Yearly Archives: 2012

Alpha Beta Soup 9/21

Alpha Beta Soup 9/21

 

Hello and welcome to OnRPG’s newest weekly coverage of Alpha and Beta announcements across the MMO world. I’ll be dishing up a hearty helping of Alpha/Beta Soup so pull up a seat and enjoy! Come back next Friday for another serving of αβ soup.

 

 

OnRPG Giveaways

These are all the beta giveaways currently running on OnRPG. There’s no guarantee that we won’t run out so grab them quick.

 

District 187

Jolly Grim

Wartune

Serenia Fantasy

 

Dates Announced:

Below are the MMOs who have announced upcoming beta events that haven’t started yet.

 

City of Steam: Beta November http://www.cityofsteam.com/

End of Nations: Closed Beta October 9th http://endofnations.com/en/beta/

RaiderZ : Open Beta October 24th http://raiderz.perfectworld.com/ (Founders Pack includes Neverwinter closed beta access)

Marvel Heroes: October 1st https://marvelheroes.com/

 

 

Alpha:

These games are currently in Alpha. Signups are available via the link.

 

Otherland

The Repopulation

Xulu

 

Closed Beta:

MMOs which are in closed beta require application and often require approval before access can be gained.

 

Age of Wulin (EU, Asia) http://en.wulin.gpotato.eu/

Age of Wushu (US) http://www.ageofwushu.com/account/signup

Black Prophecy Tactics: Nexus Conflict http://nexusconflict.gamigo.com/en/

Bounty Hounds Online https://bountyhounds.subagames.com/Welcome.aspx

Dragon Crusade http://www.aeriagames.com/playnow/dcrus

Dragon Knights http://dkonline.aeriagames.com/

Dust 514 https://secure.dust514.com/

Hawken http://www.playhawken.com/enlist/

Firefall https://beta.firefallthegame.com/accounts/new

Grimlands http://grimlands.gamigo.com/en/teaser/

JollyGrim: http://jollygrim.gamesamba.com/

Lime Odyssey http://limeodyssey.aeriagames.com/

MechWarrior Online https://mwomercs.com/signup

Patterns: http://lindenlab.com/beta_sign_up

Pirate101 https://www.pirate101.com/free_game/closed_beta_keys

PlanetSide 2 http://www.planetside2.com/

Ravaged: http://www.2dawn.com/games/ravaged/join-the-beta

Salem http://beta.salemthegame.com/

SmashMuck Champions https://www.smashmuck.com/Register

SMITE https://account.hirezstudios.com/smitegame/

Starlight Story http://starlightstory.aeriagames.com/

The War Z http://www.thewarz.com/preorder.html

UFO Online http://ufoonline.gamigo.com/en/

World of Warplanes http://worldofwarplanes.com/auth/new/?next=/ga/new/&redirect=True

 

Open Beta:

Games in open beta require an application but often it is little more than signing up for an account.

 

Universal Monsters Online

Soul Captor

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Online (Russian)

 

 

Expansions:

These are the beta events for games which are already live. These are for new content which is going to be added to the game at a later date. Access is limited to the current playerbase and often requires special permissions to take part.

 

World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria (Launching September 25th)

RIFT: Storm Legion (Launching November 13th)

Lord of the Rings Online: Riders of Rohan

Domesticating Bosses With Knight Age Update

Domesticating Bosses With Knight Age Update

 

Knight Age

 

Joymax today announces its first major Knight Age Online update not one month after its commercial release. The free-to-play 3D fantasy MMORPG with a unique riding-action gameplay strives to keep content fresh and forthcoming. Knight Age is open to all, and players can join now through Joymax’s official Knight Age website.

 

 

One of the new additions is the new boss pupae (pets). Pupae (plural form of pupa) are a central part of the Knight Age experience and these trusty pets come in a multitude of shapes and sizes, each with their own abilities. Different breeds of pupa each have their own strengths and weaknesses based on their elemental affinity. Now, players can strengthen their pool of allies with the newest line of boss pupae. Boss pupa, as the name implies, is dropped exclusively by boss monsters and looks just like them. The best boss pupa has the smallest drop rate, so these pets are exclusive to the most lucky or dedicated Knights. Collecting, raising, and combining together these pets to raise the ultimate companion is one of the biggest goals of all players.

 

Knight Age

 

Starting September 25th, players will be able to challenge Mongoose, Hagen, and Belford to have a chance to receive their boss pupae. Mongoose is a cute cuddly, six eyed and six legged monster just waiting for a hug; Hagen is a skull-faced boss whose miniature version retains identical detail; Belford is a winged demon whose arms are made from molten lava. These pupae will have some of the best stats in game, thus the player will have an easier time completing quest going forward.

