fortune to all who are willing to participate in his final game, which is called “Trickster”. You travel out to a desert island to stake your claim for part of the fortune by playing this game.

When looking at the graphics of the game, it is easy to dismiss it since it is only two dimensional. I found that despite the limitations, the entire game was refreshing. So many companies are pushing out games using outdated 3d technology and they look terrible. Trickster looks and feels much like an anime series straight from Japan. While it may not win any awards for being the most cutting-edge game on the market today, there is no complaints about their choice of palate.

The sound inside the game was decent, especially since it is a free to play game. If I was a game developer making free to play games and read that someone had issues with the sound, well I would want to pop them right in the mouth. Considering the technical limitations on the game as the minimum requirements are extremely low, they did a good job. The music fits the feel of the game; while the sounds (especially the drills) help you better experience the action going on around you.

What hooked me about the game was how it plays. Sure there is combat for those who want to go out and smack stuff in the head, but you can avoid that (or at least take a break to participate in) their unique Drill system. To sum it up as briefly as possible there are numerous amounts of drills that can be found, created, or bought (both from NPCs and the cash shop) and used to make holes in the ground in search of items. This is not a passive process either. You have to keep the drill meter within a certain section depending on the drill to be successful. Not only will you walk away with an item or money, but you will also get experience which will help you get levels just the same as combat will.

The community was just kind of average. Most players were afk in town with their personal shops open. The few actual people I met did save my skin a few times when I was out drilling though. This pretty typical of most MMORPGs that are free to play and are not a negative reflection on the game itself, just those who frequently play them.
Overall, Trickster is a solid title. They are continually running events to try and keep things fresh and interesting. Patches come out often enough with new things for players to try out. If you are looking for something more than a little bit different than you are used to I would recommend giving it a spin.

Written by Brian Perry Jr.

ONRPG Q&A: GodsWar Online

Questions by Brian Perry Jr.
Answered by David Lin – Lead Programmer

Onrpg: How has the development of GodsWar progressed?
David Lin: GodsWar is moving into the first phase of alpha testing in which the primary systems have been finished. The other systems will be improved in following phases after the testing.

Onrpg: Have there been any unexpected difficulties that have come up while programming the game?
David Lin: Well programming is moving forward smoothly because fortunately we have an experienced programming team. Of course bugs are unavoidable, especially in the character clothes-transfer systems, some special effects and our server capability. We spend considerable time and efforts to work out these issues as they arise.

Onrpg: Is it difficult to convert the game from being in Chinese to English, in terms of the code?
David Lin: Not yet. It was in the preliminary stages that we thought of the conversion in language code. This issue was settled by creating different language packages.

Onrpg: Are there things you wanted to do for GodsWar and cannot, or things that you found you could do that you did not think were possible?
David Lin: Yes, we expected to use Flash Effects which could make the visuals gorgeous but, due to the hardware aspects and other related requirements we had to give up on this idea. However, the results of our character’s appearance and the special effects have been out of our expectations. Thanks to the self-reliant engines supporting the visual effects and memorizer requirements, the results have been beyond anything we could expect.

Onrpg: How did you become Lead Programmer for this title?
David Lin: Since the gaming industry is quite new in China, there isn’t any path for professionals to follow while in school. Like most youth, I was full of passion for gaming. I started my career in the gaming industry after I graduated from the computer institute. After six years of developing my skills in this industry, I have accumulated related experience and have ambitions to create good games for all gamers. It could be a coincidence for me to join IGG, but to some degree it is also a necessity because my personal goal conforms to IGG’s. I believe this is the perfect platform to exert my talents fully, so I joined IGG in 2006 and commenced to create GodsWar Online from last year.

Onrpg: What sorts of schooling would you recommend for those who want to become programmers for games?
David Lin: I am happy to see that more and more young people take game programming as their career and nowadays more and more institutions are paying attention to the booming demand for this sort of education. However, in the near future game programming will have more demanding requirements of professional programmers. More knowledge for game technology and symbolic logic must be needed. So I think math is not a bad choice for people who want to become a programmer for games.

