Yearly Archives: 2013

Moonlight Online Review – When Werewolves and Vampires Collide

By MerryQuiteContrary, OnRPG Journalist

Moonlight Online, developed by China-based IGG, is a free to play fantasy Vampire based MMORPG for Facebook, though the player can log in using Twitter, Yahoo, MSN and Google. Currently only Windows OS is supported.

The world of Ansgarde is in trouble or so the story goes. Unnamed dark forces are attempting to overthrow the three great races of Human, Vampire and Werewolf. There doesn’t appear to be much in the way of lore but if you are fan of Twilight or just like vampires and werewolves in general then you are in luck. Moonlight Online has plenty of both.

Moonlight Online Map

There are three races to choose from in Moonlight Online: Vampire, Werewolf and Human. Each has their own special abilities, style and starting zones. Character creation offers the choice of the three races, gender and several looks for each. Character creation is very basic with only two or three choices for face but quite a few for hair colour and skin colour. There isn’t a slider bar to be had anywhere. Vampires and Werewolves have the choice of being a knight, rogue or mage and Humans can pick from knight, mage and sage.

Moonlight Online Vampires

“Moonlight Online boasts 3D amazing graphics.” Amazing is a rather strong description. Decent graphics would be more of an appropriate adjective here. I haven’t seen any evidence of physics or ragdoll effect. There isn’t a lot of character detail. I have a high end gaming PC and I can’t tell the colour of my character’s eyes. This is with settings turned all the way to max. That being said the art direction has a haunting old world quality to it. There is considerably more detail in the architecture and environs than the characters. While the graphics aren’t bad the sound effects are. The sound effects are annoying; I had to turn them off. I would rank them on par with Runes of Magic. You know that tinny metal on metal sound? Yeah, that. The background music is nice without being obvious.

Moonlight Online Review

As with most free to play games, the interface is cluttered with promotions, giveaways, and rewards as well as the standard fare. If you think the interface looks a bit familiar that is because it bears a striking resemblance to the standard WoW interface, especially the red buttons. The item mall, however, is unobtrusive but there is a scrolling ticker announcing miscellaneous items or sales. The item mall carries things like reagents, warehouse expansions, rep gain items, guild items, materials, pets, mounts and fashion outfits.

Moonlight Online Mall

Graphics aren’t that important to most as long as the combat is good. Luckily, Moonlight Online has surprisingly average combat which is neither good nor bad. If you’ve played any of the AAA titles you will feel right at home here. One of the more interesting features is the ability to enhance your weapon and then transfer its abilities to a new weapon. By enhancing your weapons you unlock new skills. Where Moonlight Online potentially fails is with the questing which seems to be a lot of running around talking to this NPC or that. Levelling is incredibly fast at least at lower levels. When you do get to fight there doesn’t seem to be any real threat that you may lose to. I would even say lower level characters are a bit over powered. I can’t say if this carries on throughout the game but hopefully end-game has further challenge.

Moonlight Online Traster

There are currently only four dungeons in Moonlight Online. The first dungeon becomes available at level 28. There are several events throughout the day which require the player to be at least level 25 to 30 depending on the event. There is some PvP in the form of arenas which are open to level 50+. However, none of this is immediately clear and requires some looking. I found nothing in the tutorial with regard to PvP options.
Mentoring is another feature of Moonlight Online though I haven’t determined to what end other than possibly extra experience. Supposedly, as a disciple, graduating from your mentor brings “great rewards”.

Moonlight Online Blodwyn

Aside from mentoring another feature that is somewhat unique or at least one that isn’t encountered that often is meditation. Meditation allows the player to gain experience and energy while offline. In later levels this requires a certain reagent.

Overall, this is a fun and easy game. It would be ideal for those new to MMORPGs to learn on; however, it could do with a better tutorial. It has its own merits and a few faults but it is early days yet for Moonlight Online. It will be interesting to see how it develops over time. For a Facebook game, Moonlight Online is a nice way to spend some time. If you haven’t tried it yet, why not give it a go? Trust me, you could do a lot worse.

The Femme Fatale Takes Center Stage in District 187: Sin Streets

D187-Femme

 

 

 It’s time to get seduced by the mysterious femme fatale as District 187: Sin Streets (D187), an urban combat first-person shooter (FPS) published by Netmarble, adds its first female characters. The latest update, “Femme Fatale,” also adds new features, including a new team death match map and new gold-plated weapons. Fans of fast-paced, close quarters combat can play D187 by signing up for free on the game’s official website.

