Yearly Archives: 2013

Netmarble Introduces Online Board Game Sensation, Dice Venture

Dice Venture

 

Netmarble.com, a leading worldwide game portal, expands its portfolio with Dice Venture, an online casual board game known internationally as Modoo Marble. The global casual game sensation with more than 5 million players worldwide will kick off a beta test on Wednesday, May 29 in North America. Interested dice rollers can visit www.DiceVenture.com for more information and sign up for the upcoming beta test.

Dice Venture is an online casual board game where players can join friends and family in a classic game with new twists. Players take turns buying and selling properties while traveling around the world for a chance to become billionaire tycoons. Games can be played in either four-player head-to-head mode or in two-on-two team matches, and take about 25 minutes to finish.

 

Dice Venture

“The introduction of Dice Venture to North America marks a significant step toward reaching gamers of all types for Netmarble,” said Jun Park, producer, Netmarble. “Our primary goal is to provide top-quality online games for everybody, and we’re happy to take strides to satisfy the growing casual games market.”

Scheduled to launch in the second quarter of 2013 on PC and for iOS/Android following shortly thereafter, Dice Venture will continue its global sensation in the U.S market. Netmarble is now taking applications for the May 29 beta test. Interested players can sign up and find out more information via the game’s official page.

OnRPG Shotgun News 5/13: Defiance, NCSoft Sales, LoTRO, and more!

By Shannon Doyle (Leliah), OnRPG’s News Monkey

Defiance Cross Over Mission Goes Live

RynnDefiance

Television is making a cross over into the MMO world as Jon Cooper, the main character from SyFy’s Defiance makes an appearance in Trion World’s MMO Defiance. To complete the mission you must seek out Jon Cooper who is looking for Rynn, the female Irathient who leads the Spirit Riders along with her father. Completing the mission from Jon will unlock more objectives and rewards.

 

NCSoft Sales Down From Last Quarter

A recent earnings report from NCSoft shows that sales have declined from Q4 2012 to Q1 2013. But they also point out that they are up compared to this time last year. Guild Wars 2 accounts for 21% of sales and NCSoft’s managing Director, Nah Seong Chan has hinted that the company is planning to address falling Guild Wars 2 sales with an expansion pack. This comes just a few weeks after ArenaNet said they were not working on one at the moment.

 

Wartune Advertising Attracts ESRB

WartuneAO

The Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) are looking into the reports that Wartune is falsely advertising itself as having an adult only rating in online ads. As it turns out the free to play game hasn’t been rated by the ESRB at all. An ESRB representative has been in contact with Wartune’s publisher (though which company they contacted is unclear) and let them know they must stop using the AO rating icon in its marketing.

 

Lord of the Rings Update 11 Arrives Today

The highly anticipated Update 11 arrives in LoTRO today. With it arrives a new launcher, improved mounted combat, the new Wildermore region, and much more. The patch notes are available on the official forums but unfortunately the website seems to be down for a short time.

Alliance Warfare

Alliance Warfare is a free-to-play real time strategy game. Set in a land of war where the ancients have abandoned four nations to their own mortal devices, you must build your city, train troops, research technology, and expand your territory to conquer the land – for victory, and for survival.

City of Heroes 9th Anniversary Loregasm

By Meticulous Meta, OnRPG’s Jobless Hero

 

The ninth anniversary of City of Heroes may have been a couple of weeks ago now but good things are still coming from it. As Matt “Formerly Known As Positron” Miller promised right here on OnRPG back in December that he would do a Lore Ask Me Anything every April 28th until the questions stopped coming in. And he is a man of his word. They started taking questions a month ago, and for nearly 2 weeks the Google document was left open for people to leave their questions. It was then taken offline and Matt did his behind the scenes magic, gathering former Paragon Studios developers who have scattered all over the country to help answer the questions he couldn’t.

KelRead

Are you on the hunt for some light reading this week? What came from this huge collaborative effort is a massive 25 page document with nearly 130 questions from fans of City of Heroes from all over the world. Not all of them could be answered, finding the right developer to answer certain questions just couldn’t happen in time. But most of them have answers, sometimes by several developers who may have different views on the answers.

 

Reactions from the community have been low key, everyone agrees that six months since the closure it has stirred those strong emotions once again. And I have to admit they stirred a few in me. I didn’t submit any questions this time around, though my partner in crime fighting, Ardua submitted quite a few. For me it wasn’t so much the questions or the answers that made me sad for ParagonCity all over again. It was seeing so many familiar global names. My friends who have scattered across the internet in the six months. Even just familiar faces who I never really played with but I would see everywhere.

