Monthly Archives: April 2012

E-Sports @ OnRPG: April 10th Report – IPL 4

E-Sports @ OnRPG: April 10th Report – IPL 4

By Umar Farooq (Kluey), OnRPG Journalist

 

 

IPL 4 – Viva Las Vegas!

 


IPL 4 – League of Legends

Unfortunately, I didn’t get too much viewing time on the League of Legends steam as it was overlapping with the Starcraft 2 stream. Nevertheless, I did get a few hours in. Before Starcraft, I was a huge League of Legends fan. This was before it had every abled body on the earth playing the game and Riot building houses out of 100 dollar bills. Now, the community of League of Legends is disgusting. It’s impossible for me to play for one day without running into someone whose sole purpose in life is to ruin you and piss you off.

 

 

Anyhow, Riot does the best job when it comes to promoting their game in E-Sports. They have the stream open in everyone’s League of Legends client; all they have to do is click. The stream peaked at around 150K viewers or so which is amazing. For the remainder of 2012, expect to see more tournaments pick up League of Legends just because of the sheer revenue potential.

 

 

As it tends to be with every League of Legends tournament, a few teams thought outside the box and used the element of surprise to secure early wins. The most notable example of this was Dignita’s game 2 tactic of using 3 supports spread across the map to create a devastating mid-game push/sustain team. CLG was set up with rapid spike damage and CC but was unable to out DPS the constant heals and buffs Dignitas brought to each team battle, resulting in devastating losses at Baron and an unstoppable constant push of mid and bottom lane. In the end counter-picking overcomes meta guidelines any day.

 

 

At IPL 4, the grand finals held the classic NA rivalry; TSM vs. CLG. The two pioneers of League of Legend teams. TSM was able to take out CLG but I expect that to change. CLG has been training in Korea and even announced a gaming house in California. Their team has always consisted of 5 good individual players and with them living in a house, they should really bond as a solid team.

 

TSM claiming their first place cheque of $25,000

 

 

IPL 4 – Starcraft 2

Sin City, The Entertainment Capital of the World; that’s where the IPL 4 was held. Before the event I was nearly certain that it would suck. The crowd would be non-existent, the players would be distracted and the venue unfit for Starcraft. Fortunately, IPL proved me quite wrong. This event was a success in their book, a great learning experience for other organizations and solid entertainment for us. In the end, aLive managed to crush Squirtle in the Grand Finals.

 

 

Winner of IPL 4, FnaticRC_aLive

 

Before we go on to anymore, I’d like to talk about the games at IPL 4. One of the side effects of a 3-day event like IPL is that the games are exactly like a well played ladder game at a high level. The players have no idea who they will face in their next game and thus cannot prepare. This is one of the reasons that make GSL showcase the best games. Their players can prepare for their next opponent throughout the entire week. That being said, 3-day tournaments also have an advantage.  Mechanics will give you a win. In the GSL, we often see that a strategic play (builds, game plans, timings) will get you ‘free’ wins against a certain player. In a 3-day event, there’s none of that. You outplay your opponent for a win.

 

 

Some specific games you should consider watching:

Squirtle vs. aLive (Winners Finals, Game: 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5)

Stephano vs. MMA (Losers Round 2, Game: 2)

PartinG vs MKP (GSTL Finals, Game 4)

 

 

 

Casters of the event were probably one of the main discussions this week. Why? I don’t know. Starcraft watchers have this bad habit of putting casters before the game itself. A caster should have a nice voice to make the cast appealing. He or she should know how much they know about the game and not go beyond that point. There is nothing more painful than hearing a caster explain something totally wrong. If you don’t know why something is happening just say what is happening and move on. Lastly, a caster should be knowledgeable about the players and the event. Any sports casters I’ve ever heard is always comparing a player’s stats and game play from what he did last event. This doesn’t happen enough in Starcraft. All in all, people need to stop over- criticizing casters as it makes them do what they cannot do like analyze or hype up the game more.

 

 

Disconnects are an issue that needs to be addressed. Why are they still happening? Blizzard has seen them often enough to know that they are an issue. Yet, they do nothing, absolutely nothing. While it is Blizzards problem, tournaments also need to do something about it. Any tournament with a prize pool larger than 5K USD has to pay a certain amount to Blizzard. If they aren’t getting what they paid for, stop paying for it. While this might be extreme, disconnects hurt the entire scene. A potential sponsor will look at Starcraft, watch it disconnect, see the fans get really frustrated and wonder how their product will benefit from this.

 

 

Mike Morhaime and Dustin Browder reacting to a disconnect.

 

The GSTL finals with the PartinG vs. MarineKing disconnect was a huge disappointment. The finals were literally the best ever until that disconnect. That game between the two was equivalent to the DRG vs. MMA finals until they disconnected. The constant back and forward action between the two and almost zero mistakes in their play was amazing. After the drop of the two players, GSTL judges had to make an extremely difficult call. Can 3 marauders beat 15 zealots, 6 stalkers and 8 high templars? Because of their brilliant analysis they came to a conclusion that both players were equal and a there will be a re-game. What in the world were they thinking? PartinG had that game won and according to SaSe in an interview, every professional player would agree with that.

