Yearly Archives: 2009

Conquer Online: Claim Your Elite Privileges

Conquer’s realm is enormous. You can travel through many varied lands, like plains, islands and deserts. However, this geographical mass could become the barrier for players to access those scattered warehouses. One has to spend time and money travelling between different warehouses and artisans.

Now you never need be troubled again! The only thing you need to do is to join Conquer Online VIP Service. If you credit TQ Point Cards >=150 USD from Jan. 1st, 2008, then you are eligible to the VIP service. By Binding Accounts to the VIP service, players can gain some elite privileges. These VIP features provide VIP players with more convenience than others. But for non-paying players, don’t be discouraged – we will maintain the essential gameplay balance in Conquer Online.

Recommended Privileges:

  1. Remotely open the warehouses around the world of Conquer Online.
  2. Remotely repair or compose the equipment even when stuck in the deepest dungeon.
  3. One more time Demon Exterminators Quest each day.
  4. 50% off for the PK-killed EXP loss.
  5. Server login priority

The higher your VIP level is, the more services you can access. Undoubtedly, these VIP functions will provide players with tremendous help. Open your VIP account in Conquer Online today!

Me, My Elf, and I: A look at relationships within MMOs

by Ben Lamb, Onrpg writer

Gaming. To many people computer gaming will conjure up images of spotty-faced teenage boys spending hours alone in their rooms. Or lonely, over-weight, middle-aged men awake long into the night trying to beat that high score. But despite the persistence of this rather unfair view, computer gaming has been surreptitiously creeping towards a radically different position for quite a while.

Listen to the marketing hype from any of the recent consoles and one of the key words you will keep hearing is ‘community’. In the days of old, if you wanted to test your elite ninja skills against another human being then you had to actually maintain a friendship with somebody who shared your interest in high scores.

The consoles, however, are finally taking advantage of that endless stream of ones and zeros racing across our planet and are enabling us all to form these relationships. Often these relationships will last only as long as it takes for some piston-fingered freak halfway around the world to reduce your cunning strategies to a withering heap of inadequacy, but they have the potential for vastly more meaningful exchanges.

Bucket Full Of Dice

The PC, of course, has been well ahead of the curve when it comes to this interaction with other players. Particularly when it comes to the MMORPG. As far back as the early nineties, hundreds of players have been connected together in worlds such as Ultima Online, and the term ‘role-playing’ took on aspects never before explored.

Traditional role-playing games have been around much longer than their digital counterparts. Groups of (large, bearded, male) players would get together with a bucket-full of dice and a bunch of pencils, taking on the personae of their heroes and villains to varying degrees. This required a certain bravery on the part of the players though, and often a large degree of imagination (beer).

With the introduction of computers and the advent of persistent fantasy worlds it became far easier to slip on a character and loose oneself in another reality. Gamers could suddenly use these places to explore those characters they had inside them, those people they really wanted to be, and meet those characters presented by other people.

In an unprecedented fashion, these worlds quickly began to suck gamers in. They expanded the demographic, first to include middle-aged women, then slowly reaching out further to all ages. Gaming was becoming an increasingly social experience.

Beating Heart

Fast-forward a couple of decades and suddenly that social aspect is the beating heart of a gigantic industry. Most MMOs have never lost that core of traditional gaming but increasingly this is not what draws people to a game and not what keeps them there. Gamers want this social aspect. They want community. They need to form relationships. They crave the kind of interaction and challenge and reward that can only come from playing with other human beings.

Gamers who have been around long enough to remember the lonely old days will recall the exhilaration of those initial connections. The exciting comprehension that those characters on the screen were controlled by other players. Suddenly actions that were previously just a means to a goal became, in themselves, a communication with those around you. The medium became the message. These actions, however mundane the intention, betray a personality. Even without the obligatory chat-interface, gamers are quick to identify with each other and form real bonds.

As with the stereotypical image of gamers that certain people carry in their minds, many people seem intent to deride this kind of connection, claiming that it is not ‘real’. The people, the personalities that present themselves, are not the ‘real’ identities of the players, and thus any relationship borne of them is false. Even if the actions or words of a player were to be a true representation of the ‘real’ person behind it, any relationship abstracted so far from reality is patently meaningless. But we all know that isn’t true.