 

I’ll finish below with a few of what I think are the best questions and answers. I’d like to thank Hosun, Tim, Sean, John, Vince, Keetsie, Sean Dornan-Fish, and Matt Miller on behalf of the entire City of Heroes community. This was an amazingly awesome endeavor and means more to us than you know. Thank you, and we hope we see you again soon.

Spaulding

Q) What was the deal with Radio/Television? Were they Dimensionless? I thought they were just the mad delusions of my villains, but as Television was the “villain” of Mako week I am wondering if there was more back story/plans with them. (Randy Jarvis)

A) They were not Dimensionless, they were (most likely) evil spirits of the netherworld possessing various inanimate objects, iirc  (Matt)

 

Q) Since Arbiter Sands had hooked up with Mynx romantically were we ever going to see him switch sides and become a hero?

A) It was a possibility that we considered but had nothing set in stone. At the time I had planned on exploring deeper into the Valentine’s Day themes in future Valentine’s Day Tips. (John)


Q) What was going to be the plan for the final incarnate powers and trials? (@Sarrona)

A) There was no “final”, once Omega slot was reached that would be the new “Alpha” slot and 10 more Incarnate levels would appear above it. Getting the first 10 Incarnate powers would have been trivialized so the “new grind” would be the Omega-base tree. And then there was a tree after that, and one after that, etc. (Matt)

 

Q) What was Mender Tesseract?  We’re told she’s from the future and that she’s supposed to be crazy powerful in her own time, but we know little about what she actually was or her powers.

A) Mender Tesseract is ex-Battalion. As Lord Nemesis traveled back in time, he had to make various “stops” to upload into a new body (this is how he got around the whole temporal tether rule). During one of these stops, he convinced the crazy powerful Tesseract that Battalion was bad and doomed to fail, and she should join the winning side when she had the chance. Pulling her out of the Battalion equation was a key part of weakening them to the point where they could be destroyed in the future, should Ouroboros fail at stopping them in the past. In other words “wibbly wobbly, timey wimey… stuff.” (Matt)

HeroesWork

Q) Additionally, what ever became of the rumored Coralax EAT? Since EATs always had fairly large plots centered around them, (more or less,) did that thought process go far enough to have a story developed for it? (@Mako)

A) The large plots is actually one of the things that prevented us from introducing more EATs. We had a ton of ideas, but the sticking point was always a lack of time necessary to both do the powers and the content associated with the EAT that would meet player expectation. I remember working on ideas for a Circle of Thorns PEAT as well as a Devoured PEAT. (John)

B) EAT’s in general were a PITA (pain in the arse) as they required a lot of mission content to be created for them, and only the EAT’s could run that content. I think it was a precedent set by HEAT’s that we ended up following for VEAT’s. There was also a Praetorian EAT that was going to be a redeemed Clockwork. A lot of design and animation for the EAT’s were done, but they still needed art and content. Eventually we were thinking of introducing Purchasable Archetypes, which had no story content tied to them.  (Hosun)

 

Q) Carnival of Light mask. Carnival of Shadows mask. What could have happened if they’d met? Power struggle/carnie civil war, live and let live, ? (Memphis Bill)

A) Hot Vanessa DeVore on Vanessa DeVore action (John)

A) The Carnival of Twilight would have all been insufferable vampire fiction fans. (Tim)

PosiAlly

Q) Kheldian players successfully defeated Arakhn, Requiem and the world take over plot. Given that this is a multi-stellar war fought across vast distances and multiple races, what incentive was there for joined Peacebringers to stay joined and on Earth? (@Ardua)

A) Memphis BBQ. Nothing like it in the entire universe. (Matt)

B) In the Incarnate speculation talk we proposed that “beings who were contributing to the Well’s gestalt” – ie a way to include non-humans, artificials, mystic entities etc who called Earth “home” in some way would find themselves being drawn to it. This was the lore figleaf for why players would stay in areas around Earth, for one. (Tim)

 

Q) Crey Corporation, what were their big plans?  Countess Crey’s backstory had this “fallen hero” angle to it, so were there ever plans to explore more of her larger schemes?

A) Their ultimate plan was to take over the world ala Apple, Amazon, Google, or Microsoft, only slightly more nefariously. (Matt)

A) I wanted Manticore and Julianne to hook up. I also had this notion that she’d become an Incarnate and rival the other heavy hitters in the 50+ realm. (Tim)

Age of Wushu – Has Snail Messed Up?