The “Femme Fatale” update includes:

    • First Female Characters – “Femme Fatale” introduces the game’s first female characters: Emilia, a rebel that has turned to a life of crime; and Bridget, a former pro cheerleader now fighting to restore peace and order with the S.W.A.T. team. These characters provide players with a 30 percent experience boost and 15 percent gold boost, and also sport a 30 percent quicker reload time.

 

    •  New Map: “Metro” – Transit hubs act as tactically significant vantage points in any urban warfare setting, and D187 is no exception. Metro, the only working transit hub left in District 187, is now up for grabs.

 

    • More Arsenals – The update adds five new guns, including the “PSD XR-Gold-Fully Moded” sniper rifle, the “Lizard M3TC” shotgun and the stylish “DE Crane-Gold” pistol. Furthermore, the newly added “Heart Grenade” gives literal meaning to Femme Fatale. Useable by female characters only, the grenade lets players show their love in a fatal new way.

 

 

 

For the full list of newly added items and features, please visit: http://d187.netmarble.com/community/news/view/2357

OnRPG Shotgun News 4/17: Prime World, Darkfall, Guns of Icarus, and Much More!

By Shannon Doyle (Leliah), OnRPG Elder Scribe

 

District 187: Sin Streets Introduces Femme Fatal

FemmeFatale

Lookout world here come the women! For the first time in District 187: Sin Streets’ history women will be playable characters. Emilia is a former pro cheerleader who turned to a life of crime and badassery. With her in the Femme Fatal update comes a new map, Metro, where players battle for the only transport hub in District 187.

 

Guns of Icarus Meets Kickstarter Goal

Thanks to the fans of Guns of Icarus they’ve reached their $100,000 goal with 34 days remaining. And that means the stretch goals are coming out. The next goal is $350,000 which will mean a world map of towns and trade routes and much more.

 

Prime World Live Stream

Prime World is hosting it’s first live stream right now on twitch.tv. Log in at 3PM EST and join the conversation where you’ll be able to ask questions. And keep an eye out on OnRPG later this week to see more coverage of Prime World from DizzyPW.

 

DUST 514 Hosts Reddit AMA

Tomorrow from 3AM GMT CCP will be hosting an Ask Me Anything session with 8 different members of the development team. Those with questions are invited to post them during a 24 hour time period after which the CCP team will get together and start a crazy answering session.

 

Star Trek Online Character Creation Gets Improvements in Coming Expansion

STO

A new dev blog shows off the changes to the character creation process for Star Trek Online which will be part of the Legacy of Romulus expansion. It will include the ability to choose your faction from the start, touching up to the visual interface, preset options for streamlining, and much more.

 

World of Warcraft Battlechest on Sale for $10

For this week only you can buy the WoW Battlechest for just $10. This is half the price it normally is. So if you don’t already own World of Warcraft now is your chance to pick it up on the cheap.

 

Darkfall: Unholy Wars Launches

After a long wait Darkfall: Unholy Wars has launched at last. It is only available via digital distribution from the official site so you don’t have to worry about finding a game store that stocks it.

Light of Nova Review – A Shining Light in Dark Cold Space

By Remko Molenaar (Proxzor) OnRPG Journalist

 

Light of Nova Review

 

In this Massively Multiplayer Online Real-Time Strategy (MMORTS) game you will have to take over the commander role of the fleet and grow your invincible space army to take control of the solar system. Light of Nova is yet another game that takes a shot at pulling in RTS fans just like me with a fascinating story line and exciting battles.  But with thousands of other players and multiple available servers there’s plenty of competition waiting to keep your intergalactic imperialistic fantasies nothing more than a dream.

 

When you are making your first character you can choose between four different ‘Arms.’ These Arms are different forces with a different view on life and the events leading up to this point. Each Arms has its own piece of the solar system held out, though they’re intent on expanding to capture the rest in time. There aren’t any benefits to joining one of these so it is purely based on whether you like the background story or not. As usual once you are started you get a thorough tutorial to teach you the basics of this game. Just like in any other RTS browser game you be focused on earning money to upgrade and build anything you need in this game. The best route to a booming economy comes from mining asteroids and running missions for rewards.

 

Light of Nova Large Battle

 

Once you are shown the ropes of the game and you are done with the tutorial you are let free. Everything is purely based on what you want; I decided to start off with the quests and missions. You get a few newbie guide quests to help you expand even more; these are all pretty basic like upgrading buildings and building other facilities that can help you grow your fleet even more. These quests reward you with a lot of minerals that can help you expand even more, so doing these are a win-win for new players. Unfortunately upgrading and building these production or resources facilities take real life time. So sometimes you will have to wait in order to complete even the newbie quests. As you can imagine this problem becomes more apparent in the later stages of the game as you attempt to acquire the higher end buildings and upgrades, making this game more ideal for killing downtime than playing hardcore for hours at a time.