Invented Personalities

For many people role-playing is still essentially about playing themselves, albeit often a much more extroverted and confident version of themselves. The friendships that these people make can often run very deep and extend far outside their original setting. More than a few marriages owe their conception to a fantasy playground. There have been heart-warming stories dating back almost as far as the birth of the MMORPG scene itself, with them becoming so common now that they barely warrant a raised eyebrow.

For these people the MMOG is simply an extension of their social repertoire. Like talking on the phone or in a chat room, it is simply providing another medium for the natural social urges with which we are all pre-programmed. The more interesting examples come from those people who dive more deeply into their roles. Whilst many players see their avatars as natural extensions of their existing personality into other worlds, some seize this opportunity to create someone entirely new.

To those people who only ever play themselves, this can sometimes seem strange. These invented personalities are inherently social. They exist only in their interactions with other players. But why socialise, why make these connections, when the part of you making the connection isn’t the real you? More to the point, why connect with someone else when it’s not the real them? This can seem doubly absurd when you consider that these characters will mostly be meeting other ‘made up’ characters.

In It For The Story

These interactions still fulfill a basic human need, one that is doubtless as old as our need to be social. Storytelling. We all love a story, probably on a much deeper level then most people ever consider. Gaming (in MMOs) is all about story. Especially the RPG. Strip this away and you are left with almost nothing. Every quest, every NPC, every location is all story, and everyone wants to be a part of it. For some, simply being there is enough, but for others, the words “Hi, my name’s Steve and I’m an accountant from Iowa”, break that spell somewhat. Who wants to know more about Steve, when instead you could be hearing about what his wizard does for a living?

There is an unspoken agreement between these role players that you’re all in it for the story. Everyone brings their own character to the party and together you go on an epic quest. Any avid reader will know the huge attachment that can be formed with a fictional character. You really start to care about them, even characters that aren’t the hero. Likewise, the in-game relationship between two imaginary characters can be invested with huge amounts of emotional energy and become a vastly more real and important connection than those between other players.

The Line Between

The role-playing servers of these imaginary worlds are filled with the imaginary friendships of these role-playing gamers, and for most of them, this will always be the extent of their relationships. These relationships are not intended to reach any further than that. There will always be some like-minded fellows who make a connection outside of the game, but others would be terrified at the thought of such social proximity.

The line between a player and their character is always a difficult distinction to draw, especially as most characters are simply an extension of the player’s personality. Even with very specifically role-played characters, the question of how real their interactions are becomes very pertinent when they intrude on a real-life relationship. While generally content to see these on-line games as empty and meaningless, the stereotypical gamer’s girlfriend will be quick to jump into action should her partner look like he is misbehaving, and rightly so.

The answer as to where to draw the lines in these situations will never be a simple one. Affairs of the heart do not often allow such easy answers, but situations like these can help us understand these strange social creations which we call MMOs. I guess it all comes down to just how real a reflection of our inner characters we believe these avatars are. Is there room for these two personalities to live side by side? If so, is there room for two relationships? As technology improves, these worlds and their inhabitants become more real. Will there come a point where a life inside the game is a fair substitute for a life outside? The main argument against this is the lack of social interactions, but surely this argument is quickly becoming redundant. Will their come a point where these two worlds, these two social identities merge?

None of these are simple questions, and none should be taken lightly. The answers may seem obvious to some but, just as our perceptions on these matters has changed greatly in the past decade, they may well change even more in the decade to come.

Dungeon Runners Review: Newbie Friendly

By Vincent Haoson, Onrpg writer

From the company that has brought games like Exteel, City of Heroes, Lineage II to the MMO industry. NCOsoft introduces an MMO which puts a whole new meaning to the phrase “don’t take yourself too seriously”, Dungeon Runners (DR).

