Yearly Archives: 2012

Pirate Maidens

Pirate Maidens is a free iOS title from Aeria Games. You put together a deck featuring some rather scantily clad, endowed pirate women, and fight for one of three different nations. Each nation has a different focus: swords, guns, and magic. You can play through each faction’s storyline at any time, and won’t lose progress. Battles are fought using the cards you’ve built your deck with, until you or your opponent has exhausted their life points.

 

 

Features

 

Over 300 Maidens: Choose from a wide variety of beauties to join your fight. Each one has different strength and abilities.

 

Card Based Combat: Put together a deck that synergizes well, and victory will come along easily to your crew of buxom buccaneers.

 

Three Nations, Three Stories: Each nation is after the legendary pirate queen’s treasure. Change between kingdoms at will, without losing your progress at all!

 

Guild System: Team up with others to take down opponents! Each guild member you have buffs your damage greatly. See how you compare to your friends!

 

Conquista Fantasia

In an alternate version of the 1900s, the Automaton, a magical mechanist doll made by steam technology, has caused a rift in humanity. Both sides struggle against each other as they seek to overthrow the Automaton in a battle of magic and steam. Choose your side and reconquer the world for mankind!

 

 

Features

 

Free-to-play: Conquista Fantasia is free to play from your Android device, no purchase required!

 

Deep Storyline: Follow a deep single player story line as you seek to fight for humanity against the machines in a steampunk world.


Player Versus Player: Humanity doesn’t stand together, even against the Automaton. Prepare for battles against other players in a struggle for dominance!

 

Collectable Equipment: Gather and collect rare, valuable, and stylish equipment in your push for victory.

Anno Online

Become a courageous seafarer, exploring and expanding in uncharted worlds! Based on the hit Anno series for the PC, players will occupy their own island, building and developing it for wealth, resources, and power. Build prominent historical buildings, appease your citizens, and join with others in a social environment to conquer the new world.

Battle for Graxia

Battle for Graxia is the reboot of Rise of Immortals. This MOBA features 24 different champions, each with their own set of skills. Players can experience a variety of them through the game’s free rotation system, and purchase their favorite to use forever. Build your character’s disciplines and artifacts, and battle opponents in a 5v5 format.

 

 

Features

 

Variety of Immortals: Immortals are rotated frequently, letting you have a chance to try them out, and find one to suit your playstyle. Each has their own unique skillset!

 

Artifacts: Give your chosen champion a small boost with various artifacts. Equip even more as you level up your champion, and upgrade the artifacts to provide even more benefit!

 

Discipline Trees: As you level up, you can choose to distribute your discipline points into four different trees. Each provide various offensive, defensive, and support enhancements, further letting you play how you want!

 

Monsters and More: Each map is host to a variety of neutral creatures, which can be taken down to provide gold, experience, and even buffs to your Immortal!

 

Death to Zynga, Long Live the Browser!

Death to Zynga, Long Live the Browser!

By Jonathan Doyle (Ardua), OnRPG Journalist

 

 

It wasn’t too long ago that in business casual easy browser games meant Insert Word Here Ville. 

 

 

It wasn’t all that long ago that in the popular consciousness the choices were either cute farming or town making games or “proper” games. 

 

 

However this is all on a person’s timescale. Two years? That’s not all that long. In the wide and varied world of online games, that’s an epoch.

 

 

Two years has brought us from Flavour of The Month Ville filling our social networks with spam to a company taking a serious tumble.

 

 

“Death to Zynga!”, people cry. Long live the browser.

 

 

Origin

Everyone has had that friend. That friend who, despite everything, insisted on playing the latest offering from whichever “social gaming” company had managed to snag their eye. You know what followed after that. Posts for miscellaneous items. Posts for more energy. Posts because a random animal was found or born or some damned thing. Why? Well the easiest answer is this. Because it was easy. There’s a time investment in every game sure but when the game itself was designed to either get you to pay or come back in an hour when you could do more, people could rationalize the time spent. Crafting the ideal farm or 50’s monster movie city just didn’t demand as much time as getting on a leveling treadmill in an MMO. Little rewards and little goals helped form hooks that would sink into that one friend and keep them playing.

