Yearly Archives: 2011

Realm Of Titans Now Accepting Beta Signups

Realm Of Titans Now Accepting Beta Signups

Aeria Games has officially announced Realm of the Titans!

Realm of the Titans is a bold, new take on the popular action strategy genre. In ROTT, two teams of up to five heroes face off on a dangerous and dynamic battlefield in an attempt to take total control of the map. As each team advances across the field of combat, they seize control points that spawn waves of NPC minions to assist them in the conflict. Players who perform well in battle are awarded points that can be used during the match to upgrade their hero’s powers and abilities. The game is meticulously designed to reward teamwork and tactics, and encourage fluid and fast-paced competitive gameplay.

 

Free MMO - Realm of the Titans - Battleground

For more information, or to be among the first to sign up for the upcoming CB testing period, visit the official Realm of the Titans website http://realmofthetitans.aeriagames.com. Players selected to participate will receive more information about the test when CB begins in Q2 of this year.

EverQuest II Extended Review: NeverQuest?

EverQuest II Extended Review: NeverQuest?

Neil Kewn (Murxidon) – OnRPG Journalist

EverQuest Online Adventures has its own special place in the annals of MMO history. The MMORPG that defined a genre, Sony’s historic title paved the way for online multiplayer games for years to come. Fans were naturally excited when its long awaited sequel hit shelves in 2005, but EverQuest II has failed to generate the same level of interest and sales when compared to other games in its class. With the market for pay-to-play MMOs notoriously hard to stay profitable in, many games are switching to payment free models. EverQuest II Extended follows suit by offering adventurers a cost-free route into Norrath 2.0, but is it worth your time?

 

EverQuest 2 Extended Gobin

 

Firstly, “cost-free” may be a little misleading. It’s important to note that EverQuest II hasn’t gone free to play. Those wanting to experience everything the game has to offer (and there is a lot) will still need to subscribe to one of Sony’s many subscription plans. Extended offers a portion of the game at no charge, with the developers hoping you’re drawn in enough to take out your credit card. Thankfully you don’t need to enter any payment details to play, and the streaming download service does an amicable job of getting you into Norrath quickly and pain-free.

One of the most appealing features of EverQuest II is the sheer number of different race and class combinations you can choose from. Whilst these are restricted in Extended, four class archetypes are still available (Fighter, Priest, Mage and Scout). These split into a number of different actual classes, two of each archetype are available to free players. Race selection is also limited. Races are split into Good, Evil and Neutral, but free players only have access to the Neutral tree, which houses just four different races. Luckily the game’s deep customization is kept intact, with a whole host of different sliders and options enabling you to shape and mould your own uniquely identifiable character.

Sony is still looking to make a buck or two off Extended. The company’s notorious virtual currency, titled Station Cash, is plastered all over the game, and the monthly subscription fee has been replaced with a cash shop. As is standard with most free MMOs, a variety of premium items, perks and enhancements are up for sale. You need to top up your “wallet” by purchasing blocks of Station Cash to gain access to the store, but the implementation of the system is so obtrusive that it acts more of a distraction than an incentive. Advertisements appear before you launch the game, during your actual play session, and even when you exit the client. You are force fed information on Sony’s membership plans (all four of them) and many of the game’s features are unavailable until you pay out. It does very little to encourage you to play, never mind pay.

 

EverQuest 2 Buff

There is still fun to be had, though. EverQuest’s interface is intuitive and easy to get to grips with, anyone who has played an MMO before won’t have much need for the tutorial that appears upon creating a character. Helpful hints appear at different stages of the early levels, detailing game and combat mechanics that are unique to the game.

At first glance, levelling a character in EverQuest II may seem familiar almost to point of imitation. You have to look further into the game to realize that this isn’t just another fantasy MMO. Weight has an effect on your character, meaning you won’t be carrying massive amounts of loot around all the time. Spell effects aren’t just dependant on your level and gear either, and can be upgraded using scrolls you find scattered around the world. Complaints regarding repetition and grinding in the original game have been addressed, and the implementation of a “mini ding” (restoring full health and power every 10% of your experience bar) is a welcome bonus for those in the early levels. Heroic Opportunities also add another element to the game’s combat system. These short mini-games award buffs and other advantages through the successful completion of spell and ability chains. It’s a small addition, but it makes combat a tad more interesting.