 

 

This major update is the dessert of the thriving Facebook community. The decision to make pupae a priority came from a poll, where pupae collecting were voted as one of the top activities players loved doing. You too can shape the game by joining fellow knights at Knight Age’s Facebook Fan Page. The Facebook is also bursting with news and tips, along with daily interaction with GMs and players.

OnRPG Shotgun News 9/21:Neverwinter, Second Life, Everquest 2, and Much More!

OnRPG Shotgun News 9/21:Neverwinter, Second Life, SMITE, and Much More!

By Shannon Doyle (Leliah), OnRPG Journalist

 

 

Today is a huge day for news. As a result the beta announcements will only be found in the newest Friday article highlighting all the Alpha and Beta news called AlphaBeta Soup.

 

Second Life Creators Announce New Title

Linden Lab has revealed the next game they’d be making is called Patterns. It heavily focuses on creativity and allowing players to create the world they live in. Beta sign ups are already available on the Linden Lab website.

 

 

 

New Free Trial Offer for The Secret World

The Secret World has expanded it’s free trial. In it you get three free days and the chance to unlock more by completing certain tasks. Completing 30 Missions will get you an extra 2 days of trial time and 1,200 points worth $10. In addition if you defeat th Ur-Draug boss and complete the first dungeon, Polaris you get a unique ring which increases your stats and gets a bonus to xp gain.

 

 

Everquest 2 Sleeper’s Tomb Trailer

 

 

TERA Offers Limited Promotion

Every weekend for the rest of September in Tera an event is being held called Instant Gratification. For characters level 1-59 when you team up you got 50% more loot. And everyone will get an instance reset scroll every day you log in so you can experience the dungeons more often.

 

 

New War of the Roses Video Released

 

 

SWTOR Has QoL Updates in 1.4

A ton of QoL features coming in update 1.4 have recently been highlighted for SWTOR. They include; Group Finder Teleport Back, Delayed Item Binding, Mood Facial Features, and more companion customizations. These are just a few of the features coming in update 1.4.

 

 

Guns of Icarus Launch Delayed

The launch of Guns of Icarus has been delayed by one month to give developers more time to complete game features and make it bug free. Pre-Orders will still get instant access and 25% off. If you’re heading to Eurogamer Expo in London the Guns of Icarus team will be there.

 

 

Brick Force Patch Revamps Build and Destroy Mode

Infernum has released a new patch for Sandbox shooter Brick Force which has revamped the Build and Destroy mode and introduced Defense mode. As well a new daily mission system has gone live. Completing random events each day will give players an opportunity to play Pick ‘n Win to get amazing in game rewards.

 

 

Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn Gets New Trailer

 

 

 

Latest SMITE Patch Allows For God Rental

The latest patch for SMITE has brought about several revolutionary changes to the game. A new game mode call Joust has been added. This allows you to go one on one with your friends. Gods can be rented for a single match by using Favor. New items have been added and changes have been made to spectator mode and how you earn assists. Speaking of SMITE be sure to check out BakermanBrad’s new series on our sister site MMOHuts!

 

 

RaiderZ Founders Pack Purchase Guarantees Neverwinter Closed Beta Access

As well as announcing that RaiderZ would be going to open beta October 24th it has been announced that purchasing the founders pack will give you access to Neverwinter’s closed beta.

Grand Chase Announces Season 5: Rebirth

Grand Chase Announces Season 5: Rebirth

 

SG Interactive today announced the launch of Grand Chase: Rebirth, the fifth season for the company’s popular anime-inspired brawler MMO. The first of several major content updates stretching to the end of the year, Grand Chase: Rebirth debuts three newly revamped and highly-detailed character models, introducing a fourth skill for each character job and a streamlined user interface to ease in creating of a new Knight, item selection and dungeon searches.

 

 

Gamers entering the game will see the first steps of Grand Chase’s epic transformation, starting with fan-favorite character Elesis, Lire and Arme. Grand Chase players will be greeted with a more detailed and refined look for the three playable characters, thanks to an increased pixel-count, and all-new facial expressions, injecting even more personality to these anime-inspired characters. For long-time gamer and players working towards endgame, a new fourth skill is also available for Elesis, Lire and Arme. Additionally, the in-game hybrid attack pool/mana pool play made popular by Asin’s fighting mechanic is now available for all of Grand Chase’s playable characters.

 

 

“For the last four years, our players have been very vocal on what they wanted to see in its coming update,” said Sunny Kim, producer of Grand Chase for SG Interactive. “With the launch of Rebirth, gamers can see advancements in three of the most popular characters, both visually and in gameplay.”

 

 

“While I can’t tell you about everything that’s coming with Grand Chase: Rebirth, I can say that these updates included at our launch are just the tip of the iceberg,” Kim added.

