Yearly Archives: 2013

OnRPG Shotgun News 7/19: SWTOR, Neverwinter, EVE, and much more!

Ultima Forever Delayed

Mythic has announced that Ultima Forever, the mobile online RPG has been pushed back a few weeks so they can spend a little bit more time on the economy and wrangling performance across all devices. So far the response has been nothing but positive, as fans would like to see the game released properly working rather than quickly.

 

SWTOR Gets Tauntaun Mounts

swtor tauntaun

The Galaxy’s favorite mount/hand warmer is coming to Star Wars The Old Republic. This information comes thanks to Dulfy from Dulfy.net who always seems to know things about SWTOR and GW2 before anyone else. There isn’t any information on when the Tauntaun mounts will be coming, though Dulfy’s best guess is that it will most likely be with update 2.4.

 

Jagex Announces Further Layoffs

Earlier this month Jagex announced they laid off 13 people from the team working on Transformers and now 10 more staff members have been laidoff as part of organizational restructuring. The 10 staff were all working on new projects which Jagex is shifting focus towards Transformers Universe and RuneScape.

 

Neverwinter Releases New Companions

Lillend

New companions have arrived in Neverwinter, Lillend and Ghost Compaion. The Ghost deals necrotic damage to player’s foes and is available for purchase via the zen store. Lillend is a celestial creature with a fondness for art and music. She is available until August 1st in Profession Packs, but it is left up to chance. She is the first purple quality companion healer in Neverwinter.

 

Raptr Introduces Twitch Streaming

Raptr users are now able to stream to Twitch with the use of the desktop app and no extra software. On this Twitch CEO, Emmett Shear said, “A goal of Twitch is to be wherever gamers are, whether it’s on laptops and handheld devices or integrated into gaming consoles and software.” Using the Twitch widget Raptr users will be able to stream to their Twitch stream with just a few clicks.

 

EVE Intruduces New Collector’s Edition

As part of the 10th anniversary celebrations in EVE, CCP is introducing a new collector’s edition of the game full of physical collectable goodies. It will include the board game that helped fund EVE, an EVE history book, EVE score recorded by a symphony orchestra, a ship model and tons of digital items too.

 

Ubisoft Announces Estimate Release Dates for The Crew and Tom Clancy’s The Division

There has been a small bit of news from San Diego Comic Con. Ubisoft announced that The Crew will be working towards a release in the first quarter of 2014 on Xbox One, PS4, and PC. While Tom Clancy’s The Division isn’t due for release until late in 2014 for Xbox One and PS4.

Shot Online Summer 2013 Super Pack Giveaway

OnRPG is teaming up with GamesCampus to celebrate the final months of summer with one of the best sports sims on the market, Shot Online!

ShotOnlneSummer2013PackGiveaway

Shot Online isn’t just an online sports game, but a highly accurate simulation, with deep role-playing elements.  These RPG qualities are what make Shot Online the addictive game it is, with community interaction alongside character levels and enhancements.  Offering realistic and rare items drawn from the lauded history of the professional sport of golf, practice can only make perfect!  Quests, item trades and exchanges, character abilities and more await players teeing off in Shot Online.  Keep your wits sharp and your clubs handy.

The Summer 2013 Pack Includes $20 in items. This includes a 7 Day Gold Plus Membership as well as:
-Fedora A100 : Resets all stats up to 100 stat points(excepted base stat).
-Zodiac Plus 100 : Enhanced Zodiac with all stats +4.
-Cyma II : Obtain treble Play’s prize for 250 holes.
-Mageia Plus D2 : Double Experience available.
– shine clothes set 7 days(shirt,pants,cap,shoes,glove).
– Mulligan(5) : A card that gives the ability to have a mulligan.Automatically takes effect in a mulligan applied room.
– FF Ticket II : This ticket makes ball speed faster.
– KJ Choi Card Level 10 – K(1day) : When a card is used, it is registered as an avatar. (Additional EXP 35%)

 

To get your key you have to follow these instructions:

  • 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:

  • Register or log into the GamesCampus website and create a character.
  • Click the “Coupon” on the drop down menu, on ‘My Account’.
  • In the Coupon Number box, paste your coupon code listed above. Click Use.
  • Choose the character you would like to give the package to.
  • Note that items are not tradable.

