Aika Online Review: Gun-Kata Women? I’m In!

By Kei Beneza (dividelife), OnRPG Journalist

Aika Online is an action-packed MMORPG famous for its nonstop PVP experience. The game has been blessed with enthusiastic reviews, all praising its supposed quality of gameplay. After seeing tons of awards bestowed upon it during the 2009 Korean Game Awards, I couldn’t help but be drawn to its fame and glory. It is one of the most famous MMORPGS in Korea today, so I’m expecting no less from the famous Aika Online. Again, the game is praised for its PVP features such as its astonishing 1000 vs 1000 RVR (that’s a lot of players!). This means that you will always have people to kill regardless of how bad your virtual bloodlust is. The game is also epically stylish combat-wise, meaning it’s not your average everyday MMO that features a single slash or attack animation per character. Will 2009’s Best Game of The Show live up to our expectations? *logs in*

Smexist Galore: Is Healing Really For The Women?

There are six classes in the game, each with their own unique playstyle and GENDER (that’s right! Genderlocking!). Anyway, the classes are separated via archetype, meaning there are two melee characters (Paladin and Warrior), two long ranged ones (Dual Gunners and Rifleman), and two magic users (Warlock and Cleric). Yes, it’s amazing how both genders play differently from one another, but that’s not really the thing here (talk about sexists). Aside from the class option, you are given a small selection of premade faces and hairstyles to choose from. The graphics are solid, that much I can assure you, but it always pays to look different from everyone. Anyway, if you’re into stylish suits, there’s no doubt that this game will satisfy your lust for fashion as the characters do look exquisite in every way. There’s definitely enough fanservice pretty boys and underboobs to keep you company all the way. I guess the sad part is that the armor sets will be the only ones that will differentiate you from each other.

What’s Next? Flying Unicorns?

After enduring a series of grindfests, you’ll be prompted to get your first Pran. Prans are technically magical loli girls who sort of acts like the pets in the game; however, unlike the player characters, these cute little girls actually evolve and grow up depending on how you play your cards (which will be further discussed). Much like pets, Prans can learn combat spells which can aid you well in battle. Since you’re bound to take on a wave of monsters soon, it’d be wise to strengthen your Pran as early as possible. Perhaps the best thing about Prans is how you can customize them to complement your playstyle. Whether you want a damaging buffer or a healing little dodger, you’ll find that there’s enough Prans to go around. Prans start out as freaky long-legged Tinkerbell ripoffs but will eventually take on a scrumptious humanoid anime girl form after a period of time. Her form changes depending on how you treat her, so make sure you toughen her up if you’re looking to acquire a tough cookie.

Talk To Me

One additional factor that makes this game a unique experience for everyone is the quest dialogue. Unlike other games that force you to read a big block of quest text before letting you get a piece of the action, Aika Online gives players the ability to respond through a series of premade replies much similar to that of single-player games. This system is also essential for your Prans’ growth as most of the changes that are bound to occur greatly relies on how you treat her. It’s actually a great way of strengthening the bond between a player and his pet; too bad other games don’t give you this much interaction.

TO THE RIGHT! TO THE LEFT!

And now on to the nitty gritty!What makes Aika Online TRULY special is its PVP system. If you’re looking for an all out epic war, then Aika Online is the game for you. Aside from the petty duels, the game sports a series of battlegrounds, all ranging from 100 vs 100 to 1000 vs 1000. Imagine that! I enjoy wars that match the clashing population of RF Online’s Chip Wars and World of Warcraft’s Battle for Wintergrasp, but this is ridiculous (in a good sense)! Aside from the epic battlegrounds, players can also participate in nation wars which, as the name states, is a giant bloodfest between all five nations. There’s also my favorite which is the Castle Siege, where guilds team up with other guilds to overthrow the current rulers of the castle. Players can earn bonuses and a lot of useful stuff if ever they are successful, so be sure to participate when able. When it comes to PVP, Aika’s player-to-player goodness beats a lot of MMOs by a mile. I can’t seem to emphasize that further, but you get the idea.

The two meanings of ‘flashy graphics’

The graphics are actually pretty flashy if you were to ask me. The characters look pretty crisp which allows players to admire the stunning features of their clothes…  as well as other body parts :3. The background is actually pretty good but it could still use a bit of tweaking as most of the terrain lacks texture and depth. Though the idea of aesthetics doesn’t really affect the gameplay, it wouldn’t hurt to make the eye-candy experience a bit more extravagant. The framerate is more than acceptable resulting in stunning character movements especially when your character is beating the living crap out of a single enemy. The vibrant lighting effects are amazing in my opinion and greatly complements the whole action-packed feel. I don’t know if it’s just me, but floating texts/numbers during combat for me is an additional factor when it comes to MMO graphics. It’s always great to see how hard you hit through a series of floating red numbers. Now if my claim is true, then I would have to commend Aika Online for having one of the most satisfying crunch numbers in MMO history (I like to exaggerate but it’s also pretty darn good).

