Bounty Bay Online: A Pirates Life For Me

By Remko Molenaar (Proxzor), OnRPG Journalist

 

 

Have you ever chosen Pirates over Ninja’s and did you ever feel like roaming the seven seas as Captain Jack Sparrow? Bounty Bay Online makes this a reality like few games can! Do you want to be a Pirate, Trader or Royal Guardian? You can choose between different classes to roam the seas and seek treasure. In this article I will be giving Bounty Bay Online an updated look at what has improved over the last few years.

 

 

History

Bounty Bay Online is set in the 16th century and there are different paths to take. Your first choice of customization is your character’s backstory, which can set you off down one of various paths in the game. Whether you choose to be a pirate or sail of as a rich trader you have a different story behind you, but all lead you on a mission of world peace.

 

 

I set sail as Captain Jack Arrow, a female pirate dedicated to getting as much booty as possible. The first thing I had to do was to choose a profession; there are currently five classes to choose from which are the following:

 

The Royal Military Officer is a High ranked member of the military who is talented with rifles and swords. Alongside their strengths in land battle they are also rather deft with cannons in sea battles. The Royal Military Officer is strong in Gunnery in Sea Battles and its Land Battle Strength is a Sword.

 

The Emperor Guardian is the elite from the imperial’s army who is good with the falchion, the axe, and the sword to name but a few. Although melee is his main strength; he can defeat enemies by using grappling tactics during sea battles too.

 

Roaming around the Caribbean, the Caribbean Pirate considers killing to be his hobby. He is very good at melee battles, and has many attack tactics such as grappling, ramming and short cannon attacks to defeat enemies during sea battles.

 

The Treasure Hunter has the passion to explore every corner of the world to find treasure. But he also excels at long distance cannons attacks, mines, and ramming tactics. Even on the ground he prefers to keep his distance, specializing in rifles.

 

The Armed Businessman is great at one thing, defending his bountiful supplies. In addition, his main strength lies in repairing and enhancing ships, and healing sailors. On the ground, he is good at healing, buffing allies, and shooting.

 

 

Since I created my character to be a pirate and roam the seven seas in search for more booty, I obviously chose the Caribbean Pirate profession since to reach my goals. As you level up you can obtain various profession skills to further improve your mastery of your combat style.

 

 

Throughout the game it is possible to acquire Reputation and Noble titles. There are many ways to obtain reputation such as authenticating rumors of treasure, discovering lands and questing. To earn Titles you require a certain amount of reputation and coins. Titles shouldn’t be overlooked in this game as they have amplifying status effects that have a major impact on your character late game. Almost every piece of armor or weapon requires some noble title as a prerequisite to equip.

 

 

Gameplay

First off you start off doing quests for the local NPC’s in the town you’re at. You will be helping the local farmers, miners and lumberjacks with their gathering of resources. You will also hunt down a few monsters with your sword and gather the needed items for several quests. This will teach you the basics in Bounty Bay Online. In every quest log you will find out which mob you will need to hunt or which NPC you need to talk. It is possible to click on the NPC’s green underlined name to automatically walk to the destination where this item or NPC is. As the game world is incredibly huge, this will be a big plus since remembering a single NPC location is nearly impossible.

 

 

After a few of these menial tasks you will earn the right to set sail as captain of your own vessel. However to sail out you will need sailors that will help you in your future quests; every ship has a maximum number of sailors that can sail along with you on your journey. The first quest lets you hire 50 sailors that will help you with whatever you desire; you will also need to buy food for the sailors so they don’t starve to death. After you have finally sailed out of the docks you can do whatever you want. You can do quests or just simply engage every ship you come across. This sandboxy feel is what really attracted me to the game.

 

 

Graphics

The graphics aren’t terrible but won’t be turning in heads in 2012. Bounty Bay Online has been out for 4 years now and so the requirements to run this game properly are really low. As long as you have a Pentium 3 processor along with a video card plugged in you are able to run this game. If you have no idea whatsoever about what kind of rig you’re running, just ask yourself if you’ve played an MMO before. If so then your rig can certainly handle this game.