 

Light of Nova Missions

 

Luckily beyond the tutorial quests there are still a series of missions you can participate in. These are more advanced and a lot more fun to do. In these missions you basically get to kill something such as crossing forces with space pirates! The combat is probably the highlight of Light of Nova so I was more than happy to jump into these missions. Plus the resources you earn from them substantially speed up your ability to upgrade and build on your empire. I also commend the devs for tying these missions into an overarching storyline rather than random encounters so lore fanatics can appreciate that there is purpose behind their warfare. Another side note to mention is by upgrading your facilities and doing missions you will earn experience. All the members of your fleet such as your commander or the governor are able to level up. If you level up you are given skill points that each one of your member can use in order to get extra stat bonuses to give you an edge over your opponents.

 

Light of Nova RPG Elements

 

Conclusion

 

Light of Nova is a free-to-play browser MMORTS game. You get exactly what you’d expect out of this but at a level of quality a bit above what the competition has on offer. It doesn’t really ask anything out of your computer at all and thus is playable just about anywhere on any machine even while multi-tasking. I have played many MMORTS browser games and Light of Nova’s art is top notch. Unfortunately though there isn’t a ton of features to check out and you can get burned out fast doing the same missions over and over. But if you are a big fan of real time strategy games then this shouldn’t bother you. The game is updated frequently and offers a large competitive alliance scene that is certainly worth checking out.

 

Light of Nova 1 vs Army

Light of Nova

Light of Nova is a browser based MMORTS title set in the dead cold reaches of space. Featuring constant updates, a competitive alliance system, and missions that tie into a larger story along with impressive artwork, it sets the bar high in the highly competitive browser empire building market.

Defining Defiance

By Jonathan Doyle (Ardua), OnRPG Journalist

Defiance Impressions @OnRPG

Defiance! I’m sure you’ve heard of it.

If not, in the real world Defiance is a cross platform, cross media, MMOFPS by Trion Worlds and the SyFy Channel. In their world? Defiance is the town that the television show of the same name is based in. It’s the name of a battle, a movement, a place and probably more besides.

Suffice to say, it gets around.

Definitely Fun

Seeing as Defiance revels in the name trans media for being both a television show and a game, we’re going to have a trans-review. We’ll do the review bit first and the opinion afterwards.

Defiance is in a word fun. In several words, as stated it is a massively multi-player shooter but unlike the others on offer in the genre, it’s mostly PvE. It’s not all shooting mobs though, Defiance comes equipped with team based PvP instances for small scale action against your fellow players as well as the Shadow War system.

Defiance Shadow War

Specifically Shadow War is an area of the open world that people are entirely able to pass through but also serves as the battle ground “training” for larger teams of up to 64 on a side.

On the PvE side of things you have plenty of things to shake your weapons at. Arkfalls, which if you are familiar with RIFT, well… they’re rifts. Rocks fall, things happen, bring ammo and friends for fun and loot. Time trial races on your vehicles, leader board toting mayhem instances and other such diversions. If Defiance lacks anything, it certainly does not lack diversions to keep the player busy in the post-apocalypse.

Getting into the game is easy and compared to some of the character and class creators out there, rather simple and quick. Some of that can probably be laid at the feet of also making the game for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 crowds. At the moment there are two races which come in the male and female flavors (hey, aliens, you have to check that sort of thing).

Defiance Character Creation

“Classes” for want of a better word really just define your starting gear and outfit. If you’re unhappy with the machinists’ semi auto rifle or the scavengers’ sniper rifle, don’t worry. You won’t go long without finding or being able to buy replacement weapons.

People are guided quickly though the tutorial getting their grenades, weapons and trying out the EGO powers as they go. Coming into the game proper players find themselves very quickly getting their first ride and ego points for passive perks to apply. There’ll be no long foot slogs for new players; you’ll be on the little ATV fairly quickly, with various other four wheeled weapons (hey you can run things over) eventually being offered.

Defiance Vehicles

There’s very little lead time between starting your character and getting into what Defiance is offering you. Episode missions, arkfalls, mutant uprisings. They all beckon.

 

Defying Borders

Moving away from the PC there are two major things to remember about Defiance.

Firstly it is cross platform with the PC, Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 all being able to play Defiance. Sadly though not together. I am sure there are various reasons for it. Concessions have been made as a result with design to give the best experience across all three platforms. Would I prefer if I could hop into a Shadow War against a bunch of my friends who only have consoles? Of course I would, but if it isn’t to be, then we’ll survive.