By Jordan Hall(ApocaRUFF), OnRPG Journalist

 

So it has been a little over twenty days since the official launch of Age of Wushu. So far, I am loving the game. I have almost no qualms suggesting it to anyone that loves PVP-centric gameplay, and I would be willing to debate with anyone that says the game isn’t great. Unfortunately, there is one thing that I just cannot defend, and in fact I even agree with a lot of people on. Snail has been messing up big time so far, and now that they no longer have the title of “beta” protecting their mishaps, people are beginning to get very angry.

 

I’ll begin with the recent big issue that everyone is still raging about. Snail made the mistake of implementing an automated system that would ban those that did the worst possible crime (in their eyes) and buy Taels, the in-game currency used to trade with other players, from third-party sites. Unfortunately, this backfired massively and hundreds of players were wrongfully banned for doing something as simple as selling a rare item for a large sum of money. To make this even worse, they were slow to respond when players began to cry out at being banned for no reason. They were even slower in helping those that were wrongfully banned, so slow that they are still investigating accounts that were banned today, well over a week after the incident.

 

Age of Wushu Angry Customers

 

I personally know several people who were banned just for selling rare scripts for a lot of money, and they are just now getting their accounts back. This has caused many, many players questions whether or not they can trust Snail. Some have left for games like Neverwinter, or even Darkfall: Unholy Wars. Some users have taken up arms and begun working on spreading awareness about the things that Snail has done or failed to do. As much as I love the game, I’ve got to say that these people were completely right in their decisions.

 

Age of Wushu OnRPG Forums

 

It’s not just this monstrous debacle with the mass-banning. There are other issues that are testing the patience of the players as well. One of the biggest strains is the fact that a majority of people, who live in North America, are getting pings that range from 400-800 on a regular basis. As I sit in the game, writing this article at 6:30AM, I am sitting at a near constant 403 Ping. This has me questioning whether or not the game server is even hosted on the North American continent. It’s very hard for most North American players in combat, and near impossible for non-North American based players to stand a chance.

 

Age of Wushu Bad Ping

 

A lot of people feel that it is quite obvious that Snail is more interested in punishing people for buying gold rather than stopping the botters or gold spammers themselves. Although, quite recently they did implement a feature to report spammers. And it actually works, at least during regular hours when support staff is available. And botters are still a major issue. For example, my guild mates have trouble finding open spawns of plants for poison making or herbalism because they are constantly being camped by bots. And you can’t kill the bots, because you gain way too much infamy and end up going to jail, or even being whipped and receiving a 24-hour -30% damage debuff if you’re part of a good-aligned school such as Shaolin.

 

Age of Wushu Reporting Spammers

 

On top of the possibility of being banned for simply trading with other players, on top of the laggy servers, on top of the near constant issue with botters and spammers. On top of all that, we still have issues with lack of information on the game and horrible translations. Every bit of knowledge I have gained about the game has been explained to me by other players – I have had no luck finding any official source of meaningful information. The translations, despite the game being in beta for months and having been officially released, are still bad, or even completely wrong in some cases. The most notable example of this, in my opinion, is the lowest tier divinator cultivation buff, which will tell you that it is for 450% when you receive it but is really only 10% when you actually look at the buff.

 

Age of Wushu Confusing Translations

 

There is one other issue that may or may not affect Snail and Age of Wushu in a bad way. Xsolla, the company that does Snail’s billing, has recently lost its ability to use PayPal as a payment method. When I spoke to a customer service representative at Xsolla, I was told that they are working to get it back, but could not tell me why it was gone or when it would be available again. For players like me, who prefer to use PayPal for online purchases, we will have to make a decision on whether or not to use some alternative means or just let it go and move on to a new game. I am still trying to decide on if I will trust my Credit Card to this company when my VIP runs out on the 17th and I need to renew.

 

All of this is adding up to giving players a bad experience and marking Snail Games with a bad reputation. I fear that if Snail does not get its act together and make some drastic changes – either on the Chinese side, the USA Side, or both – things will begin to fall apart and an otherwise great game will go to waste. And with it the time, effort, and dedication of thousands of players. Things are probably much better for players of the original version of the game, but for North American players it is quickly becoming a headache just to log on. It is for this reason that I am begging Snail to please, please make some changes and save this game from becoming another forgotten failed foreign project.

