Yearly Archives: 2011

Runescape Prepares Guild Citadel Expansion

RuneScape Prepares to Release Clan Base Expansion

 

Jagex Games Studio today unveils the first details of the Clan Citadels expansion which launches in RuneScape on July 26. The expansion will fill RuneScape’s horizon with floating castles to offer in-game clans new, unique and fully customizable gameplay experiences.

 

The centrepiece of the expansion is the clan battlefields, a unique sandbox environment allowing clans to generate their own user-generated gameplay for the first time within RuneScape. Clans will have access to a full-blown Battleground Editor equipping them with all the tools needed to create and develop their own multiplayer games. Clans can create any gameplay they wish; ranging from simple capture the flag style games to full clan versus clan battles. Once created, clan members can save their games and even invite others to compete in their creation.

 

 

The Clan Citadels expansion breaks the mould for group gaming in MMO’s and will be open to all RuneScape members. Once signed up, clan leaders can select one of four Citadel layouts and propel their citadel into glorious sunshine or perpetual night. In addition to the clan battlefield, each citadel comes complete with portal grounds, meeting rooms, senates and party rooms. Players will have free reign to customise their castles and add banners and flags flying the colours of their clan.

 

The Clan Citadels is in place to support the vast number of clans now created within RuneScape and offers new and innovative functionality to those who enjoy playing in this group way. Clan Citadels will be able to offer MMO gamers a more fulfilling multiplayer experience than they may currently enjoy. With Clan Citadel’s unique mechanics, features and user-generated battle arenas, RuneScape will welcome all new players who seek more compelling clan gaming to come and see it for themselves.

 

 

Daniel Clough, VP of RuneScape, commented, “For over a decade RuneScape has pioneered MMO development and the launch of Clan Citadels will once again prove RuneScape’s commitment to creating truly unique and innovative content. Since our last clan update in April we have seen more than 1 million RuneScape players sign up to one of the 150,000+ in-game clans, so we felt it an important move to give them all something of this scale to support their clans and we know that they will be hugely looking forward to it.

 

This update has been designed to make RuneScape’s clan support the envy of the MMO world. We know that the functionality and gameplay offered will appeal to clans from other MMO’s who long for better group play experiences and we warmly invite new clans to check out the update and judge for themselves just what RuneScape has to offer.”

 

Be sure to check out the teaser trailer of this expansion right HERE at OnRPG.

ChinaJoy Convention 2011

OnRPG is proud to announce that we are the designated North American media outlet representing the ChinaJoy Convention 2011! Be sure to check back here regularly as we will be covering all major game announcements and more awesome cosplayers as the convention comes closer to its start date of July 27th!

Starcraft 2: Journey To Diamond League

My Journey to Diamond League: First Issue!

By Mohammad Abubakr, OnRPG Journalist

 

 

Be sure to check out Kluey’s Starcraft II Review if you’re not familiar with the game! http://www.onrpg.com/MMO/Starcraft-II/review/Starcraft-2-Wings-of-Liberty—RTS-Perfection

 

 

This is the beginning of a new series here at OnRPG, “My Journey to Diamond League”. These bi-weekly articles will record my matches and progress in Starcraft II. My goal is to advance from the bronze league to diamond. Due to the length of this article, the first column will be split into a 2 part series.

 

 

I believe that I am good at video games. I can rank high in various genres including FPS,MMO and MOBA. What makes Starcraft different from the other genres is that you must manage more than one unit at a time. My one gaming weakness is multitasking; hopefully I will improve by playing Starcraft II.

 

While it is true that I have not played a lot of Starcraft before, I did play a couple of hours of Starcraft II when I bought it a couple months ago. I did not find myself playing it a lot because I was not enjoying myself. After seeing the pros play at MLG with their incredible speed and unique play styles, I was tempted back to the league.

 

When I first did my placement matches I was surprisingly placed in silver league but due to my lack of knowledge, I got kicked down to bronze. That is the point at which I quit playing because I was busy with other games but frustration might have been a factor. I do not like losing.

 

After watching MLG, I hopped back on Starcraft and used some of the new tricks I learned from the players and streamers. Now I am rank 8 bronze in my division, this is where my journey will begin.

