Monthly Archives: May 2013

OnRPG Shotgun News 5/21: Dawngate, Scarlet Blade, GW2, Planetside, and much more!

By Shannon Doyle (Leliah), OnRPG Mistress of News

 

Dawngate Beta Begins Friday

Last week a new MOBA from EA was announced, this week it starts beta testing. You can still register to take part on the official website for Dawngate, so what are you waiting for?

 

Men Coming to Scarlet Blade in Taiwan

There is already a class of men in the Korean version of Scarlet Blade, and now they’re bringing men to Taiwan, could the West be next? The addition is being made thanks to a large number of players asking for it. You can see the new trailer of men kicking ass and dancing with ladies for yourself below.

 

 

Guild Wars 2 Drops in Price

A new permanent price drop has been issued for Guild Wars 2 that will be available starting later today. A $10/£10 drop in price will be available for both the standard and digital deluxe editions.

 

Dragon’s Prophet Announces Open Beta

Dragon’s Prophet has announced the open beta phase will begin on May 30th. And all founders will have one day early access starting May 29th. In addition to the announcement the Closed Beta NDA has been dropped which means you can find out more about the game.Including the article where OnRPG’s very own ApocaRUFF gives his thoughts.


Planetside to go F2P

Following in it’s sequel’s footsteps the original Planetside is due to go f2p. SOE CEO John Smedly took to twitter last night to make the reveal. Though it was announced in 2011 Planetside would be going F2P it has only partially done so with free time for anyone who has played previously and anyone who has played PlanetSide 2. There isn’t a date just yet though so keep an eye out here for more news on it.

 

World of Tanks 8.6 Update Incoming

WoT_Screens_Tanks_USSR_SU_14_1_Image_02

Details for World of Tanks’ Update 8.6 have been announced. Included in the update will be more balances for the economy, new SPGs, a new premium British medium tank the A33 Excelsior, and a new map based in Korea.

 

Guild Wars 2 Last Stand at Southsun Update Announced

Just 14 days after the last content release Guild Wars 2 players have another to look forward to. This one expands on the trouble brewing in the Southsun Cove, especially dealing with a troubled renegade Sylvari called Canach. But that isn’t all the update has to offer. A ton of new WvW changes are coming in. Ranging from WvW XP, and even infusions and Ascended gear with WvW specific bonuses.

 

Star Trek Online: Legacy of Romulus Launches

Tal Shiar

Today is launch day for the first expansion of Star Trek Online: Legacy of Romulus. With new content for Klingons, not to mention the addition of Romulans and Remans there is plenty to keep players busy with for a long time to come. So get out there and go where every man is going now.

 

Wargaming WWII Movie Weekend

If you’re lucky enough to live in London you could attend a special War movie marathon being put on by Wargaming. The Weekend at War will take place in Stratford Cinema London from July 4-7. They’ll be showing classic WWII movies like The Great Escape, Kelly’s Heroes, TORA! TORA! TORA!, The Bridge on the River Kwai, and others. Tickets will be available for purchase starting May 31st.

Neverwinter Apologizes for Cat-tasprophe

That week went by quickly! The developers of Neverwinter have announced the details of the Caterday Survivor’s Pack. After Neverwinter experienced an exploit which can only be described as economy breaking the servers had to be brought down for the majority of the day before it was finally decided that a 7 hour rollback would be required. Anticipating the outcries of “OMG My Stuff” and “But I got over 9000 levels!” The developers quickly promised a bit of a thank you for the loss and everything else associated with the event. They had said it could take up to the end of the week before they could announce anything but since they don’t like to keep us waiting what the thank you package includes has been announced!

The Caterday Survivor’s Pack Includes:

Stone of Health

Cape of Catastrophe

Caterday

Dwarven Facemask

5x Teleport Scroll – Protector’s Enclave

2x Adventurer’s XP Booster

The pack will be available for all characters made before 5AM Pacific Time on Sunday, May 19th when the problem was discovered. You’ll be able to find it in your in-game mail attached to the “You Survived!” message.

