Yearly Archives: 2013

Shadowland Online Vanguard Pack Giveaway

OnRPG is partnering with ZQGames to celebrate the launch of Shadowland Online’s Vanguard Server.

Shadowland Online

The undead gates have released a dark force that has laid siege upon humanity. As a surviving human faction, it is your duty to reclaim the tainted Shadowlands of God’s Continent and rebuild your empire with your army and fellow allies. With a captured undead gate at your side, you must travel to other ages and seek legendary heroes to empower you in your conquest.

The Vanguard Pack Includes:
250 Diamonds
3,000 Gold Coins
150 Battle Achievement

To get your key you have to follow these instructions:

  • If you are not 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 you close your browser!

 

To Redeem your key:

  • Register at Shadowland’s Homepage and choose the Vanguard server
  • Create a Role Name and enter the game
  • Click on your profile image on the bottom right of the screen
  • Under the town hall menu click on the “Gift Card” tab and enter your key
  • If you entered it correctly you will see a message announcing your gift pack items!

The Age of MOBA

The Age Of Moba

 By Jason Harper (Hhean), OnRPG’s MOBA Enthusiast

 

Reading through the comments section of a good number of websites and youtube videos is akin to gazing upon the blood etched runes housed within the fabled necronomicon. There is knowledge there, but it is dark and terrible stuff encrypted within the ramblings of madmen. This year, the comments’ scrawlings have directed their ire towards the emergent MOBA genre, so I thought I’d saddle up my horse, don my white armour and sally forth in defense of gaming’s latest fad.

 

While dubbing a genre ‘Multiplayer Online Battle Arena’ is a genre name as vague as it gets, the core of what makes up a MOBA is very straightforward. In a MOBA, there are multiple (though most often only two) teams of players that each control a single character within the game. These characters will have a selection of abilities that differentiate themselves from the rest of the cast, and can gain levels and/or items to increase their performance over the course of a match. The objective of each team is to destroy their opposition’s base, while pushing groups of computer controlled mooks down set pathways in order to destroy the towers that obstruct their progress. I’ve seen the term ‘Lane Pushing Game’ or LPS used to describe the genre, and while I personally think it better describes these sorts of games, I’m aware that MOBA is a far more commonly used acronym.

 

While the first MOBA was the Aeon of Strife map for Starcraft: Broodwar, most of the core elements of the MOBA genre weren’t solidified until the Defense of The Ancients: Allstars map for Warcraft 3: Reign of Chaos. Gas Powered Games’ Demigod was the first MOBA to be released as a stand-alone game, which was a commercial failure due to server issues. Riot Games’ League of Legends (LoL) shortly followed, coining the term ‘MOBA’ in order to set their newly released title apart from DOTA. LoL has since become the most successful MOBA on the market, and is one of the highest grossing video games of all time. Despite its incredible popularity and earnings, LoL has had few imitators. Most MOBAs have been either clones of DOTA or add their own unique ideas onto the standard template.

 

This is one way that I believe that the MOBA genre is not the cynical cash grab that its detractors often claim it to be. Usually, when a big game comes out it gets a large number of imitators. Not simply games that cherry pick a few key mechanics, but lift the entire mechanical underpinnings of the game alongside nearly all of its thematic components. The worst example of this was found in the wake of World of Warcraft (WoW), which both reinvigorated and stagnated the MMO genre.

 

WoW is far from the only culprit here, but its imitators were by far the most blatant. Blizzard’s behemoth brought the MMO market out of obscurity, taking it from a niche to one of the largest, most bloated of genres. This should have been great for the genre as competition often breeds innovation. The problem is that due to the extreme cost to make an MMO, only big publishers could even consider funding such a large project. Big publishers with risk adverse investors who only want ‘sure fire’ games to increase the worth of their stock. The result was a veritable deluge of fantasy themed worlds filled with quest logs, hotbars and rat infested basements.

 

The reason this hasn’t happened to the MOBA genre (so far) is that they are relatively cheap to build. You only need to make one map, a few characters, and have a solid idea of how those characters interact with any available upgrades. You don’t need a story, or cutscenes or quicktime events. Just some artists, programmers and designers. While balancing the game can be a nightmare (especially as potential upgrade/character combinations expand), those simply require a larger than normal QA team, who are the lowest paid workers in the gaming industry. This means that we’re seeing small startup companies leaping at the genre rather than the lumbering AAA publishers.

