Yearly Archives: 2008

Lord of the Rings Online Review

Lord of the Rings Online

Lord of the Rings Online is a basic MMORPG, just in a brand new super shiny wrapping with a little pink bow tied on top for good measure. The developers of this particular game have obviously chosen the “How about we make this like every other MMORPG on the market” approach and in doing so have thrown nearly every single theme that echoes throughout the Lord of the Rings books and movies out of the window (flattening a passing hobbit who was just about to take a bite into his well deserved cheese sandwich). So is LOTRO worth your money? Or more importantly, is it worth the time it will take away from being with the ones you love?

Let us not beat around the bush here, Lord of the Rings Online is presented to you, the avid gamer, with beautiful graphics and a wonderful, and utterly breath taking, music score. The attention to detail, whilst you sit in your chair and neglect your partner for a couple of hours, in the huge world of Lord of the Rings will make you drop your jaw in awe. Be it the realistic sky or the huge, over-towering hills there is something in this game that will surprise you and make you think “Holy cow! Real life does not even look this good!” The music that accompanies you on your quest to defeat the demons that haunt Middle Earth is excellent, giving you appropriate tunes for each area whilst at the same time providing you with some decent voice acting to listen to. If I had to complain about one thing, which I do (it is in my contract, one review, one complaint), it would be that despite the world looking as good as it does you do get a general feeling that the new Middle Earth lacks charm, as there is no real sense of doomsday among the inhabitants and the world seems pretty calm and kind of boring. You will not get the feeling that a huge war is brewing and the general feel of desperation and impending doom that is apparent in the books and indeed the movies is lacking. LOTRO all in all lacks the atmospheres that the movies and books dispense making the game seem almost soulless.

The gameplay does nothing to improve the general lack of heart in the game. Whilst the mechanics are not bad, they are just the same old basic gameplay. Click on an enemy, stab him to bits using a vast variety of skills with weird names, and then loot the foe’s dead corpse (it was his fault for being stupid enough to cross your path in the first place) and repeat. Although I am happy to celebrate that the game does not make you grind as much as other MMORPGs, hurrah! Rejoice! Lord of the Rings Online does have some funky ideas in it though, such as the ability to wield titles which make your character look extra awesome when you are saving a friend from a bombardment of spiders, and with some cool character customisation options, you can well and truly make your character as wacky as you want.

To accompany the “average but that is okay” gameplay is a storyline that definitely impresses. The storyline in LOTRO is most certainly its strongest feature as the game makes new characters, uses old ones and creates whole new situations and story arcs to add to the existing power house that is the Lord of the Rings story. For players who are not as all knowing about the storyline as they should be, they may find that the storyline (whilst good) is not as engrossing as one would have hoped, yet whether or not you are an devoted fan of the series, you’d be hard pressed to find a flaw in the storyline.

As you can no doubt see, this game is not too bad and perhaps even looks enjoyable, however sometimes this is definitely not the case, as LOTRO suffers from a poor design which erodes the game at its core. Lord of the Rings Online is more of a free roaming MMORPG. You will not get told where to go, and you seem pretty much free to explore wherever you want in the Lord of the Rings universe. However, you are not. The game keeps you from exploring too much by putting high level monsters in the way of your exploration. So you are allowed to go wherever you want to, but you cannot, and you will not know where to go in the game to get further through it, as the instructions for quests are more than unhelpful, they are downright crazy. You will end up in a situation where you will become stuck, not really knowing where to go, or what to do. Whilst this sense of confusion and aggravation is not experienced all the time while playing LOTRO, you will experience it a lot more than the simple once, or twice.

Lord of the Rings Online is an all around average game, but the game lacks charm and is definitely stuck with a design flaw which has existed from the beginning of the game’s development. There are better pay to play games (and even a few free MMORPGs) than this, however if you feel the need to explore the Middle Earth world, then by all means take a step in. Be warned though, at some point you will take one giant step back after you realise just what is wrong with this game.

By Joshua Temblett

Voyage Century: Player-Oriented Design

Automation may not be good for the economy, or all those factory jobs lost to robots, but it sure can make life simpler in game. As you probably know, the auto-track function in Colony Age (http://vc.igg.com/) has brought players some much needed convenience. However it’s just the tip of the iceberg. Today the Voyage Century team is going to talk to you about 2 more practical functions, auto-loot and auto-recovery.
With the auto-loot and auto-recovery functions, you will save a lot of time and energy, because you actually don’t need to click on everything and worry about the status of your character. Just enjoy questing, sailing or PvP.

Auto-Loot
When you open the skill bar, you will find auto-loot function contains 2 modes – “safety” and “any”. In safety mode, your endurance and load are under control so that your gear will not be destroyed.

Auto-Recovery
This is actually a very useful feature in Voyage Century. Players can set “HP”, “Quick Restore-HP”, “SP”, “Special Status”, and “Ship Durability”, etc. on the recovery interface to make it fit your playing style.

With these 2 powerful functions, you can feel free to sleep when your computer is doing the heavy lifting for you.

We want to remind you that all these functions are free! In addition, we will release some new purchasing services in our Item Mall, and make the in-game chat mode more human-oriented in the not so distant future .  

For more details, please click here http://vc.igg.com/getting/index.php?ac=10&aid=1152.