Onrpg: Would you even recommend people looking into becoming programmers? It seems that often the coders are unappreciated and take the blame for everything being wrong with a game.
David Lin: It is very important for every one of us to think hard about what progress you want from your future career path, no matter where it may lead. Your decision will have an impact on your occupation planning. Compared with game designers and art designers, what the coders do is easy to be ignored and misunderstood when things go wrong in games. However, the feeling of achievement is great for coders when working out certain difficulties in game programming, which game designers and art designers and other people can never experience.

Onrpg: Have you worked on any other games before?
David Lin: I have participated in some game programming for commercial games. Among them were some that failed but for me they were very precious experiences, especially for the creation of GodsWar. I believe success lies in the accumulation of efforts rather than instantaneous results.

Onrpg: What is your favorite MMORPG?
David Lin: Personally, among the MMORPGs I really like WOW from Blizzard. From the view of a developer, the excellence in WOW production deserves every honor bestowed upon it and it will always be a great example of design excellence. I hope I can learn from other games to improve our own games. Through learning we can perfect our skills, experience and games day by day.

AoA weapon system

Age of Armor—Weapon System

There are various kinds of weapons in Age of Armor, with different functions and usages. The weapon is the most important way in a fight; it can be divided into three general categories, 10 kinds of types and 6 grades. There are 6 grades in each rank with each grade in a different color, including gray, white, green, blue, purple and orange. Deeper color means more advanced it is.

The three categories are melee weapons, firing weapons and missiles.

Melee weapon, the physical collision, brought by weapons for fighting and the targeted objects during fighting, proves to be a source of damage against armoring at the bottom by working its way through the cover of energy. This function, not something every armor comes with, makes fighting weapons outstanding a field. It is beyond doubt that this kind of way of attacking is more for Enhanced Human, including Laser Falchion and Laser Sword.
Firing weapons, it is a traditional but effective way to use firing weapons to shoot enemies form faraway. The attack from faraway proves to be a big advantage, with the damage brought by this way of attack compromised by the cover of energy. All of the races are able to use any kinds of shooting weapons very well. Even Enhanced Humans have shooting weapons as supplements. The weapons for firing include bullet weapons, laser weapons, shrapnel weapons, electromagnetism, particle weapon and so on.
Missiles, the succeeding rate of either melee weapons or firing weapons depends more on the driver’s skill and armor’s capacities in radar. This kind of weapon comes with the ability to automatically search for targets to make sure 100% of a succeeding rate. The best thing about this kind of weapon is its consistence in damaging the target.
Pick the greatest one of your weapon and go to the battle with your friends.
The second closed beta will start on August 15th.
Official Website: www.aoaus.com

GodsWar Online Feathers-Faction System Preview

Faction war plays an important role in GodWars Online (http://gw.igg.com). Every player of the two poleis – Sparta and Athens in GodsWar Online wants to be the master of Greece.

Faction system introduction:

Players of different poleis will belong to different factions. Players have to choose one of the two factions when creating the characters and join the faction battle (taking the city, PK). What’s more, you will benefit a lot after joining a faction, regardless of which faction you are in, the goal of faction is the same:

Players in different factions can PK. GodsWar Online has a large number of Greek cities; players can participate in the battle between poleis for the city, or control the city through investment or war. Controlling a city will give the relevant player a lot of extra privileges.

Players will gain reputation by contributing to your poleis and with which you will obtain corresponding titles. Furthermore, player can gain additional awards from high title. In order to increase the fun of faction system, the game will give different quest for different factions. Players can upgrade their reputation in the way of killing opponents and completing quests.

In the faction of GodsWar, you may experience PK and the duel; or enjoy the battle among thousands of parties. GodsWar Online is coming soon, let’s wait and see.

Tales of Pirates: Patch Notes

Notes for the latest patch of ToP (http://top.igg.com) have been released and are now available for viewing.
1. The 2nd Region and Two New Servers
Mystic Ocean’s two new servers, Aegean Sea and Black Sea, have been officially launched for Tales of Pirates. Currently, there are two regions and 10 servers in total.
2. New Spotlight: Hexathlon
The newly designed program Hexathlon has been added to the game during this update.
Hexathlon is a specifically designed activity for pirates of different levels who would like to take a shortcut to level up.