The Verdict

I think it’s pretty obvious how impressed I am with the game. Awesome PVP system, questing, loli fairies, what more could you ask for? As far as features are concerned, Aika Online definitely deserved being Korea Game Awards 2009’s game of the show. You see, these are the type of games that prevent me from commiting myself to playing various PAY TO PLAY games. It’s free, it’s good, and most of all, it’s really damn good!

The character customization phase could use a bit of gender tweaking. It would definitely be awesome to play as a male dual gunner, or better yet, a female rifleman (or riflewoman). Anyway, if you’re looking for an MMO for keeps—register, download, and play!

Pros

-Quests

-Answering system

-Prans are damn cute (when they mature *cough cough)

-Stylish

-Insane PVP

Cons

-Character customization lacks features

-Genderlocking?

-Graphics could use a bit of tweaking

City of Heroes Meta’s Verse: CoH Isn’t WoW

I’m breaking away from the news this week and doing a bit of an opinion piece. Something happened to me this week while I was playing with some friends and I need to talk about it because it’s a topic I keep hearing and I’ve had enough. One of my oldest friends in City of Heroes is against change. He is of the opinion that all the new things coming out, the direction the devs are taking us is towards a World of Warcraft route. That by the end of these changes we may as well be a WoW clone but with heroes instead of fantasy creatures. Now if this was the first time I’d heard this I would ignore it. But I’ve heard several people over several global channels saying this. And I’ve had enough. I won’t go into why I don’t think it’s like WoW, because honestly I don’t know. It was a game that I could never get into and know next to nothing about. I will instead go into the basic ideas people are trying to get across.

Anyone who has played City of Heroes knows that teaming means to rescue miscellaneous person X, get item B or stop villain M before something terrible happens and combat means walking up to the bad guy and hitting them until they stop. On my main character (a Katana/Super Reflexes Scrapper) I can completely stop paying attention when fighting minions as long as I keep mashing the same four or five buttons. With the new Apex and Tinmage task forces you have to stay paying attention. Be on yours toes, constantly moving. In terms of the fighting styles it is completely different from anything we have ever had before.

Why don’t people like this? It means the game is harder. Its resulted in leaders who more than anything are in charge of telling people when to do what. Why is this happening? Well there are two reasons. The first, the game is changing but the mentality of players isn’t. People still want to stand around and fight. But when you’re being targeted from orbit, you need to move or else you die. When people aren’t moving when they need to it becomes the job of the leader to start telling people when to move. And the leader becomes a glorified babysitter. The second reason is that people aren’t used to failing. Sure, it’s a game. And no one likes failing a game. But some people are so afraid of ending up face down, or maybe it’s the debt that they aren’t willing to take risks. Personally I’ve never had that big of a problem with debt. And when I team with people who are afraid of debt, or who take issue with my taking risks to make things more interesting I give them a saying that seems to stop them. “Debt ain’t nothin’ but a badge.” Change is bad? I don’t think so.

City of Heroes wasn’t stale. Things would suggest otherwise. Since the Alpha slot was unlocked every weekend two servers have gone into the red. This means that they have a large number of people on them. Many other servers have gone yellow. Now, thanks to the weekly strike targets servers are going into the red during the week. All of the servers are going from green to yellow at the very least. Numbers show that more people are logging in. More people are playing. At some points in the past it was next to impossible to find a team for anything. This is especially true of high end content. My favorite task force is the Lady Grey. Before the Alpha slot you couldn’t find 8 people to fill a team to do the task force unless it was a speed run. Now you see them being run daily. Especially this week while it’s the weekly strike target.

This has of course lead me to another complaint people have been having. One that for once I will agree is a valid point. It is (nearly) impossible to find a team that isn’t level fifty. Everyone wants those shards. And if they don’t want incarnate shards they’re after a notice of the well. Why is this the case? We have something new. And people jump at new things. Especially the weekly strike forces because they seem for now to be a limited time thing. The only way to get something before it comes out for the rest of the population. The real question that has to be asked is why, these people who can’t find non level fifty teams aren’t on fifties themselves.

The biggest worry my friend and other people have had is that City of Heroes won’t be what it has been for so long. That the game will change so much it will be unrecognizable. I think all those people need to take a step back and look at the big picture. Apex, Tinmage, Incarnate, Incarnate trials are all end game content. Something players have been begging for. But before you can get to that point there are fifty whole levels you have to get through. When things calm down, incarnates are old news everyone they’ll look back at this moment and laugh at how worried they were.