Firefall: Open Beta Review

By Jason Harper (Hhean), OnRPG Journalist

 

I haven’t played Firefall since writing my first impressions a year ago. So as I booted up the game again to see what has changed, I couldn’t help feel nostalgic for the good times I’d spent with the game back then.

 

Unfortunately, I think the market has changed more in that year than Firefall has. The game is nearly unchanged after these twelve months, yet my enthusiasm for the game has diminished greatly in the wake of some of the great titles that have come out between my two playthroughs of the game. The good parts of the game are still as good as they were before, so I highly recommend taking a look at that above linked article for a positive opinion on the game, because I’m afraid the rest of this article is going to be anything but. I’ve been avoiding writing this piece simply because while I’m really, really trying to like the game I’m finding it frightfully dull in spite of my own positive bias.

 

The biggest problem that the game has is that while the running and gunning is intuitive, the way that you progress a character is an esoteric mess of menus with no guidance on what you actually need to progress. The game’s tutorial will fill you in on the usual “Use WASD to move” stuff, but it doesn’t it tell you that you need Xenographs to advance some abilities, and that Xenographs themselves are part of sub group called Organics, one of three main sub groups that each compose of several other resources types that…..

r4ckMeTh

Eurgh.

 

Get the things, then turn those things into other things to build parts to make stuff that could be useful. There’s so many resources, currencies and other obfuscating nonsense that gets between the simple act of making a character’s gun go from pew pew to BANG BANG that progression in the game feels more like stumbling into a minefield than a reward. It doesn’t help that all of this legwork and research don’t really add up to much, as progression in the game is not only slow, but also lacking any real sense of impact.

 

You start the game without any of your frame’s secondary weapon and abilities. While you get to briefly play with these toys in the tutorial, they’re promptly snatched from you when you get into the game proper. It takes hours of play to get your first frame to a state where you’re about more than just left click on enemies, a tiresome grind that makes all the fights feel the same because your character lacks the tools to employ different tactics. it gets better once you’re able to use your full spectrum of abilities, but once you have them all, all progression in the game feels very limited. outside of unlocking the more advanced frames, there’s little sense of accomplishment, as any upgrades you get are barely noticeable.

 

To make the grind worse, the firefights can be surprisingly difficult to get into. Most of your time in Firefall will be spent walking from one place to another, as the open world has large swathes of land with absolutely nothing in them. While MMOs get a lot of flack for their large fields filled with respawning critters, those killing fields at least provide something to interact with. Even when making breaking up travel with the odd smash of the mighty sonic hammer (which is still just as satisfying to use), the resources in these places are now so sparse that you’re going to need to do a hell of a lot of whacking before you get to the part where you start shooting everything in sight. This problem gets mitigated later on when you get access to the game’s mount, a motorcycle, but it also feels less awesome to be driving about on a bike rather than taking to the skies on a jetpack.

kUAPdrTh

The game has at least added more variety into what you’re pointing your gun at though. A year ago there was only bugs, flying bugs and guys with guns. Now there’s bandits, wolves, flying tentacle monsters, crustaceans and zombies. These new additions unfortunately fight exactly like the old enemies, and highlight just how poor the enemy AI is. Just about everything uses the same strategy of ‘charge forwards until the enemy player dies’, which is fine when you’re dealing with a swarm of bugs or zombies, but feels like a waste when you’re dealing with squads of armed men. Every time you get into a gunfight against overwhelming numbers you can simply walk backwards, hide behind a corner for a moment as the enemies all pile into one spot, then fire something explosive into the middle of them all. The fact that this works without fail, against every ranged enemy in the game makes firefights that should be intense ultimately feel formulaic.

 

There’s now a variety of open world missions that function like a watered down version of Guild Wars 2’s dynamic events. With no story offered behind these missions, you’re left only with the raw mechanics of your actions, rather than having a narrative recontextualize the same actions as something new. These missions boil down to shooting enemies in corridors, usually in a cave, though there’s some metal corridors to shoot at them in too. When you’re done, you either interact with a few nodes, or you take an object to another place while shooting other enemies. When not being forced through confined complexes, point defense missions become the norm, which are simply a variation on the thumper defenses that were in place a year ago. None of this is really bad per say, but with these tasks appearing frequently in the same positions over and over again, with no context for why they’re happening, the grind sets in quickly.