Dragon’s Prophet First Look

By Jordan Hall (ApocaRUFF), OnRPG Journalist

 

Dragon’s Prophet is an up-and-coming MMORPG that offers elements of the traditional themepark MMOs we’re all used to, and the sandbox genre that is beginning to take over the market. It is developed by Runewaker, who has previously developed Runes of Magic, and is being published by Sony Online Entertainment in North America. The game is filled with a diverse array of dragons that players can find and tame. It also has the “Frontier System” where players can take control of floating islands where they can build and decorate their homes. Altogether it looks like it will provide an exciting experience for fans of monster-capture games, dragons, and player housing.

 

Building Your Character

Like most games, you start out with making your character. There is currently one race in Dragon’s Prophet, so everyone plays as human. The first decision you make is your class and your choices are Guardian, Ranger, Oracle, and Sorcerer. Guardians are melee fighters who can either focus on defense or damage output. Rangers are non-magical ranged fighters that can dish out a lot of damage in a short amount of time. Oracle is a magic-based melee fighter who makes up for his lack of heavy armor with buffs and other magical abilities. And Sorcerer is a magic-based damage dealer.

You might notice that all classes in the game have been designed to be damage dealers. I believe this is so all classes can experience the fun of destroying their enemies with over-the-top attacks, while still having plenty of options available to them. Between the talent trees and dragon soul abilities, which I will talk about later, each class has a nice selection of choices to make themselves unique. That’s the theory of how it will go, anyways. The game hasn’t been available long enough to tell if that’s how it will play out.

After choosing your class, you are taken to the customization screen. Runewaker has provided us with a lot of options for our characters. Everything from your eyes to your legs has a slider. You also get a selection of colors for everything, including your skin. You can create a pale-skinned beauty or a purple Popeye-armed monster.

Meet Popeye's Son. Meet Popeye’s Son

Once you’ve spent a good twenty or thirty minutes designing your character, you will be asked to choose which continent you would like to start on. After that, you are thrown into the familiar cycle of going from quest hub to quest hub and leveling up your character. Each level you are given three points to spend on your stats and at level fifteen you start getting points to spend on your talent tree. You don’t get unlimited points for either, so you will need to choose wisely.

CharacterScreen

The World

Dragon’s Prophet takes place in a world with a rich lore. You are of the Osira, the first humans and the blood that courses through your veins allows you to bind with the dragonkin. The world is an interesting place, filled with many lands with their own distinct feel from deserts, to forest, to floating islands. Auratia has both a fantasy and a steampunk feel to it, as there is lots of magic but at the same time there are airships, trains and other steampunk-looking technology around.

SteampunkSplashScreen

Unfortunately, the airships are usually static or act as transportation between zones. Speaking of zones, there are currently seven of them. The monsters and NPCs that inhabit them are given routines to do so that they seem more life-like. Animals will walk around and eat the grass or munch on the corpse of another dead animal, or even take a nap. NPCs in towns will roam around completing their jobs and even stop to have silent conversations with each other. However, putting in some voice acting would do wonders with making the game feel more alive.

Nothing like a fight on the streets. Nothing like a fight on the streets

There was one glaring problem that I ran into. A majority of the world, or at least the part where you spend the first thirty levels or so, feels like it wasn’t designed with flying dragons in mind. Due to the massive cliffs that you can’t get past, the areas that you can fly in feel very cramped. I feel like the devs made the dragons fly slower than I would expect them to fly for this reason and I feel that it hinders the game a lot. In a world inhabited by amazing dragons, a lot of which have wings, it should largely consist of wide open spaces.

You can only fly in the green spaces, it's not possible to go past the areas marked with red. You can only fly in the green spaces, it’s not possible to go past the areas marked with red

That’s not to say every area will make you feel claustrophobic. There were a decent number of spots that actually had a lot of room to fly around in. I just feel that there were too few of those areas and too many of the restricted areas. I shouldn’t have to follow a set path to get to a village when I have a dragon that can fly, just because there are large cliffs on either side of me and a low flight ceiling. Hopefully this will be changed later on, but I doubt how likely that would be.