C9: Webzen Editor’s Awards Recap

C9: Webzen Editor’s Awards Recap

By Darren Henderson (DizzyPW), OnRPG Editor-in-Chief

 

 

One thing I will say is the OnRPG community is an inquisitive bunch. Many of you guys have played on the Korean version of Continent of the Ninth Seal and are no doubt more experienced than me on the game so getting your questions answered from the devs is no easy feat. They stayed tight lipped on most subjects but were still willing to let a bit slide. In this article I’ll be going over the three newly revealed classes that global players will be getting their hands on in this month’s beta test as well as all the little tid bits of knowledge they graciously gave us at their Korean HQ interview.

 

Real Gamers Control Their Character By Sticking their Tongue Out

 

The Demo: New Classes and Ultimate Fury

So first off, the big reveal! We got hands on with the Berserker, Shadow, and Reaperess and I have to say the difference between playing a level 2x character and playing a high level character in this game is night and day. For starters the Berserker is exactly what it sounds like. These warriors throw defense to the wayside in exchange for the highest dps of the warrior classes and the ability to chain combinations like no other. We were offered a demo in which three top C9 players demonstrating PvP combos and the Berserker could easily jungle foes for 5x to 6x hits consistently. Wow is the only word that comes to mind describing this.

 

 

I spent the majority of my time with the Shadow as I wanted to shake things up after spending most of the VIP test on my Shaman. To describe Shadows in one sentence I would say they are aerial rogues specialized in 1 on 1 combat. They specialize in various poison buffs they apply to their weapon as well as movement buffs to gain a mobility advantage in battle and then just go about picking their slower foes apart before they can ever launch an offensive strike against you. Especially helpful in comboing is the Shadow’s ability to sort of control their descent in the air with mini-double jumps. Thus it becomes possible to start a combo, knock the foe down, scoop them off the ground and into the air, jump into the air and knock them down, hit them back up before they hit the ground, then follow them into the air and finish with a devastating blow sending them back to the ground again. Yes it’s as cool as it sounds when you actually get the perfect timing and cooldown coordination to make it work. The downside though is they lose the range advantage most hunter classes have, which can be incredibly risky when joining into a crowded brawl in team battles. Many times I found myself instantly comboed down from full HP by a joint effort from a Berserker and Reaperess with no way of retaliating because they caught me with my buffs down.

 

Christian of Gaming Climax Trolling us by Constantly going low HP and Hiding Behind 2 GM Guards

 

Now the Reaperess, besides having an awkward name, is at its core an awkward class that requires a lot of skill to become good with. This is because unlike the low level Shaman I played earlier this year, the Reaperess is a goddess with the scythe and can swing her weapon around as if it was a tooth pick. From what I picked up in the demo, she basically uses magic defensively to create an opening where she can strike first, and then CCs and disables the opponent while opening up on them with a wicked fast attack speed. With proper support she can be a serious threat even with less than 10% of her HP remaining because you’ll never get an opening to finish her off in melee range.

 

 

Besides these three new classes, they also introduced something that I couldn’t be happier to see in the game. In the first VIP test if you built up your Fury Bar you could enter into a super saiyan style fury mode in which your attacks hit harder and your movement speed shot through the roof. This was cool and all but for how difficult it was to build this bar up (I’d sometimes run an entire dungeon and only get the thing 75% of the way) it felt like too little reward for too much effort. Well now the problem has been resolved with the Ultimate Fury Skill!

 

 

The Ultimate Fury Skill is unique to each class, and offers a supreme combo attack that really makes the fury mode valuable. It’s difficult to describe exactly what you do on each class when activating it, but basically you explode in some kind of anime inspired ultimate combo that devastates anything and everything unfortunate enough to get caught in your way. Some of the classes requiring you to activate each part of the attack individually while others like the Shadow just swing and swipe at anything in front of them while you direct the direction of the devastation until the duration ends. It definitely spices up the PvE in this game and is just another reason why the end-game of C9 is starting to look so satisfactory.

 

 

OnRPG Viewer Questions

Now that we’ve got the demo out of the way we can focus on trying to answer the various questions our viewers posed prior to the trip. I do apologize for some of the unfinished answers but as gamers you know how the community can be when devs let info slip that ends up not making it into the final version and everyone freaks out. So let’s get started with the Witch Blade!

 

 

For those not in the know (like me), the Witchblade is described as a class that specializes in dynamic jerky movement that throws off the rhythm of their opponents to try to gain an advantage in opening offensively. Essentially they are an acrobatic rogue with some mid-range magic attacks and magic melee enhancements. Unfortunately this class will not be available in the next beta test nor do they have an official launch window for her in the global version so we’ll have to bide our time and wait till Webzen and Cloud 9 Studios deems her ready for launch on this side of the Pacific.