MxXDkaah

City defenses, blowing up evil tornados and ultimately grinding your way to the game’s first (and currently only) instance are the closest thing Firefall has to an endgame. These can be suitably grandiose affairs, offering a wonderful spectacle as the skies light up with with the sights and sounds of all out war. The city defenses can drag on a bit though if you don’t have enough people around, as you can get stuck very slowly whittling down the teeming masses of enemies. The instance is alright, but it’s simply another corridor shoot with one or two new enemies that act as the closest thing the game has to boss fights. Again, because the game’s AI is stupider than a goldfish that’s been bumped on the head too many times, these encounters are hard more due to the sheer number of enemies rather than them pulling out anything clever or surprising.

 

Lore is something the game seems inclined to hold to ransom, much like the information on its own progression systems. You can pick up snippets of information from various audio logs scattered about, or from trying to infer things from what the game’s various talking heads tell you as you go about your missions, but what you get is fragmented and incomplete without being mysterious or compelling. While I can expect a game to hold on to some secrets in order to make uncovering them a reward for the invested player, the game doesn’t bother with even the briefest of explanations on who or what you’re shooting, and why they deserve to get blown to giblets. While there’s plenty of information about the world on the game’s website, very little of it feels like it’s relevant within the game itself.

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At the time of writing the game has been having some annoying technical issues, though nothing as severe as you’d expect from the opening days of an open beta. While it has been difficult to log in at times, and certain things seems to be running unreliably (most notably the store and level up screens) the game’s server haven’t just completely died as a result of the influx of players.

 

As I wrote at the start of this article, everything that Firefall did well before, it still does. It still looks good, it still plays smoothly, it still gives the players a great deal of freedom and hitting stuff with a hammer is still satisfying. The game simply hasn’t done much to deal with its faults in a year, and the new things added have only made its problems worse. There’s worse ways to spend your time than giving Firefall a look, but I’m not so sure it’s a better choice than its competition.

Webzen Releases New Advanced Class for C9: Demonisher

Continent of the Ninth Seal

 

WEBZEN, a global leader in next-generation free-to-play games, releases a brand new class for the adrenaline-pumping 3D Action MMORPG, CONTINENT OF THE NINTH SEAL (C9). Starting Wednesday, July 24, 2013 (Global Server Time), C9 actionists will be able access DEMONISHER, the newest advanced class for the Shaman. In addition, WEBZEN will host a gamer gear giveaway and special events to celebrate the game’s first anniversary.

DEMONISHER
Featuring long-range magical attacks and incredible surges of strength, DEMONISHER is the fifth advancement within the Shaman class. Utilizing a mystical orb as her primary weapon, this character can launch powerful offensive strikes, while evading attacks from her enemies. By tapping into the power of the orb, she can transform into another being and inflict explosive damage on all those who oppose her. After transformation, the character’s speed increases and some of her skills are strengthened. DEMONISHER can also assist her allies in battle by enfeebling her enemies.

 

 

THE STORY
The Ikejan Mages, an ancient order that has protected Glenheim, sought a way to maximize the connection with the spirits to defend the Sixth Continent, Raebin, from invading monsters. To achieve this, they developed a new magical tool to communicate with the spirits called an Orb. Instead of connecting with the spirits, the Orb reacted unexpectedly to spiritual energy and created a new source of power, unlike any other. Some of the Shamans craved new power and became obsessed with the Orb’s ability to tap into the power of souls rather than spirits. However, the other Shamans objected to the use of such depraved magic and war broke out between the two factions. To end this conflict, sanctions were placed on use of the Orb by the Shamans, but those who still wanted to use it gathered under the protection of Paulo, an elder Ikejan Mage. Dark times fall upon the world of Glenheim once again. The Orb-wielding Shamans use this opportunity to reveal themselves and unleash their new-found magic, calling themselves DEMONISHERS.

SPECIAL EVENTS
To celebrate the release of DEMONISHER and C9’s First Anniversary, WEBZEN will host a series of special events on July 24, 2013 (GST):

  • Gamers can visit one of the MMO sites that has partnered with C9 to obtain a code for a free promotional chest, filled with in-game items.
  • Players can celebrate the game’s first anniversary by participating in a massive online competition between servers during an in-game drop event. During this period, gamers will battle monsters that drop free items and collect special tickets for additional rewards. Prizes include five V8MA Gaming Mouse devices from BLOODY (featuring dual optics, exclusive X’Glide Metal mouse feet and Ultra Core 3 software).
  • Those who are new to the world of CONTINENT OF THE NINTH SEAL can join the game and create characters that immediately start at Level 20. New users will also receive two special support chests for playing.