 

 

Along with the character updates, the Grand Chase team has gone through the entire new-player experience, vastly improving and streamlining the existing user and dungeon interface. The previous screen resolution has been increased to 1024×786, allowing for a richer palette and larger play area. Much of the new-character creation process has been optimized with graphical icons, allowing players to instantly identify the characters, gear and dungeons available to them, and what’s needed to unlock what’s not currently available. The updated dungeon interface assist players in finding the battles, and more importantly the gear they want, in order to level and be properly equipped for the challenges that lay ahead.

OnRPG Shotgun News 9/20: RaiderZ, Sin Streets, Black Prophecy, and Sevencore!

OnRPG Shotgun News 9/20: RaiderZ, Sin Streets, Black Prophecy, and Sevencore!

By Shannon Doyle (Leliah), OnRPG Journalist

 

 

RaiderZ Open Beta Dates Announced

Following a successful closed beta RaiderZ has announced that open beta will begin on October 24th. In it will be new zones and new monsters that were never seen during the closed beta. Over 70,000 characters were created during the closed beta. To take part go to the official RaiderZ website.

 

 

Sevencore German/French Launches

Sevencore has launched today in Europe for German and French localizations. This weekend they are celebrating with a special bonus XP weekend. The Invasion of Obsidian Troops event and the Race for Glory events will be going on throughout. Players can download the client for free on the official website.

 

 

Black Prophecy Announces Shutdown Party

Black Prophecy is having a party the night before it shuts down. The shutdown is taking place on the 26th while the party is the 25th of September. The celebration will begin on the EU servers at 2PM EST and at 9PM on the North American servers. The shutdown will be taking place a 3AM the following morning.

 

 

District 187 To Send Event Winner to New York

CJ Games Global has announced that the winner of the “Play & Win” event in District 187 will be awarded two tickets to New York Comic Con as well as $1,500 in vouchers for travel expenses. The event begins today and runs through Sunday. Winners will be notified by Monday. To be in for a chance to win log into District 187 and play for at least an hour this weekend. How do you get in? Visit our giveaway page to grab a key of course!

Maestia: Rise Of Keledus Dubs New “Skies of Palus”

Maestia: Rise Of Keledus Dubs New “Skies of Palus”

 

Maestia Skies of Palus

 

Gravity Interactive has announced that the latest game update has added new features and a level cap, arrived an exciting new zone to Maestia: Skies of Palus. Players can now treat themselves to a sneak peek at the update trailer and Maestia will be holding special event with exclusive prizes for its players.

 

 

Maestia challenges like the new battlegrounds, new raids, and new max-level dungeons, player will be happy to know that the latest patch, titled The “Skies of Palus”. Players can now queue for instanced PvP at the level cap, square off against dangerous foes in raid bosses by retuning the encounters to make it extremely challenging and unforgiving for unprepared parties, and test their mettle against three new top-tier instances.

 

Maestia Lake Of Hope

 

“Maestia is fantasy free-to-play and our players can now customize their Heroes. Skies of Palus will a new dungeon instance with two sets of difficulty,” said Alex Kim, Producer for Maestia at Gravity Interactive US Office. “Also included will be an expanded skill tree for every class that will give players new skills for these new encounters!”

 

 

Sometimes you need a good partner to help you go through the toughest zones in Maestia. With the new mercenary feature, face new challenges by employing your other characters to help you out. Max out both characters to the new level cap and receive a cool prize!

 

 

If you’re still looking for something to do after you’ve conquered all the new content, Maestia is hosting a Lineage of the guild PvP tournament that of course, RvR will never be the same! Participate will need to be not knocking on its Golem in the new Golem Defender PvP mode and wins some awesome prizes!

RF Online: A SciFi Classic Returns

RF Online: A SciFi Classic Returns

By Remko Molenaar (Proxzor), OnRPG Journalist

 


RF Online, originally named Rising Force, has been out for a loooooong long time. It has been online since 2006 and has been one of the few that started out as a pay to play subscription. Unfortunately due to license problems the service was brought down as of November 9, 2008. The developers however didn’t felt like this MMORPG should’ve just died because of a license and went to host it for themselves for the NA/EU region. And only a couple of weeks ago the good news came in! GamesCampus decided to pick up the game which means there is a bright future ahead for RF Online!

 

 

It has been Free-to-Play for quite some time now already since the game wasn’t as successful as hoped back in the day. Since it had been quite some time since I had played this game I decided to return to the world of Rising Force that was once so popular. RF Online is a free-to-play scifi/fantasy MMORPG made by CCR. The game is set in a deep space galaxy known as Novus, there is an ongoing war between three nations and you can pick one of these powerful factions to fight for domination over Novus. The three nations the player can choose are the following:

 

 

BELLATO Union:

The Bellatians look very thin at first sight but don’t let these people fool you because they have strong physical abilities. They are specialized in high tech machinery from Accretians and spritiual powers from Corites and use both to grow their civilization.