 

 

Next up is the battle arenas. Quite a few people in the global test playing outside of the United States in places like the eastern Canadian provinces complained quite a bit about lag in the PvP arenas. Dealing with lag in a global version is quite a bit more of a challenge than it is to host a game in a small country like South Korea with some of the world’s best Internet infrastructure. However ensuring a smooth gameplay experience for the widest audience possible is key to C9 Global’s success and so this lag issue is a huge concern and top priority for the team right now. They are still tweaking their servers to get full maximization out of their use and intend to open more in various parts of the world in the future as the game begins to be localized for non-English countries. A short term solution they are working on though is showing ping rates of players attempting to join PvP channels so that you can attempt to connect with someone on par with yourself.

 

 

On the note of trying to even out the playing field, Webzen is looking into an elo type system to allow players to take on others of their own skill level. Since the closer to end-game you get, the higher the skill variation between players becomes, this is likely a must have feature that won’t be neglected. In addition they were considering offering a handicap style system similar to Soul Calibur to let you play against friends of different skill levels and still have a fun time all around. New maps are also being developed for the Asian versions of the game that we can expect to see in the Global version soon after launch.

 

 

Another hot topic among our viewers was the GMs in beta teasing the concept of more open world elements. The developers confirmed that true open world technology is currently beyond the scope of their custom engine but this limiting factor was not going to deter them from developing round-about ways of giving their players the feel of an open world environment within an instanced title. Their only example of this right now is the intrusion system but they seem confident that more systems like it are on the way.

 

 

Some support-type players may be felt left out in C9 due to the lack of a true healing class. When I asked them about this design philosophy they said they were trying to capture the true essence of a console action title and to do that they felt everyone should be some type of DPS character. This way there aren’t limitations on party composition and everyone is responsible for watching out for their own ass on the battlefield.

 

 

I also asked the devs about their cash shop and if they intended to introduce something similar to Rusty Hearts in which they sell gender variations of the existing classes. They assured me that this is definitely a possibility but due to the nature of their complex character customization system it isn’t as easy to do and will require quite some effort. They are shelving the idea for now and focusing on refining the last 4 classes to introduce into the game but may revisit this idea in the future. Of course the wants of the community are a top concern to both Cloud 9 Studios and Webzen so if the audience shows enough of an interest in this feature, it may be given higher priority!

 

 

One of our overly knowledgeable community members (*cough Viney1 cough*) was curious about the pet system and if they would be testing it in global first or the Korean version. They confirmed that they haven’t finalized plans of where or when they were going to test it as it’s still very much in the theory crafting stage. What they are expecting to see with it is pets based on various animals. The biggest problem they are experiencing in development right now is finding the right balance of impact the pets have on actual gameplay so as to not make them feel useless but not make the game too easy as a result of introducing them into the game. That’s all they were allowed to say on the subject as they laughed about Webzen’s marketing team potentially busting into the room to block them from answering more about it.

 

 

To answer the question about the stamina system, they strongly agreed that its current form is not well accepted by the Global community and needs to go. However in terms of what might replace it they haven’t come to a final conclusion yet. Though they mentioned their aim with the title is to offer much more excitement and enjoyment in shorter bursts of time than most MMORPGs so that players could hop in between breaks at work or during short bursts of free time and still walk away happy rather than wasting time grinding monsters and not really receiving anything tangible for their efforts like a lot of MMORPGs tend to do.

 

 

As far as plans for the cash shop they made it clear that selling power and unfair advantages would kill a game as competitively PvP focused as theirs. As such the primary source of revenue will be coming from costumes, exp bonuses, and skill resets.

 

 

One last bit of information they were excited to share is that they have no plans of wiping character data during the next beta test. For those complaining about the game’s commercial launch being too far off, you can at least be happy knowing that your progress from now on will carry on into the future. They’re also extremely excited about their upcoming championship tournament at E3 and hope players give it their all to qualify so they can visit LA and meet the Webzen group in person. And speaking from experience… a trip to E3 is one of the best prizes a game company can give out! Especially if you get one of those exhibitor passes so you can walk around like a VIP.

 

 

That concludes the coverage of everything C9 related at the Webzen HQ event. I think the only request I haven’t fulfilled now is Phenoca’s want for pictures of Korea. No worries though. I have a huge batch of them and will post them first thing in the morning so be sure to check it out!

Arctic Combat: Webzen Editor’s Awards Recap

Webzen Korea Editor’s Awards: Arctic Combat

By Darren Henderson (DizzyPW), OnRPG Editor-in-Chief

 

 

As many of our regular visitors probably know by now, the support of our community allowed OnRPG to snag a much coveted spot in the top 3 editors that were invited to Seoul, Korea last week to meet with the development teams behind Webzen’s upcoming 2012 titles, Arctic Combat and Continent of the Ninth Seal. Up until now Arctic Combat has kept pretty tight lipped, only revealing a basic gameplay trailer and no concrete information about the title. As such this was a huge opportunity to be among the first in the world to get hands-on time with this stellar online FPS and I made sure to grill the dev team with questions until asked to stop!