Stone Wardens – A Unique Take on Tower Defense

By Jordan Hall(ApocaRUFF), OnRPG Journalist

 

 

I was recently invited to play with the developers of Stone Wardens, a new project from the guys at Burst Online Entertainment. The goal is to create a fun and unique Tower Defense game with a twist of action RPG added in. It will have the best of both genres – numerous towers to place and action combat with player progression in the form of levels and loot. So far only a demo with basic multiplayer has been created and the game is already a blast to play. The project is relying on a Kickstarter campaign for funding with a hefty goal of $225,000.

 

Concept

 

The Team

Burst Online Entertainment is made up of industry veterans who have worked on some amazing projects. David Bowman, the Creative Director, has worked on several of my all-time favorite MMOs – such as Horizons: Empires of Istaria (or Istaria: Chronicles of the Gifted, as it is known nowadays) and Asheron’s Call. Others members of the team have worked on titles such as Wizard 101, Guild Wars, and Tabula Rasa. Combined, Burst has over 60 years of game development experience. It’s safe to say you’re in safe hands with these guys.

 

Team

 

The choice of Kickstarter over traditional investor funding was made because Burst wanted to have a closer, unhindered connection with their players. With Kickstarter funding, the players can play a much bigger hand in what content gets into the game. You won’t have to worry about Stone Wardens being a micro-transaction pay-to-win game, either. The plan is to go with a buy-to-play (with a possibility of free-to-play, from what I’ve read) payment method that will offer DLCs for added content. What does this all mean? That Burst won’t have to cater to everyone in the hopes of pleasing investors, which means a more rich and enjoyable experience for those that want to play a challenging Tower Defense game.

 

 

The Game

The basic premise of the game is that of Tower Defense. You make strategies and build towers, choosing from a wide variety, in key locations to protect your “Portal.” For every enemy that gets to your portal, your portal loses points. The goal, of course, is to make sure as few enemies get through as possible. At the end of each match, a massive and powerful cyclops appears and in most cases, not stopping him will mean defeat.

 

Now, towers (or “Ancestral Guardians,” Guardians for short) are not your only method to defeat enemies. Each Warden (such as the Ninja or Mage Wardens that are available in the demo version) has its own set of unique abilities, as well as a basic attack, to use on enemies. Some of these cause damage, while others are more utility. Freezes, teleports, and speed buffs are some of the planned utility abilities. For me, this is exciting because, while I do enjoy some of the powerful damaging abilities, I enjoy that I can do something like plan ahead and freeze the cyclops in a nest of Guardians and watch as his health melts away while he is left helpless. This sort of stuff will add many more dimensions to the gameplay.

 

Cyclops

 

Burst plans to add in a lot of content to keep their players occupied, with regular updates and DLC for years after the initial release. The biggest source of entertainment and incentive to play will come from personal and character progression. You will want to play to develop your Warden with epic loot that will not only improve its stats, but also make it look cool in the process. Stats mentioned include not only the typical universal movement speed, attack speed, critical chance, etc… But stats that will be unique to certain types of Wardens and their abilities.

 

I mentioned personal progression. Not only will you want to develop your character, but you will also want to push yourself to the limit as well. With the ability to “Boost” a map into higher difficulties, you will provide yourself with a steady stream of challenges. And this won’t just be the standard, “Easy, normal, hard, and hell” difficulties. When I spoke to the devs, they mentioned that difficulty levels ranging in the hundreds are what they are aiming for. This, combined with leaderboards and the possibility of PVP MOBA-style game modes are really going to give you a run for your money.

 

Screenshot2

 

It can be argued that the most important things in a game are the story, setting, and the graphics. Stone Wardens has a wonderfully original story to give what the players are doing meaning. The chibi, colorful art-style brings the world to life, too. Immediately after I started playing the demo, my mind was flooded with nostalgia from back in the day. Uniqueness like this in a game is something that is dying, and I’m glad that, thanks to platforms like Kickstarter, it can still exist.

 

Screenshot3

 

Personally, I think the originality of the game really shines through with the Guardians. With eleven “general” Guardians, and one “unique” per Warden planned, you will have a large variety to choose from. Just from the Guardians available in the demo, I got a sense that each had its own story behind it. And the fact that you bring them to “life” by having your familiar give them “spirit”, which is harvested from wells spread out around the map and from fallen enemies, makes them even more interesting. I instantly fell in love with them and the concept behind them.

