Monthly Archives: October 2013

Project Velyria Sentai Pack Giveaway

OnRPG is partnering with Madsoft Games to introduce a new Scifi MMORPG featuring classic dungeon crawler combat with tons of character customization options. And what better way to celebrate a game like that then with a Sentai Costume Pack Giveaway!

Project: Velyria is an upcoming, browser-based, sci-fi MMORPG where you play as a colonist abandoned on a savage planet, forced to fight a never-ending onslaught of alien creatures. Interesting and exciting missions send you deep within the caverns that sprawl beneath the surface of Velyria. The gameplay is dungeon-crawling at its finest, with randomly generated, yet persistent, maps for each floor in Velyria’s vast subterranean network. Battles follow a turn-based battle system, creating a balance between intense strategy and hack-n-slash fun. You can customize your characters to suit your playstyle through stat allocation, by choosing between hundreds of weapons and equipment (which can be further customized by chip enhancements), and most importantly, through class selection.

 

  • If you are not yet a member of OnRPG please sign up here.
  • Enter your OnRPG username and password below to get your key.
  • The key will appear at the bottom of the page. Copy & paste it to a safe place as you may not be able to retrieve it once closing your browser!

To Redeem your Key:

  • Go to http://projectvelyria.com/
  • Sign up or, if you have already signed up to the game, login with your existing account.
  • Create your first character if you haven’t done so yet.
  • Click on the “Redeem Promo Code” button below your character.
  • Enter the promo code and click on “Redeem”
  • The new items should appear on the item screen, enjoy!

MU Online Prepares Whirlwind of October Events

MU Online Halloween Events 2013

It’s going to be one busy month for players in Webzen’s longstanding MMORPG juggernaut, MU Online! Here’s the breakdown so you don’t miss any of the free goodies and fun events.

 

MMO Giveaway Trick or Treat Event: MMOHuts and OnRPG will be teaming up with four other MMO coverage sites to hand out codes redeemable for in-game candy. Collect all five pieces and you’ll find yourself with a bag full of goodies that will qualify you for further items when you visit the MU Online Facebook page. Swing by our site on October 18th to begin the journey!

Facebook EXP Event: Biding your time until the Trick or Treating begins? If you snagged a screenshot from the Golden Colossus event, just share it with your friends on Facebook and an exp boost of up to 200% will be granted to you depending on the number of shares generated. But hurry as you only have till October 14th to get in on this.

MU Roomy Returns: Get to killing those monsters as Roomy cards are on the fly once again. Collect all 24 and build a deck, then get to playing with your friends. Not only are Zen and Jewels up for grabs, but those who earn their way into the top 10 each week might snag a Pendant of Ice, Ring of Ice, or Random Seed Sphere.

Haunted Halloween Hunt: Finally the spiriting season begins October 23rd until November 6th when the WereRabbit and Fire Flame Ghost will terrorize the world of MU Online. Bring them down for rewards or hunt any monster above level 68 to snag pumpkins redeemable for scrolls, sustenance or a rare transformation ring that will change their characters into the hellish Jack-O-Lantern Monster.

 

Players can keep up with any changes or additions to these events on the official site for MU Online.

Exploders

Exploders is a free-to-play, top-down multi-player arena where the size of your bombs does matter. A six player free-for-all with multiple characters and a worldwide leaderboard, Exploders offers an easy-to-learn, difficult-to-master tactical arena where anything goes. Pick up power-ups while try a variety of bombs on your opponents – or when you need a break, sit back in spectator mode and watch the bombs fly.

Aura Kingdom Dev Blog: Crafting a Story

Hi Aura Kingdom fans,

Since we’re revealing the first look at Aura Kingdom’s lore this week, we thought this would be the perfect time to discuss the work that goes into crafting a game’s story. To that end, we brought in our fantastic localization team at Aeria to share their creative process with us!

“First and foremost, producing a game is a collaborative process. Designers, artists, coders, editors… everyone gets input, and everyone contributes. This is true for any game, but especially true for such a mammoth project as an MMORPG. It’s a design-led process, not a story-led process. Design choices are made, art is drawn, and the broad strokes of story are dictated by elements like level progression and the relative importance of things like PvE vs. PvP, the significance of crafting, and so on.


As writers and editors, what we do is take all of that and create a story that explains to the player how the game is played, that connects the diverse game-play elements thematically, and which creates an overall context for the world that describes what’s going on and why the player’s character is involved. And for an MMO, all of this has to be done in a way that doesn’t close off options for future content.

It’s a group effort. Someone’s doing mobs, someone else is doing quest text, someone else is writing item descriptions, someone else is doing incidental dialog… Often, creative inspiration strikes when we’re trying to edit all these individual efforts into a cohesive whole. For instance, level designers made a sequence about fish-men living in a swamp. The artists made images of these creatures that were not so much fish-people as snake-people. We looked at the art, and decided to call them ‘Sarpa,’ derived from ‘serpent.’ The idea of them being more snake-like than human-like influenced the way their dialog and action was written.