 

 

As shown in their newly released storyline trailer, Arctic Combat takes place in a theoretical near future World War III. After years of peace, Russia and the United States are forced to go to war over a massive oil and natural gas reserve in the Arctic Ocean that stands as the final source of fossil fuels in a world that has burned through the vast majority of its supply. Given the setting, you can expect to see the type of weaponry showcased on Discovery Channel’s Future Weapons show… advanced as you can get without venturing into the realm of science fiction that most FPS titles are doing this year.

 

 

For long-time fans of FPS titles like Goldeneye and Tom Clancy, you will feel right at home unlocking classics like AK-47s and P22 pistols. But the game maintains the fun over reality aspect with over the top rocket launchers and flame throwers hidden around the map to keep your enemy guessing. With over 100 weapons in the game currently and a slew more coming after launch, every player will be able to build a unique fighter.

 

 

Speaking of building a unique fighter, Arctic Combat has some unusually in-depth RPG elements for a shooter. As you rank up from battles you will unlock and upgrade various active and passive skills to be used in combat. For instance I was using an active that allows me to pull out a massive rocket launcher once I was on a 4 kill killing streak. Some other options they mentioned would be available soon as actives was a ‘improved state’ which I interpreted to be a stim pack, as well as time bombs. Battery Studio stated that their goal is to create over the top fun actives but without ruining balance and considering a guy with a pistol ended my rocket launcher killing spree, I’d say they are doing a fine job of this so far.

 

 

The passive skills are much more diverse and really allow you to specialize in a certain type of game style without forcing you into a restricting class system. For instance I went with extra stamina which allowed me to sprint for around 2 seconds longer than normal players. This puts me in a bit of a run and gun roll as it was my duty to run through enemy fire to get to the rare weapon depots before the enemy and secure an early advantage in each match. Other useful passives include fast reload, assisted aim, larger ammo clips, extra max ammo, and more that I can’t even remember off the top of my head. At rank 1 you currently have a selection of around 10 passive skills so even new players can have fun experimenting with different builds to see what works.

 

 

Of course the real customization comes in with the weapons, upgrades, and stats. Every weapon has numerous statistics including fire rate, damage, range (some weapon’s damage peters off when hitting someone outside their max range), recoil, clip size, reload time, and more. You’re able to enter a match with a primary weapon (sniper rifle, assault rifle, semi-automatic, and so on), a secondary weapon (pistols, small arms), and up to 3 types of grenades. However you can also create backup sets to switch out your weapons while spawning if the situation calls for it. You can also grab the dropped weapons of your foes which really makes every match dynamic.

 

 

In terms of the gameplay itself, the game is tactical and fast paced with a heavy emphasis on team coordination. Like the modern weapons they are based on, if you find yourself in a close quarters gun fight, one side of both will die very quickly. As such if someone isn’t watching your back, you can easily find yourself dead before you can even fire a single shot off in retaliation. Luckily the maps are well designed to cater to this type of gameplay, with plenty of places to take cover, vantage points to snipe, and twisting walkways to run through and lose pursuers. Most matches tend to come down to who can hold the strategic weapon spawn points the longest, as calling in airstrikes or the ever dreaded helicopter can easily turn a match and throw 6 or 7 kills your way in a matter of seconds. Some maps offer mounted rail-guns with enough power to cut down even the D-Day raid, but as I said you’ll be extremely vulnerable to getting knifed in the back if no one is watching the entrance to your position. The flame thrower also makes an exceptional suppression tool, forcing your enemies out of position and into open areas for your snipers to finish the job.

 

 

Now one thing that I believe deters a lot of casual players from FPS titles is the lack of a single player mode or bot games. Arctic Combat offers an amazing VS AI mode with I believe 5 levels of difficulty from beginner to very hard. On hard difficulty the representatives from MMOSite and Gaming Climax were struggling to break even so this mode provides plenty of room for you to practice and improve without the stress of having to take on real players. With their AI already so well perfected at such an early stage, they didn’t deny that an actual campaign mode might be in the works for a future update. Man I hope so because Co-Op FPS campaigns are some of the most fun games in the world in my book (need proof? Try Borderlands).

 

Every Building in AC is a Work of Art

 

Of course Battery Studios seemed noticeably aware of how much competition is rising in the market for online FPS titles this year. In addition to the numerous console FPS titles they recognize that not any game will be able to compete and succeed when launching in 2012. This is why they choose to not settle for solid controls and a large array of customization and instead pushed further into the realm of extreme production quality. Every action your soldier does from crouching, to firing, to running, to throwing grenades was all done by mapping actual human behavior with pre-visualization technology. Actual gun-fire was recorded to make the weapons look and feel as real as possible. There were times I actual died because I was too distracted by the amount of detail put into reloading my sniper rifle. The maps as well are also shown plenty of TLC with every building looking detailed and unique, and ambient sounds making it feel as if you’re truly in a wide-spread war rather than an enclosed isolated arena.