 

The BELLATO Union offers four classes to choose from: Warrior, Ranger, Spiritualist and the Specialist

 

 

ACCRETIA Empire:

The ACCRETIA Empire decided their natural bodies were too frail and decided to leave them for a somewhat stronger one. They left their human bodies for stronger mechanical ones which makes them one of the most beefy nations of them all. They have an extremely high defense and supporting armor but unfortunately because of this they cannot use the Force.

 

The ACCRETIA Empire offers three classes to choose from: Warrior, Ranger and the Specialist.

 

 

Holy Alliance CORA:

The Corites as they like to be called are best categorized as the religious faction of the galaxy. They focus themselves on the spiritual realm and don’t appreciate mechanics as much as the Bellato or Accretia. They depend on their god Decem for power and wisdom and thus are the most humanized faction of the bunch.

 

The Corites offer a home for 4 classes: Warrior, Ranger, Spiritualist and the Specialist.

 

 

I chose to leave my own body in return for a strong mechanical one that offers one of the greatest defenses in the game, who doesn’t want to be a kick ass robot shooting lasers? When you are done creating your character you get a really long tutorial that will take you through all the basics of everything. It shows you how to move your character, adjust the options to your liking, and other sound options and minor conveniences. I have never ever seen such a thorough tutorial, and since I am not really new to the genre at all I was hoping for a button to skip the whole thing, unfortunately I had to sit through this session which took quite some time…

 

 

When you are finally done with the long informative tutorial it is time to play in the big boys’ world. You are dropped in your hub city and from there the choice of what to do next is yours. I was given some goodies that look absolutely amazing including a bow that was shining like it was competing with the sun and a rocket launcher that looked too heavy for even my mech to use but he held it like a boss nonetheless.

 

 

Graphics

The graphics of RF Online are still looking beautiful, as should be expected of a game previously launched as a Pay-to-Play. It does however entirely depend on what kind of resolution you are playing. When I first played the game in windowed mode on a smaller resolution much of the games’ tiny particles and skinning was lost due to the shrink. Make sure to adjust your game to HD with a higher resolution to get the most of it. Still its age does show though, especially when outside of the cities. The countryside lacks detail and ambience, resulting in very plain looking worlds. To play RF Online you will need the following computer requirements:

 

 

Minimum requirements:

XP, Vista or Windows 7

Intel P3

256MB Ram

Nvidia Geforce FX Series, ATI Radeon 9500 or better

Over 6GB of free space

DirectX 9.0c

Recommended system:

XP, Vista or Windows 7

Intel P4 or better

1GB RAM

Nvidia geforce 6 or over, Ati radeon x700 or over

Over 6GB of free space

DirectX 9.0c

 

 

As you can see the requirements to play this game are asking absolutely nothing out of your system, partly this is because the game is already quite old but it also was perfectly optimized when programmed. As a PvP enthusiast this was much appreciated as I didn’t have to worry about sudden lag spikes when clashing with fellow players.

 

 

User Interface

The user interface feels quite messy in my eyes and would be the first thing I would overhaul if it was for me to decide. Basically it is just as simple as other MMORPGs but with the addition of multiple tiny buttons that don’t readily display their functionality through visuals. The skill bars are at least well designed with multiple rows available by default so new players can adjust their hotkeys properly. The minimap in the upper right also feels like it could use a change; it works as a small radar and gives little dots with each interaction you can do, as you can imagine there’s a lot of yellow dots on the radar which stand for a monsters. Overall the user interface isn’t great nor unusable, it’s just clunky and functional on par with industry standards.

 

 

Conclusion

With so many games suffering recently due to lack of quality and content, RF Online is a bit of an odd fish. It’s definitely better than most on the market but has suffered keeping up with newer rival titles due to the constant shaky situation with developers. The developers still have high hopes in this game though or they wouldn’t continue pumping out updates for all these years. However despite the excellent graphical first appearance, RF Online is starting to show its age in other areas. Their attempt at throwing some amazing items at players following the tutorial seems like a last ditch effort to keep people playing long enough to build a population, and for RF’s sake I hope it works. RF Online was once among the shining stars of the MMO industry, and I had a lot of fun playing this game in its heyday. But now I can’t help but feel it’s lost some of that same magic that held me spellbound long ago. I hope GamesCampus is able to revive the game to its formal glory because the options are few and far between for SciFi MMOs with a heavy PvP emphasis like RF brings to the table.