New Concept, Same System

You get to choose from three different job classes in Dungeon Runner, the Fighter, which is the melee character for DR, the Mage, which is your standard magic user type, and lastly the Ranger, which is the long-range character in DR.

Aside from the standard three classes in Dungeon Runners, you can also customize how your character looks in game. You have a limited pre-rendered selection of customizations on your character’s face, hair and hair color design.

Dungeon Runners also allows you to see what you equip to your character. This feature is hard to find in most of the f2p games available in the market.

At the beginning of your character creation, you can immediately see the quirkiness of the game. Each of the three class starts of with a lengthy and comedic title. For the fighter, you start of as the Invigorated Fanatical Fighter, for the Mage, you are the Energetic Noobie Obsidian Mage and for the ranger you are the, All-around Bush League Poison Ranger.

Similar to most mmos, DR has the usual stats that you need to fill out whenever you level up. The stats, which are namely, Strength, Agility, Endurance and Intelligence, are as self-explanatory as they can be. There is an in-depth stat guide found in the DR forums where you can know more about how the computation is done which gives players the heads up on what stats they need to allocate for their preferred builds.

The quirkiness factor does not just begin with the character creation. Once you log into the game you are welcomed by a little read dinorsaur named, Noobsaur. This “dinosaur” is the beginner NPC that would give you the starting quest so that you can jump start on your DR experience.

The look

Usually in free-to-play MMOs you would be disappointed with the way the character design is done. In DR you can see that the character detail is smooth and refined. Though you are limited on using a few pre-rendered styles in the overall look, they are made in such a manner that passes as expertly done.

With the character sprites done in such a manner, you the game’s background and interface though suffers quite a bit. There are areas where the background is as fine as the character design but it is not that important as you will have to concentrate on the monster attacking you rather than the background.

The game’s audio also a treat, especially the NPC’s dialogue. However, the audio can be quite irritating as you continue on playing.

The game’s in-game text can also be hard to read especially when you do play it in window mode. Regardless of what you do with the game’s resolution, you would still get the same hazy text. I advise that if you do want to save your eyes the trouble, play the game in full screen mode.

Conclusion

While the quirkiness factor does put a novelty feel to the whole thing, Dungeon Runners does in fact have nothing more than that. As the game title suggests, Dungeon Runners is a game that is- well a dungeon exploration game.

While it is true that the lack of in-game content story wise is a real disappointment, DR is not about the story but rather a dungeon questing game. This is where DR really shines best, the dungeons are fun to go to though there are camera angle issues it is a spectacle to see how you can beat down those “icky” monsters using either a very large sword or bow or killing them with your spectacularly colored skills.

The overall look and feel of the game can be quite troublesome especially the foliage. Thankfully, there is a foliage control option in the game so you can manage if the grass is quite troublesome especially if you are in the middle of it and you cannot seem to click the monster you need to kill.

The controls are also easy to use and very convenient. You do not need to keep on clicking to kill a monster all you need to do is just press on the left mouse button until you kill the monster.

Also, as the game specializes on exaggeration, it is fun to see how your character moves and sounds whenever you encounter a monster or an NPC. Though I have to admit there are times when the humor on some NPCs are strained that you cannot find the slightest humor in it.

The game is newbie user-friendly because the game is ample with NPCs that help you out on how to experience the game. Plus add the fact that having an NPC named “Noobsaur” that gives the players the initial run through on how to play the game really helps those who have just started out.

The lingo used in the game though could be quite a handful especially to those who are not familiar to the whole l337 speech. Though the learning curve for it is not quite as huge as other languages, it could initially irritate a newbie player.

Like most f2ps you need to actually subscribe, or pay for the game itself to fully enjoy the full potential of the game. The subscription does not in anyway change the fact that DR is fun even if you do not shell out.

However, if you do want to delve into the world of Dungeon Runners, you should then get ready to spend your money on the game. It is true that you can enjoy playing DR without spending a nickel yet you cannot utilize your character’s full potential without getting the privileges of a premium subscription. On the other hand, you can purchase the game off the stores, which gives you a hefty advantage then being just a premium subscriber. The question though is that are you willing to spend your money on a game like Dungeon Runners, that is for you decide.