 

Towers

 

There’s no doubt that the stars of the show are the Wardens themselves, though. I already mentioned a good deal about them, but there’s a bit more left to talk about. Initially, there are a planned nine Warden classes. They include Mage, Elementalist, Wizard, Gatekeeper, Ninja, Stonesmith, Vesta, and Tinkerer. From what I was told, even more are planned for future content releases. With each class having its own unique strengths, weaknesses, abilities, and even Guardians, it’s not hard to believe that strategy and practice will be important.

 

Screenshot4

 

The last thing I want to mention before finishing up this article are the controls. The game, in its current demo (and I want to stress demo) state, offers your traditional point-and-click movement and attacking. It was mentioned that other methods of control may be experimented with later on in development, but this choice was made for multiple reasons. One of which was the cross-platform support that Stone Wardens will have, and this includes mobile devices with touch screens. The great thing about this cross-platform support is that it is all tied into the same back-end, and I can play with my friends on my smartphone while they are on their PC or Mac using a client or even their browsers. This is a feature that I am so happy to start seeing and I think it will help make this a fantastic gaming experience.

 

 

Conclusion

Burst Online Entertainment has done an incredible job so far with their demo of Stone Wardens. There is so much potential here and I keep getting more and more impressed. Be it from the seasoned industry veterans behind its development, or the uniqueness of the game and its art style. My only real worry was whether or not it would be one of those games that require constant micro-transactions to enjoy, and that was put to rest right away. This seems like a Kickstarter project definitely worth backing and I will be pledging here in a few days. If you’re in need of a fun, cross-platform Tower Defense or Action RPG game like I am, I suggest you to back the game as well.

Wargaming Preps for World Cyber Games

World of Tanks

 

Wargaming, the award-winning videogame developer and publisher, today announced that World of Tanks will be featured at the World Cyber Games 2013, an international competitive eSports event that gathers the best cyber athletes from all over the world.

“Tank squads have improved on their skills since last year, and we expect harsh competition at WCG 2013,” said Global eSports Director at Wargaming Jonghyuk Baak. “Following the launch of the Wargaming.net League, World of Tanks has come a long way in professional gaming, and we’ll continue to evolve both the competitive and spectator elements of the game, providing viewers with a quality experience, introducing new eSports features and supporting pro-teams.”

 

World of Tanks

 

Having debuted at the World Cyber Games festival the previous year, World of Tanks continues to gather momentum in competitive gaming. This year the game will be featured at national preliminary events in North America, Europe and CIS, as well as continued presence in Asia. The winning teams from online qualifying rounds will be awarded travel to the national finals where they will compete for the opportunity to represent their countries at the 2013 WCG Grand Finals, taking place November 28th through December 1st in Kunshan, China.

Guild Wars 2 Makes Big Changes in 2013

By Shannon Doyle, OnRPG Resident Tyrian

As promised Colin Johanson wrote an extensive look at what the rest of 2013 holds for Guild Wars 2, spoilers free. It touches on every aspect of the MMO from PvP to Crafting and is bound to change plans for a lot of players. If you’re looking for a bullet point of the novel sized entry scroll down to the end of the page for the TL;DR version.

 

Crafting

There are a lot of big changes coming to crafting later this year. At some point crafting skills will go up to level 500 using new materials which are themselves crafted, using materials that are lower down. And, much like the charged quartz which was just introduced there will be a limit of one per day to aid in creating an economy for such items. There will also be new account bound crafting materials which will also be a once a day, per location occurrence. What types of places? Jumping Puzzles, giant world bosses, dungeons, and others. Salvaging Fine and Masterwork items (blues and greens) will give you a chance to get a Magic Find Consumable. Which brings me to….

Crafting

Magic Find

Sometime this year Magic Find armor will be a thing of the past as MF is taken out of item stats all together and made an account wide stat that improves the odds on all your characters. Improving your MF will be done through consumables and the achievement reward system.

 

Legendary

Legendary weapons are hard. Getting the precursor is the hardest part. But that will change this year as a way to craft the precursor is introduced. It will require level 500 in crafting professions, and the new materials which will be introduced. Players who do craft a legendary will also be able to pick from a list of already existing stats combos so transmuting will no longer be required anymore. And on top of all of this there will be new legendary weapons introduced.