Secondly, there’s that whole TV show thing happening. While initially the amount of bleed over from the game to the show and back is limited, it is an additional influence in the game world that should be considered. Building, presumably, on the show and on the episodic idea, Defiance offers season passes to its DLC that is set to come this year. Five separate DLCs are planned and will have both free to play and paid components in them. How they will affect one another as time goes on? Well…. that’s the big question and the grand experiment isn’t it? Time and Nielsen ratings will tell.

 

Defining Defiance.

From a purely review standpoint, Defiance is well worth a look. If nothing else the trans media effort will certainly make it a touch different to anything offered on the market as you know it. Everyone I know who plays is having a great time and complaints that I personally have seen are few enough and usually attributed to the normal growing pains any game has. Any of the larger complaints have been met head on by the Defiance website with frank and clear discussion on what they are doing with regards to lag and other such irritations.

From my inevitable opinion standpoint, how do you review half a product?

I do not mean that Defiance is unfinished. I mean that it is only half of the story. Any other game before launch and indeed through various quests or missions will flesh out its own lore, it’s own background and personality. Defiance doesn’t, or at least doesn’t to the same degree. Yes I’ve read everything I have come across in-game and listened slavishly to the audio logs I have found, but I am left lacking context and at times connection.

Defiance Nolan

Take Nolan from the show whom we meet in Defiance early on. That should be a big thing right? However at this point I feel it’s more of an intrusion. Go away Mr. TV Character, you’ve not yet in my experience explained yourself or indeed really been much of anything to me. I’ll stick with Cass Ducar, who is cuter anyway. Why do I feel that way? Television.

Defiance Review Cassducar

The characters of the show and indeed the history of the world have both been laid out on various wikis and interviews and whatnot around the Internet. However the actual emotional side, seeing the Pale Wars in full swing, watching the battle of Defiance, all of this is likely reserved for the TV show or is in areas of the game that I simply haven’t reached yet.

TV demands ratings, ratings demand people to watch and so in my mind the juiciest bits of the back story and the world have been kept for that. Gamers will happily head shot things from now until the end of time, they will be entertained or they won’t. Television viewers are treated as different creatures, despite obviously the hope that people will both watch the show and play the game.

So on the purely review standpoint, if you’re looking for a new game and want to storm mutant strongholds or mow down giant critters with a mob of people or simply a few fine friends, get Defiance.
On the opinion standpoint, I’m still waiting for the show so I can connect with the universe.

I also cannot wait to see how this whole trans media experiment goes and what it will mean for games and television in the future. My personal suggestion? Give them both a go, there may never be anything quite like this again.

In conclusion, if you join Defiance, you’ll probably find me lurking down near the Golden Gate bridge, eying my nemesis, the giant missile spamming murder bot.

Defiance Murderbot

You know what I need?
Defilade.

Elder Scribe: Variety and the Beast

By Shannon Doyle (Leliah), OnRPG Elder Scribe

Quickly, check your spam. Did you get a beta invite? A new batch of beta invites for an upcoming Elder Scrolls Online beta event have been going out the last couple of days. But if you didn’t get one, have no fear, it is just a small one this time. If you did, SHUN! I mean…leave your log in information in the comments below…I mean….well, keep reading, unless you know you can log in right now. Then what the hell are you doing reading when you can be out there killing things? (Please don’t stop reading, I need fans like you to keep this going.) This week we’re taking a look at the most recent Ask Us Anything and the making of Ogrim which can really be applied to a lot of the creatures in Elder Scrolls.

Ask Us Anything: Variety Edition Vol. 3

This week’s Ask Us Anything tackles topics from all over the spectrum. Some more serious than other. The most serious of them all comes from Luke Clarkson, “Will I be able to make/eat sweet rolls? I must know!” To which the answer is, “Yes. And Fishy Sticks, of course.” Check out a few other questions below.

Will your level be scaled up when joining a PvP zone, or will you remain the same level and be a part of a level “bracket”? For example, if I am level 16 and enter a PvP zone. Will I be scaled up to max level along with everyone else, or will I remain level 16 and play with people in the 10-19 bracket? – By Yousef AlQattan

You will be scaled up to approximately level 50. You’ll be able to remain competitive, but a true level 50 will have the advantage of having more skills and abilities than you.