Crafting is an important part of the EverQuest II experience, and any player can choose to become a “Tradeskiller”. There are a large number of different skills you can choose to specialize in, split into three archetypes. The Craftsmen Tradeskill has classes that help you build wooden weapons and armour, rustle up food and drinks and design furniture for player’s homes. Outfitters forge heavy armour and metal weapons, and Scholars specialize in alchemy, spell upgrades and jewellery. The materials needed are often found in the world of Norrath itself, and your character can choose to “harvest” elements from the world around them. Fallen trees, rocks, plants, animal dens and throngs of fish are yours for the taking, and the Mining, Foresting, Fishing, Gathering and Trapping skills determine how well you gather these materials.

 

EverQuest 2 Casting

 

Once you have the necessary recipe, you’re ready to craft. The crafting process in EverQuest II is more than just the click-and-wait affair found in other MMOs, with players having to put some thought into their crafting in order to keep the quality of their output high. Your goal is to craft the item as quickly as possible whilst keeping the quality and durability of it at a respectable level. During the crafting process you must respond to different events in real-time, failure to do so will increase the chances of your finished product being a complete dud, wasting your materials and fuel. Often these events can be beneficial, adding a perk or buff to your item. This process works well on the whole, and the crafting mechanics themselves are deep, well implemented and most importantly, enjoyable.

One of the most redeemable factors of EverQuest II is its sound direction. The game probably has one of the best selections of music in any MMO. It is filled with impressive ambient tunes that seamlessly fade in and out during play, and most tracks are a pleasure to listen whilst you adventure. The sound effects are also a triumph. Armed combat is satisfying, thanks to the varied and meaty sounds that echo after each blow, and environmental sounds that accompany you on your travels (rustling grass and loud, tweeting birds to name just two) can make for a very atmospheric game at times.

EverQuest II is a very solid MMORPG. Sony has created a beautiful world dripping with atmosphere, a world that is both sadly underrated and overlooked. I would make no hesitation in recommending the game’s approachable and intuitive gameplay to anyone looking for a more refined MMORPG, but Extended’s approach to advertising and its heavy use of a cash shop makes it very hard to warrant a download. Extended isn’t a free-to-play MMORPG, it’s nothing more than an extremely restricted trial of a pay-to-play one. It merely acts an introduction to a bigger, better game, and those wishing to spend time in Norrath will find that their money is better spent purchasing the full game and a monthly subscription.

Pros:
Beautiful, varied world to explore
Novel ideas add depth to combat
Deep crafting mechanics

Cons:
Character development is crippled unless you pay
Annoying, distracting advertisements
Confusing payment model

King’s Bounty

King’s Bounty is a groundbreaking combination of dynamic adventure and turn-based
tactical battles.

The game lets you take on the role of Princess Amelie. She needs to avoid traps and find bonuses that appear in the various battle arenas.

King’s Bounty features a unique system of living items that exert their own will.

You Got RIFT In My Team Fortress 2!

You Got RIFT In My Team Fortress 2!

 
Valve’s Team Fortress 2 is about to be invaded by Rift, the upcoming MMO from Trion Worlds. Both companies announced today that Steam customers who pre-order Rift by March 4th will receive two exclusive melee weapons in Team Fortress 2: the “Sharpened Volcano Fragment” and “Sun-on-a-stick.” Additionally, the Valve team is adding a permanent Team Fortress 2 achievement that grants players a redeemable code for an equally exclusive (and terrifying) headpiece in Rift, the “Well Spun Hat.”

Team Fortress 2 players will automatically receive the melee weapons beginning today, while players lusting after the Well Spun Hat must complete the new “Riftwalker” achievement. After applying the code on their Trion account page, Rift players will receive the hat in their in-game mailbox beginning with the game’s headstart period on February 24th.

All Steam pre-order customers will receive the weapons, including those who’ve already purchased Rift through the digital platform. This offer is available to Steam users worldwide.