Legendary

Ascended Gear

New Legendary weapons aren’t the only thing on the table. The new materials and level 500 crafting will be all about Ascended Gear. Armor and Weapons both will be getting the Ascended treatment. The weapons will have the stats of the same level as Legendary Weapons but not be as time consuming to create, or as pretty to look at. Ascended Gear will also be found as rare drops throughout the world however, they will be account bound.

 

LFG Tool

The LFG tool is officially “upcoming!”

 

New Skills and Traits

To try to combat releasing new gear every few months while still offering progression new skills and traits will be introduced. These will be obtained by unlocking them. There will also be new ways to earn skill points introduced to encourage players to try different things.

pvp

Rewards

New rewards will be introduced to give players even more options, and better choices while completing content. Much how chest events give one guaranteed reward chest a day so too will Champions. These chests will include things like crafting materials, unique skins, and skill points. This will make places like Orr and Southsun Cove where Champions are everywhere much more appealing. Dungeon completion will be getting a change as well. Players will be given bonus gold for each dungeon path completed each day. These rewards will be guaranteed and vary depending on the difficulty and length of each path. The bonus gold only counts once a day, per path, thereby encouraging players to look beyond the favorite paths.

Champ

TL;DR

Crafting to 500
No more Magic Find Stats
New Crafting Materials
Ascended Gear to be Crafted at 500 level
Green and Blue Level Drops Worth Salvaging
Crafted Legendary Precursers
New Legendary Weapons
New Skills and Traits
LFG Tool “Soon”
Champion Chest Reward
Dungeon Gold Bonus
WvW Orbs Returning
PvP Rewards Improved

Firefly Online Announced at SDCC 2013

Browncoats rejoice!

Firefly returns, as an MMO. Making one of the first announcements from San Diego Comic Con this weekend QMXi and Spark Plug Games announced Firefly Online, based on Joss Whedon’s hit cult hit. A mobile, space based social MMOG for tablets and smartphones. In it players will assume the role of Ship Captain, create a crew, and customize their ship before setting out for adventure. The game is expected to be released during the summer of 2014 and you can already register for the game on the official website.  There may not be much news on it yet, but there is a trailer, which you can watch below.

Shiny.

Stone Wardens – Kickstarter Campaign Interview

Questions by Jordan Hall (ApocaRUFF), OnRPG Journalist

Answers by David Bowman, Creative Director of Stone Wardens

Stone Wardens Kickstarter Interview

I recently got the chance to ask David Bowman, the Creative Director of the up-and-coming Burst Online Entertainment game, Stone Wardens, a few questions. It will be a unique blend of Tower Defense and Action RPG. There will be the strategy and planning of traditional Tower Defense games, mixed with point-and-click action combat similar to what you get from games like League of Legends or Path of Exile. The game looks like it will be incredible, and from what I saw while playing the pre-alpha demo, it will deliver. The questions I asked are what I believe potential Kickstarter backers will be most interested in. I hope you enjoy the interview.

 
Hello and thank you for your time. Please introduce yourself to our readers.
I’m David Bowman, Creative Director on Stone Wardens.

 

Can you explain what it is that you do at Burst?
I create the designs for our games to meet the goals set by the company. I work with Paul Tanganelli, our Lead Engineer, on the details of the game design to specify the way the systems will work and collaborate with John Cboins, our Art Director, on the style and emotional goals of the art. We are a small team, so I also do the data entry to set the values for the game play, and then adjust those values and the corresponding spreadsheets based on play testing.
Tower Defenders

Burst is made up of industry veterans. Can you tell us a bit about your past projects and if you will be taking what you’ve learned from them into Stone Wardens? Do you think your experience will help you provide a quality Tower Defense game to your players?
Prior to starting Burst, we have worked at Bungie, Turbine, Nintendo, THQ, Gazillion Entertainment, NCSoft, Certain Affinity, and NetDevil on Asheron’s Call, Wizard 101, Guild Wars, Halo, Call of Duty, Left4Dead, Age of Booty and many other successful games. Our experiences have taught us how to create well-built, fun to play, online games. We’ve done a lot of multi-player titles, and our goal with Stone Wardens is to create a very fun to play experience that plays well as a solo game, but multiplies the fun as you add more people playing cooperatively. We love playing Tower Defense games, but the current ones are predominantly single player only. The few that allow for multiple players often make you feel you are playing a solo game at the same time as someone else is playing the same game, rather than create systems that are synergistic and cooperative at their core.

