Yearly Archives: 2009

Forged by Chaos

Forged by Chaos is a fantasy RPG powered by the CryEngine 2 technology.
The game is based on the theme of Chaos, its power originating from steel and battle magic. Your ultimate goal is to become a warlord, obtaining armor and weapons and develop magical skills – Chaos Magic.

Because of the CryEngine 2 technology, this game has customizable characters, interactive environments and enhanced game world dynamics.

Galactik Football becoming an MMO!

Virtual worlds and MMO games production company Virtual Fairground and French animation house Alphanim, today announced that they will bring Alphanim’s animation hit series Galactik Football to the web in the form of a cutting-edge, Flash based virtual world and MMO game for kids and tweens.

The two companies signed a worldwide licensing agreement that will see a phased international roll-out of the game and service starting spring 2009 up until a full launch in 2010, the year of the FIFA World Cup. Virtual Fairground assumes full development and publishing duties. Devised and produced by French animation studio Alphanim, Galactik Football is a vibrant mix of 2D and toon-shaded 3D and follows the progress of the Snow Kids, a futuristic football team from the planet Akillian as they try to win the prestigious Galactik Football Cup. The show blends drama, action sports and magic in the form of the mysterious Flux force and is currently on air in over 100 countries.

“We’re looking forward to opening up the Galactik Football galaxy to kids”, says Maarten Brands of Virtual Fairground. “In a safe and extensive online world, kids will soon be able to create their own players and teams and compete for the Galactik Cup. Besides the overall quest, we’re creating numerous mini-games, fun distractions and socialization features for a kids and tween audience.”

The entire Flash-based world will run directly from the browser, without the need for a client or other plug-in. Ilja Goossens of Virtual Fairground: “We’re creating this high-end entertainment experience for the web, but accessibility is a key feature for us and our audience. That is why we have set this challenging development goal for ourselves: making everything run from the browser. We are extremely proud of the cutting-edge 2D and 3D graphical elements our team is producing at the moment. This game will be an eye-brow raiser when we launch its first phase in April.”

Cedric Petitpas, VP Marketing & Licensing for Alphanim: “We are extremely pleased with this new online project which is going to bring a new and exciting dimension to Galactik Football, giving kids the possibility to interact and finally take part in many fun ways in the ultimate competition.”

Quest Online Releases MyAlganon.com, in Anticipation of its MMO Alganon

Online Gamers want enhanced community features. While it seems everyone has joined wide-scale communities such as MySpace and Facebook, most agree that those communities don’t cater well enough to any specific niche. Populated with add-ins and advertisements, the experience is less than exceptional. How does one curtail the noise and create a gaming community that appeals specifically to the online gamer? It seems that one company has developed a solution.

Quest Online, LLC has created its own MMOG Community System that will directly integrate with its upcoming MMOG, Alganon. “Enhancing the online community experience has been one of our goals from the start,” explains Quest Online’s President David Allen. “After a significant amount of research, we knew we needed to come up with a place that was media-rich and engaging for today’s avid gamer. We established a commitment to meet the needs of our target market. As a result, we have created the MyAlganon system to serve as the gateway for the upcoming release of Alganon, due later this year.”
To help meet the requirements of the upcoming Alganon Beta, Quest Online is launching MyAlganon.com into the gaming community, enabling them to sign up and gain deep insight into Alganon, as well as establish dialog with the growing community of gamers.

The MyAlganon community website offers:

* Early signup for Alganon and access to the Beta phase of Alganon.
* Player profiling and networking that enables players to build up social activities outside the game and stay connected with friends.
* User-generated content through blogging, news, articles, guides and more that can serve as an important source of information for any MMO gamer.
* Content such as previews, reviews, interviews and videos developed by our editorial staff and the community, all of which is intended to guide players through the world of Alganon.

Creating a MyAlganon account is free! The MyAlganon.com Community features: Guilds, Blogs, Pictures, Videos, Groups, and more, all appealing to the diverse set of communication and media elements that gamers seek. Additionally, one of the more compelling reasons to join is connectivity to our development team – as an avid gamer, your feedback counts! Future enhancements include direct ties into the Library, Auction, and Study systems of a player’s characters.

World of Kung Fu: The Forbidden Kingdom arrives

VestGame Entertainment is excited to announce the addition of new Kung Fu suites to the Item Mall in its free game “World of Kung Fu”. This series of suites is inspired from the movie “Forbidden Kingdom” acted by Jet Lee and Jackie Chan.

These new Kung Fu Suits separately enable players to “cosplay” characters in the legend of Forbidden Kingdom. They are Lu Yan, Mo Seng, Golden Sparrow, and Jason, who represent justice and peace; White Witch and Jade Emperor, who obviously represent dark power. Players can pick out their favorite ones related to different characters and dress them. These fashion suites will not only make players look totally different, but also significantly enhance their attributes, which is much better than any other fashion clothes sold in Item Mall before. They will be of great help in battle. Amount of these special fashion dresses are all limited. Only a few players will be lucky enough to grab a permanent one. Besides, players can choose which side they want to join, the evil side or the holy side. And they can also choose what sensation they want to own, vengeance or justice.