 

In simplest terms, Starcraft II is a game where the player must build up an army to take out his opponents buildings. Once all buildings have been destroyed the player loses. However, games will rarely get to the point where you are destroying all buildings. Players simply concede upon realizing the game is lost.

 

The ranking system is divided into seven leagues. These are bronze, silver, gold, platinum, diamond and masters. You might notice that I have only listed six; we will come to the seventh league later on. You may be promoted to these leagues based on your hidden matchmaking rating. This rating goes up or down depending on your matches. It does not increase by a set value so it is nearly impossible to calculate. A victory over a better opponent will award you with more points while a loss to a worse opponent will result in losing more points. When you begin the game, you must play five placement matches. Your initial rank will be decided based on your performance throughout these games.  You may not view your win to loss ratio until you achieve master’s league. Also, each league is divided into separate divisions which each include 100 players. The final league is called the grandmasters league and this league only includes the 200 top players on the server which are selected by Blizzard.

 

Now, let us dive right into the games.

 

Week 1

Games played: 4

Initial Rank: Bronze – 8

Final Rank: Bronze – 8

Win/Loss:  4/0

 

Being in bronze league means you will rarely play epic matches because they are often full of all-ins and cheese. This means they will pump out units very early and not focus on developing a good economy. I play as a Zerg who is not very aggressive early on and hopes to create longer macro oriented games. This means that I will quickly setup multiple expansions and develop many workers early on to maintain many bases. Army units are seldom built until later on unless necessary to counter an aggressive opponent.

 

If an opponent is aggressive early on and continues attacking the same base it is considered to be an all-in. If I am able to hold off these acts of aggression, I will be able to overrun him with high quality massed units produced by my stronger economy. Sometimes opponents are smart and continue to develop an economy while forcing you to build army units to hold off attacks. This results in them getting ahead of you economically while throwing you off your game. This seldom happens in Bronze league because this league consists of new and less skilled players.

 

I employed one of the key strategies in Starcraft II during my first game; build up a good economy.  My opponent was also a Zerg player but he did not want to develop his economy. His aim was to end the game quickly so he can move on to another match. Since bronze players often try to finish games quickly, I had setup static defense in the form of spine crawlers. His zerglings fell one by one to my superior defensive structures while my army of workers brought in huge hauls of crystal. I used this to my advantage and continued to enhance my own economy.

 

My opponent tried his best to delay his inevitable defeat by hiding buildings and setting up a lot of static defense. If he was really in such a hurry to progress to his next game, he should have surrendered sooner because the writing was on the wall early on.

 

So many spines!

 

My second game that same day was versus a Terran. While he did have a good plan to harass me with reapers it was not well executed on the micro level. He stood around with his reapers for too long to the point where I could easily fend off any harassment. Since he only focused on constructing one base and poked me ineffectual harassment, I continued to develop my economy. I achieved victory by destroying his main base with zerglings and banelings. I might have lost the game if he attacked me with his reapers because I was not building an army at that time. Keep in mind that reapers can jump over walls, so he could have easily harassed me multiple times without losing any units.

 

 

There goes his base!

 

Two days later I was put up against a Terran. I almost pulled an Idra (In case you did not get the reference, Idra is a professional player that left a won game because he thought he was behind.)

 

I was minding my own business mining on my three bases when the Terran decided to send some banshees my way. Keep in mind that unlike Terran and Protoss, Zerg have limited options to counter air early on. Air units appear frequently in bronze league so I built some evolution chambers early on just in case. These allow me to build spore crawlers which are the static air defense for the Zerg race.

 

 

Roaches do not help against banshees

 

I was sure I had lost the game because almost all my drones at my expansions were gone but thankfully he was still on one base. He did not quit coming at me with banshees and eventually Vikings, so I thought it was a good idea to build some mutalisks. This way I could harass his only base which would drastically reduce his income and kill off his air army.  With my ground and air army, I marched to his base, broke his wall and went right for the starports. I did not want to fight more air units, I hate them. He conceded after losing his starports.