 

Can you tell us a bit about the game itself and what will set it above and apart from your competitors (such as Dungeon Defenders)?
Dungeon Defenders is a fun game, and we have played it along with every other example we could find of multiplayer games with tower defense mechanics. But we are looking for a different experience; one that is less about setting a tower down to create a choke point and then using your abilities repeatedly to kill the backlog of enemies. In Stone Wardens, the player’s abilities change the state of the enemies, allowing other players to get secondary bonuses in their attacks; for example, freezing an enemy sets them up for extra steam damage if they are hit by flame attacks, or a chance of shattering if physical attacks are used, causing shards of ice to damage other nearby enemies.

Our enemies also have many different abilities that not only affect other enemies (healing, speed boosts, damage protection), they also have abilities that keep the players on their toes causing not only damage to Wardens, but also creating secondary effects such as knockback, freeze, teleporting, etc.

Our world is a much more open world, with lots of vertical dimensionality which opens up opportunities such as the Ninja’s Assassinate ability letting you jump onto the back of a passing Cyclops as he moves under the bridge you are standing on.

Stone Wardens Invaders

What was the inspiration for the game setting?
Stone Wardens takes place in a world of magic that has been confronted by invasions for generations. The story of the Wardens being trained to combat these invasions, evolving into specialized Warden classes, and using their magical familiars to harvest spirit from the world and use it to bring ancestral guardians to life comes from both the core game mechanics and our love for fantasy novels and games. We built the game to be fun, and then we wanted to know why these things would be true? The story fits the game we have created, and then the art style grew out of that story and the fun, cooperative feel of the game.

 

 

Potential players who see the pre-alpha screenshots might be a bit put off by the current level of detail in the graphics. Are there plans for improvements for the final product?
Yes, we are iterating on the game, and improving some of the technical aspects. So far, we’ve gotten a great response to the look and feel of the game art, and look forward to reaching our release bar during Beta.

Stone Wardens Cyclops

Personally, I love the chosen art style as it reminds me of some of my all-time favorite games from back in the day. Where did the decision to go for this style come from? Was it purely chosen for aesthetics or did your cross-platform (specifically mobile devices) support play a role?
We set out our emotional goals for the game first; we wanted a friendly, approachable, cheerful art style that made people smile and want to engage with the game. We then worked with proportions on our Wardens, trying out many styles to find one that evoked those emotions. This, combined with the story that had evolved, set the style that we have today, and we are very happy with it.

 

Why Kickstarter and the large goal of $225,000? Are traditional investors not an option, or is it just personal preference?
Kickstarter has two purposes for us. Ideally it would help us find an audience that we could engage with early in the development while there is still time to respond to their feedback, and it would provide funding to complete the game.

We’re self-funded entirely to this point, but don’t have the resources to complete Stone Wardens without further investment. Publishers today appear to be primarily interested in low-risk, proven franchises or completed games that they then market and distribute, rather than funding 3rd party game development. Investors are also risk-adverse, and look to franchises or teams with long track records together. While we have extensive experience in making games on previous teams, this is our first major game as this team.

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Are there any plans for Stretch Goals?
We’ve set out three stretch goals, which are focused on more content and adding iOS and Android mobile platforms. We’ll add more to those goals as we can, and add further goals once we get closer to our primary goal.

 

If this Kickstarter campaign fails, do you plan to seek funding elsewhere or will that be it for Stone Wardens?
We have not yet secured funding that would allow us to complete Stone Wardens independently, so we are continuing discussions with potential investors and publishers to help with that. Ideally, players would learn about the Kickstarter and back us. We’ve seen a great response among those who have visited the Kickstarter page, but the numbers have been small. I suspect because we have not done a great job of creating awareness about our game and Kickstarter; rather we have focused on making it fun. It’s a difficult challenge.

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Speaking of final product, do you guys have a goal date yet?
If we meet the Kickstarter goal, then we’d be ready for release in February of 2014.

 

Thank you for your time and for answering our questions. It was a pleasure being able to have your insight on Stone Wardens and playing with you in the demo. Do you have any other message to share with our viewers?

Stone Wardens was born out of our desire to create a fun and unique multiplayer experience that blends the best of action RPGs and tower defense games…and to provide that experience to a community of players in an online service with social and competitive features. It is our hope the readership here will help catapult our funding efforts on Kickstarter and beyond so we can make Stone Wardens a reality.