 
Item Descriptions:

Sharpened Volcano Fragment – Melee weapon for the Pyro

Sun-on-a-stick – Melee weapon for the Scout

Well Spun Hat – Cosmetic head slot item used to intimidate and frighten other players

 

To pre-order the game and receive the exclusive in-game items, visit www.steampowered.com.
For more information on Rift, please visit www.riftgame.com

Lucent Heart Star Contest Winner Announced

Lucent Heart Star Contest Winner Announced

Gamania Digital Entertainment announced that players can now sign up for Lucent Heart‘s upcoming “Prepare for Love!” sneak peek beta. Beginning just in time for Valentine’s Day, on February 10th-14th players are invited to find their Valentine in Lucent Heart and partake in special date dungeons, fun relationship building activities, or just some good old fashioned questing throughout Acadia. And as a special gift for a special occasion, Gamania will be turning on in-game weddings for serious couples.

Lucent Heart is a highly social Anime MMORPG that’s filled to the brim with unique content. Players will meet new friends and go on fun, lighthearted dates after being paired up by its matchmaking system. They will experience the powers of the Zodiac with special armor, abilities, and daily horoscope enhancements tied to their birthday. Not to mention 20 huge zones with unique monsters and bosses, hundreds of quests, numerous classes and skills, crafting, pets, mounts, and so much more.

Gamania would also like to introduce its new “Lucent Heart Star”, Vanessa Liang. Vanessa beat out some incredible competition in the “Lucent Heart Star” contest and will be the official representative for Lucent Heart’s North American launch.

“I’m beyond thrilled just thinking about my new role!” said Vanessa. “Being the Lucent Heart Star combines all of my favorite interests – gaming, anime, fashion, and cosplaying. I’m so thankful and excited to play with everyone that supported me, and to meet new people in the upcoming beta release.”

“We are very excited to have Vanessa on-board as Lucent Heart’s official spokesperson,” said David Wong, COO of Gamania. “We wanted to be sure we chose someone that represented Lucent Heart’s enthusiastic community and Vanessa is a perfect fit.”

Beta keys are available now for Lucent Heart’s “Prepare for Love!” beta. The keys are going fast so players will need to be quick to insure they get a spot. Sign up options can be found here.

For more information and to check out the interactive Zodiac wheel describing all 12 in-game Zodiac signs, visit the official Lucent Heart website.

Dust 514

DUST 514, featuring first-person shooter and RTS-style gameplay, will interact directly with EVE Online. This interplay between the two games opens the EVE universe to console gamers and gives them a chance to become part of one of the most massive cooperative play and social experiences ever.

 

 

The primary gameplay of DUST 514 features brutal ground combat that takes place on the surface of planets from EVE, delivering the visceral, adrenaline-fueled experience of futuristic firefights. Developed for the current generation of consoles, DUST 514 combines equal parts battlefield reflexes and strategic planning, giving commanders and ground infantry real-time configurable weapons and modular vehicles to manage dynamic battlefield conditions.

World of Tanks Review: Tank You Very Much

World of Tanks Review: Tank You Very Much

By Iain Compton

 

World of Tanks Urban Combat

 

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past few months, you’ve probably heard of World of Tanks; a third-person tank combat game that’s become a breakaway hit for the Russian developers. I’ve been playing the game on and off for the past few months and so the good folks at OnRPG asked me to write a review.

 

At first glance the game looks very solid, the graphics are realistic and the tank models appear very authentic. You can choose from three nationalities – the US, Germany or Russia – but these are not factions or sides. Rather, they are three different tech trees to explore with strengths and weaknesses at different points. Battles are 15v15 affairs with each team balanced by the server to distribute the more powerful tanks as evenly as possible. This generally results in each team having a mixture of each nationality as well as a spread of vehicles from mighty heavy tanks to nimble scout tanks, stealthy tank destroyers and fragile but powerful artillery. In game you command your tank with some very basic controls as you and your teammates do battle across one of half a dozen or so nicely designed maps. The winner is either the last team to have any tanks alive or the first team to capture the enemy flag.

 

The game is set during the Second World War and the period is well realised. The tanks depicted are actual, historical tanks that fought in that conflict, the equipment you can buy for them is authentic and the maps are very atmospheric – most depict central or eastern European towns and villages of the period. If you are a hard-core military history buff you might complain that some of the tanks didn’t see service at the same time but if you did, we would be justified in ignoring you. This is an arcade style game not a simulator and the emphasis is on fun and accessible game play rather than strict accuracy. You can have the camera outside the tank for better visibility or you can zoom in for a gunner’s eye view down the barrel of the main gun for greater accuracy.

