Yearly Archives: 2009

Aeria: have fun or get refunded

For the month of April, Aeria Games guarantees that gamers will have fun playing any of their premier titles, or they will receive a refund of their Aeria Points.

Throughout April players can purchase Aeria Points which they may then spend in the Item Malls of any of their titles. Purchasable items include costumes, custom pets and consumables which will increase the amount of experience gained while leveling. In the month of April if players do not have the most fun they possibly can, Aeria Games will give that player up to a 5,000 Aeria Point refund.

Players must do the following to obtain their refund:

* All AP purchases between April 1st and April 30th up to 5000AP will be eligible for a refund.

When filling out the contact form the subject must be “Fun Month Rebate” and the category must also be “Fun Month Rebate.”

The rebate request must be made between May 1st and May 10th.

The refund is only for item mall purchases made with Aeria Points.
Purchases made with Bonus Aeria Points are not eligible to be refunded.

Maximum refund amount is 5000AP.

This is just another example of Aeria Games commitment to offering the highest quality Free-to-Play MMOs along with the best gaming experience a player can possibly have.

Galaxy Online: Development Direction

What types of hero will you be? This is probably one of the first questions players will answer when playing most of MMORPGs. However, Galaxy Online does not provide players class options. At the beginning, most players incline to develop their galaxies comprehensively, ending up constructing almost all available types of buildings. The problem is whether you can balance your resource yield and consumption. The universe is enormous, but players are never alone. Joining corps and having a specific role will take you and your fraction closer to the victory. Here Galaxy Online experts hint you the possible directions of career development.


Farmers

“Farmers” only build industrial infrastructures. They work hard to produce resources (alum, gas and people). Usually 80% or more of the resources they exploit are transported to “Military Engineers”.

Military Engineers
“Military Engineers” are dedicated to studying science and warship construction. They must substantially produce high science points to support hull and module’s study. Also they excel at warship design, spending time on researching the best warship they can form from the available hulls and modules. The battleships they build are delivered to “Soldiers”.


Soldiers

“Soldiers” are masters of warships, capable of arranging fleets to the most fearsome array. They recruit and train Spell and Super commanders. Their superior strategic abilities will cause enemies the worst destruction while protecting their allies from tremendous attack.

Stay in the same vicinity, use communication, coordinate attacks and ability use, and have a strategy. Good teamwork is probably the most important factor for success. It takes time and practice to develop, but it’s worth working on.

Stargate Worlds in doubt?

Gateworld.net just published an interview with Stargate Executive Producer, Brad Wright, and asked him about the state of Stargate Worlds MMO. The answer seems to be quite pessimistic about it:

“We don’t know,” Wright told GateWorld, regarding the future of Stargate Worlds. “It’s a shame. If it doesn’t happen – and, let’s be honest, it should be happening now if it was happening. It’s a shame. It’s a terrible shame.

“They had an opportunity and they got our support, and they obviously had significant funding, and it didn’t happen. It’s kind of a drag for the fans and the time that we invested – what little of it there really was, in comparison to what they did – was still a shame that it was wasted, because it should have happened.”

Will there ever be a Stargate MMO? Time will tell.

(source: Gateworld.net)

The Warlords: Lucky Draw Event

The close-beta phase of the Warlords is scheduled to end on April 24th. After the close-beta test, players can preserve their characters and their accounts.

To revive the militarism tradition of the Manchu, the Qing Court will grant a special honor to those brave warriors of the empire. On April 21st, 5 lucky adventurers will be randomly drawn out from those above level 70, and be rewarded a one-week Medallion respectively.

There still are 2 weeks left for you to practice your Kungfu skills. Hurry up. Try your best to win the emperor’s interest.

Luminary: Rise of the GoonZu trailer

Luminary: Rise of the GoonZu is a free-to-play MMORPG that incorporates real-world politics and economics. Players are citizens of the Luminary world who not only battle monsters, but engage in the production of new goods, trade commodities, stocks, real estate, and even hire NPCs. Additionally, a player can become the pinnacle of success, the “GoonZu”, by being elected by his gaming peers.

Khan Wars Review: Super Strategic

By Rick Charbs (Jammart), Onrpg writer

Overview

Khan Wars is a browser based strategy game developed by XS Software. Recently upgraded to Khan Wars 2.0, many updates have been added to the game, as well as a general revamp of the overall gameplay (which can all be viewed in the help section on their website). Heavily based on medieval history with elements of fantasy, this MMO attracts many. It introduces the Middle Ages of Europe setting, where you may choose from one of nine nations to build up in order to lead them to victory. The nine nations are as follows: the Bulgarians, the Franks, the Germans, the Goths, the Byzantine, the Brittan, the Arabs, the Lithuanians, and the Russians. Each nation has its own infantry, buildings, and offer different gameplay experiences to a certain extent. The variety is a huge plus for a strategy game with so many players playing simultaneously (you’ll end up having to surpass thousands if you dedicate yourself to this game!).