 

Independent studies are far more likely to be making games they enjoy and want to play, rather than trying to work out how best to achieve maximum market saturation. They don’t have investors to appease or sprawling amounts of managerial staff desperate to justify their own existence. Risks are far more common in the indie scene, and the MOBA genre has inherited a lot of its pioneering spirit. Third person shooter with MOBA elements? Why not! Platformer hybrid based on 80s cartoon shows? Go for it!

 

Ironically, this is why most MOBAs are crap. While there’s a good amount of diversity in the genre, no-one but Valve and Riot have the money to throw at their games to polish them to the incredibly high standard its audience now expects. There are few companies working in software, let alone in gaming, that are making the sort of profits those two are raking in. While both LoL and Dota started out as diamonds in the rough, they are now diamonds sporting enough bling to blind a rap star. These new games simply don’t get a chance to prove themselves before their userbase gets consumed by the ever hungry MOBA Monoliths. Even those that do survive past the opening weeks, and manage to gain some traction (Hey SMITE, how you doing over there?) suffer when they are unable to keep pace with the consistent stream of upgrades the two market leaders keep lathering all over their products.

 

What has succeeded, however, is League of Legends’ business model. The exact way that a game is carved into pieces with pay gates only being put on cosmetic options, then allowing both in-game and real world currency to be used to expand the number of tools at a player’s disposal has become the industry standard. Paying for power has mostly disappeared from new releases, as has paying for sections of content. While the free to play model was in use before LoL, it was considered a second-rate option for western titles until Riot paved the way for a new generation of western F2P games.

 

Many people would likely rather see more games adopt Dota2’s free to play model that has its users pay for cosmetics only, but I honestly can’t blame the free to play market for not going for such a risky venture. While Valve has Steam backing it if their games don’t turn a profit, no other developer can afford to give things out completely for free just so they can increase the number of people with their distribution platform installed. EA probably could use such a scheme to get Origin into more homes, but they are too busy dealing with their own financial woes in the wake of the abysmal failure that was The Old Republic.

 

Perhaps in the future we’ll start to see some of the worst parts of the gaming industry at work as the big publishers catch the scent of money and begin warming up the cloning vats. If you were particularly cynical, you could argue that it’s already begun, with tie ins like Guardians of Middle Earth and the upcoming Infinite Crisis trying to make a cheap buck from fans. I like to hope that the future holds more experimentals like Prime World and less survey driven slush like Merc Elite.

 

In the present though, we have a small roster of different titles that offer more diversity within the borders of the genre than most others could only dream of. Love them or hate them, MOBAs certainly aren’t going away anytime soon.

 

Alpha Beta Soup 4/29

Welcome back everyone! We took a bit of time off for the site transition then I decided this was a perfect time to go through the list and do a bit of spring cleaning. Everything you see in the list is true as of today. There is a ton of new stuff to look at too. I put all of it in orange even if it is a little bit out of date just so you wouldn’t miss anything. Enjoy your soup!

As ever all changes to the list below are in orange for you to find easily.

 

OnRPG Giveaways

These are all the beta giveaways currently running on OnRPG. There’s no guarantee that we won’t run out so grab them quick.

Anno Online Closed Beta Key Giveaway
ChronoBlade Closed Beta Key Giveaway
Everlight Open Beta Privilige Pack Giveaway
Kartuga Closed Beta Key Giveaway
Loadout Closed Beta Key Giveaway
World of Warplanes Closed Beta Key Giveaway
Yitien Open Beta Pack Giveaway

 

Dates Announced:

Below are the MMOs who have announced upcoming beta events that haven’t started yet or are currently in progress for a limited time.

Neverwinter Open Beta April 30
Ragnarok 2 Official Launch Date May 1
Lost Saga Launch May 2
Origins of Malu Open Beta May 4th
Arcane Saga (Formerly known as Prius Online) Closed Beta May 7
City of Steam Open Beta May 10
Legend of Edda Vengeance Open Beta May 16
ArcheAge Chinese Beta starting May 2013
Ballistic Closed Beta Spring 2013
Firefall Open Beta July 9
Age of Wulin EU Closed Beta 2013

 

Alpha:

These games are currently in Alpha. Signups are available via the link.

Gloria Victis Pre-Alpha
Lunaria Story
Onigiri Alpha (Japanese) Between Phases
The Repopulation
Xulu

 

Closed Beta:
MMOs which are in closed beta require application and often require approval before access can be gained.