Every map should be as wide and open as this one. Every map should be as wide and open as this one.

Controls

The controls in the game worked fairly well. There are some areas that could use work in the way that targeting things works, but I’m sure it will get smoothed out as time goes on so I’m not worried. The only thing I disliked about the combat controls was that it was hard to tell if your combos were working correctly. Later on after you’ve put several hours into the game it’s easier to tell, but you have next to no idea what you’re doing at the beginning. This results in you not making as much use of the combo system.

The Dragons

Before we get too far into Dragons, let’s discuss how they are tamed. First, you will want to know that you have a bar under your health and mana, which is yellow and represents your Dragon Soul Points. These points are consumed when taming a dragon, or using a Dragon Soul ability, and are replenished over time or by fighting enemies. If you want to tame a dragon, it is a very good idea that you are the same or higher level, and that your Dragon Soul Points are maxed out. Trying it without those two things will make it very difficult.

Taming itself is done by jumping on the dragon’s back and playing a mini-game as it struggles against you. The point of the mini-game is to use the WASD keys to try and keep a dragon head icon within the inner-circle shown in the screenshot below. While the head is in the inner-circle, the red bar on the right goes up and the goal is to fill the red bar. As this happens, the yellow bar on the left, which represents your Dragon Soul Points, is depleting. If the yellow bar is empty before you get the red bar to where it needs to successfully tame the dragon, you will fail.

TamingMinigame

There is a variety of dragonkin available for players to tame. Some dragons can only run on the ground, some can glide, some can swim, and some fly. There are even dragons that can do a combination of those. Dragons can look like what you would expect from traditional European fantasy, like lizards, or they can even look like birds. Some even kind of look like Tonton’s from Star Wars. If you can imagine it, the developers probably already have and put it into the game.

Dragon

Dragons provide a number of roles. You can use them as combat companions or mounts. You can turn them into laborers to gather resources for you using the lair system. When you tame a dragon, you will find that it is not the same as every other dragon of that type. Part of the fun is trying to find the dragon with the perfect stats and the best Dragon Soul abilities.

DragonMount

Speaking of Dragon Soul abilities, there’s a wide array of them. I’ve found buffs that increase your armor, damage, or stats. I’ve found a number of different heals, too. From heals that will replenish your mana as well as your health, to abilities that will allow you to heal yourself and allies over a wide area. Having a dragon in your dragon inventory will give you access to any of the Dragon Soul abilities they may know, and you can have a maximum of six dragons on you at any time.

DragonSouls

I mentioned earlier that you can use dragons to collect resources for you. This is done with the lair system. You will use the lair system to store your extra dragons, to train your dragons, to transfer Dragon Soul abilities between dragons, and many other things. Almost every town seems to have a Lair management NPC in it. It’s a good idea to set your dragon up to train while you’re offline before you log off for the night.

DragonLair

The one thing that I do not like about the dragons is that you can only have them out for a few seconds at a time. It is possible to put points in a certain stat to increase the length of time that they can be out, but I feel like we shouldn’t have to do that. The selling point of the game, at least for me, was dragons. And limiting the amount of time I can fight with them just turns them into some novelty that you will often forget to make use of unless it is a hard boss fight. You can have your dragon out as a mount for as long as you like, though.

DragonFighting

The Game

I’m going to start off with the negative here. First, the game has yet to show me anything original in terms of questing. You do your typical leveling up questing cycle that can be found in every other quest-based themepark game. You will start in a town, and then move down a linear path of quest hubs, complete all the quests in that area, move to the next, and repeat that. Occasionally a dungeon shows up and you get to fight an epic over-sized enemy, but that’s not enough to make it fun.

The massive size of these bosses really make the fights feel epic. The massive size of these bosses really make the fights feel epic.