 

So you drive your tank around, you shoot the gun at other tanks and after the match you are awarded credits and XP. You can spend the XP on unlocking new upgrades or vehicles while the credits go on repairs and replenishing your ammo as well as buying new and shinier stuff. The game is free to play and so the developers hope to pay their bills through micro-transactions. You purchase Gold that can be converted into credits to spend, it can be used to buy certain premium tanks directly or it can be used to upgrade your account to Premium status. Premium accounts earn 50% more cash and XP, which means you’ll be driving the bigger and more powerful tanks much sooner. Some of those big and powerful tanks fire very expensive shells and cost a fortune to repair so, if you are unlucky enough to have your ride wrecked and to lose the match, it’s possible to earn less money than it costs to fix the tank up again meaning that Premiums become very useful indeed at higher tiers.

 

World of Tanks Upgrades

 

Each tank has a bunch of upgrades that you can research using XP. These range from bigger guns or engines to better suspension, more powerful radio equipment and more heavily armoured turrets. Additionally you must research the next tank in the tech tree before you can purchase it so you have to work your way methodically through the various tiers. The team balance is based on tiers more than anything else so the game will try and put tanks of roughly equivalent level into a match. This means that your little Leichttraktor starting tank won’t have to run up against anything more dangerous than other light tanks and perhaps some of the less powerful medium vehicles.

 

World of Tanks Skill Tree

 

There are, generally speaking, three kinds of vehicle in the game and each is a separate branch of its country’s tech tree. You have tanks, which are pretty straightforward: armour, turret, gun. These are the most versatile vehicles in the game and they come in light, medium and heavy flavours. Light tanks are fast and so are useful for scouting, heavy tanks are lumbering behemoths that can take huge amounts of punishment and medium tanks fit somewhere in between. Then there are tank destroyers, stealthy snipers that mount very powerful guns but have limited mobility. They don’t have turrets and can only fire directly forwards, they are also generally less armoured than regular tanks but they make up for this by being harder to spot. Finally there are self-propelled guns, more commonly referred to as artillery. These are very slow and lightly armoured but are capable of lobbing shells practically anywhere on the map. They have a special top-down map mode where they can select targets that are out of their direct line of sight and zero in on them. If any enemy tanks find your artillery then they are in trouble but if you keep them alive then they will rain down death from afar.

 

A nice touch is that there is a place in the battle for smaller and less powerful vehicles; bigger isn’t necessarily better. You can always see your teammates on the map but you can only see enemies that have been spotted by someone on your side. Spotting means that the enemy tank is within range of a friendly vehicle and that the friendly vehicle has a powerful enough radio to transmit the information to the rest of you. Until your scouts bump into the enemy then you won’t know if they are rushing your flag in force or dug in and waiting for you to come to them. Artillery in particular is very dependent on brave souls burning forwards in fast but lightly armoured vehicles to report on enemy positions. If you are in a light tank then your engine and your radio are more important than your gun. Scouting is worth XP and credits after the match just as kills or damaging hits are so you are helping yourself as well as the team by doing it too.

 

World of Tanks Free MMORPG Long Shot

 

At the moment, the game is in open beta outside of Russia and so many things are still unfinished. A clan system and territorial control campaign has been added recently that allows players to fight each other over a strategic map rather than just randomly skirmishing. More tech trees are promised with French tanks apparently almost ready for release and British and Japanese vehicles planned further down the line. Wargaming.net have set a February or March 2011 timescale for release but no firm date has been announced yet.

 

Overall the game succeeds. There will be enough to keep a hardcore player occupied in unlocking all the new vehicles and upgrades but there’s also a lot of fun to be had in the lower tiers so the more casual players aren’t going to feel left out. The controls are easy to learn, the driving physics work the way you expect them to and matches are fast-paced, rapid-fire affairs. If you have a bad match and die early on, you can leave, join a new game with a different tank and you’ll still get your rewards from the earlier game. A few things niggle a little but they are details really rather than solid criticisms – why do all the tank crews have American accents for example? My Heroes of the Proletariat in the screenshot above apparently come from somewhere outside of New York City rather than the banks of the Volga. The game is easy to pick up, lends itself just as well to a quick session at lunchtime as to a long evening of gaming and the different maps throw up different tactical challenges.