Yearly Archives: 2009

Karos Online

 The original Karos Online has been shut down. It is now available as Karos Returns.

With a strong RPG component, wide range of class skills and fantastic visual combat effects, Karos Online offers a rich player experience and an exciting end-game for guilds, including castle sieges and resource control points. There are a variety of dynamic dungeons to explore, with shifting paths and surprises to challenge players as they progress in level. The economy is well-developed, with mining, fishing and crafting elements and a consignment system for storage.
Karos Online offers rare graphical quality for its small client size, and will be accessible to a vast range of computers with minimal requirements.

 

Fiesta Race To 1,000,000 Spark Cash Event

July 1st, the race to one million Spark Cash event began on the new Fiesta server, Cypion. The Spark Cash immediately became available to the first three people to reach the level cap, level 105, but the amount has been decreasing every hour.
 
Being a new server, all the players who created an account there started at level one, giving no one a special advantage.
 
Now the event is coming to a close. Two people are level 103, and a third is level 97. The prize is currently at 776,000 Spark Cash, which is more than enough for any person to buy every premium item that becomes available for quite some time.

GunZ: The Duel Brings New Adventures

Outlaws and bounty hunters will scramble to survive with the recent update to ijji.com’s popular, multi-player online third-person shooting game (MOTPS) GunZ: The Duel. Today the fast and furious action game introduced its latest gameplay mode, called survival mode, giving both loyal players and newcomers to the 8 million-strong hardcore gaming portal a new challenge: The most basic game of survival.
“This highly anticipated update will give even the savviest of GunZ’s players a thrilling and demanding new test of their endurance and skill,” said Philip Yun, CEO, NHN USA, which hosts ijji.com.  “We know our community and the brave explorers of GunZ depend on frequent and exciting updates to the portal and its games.  After all, where is the challenge in a world or map you know inside out?  As gamers ourselves, we get it – we keep things fresh.”
The new survival mode pits players against three novel and ominous bosses who employ creative means to thwart players’ very survival.  The mode also features 20 different unpredictable scenarios, each with an impressive 100 rounds, leaving even the savviest and strongest gamer begging for respite. Before a triumphant advance to the next round, players must first defeat the monstrous final boss, which grows stronger and gains skill as the player progresses through proceeding levels.
GunZ is a MOTPS set in a world where fantasy and magic meet the progress of the industrial revolution.  Treasure seekers, bounty hunters and rogue explorers use stealth, magic and cunning as they face notorious outlaws and bounty hunters in non-stop adventures across the Empire and the Republic, two previously warring nations.  In a world enjoying a rare and recent emergence of peace, players engage in a wide range of game modes – including intense deathmatch, berserker deathmatch, team deathmatch, assassination, duel and survival mode – and story-heavy quests and missions. GunZ offers players non-stop action in a community-centric environment highlighted with deep character customization and progression.

Minions of Mirth Review: Instant Immersion

By Bryan King (Bryan), OnRPG Journalist

Minions of Mirth has the composure of the classic hack and slash MMO. There’s a huge world to discover, characters to grow and epic battles to be had. Although the game is dated, it still provides a wonderful environment for players to explore to their own fulfillment. With both a free version and a paid version, it still gives F2P gamers the chance to experience the fun.

Gameplay

MoM, from the get-go, provides three points that are critically different from most MMOs on the market. Firstly, it is a single-player/multi-player bundle. It allows players to create their own persistent world and give the server information to other players to join them privately and cooperatively. Next, it is playable on a Mac. And last, it allows the players to level three classes on one character.

One primary complaint is that Minions of Mirth throws you into the game with little to no information on controls, interface, and starting advice. This is easily overcome by more matured MMO players, but I’m sure this would be a turn-off to new gamers who happen to choose Minions of Mirth to be a starting game.