Age of Wulin(EU, Asia) EU in Early 2013
Anno Online
Ascension: Arenas of War Current Status Unknown
Black Prophecy Tactics: Nexus Conflict Current Status Unknown, Website No Longer Exsists
Born To Fire
Bounty Hounds Online Beta Testing Complete. No Launch Date Announced
ChronoBlade
Dragon’s Prophet
Eldevin
Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn
JollyGrim
Kartuga
Loadout
MechWarrior Tactics
March of War
Marvel Heroes
NavyField 2 Between Beta Events
Neverwinter Founder’s Closed Beta April 12, Open Beta April 30
Patterns
Prime World
Strategoria
Transformers Universe Now accepting applications.
UFO Online
Warface
Wildstar
World of Warplanes

 

Open Beta:
Games in open beta require an application but often it is little more than signing up for an account.

City of Steam Starts May 10
DK Online Servers Closed Temporarily
Dominatron
Dust 514
Ecol Tactics
End of Nations Open Beta delayed until further notice, refunds have been issued.
Everlight
Firefall
FoxLi Rush
Gunswords(English and Russian)
HeroDex
Heroes & Generals
Path of Exile
Oversoul
Raceroom Racing
Ragnarok 2
Real World Racing
Scarlet Blade
SmashMuck Champions
Tales of Laputa
The Aurora World
The Lost Titans
Universal Monsters Online
War Thunder
WorldAlpha
Yitien

Record Breaker! Warface Claims a Guinness World Record

Warface

 

Crytek GmbH today announced that their free-to-play title, Warface, has set a new Guinness World Record. The game entered the record books for having the most players online simultaneously on one online shooter server. The record was set on Saturday, January 26th, when 145,012 players in Russia were enjoying Warface on the Moscow-based Alfa server.

 
The record-breaking play session was coordinated by Mail.Ru Games, a leading internet service provider and online games publisher who operate Warface in Russia. The news that over 145,000 Russian Warface fans enjoyed the game simultaneously follows on from the announcement earlier this month that the game has attracted over 9 million registered users in Russia during its first year online.

 

Warface

“Warface stands out from other shooters for many reasons,” said Vladimir Nikolsky, Vice President of the Games Division at Mail.Ru. “The fact that it’s created with CryENGINE® 3, its exciting co-op and versus modes, and the constant updates to the game world all set it apart and have helped to ensure its popularity with players and press. We’d like to thank everyone who has supported Warface so far, especially our players, who made this record possible.”

Warface first went live in Russia in April 2012, and was named “Game of the Year” at the Russian Games Developer Conference. Players in Russia and other territories served by Mail.Ru enjoyed regular updates to game content that included 45 new weapons, 10 unique character skins and 11 new maps.

OnRPG Shotgun News 4/29: Dust 514, League of Legends, and Warface

By Shannon Doyle (Leliah), OnRPG News Fanatic

Dust 514 Coming 5/14

 

Over the weekend at EVEfest it was announced that it’s free to play PS3 shooter Dust 514 would be launching at last on May 14th. The game can be downloaded for free and will have new upgrades and features for the coming years.

 

League of Legends Spotlights Sejuani

 

A new 5 and a half minute long video has been released spotlighting Sejuani, The Winter’s Wrath. The video highlights the character, how she works and what works best for her. Have a look for yourself below.

 

Warface Breaks World Record

 

Warface has officially broken the world record for the most players online simultaneously present at one time on one server in a shooter. The record was broken on January 26th when 145,012 players in Russia logged in. The record has been confirmed by the Guinness World Records.

Camelot Unchained: The Final Countdown for a Kickstarter, and an Industry

By Darren Henderson (DizzyPW), OnRPG Editor-in-Chief

Camelot Unchained Kickstarter

Camelot Unchained, The Lighthouse in a Bleak Ocean

If you follow OnRPG you may have heard of a little project I’ve been backing since the early days of its announcement. From the proverbial dark ages for Fantasy MMORPGs came a shining light when one of the Pre-WoW Innovators of the online gaming industry emerged from his retirement to announce a title so full of risky untested features, major publishers like EA wouldn’t touch it with a ten foot pole. I’m talking about Mark Jacobs and his newest venture, City State Entertainment, now finished with their mobile title and ready to push the limits of what defines an MMORPG with Camelot Unchained’s kickstarter goal.