You begin playing the game by creating a hero (registering) and then choosing a race from one of the nine nations. You are then transported to your kingdom, and you are prompted to create a few buildings to aid you in collecting resources. You will have to wait a while for your building queue to finish until you are able to build more things, this also applies to combat. This tactical gameplay is basically the jist of the game, though you will always bump in to larger and more complex challenges the more you play.

The hero aspect of the game allows you to customize your avatar and build up his skills with skill points you receive based on your experience in game. This allows you to build up an even stronger army and defeat your opponents much more easily, but beware of their own hero!

Khan Wars is also a comprehensive social unit. With a friends list, many statistics, guilds, and more, this strategy game really relies on player cooperation. These features will also often relieve you of boredom whilst waiting for your in game quests to end (its like one huge chat room)!

Graphics and Sound

With a strictly 2D atmosphere, I have to admit Khan Wars did a great job. The concept art is very appropriate, and the user interface is very simple and very smoothly done. There are no sounds as far as I’ve experienced, though, but that can easily be replaced by your own media library any day.

Personal Recommendation

Firstly, if you do not enjoy strategy/tactical games, do not even think of playing this game—it will bore you silly. However, if you are somewhat interested in this type of MMO, it is a great one to try. The concept is simple with loads of hours of gameplay, and the game was done right. There are hundreds of new players every day, so be sure to join forces with others to spice things up! One major downfall I discovered was their VIP status, though, as you have to pay to have a certain advantage over others. On the other hand, they did not overdo it and everyone is given VIP status for their first few days in the game to try it out. Nonetheless, even if strategy games highly bore me, I was really impressed with this browser based game. Happy Gaming!

Pros

– Browser based

– Simple and entertaining

– Great concept art and user interface

Cons

– Vip status

– Not much content

World of Cars

The World of Cars Online is a 3D online world based on the hit movie, CARS. Get ready for an amazing ride into this wacky world of fun and adventure. The only difference is – YOU are the Car! Design your car, become a racing legend, or just make new friends. Play tons of mini-games with Lightning McQueen and the awesome cast of CARS.

DDO: Module 9 in test phase

Turbine is reporting the following news about its MMORPG Dungeons & Dragons Online:


Risia Retires, Lamannia Is Born!

The Risia server is being retired! If you currently have a Risia client installed, please uninstall it. We have an all new Preview Server for new content: Lamannia! Lamannia is taking Risia’s place as the server for checking out upcoming game features and releases!


Mod 9 On Lamannia!

Next, some more exciting news: next week we will begin the first previews of Mod 9: The Plane of Battle on Lamannia! But that’s not the only thing new coming to DDO…


A New Way To Get In Game!

Mod 9 and Lamannia come packaged with technology designed to streamline downloads for new players and make patching easier than ever for our current players!

The Turbine Download Manager makes it easier to get into our games and start playing, whether you’re a new player or a current player ready for new content. The Turbine Download Manager offers new players the opportunity to start playing the game before they have completed the entire download and installation of the game. Future versions of the Turbine Download Manager will offer current players the ability to automatically download patches through a process called “forward patching,” enabling them to play as soon as the servers open with new content!

Beginning with Mod 9 on Lamannia, new players will experience a “tiered” download; meaning that after a relatively small initial download, they can jump right into character creation. While they’re creating their characters, the new player (Beach / Grotto) tutorial instance will download in the background; while they’re playing the tutorial instance, the public portion of Korthos Village will download, and while they’re playing through those first few Village quests, the Korthos Wilderness will download in the background, and then the full game. There may be brief periods of waiting while the next tier is downloading, particularly for new players with slower internet connections, but the wait time has been significantly reduced from the days when the entire game had to be downloaded and installed before a new player ever reached character creation!

The Turbine Download Manager also offers the following features:

  • Peer-to-peer downloading, allowing you to download files even faster
  • More control over your download experience
  • Set overall capacity and speed limits
  • Schedule downloads by time of day and day of week
  • Set limits based on what other applications you are running
  • Pause and have the download automatically resume at a later time
  • UPnP support (if your router and firewall support it and are configured correctly).

We encourage everyone to try creating a new character to help provide feedback on the incremental download, so we can polish this experience for new players!


A few important things to note:

Lamannia will contain all recently played characters which existed on the DDO servers as of December 29, 2008.
While Turbine will remain the primary provider of bandwidth, the Download Manager will also use optional peer-to-peer file sharing to speed up the downloads. The peer-to-peer portion only acts as a subsidizer.

Ready to get started? Watch for the announcement for the Turbine Download Manager Beta, which will provide a link so you can get started on Lamannia! Release Notes for Lamannia will be available on Monday in the Compendium!