Virtual games players stick close to home!

Northwestern University has just released some information regarding an interesting study about virtual worlds. Here’s a summary:

In the real world, tracking a person’s social network – which could include hundreds of contacts that serve different purposes – is nearly impossible.

But in online virtual games like EverQuest II, where tens of thousands of people leave digital traces as they chat with one another, perform quests together, form groups and buy and sell goods, researchers have found a gold mine of networking data.
That’s where social scientist and engineer Noshir Contractor comes in. Contractor, the Jane S. and William J. White Professor of Behavioral Sciences at the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science at Northwestern University, and his collaborators are studying nearly 60 terabytes of data from EverQuest II, a fantasy massive multiplayer online role-playing game where players complete quests and socialize with each other.

The researchers analyzed this data along with a survey of 7,000 players – making it one of the largest social science research projects ever performed, Contractor said.

The group has mined the data logs from the game to look for “structural signatures” that indicate different kinds of social network configurations.

The researchers found that many players underestimate the amount of time they spend playing the games, and the number of players who say they are depressed is disproportionately high.

They also found that women don’t like to play with other women but are generally the most dedicated and satisfied players. And players aren’t just teenagers – in fact, the average age of a player is substantially higher.

But what most surprised Contractor was that even though players could play the game with anyone, anywhere, most people played with people in their general geographic area.

“People end up playing with people nearby, often with people they already know,” Contractor said. “It’s not creating new networks. It’s reinforcing existing networks. You can talk to anyone anywhere, and yet individuals 10 kilometers away from each other are five times more likely to be partners than those who are 100 kilometers away from each other.”

Worldwide, nearly 45 million people play massive multiplayer online role-playing games like EverQuest II, and the amount of real-world money associated with virtual worlds would make it the seventh largest country in the world according to gross domestic product.


“This is not a trivial issue,”
Contractor said. “Now that we have the computing power to study these networks, we can explore different theories about social processes on a scale that was never possible before.”

Pirate Galaxy Review: RPG Space Shooter

By Vincent Haoson, Onrpg writer

When you hear the word, Pirate in a game, the first thing that comes to mind is a game that concerns sea-faring outlaws. But add the word Galaxy to the title, the game then makes you think of pirates in space. However, Pirate Galaxy is not about pirates, you won’t get to control space pirate ships as you’d first expect.

Welcome to the war

Pirate Galaxy is a 3D Sci-Fi space RPG game from Splitscreen Studios. The game ushers you into a world that is devastated by an alien civilization. Humanity was at the brink of destruction: the Mantis, an alien civilization was hell-bent on acquiring Cryonite (the most precious mineral in the Universe of Pirate Galaxy) at the expense of whatever civilization they obliterate.

Your role in the Mantis-Human conflict is that you are a newly recruited hotshot pilot for the humans. You are given the role of becoming the best of the best in the ranks and to finally cripple the Mantis.

Gameplay

When you talk about spaceships the first thing that comes into mind is that it’s going to be a definite 3D Space Shooter, well, Pirate Galaxy is not. The game’s controls utilize both the mouse and the keyboard. You can use the move to make your ship move by clicking the area you want your mouse to go. You also use the mouse for locking-on your enemies. However, your ship won’t automatically attack when you locked-on an enemy: you’d have to press the corresponding key in your keyboard where your attack is located.

Speaking of the keyboard, up until recently, the controls in Pirate Galaxy does not include the W, A, S, D keys for steering your ship. So the ship control was solely done with the mouse.

Quests Galore

As you play Pirate Galaxy, you will be required to do a series of quests as part of your job being a “pirate”. The quests are a mixture of eliminate specific targets to search missing pods of NPCs that were attacked by the Mantis.

Pirate Galaxy offers two types of quests for the moment. It’s the storyline quests, this are the quests that center on your story as it unfolds within the game. Besides the storyline quests the game also has the normal quests. These quests can be redone if the game allows you to.

The quests in Pirate Galaxy are the lifeline of replayability of the game as of the moment, With the PVP related systems still untested the cycling through quests in the game would be your main attraction.

Pimp my Ship

Customization in Pirate Galaxy is reliant on items called blueprints. These are items that opens certain customization features or, gives you ship add-ons that you can attach through your ship’s hangar. The main body of your ship is provided by default and you will start off with a small ship, you can upgrade the body as you progress through the game and earn crystals so you could buy for it.

Blueprints are won through quests or are dropped by monsters in-game. You can also change the color of your ship as long as it is already enabled in your hangar.

Conclusion

Pirate Galaxy is an MMO that is has a unique shop control system in itself. The MMO feel of the game is another aspect of Pirate Galaxy that seems to be steering away from the usual gameplay we find in 3D spaceship games.

New players may find Pirate Galaxy’s controls awkward. Cycling between the ship controls and the weapons system can be a little bothersome especially to those who are not used to using the mouse only for locking-on while the keyboard is used for shooting. Though this navigation issue would be of little worth when you are playing the game in the long run.