 

 

Now one of the biggest make or break points for an FPS can be a cash shop system. They couldn’t reveal too much as they are still in the early stages or organizing their cash shop so I can’t say if they will have a one-time purchase or rent a weapon type of system. However one thing they were clear and open about is that they won’t sell any body armor or weapons in the store that can’t be acquired through playing the game. Furthermore, they are making sure that balance is a primary concern at all times. For instance the special armor suits you can purchase will offer unique abilities or stats, but will be lacking in other areas to allow veteran players to specialize your tactics even further without being flat out better than new players in every aspect of the game at once. The fact that 2-3 well placed shots from an assault rifle can tear even the most veteran player down ensures that skill will always be more important than gear.

 

Armor Sets will Represent Nations from Around the World

 

One of my concerns going into the game was that they were catering a little too heavily towards American gamers, promoting special suits to replicate those worn by Navy Seals, the Air Force, and other American military groups. In fact they will be offering uniforms for the Red Star Alliance as well, along with a few more neutral groups like East Asian nations and the UK.

 

 

I could ramble on about just how excited I am for this title but in all honesty words fail to describe the type of inner satisfaction you get in this title from turning the tide of battle with an airstrike, or getting a head shot achievement trophy with a rocket launcher. At the end of this year, when the weather turns chilly, and America’s political future is being voted on, you can finally get your hands on this solid title and see for yourself just what the buzz is all about.

 

 

Be sure to swing by OnRPG later today for our look at things to come in Continent of the Ninth Seal, including first impressions of the Berserker, Shadow, and Reaperess!

Meta’s Verse: CoH April Fools Recap

Meta’s Verse: April Fools Recap

By Meticulous Meta, OnRPG Paragon Reporter

 

 

Every year on April Fools Day the internet explodes with false declarations of pregnancy and the promise of silly technology. Even game studios get in on the jokes, Paragon studios is no exception. They’ve been taking part in April Fools Day since 2005 when they started with a description of a Vomit temp power that you couldn’t actually get in game. People went mad looking for the power only to find out it was all a joke. Since then we’ve seen classics like visual sounds. Which brought us the widely loved FREEM! And last year’s announcement that City of Heroes was running out of XP. This year a variety of light hearted and much desired items have been announced to release on the Paragon Market, Just in time for April Fools Day!

 

Liger Pet

Bred for their skills in magic, the liger pet is the perfect thing to show off your favorite animal (pretty much). This half-tiger, half-lion vanity pet is an unwavering companion for your tater-tot eating hero. Why buy a time-machine online when you can buy a liger for a fraction of the cost?

 

Price: 400 Paragon Points

 

Vanity Pet

This four legged companion pet will act as a true reflection of your character. Its fine wood exterior can withstand even the toughest super powered attacks. Assembly required, allen wrench included, but other tools will be needed.

 

Price: 400 Paragon Points

 

Custom Power Set

Purchasing this item will get you a phone call from the designers at Paragon Studios who will walk you through the process of creating your very own customized power set of unimaginable power. You decide the Archetypes it works with, what attacks and buffs it has, and what the animations and effects are supposed to look like. Please allow up to 8 months for the power set to appear in the game.

 

Price: 750,000 Paragon Points

 

There is Always One Identifier

This will give you 5 charges of the “Who Hasn’t Clicked The Button?” power. Executing this power while you are one person away from entering an event or Incarnate Trial will highlight name of the character you are still waiting on. In addition, a giant arrow indicator will appear over their head, the game will send them a tell, email them, send an SMS to their phone, call their home telephone and dispatch a local security firm to their house to get them to click the “Enter” button.

 

Price: 160 Paragon Points for 5 charges. Less when bought in bulk.

 

Babysitter

Want to get in that Shadow Shard Task Force without worry? Need someone to watch Junior while you blaze through the newest content update? Purchasing this will allow you to schedule a four or eight hour babysitting session where one of several Paragon Studios employees will come to your home and watch your little one(s) while you play City of Heroes. (Maximum four children and eight hours at a time).

 

Price: 250,000 Paragon Points for 4 hours, 450,000 PP for 8 hours

 

Clown Summoning Power Set

With the Clown Summoning Power Set for Masterminds, you will be able to command and control your own circus of clowns. The minion pets are three traditional happy clowns, with squirting flower ranged attacks and balloon-sword melee attacks. The lieutenant pets are of the sad clown variety, and finally the boss clown is a vicious mime with a very powerful self-containment attack that puts himself inside of an invisible, shrinking box. Clowns arrive on the battlefield via a single tiny car that they all pile out of.

 

Price: 800 Paragon Points

 

Rularuu Costume Change

Changes your character’s model to that of Rularuu, the 50 foot tall insane god-like, dimension eating, being that is trapped in the Shadow Shard. Please use outdoors only, as your character may not fit on many indoor maps.

 

Price: 400 Paragon Points

 

Bee Bark Upgrade

City of Heroes has dogs. City of Heroes has bees. Now City of Heroes has dogs with bees in their mouths and when they bark they shoot bees at you. This upgrade power will work on the wolf companion pet, the black wolf companion pet, the umbra beast, and the minion and boss summoned wolves from the Beast Mastery power set. It will give those creatures the ability to shoot bees out of their mouths as a ranged attack. “Simpsons did it.”