 

My final game this week was against another Terran.  After learning that I should always scout with overlords and run up his ramp from time to time, I saw that he was just getting mass marines and marauders. I later found out he also had tanks. Since he was only on one base, I had a big economic advantage. He did not bother attacking early on, as most people do when on one base so I went ahead and setup four bases.

 

His marine, marauder and tank army was no match for my roaches and banelings. While he did hold steady through my first assault, I was able to reinforce my army because of my massive income from four bases. The second assault overwhelmed his remaining defenses.

 

I am not happy that I did not gain any ranks this week. I was busy with school exams so I did not have a lot of time to play Starcraft. In part 2 I will cover my second week and the beginning of my rise to Silver League! Look forward to seeing it early next week!

Karma Online Pre-OB Testing Has Begun

Karma Online Pre-Open Beta Test Has Begun

 

 

Joymax announced today that its upcoming World War II game, Karma Online: Prisoners of the Dead, has launched its pre-open beta test with much fanfare and bullets flying, which will run through Tuesday, July 19. This test is open to the public so don’t miss out!

 

“The sheer volume of players who signed up for this pre-open beta was flattering, but we were glad to be prepared for so much excitement and interest,” said Joymax CEO, Nam-chul Kim. “We have GMs in game regularly to take feedback, play games with our lucky testers, and they’ve reported how much fun everyone is having!”

The pre-open beta runs now through July 19th, so players will have the next couple of weeks to familiarize themselves with the game, learn how to build a character from the ground up and customize them with a variety of skills, use many of the diverse weapons available in the game while blasting their opposing faction’s players and zombies.

 

Developed in conjunction with Dragonfly, and published by Joymax, KARMA Online: Prisoners of the Dead is the newest installment in the KARMA Online series, the top online first-person shooter series in Korea. Players go back in time to World War II, where they must choose to side with the Axis or Allied powers and join the fight for global victory – with a zombie twist.  In this virtual and historical simulation, players will be up against enemy troops as well as hundreds of the walking dead from the remains of the catastrophic battle.

Guild Wars 2 Early Access Part 1

Guild Wars 2 Early Access – OnRPG Goes Hands-on With the ‘Different’ MMO

By Nic van’t Schip (Nilax), OnRPG Journalist

 

 

 

One of the sad things about no longer working on the same continent as the core OnRPG team is that I get to work and talk with them a lot less. They’re based in LA and I have recently returned to The Netherlands back in Europe. But there are advantages that come from this move as well! Like for example when NCSoft organizes a hands-on Guild Wars 2 press event in a hotel in Hamburg, Germany! With most of our other writers in the States and other parts of the world I was the designated man to take the trip.

When I got the invitation I was very excited, I hadn’t played Guild Wars 2 yet and the hand-on section of the event was going to give me ample opportunity to feel with my own fingers if the game plays as well as it looks and sounds!

Without jumping straight to the conclusion of this write-up I’ll reveal one thing: Guild Wars 2 TOTALLY feels as good as it looks and sounds!

 

Different, no really.

A couple of months ago I mentioned how the creators behind Rift, Trion Worlds, had taken the bold move to not innovate at all. Instead they took the (rather successful) path of copying and improving all the best features from a myriad of MMOs in the market. The result is a great game… but a very predictable and comfortable one. Rift just won’t surprise you very often and as I wrote back then, that’s fine.

Guild Wars 2, in this respect, is the polar opposite of Rift. The game and the entire driving force behind it is one giant soup of innovation and new, different game mechanics and challenges. In fact the basic premise of Guild Wars 2 almost seems to be “What is wrong in today’s MMOs and how are we going to fix it in Guild Wars 2?”

 

Cooperative mode is ON

The first example of how Guild Wars 2 is different is the game’s emphasis on cooperation. There is no penalty whatsoever for playing together with others, only rewards. So if you see someone else beating up an NPC you can join in at your leisure. You will not be stealing their xp nor will you be locked out of any loot. Loot is another fine example as there will be NO rolling for loot. If a monster drops an item EVERYBODY who helped kill the monster will get it. Ninjas need NOT apply!

