Monthly Archives: February 2011

Villagers and Heroes: Reborn

Villagers & Heroes (previously A Mystical Land) is a free-to-play 3D browser game that offers loads of adventures to you and thousands of other players in a fantastic world.

Besides fighting monsters as a wizard, warrior, hunter, or priest to improve your character, a variety of more casual activities are at your disposal including fishing, mining, blacksmithing and cooking.

Villagers and Heroes uses many Facebook features which allow you to easily find your Facebook friends and share achievements and news.

Europe 1400

Establish your own dynasty in a medieval city: Become a prestigious craftsman, a cunning merchant or a dodgy scoundrel. Produce high-value goods to sell at the market or concoct evil schemes.

In Europe 1400 your job is to found a family dynasty in a medieval city: develop an economic empire by pursuing a profession, become an expert trader and climb the political ladder. To help you achieve your goals, a number of above-board options are available to you, but you can also choose to take the dark path of intrigue.

You own a residence, which you can gradually transform into a grand palace from the small hut that you start off with. You also own production workshops, in which you can produce numerous types of goods.

The goods, which range from simple resources to powerful artifacts can be bought but also sold at the marketplace for a profit. You can also trade directly with other players via your warehouse and take advantage of fewer price fluctuations than at the market.

As soon as you have gained enough wealth and influence, you should consider starting your political career. A range of offices offer you a multitude of privileges and benefits, allowing you to expand your sphere of influence and eradicate any unwanted competition.

But beware! Taking the dark path of questionable methods may have you thrown in the dungeon or on the dungeon master’s rack faster than you can blink an eye. And remember: there is nothing wrong with a little cleverly spun intrigue – as long as it remains undiscovered.

 

Landmark

Landmark is a sandbox MMO featuring fully destructible environments, permanent changes to the world based on player actions, and action consequence. Landmark serves as a building tool for players to build their own worlds and adventures from the ground up.

Farmerama

Life as a humble farmer at Farmerama is pretty darn swell: you start off with your very own farmhouse, mill and barn. Make the best of life and carefully tend your greatest asset: your land!

Show that you’re the cream of the crop: Raise a fine herd of cattle, pull in the largest harvest and get your orchard to bloom.

Bitefight

Legend tells of an everlasting battle, driven by blood lust, between creatures of the night for eternal supremacy. And now the legend has become reality. In the shadows of the underworld, a battle rages between vampires and werewolves, the offspring of evil. Their weapons are simple but effective: fangs, steel and clans are all they need to face their opponents and to hunt for human blood. What type of blood will be running through your veins?

DC Universe Cat Woman Inspired Update Announced

DC Universe Cat Woman Inspired Update Announced

 

After Michelle Pfeiffer, Halle Berry *shudder* and the recently announced Anne Hathaway, a new version of Gotham’s favourite cat burglar is coming, and she’s bringing Egyptian gods goodies with her!


In the first of Sony Online Entertainments promised monthly content ‘Issues’, DC’s ’ Feline Fatale’  is taking centre stage.  Catwoman brings with her cursed Egyptian artefacts and monsters. See kids? Robbing museums is bad!


DCUO Cat Woman Update

 

“Basically, roughly on a monthly basis we want to add more stuff to the game,” said Chris Cao, the game’s director. “For February we looked and saw that not everyone is max level, so we need some new stuff for people who are still climbing up and trying to become a legend. But we also need something for those players who have already maxed out.”


So this new content will span all levels and give some new items, enemies and armours In the Ancient Mayan Armour and Cat Burglar gear. Catwoman will also be opened up as a playable character in the Legends PvP Arena.


DCUO Mayan Armour Gear Set

DCUO Cat Burgler Gear Set

 

But Batman’s sometimes partner and sometimes foe is not alone as the season of romance will also see Wonder Woman and Circe fighting it out and upsetting the Goddess of Love. This leads to all manner of Valentine’s themed mayhem and adventures in the ‘cherub shadow realm’. Players will compete both with and against each other to earn hearts to use as ingame currency and will ultimately face off against the Goddess of love herself.


In addition, there will be a new Duos mission against Bane, a new Raid mission in the Batcave, races and Information investigations. Perhaps the biggest news for current players is that Item trading will be introduced, so perhaps the Broker Houses in the Watchtower and Hall of Doom will be active sooner than we thought.

Last Online

Be part of one race in the world of LAST Online, which omprises huge world outlook, mutiple classes and all sorts of quests. The story line bases on the psychic revolution which is similar with Industrial Revolution in Europe. The heroes fight against with daimons.The 100:100 mode will be full glory. The developer said they won’t reduce any contents to prevent players obtaining pleasure.

Metropolis Now: Get Your Feet Wet with DC Universe Online’s Opening Levels

Metropolis Now: Get Your Feet Wet with DC Universe Online’s Opening Levels
By Stephen Boyd, OnRPG Journalist

 

Once you have escaped from Braniac’s ship with the assistance of Superman or Lex Luthor (depending on your allegiance) you are thrust into the main game world.