 

 

Conclusion

Bounty Bay Online offers a wide variety of gameplay features for anyone looking for an MMO with real freedom. I chose to play as a pirate but there are a lot more of options you can choose from. The only downside I experienced while playing were a few annoying bugs but nothing so much as to detract from the overall experience. The game creates its own unique style that works out pretty well and certainly sets it apart from the majority of F2P MMOs on the market. If you have always liked Pirates over Ninjas and you have been a huge fan of Pirate movies you should try out Bounty Bay Online because it is a really fun game to play!

Call of Gods: Disappointing Climax

By John Gallagher (Zastlyn), OnRPG Journalist

 

Call of Gods, free-to-play browser game designed by KoramGames, is filled with constant moments of “if only.” The game has some very good ideas and a fun premise. However, it falls short in the actual execution aspect of those ideas. When the game begins, the player is allowed to choose between human, elf, or undead heroes. There is some slight player vs. player content that is determined by the race you choose, but it is mainly an aesthetic choice. The game has three main components: castle development, army management, and the battle system. The former two are detailed, unique and fun; however, the battle system is a big disappointment in a game that calls itself a MMORTS.

 

 

Call of Gods is a game that will keep you busy. The player has to manage multiple heroes’ stats, skills, and equipment, as well as their respective armies. It is also necessary to manage the castle and its vast array of buildings and upgrades. Everything in Call of Gods is upgradable, from the amount of units you have to those units’ attack and defense. Your castle will quickly become a familiar sight. At the castle, the player can construct buildings to gather resources, such as stone quarries and lumberyards. The player can also build battle units at the castle, as well as manage unit upgrades. Each building has multiple levels of upgrades – for example, an upgraded mine will produce more stone per minute. An upgraded barracks will add new units to add to your army. Buildings sometimes take up to 30 minutes to complete, but it is not necessary to keep playing while they are under construction. Players do not need to sink many hours into this game in order to have fun with it.

 

You’ll be here a lot.

 

When the player is not upgrading every possible thing in their castle they will be obtaining quests in the main world via a series of point-and-click screens. These quests are the main ways to level up the heroes recruited from the tavern. The player starts with a free hero, but it is possible to upgrade to a maximum of seven unique heroes, given the player has enough patience for the necessary resource collecting. Every hero has his or her own equipment slots, customizable skills and specialties, such as archer units or front line warriors. These quests consist mainly of killing certain units in pre-determined battle areas and automatically collecting the item in question. One unexpected difficulty in questing is understanding some objectives. Due to some bad translations, it is sometimes necessary to re-read an objective in order to make sense of its broken English. No quest was ever unintelligible, but it detracts from the overall game experience to have to read sentences such as “I do not care if you are enough brave.”

 

Point and click never looked so pretty.

 

The final aspect of the game you will become very familiar with is the battle screen. The battle system in this game was a big disappointment. After all the work the player does upgrading their armies and heroes, when it comes time to battle you can only observe. The battle system in this game is automated with a very simple set of rules for the AI to follow. In order to get closer to the enemy units move up predetermined “rows.” If there is no enemy within reach they move forward. That is the extent of the game’s battling A.I.  Due to this battle style, ranged units dominate the battlefield, never having to move and taking potshots at a slowly advancing enemy every turn. Each battle takes between 20 to 50 seconds. However, in order to complete most quests the player is required to fight the same enemy upwards of 6 times. That’s minutes of just watching your precious armies slowly winning the battles for you. It is a big letdown after the build-up of micromanaging your army’s composition.

 

Sadly, all you can do is watch.

 

Call of Gods has a good build up that never really reaches its climax due to the poor implementation of the battle system. It has great visuals, fun micromanaging, and tons of upgradable stuff that would have you coming back for more, but it all doesn’t mean much when battles are simply not fun.

 

Gameplay: A mixed bag of fun army building and a bad battle system hinder its gameplay greatly: 6.0.

Sound: A constantly repeating background theme with merely decent sound effects hurt this score: 6.0.

Replay Ability: With three different races, this game has a lot to it, if you have the patience: 7.5.

Graphics: The graphics are quite good, but there some stiff battle animations: 8.0.

