The Wilderness Returns in RuneScape: Are you ready?

Are you prepared for the ultimate risk verses reward MMO experience?

On February 1st ‘The Wilderness’, the most dangerous and high risk area of RuneScape, will be returning to the game. If you have little or no experience of RuneScape or of player-vs-player combat in the Wilderness then this is the guide for you.

 

The Wilderness, for those who haven’t experienced RuneScape, is a barren landscape that dominates the north of the game world. It is an open player vs player (PvP) area where players can hunt down other players with the intention of killing them in PvP combat. The Wilderness can be explored by both members and non-members so everyone is free to put their combat skills to the test in the most dangerous area in RuneScape.

 

If you are a fan of PvP you will love the Wilderness but it isn’t for everyone, so it’s currently protected by a perimeter wall which acts as a warning to players of the dangers ahead. If you are brave enough to try, leap the Wilderness wall and prepare for battle.

 

Strategy and tactics are key to a successful wilderness campaign. If you want advice from seasoned players, then your best bet is to head over to Edgeville, just south of the Wilderness, where many players cluster and prepare before wandering into the Wilderness. You may even be able to find a PKing group of your own to back you up when you venture forth. Whatever your reason for entering the Wilderness, it is clear that you do so at your own risk. As it is an open PvP area you are in danger of being attacked and potentially dying at the hands of another player. Unlike other popular MMOs, dying in the Wilderness doesn’t just mean that you will re-spawn somewhere else. It will mean that upon death the items you are carrying and wearing will drop on the ground where they will be available for other players to pick up. Of course conversely, if you kill another player you get the immediate reward of gaining their items.

 

The Wilderness can be a thrilling, tempting risk; one that you could potentially reap great rewards from. You have to decide whether taking your expensive high level equipment will give you enough of an advantage to ensure that you are on the winning side of the “kill or be killed” mentality.

 

You might wonder why you would want to venture into the Wilderness at all, when high level players would clearly have the advantage but help is at hand. RuneScape has a number of things in place which are designed to stop low-level players from immediately dying at the hands of high-level players lying in wait at the borders of the Wilderness. There are three factors that affect who you can attack in the Wilderness: your combat level, your opponent’s combat level, and the depth of the Wilderness (which is indicated on your screen). The Wilderness stretches from a depth of level 1 to level 56, increasing as you head further north. P-king soon becomes the art of knowing which players to attack and who to leave well alone!

 

Eventually you may find yourself biting off more than you can chew with escape your only viable option. Although you might want to run away as fast as you can; things may not always be that simple. Teleport spells can get you out of a combat situation; however there is the danger that this will be countered by an opponent’s Teleblock spell, meaning your escape attempt will fail.

 

It isn’t all dangerous; there are some areas in the Wilderness which act as a safe haven, most notably the small area after the Wilderness wall and Daemonheim, the home of Dungeoneering. Reach these locations and your opponent will not be able to attack. Some of these areas do require that you are out of combat for ten seconds, however, so be aware that you may not be allowed in until that time has elapsed.

 

Now that you know the basics of the Wilderness do you think you are up to the challenge? Are you ready to tackle the epic wilderness? Why not create a free account at the official website. and jump in game. The Wilderness returns on February 1st so let battle commence.

Faxion Preview Tour – Heaven or Hell? LET’S ROCK!
By Michael Sagoe (mikedot), OnRPG Journalist

 

UTV True Games is working on an epic new online game that will pit the forces of Heaven and Hell in a war to settle the score once and for all. Faxion is a traditional MMORPG that focuses heavily on combat and will serve up tons of exciting experiences that will prove it’s not just another run of the mill MMO. The game is currently in an alpha testing phase and I got a chance to play first hand.

 

For starters, players will begin the game by choosing whether to side with Heaven or Hell. It may seem like a tough decision, but both sides are structured very similar to each other.  For this tour, I and several others joined up with the Heaven side to meet up with Ashen Temper, one of the Lead Developers for the game. Once gathered, we set off to see and learn more about world of Faxion.

 

 

 

Ashen first explained to us about the game’s classes: Available for both heaven and hell are Crusaders/Reavers (warrior types), Diviner/Occultists which are range/DPS dealers and Guardian/Zealots which can heal and buff. While this all sounds like the same old stuff we’ve seen from other MMOs before, Faxion sets itself apart from the pack by introducing a multi-class system.  Basically, you can mix and match skills between the available classes to create a unique class you can call your own.