After finding a user manual for the game on Google, I wandered into the lush world. Along with most other MMORPGs, you start by create a character. At the beginning of this process you can choose one of the factions, Fellowship of Light or the Minions of Darkness (membership only). What really impressed me is the bountiful amount of classes, which is hardly seen nowadays. There are a total of 12 races, and 16 classes. Some of the classes include Revealers, Shamans, Paladins, Clerics, Barbarians and Tempests, just to name a few. Some of the classes are exclusive to races, and other classes are attached to light or dark sides. For example, the Ogre, Goblin and Orc are exclusive to the Realm of Darkness. Specific classes and races also receive special abilities. In the early parts of the game I encountered a bug where I got stuck in a stairwell and had to relog to fix it and another bug where a skill would have a double cast time when I only pressed the hotkey once.

You can even create your own party of up to 6 characters and adventure with your own little ‘party’. Unfortunately, you will only see one avatar representing the party, but you can pick the look of any of your party members to switch who you view while fighting or adventuring.

After level 5 characters have the ability for a dual-class which adds another class to their base character. Then at level 15 they have the ability to add a third class to their character. With premium membership the max level for all three of these classes is level 100.

Anyone who loves classic medieval fantasy games will easily find a race, class, ability, or side that suits them. The starting combat seems very slow in boring, but in time, with increased skill learning and earning tertiary classes, it picks up and becomes very interesting.

Minions of Mirth

Pets are another unique feature of the game. Players are able to enhance and level their pets, as well as equip them with armor and weapons.

Minions of Mirth actually allows players to play as some of the monsters defeated on the actual quests. Monsters become available in the player screen in the Monster section, and allow players to start from a totally different point and play from there.

Servers are divided in clusters of Premium Members (one-time fee of 29.99 to unlock all features) and Free Users, the Premium Members cluster usually being more populated.

Crafting

One of the most important features of the game is the game’s extensive crafting system. Crafting provides a steady source of income for players’ economic benefits. Whether it’s crafting weapons, spells, armor, poison, etc., there’s a pretty deep system to it all without being all too hard. Most games these days include an unnecessarily hard crafting system, but Minions of Mirth is successful at giving players an easy, custom-tailored crafting system. Players are able to earn experience by crafting items, and thus learn more crafting skills to use to their own advantage.

Graphics & Sound

MoM’s graphics are very dated, that can be easily stated. But, even for an aged game, the environment and models can be said to be better than or as good as some MMOs today. The lighting effects of the game further enhance immersion within the game.

Most definitely, the sound work in Minions of Mirth is superb. Walking around the world definitely gave me the feeling that I was walking in a unique fantasy world, battling monsters, raising my personal pet, and casting my own spells. Some NPCs speak when being spoken too as well. The sound definitely adds to the immersion of MoM.

Dragon in MoM

Final Summary

Whether players choose Light or Dark sides, Minions provides a deep amount of lore that classic and new gamers will both enjoy. Immersion levels are extremely high, giving players the actual feeling that they’re IN the world. There are amazing structures that provide another level of enjoyment. Another intricate feature is that some enemies wear armor and weapons, and after being defeated, they drop their wares. This provides a whole new level of realism to MoM. Minions is a shining star on the MMO industry, and I personally recommend that players give it a try.

Pros:
– Large amount of immersion
– Beautiful Sound
– Great class/character development
– Deep Crafting System
– Beautiful Environment.

Cons:
– Relatively Dated graphics
– Small amount of bugs
– Paid content unlocks crucial part of the game.

Wind Slayer Race To 45 Event

A nice event for Wind Slayer has begun July 27th, where users who create a new character are automatically entered into the event. All players who reach level 45, will receive 1400 Spark Cash as long as they get it before August 3. There’s also special prizes to the first ten and twenty players that reach level 45. Check out full details here.
Also all users who log on July 30th from 1:00pm to 3:00pm will automatically be entered into the raffle to win a free Nintendo DSi! Everyone who logs on will get a free triple jump item that will help them get through the game. You must be logged on during the full two hours to win. Click here for full details.
If you are interested in starting to play Wind Slayer or Fiesta, for free, go to register.outspark.com and make an account.

