Yearly Archives: 2013

Prime World Open Beta Weekend and Four New Modes

This weekend Nival is opening testing of their unique RPG MOBA Prime World with three days of testing and four modes never before shown on the western servers!

Challenge Mode

Prepare to enter a battle against the AI in this tower defense style mode. Check out our E3 demo for a better look.

 Prime World Native Land

Native Land

Utilize the flag terrain pushing feature to its fullest in this mode. Set on the Borderlands 5v5 map, whenever any hero is standing on their native terrain, they will receive massive damage and survivability bonuses along with speed and regen.

 Prime World Switcharoo

Switcharoo

Ready to learn a new hero but can’t decide on who? Switcharoo throws one of your teammates’ hero your way to learn their build and hero on the fly. May the best adapting team win!

 Prime World Zombie Invasion

Apocalypse

Incoming zombie MOBA mode! Kill off enemy units to build an army of undead to overwhelm your enemies. Killing enemy heroes will net you a chance of earning even more powerful zombies to build hordes. With multiple lanes in the mix, how will you stem the undead?

 Prime World Dragon

All these modes will be on rotation this weekend so head over to their site and sign-up for an account now!

Age of Wulin CB Key Giveaway

OnRPG is partnered with Webzen and gPotato to bring you access to the European beta test of Age of Wulin, the top martial arts focused sandbox MMO on the market today!

Age of Wulin CB Key Giveaway

Age of Wulin represents a completely new style of a Chinese martial-art MMORPG! Instead of the traditional fantasy genre based on elves, dragons and orcs, as seen in many other MMORPGs, the story of Age of Wulin – Legend of the Nine Scrolls is set in medieval China and based on the lore surrounding martial arts and the brave adventurers who practice it.

 

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:

  • Visit the Age of Wulin site and sign up for a gPotato account.
  • Enter your beta code where prompted
  • Download the client and start enjoying the beta!

Neverwinter Review – The Best F2P

By Meredith Watson, OnRPG Journalist

Neverwinter Review @OnRPG

Neverwinter is quite possibly the best free to play MMO released in a long time.

That is a very bold statement and you may be wondering how I can claim such a thing.  Well, by playing the game of course.  I don’t mean I’ve played it to level ten and then declared this game full of awesomeness.  No, I’ve been doing tier 2 dungeons.  I have a level 60 control wizard, level 44 devoted cleric and level 35 trickster rogue. I am more than qualified to make this claim. And this game is full of awesomeness.

Neverwinter Login

Neverwinter is a free to play MMO developed by Cryptic Studios (City of Heroes, Star Trek Online, and Champions Online) and is published by Perfect World Entertainment. Neverwinter is set in the Forgotten Realms campaign setting for Dungeons & Dragons. Open beta started on April 30th and it has been recently announced the game will go live on June 20th after a week-long in game event (which starts June 14th).

Let’s start with character creation.  Because this is free to play you only have two slots available unless you purchase additional character slots through the zen store.  Character creation doesn’t disappoint if you are like me and spend far too much time making perfect looking toons.  There are plenty of sliders (yes, yes there is a boob slider but there isn’t a huge difference between degrees of ….boobiness).  That may not be a real word but you get the idea.  To start with you need to pick your race and there are quite a few to choose from: half-orc, dwarf, human, elf, half-elf, tiefling, and halfing with another race “coming soon”.  The character models are good looking but can easily be scuffed up with scars and tattoos. Anytime I have makeup AND fingernail length in a game I am happy. Actually, I don’t think I’ve ever gotten to choose fingernail length before in any game. I am quite picky about orcs and I think they’ve done a great job with the half-orcs. No corrupted orcs here. Definitely more EQ2 than WoW or Warhammer orcs.

Neverwinter Character Creation

Once you’ve decided on your race you can pick from one of five classes: Guardian Fighter, Devoted Cleric, Trickster Rogue, Control Wizard and Great Weapons Fighter.  There is also a class that has yet to be announced and rumour has it that it is a ranger or druid.  Please, please let it be a ranger Cryptic! There is and there isn’t the holy trinity. I have done a tier 1 dungeon with two clerics, two wizards and a rogue with the rogue “tanking” the final boss.  Cryptic takes what you know of MMO class mechanics and kind of turns it on its side. That being said, there was most recently a game update and balance patch and since then I’ve not been in a tier 2 dungeon that didn’t have a guardian fighter.

Neverwinter Dice

Next you get to roll some virtual dice. I started playing D&D in 1982 and to this day I belong to a local gaming group where we get together once a month to really roll some dice.  Needless to say, I was filled with happiness when I saw I could roll for stats. I doubt this will mean much to those who aren’t fans of tabletop gaming or those too young to know what D&D is but including the dice and rolling is a nice touch.

The biggest part of any game, for me at least, is combat.  Combat in Neverwinter is reticule based and twitch-esque. If you are used to the standard spamming of 1,2 and 3 then you may need a little time getting used to the controls but once you do combat is excellent and most enjoyable.  There is a very good tutorial when you start playing to help you along.  Combat is fast paced and requires quite a bit of situational awareness as the mobs will display red circles or cones on the ground. You will want to avoid those and the best way to do that is by using your special dodge move which is by default bound to your shift key. Top Tip: rebind your dodge ability to one of your side mouse buttons if you have a gaming mouse (and if you don’t-why not?).  I love combat where the player actively has to dodge and Cryptic has made it especially nifty by making dodge different for each class. My rogue tumbles, my wizard teleports and my cleric slides.