With such an expanse of playable area, will the player be able to fast travel from anywhere so long as certain conditions are met (i.e. not in the middle of battle)? – By Douglas Ownbey

As long as you have visited a Wayshrine, you will be able to travel to it. Travel between Wayshrines is free. Fast traveling to a Wayshrine from anywhere will cost you gold, and there are limits to how often you can do this.

You mentioned that there will be permanent character choices that affect the phase of an area—for example, saving a village or not saving a village. Let’s say I did save the village and my friend did not. We are not in the same phase; how will we be able to play together in that specific zone? – By Pavle Vivec

In some areas, phasing (or “layering” as we call it) is not based on a choice, but on whether or not you’ve done a certain thing yet. In this case, separation from another player would be temporary. In other areas, it can be based off of a choice you’ve made. Those choices tend to come at the end of the activity for an area, reducing separation.

There are other mechanisms we use to reinforce choice that have nothing to do with layering. You may experience something completely different than someone else based on your individual choices, but the ways we show this don’t separate you from others at all. The latter techniques are used far more frequently than layering. And finally, there are still other solutions we’ll discuss later that enable you to better stay together with others even if you’d normally be in different layers.

Also note that layering and channels are not the same thing. The megaserver places players intelligently into channels to make sure your gameplay experience is good and to prevent overcrowding. So if you’re in Glenumbra, but you can’t see your friend, you may be in a different channel. You’ll simply be able to join your friend in their channel or vice-versa. Channels, however, will be largely invisible, as we’ll try to put you in the best channel with the highest preponderance of your social connections.

So, that last answer was a bit lengthy but hey, it was important! The next Ask Us Anything will be in 2 weeks and cover topics about PvP and Cyrodiil. Questions are still being accepted by sending them to community@elderscrollsonline.com.

And that finally brings us to the Ogrim. You may remember them if you played Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. Zenimax is bringing in Ogrim and many other creatures from all the Elder Scrolls games. The creation process, though lengthy and no doubt difficult actually sounds pretty straight forward. First they looked at the creatures in Morrowind and other already existing lore to get a better feel for the creature before creating concept art. Then, as parts of the look got more finalized they created more polished images which were to be used as reference for the figure artists. Figure Artists then start creating the actual model you will see in game. And finally, before it is done Texture Artists go in and put the final touches on the beasts.

But of course that isn’t the end! Images don’t just move on their own after all. Animators had to design the rigs for the creatures and work out animations. Finally, everything is put together and placed in the game. Zenimax was even awesome enough to make a video of how they appear in the game.

So there we have it! Another exciting week of Elder Scrolls news behind us. We got some awesome new images, a new video, some questions answered and a lucky few even got a beta invite. I can’t wait to see what the coming weeks have for us.

PlanetSide 2 Mobile App Now Available

 

 

Troops in the Auraxian War can now stay connected and strategize at all times, as Sony Online Entertainment has released the PlanetSide®2 Mobile Uplink mobile app for iPhone, iPad and Android devices (including Kindle Fire). The app is available now for free on the Apple App Store and Google Play.

 

The PlanetSide 2 Mobile Uplink app is the official app for PlanetSide 2 and features a comprehensive guide to weapons, vehicles, classes and more, while keeping players updated on all news from within the game. Through the app, players can receive near real time updates to character stats, leaderboards and general updates from the battlefield, as well as voice chat with their outfit from the game. Additionally, PlanetSide 2 Mobile Uplink connects players to all of the game’s community sites and social channels, such as YouTube, Twitch streams and forums, so that they don’t miss a minute of the action!

 

To download the app, visit:

Apple App Store: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/planetside-2-mobile-uplink/id627456762?ls=1&mt=8
Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.soe.ps2mobile

OnRPG Shotgun News 4/16: Guild Wars 2, Neverwinter, and Origins of Malu!

By Shannon Doyle (Leliah), OnRPG Elder Scribe

 

Guild Wars Announces Anniversary Event

The 8th anniversary of Guild Wars is steadily approaching, and the folks at ArenaNet have made sure no one forgets it with the announcement of upcoming anniversary events. The old traditions of the Shing Jea Boardwalk and Rollerbeetles are making a return again from April 22nd to 29th. And be sure to grab the anniversary ranger pet, the hound of Balthazar.

 

Neverwinter Reveals Rothé Valley in New Trailer

Just days after the end of the final closed beta event of Neverwinter we’re being treated to a peek at the high level zone RothéValley where the drow from the House Xorlarrin are being enslaved.

 

 

Origins of Malu Beta Delayed

Burning Dog has just announced that the beta for Origins of Malu would have to be delayed due to not having enough time to put the proper polish on the game. The client will be available for download this week but there is no new date set for the beta.