 

 

Obviously it was successful if we really all did have that one friend. I know I had several and that was even with blocking every such application as it appeared on my horizon. It was so successful that when Zynga went for an IPO shares were up around $10 each. More recently? $2.29 (source

 

 

It doesn’t take a business degree to see that things aren’t going the way of the cutesy casual game company. Especially when it seems that they keep losing executives every other week.

 

 

Read The Label

Brighter minds than mine with letters after their names will be able to tell you why the original meteoric predictions for both Facebook and Zynga fell short of reality. Very short in some cases.

 

 

My personal theory? It wasn’t a change in Facebook’s environment that spelled trouble for Zynga. Neither was it a lack of business acumen. They have money and talent. Nor, finally, was it the fact that they were focused on browsers. By all means these things do have a bearing, quite a large bearing sometimes. You can’t really claim to be a “social” games company if you aren’t working your way onto phone handsets as well as into social networks. Just buying up what is the current darling app doesn’t mean success. 

 

 

My theory is quite simple. The cute games, the little apps, the Ville Ville Villes… they trained their users too well. What was once rationalized as “oh it’s just a few minutes here and there” became hours tweaking the perfect farm or city. Once you’re already investing the time… why settle for something limited?

 

 

Zynga and other companies just like it labeled themselves as social games companies but …a company still needs to make money. The methods that they used to make that money, getting people to pay so they could play more now, only encouraged people to play more. Now.

 

 

After that well… enter a new contender.

 

 

In the Browser Corner

I’ve looked over shoulders to watch people play and even played a browser game or two myself. They were simple little things. That’s not a slight against them, it’s certainly more game than I can make myself. At the same time, in playing with monsters and mayhem through Facebook, I have seen what browsers nowadays can do. OnRPG has made mention of Project Theralon before. Running through Facebook and on a perfectly regular computer, I watched foes being slain and dragons being called. My eyes have been opened to the possibility. 

 

 

Of course big browser games are hardly new. If you like sci-fi title, in particular Battlestar Galactica, where do you go to play an online version? You don’t like what Star Wars or Star Trek brings to the table with their AAA MMO client and the gigabytes of data that entails? You open a new tab in your browser, find your way to Bigpoint and start frakking up Cylons.

 

 

Bigpoint itself is now boasting 300 million registered users. Not exactly small numbers. Other companies are going the browser route and finding receptive audiences not just waiting but clamoring for more. City of Steam seems to have flourished lately and all you need is an internet browser and unity to experience that world.

 

 

It’s a fact of technology, as we go forward, it improves. Phones can do more today than they could five or ten years ago. Browsers can too. 

 

 

It’s also down to the people. Why would you settle for games that all but punish you for not paying for items just so you can get that crop in for a shiny star? Why settle for games and environments that despite being touted as social… are about as social as a bulletin board. Sure people are using them and sure messages pass back and forth, but they’re usually demands and supplies. The technology is here now for browser games to not just create MMOs but to have games that on their own merits can stand up alongside their bigger cousins in the AAA scene.

 

 

Will they always be on par? Of course not. Technology, as we said, marches ever onwards. I’ve had to upgrade my computer a few times for newer MMOs as they have come along. Not everyone can afford to, not everyone wants to.

 

 

Everyone though has a browser.

That’s a hell of a market, and as business has shown, it’s nowhere near tapped properly yet.

OnRPG Shotgun News 12/10: Age of Wulin, My Little Pony Online, TSW, and Much More!

OnRPG Shotgun News 12/10: Age of Wulin, My Little Pony Online, TSW, and Much More!