Neverwinter Graveyard

I am not going to go on and on about how pretty the world is as I normally would. I will however point out Neverwinter includes physics and ragdoll effects. One of my favourite things to do when waiting in the queue for a dungeon is to kick barrels around Protector’s Enclave.  From what I understand, Cryptic has used a modified game engine used for Champions Online and Star Trek Online.  The game world both indoors and outdoors is varied and most importantly feels like D&D.  Character animations are smooth and natural looking.  Well, as natural looking as a high fantasy video game can look.

Neverwinter Lore

The meat of any game is obviously gameplay which entails questing, dungeons, raiding, PvP, crafting and for Neverwinter – the foundry.  The foundry is player created content and quite often is as immersive in the storytelling as the Cryptic created content.  The foundry adds another dimension to gameplay that other fantasy MMOs don’t have.  Questing in Neverwinter, though you still at times have to kill x amount of a certain type of creature, has a purpose.  There is story behind it all.  This is D&D after all. What I find interesting is that even though you may do the same quests on alts, it won’t feel the same due to the varied class mechanics.  For example, taking my rogue through Helms Hold felt much different than when I went through on my cleric or wizard.  Some games give each class essentially the same spells but just slightly different nuances and names. Not so in Neverwinter.  It is a wonderful thing to see such difference between classes.  I really hope Cryptic doesn’t try to please everyone and maintains the individuality of the classes.

Neverwinter Foundry

Neverwinter is full of solo instanced content which will really appeal to the anti-social or those that just prefer solo content. Questing in Neverwinter is meant to be solo with a companion and by companion I mean an NPC combatant.  These companions can be acquired through a short quest after getting to level 16. Companions can also be bought with gold, zen, bars or astral diamonds (the different currencies in game).  With the most recent patch companions were made to be more effective though to be fair I haven’t noticed a huge difference.

Neverwinter Companion

The dungeons in Neverwinter can be tough especially without having guild members to rely on but can be incredibly fun even with a PUG. How can you not love a game where a valid tactic is punting mobs off bridges?

The other day I was talking to a player who was complaining that Neverwinter was just a cash cow for Cryptic. I didn’t really understand the complaint. Yes, Neverwinter has a store and yes I’ve spent far too much money there but it certainly doesn’t seem to be the focus of the game.  When first logging in, the thing that is shoved in your face is the dungeon, foundry and quest info, not the store.  You actually have to go looking for the zen market. The game can be played entirely for free.  Any complaints about Neverwinter just being out for your money aren’t valid.

Neverwinter Zen Shop

As with all new games, there will be issues, bugs and exploits. Neverwinter is no exception.  There have been exploits which were promptly dealt with and as we can see from the last patch they have been working on any other issues.

Neverwinter Bugs

Overall, this is a great game in the making. I stand by my earlier assertion that it is the best free to play MMO in a while. But don’t take my word for it. Go play it for yourself. I dare you to prove me wrong.

 

Keep an eye out on our Giveaway section for a special launch package later this week and catch the OnRPG team streaming Neverwinter tonight HERE starting at 6pm PST (9pm EST)!

OnRPG Shotgun News 6/19: EQII, City of Steam, Wakfu, and Black Desert at E3

By Shannon Doyle (Leliah), OnRPG European News Editor

Several SOE Games Go ProSiebenSat.1

This week SOE hands over new European account processing to ProSiebenSat.1 for Everquest II, DCUO, and Planetside 2. If you already have an account for one of these games but not the others with SOE you won’t be able to sign up for them as they are already redirecting people to create PSG accounts. This means maintaining two accounts instead of one. An FAQ has been set up on the EQ2 website to answer questions ahead of the transfer on the 20th.

 

City of Steam Reintroduces Beloved Races and Classes

Channeler

After going away at the start of City of Steam’s open beta Mechanist Games is bringing back Dwarves and the Greenskin races as well as the Channeler class. This will be part of next week’s 1.3 update which also introduces a new level cap, more dungeons

 

Wakfu Haven Worlds Update Delayed

After finding some concerns during an internal playtest of the Wakfu Haven Worlds update it has been decided to delay the update by a week. This will push it to June 25th. They’ll be spending the week addressing the concerns and improving gameplay.

E3 Update

DizzyPW talks to the Director of Business Development for Pearl Abyss and Black Desert in this new video from E3. It talks about player housing, crafting, and mounted combat. See it for yourself here.

New Artillery Rains Destruction in World of Tanks Update 8.6

World of Tanks

Wargaming, the leading free-to-play MMO developer and publisher, is excited to announce that World of Tanks Update 8.6 is now available in Europe and rolling out to the rest of the world later this month. Southeast Asia will see the update go live on June 20th, while American and South Korean players will get the update on June 25th and July 4th, respectively.

The latest update to World of Tanks brings further changes and balance to the in-game economy, as well as adding new SPGs that further bolster that line of vehicles up to Tier X. Along with the new artillery units, Update 8.6 also adds a new premium British tank, the A33 Excelsior, as well as a new battle arena—Sacred Valley, based on a Korean setting.

 

Shadowrun Online

Shadowrun Online is an online continuation of the Shadowrun universe. Powered by Unity3D, the game will be cross-platform and feature highly customizable characters with turn based tactical combat. Players will have the impressive power to drive the storyline of not only the game, but the pen and paper storyline too!

Features:

Intense Faction Wars: Battle against other players in fierce faction-based combat, aligning with mega-corporations to stake a claim in the dark world.
Co-op Gameplay: Join with other players – or hire mercenaries – as you head into the streets.
Player Driven Storyline: As players help or hinder the corporations, stocks will rise and fall, and the storyline will change the future of Shadowrun – not only online, but also in the tabletop game.