Overall Score: The presentation is nice, but the lack of strategy in a strategy game hurt its score greatly: 6.5.

What is E-Sports?

By Remko Molenaar (Proxzor), OnRPG Journalist

 

 

 

Electronic sports also mostly known as e-sports is a term used to describe the competitive sport of playing games, and it is becoming a world known phenomenon. In countries such as South Korea e-sports has been quite known for a while and like most of you know the Starcraft franchise has been a life changing game for many Koreans. The first Starcraft game changed the country and people were able to play games instead of playing normal sports. At one point Starcraft crossed the threshold and become a television phenomenon as people started tuning in around the nation to view a serious online sporting event. For a long period of time Starcraft was the only game able to claim such a position as the very idea of competitive online sports was still developing along with the online gaming industry itself. However once games like Guild Wars began holding international tournaments, it became clear that this was going to be a big deal.

 

Exhibit A: Kind of a Big Deal

 

Some of you from our forums might know my background with competitive games; I have been a big fan of FPS games since I was a little boy playing my first game of. I have always been a fan of the Call of Duty series on the PC and have played it since the first version was launched. I have been playing Call of Duty 4 competitively and have attended several LANs (A gaming event in which multiple players connect directly between computers for minimal latency issues) where I placed quite high in ranks with my team.

 

 

Currently I have made the transition to RTS games. I have always liked Age of Empires 2 and played it casually when I was small but my games would always take days finish because I loved building up my empire and just defending incoming armies. However the lure of Starcraft was greater than ever with the release of its sequel, and I became enamored at the thought of competing professionally. In fact I just competed at a LAN in the Netherlands on the 21st of October with over 800 people to give you an idea of how large these events can be.

 

 

Lans

Do you remember the time where you went to college and you started up a small LAN with just a few people to play games such as Counter Strike, Call of Duty and Starcraft (or even Mario Kart for the more old schoolers). You did it mostly for fun and just to have a laugh with some friends. Nowadays however the LANs are getting more serious and the rise of competitive gaming is the focal point of this growth. This is particularly the case due to the introduction of publisher sponsored prize money that is sizable enough that professional gamers have begun living off of their earnings.

 

 

As I am writing this, MLG Orlando is currently on its final day of the tournament and the last matches are being played. MLG or Major League Gaming is one of the biggest organizers of LAN events in the US. They are hosting 6 lans currently in 2011 and each one of them has been a great success among the participants and visitors. The three games that are played currently at MLG Orlando are Halo Reach, Call of Duty: Black Ops and Starcraft 2. As I’m a PC guy I am focusing on the Starcraft 2 scene in which the MLG is paying out $14,000 among the top 8 players. The prize money announced for these games is enough to lure people from around the world to compete, and even now people such as ColbyCheeze are being hired out to spectate matches and provide commentary for the audience. Besides the MLG, the ESL and Europe’s Dreamhack are also famous for hosting these big money tournaments.

 

 

Organizations and Sponsors

Now the most important part of sports is getting fans to raise the banner of their favorite team in a competition. Without famous teams rising from the masses to rally spectators under them, sporting ventures are not viable. Various organizations such as the Taiwanese company Gamania have begun recruiting top players from around the world to represent them in worldwide tournaments. Organizations like Gamania pay these players a salary so that they can donate their full energy towards improving their skills at various games for upcoming competitions. Rumor has it that team Evil Geniuses is paying your star player Hulk 6 figure digits just to compete in gaming competitions!

 

 

Just as important as the organizers though are the sponsors. These sponsors invest a lot of money into big organizations to promote their brand because let’s face it, advertising your upcoming game at the Super Bowl isn’t exactly hitting our pinnacle target audience of your games, nor is it cost effective. As such gamer centric brands like Red Bull, Intel, AMD are investing large sums in getting their name out at all the major events.

 

 

I will continue to seek out my name in competitive gaming because it brings me a passion that nothing else compares to. It brings all the nerds together to make a statement that the virtual world is fast becoming on par with some of the major sporting leagues of the world. I hope that countries around the world will soon see the profits that can be made from these events and give them further support to quicken the proliferation of them worldwide. Maybe one day my kids will be able to take competitive gaming in school instead of physical education!