 

For heroes you will either be sent to the east End of Gotham or, in this case, to Little Bohemia in Metropolis.

 

DC Universe Meto Police Station

 

Unfortunately for this usually peaceful area, it has become infested with giant gorillas. Superman tasks you with shutting down this invasion by defeating X number of gorilla soldiers and retrieving X number of information disks. And this sets the tone for the vast majority of the early missions in DC Universe Online. Killing and fetching will need to be done until you reach the boss at the end of the chain and so the early missions can tend a little to the grindy end of things.

 

DC Universe Fighting Monkeys for XP

 

Levelling up happens fairly quickly though at this early stage so you will be given a few new abilities during these early missions. As you reach Level 3 before leaving Braniac’s ship, you already have one of your abilities slotted, but now you get to decide on which direction you want to take your character. In the case of this character, The Mummy, I have chosen a Nature power set this gives me an option of taking a Plant Mastery or Shapeshifting path. I think a werewolf Mummy is something we would all like to see, so that’s the way we are going with this one!

 

DC Universe Powerset Loadouts

 

Each of these start missions will run around three chapters and, in a change from the MMO norm, you will gain mission progression if an ally is running the same quest in your vicinity, even if you are not grouped. This mechanic makes the game world seem cohesive and lets you complete your missions a little more quickly. In another little tweak on MMO standards, you will receive partial XP for every task as soon as you accomplish it. For instance, here I was tasked with taking out 20 gorillas and collecting 10 battle plans. Once I had collected the battle plans, I was granted XP and that got me to Level 4.

 

DC Universe Quest Text

 

Once the full mission was completed I then moved to the next step on the quest chain and was awarded with some snazzy new gloves.

 

The one thing that is a little overwhelming at this point is the sheer speed at which enemies respawn. In this first mission enemies were reappearing literally seconds after I had dispatched them. The mobs also have a tendency to swarm. If you try and aggro one, chances are you will pull half a dozen, and that makes for one dead, or in this game ‘Knocked Out’, hero. I have to assume the developers have these respawn rates ramped up for all the new players, so they don’t have to hang around too long to complete quests, but this is something they need to look at soon.

 

Along the way you will come across several citizens of Metropolis (or Gotham) that need your help. These little side quests are normally integrated into your main missions and provide a great way to level up faster. They can also provide new weapons, armour and health drinks for your character. They will also boost your renown with the varying factions in DC Universe Online which will enable you to purchase exclusive weapons from the vendors associated with those factions.

 

Also scattered around the world are Information nodes.

 

DC Universe Information Nodes

These come in three flavours; Green, Blue and Yellow.

 

Green denotes details and information relating to the backstory of the mission you are running and will fill in some of the lore of DC Comics.

 

The Blue information nodes provide items. As far as I have been able to see, these don’t scale with your character, so best to search an area while doing the mission rather than returning after the fact.

 

The Yellow nodes are for Collectibles. There will be six for each area and collecting all of them will result in a nice reward being sent via your in-game mail from your mentor or another DC hero.

 

Collecting these Info Nodes will also count towards Feats, DC Universe Online Achievement system. However, in a twist on the usual Achievement or Trophy system, these Feat points can actually be translated to Skill Points which you can use in game to build up your character.

 

All this leads us to our first Boss encounter, in this case the villainous psycho-ape, Gorilla Grodd. After running through his army of simian soldiers, we must free his arch nemesis, The Flash and assist the Scarlet Speedster in taking him down.

 

DC Universe Stasis

This battle involves just battering the damn dirty ape until he releases his mental attacks, then running and avoiding them. The Flash does most of the heavy lifting in this fight, so ranged attacks and using the explosive barrels scattered around the room are your best bets.

 

DC Universe Raid Boss Encounter

 

As with the majority of the boss battles in Dc Universe Online, tactics are really not necessary. Just getting in there and keeping yourself healed seem to be the best strategies.  Taking down Gorilla Grodd will bring on the first of the Motion Comics that follow these Boss Encounters.

DC Universe Cutscene

 

These vary in both artistic quality and content. Grodd’s is basically an insight into his Ape Rage. However the Motion Comics that follow the encounters with Harley Quinn and Raven later in the game give nice little insights into the characters and are artistically impressive. Completing these missions will raise you to Level 6 and this, along with giving you more Power points to spend, will open up The Vault for your character.

 

DC Universe Vault Instance

 

The Vault is a nice little daily ‘Bonus Round’ that sees you enter the Joker’s Funhouse and smash presents that contain cash and sweet loot. The loot drops seem to be random and can contain useful weapon Power Ups or cosmetic items. So far I have received Flash T-Shirts, Superboy Hoodies and other DC Hero themed merchandise. Not particularly useful in-game, but a nice little nod to the Fanboys out there.

This covers the earliest stages of DC Universe Online. In our next feature we will look in more depth at the Skill Trees, Character Development and the introductions of PvP.