Maybe WoW did have weekly tasks with extra bonuses first, maybe they had raids with large amounts of people. Does that mean we’re turning into them? No. Does it mean we’re taking a step backwards from being industry leaders? No. Comparing City of Heroes to WoW is unfair. Saying if you want change go play WoW is ridiculous.

City of Heroes needed the change, its benefitting from the change that’s happened already and this has just been a preview of things to come. The grinding is gone, speed runs of task forces are all but at an end. I don’t feel like making petless masterminds or concept builds just to make the game interesting for me again. The game is interesting for what it is. My desire to play is stronger than it has ever been and I’m looking forward to everything that’s coming. Maybe you agree with me, or maybe you agree with the others. Either way I hope you found this informative and got some insight.

Just a reminder that starting Tuesday the Weekly Strike Targets will be Sister Psyche and Silver Mantis.

Meta’s Verse is written by Meticulous Meta who lives in Atlas Park with her dog Snuflé

EverQuests Age of Rediscovery: Fippy and Vulak

EverQuest, the game everyone has heard of. A lot of people have played for a short period of time at least and it is credited with being one of the first Western Massively Multiplayer games to hit the mainstream all the way back in 1999. Fast forward to the present and over the last decade it has had seventeen expansions, given birth to its sequel, EverQuest II and several PlayStation 2 games. But starting today, one server will be taking a page from Prince, and partying like its 1999. The clocks are being rolled back to when EverQuest was just a baby. Back when I had the pleasure of having my first experience with the game.

So what is going on with those folks over at EQ? Well it’s a concept they’ve tried before with great success, a progression server. Previous attempts have been such a success they’re doing it again, cleaned up a bit and the rules changed to make it more user friendly. The server, Fippy Darkpaw as it is being called will travel through the history of EverQuest at an accelerated rate so players can experience the game as it was originally. Playing as each expansion comes out in the same order it was previously released, and giving players new and old the chance to rediscover the world of EverQuest.

I had to give up playing after the first expansion came out because at that time I was just a child and my computer was made up of hand me down parts from a better, newer computer. When the Ruins of Kunark came out my computer just couldn’t handle it. So I put down the game I loved and haven’t touched it since. Over the years I considered picking it up at least a dozen times. But each time I faced the disappointment that I would be getting all this new content I knew nothing about all at once. I wanted to live out as they released. This server is giving me that chance. It has brought me back to a part of my childhood that has defined who I am. The game that helped me become the gamer I am today. I don’t know exactly what will come as I haven’t kept up to date on the lore and goings on in the EverQuest world but I’m ready to find out.

Curious how it will work? Well so was I. So I did a bit of research. After a set amount of time, 90 days for the first release then 60 days for each expansion there will be a voting period where any character over level 30 on Fippy Darkpaw will get to vote if they are ready to advance to the next expansion. Once a certain percentage of the population votes in favour of moving to the next expansion it will be done.

The reason you have to be at least level 30 is they want to make sure that only people who are on the server and dedicated to it get a vote. This isn’t the only thing the players will be getting a chance to vote on. But it will certainly be the biggest and most important. Voting will be available for a week, so there is no need to feel pressured into logging in right away. Most importantly though, we will be starting out with only the basic races and classes. Others will be unlocked as the server gets to the appropriate expansion. Zones and content that were released between expansions will be unlocked with the expansion they were closest to released to. A few things couldn’t be changed because they’re hardcoded into the game and changing them for one server would mean changing them for all the servers.

We won’t hold this against them though. From all accounts this is the most advanced and best progression server to date. And it is indeed proving so popular that a second progression server with the same rules has been opened. It is being called Vulak’Aerr. In the EverQuest lore Vulak’Aerr is the lord of the temple of Veeshan, a dragon who will summon other dragons during engagements. This brings me to Fippy Darkpaw. When I first read the name that was picked I thought to myself that everyone was insane. It was a name voted for by players but I of course had no idea what, or who Fippy Darkpaw was. He is a monster who spawns in the newbie area of Qeynos, one of the starting cities for Humans. In celebration of the release of the progression servers all EverQuest accounts that have ever been have been reactivated for a short time. As you can imagine though that’s a lot of accounts, but emails are being sent out telling everyone about the reactivation.

This ultimately brings me to the end, the end for this week at least. Come back every week to find out more about my adventures on Fippy Darkpaw. Read interviews from players new and old and get my account of how the progression server goes. There will be news updates, alerts for when voting begins and anything else you may need to know if you play on Fippy Darkpaw or Vulak’Aerr. I hope you enjoy this weekly article and come with me as I enter the Age of Rediscovery.