Combat Arms Europe Preview

By Joshua Temblett, Onrpg Writer

Combat Arms is the latest game from publisher Nexon. This First Person Shooter aims to revitalise the stale and pretty much absent free online FPS genre. With its fast Call of Duty 4 style gameplay, host of weaponry, modes/maps and new features in the pipeline, CA is really looking to be a success with its constant updates. However if the core gameplay is lacking, is there any point on expanding on it?

Um storyline?

Now normally I would start up this second paragraph by talking about the storyline of the title. Combat Arms doesn’t have one, so it makes my job slightly easier. Do we really need a background to this game though? No. You give us guns, we don’t need reasons, and we’ll shoot things. This is the way of the human race, as horrible as it sounds. Whilst the (American) website does boast a very exciting CG cutscene which could lead into some sort of tale, the game does not feel the need to play on it. After all this is a free online fps, what more do you expect? Boy, these weapons look good!

Graphically this title isn’t so superior, however when compared to other Free to Play FPS’s on the market it definitely looks good. The game retains a semi realistic style (which isn’t fully realistic due to its lack of graphical power) which suits the game well as it attempts to provide the gamer with “real life” guns (yes the AK-47’s there) and the modern day war time experience. These guns aren’t necessarily easy to handle though as each gun is different in its weight, size, recoil and feel. This uniqueness for each gun, and a bigger emphasis on the stats of each gun, is very refreshing as not only does managing the guns require skill, but experience. Fighting against the recoil is always fun.

Get ready to aim…fire!

Running and gunning is always exciting however if you have broken controls, which don’t work, the fun is no doubt ruined. Combat Arms doesn’t have broken controls though, so don’t worry. The controls are generally very responsive, and the W,A,S,D keys for movement enable fast responses to situations. The gameplay is generally very quick, however not so much so that you’ll respawn, and then seconds later die, however swift reflexes are needed. You’ll certainly need to learn on the job for this game, and if you haven’t played a lot of FPS’s you better get ready for a long ride, but it is certainly worth it.

Speaking of a long ride, guns cost money and getting cash in this game isn’t exactly the easiest thing in the world as you’ll be earning it pretty slowly. You’ll also need to obtain experience to be able to unlock new weapons and items. With every level up you do obtain large sums of GP (the local currency) so it’s not much of a problem as long as you keep playing however if you’re a bit more casual this could become a problem as leveling up and getting the money is a long and hard process. Also when you buy weapons, you have a choice of how long you purchase them for (I.E. one day, one week and so on), with the price increasing with the more days you wish to keep your weapon for. This can create some issues as to get fully kited can be expensive. Once you get good at the game though, it’s not so hard to remain well equipped.

So, is it good?

Combat Arms is shaping up to be a hit, however the US version has been hit by a variety of hackers, so there is a fear that the same will happen here (which it probably will as the hackers always feel the need to use aim bots as it’s their way of compensating for something), what with a weak hack prevention system. It’ll be interesting to see how the game progresses as they add the clan ranking system and various other interesting features. I’m interesting to see how this game will evolve, as I think it’ll definitely bring some awesome new features to the genre, and I certainly look forward to them.

Flyff Interview: Version 13 Sneak Peek

Questions by Rick Charbs, Onrpg writer

Answered by: Alexandra Pavels, Flyff Associate Producer

Onrpg has been glad to conduct an interview with Alexandra Pavels, Flyff Associate Producer, on the topic of their game’s current condition and future. With new updates and events on the way, Flyff is sure to attract new users in the near future: “The design plans for Version 13 are still under wraps, but preliminary concept documents suggest that it will be one of the most compelling updates to the game yet. We should see it sometime in the spring of 2009” explained Alexandra. Are you as curious as we are?

Onrpg: With the recent addition of Flyff Version 12, what kind of feedback has the community provided to the game?

Pavels: Players have been very responsive to the latest edition and seem to be happy with the new changes. The introduction of Version 12 added a lot of dynamic content to FlyFF that our users have received well. Of course, there are things that the players would like improved and we’re working with our developers to make that happen for them with our next Version.