 

Price: 400 Paragon Points

 

 

A lot of these seem awesome and like things people would actually buy. It has been asked if the studio would really do custom powersets for that price and the answer was simply no. That was a huge underestimate and it would cost much, much more for it to happen. Positron also chimed in saying that clown summoning would never happen until you could customize mastermind pets which is not something they’re looking into at the moment. The tool to identify who is that one person who hasn’t pushed the button yet seems to be very popular just because it always happens, there is always one. And finally, my personal favorite and something I even asked for during the i22 beta was the barking bees power. I haven’t bought the beast mastery pack yet but I can guarantee that if they added this ability I would be the first person to roll up a Robotic Richard Simmons beast mastermind who goes around singing “Shake, Shake, Shake.” (Please make this possible Paragon, It kinda sounds awesome!)

 

 

As it turned out not all of what was labelled as an April Fools joke was. Just a few short days after the joke was posted the liger pet was released. Though it looks nothing like what a real liger looks like it is true to Napoleon Dynamite’s definition of a liger. Scorpion tail included. Does this mean there may be a future for the rest of them? I hope so!

Joymax Celebrates 15th Birthday

Joymax Celebrates 15th Birthday

 

Joymax

 

Joymax, leading online game developer and publisher, turns 15 this month! In celebration of the amazing milestone, Joymax is kicking off a celebration to thank its loyal gamers and fans! Joymax first opened their digital doors in April 1997 and hasn’t stopped producing high-quality gaming content since. From their breakout hit, Silkroad Online, to their merger with WeMade and their successful line of iOS titles including Heavy Mach, to more recent key launches including Digimon Battle, Karma Online, Digimon Masters and many others, Joymax has been blessed with unprecedented success and a loyalty level from fans few other companies ever enjoy! Players who haven’t yet discovered the full catalog of Joymax titles can check out http://www.joymax.com/

 

 

“Our fans mean so much to us. Whether you play one day a week or every night for hours, YOU are our fans and members of the Joymax community and we want to acknowledge each and every one of you,” said Nam-Chul Kim, CEO of Joymax. “It’s amazing to see how many new players are joining us and how quickly they settle happily into their new home as a member of the Joymax community!”

 

Joymax

 

Two special events will run from today until April 13th to reward all players who join games on the Joymax portal. The “Large Recharge” will randomly select 15 players to win back all of the Silk they’ve purchased during the week! This reward will be worth a maximum of 1,500 silk, so now is the perfect time to buy that special item you’ve been thinking about. In addition, the “Fortune 1500” will award 15 Silk to a selection of 1500 players who have spent 15 silk or more during the celebration week. Moreover, Joymax has never stop thinking about benefits for their valued players, another huge event of Silkroad and Silkroad R is on planned, developed from ideas collected from the community.

 

 

Joymax is based in Seoul, South Korea with other offices around the world including the U.S.A., the U.K, the Philippines and employs over 230 staff members who care for a variety of titles including Silkorad Online, Digimon Battle, Digimon Masters, Silkroad-R, KARMA Online, with more titles under development and even more unannounced. The iOS division, developed by WeMade, has numerous successful titles including the Heavy Mach series, Viking Island and Chaos & Defense.. Joymax will have more news on both the Silkroad and Digimon franchises in the near future, and can’t wait to share the exciting news with their millions of registered players.

Firefall First Impressions

Firefall First Impressions

By Jason Harper (Hhean), OnRPG Journalist

 

Firefall is a very unusual beast. I’m not entirely sure what I was expecting when I loaded up the MMOFPS for the first time, but it probably wasn’t the game I wound up playing. While the game is undoubtedly an MMO, it breaks many conventions of the genre, and instead strikes out on its own, bold path.

 

 

Firefall’s first unusual trait is that unlike other MMOFPS titles, the game is highly focused on PvE content rather than competitive PvP. If you were expecting a similar game to Planetside from Firefall, I’m afraid you’re going to be disappointed.

 

 

Firefall starts around the Copacabana beach in Brazil, over two hundred years into the future. A near-apocalyptic calamity has engulfed much of the known world in a deadly purple haze called The Melding, forcing the survivors to scrounge up whatever resources they can in the few habitable spots on the planet. Players will be able to slowly drive back The Melding and reclaim earth inch by inch in the full game, but in the current beta that functionality is not yet available.

 

 

What’s left of the world is incredibly open. Firefall is not a directed experience in the same way as most MMOs, and this allows its environments to have a far less constructed feel to them. You can begin the game by hurling yourself into the air with your very own jetpack, and head straight off into the distance with nothing to hold you back. There’s no load times, no box canyons, and no level restrictions on areas. Go wherever you like and check out what you want to, when you want to. You can even go out into The Melding for a limited period, though it’s going to kill your character sooner rather than later.

 

 

There is, however, a short section where you’re given a series of missions by some talking heads in your ear piece. These tasks serve as the game’s tutorial, and while interesting, don’t last very long. The best thing about these missions is that they’re no ‘go to man, do thing, go back to man, do another thing’ structure. Instead you are simply told the next thing to do the moment you finish your previous task, giving the narrative a constant flow, rather than being a stop start affair. While I expect there will be more of these chains added in the final release, currently there’s only one of these to go on, so there’s little indication of how important these might be at launch.