 

Want to create a ranged class with tanking abilities? No problem!

…Or how about a warrior that can heal and buff? Go for it!

 

Although you’re free to tweak your character with tons of different possibilities, the amount of multi-class skills you can earn are balanced out by the amount of skills points needed to unlock them. Gaining skills for your primary class will require the least amount of points, secondary class will have a moderately higher amount needed and your third class will require a ton of points. Plus: You’ll need considerable amounts of gold to gain those skills as well, so you won’t be able to create a character with every skill available.

 

Next up: We took a quick peak into a wild museum with exhibits on unicorns, creepy goatmen and even a giant wookiee!

 

 

After that, we ran off to the marketplace to see what UTV had planned for the game’s F2P aspect. Like with UTV other titles, Faxion will be a free-to-play title with micro-transactions.  Just about everything in Faxion’s game world can be earned from looting or purchased over at market with in-game gold. But what if you’d rather spend less time finding equipment and more time battling others? Well you have the option to purchase special coins with real currency to purchase items from the market as well.

 

 

 

This gives you the choice to either enjoy the game with time and/or money spent, and will make sure that Faxion will never have a “pay-to-win” issue. Now this is an excellent decision from UTV that many free-to-play publishers and devs should take note from.

 

It was then time to get our heavenly hands dirty with a little combat. We strolled along the city looking for some suspicious looking characters and ran into this big ugly shmuck. We tried to take it down, but most of us got taken out pretty fast.  Dying in Faxion (currently) does not have any penalties whatsoever, so it becomes more of a pride and humiliation kind of thing.

 

 

 

The world of Faxion proves to be one that isn’t for the weak, because you’re never too far from a fight around here. This game is completely geared for PvP in just about every way. Sure, there will be a few PvE opportunities here and there, but ultimately, you’re going to have to use your strengths to beat up someone in your opposing faction. For instance, both factions will be batting to control different areas to gain resources and special quests. When areas are controlled by Heaven, the sky will turn bright and blue, while areas controlled by Hell will turn dark and red. If you were on a quest in a particular area and it ends up getting taken over, you’ll be cut off from that quest and would have to fight the opposing faction to get it back.

 

Now it was time for us to visit one of the many fascinating worlds in Faxion: The realm of the seven deadly sins. Currently, the gluttony area known as “the fields of hunger” was available, but soon there will be a realm for every other sin (can’t wait to see what the lust realm looks like!) The fields of hunger had tons of trees bearing fruit and crops to be harvested. I saw several NPCs slaving over these crops while fat; disgusting dudes were having a feast. From there, the realm of Gluttony kept getting grosser at every turn.

 

I witness one of the most disgusting things ever in an MMO: This freakishly huge man surrounded by food and covered in slime stood in front of us. There was also tube above him that ran straight to his mouth so he could eat all day. The room he was in was also a huge mess, as there was tons of discarded and half-eaten food everywhere. When we first saw it, I and the others thought: LETS CLIMB MT. FATTY! We started jumping all over it to see if we could reach the top, but sadly, we couldn’t. L

 

 

 

Behind this huge blob of a man, there were hills upon hills of wasted, rotting food. As horrible as that was, Ashen tells us that these huge hills would be great places to jump off and glide to your next destination (if you have a pair of working wings.)

 

 

 

While there was several bugs and issues that occurred the experience, my preview tour of Faxion left me greatly impressed. The whole concept of Heaven vs. Hell is intriguing, and the constant struggle for supremacy will keep the excitement levels high.

 

 

 

Spending A Good Night In Neverwinter
A retrospective on the Neverwinter Nights series, filled to the brim with nostalgia and joy
By Jason (Hhean) Harper, OnRPG Journalist

 

Neverwinter Nights 2, the Obsidian made sequel to BioWare’s ode to pen and paper RPGs has finally made it on to the Steam distribution platform, enjoying some good sales numbers for a game now over four years old. What’s made this series so enduring over the years, and why are both games still played by so many people, so long after their release?

 

Simply put, no other game on the market, nor any game currently in development, offers the diversity that Neverwinter Nights series provides, all without a single modification. No other set of games comes with a full single player campaign, a robust toolset for building your own content, and a powerful administrative client straight out of the box. Built with a comprehensive multiplayer component in mind, the Neverwinter Nights games were both game, and gaming platform.