Onrpg: Azria is a new game world area in Flyff. Could you please explain the mechanics of this area?

Pavels: Azria is what we call a “Premium Area”. Players can purchase tickets to this area and gain access to increased spawns, non-aggro mobs, and increased EXP.

We allow our players a variety of options as to how they are able to access Azria. We offer seven day and 15 day tickets that can be purchased from our Premium Shop. We also frequently give away Azria tickets to players during events. We very much encourage that players trade the tickets to each other in game so that as many of our players as possible are able to enjoy the benefits of Azria.

Onrpg: What plans do you have for this holiday season in Flyff?

Pavels: We are planning to hold a lot of sales and events for our players this Holiday Season. Currently, we have the “12 Days before Xmas Event” Running. We are offering free bonus items for any player who purchases specific items from our Premium Shop; many users that frequent our Premium Shop have been asking for a sale like this. In the past, we would have held this sale for only one day, but this year we’re stepping it up quite a bit. We will also be holding some awesome in game events for our players. Before planning these events we always like to look to our players for suggestions.

Onrpg: What makes Flyff such a unique free MMO?

Pavels: Flyff is one of the few free MMOs that display a willingness to evolve. As time goes on, the game experience shifts in an attempt to keep players interested and excited. We also pride ourselves on our wonderful community. Flyff is one of the few MMOs that emphasises GM interaction with players on a daily basis in order to keep in touch with what our players want and need. Our players are very friendly and willing to help each other. They support each other and are generally more active in game, in events and on our forums than other MMOs.

Onrpg: How strong is the current PvP aspect of the game?

Pavels: Although PvP is not the focus of Flyff, we do have a cluster with a few channels dedicated to straight hardcore PvP. No one (except low level players) is safe there. It can be tough for inexperienced players so we offer double EXP and double the normal item drop rate in those channels. While the PvP aspect of Flyff may be challenging, it is also very enjoyable. The atmosphere on our PvP servers can be very competitive; however the players on these servers also form some of the closest communities in Flyff.

Onrpg: Could you please offer us some information on your current events?

Pavels: In conjunction with our holiday events, we are also currently running the “Christmas” event, which includes the “Quest for the Golden Apples.” Players who choose this quest from Santa are give then task to collect Golden Apples so that Santa can make his special Golden Apple Pies for Rudolph. Without these pies, Rudolph won’t have enough energy to lead Santa’s sleigh! As a reward for the player’s help, Santa will give him/her a Red Stocking filled with holiday related items. Another part of the event involves the Mysterious Collector who just happens to love Santa’s special Red Stockings. Players can trade their Red Stockings with the Mysterious Collector for a special Christmas Gift.

Onrpg: What is your favorite aspect of the game?

Pavels: My favorite aspect of Flyff is actually one of the new systems that was recently implemented with the introduction of Version 12. The Lord system was one of the biggest changes that Flyff has seen recently. It also happens to be one of the most unique and dynamic. The Lord system allows players to vote for their own “Lord” on each server. This Lord is given many responsibilities and exclusive powers. Most importantly, the Lord has the ability to set increased drop and EXP events for the players on his/her server. The ability to run these events rests on how much revenue (in game virtual currency) is collected from taxes and donations from players. Lords have the ability to adjust the tax rates for their servers as well as receiving rare items that are exclusive to being Lord. It’s as close to being a GM (Game Master) as most players will get and it’s cool to see the effect it has on our community.

Onrpg: What is your favorite character class, and why?

Pavels: Personally, Blades are my favorite. There’s nothing like holding two giant, flaming swords and knowing that anyone you come across is going to be a bit more intimidated by you. My playing style in games tends to be aggressive, so the Blade class is very suited to me. It may also have something to do with the fact that I don’t have the patience to be a Magician.

Onrpg: What new updates do you plan for the future of Flyff?

Pavels: The design plans for Version 13 are still under wraps, but preliminary concept documents suggest that it will be one of the most compelling updates to the game yet. We should see it sometime in the spring of 2009.