As of this writing, the quest system in Pirate Galaxy is still bugged. This should be fixed as soon as possible because the quests in Pirate Galaxy are the only thing that players can really do to make the game interesting for the moment. The PVP system is still untested but it would be very interesting how the PVP would work out especially with a gameplay like this.

Another thing I can say the game lacks is sufficient customization. Basically your ship’s overall design would be highly reliant on the blueprints you get and on the base design your ship will be having. This could really be a bad thing for players who are more into customizing their own “dream” ship.

However, it may be true that the game still lacks enough eye-candy beauty that other 3d spaceship games have, Pirate Galaxy has one of the better FMVs in the f2p 3d sci-fi game market. The cut scenes where your ship would go to and fro the planet and to the orbital station found on atmosphere is a sight to behold.

Also, the game’s background is very static. You can see the stars moving as you progress through the game. It’s as if you are seeing whatever is unfolding outside Vega 2.

The game’s music and SFX is right on the dot. The BGM is very intense when you are fighting and it mellows down a bit if you are just adventuring or just lounging in-game.

Pirate Galaxy is still in closed beta stage, and the way I see it, the developers are still putting a lot of things as the closed beta goes on. The game may ultimately change once it goes Open Beta or commercial. So before that happens all bets are off, Pirate Galaxy is an interesting game in itself and it may turn out even more when the proper time, effort and attention is given to it.

Pros

– FMV is one of the better seen in an f2p sci-fi

– You can also play on your browser

– Game is still in closed beta things may change

Cons

– Controls are awkward at best

– Quests are still bugged

– Not much customization available

Anarchy Online new expansion

Funcom is proud to unveil ‘Legacy of the Xan’ – the new booster pack for the massively multiplayer online game ‘Anarchy Online’. The new booster pack features end-game content tailored specifically for seasoned ‘Anarchy Online’ veterans, opening up new areas of the world, introducing new items and bringing hundreds of new missions to challenge players. This content upgrade is the latest in a series of expansions and booster packs that have been released for the classic seven year old science fiction MMO.

“The ‘Legacy of the Xan’ booster pack introduces new content for those who have reached the ‘Anarchy Online’ end-game, by introducing areas, items, enemies and missions relating to the mysterious civilization of the Xan and their history on planet Rubi-ka,” says game director Colin Cragg. “We are thrilled by the fact that ‘Anarchy Online’ continues to capture the imagination of gamers even after seven years of operation, and we greatly look forward to be bringing players even more challenges, content and improvements to the game in the time ahead!”

The booster pack will be available on February 19th, but pre-order has already started. The booster is available for 19.99 US dollars or for a combined purchase using paid points and currency. Included in the purchase is an in-game virtual item known as The Phasefont Hoverchair – a unique, time-limited launch offering that allows you to cruise around on Rubi-ka in style! For those new to Anarchy Online it is also possible to purchase a complete package for 29.99 US dollars that contains the core game as well as all expansions and boosters previously released. Legacy of the Xan pre-order and the Phasefont Hoverchair is included in this complete package.

Wizard101: 1 million users registered!

Online entertainment company KingsIsle Entertainment, Inc. today announced that over one million unique users have registered to play the highly immersive 3D virtual world Wizard101, just five months after its launch in September 2008. "The response has been absolutely overwhelming," says Elie Akilian, founder and CEO of KingsIsle. "We knew the game would appeal to families but we were surprised to see how well the game resonates with the hardcore set. The mechanics are a cross between a traditional Collectible Card Game and an old-school turn based Role Playing Game, and that makes us incredibly unique."
The company is marking this milestone by rewarding the millionth registered player with a free one year subscription to the game, and a statue with an interactive commemorative plaque featuring the Wizard’s name has been placed in the Wizard City Commons.
As a special "thank you" all current and future players will receive 101 free Crowns automatically in their account. Crowns are used to purchase game areas and unique items. Several new items that cost less than 101 Crowns have been added to Wizard101 including a limited time commemorative Storm Beetle pet.
"When we created Wizard101, we knew we had something special," said J. Todd Coleman, the Director of Wizard101. "We’re thrilled to see that so many people, young and old, agree with us. You can usually tell how well a virtual world is doing within the first few months of launch by how many realms they add or remove. We started with about a dozen and we’ve tripled since release."
Wizard101 has received high praise for its wide appeal. Dragonspyre, the recently-launched first major world expansion, continues the storyline in an ancient haunted world where players will face challenging new battles and ultimately discover the truth about renegade Death Magic professor Malistaire Drake’s sinister plans. Several new Player vs. Player Arenas have also been added where players can challenge each other in either Practice or Ranked duels, with up to four Wizards per team.
This week Wizard101 unveils its special, limited-time content in celebration of Valentine’s Day, including a special holiday-themed Piggle pet, and a selection of wands and staves. All items can be purchased with Crowns from a non-player character named Valentina, and all the items may also be obtained after successful battles throughout the game.