For more details, please visit the official site: http://top.igg.com/index.php

The end is up to you

Age of Armor is a war history contains documentary, video and kinetic movie which is different from other MMORPG; it is a special game that the end is up to the players. Whole game is mainly about “Robot” and “High-technology War” and theme is showing by both of the two parts. The dominant theme is to experience the foreseeable future modern war; and the recessive theme is to find the meaning of people to survive under the conflict between civilized world and technology development.
Age of Armor creates the latest in-game conception that “World can be destroyed” which means the in-game world can be smashed by bloc war between players but not in charge of game company; after the world be destroyed, all the game data of players will be saved, and players will go to another new server to start their new life. Winners will get Medal of Honor while lose party players can revenge in the new world. AoA successfully quotes the theory of “Parallel World” to create specific shuttle between each server and provide a corps system to supply an efficient command place.

There are various fight styles from thousands of players’ decisive war to player VS player; from corps war to bloc war. What’s more, whether the world is live or dead is up to the result of the war between corps or blocs. That is to say, this game is produced for the guilds!
Suppose you are fighting with your enemy under the expansive sky; hundreds of armors are your comrade-in-arms; and every armor presents a real player.
Hurry up! Let’s run to the dark night with our armor; the Milky Way is our glory battle; the enemy’s wreckage is the scar of the universe; the swords and weapons of victims are eternal!
Second Closed Beta of AoA will start on August 15th!
Official Website of Snail Game: www.aoaus.com
Gewben

Siege Affair Guild vs Guild

Anime MMORPG, MixMaster Online has announced the official launch of its Siege Affair (Guild v Guild battle). It will be launched on 11th August ‘07. Siege Affair is the most popular weekly event in all other MixMaster versions and is already attracting many interests from 40,000 current users.

The concept of the Siege Affair is to decide the best MixMaster in the World, and users will be fighting for the Ultimate Monster, Parapoong and the ownership of either Magirita Castle or Mekrita Castle. Magirita Castle will be fought for on every Sat 7pm (GMT+10hr) and Mekrita will be fought for on every Sun 11am (GMT+10hr).

As a celebration of the launch of Siege Affair, SeedC Pacific has organised several events which shall encourage all MixMasters to put more extra work into the Siege Affair.

  1. Guild Recruitment initiative

Since Siege Affair is a Guild War, users must be in a Guild to join the event. Guilds with the most number of recruits from until 9th August will receive many incredible prizes such as, not yet implemented lvl 80 weapon, not yet implemented paid item armour, hair dye for all members. Everyone who joins a Guild is a winner as money is given to everyone for consolation prize.

  1. Premium Zone Excursion Event

All MixMasters are invited to the Premium Zone, which is usually a paid entrance zone, for free. MixMasters are encouraged to level up their character as Premium Zone offers 200% EXP, 200% Money and up to 300% Monster Drop rate.

There will be many more small initiatives such as Guild Creation fee has been lowered from 2.5million GP to 1million GP, and Siege Affair entrance fee and requirements have also been lowered.

SeedC Pacific have also worked in conjunction with Game Community Site MMOsite.com, to create a Cup called MMOsite Cup. The inaugural winner of Siege Affair will be crowned as the MMOsite Cup winner, and will have an exclusive interview with MMOsite. MMOsite Cup is planned to be fought for every 6months or so. MMOsite has also contributed to this, as they have created events of their own, such as the Siege Affair Winner Guess Comp, Screen Shot competition as well as creating an official MixMaster Siege Affair forum.

“We have tried to maximised the interest of the Siege Affair by organising so many events. We hope our efforts will directly reflect on our users’ enjoyment level” says Takuya Matsunaga, C.O.O of SeedC Pacific. “Siege Affair is the pinnacle of MixMaster, you must join Siege Affair to enjoy MixMaster to its full potential, and we hope all of our users will join the event.”

Tales of Pirates: Weekend Double XP Event

IGG is going to hold Double Exp event and Item Mall Overall Special Offer to welcome the coming new version of Tales of Pirates (http://top.igg.com).

Double Exp event
The Double Exp event will be held for two weekends from 0:00 EST July 28th – 0:00 EST July 30th & 0:00 EST Aug 4th – 0:00 EST Aug 6th for all servers.

Item Mall Overall Special Offer
All items available in our item mall are at 20-50 percent discount now until ET (GMT-4) 6:00 AM August 20.

For more about the events and new version, please visit ToP official site: http://top.igg.com