By Shannon Doyle (Leliah), OnRPG Journalist

 

 

Age of Wulin PvP Details Revealed

More details have been coming out of Gala Networks Europe about upcoming martial arts MMO Age of Wulin. Not only will you be able to PvP anywhere at any time but there will also be a social networking aspect to it as well. The in game social networking will be a place to display achievements and interact with characters. But before you decide to start attacking everyone you pass keep in mind there is a criminal system and if you get caught you will have to spend time in jail.

 

My Little Pony Online Shut Down

After opening in 2011 the inevitable has happened to My Little Pony Online, it has been shut down. After receiving word of the unofficial MMO Hasbro sent the studio what was likely a wordy letter effectively shutting them down. Not all is lost for the studio though, they’ve formed Starlight Studios and plan another pony themed MMO for the future.

 

 

The End of the World as we Know It, And Joel’s Not Fine

The Secret World’s Director Joel Bylos is taking the end of the world rather personal. In the first of his video logs leading up to the end of the world you can see him stressing out about the end of the world, how it might happen and of course what it means to for The Secret World. You can check out the video for yourself below.

 

 

 

Time Magazine Names Guild Wars 2 Top Game of 2012

Matt Peckham from Time has named Guild Wars 2 the top game of 2012. He calls it, “one of those rare games that unexpectedly knocks your life off-kilter, like a meteoroid banging into a satellite.” It beats Halo 4, Assassin’s Creed III, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, and several other huge names from 2012 which are all on the list.

Absolute Force Online Open Beta Date Announced

Absolute Force Online Open Beta Date Announced

 

Absolute Force Online

 

Net Dragon Websoft Inc. announces the open beta for the highly anticipated MMOFPS, Absolute Force Online will begin on December 19th at 5pm PST. Absolute Force Online has eight different realistic and intense game play modes available that will keep a players adrenaline pumping. Whether you are looking for the traditional game play modes like Bomb Mode, Capture the Flag, Zombie Mode, Team Deathmatch, or Squad Mode, AFO has it all. For both Arsenal and Vehicle Modes, which are exclusive to AFO, players are rewarded with better gear for every player killed or recreate your own Apache vs. Mi-24 battles. There are so many options available to players. Players will battle with players from around the globe to become the best of the best. Absolute Force Online is now available to all players and is free-to-play.

 

 

Since the successful launch of the closed beta on November 14th, currently there are over 10,000 players enjoying Absolute Force Online. The AFO Development team has been happily overwhelmed with all the feedback from current players. The feedback has been taken seriously and changes will be implemented into the game according to the player’s requests during the open beta. AFO development team is dedicated to continue the improvement of the gaming experience for the AFO community. New content will be available during the open beta including new maps and new weapons for players to enjoy.

 

 

During the launch of open beta all previous characters created during closed beta phase will be deleted to ensure that all players start off equally in the game. But characters that are created during the open beta stage will not be deleted once game is fully released.

Mortal Online: A Review by an Experienced Player Pt 2

Mortal Online: A Review by an Experienced Player Pt 2

By Jordan Hall (ApocaRUFF), OnRPG Journalist

 

If you missed part 1, be sure to check it out first HERE.

 

Gameplay

Phew, already around eighteen-hundred words in and I have not even started the gameplay section yet. Well, let me start by saying that StarVault is a small team with issues. Their size restricts their capacity to develop by a lot. This means content and bug fixes are slow to come compared to the big developers. Do not get me wrong, this does not mean the game is not good. It just means that you have to have patience to play Mortal Online.

 

 

I won’t lie to you, I cannot possibly cover all aspects of Mortal Online gameplay in this review. I will have to brief over a lot and may not get a chance to mention some stuff. The game is packed full of features and it can be hard for one player, no matter how much time they spend trying, to actually get in to more than a few.

 

 

I will begin with what I am familiar with. I have had characters who have done butchery, magick, melee, mining, and archery. I have maxed at least one character in each of those. Right now, the magick system in Mortal Online is a place holder and is not very fun in my opinion. As I understand it, the developers plan to work in the magick system next, once they finish working on bug fixes on their Awakening expansion. Unfortunately, there is no telling when that will be.