 

 

The core method of advancement in the beta is thumper harvesting. You wander the world, bashing it repeatedly with a dirty great hammer, and look for resources to extract from the earth. Yes, this is as ridiculously over the top as it sounds, making you feel like a huge badass when all you’re doing is essentially looking for a mining node. This gets even more insane though, because you don’t mine with a mundane pick, but instead with a massive missile/drill called a Thumper. Firefall doesn’t do subtlety.

 

 

Once you’ve called in your thumper, waves of giant bugs spawn near you, attracted by the noise it makes. Your job is to protect your thumper at all costs, as waves of these starship trooper wannabes try to blow up your missile drill, and deny you the vital resources it can harvest. If you can get your thumper to complete its extraction you’ll be rewarded with a load of minerals that can be used for creating equipment or upgrades. If you fail to protect your thumper, it gets blown to bits, and you lose it permanently. While crafting a new new one is possible, they don’t come cheap, so these losses can prove to be a fairly large setback.

 

 

The number of enemies that a thumper throws at you increases with the size of the thumper you’re using, as do the rewards. While your starting thumper won’t send too many enemies your way, when you start upgrading your thumper you’re going to be facing down far, far more enemies than a single player is going to be able to handle. If you want to make your life easier, then gathering into groups (or Squads, as the game calls them) is really in your best interests, both for a more reliable defense, and to assist with searching for more resources. This has been the first MMO in some time where I’ve actually wanted to group with others, but not felt forced to do so. You can play the game solo, but progress will be far slower than finding a few people and pooling your resources to take on the more advanced thumpers. The downtime while searching for more resources, or waiting as a thumper comes down also gives time for socialization, again something rarely seen in more modern titles.

 

 

When enemies start pouring in at you though, Firefall is no featherweight. The gunplay is a slick, arcady affair with an emphasis on run and gun play. There’s no camping behind cover, and looking down an iron sight is a luxury afforded to some guns, not the norm. Firefall rewards circle strafing, bunny hopping and hoping that you can kill the other guy before he and his friends turn you into swiss cheese.

 

 

Each role in the game, referred to as a battleframe, gets a set of unique abilities and weapons they can choose from, in addition to a range of secondary weapons that can be used by all of them. The Assault is high burst damage role, packing a grenade launcher, a devastating floor stomp and the ability to blast enemies with a conical wave attack. They’re pretty dominant in PvP. The Engineers is exactly what you’d expect, someone equipped with a repair gun, turret and healing dispensers. Given they’re one of the few classes that can self heal, and get to bring a second gun onto the field, they’re extremely popular amongst PvE players. The Medic is a standard healing class, with a healing ray guy straight from Team Fortress 2, and abilities that heal and resuscitate their allies. The Recon is a lightweight sniper, with high maneuverability, mines, special ammo and, of course, a sniper rifle. The Dreadnought is the tank, with a very large health pool, low speed, a minigun and abilities that allow them to take a massive beating.

 

 

Nothing that sounds wholly new, but the way you can make use of them certainly is. These roles can be switched out any time you go to a frame changing device, allowing you to have one character with multiple classes leveled up. This stops situations where you can be in a PvP game or PvE group where you really need a class, but no-one has something to fulfill a certain role. You can simply switch to what you need by heading back to town. The only criticism I have on the system is that other roles don’t get levels when you level up other classes, meaning if you want true versatility as you level, you’re going to have invest a lot of time switching between roles. This undermines the idea of this system a bit, but at least you don’t need to constantly mail yourself equipment between numerous alts, because all the equipment you need is just on the same character. While the game does allow for multiple characters, I don’t see any point to it, given switching between classes on the fly is so effortless.

 

 

Currently, leveling is rather flat. There’s not many levels, not many rewards for leveling and experience is gained fairly slowly. Leveling only grants you access to better equipment, rather than there being stats to upgrade, skills to pump up or talents to invest in. This is good for PvP balance, since it means your level 1 character actually stands a decent chance against that level 9 charging straight at you. It does remove some of the Skinner Box rewards usually found in an MMO, though. You can take that as a good or a bad thing, depending on your disposition.

 

 

One thing I really liked about the experience system though is how it rewards altruism, and in a manner still consistent with other shooters. If you shoot at a hostile creature making every effort to rip someone nearby to pieces, rather than getting nothing, or complaints about kill stealing, you’ll instead get experience for assisting your fellow man. Even if you accidentally steal the kill, the game has ‘critical assists’ that are given to the player who dealt the most damage, which can grant more experience than the one who dealt the killing blow. All of this means that people can actually be thankful for you lending a helping hand, rather than being angry at you for trying to steal their stuff. It’s things like this that I think will really help Firefall’s community, and I hope Red 5 have more ideas like this to help foster a friendly playerbase.