 


A 3rd example of how Arena Net is poised to change the MMO landscape is how they handle crafting. There are no requirements for being able to pick up, harvest, mine, pick etc crafting materials and there will be no mad dash for the mining node to steal it from your fellow players as all resources are instances. In other words: everybody gets an equal amount of resources from every gathering point.

I can’t even remember the amount of times I have cleared a path through some dangerous monsters to get to a flower in World of Warcraft only to see someone else run off with the reward!

There are many other ways Guild Wars 2 is really trying to set its own standards and not stick to the current mold but I’ll get back to them in the full preview.

 

This IS your story

When you create your character you will of course get to customize its looks extensively but on top of that you also get presented with a series of choices about the background and the motivations of your character. These choices will then get used to determine the path your character goes on, and they will influence the story at key points. This kind of character creation strongly reminded me of the questions asked in the beginning of games such as Ultima and other RPGs.

 

The game opens with a beautifully stylized opening cinematic that is strongly reminiscent of the awesome cut scenes in InFamous.

As Arena Net has stated in some of the trailers as well, they wanted to get away from a situation where an NPC tells you they are under attack and you have to rescue them only to have the “attackers” stand around in a field behind the village waiting for you go kill them to complete the quest. In Guild Wars 2 an attack actually means that the NPC will be running for his life and buildings will be set on fire. You can then choose how to help the villages. You can try to kill the attackers or go about picking up buckets of water to douse the flames. Depending on how (and if) the attack gets repelled, the continuation of the quest may differ. You’re actually shaping the story and your experience and this is very different from the static MMO worlds that we’re used to.

World of Warcraft has tried to do a better job of this in their last expansions by introducing “phasing,” allowing you to see the world differently depending on the stage of a quest… but that feels like a bit of a cheat compared to how the game world reacts to your actions or inactions in GW2!

 

 

Newbie boss fight!

Something I hadn’t seen in other games is what Arena Net calls the Scout System. When entering a new zone there will be an NPC waiting for you that tells you what you can expect. It goes into map view and takes you on a virtual tour, marking some of the zones and NPCs you can visit to help.

 

When entering the game for the first time as a Norn, the scout told me about the great hunt I was about to join to prove my worth to my tribe. I helped some of the Shamans in the zone out in different ways and pretty soon found myself involved in a huge scale boss fight with a giant worm.  Several of my fellow journalists were in the same fight and when we got organized a bit we withered the monster down! The cheer when we defeated the beast echoed around Hamburg!

Being pulled into a multiplayer boss fight 20 minutes after starting a character isn’t entirely new (Rift did it) but Guild Wars 2 sure makes it feel epic!

In the next article I’ll tell you guys more about the Dungeons as well as the underwater experience in Guild Wars 2. We got to experience both at this event but putting so much awesome sauce in one article would probably blow your minds… and we don’t want that!

Be sure to check out the interview we had with Arena Net’s Jonathan Sharp as well!

Indomitus

Koramgame’s strategy epic, Indomitus, unfolds in a savage era of European history. Play as a barbarian warlord on a quest to conquer Europe and join thousands of heroes like Attila the Hun as they clash in epic battles. Join the war today!

 

Features

Manor System: Create Manors as the pinnacle of your civilization. New city and army options become available based on the path and upgrades produced through your manors.

 

Technology Tree: Push your nation down three different Technology Trees known as Basic Research, Unit Research, and Advanced Research. Basic Research provides additional bonuses from your manors and important upgrades to your Heroes. Unit Research allows you to specialize your generic army units to fit your playstyle. And Advanced Research gives you special bonuses to provide you a one up on your opponents come end-game.

 

Hero System: Experience a unique and deep hero system! Your heroes can gain experience, level up and learn customizable abilities, upgrade the stats you want them to upgrade, embark on quests and training missions, and equip/enhance 5 types of equipment. You will need to master the Hero System to succeed in Indomitus.

 

Deep Strategic Combat System: From forming squads, to choosing one of 12 formations, to building various city fortifications, Indomitus ensures that battles always feel unique and unpredictable.


Guilds and Tribes: Even the community is strategic in Indomitus. Join a faction and pool your resources to profit on the economic side while acquiring research advancements that only are attainable through guilds.