At this point we have a departmental meeting to standardize names and broad story arcs. We’ve gone through an expansive period with the story, growing in all directions. Now, we contract some, tightening focus. We want a world that feels big and exciting, but not one that will confuse the players and leave a lot of loose ends lying about. The cycle of expansion and contraction continues, but contraction gains an edge as the game gets closer to release. The more that’s added, the more possibility that it could clash or contradict with material that came before it. So we begin to focus more on making the experience of the story already in play more cohesive.

It’s a colossal undertaking, but seeing the end product come together makes it infinitely worth it for us. Hopefully the players enjoy experiencing the story as much as we love creating it!”

Wishing you endless hours of fun,
-The Aeria Localization Team

Shotgun News 10/2: City of Titans, WoW Film, EQ II, and Much More!

City of Titans Kickstarter Launches

In 12 hours since the City of Titans Kickstarter campaign launched Missing Worlds Media has raised $93,000 $98,600 towards the development of the City of Heroes spiritual successor. City of Titans, formerly known as The Phoenix Project is the first of the three Plan Z spiritual successor superhero MMOs to come out with a Kickstarter campaign. They’re looking to raise $320,000 to pay for licensing software and legal fees. But no wages, Missing Worlds Media is a completely volunteer run studio. Keep an eye out for a developer interview with our very own resident hero, Meticulous Meta in the coming days.

Blizzard Announces Release Date for World of Warcraft Film

There may not be any details about the cast yet, or even the plot. But thanks to Blizzard going on Twitter we now know the World of Warcraft movie has a release date of December 18th, 2015. We only have one question, is it too early to reserve seats at the midnight showing?

Star Wars: The Old Republic Releases Update 2.4: The Dread War

SWTOR Dread War

The biggest update since 2.0 has launched in SWTOR. It includes a new story mission area that has new missions on a new moon. It also features new 4v4 warzone gameplay, new gear, quality of life changes, and of course new vehicles. All in an uncharted system that is strong with the dark side.

Bethesda Opens Sydney Office

Bethesda Softworks has opened a new office down under. ZeniMax Australia will oversee publishing in Australia and New Zealand. Simon Alty is taking on the role of Managing Director. And with three AAA titles releasing in the next year they are sure to have their hands full.

Everquest II Introduces Heroic Characters Program

New, current, and returning players can now jump straight into the Everquest II action by making a level 85 Heroic Character. This will allow players to prepare for the upcoming November launch of the Tears of Veeshan expansion. To kick the program off, for a limited time anyone can create one perminant Heroic Character for free (a $35 value). This event is running until October 15th. Create a level 85 Heroic Character after that date and you’ll be faced with three choices. One, Try Before You Buy. Play your character for one full level, several hours of gameplay before deciding if you want to keep them. Two, Purchase a Heroic Character at the character select screen. Or finally, upgrade an existing character.

Archeblade Indiegogo Campaign Underway

And now for a game we’ve not heard much on in some time. Archeblade, the third person fighting game has launched an Indiegogo Campaign to raise funds to help finish the game and keep it free to play. It has been on Steam as part of an early access program since March and had more than 500,000 downloads in that time. They have just 25 days to raise $80,000. If you want to know more visit the campaign page. http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/archeblade-next-generation-mo-fighting-game

Destiny Beta Announced, Pre-Orders Now Available

Activision and Bungie have have announced that Destiny, the console MMO which will be available on PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One will begin beta testing sometime early in 2014. Fans who pre-order the game will be able to participate in the beta. You can find out where to pre-order by visiting the game’s official website.

Dragonica: Cassiopeia – Part II Now Live on EU Servers

The second instalment of the Dragonica: Cassiopeia expansion has gone live. The first stage was launched on June 19th. With it came a raised level cap, 11 new dungeons, and an all new legendary level of difficulty. And of course it wouldn’t be a proper MMO update without some new armor and weapons.

Ubisoft Buys Future Games of London

Ubisoft has announced they have acquired Hungry Shark developer Future Games of London. This includes the free to play Hungry Shark action games on Andriod and all 41 staff members.

Project: Gorgon

Project: Gorgon is an independently developed MMORPG with a quirky feel that blends old and new schools of MMO game design.

Project: Gorgon is designed for players who enjoy complex game systems, deep worlds, and supportive communities. Revived ideas found include the ability to discard items on the ground for other players to pick up; the ability to buy other player’s vendor-sold items; and reduced hand-holding after basic game tutorials. Meanwhile, modern MMO concepts include robust combat, quests, and guilds. Add in some crazy new ideas like player werewolves, player-created treasure hunts, and regularly changing combat combos, and you’ve got an interesting pot of ingredients to stew into a new twist on the MMO.