Crafting isn’t anything new either. There are six crafting schools that everyone has access to. The most efficient way to get resources for crafting is to have your dragon do it for you, but you can also gather stuff from the world as you quest. This doesn’t require any special skills or tools, so you can just run up and start gathering. Basically, it’s your typical “Collect X and Y to make Z” type crafting. I haven’t been able to tell how important crafting will be in the game yet.

 

Now that this disappointment is out of the way, I can discuss what I really liked. The combat in Dragon’s Prophet is quite fun. Usually, I prefer ranged magic users in MMOs, but I found myself enjoying the Guardian class the most. I’ve jumped into fight after fight with pure enthusiasm, throwing enemies up into the air and then raining blows on them while they fall to the ground. I enjoy challenging myself by seeing how many enemies I can take on and stay alive.

 

Combat is an interesting mix of targeting and action combat. I’m not quite sure how to define it. Unfortunately, there is no dodge ability, but it is possible to run out of the way of an enemy’s attack. You can also hit multiple enemies with your attack if they’re standing close enough together. Everything is solid, too, so you will find yourself being thrown or stuck in the middle of a group of monsters if you’re not careful.

This is how you teach a bear to fly. This is how you teach a bear to fly

I can’t say anything about PVP, as I haven’t gotten to try it yet. I did notice a PVP Status button in the abilities list, so I assume it’s something you can toggle. I’m not sure if all PVP is consented to via this toggle, or if there will be some areas in the game that force PVP. I also did not get a chance to check out the Frontier, so I can’t mention anything on that either, which sucks as a lot of the game’s most interesting features take place in the Frontier – such as player housing. However, I will be covering it in great detail in my full review of the game that will be coming later, once I get a better feel for the game.

 

The Cash Shop

Something that has been worrying everyone is the cash shop. I can say that Station Cash (SC) has a hand in almost everything in the game. If you die, you can pay a few SC to revive right where you died. You can also pay SC to make upgrading equipment, crafting, and just about everything else more easy. Anything you can do with SC, you can do with in-game methods as well, but with more effort involved. I also noticed that there was an option on the Auction House to set it up so you sell your items for SC. I do not know if this means that players can receive SC via selling stuff on the Auction House, though.

 

Conclusion

It’s a bit too early to really judge Dragon’s Prophet. What really has me disappointed is the very linear quest progression, it’s the same system MMOs have been using for over a decade now and I wish the cycle would stop. However, features like the Frontier hold incredible promise and the fact that the diversity of dragons available for taming will probably rival that of the first generation of Pokemon help it a lot. After pouring tens of hours into the game, I’m still as excited about it as I was when I first heard of it months ago. I will continue to play and will be sure to share what I find later on.

Dragons Prophet First Look

Be sure to catch the latest MMOHuts First Look to get a visual look at Dragon’s Prophet courtesy of JamesBl0nde.

Gloria Victis Rolls Out Massive Pre-Alpha Updates

Gloria Victis Alpha Screens 10

Today Black Eye Games has announced a series of major updates to Gloria Victis, an MMORPG already looking like a breath of fresh air in its pre-alpha state. The forest is now filled with life boasting a wide variety of inhabitants and is now the home of foxes, wolves, boars, sows and wild piglets.

Gloria Victis Alpha Update 5

The updates however do not pertain only to the wildlife but extends to the fauna as well. In the forest, players are now able to gather bark and lumber from trees, harvest seven different vanities of mushrooms as well as gather pelts and game meat from slain beasts.

Gloria Victis Alpha Screens 16

For the more agriculturally minded player, you can now also gather pumpkins, hops, wheat, flax and sunflowers from the fields outside the village, but be wary, there also lurks a mob based on Slavic Folklore that will not hesitate to strike the player.

Gloria Victis Alpha Screens 12

Another update enlarged the underground area outside of the village in anticipation for a pathway to a completely new area featuring a swamp and a larger village with its own fortified keep. A new partnership with Medieval Worlds has offered new concept art portraying how that village will look. Also in the underground area are five new humanoid thug mobs that the player can test their steel against.