 

 

The first Neverwinter Nights was pitched as software to allow old Pen and Paper groups to play together online in dungeons made by, and run by their old Dungeon Master in days of yore. It was intended to be the successor to the critically acclaimed Baldur’s Gate series, while updating to the Dungeons and Dragons 3.0 ruleset, and moving from the aged infinity engine to a new 3D engine dubbed ‘Aurora’.

 

For many people, the single player alone was worth their time and money. If the original campaign and the expansions weren’t enough, even more content was available, crafted by the active community on Neverwinter Vault. This was made possible by the games’ powerful, yet surprisingly easy to use Aurora and Electron Toolsets, which came with Neverwinter Nights and its sequel, respectively.

 

With most games, the option to use its development kit really is only available to someone with some knowledge of 3D modelling and design before they could even begin understanding what they are looking at. It would take weeks, or months, to learn the basics of the Unreal Development Kit, the Valve Hammer Editor, or Morrowind’s Toolset (although the latter had a relatively painless learning curve by comparison). With the Aurora, or Electron Toolset (the former more than the latter), you really could learn it as you used it, jumping in without reading a single tutorial, though these helped greatly with some of the more sophisticated aspects of the toolsets, such as scripting. It was this ease of access that gave rise to the robust community surrounding the game; Builders and modders, storytellers and artists, coders and server admins all creating and hosting new content for others to enjoy.

 

 

There couldn’t have been such a strong community surrounding the game though if it had no multiplayer component, and indeed, the games were built from the ground up with multiplayer in mind. The first trailers for the original game heavily emphasized the multiplayer aspect of the game, and the advantages of interacting with someone on the Dungeon Master (DM) client.

 

That said, the majority of online usage for the game was simply people playing through the original campaigns co-operatively with their friends (A market the new Cryptic-made Neverwinter game hopes to tap into with its co-op focus). The smaller sessions in custom dungeons, created and run by a Dungeon Master (that were the game’s intended purpose) turned out to be in the minority when the game first came out.

 

The game’s multiplayer got its most interesting twist some time after the release of the original game when some of the players began to realize the potential of Neverwinter Nights as a platform. The persistent worlds began to appear, small scale MMORPGs (Or MORPGs) designed by small teams for specific purposes. Rather than the single digit numbers of a co-op campaign, or the numberless legions in an MMO, the persistent worlds fell in the area of two dozen to fifty individuals playing together at any given time, an area where few games seem to tread outside of the FPS genre.

 

The action and arena servers sprang up – fields of endless battle, a geeky Valhalla, where only the strongest of munchkins could survive. The social servers grew into bizarre realms where a floating eyeball would converse with a half vampire/dragon about the migration patterns of geese. This is unlike what the modern ‘Social’ servers are like though, which spread like herpes some time later, and are places entirely set up for some of the most bizarre cybersex outside of second life. The Roleplay servers set up their stages, upon which the players would act as the protagonists to a play with sets and props crafted by their Dungeon Masters, and penned by madmen.

 

 

Each of these places grew to have their own rules and customs, and anyone joining Neverwinter Nights 2 now, picking it up as an impulse buy from a steam sale perhaps, is now treated to a plethora of ways to play, of different worlds and experiences ready to be explored.

 

Next week we’ll explore why, if all of these ideas were so great, why no other game went the direction that the Neverwinter Nights games took. The flaws of creating a game as a platform for large scale community development, and why there likely won’t be any games released in the near future that follow its business model.

Legend of Mir 3 Retro Review: Theres Still Something Here
By Kei Beneza (dividelife), OnRPG Journalist

 

There are several types of games that will hook you because of its awesome graphics. After playing for a while, however, it becomes apparent that the game is just like the airhead you might have met at the bar two weeks ago: all pretty, beautifully made up and packaged, but has no substance.

 

Gamers today often mistake “graphic quality” for “quality games”. Fortunately, WeMade Entertainment’s Legend of Mir 3 doesn’t fall in the airhead category. Let’s get this out of the way early on: if you play this game, do not expect flashy or jaw-dropping graphics. In fact, this game’s graphics is so dated that it can run on your technically challenged mom’s personal computer that she only uses to process Word documents.