Now I’m not here to educate our readers on what this game is. Hell I’ve been doing that for a full month, offering a 50 minute interview with the man, reposting countless video discussions on the various topics, and summing up the thirteen founding principles to anyone that would listen on our forums. No if you aren’t knowledgeable about this game at this point, it was obviously by choice and there’s no point trying to reach out to convince you otherwise that this game is for you. It was made clear from day 1 by Mark that he isn’t designing it for everyone. This article is directed at the fence sitters, the MMORPG industry enthusiasts, and even the luke warm backers that put some money down but haven’t mentioned it to others.

Camelot Unchained Wont Fund

As things currently stand, Camelot Unchained will not fund. The income has slowed to a trickle with the only hope coming from a decent bump when Larian Studios (designers of a title I’m currently truly excited for: Dragon Commander) officially backed them in a mutual partnership. The project literally needs double what it’s bringing in daily though to have a chance of making the remaining $500,000 required to hit their goal. And while you might say ‘hey $1.5 million is pretty good. They should be proud.’ I say nay to that!

MMORPG Industry in Decline

The Bigger Picture – An Online Gaming Industry in Decline

This Kickstart has moved beyond a simple industry veteran trying to put together a tiny elite team to make a pet project MMORPG. That died out when the comment stream on their page became a 24/7 chat room. When every major MMORPG press veteran dropped their coverage priority on major publishers with advertising dollars oozing out of their pockets to focus on this title with lofty goals and slim to nill chances of success. As my co-worker wrote about in her Top 9 Features you miss in an MMORPG, the most powerful element of an MMORPG was born with a vengeance. The Camelot Unchained community.

SaveCoH

Akin to the never give up and never surrender spirit that followed City of Heroes, this type of community shouldn’t seem like such a big deal. Heck back in the early days of the industry, every popular game had dedicated communities like this. Just look at Ultima, Everquest, EVE, hell even World of Warcraft to a lesser extent. They’ve survived the MMORPG graveyard of 2012 with flying colors thanks to the dedication of their community surmounting outdated features, weaker development engines, and lesser aesthetics compared to modern MMORPGs. But this sense of community in recent years has begun to die. MMORPGs have become Single-player Wars Tackling Outdated Rituals. The emphasis on players as the hero of their own tale, a tale crafted and forced down their throat by developers has replaced any sense of community. Any sense of needing other players. “Just run your treadmill” they told us. “More content awaits you at the end to keep your track from breaking.” “You ran it too fast. Slow down and visit the cash shop to kill some time.”

It’s honestly nauseating thinking about it. And I get dizzy looking at the new reality… why build a community? The game you’re joining will be closed in 2 years or less anyway. No one you know now will be there in the next game but don’t worry… we’ll refund 30% of your cash shop purchases in our next treadmill so don’t break the habit! Blinders on!

The industry essentially has gone from the content treadmill to the game treadmill, finding it more profitable to close down old games the minute a slightly more advanced engine becomes available and transition as much of their userbase to the next big thing in a never ending cycle. There’s no time for innovation or risk. If your next treadmill isn’t done before they tire of the current run, the players will simply run on any of the numerous other treadmills publishers on the market spouting their hype machines at full blast.

So you might think I’m getting vastly off topic from Camelot Unchained at this point? No I couldn’t be more focused on the topic of this kickstarter campaign. The age of the game treadmill is at its limit. Those that are members of our forum community can attest to this. When was the last time our forum was united to play a game seriously for more than a 2 month period? Eden Eternal in 2011. Our community no longer stands united to a game. Players stuck in this single player mentality have returned to PC gaming because let’s face it, it’s superior if you’re seeking a single player experience to begin with. Yet… despite the death of the unified community for any new titles coming out, just look at the comment section of Camelot Unchained’s Kickstarter page.

Camelot Unchained Back on Track

Given the impossible mountain that stands before them, do you see uncertainty? Doubt in the legitimacy of this project? Call it naivety, but this community has no doubt that this game will happen. Rings a bell doesn’t it? Perhaps the City of Heroes community facing the closing of their title by NCSoft while to the end never believing it would actually happen. And then it happened and to this day there is no sign of City of Heroes ever returning. The CoH community continues to reel. They still stand strong as a community, but without their unified focus, i.e. the actual game, it will slowly dwindle down and disappear. So what is in store for Camelot Unchained’s future when it doesn’t fund?