 

 

If you’d rather be directing your fire toward your fellow players though, the game does feature a bit of PvP. It’s standard competitive shooter fare, unfortunately. Go to a console, and wait for a queue to load into an instanced arena. The current game types are team death match, point capture and a siege mode with attackers and defenders. The PvP is best described as ‘serviceable’. It’s good, but doesn’t do anything that countless other games don’t already do. Perhaps as the beta opens out a bit more we’ll see some open world PvP, but for now all you get is an experience not dissimilar to launch day Global Agenda.

 

 

The beta is currently lacking in content, and many of the game’s features haven’t been fully implemented yet. While there’s a lot of land to explore, there’s often not much to be found in these spaces, and there’s nothing in existence beyond the single digit levels. This has been one of the few times I’ve found a game in beta to really feel unfinished, rather than a pre-release demo. The current client has a good share of bugs, wonky AI and visual glitches. Latency can be a massive issue during peak times, especially in the highly populated starting town. No friend or clan/guild functionality is in yet too, which was a pain when organizing some testing related to the thumper system. Still, this is all undoubtedly going to be sorted before launch, and Red 5 have been active in patching the game in the week since the testing switched to 24 hour access. Just don’t expect the release of Firefall to be sometime next month.

 

 

Despite all the issues present in the beta, the core gameplay of the game shines through. Firefalls’ unique approach to advancement and exploration make it a wholly new experience. I especially like that in spite of the lack of any form of community UI functionality the game still heavily encourages sociability and cooperation, making it one of the few games out there that seem to have considered the social implications of not just long term play but also the moment to moment play. I’m eagerly awaiting future patches, when we’ll be seeing Red 5’s vision for the game fulfilled. Firefall has the potential to really shake things up in the MMO genre, and I simply cannot wait for what the future has in store.

 

 

Bored of the current generation of WoW clones? Put Firefall on your radar, now. Also check back later this week as Spunkify gets us an interview with the dev team straight from PAX East!

Zoom Over to Drift City’s Newest Zone, Neo City

Zoom Over to Drift City’s Newest Zone, Neo City

 

Drift City

 

Leading online game publisher GamesCampus.com peeled rubber towards a new zone in their fast-paced racing MMORPG hybrid, Drift City. New cities mean new quests, the next driver’s dome, alongside Easter events all wrapped up in a pretty bow! Racers can register for their own license at http://driftcity.gamescampus.com, where the driving action is revving up to a whole new level.

 

 

“We’re putting our foot all the way down on the gas pedal for the biggest update yet in Neo City. It’s an exciting region, especially since players actually warp into the future to visit!” said Hubert Yee, Head of Marketing at GamesCampus. “Even more thrilling is players are only visiting a fraction of Neo City, and we’ll be opening up the other zones in the near future.”

 

 

That’s right, Drift City going back to the future! Enter Neo Oros, the first zone of Neo City, for a peek at the future where a war torn society obsessed with racing has developed into a culture all its own. Your mission is to rescue the war survivors while repelling armed enemies, using suave driving and shooting skills. Party with up to four fellow drivers to take on the most challenging storyline yet.

 

 

No city would be complete without a driver’s dome, and Neo Oros is no exception. Take charge of your destiny with three full chapters of quests, including 15 missions and 2 challenge operations. Explore a variety of mission types including escort, collection, and investigation. New action slots are waiting to be filled with the bounty you collect: two dozen new weapons, armor, and new NEO-only items are yours for the taking, to fight off a variety of new and familiar enemies.

 

 

Neo City also brings with it a new wave of cars and parts. Get behind the wheel of an Eco or Wave and see the difference future technology makes – or upgrade a current car with level 90 ultra parts for speed, acceleration, durability, or boosting. For that special touch of class, new aero wings are also available: Sports, Rush, Fly, and of course, NEO.

 

 

Don’t forget in all this excitement to bounce over to the Easter Bunny events being held now. Deliver important Easter items to collect recipes, eggs, and paints, then craft Egg Baskets to give to your fellow drivers containing Bunny coins, upgrade items, and more. Grab 99 Easter Bunny coins to exchange for an eggstravagant gift box, containing high level parts to trick out the fastest car yet!

Tribes: Ascend Previews Launch Content

Tribes: Ascend Previews Launch Content & Awards TotalBiscuit

 

Tribes Ascend

 

Tribes: Ascend is preparing to release on April 12, and Hi-Rez Studios has just announced its update plans for the launch. With the release, Hi-Rez Studios will bring back the classic Tribes map Raindance, shipped first within the original Starsiege: Tribes in 1998. The map is one of the most popular Tribes maps, and has been cited as one of the most influential multiplayer game maps of all time.

 

 

Hi-Rez Studios will also add the brand new game mode Capture & Hold. This map, playable at PAX on the map Katabatic, promises to showcase speed, vehicles, objectives, and teamwork.

 

 

Meanwhile, Tribes: Ascend has also rewarded the first player to achieve Celebrity in-game status by achieving 500 qualified new player referrals. John “TotalBiscuit” Bain has earned 5000 XP for each referral plus over 30,000 additional units of Tribes Gold. And upon reaching 500 Referrals TotalBiscuit becomes the first name added to the Player Celebrity Wall at Hi-Rez Studios.