Dragon Oath: Official 2nd Pre-Closed Beta Key

Due to exceedingly high interest from players, the Dragon Oath Team proudly announces the official 2nd Pre-Closed Beta Key Distribution. For this second round, the company is pleased to inform that the key distribution partners have been increased to 10 (previously 5) to cater to the high demand. In addition, the number of total beta keys distributed will be more than the 1st Giveaway held on July 9, 2009. Players who have received and activated keys through the 1st Pre-Closed Beta Key can still use their keys and do not require receiving keys again.
 
Dragon Oath Team clearly announces that the players from the following areas will not be able to access Dragon Oath even though they have keys: Singapore, Vietnam, Malaysia, Korea, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Philippines and Europe.

Red War Announces Commercial Service

Uforia, a new online game publisher specializing in massively multiplayer online games, announced that Red War was entering commercial service today.  The service will officially begin at 11:30 PM PST and will give players the opportunity to purchase a wide selection of items to enhance their gaming experience.  Among other things, Uforia players will be able to purchase reset scrolls that can reset their misplaced stat points, items that will boost their experience rate for one full month, and potions to increase their attack and defense powers for 30 continuous minutes. 
“We have had a lot of players requesting that we begin the commercial service for Red War sooner than later and are pleased to be able to do so now,” said Sumsicroxe, Game master of Red War.

 

Sudden Attack First Open Beta

GameHi, Inc., the U.S. division of the notable Korean-based online games company GameHi Co., Ltd, today announced it will begin the first open beta test for Sudden Attack, their No. 1 free-to-play first person shooter (FPS) available for players July 28 – August 17. Slated for commercial release this fall, fans who missed the closed beta can register for this first open beta at gamehi.com/ in order to take part in what’s currently one of the most popular multiplayer online FPS games in Asia.
This first open beta will be open to anyone who signs up over the next three weeks. Members of the first closed betas will not need to re-register, and will be able to keep their same account and character name.
For the first time players will get to try the Property Defense mode in the new map StormVille. Here each team must find, capture, and defend a specific area for a certain amount of time, in order to win the game. Unlike rules from other missions, the characters will respawn infinitely until the objective is met or time runs out. As well, players will have the chance to experience the game’s most powerful weapon yet, the MG43. This machine gun is Sudden Attack’s primary weapon, holding 100 rounds in a clip, the largest rounds in the game so far. 
Originally launched in July, 2006 Sudden Attack is now the most played first person shooter in Korea with more than 100 consecutive weeks on the game charts. Notable for its high quality graphics, stable game service, ample resources, and quick character and community system, Sudden Attack is positioned to garner similar blockbuster success in the U.S. Its broad appeal comes from a combination of elements including fast and fun casual gameplay; and unlike most FPS games, Sudden Attack is free-to-play.
With ongoing updates for new maps and firearms Sudden Attack offers a variety of features to provide both novice and core gamers continuous gameplay options. Community inclined it supports several chatting modes, macros and firm clan system, as well as Explosion and Elimination game modes. Quick entry allows users to install in under three minutes and join games without having to wait for a new start. Even new FPS fans can easily adopt in the game with simple rules and easy controls. Additionally, players can earn in-game points for game currency or purchase upgrades through real world cash.
Sudden Attack players are divided into two opposing teams: Special Force and Silent Fox Alliances. Each team is required to have at least one member and at maximum eight members. Players can also group into their own clans to fight within a separated network. Here players can show off group power, where teamwork and coordination play a crucial role. Strong clans can join ‘Clan Battle System,’ an exclusive competition mode in the game. Clan strengths can be proved clearly within this mode, as comradeship and cooperation are decisive factors to secure a win. Additionally, the game makes a breakthrough in comparison with preceding MMOFPS titles with the availability of in-water battle mode.

Titans Of Time

TitansofTime is a free to play Browser Based MMORPG. With no required downloads, in moments you can become a hero of a fully interactive and dynamic 3D world set in a semi-fictional ancient time.

Choose from several customizable classes to conquer the 25-plus unique zones, temples and hundreds of quests with thousands of item rewards.

Become an entrepreneur by creating your own items and consumables with the several professions available.

Hone your skills and increase your abilities by dominating fellow players in real-time PvP and PvE combat. You can group with up to five of your allies to defeat the most difficult of foes in the various temples and dungeons. Choose your path and become, a Titan of Time!