MW Example 2

As loot and currency systems are now implemented, our shop system is also online and players are now able to earn their gold to buy their gear. Black Eye Games hope to implement a basic crafting system in the next phase of updates in order to set the frameworks for the dynamic, non-grinding, skill-based crafting system. Of course more alpha invites will be sent out along with the next series of updates so keep an eye out if you’ve applied! And catch all the new screenshots on our profile page.

Guns of Icarus Adventure Mode Reaches Final Day of Kickstarter

Guns of Icarus Kickstarter Final Day

At the time of posting this, there’s roughly 14 hours remaining in Muse Games Kickstarter focused on expanding the core gameplay of Guns of Icarus Online, a steampunk styled multiplayer airship PvP battler with a heavy emphasis on teamwork, into offering additional PvE focused content and a much larger persistent world to compliment it. Muse Games offered the following in thanks of the support that successfully funded the campaign:

 

We pushed over our threshold funding target in the first month of the campaign, and since then it’s been the long, steady ascent toward our stretch goals, like skywhales. We’re incredibly grateful to everyone who’s backed us so far for your continued faith, enthusiasm, and support. We’ve already plunged ahead into development of co-op mode, and we’re busy hatching our plans for future. In the meantime, we’ve also been doing a bit of catch-up on our infrastructure to support our sudden surge in popularity these last two weeks, so please bear with us as we take turns banging on the servers with mallets!

 Guns of Icarus Adventure Extended Goals

But even though the upcoming Adventure Mode has already funded, it’s not too late to support Adventure Mode and snag some of the sweet goodies that comes along with it. Who knows, if enough jumped on board they might even get the econo-political system included as an extended goal! Check out what’s up for grabs on their Kickstarter Page.

Insurgency

Insurgency is created by a small community focused team known as New World Interactive. As a follow-up game to the award-winning Source mod, Insurgency is highly competitive and unforgivingly lethal, striking a balance between one-life gameplay and prolonged action.

Note: This is a buy-to-play retail game.

Features

Nine Game Modes:  Insurgency has unique modes that are focused on tactical operations or sustained combat, including Firefight, Skirmish, Search & Destroy, Strike and more.

Vast weaponry: Over 20 weapons with numerous attachments, no crosshair, and a focus on realistic weapon behavior including a free-aim system and intense suppression effects.

Various real world locations: 12 multiplayer and cooperative maps that take place in 6 distinctive environments ranging from Iraq to Afghanistan to Somalia.

Squad systems and communication: Includes a squad system built upon role-based player classes, which are customizable and asymmetrical based on what team you are on, as well as a squad-based communication system which includes 3D VOIP, allowing friendly and enemy players within proximity to hear you.

Early Access: Insurgency

By Remko Molenaar (Proxzor), OnRPG Journalist

Realistic games are a rare thing, especially coming in the form of a first person shooter. When I heard about Insurgency and the chance to play in the alpha, it didn’t take me long to say yes. The fps genre and shooters in general have always been one of my favorite categories of games and I’ve wasted more hours of my life than I should be proud of sampling the various options. But while the genre has recently been pushing further into the science fiction end of the spectrum or otherwise totally cartoony, Insurgency pushes realism harder than anything in recent memory. In that sense you get the feeling that the developers attacked this project to build a game they personally wanted to play rather than just what was currently proven successful by others in the market.

What started out in 2007 as just a mod to Half Life 2, Insurgency has grown into its own standalone game purely by popular demand. Its total downloads reached over a million and at its height of popularity received the ModDB “player’s Choice Mod of the Year”. And here we are 6 years later and the game is in alpha waiting to release as a standalone game. So in today’s overcrowded market what would make you want to even look at another new shooter? Well if you’re someone who has grown sick of the engrossing stories, rollarcoaster style presentation, or just players one-upping you by bunnyhopping in circles spraying their automatic rifle, Insurgency is your light at the end of the tunnel. This game isn’t just a game where you can wildly sprint through the enemy’s fortification and think you’ve got a 50/50 shot of killing the enemy first. No Insurgency actually takes skill, tactics, and teamwork to overcome the opposing team.