 

Legend of Mir 3 is not exactly a new or original game. It has been released as a sequel to uber-popular Legend of Mir 2, though the game is more likely considered as its remake. The series is not a big hit in the Western countries, but the game thrived well in Asia (particularly in South Korea and China) enough to make it to the Guinness Book of World Records for having the largest numbers of subscribers playing online simultaneously. Legend of Mir 3 was released around a few years short of a decade ago, and it was only globally released in 2009. And in 2009, you have to admit that gamers will kind of want to play a game that will challenge and conquer their epic set up. Legend of Mir 3 is not that kind of game, but if you look past the graphics problem, then you’ll see why this game has amassed a huge and loyal following in past few years.

 

A Few Class Lessons

Legend of Mir 3 is an Oriental-themed game, with the Mir universe done in 2D isometric graphics. The first time I saw it, I was immediately reminded of good ol’ dungeon crawlers. Suffice to say, it doesn’t disappoint in that aspect because it feels and plays like one. Let’s start from the character creation screen where you can choose from four classes the Warrior, Wizard, Taoist or the Assassin; after naming and picking your character’s gender, you’re all set. You can’t customize your characters at all. Your starting town depends on your class. Either way, the game is brimming with assorted quests such as the generally easy errand quests, others are hack-and-slash types, and then there are the quests that will unravel the stories in the Mir universe. For the early levels, the game would technically feel the same for all class types since your character will be barely equipped. And I’m talking about your level 1 character in his or her birthday suit. The game is actually generous enough to provide you with your basic outfit, class weapon, a potion and a, hmm, a candle. This is something of notable importance which we will discuss later on.

 

It doesn’t matter what class you choose at the beginning because you won’t have any class-specific skills as of yet. The Warrior is your usual melee type character; your regular damage dealer with high hit points, but has low resistance against ranged attacks. The Wizard deals offensive ranged attacks and area of effect spells, relying mostly on mana points; it has low hit points, but it has a high magic resistance. The Taoist is most balanced class among the four and uses soul charm to deal either holy or unholy spells. It is a support type character that will be always welcome to your group for the much needed heals and buffs. A pretty advanced class, the Taoists usually has a hard time gaining levels quickly because it neither has high attack power (like Warriors) nor high ranged damages (like Wizards). Questing alone means you only have yourself to heal or support, which is kind of sad for Taoists. The Assassin is a new class addition to the Mir series. Their specialty is dealing quick and fatal damages because, unlike the Warriors who usually acts as tanks, the assassins are still pretty susceptible to damage since their armours are not as tough as that of the Warriors’.

 

The best you can do at the beginning is to equip your given outfit and take on hack-and-slash your way until you level enough to obtain a Mu-Gong (or martial art) skill book. The skill trees of each character is wide and varied, like seeing twice or thrice the number of skills you can acquire in Diablo 2 (which is the first game I thought of upon seeing the interface). It is more advisable to stick to a particular tree to unlock the highest skill in that tree.

 

Let There Be Light

As mentioned above, the candles are quite important in the game. This is because the game operates a day and night feature, wherein at night you will have to light up something (a candle or a torch) to let you see through the environment. Unlike newer games that also have the same feature, seeing in Legend of Mir 3 is a tad bit difficult because of the graphical limitations. It will be harder to see if a beast or monster is just around the corner… unless your eyes are sharp enough to detect the slight difference in depth of the background and the monsters. While there are helpful name tags in the monsters, it still proves to be a little annoying because the all too simple font makes it hard for me to read or identify which is which, especially when a barrage of enemies appear on my monitor. Lighting a torch or candle adds a touch of realism to the whole feel of the game, though.

 

It’s A Limited Edition

Legend of Mir 3 is a game that doesn’t lack substance, but it has some limitations that made it feel too old when compared to this year’s array of MMORPGs. The character classes seem to be a tad limited, but even though there are hundred thousand others who are Warriors or Assassins just like you, your build can still be unique with its expansive skill sets. The interface, in my opinion, takes quite a huge space at the bottom. The user interface windows are too simplistic and uninspired. Generally a PvP-oriented game, this game may prove to be a challenge for those used to PvEs. Having a guild in this game will pretty much make your gameplay more exciting with its siege wars. This game is unlike the other games of today that may be aesthetically pleasing but lacking substantial or serious gameplay. Legend of Mir 3 is the kind of game I would play only for sheer nostalgia, of going back to basics so I don’t think I’m closing my doors on this one. Are you?

 

Good

– Old school PvP goodness

– Several options for your character build

 

Bad

– Old school graphics can be a burden

– Texts are not aligned and font type makes it harder to read sometimes