 Camelot Unchained Look into the Future

A Look into the Future

It’s now May 30th. The Camelot Unchained kickstarter round 2 is now funded. The goal? $1.3 million. It barely reaches it before the deadline with a strong community effort pushing it through. Media hype has severely cut down on coverage of the game following its disappointing failure to reach its original goal despite having such lofty extended goals teased that may never become a reality. Mark Jacobs sees the writing on the wall and realizes he either has to make the painstaking decision to cut back on certain features, or make concessions in investment partnerships to make up for the loss of roughly 15% of their original funding goal. He of course will side with the content cutbacks over compromising his goal to remain independent. The game will still be made, but a somber knowledge that this title the CU community was so excited for, a title that once topped MMORPG.com’s hype list, was unable to even reach its original Kickstarter goal. And that they will be receiving a slightly watered down rendition of Mark’s original vision, despite his team putting in destructive levels of overtime in an attempt to compensate for both the delay in funding and decrease in funding.

 Camelot Unchained Ripple Effect

The Ripple Effect

Other potential indie developers without a powerful name brand in the industry like Mark Jacobs will shudder. A title with backing from MMOHut, Massively, MMORPG, Eurogamer, Ten Ton Hammer, and countless other general coverage sites with one of the most publicly open development processes ever seen couldn’t reach funding. What chance do these lesser indie titles have of making any impact? Best to scale down as well. Best to sacrifice on the full vision of their dreams. Reality sets in. Some scrap their dreams and apply to work for the big publishers for a more secure future. Talent infuses into larger companies still pushing the MMO Treadmill to the end of its lifecycle. Others with more foresight compliment console companies where they realize all the money is heading back to currently. A scarce few ignore the facts and push forward with their kickstarter. It goes nowhere and they bend to a larger publisher and their business practices.

In memory of a truly amazing indie experiment that made it further than most

If you’re reading this and have been watching the MMORPG industry as closely as I have, you know what I’m saying is reality. Camelot Unchained is an anomaly in an industry that’s become filled with recycled ideas and dying profits. If it funds successfully (through a miracle at this point), it will show that the strength of the MMORPG community still stands together strong enough to overcome the bottom line power of the 1%. Of the NCSofts. Of the EAs. If it fails well.. Nexon knows they’ve won. Perfect World Entertainment will continue acquiring smaller talented studios to improve the gaming mill of releases. Jack Emmert will walk around gaming conventions looking like a zombie as he interviews gaming press like us with a paid smile on his face.

Camelot Unchained Funds

The Future Isn’t Written in Stone

So tell me, does it make me a hero to put my money behind a project I truly believe in for my personal enjoyment? Not in any way. But if someone who doesn’t even want to play Camelot Unchained sees the bigger picture and throws a small donation behind it anyway… then something bigger than ourselves begins to occur. This game has the power to make a statement. To change everything. To bring back gaming communities the way they were known in the late 90s and early 2000s. A return to indie studios like the original Mythic Entertainment forged by 80s style game devs uniting to accomplish their vision of fun. The original Cryptic Studios formed by two guys that just “wanted to do an online role-playing game… with superheroes.” Risk takers like Origin Systems that will put their company name on the line for an untested experiment like Ultima just because a handful of developers knew they could make it work. CCP games that weren’t daunted when everyone said copying World of Warcraft was the only way to make it in the online world, and stuck to their SciFi guns until it paid off.

Or do you want to stare at shiny graphics and games offering a single innovation about as often as consoles release new generations. To continue staring at your forum signature stating you’re ‘waiting for: nothing.’ To endure the toxicity of MOBA communities rather than the camaraderie each of us older gamers have at one point felt in our online gaming history. Your move.

 

 

General War: Memories Kicks off 2nd CBT

Meticulously recreating the brutal WWII, the browser game, General War: Memories, (published by Gamebox) has attracted dramatic attention and popularity during the past week of 1st closed beta test. Offering gamers the riveting opportunity to relive historic battles, it brings the experice of war to life with heated PvP confrontations. Now its 2nd and final beta test is underway.

 General War Beach Battle

This test brings with it a number of optimizations and new features sure to satisfy fans. With quicker loading, an improved user interfaces, and cleaner tutorial, new players will be able to jump into battle faster than ever. And new ranking and matchmaking features ensure that players can always find the perfect opponent of their level.

 General War Gameplay 1

The importance of strategy and alliances also become more apparent in the latest version. Players being bullied by stronger foes can now forge together to overcome insurmountable odds.

 General War City Battle

Gamebox however admits that the game still has a way to go. As such they’ve simplified the system of submitting suggestions in the beta test to ensure they receive as much feedback as possible. These suggestions will be considered in the final polishing prior to General War: Memories launching in early May.