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Voyage Century (http://vc.igg.com/), a 3D MMORPG from IGG (www.igg.com), prides itself on its real world geography, historical design, and eye-catching graphics, and continues to impress its extraordinarily loyal players and fans.

Angels Online: New version Preview-The Lost Atlantis

The Angels Online (http://ao.igg.com) team is very happy to announce that the latest edition “The Lost Atlantis” is in process and will be available for players soon. Today, the AO team has been kind enough to give us a brief introduction to the new edition.

In the coming new edition, the highest character level will be level 100. Meanwhile, a series of systems, quests and maps will be available for players as well.

New System: Cards Collection
1. Players can exchange their cards for rewards from officials. Meanwhile, they can enjoy the final game designs.
2. There are various cards including monster cards, special monster cards, character cards, scene cards, equipment cards, item cards and so on.
3. After they collect a volume of cards, players can exchange the volume for rewards.

New Instance:
Huge cracked ships and heaps of raw and bloody bones are scattered everywhere creating a ghastly underwater graveyard. In addition, the dead voyagers’ souls haunt the area in misery.

New Maps:
15 new scenes including coast scenes, shallow waters scenes and deepwater scenes are available for players.

For more information about this event visit:
http://ao.igg.com/news/news.php?aid=1263

Tales of Pirates: Gold Coins Lottery

In order to celebrate the coming of the Beijing Olympic Games and to thank their players for their continued support, the Tales of Pirates (http://top.igg.com) team will be holding a Gold Coins Lottery event to offer all players the chance to win a valuable Golden Olympic Coin.

During the Beijing Olympic Games, the TOP team will choose one lucky player every two days who has bought item mall points and then present them with an exclusive limited edition Golden Olympic Coin. There are only 8 Coins to be given away.

Tales of Pirates (http://top.igg.com/), a 3D MMORPG from IGG (http://www.igg.com), is based on cute characters, eye-catching graphics and captivating storylines. It has quickly created a huge loyal following for itself since its debut more than a year ago.

For more information about this event can visit: http://top.igg.com.

9Dragons Clan Video: League of Beggars

One of the White Clans is League of Beggars. Through accepting charity, helping those who face hardship, and giving noble purpose to those who find themselves lost or empty, the disciples of The League, although poor and often pitied, display all the noble characteristics of true heroes. They are the clan with the closest relationship to the common people.

9Dragons Clan Video: Sacred Flower

The Sacred Flower Clan was founded by a legendary female warrior, The Mistress of Chaos, when she was denied entrance to the male-dominated Shaolin Temple. These women know they are not equally matched with men as far as brute strength is concerned, and so Sacred Flower’s Kung Fu techniques are based on seduction, speed and illusion, reinforced with all manner of poisons and venoms.

9Dragons Clan Video: Brotherhood of Thieves

One of the clans from 9 Dragons is the Brotherhood of Thieves! The clan is an organization of thieves, robbers and brigands unified by a noble purpose: To overthrow corrupt officials and redistribute their wealth to the defenseless poor. Noble indeed, but their methodology has resulted in them being labeled a Black Clan in the eyes of Shaolin and Wu-Tang, and as outlaws wanted dead or alive by the government.

Lands of Hope Adds Stargazer

The Forlorn Games team is pleased to announce that a new playable class the "Stargazer" will be added on Monday 11th August 2008, this new class can only be access by players who reach level 1000 and unlock its power!

The Stargazer and its later evolutions of Stardreamer, Starchaser and Star Catcher are all hybrid classes with both Melee and Magic abilities, differing from other classes when you make your Stargazer you can bind your character to a constellation which unlocks new abilities for your character and provides uniqueness between players of the same class.

As you evolve at later levels you can choose additional constellations to gain yet more powers and abilities, each tier presents you with six new choices.

As well as the ability to bind to a constellation your class depends on gathering special meteorites that fall from the sky randomly throughout the day as these can be used to craft your Celestial dagger, staff or sword weapons which provide even more offensive power.

Other News
-Myzan Land Rush – August 9th 2008 we will be holding an auction the highest bidder will win a truly unique prize, they will get a customized area in an existing realm, a special NPC town and an NPC dungeon as well as NPCs and special quests. We will liaise with the winner to come up with a truly amazing addition to the game crafted from the winner’s imagination by the hand of the Developers.

About Lands of Hope
Lands of Hope, is a persistent browser based online role playing game, dwarfing most other games in this genre by its size and playability.

Set in the fictional land of Myzan, you can choose to play LoH as one of 4 Allegiances (Neutral, Exile, Society and Reaper), the story is still in its infancy but revolves around the age old rivalry between the Exiles and Society and the growing power of the undead allegiance known as the Reapers.

As you journey around the 12 massive realms that make up Myzan you will encounter hundreds of monsters, thousands of quests and gain new powers.

Lands of Hope features a very comprehensive interface system that allows you to access game features through menus, there are hundreds of menus and over 800 screens that make up the game.

There are few browser based games like LoH and its staff is dedicated to ensuring that it stays like it!

Visit http://www.forlornonline.com for more information and to signup/play.

9Dragons PVP Event

This is not your ordinary PvP. This is about territory, control and hard cash. That’s right, the winners own the territory and they get a tax on all transactions in their territory, so it’s worth more than pride to win in Storm vs. Storm.
So gather your hero bands and leagues and get ready to fight for pride and control. This is going to be fun… and profitable! Oh, and by the way, winners get some great treasure items, too.
Don’ miss out!