Anno Online Review – Finally Real Strategy in an Empire Builder

By Remko Molenaar (Proxzor), OnRPG Journalist

ANNO Online Review

It is no real secret that I have a soft spot for strategy and simulation games, and being a fan of the Anno series, I was actually really happy when I heard about the upcoming Anno Online. The past years have been a kind of renaissance age of strategy titles going massively online and after one clone too many it’s good to see high quality names like Ubisoft throwing their name into the ring. I was among the first to test out Anno Online in this early state. I jumped into the game eager to see if innovation had finally arrived in this typically cut and paste empire building genre.

ANNO Online Port Management

Now don’t confuse my eagerness for being overly optimistic. I know better than most of the cash shop heavy drivel that clones Evony in this realm of gaming again and again. Of the near endless wait times waiting at end-game for those who think they will play free forever. Not to mention the sheer lack of strategy or depth that comes with the territory.  But when I caught the first glimpse of Anno Online most of these fears completely disappeared. Anno Online not only looked fantastic but would stay true to the one strength the genre has right, being a free-to-play MMORTS that can be played on almost any computer in the house. In Anno, your goal is to get a gigantic empire by satisfying your citizens and working the land for resources. In your medieval city, you are the one to do it all. In most MMORTS games the game itself is very limited, build this and that and you’re already done with your first city, castle or whatever your starting land is. In Anno Online however, you won’t be done so quickly. In fact the surrounding s of your island matter a great deal and there is a learning curve that players who don’t do their research or properly plan their city layout may lack the sophistication in their city that more prepared and experienced players have accomplished.

ANNO Online City Placement

From the moment you have been given your grant of land, you will have to start your town from absolutely nothing but a harbor. There’s no cut and dry tutorial telling you to build X on Y; the freedom is yours to do as you see fit. Your first goal is to hark in enough citizens to acquire the first few goals that can definitely help you out in enlarging your empire early on. In Anno Online, you will actually have to wait for people to move into your little village; this involves making your town attractive for would be settlers or else the trickle of new population will drive you mad. As I said before, you really have to work with what you’re given because every citizen asks for something. Let it either be security, food or an occupation, the demands are various and must be monitored and met when reasonable. Since I was close to water, and had a forest nearby my place, I decided to get myself rich with food and wood planks, ensuring I could feed a large population that then could effectively use up my lumber to continue building new houses and other construction projects.

ANNO Online Midgame

Luckily helpful notices make micromanagement not overbearing on the fun. You will be notified if you’re slacking on something such as your warehouse hitting max capacity or your town lacking a needed resource. The buildings will show this with an exclamation mark so you know what has to be changed in your little village. Unfortunately since I was enjoying building my resource acquirement facilities, my warehouses couldn’t keep up with storage needs. This is where I discovered a vital strategy decision lacking in this genre. You can your facilities the day off and let them sleep so you can stop the inflow of too many resources, lowering the running costs as a result. There is another thing to consider when placing your facilities on your land. When you place them too close to each other, they might interfere with the amount of resources they can bring in. You simply can’t just have two fishing huts side by side and expect them both to bring in the maximum haul of fish. Scattering each resource building is key. Knowing the space required for each building and preplanning your construction is vital to running a successful metropolis. Even though I have played many strategy games, I built without thinking and soon found vast levels of real estate inaccessible.

ANNO Online Island Expansion

On your island there’s a lot of different sectors, at first you start on a small piece of land that can keep you busy for a few days. But after a few days you will need to expand your empire and this can be done by exploring undiscovered sectors around you. These exploring missions take quite a while, so do not forget them because it can delay the process for becoming the almightiest of all empires.

When you have become a little more advanced and your city is running, you are ready to start upgrading everything to a high level. The leveling system in Anno Online is so well done graphically that it’s hard to believe it’s happening in the F2P empire building realm. For instance a simple residential house goes from a simple hut made of wood, to a building made from stone. And slowly you will see your empire grow from simple men into professional architects. And the money you were making a few days ago? It’s now flowing in tenfold from where you began.

 

ANNO Online Review Conclusion

Conclusion

Anno itself has always been a wonderful strategy series that always had a strong community behind itself. This new game hasn’t changed at all, from almost everything in the game to the community, everything remained the same and the game is definitely still as awesome as it used to be. With that said I also have to give credit to the men behind Anno Online that really made the first online strategy game that actually feels like a strategy game. I’ve seen hundreds of online strategy games but they all felt like they were missing the key elements to be even remotely close to what I am used to in B2P strategy games. Anno Online however offers the depth and consequences in every purchase and upgrade you choose. Oh you made this road here and you found out you don’t have enough space or you cannot upgrade the farm you have placed there? Well that is your own fault and you should’ve considered that before. That’s the thought process you need to have in a strategy game, and Anno Online really does this well.