Insurgency Lone Survivor

What is Skill?

To clarify I’m not saying you need to be the best sharpshooter in the world to hold your own in Insurgency. Sure, knowing where to aim even though you lack a crosshair is a good thing to have, but without the knowledge and the planning, you are still one of the brainless spray and pray players that the genre’s community has become infected with. Insurgency lets you experience the excitement and realism of what real soldiers might be experiencing. The choice to peak around an unknown corner can get you a quick bullet to the skull before you know what hit you.

Insurgency Corner Check

Sure, it is still a game and a real soldier might be laughing at me even saying this, but so far this game brings the intensity and suspense like nothing else. One well-placed bullet can completely eliminate your target and disrupt his team’s plans, and that is what makes Insurgency so exciting. Games such as Call of Duty and Battlefield claim to be realistic shooters, but these games aren’t truly. Don’t get me wrong here, both of these games are really awesome shooters but they are missing the real feeling that you know you aren’t just a meat bag holding a gun.

Insurgency Camping

Now let’s go into the most hated thing in first person shooters, which is camping. This term is given to players that sit in one corner the whole match shooting at any player that might cross their field of vision. Sure in some of the games named above you might be called an idiot for doing that, because well they will see you as a fun disturbing player. But ask any military veteran, and they will call you crazy not to be one of these ‘campers’. Sure you will spawn 10 seconds later and you can try to get yourself going again, but you will keep dying over and over if you sprint like a headless chicken. Just as in a real war, every step you take will matter. If you make one stupid mistake, you will most be on your way to face-planting the dirt. Just as I said before, you will have to contemplate and plan every step and transfer from cover to cover to succeed.

 

Of course a game would be pretty stale if you just had a bunch of players playing the patience game waiting for the other to slip up first. Instead coordinating with your allies to offer suppression fire and tactical sprints through open ground to new camping spots is vital to giving your side greater area of control on each map. Just realize you are not going to be able to spin circles in the middle of the street wiping out an entire enemy squadron with a series of no-scope kills. Like a well-oiled machine, a well-coordinated team will be able to push the enemy back and secure objectives by working in perfect unison to outplay their enemies. As such Insurgency’s scoring system rewards teams for how successful they are in driving back enemies and taking objectives rather than the typical kill-death ratio.

Insurgency Sniping

With the use of multiple weapons such as automatic rifles, shotguns, submachine guns, and sniper rifles, you will find your gameplay changes drastically depending on the weapon you bring to a fight. Snipers will need massive map awareness and spend their time picking off front line opponents preparing that aren’t as perfectly covered as they imagined. Those that can keep a cool-head under fire though might opt for the submachine gun/grenade combo to blow enemies out of heavily fortified positions. Enough utility tools exist in this game to give veteran players some pretty wild tactics that will keep you guessing on the receiving end for many hours while you get your bearings in Insurgency. Of course this further adds to the suspense and thrill of each battle as the maps are cleverly designed to offer various ways to offensively tackle or defensively protect each objective. Moving down a dark hallway never felt like such a stressful endeavor in other shooters.

Insurgency Map Design

Conclusion

Insurgency is not to be taken lightly. I promise with my countless hours spent in various shooters, I’ve never felt a game bring this level of emotion and realism before. Insurgency turns the genre from rewarding twitch masters and making each player feel like a chess piece on a board where the better team leader wins, so long as one of your allies isn’t the weak link that destroys your goals. With three different available classes that give you either more agility, armor or weapon control, you will really have to think through what kind of weapons and role you intend to play on your team each match. That said the game won’t be for everyone. If you get your kicks being the hero and shooting endless ammo into every dark corner, you’re going to probably find Insurgency too slow-paced overall. But those seeking well aimed shots to instantly end fights and long shoot-out standoffs, Insurgency delivers big time and still has plenty of time to further polish the systems before full launch. Though if you can’t wait like I couldn’t, you can jump in now via the Steam Store and make sure your voice is heard to push the development of the game in the direction you envision.