 

 

I had a combination swordsman, archer and mounted archer character when I played the game regularly. This is because during a majority of my time playing, two-handed swords were the second best weapon, and mounted archery was required if you did not want to be stomped in most PvP encounters. Thankfully the developers have started to work on weapon balancing now that Awakening is out, and more weapons are becoming viable in combat. Weapon balancing was something the game needed badly as it really hindered the fun you could have.

 

 

Archery is fun but weak if you are not on a horse. Mounted Archery is generally overpowered due to being able to move quickly in-and-out of combat with relatively little reduction to your ability to use the bow. I look forward to the day that Mounted Archery is brought down a few notches so other styles of combat will become more prevalent, such as foot archery.

 

 

 

Crafting is nearly endless. From gathering to refining, to the actual crafting of the item, you are given unmatched options. I have yet to come across a game that comes close to the options that the Mortal Online crafting system offers. Not even Wurm Online, which I often consider the king of crafting MMOs. This system is as realistic as it can be without being completely tedious and requiring years of experience to master. Actual experimentation and testing is key to success with this system. Crafting is definitely where Mortal Online shines the most.

 

 

Combat in general is currently buggy. The game suffers from bad prediction. Because of this, people you are fighting will often seemingly hit you from a completely different direction than it looked like on your screen. This can often be very maddening and I admit I have rage quit in the past. Fortunately, the developers have taken, and continue to take, steps to reduce this problem as much as possible. Combat is still fun because of what it means and the risk versus reward involved. Losing a fight could mean losing your keep, or gaining a new territory.

 

 

A.I. – Artificial Intelligence, this is where Mortal Online suffered the most in the past. Awakening was meant to fix that. Initially, the benefits that Awakening had on A.I. were not apparent. Slowly, the developers have been fixing the issues surrounding A.I. and things are really getting better. Once the last of the bugs get wiped out, I have no doubt that the A.I. in Mortal will become something to behold. For now, we wait and hope.

 

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Player structures are a big part of the game. From massive keeps to small log houses. Players can build these structures and even destroy them. The choices in house styles available to players are pretty slim right now. Asset destruction – the destroying of a player created structure – is often a result of conflict. And structures are not easy to make, especially the keeps. You will spend a decent amount of money and resources if you plan to build one.

 

 

Mortal Online has thieves. Just like in the Ultima Online of old, you can pick pockets and locks. You can learn to talk cunningly to get illegal items past guards and smuggle them in and out of the cities. Though I did not touch this, I have plenty of experience from being on the receiving end. Not a more horrible feeling exist than opening your inventory only to find that the stack of gold coins you were carrying to your bank is gone. At the same time, it is incredibly satisfying to catch a would-be thief in the act and call the guards on him, then watch as they chase him down and make quick work of him.

 

 

Taming and domination are two features I enjoyed a lot in Mortal. The system is not perfect, but can be innovative and fun. With taming, you can tame creatures and use them for combat and transport. Creatures start off small and will grow in size the longer they live. With domination, you can control humanoids, such as minotaurs. The pet system was reworked with Awakening so bugs are not uncommon.

 

 

Next up is the grind. In short, compared to other games, the grind in Mortal Online does not exist. It does not take long to master a skill if you are actively using it and if you cannot stand to do it manually you can always read a skill book. While skill books will get you pretty high in a skill, usually in the upper-eighties, they will not make you a master. One of the things I appreciate about Mortal Online is how easy one can change a character’s skill-set.

 

 

Mortal Online features a gameplay aspect that usually is not such a big problem in most MMOs. The aspect I am talking about are the bugs. Mortal is infested with them. Even though the developers are trying to get rid of them as quickly as they can, a lot of them still exist. From disappearing items to horses that fall under the world. Sometimes you will find yourself stuck in places that do not make sense, and occasionally you will get to see Myrland from the underside. And it does not end there.

 

 

A team of dedicated volunteers who have the tools to fix these problems is available, but they cannot assist players 24/7 and sometimes you have to wait several minutes, or longer, before receiving help. The bugs are the biggest stain on the gameplay of Mortal Online.

 

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Awakening

Awakening is the second expansion to hit Mortal Online to date. The first being Dawn. The selling points of the expansion are updated Artificial Intelligence(A.I.) and a new User Interface(UI). In the area of UI, I think Awakening has delivered. The new UI is easy to use and looks pleasing to the eye. There are some bugs that need to be ironed out, such as a slight freezing every few seconds when some elements of the UI are open. And the disappearing items can be annoying. Fortunately the support staff can help you with that. Overall, it has been a pleasant experience using the reworked UI.

 

 

As for A.I., I believe the ground work for future updates that will allow the A.I. to really shine have been put in. It still needs a lot of work if Mortal Online wants its A.I. to be anything special. Right now the A.I., even with the upgrade advertised to come with Awakening, seems rather dull. Migrating mobs have started to appear in Myrland, though most of the spawns seem to still be static.

 

 

Other features that came with Awakening include:

 

Tailoring and dyeing – Used to make clothing and dye them. Tailoring is not fully implemented yet, and no new craftable clothing items have been added to the game. Dyeing seems like an interesting system and as far as I can tell, it works pretty well.

 

Trade Brokers have been added to the game. These are NPCs that will allow you to put items up for sell, or buy items that have been put up by other players. This was a much needed addition to the game as it increased the ability for players to find items to buy and to sell their own stuff a lot easier. Some issues where you will sometimes lose money or become unable to see items you are selling have been known to pop up.

 

 

New dungeons and creatures – Among the new creatures are the Megnaton. These are ant-like humanoids that migrate across the land along with the massive Thorax, which acts as a sort of queen. The first Thorax fell with the combined effort of many players and a few hours of combat. Flying creatures have also made their way in to Nave.

 

Item Identification – Now your lore skills will become useful for more than just crafting. Having a better understanding of your pets zoology lore will make you better able to control it.

 

Re-worked Creature Control system – With Awakening, the taming system has been changed to be more effective and diverse. Domination has been added so you can take control of humanoids.

 

Lock-picking – Pick the locks of chest found through-out the world to find epic loot.

 

Containers and bags – Used to better organize and store items. Issues with items going missing and whole bags disappearing have been known to happen.

 

New Weapons. Katanas, fist weapons, and more have been added to the game.

 

Player Books – Players can now write their own books using the neat book system within Mortal.

 

Disable Nudity – Previously, the game forced nudity. With Awakening an option was added to turn off nudity.

 

64-bit client. This brings increased performance for players with 64-bit PCs.

 

 

I have got to say, I liked a majority of the stuff brought in with Awakening. Unfortunately some things, such as noticeboards, did not make it in to the expansion. I am pleased with how much Awakening added.

 

 

Final Verdict

Mortal Online is a game that has suffered many hardships. It started out popular with a healthy population, however the lack of content and bugs has made the population dwindle a lot. Now that Awakening has been released, things are being fixed and content has been added. Slowly but surely the population is starting to return. A lot of frustrating bugs are left that require you to rely on the in-game support heavily. On the other hand, if you love freedom and sandbox games you can still have a blast in this virtual world.

 

Due to the massive size of Mortal Online, it is hard to review all of it. I have tried to fairly review the game and focus equally on the potential and the reality of the games current state. I do feel that Mortal Online is going places. It is just taking longer than anyone would like.

 

The title now has a F2P option that should boost its population noticeably. I suggest you take the time and try it out for yourself. Be aware that the game suffers from a poor new player experience due to a large learning curve. My recommendation is that you find a guild to join via the forums and learn all you can prior to jumping in.

 

 

Graphics: 3.5/5

Controls: 3/5

Customization: 5/5

Community: 3.5/5

Features: 4/5

Overall: 3.5/5