Yearly Archives: 2013

WeMade USA Relaunches Lost Saga, Signs Former Outspark CEO

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WeMade USA Relaunches Lost Saga, Signs Former Outspark CEO

 

 

WeMade Entertainment USA, the US-based publishing arm of leading online game company WeMade Entertainment, today announced the hiring of online gaming executive Philip Yun as Chief Executive Officer. In conjunction with the new leadership, the company unveiled its new corporate headquarters in Irvine, CA as it gears up to re-launch the popular PC fighting MMO, Lost Saga, under its own brand.

 

Yun steps in as CEO of WeMade USA after serving as CEO of the online gaming companies Outspark and NHN USA. His accomplishments include helping pioneer the rise of free-to-play MMOs in the US and overseeing the highly popular MMO Fiesta Online.

 

The first title to launch in the new era of WeMade USA will be Lost Saga, scheduled to launch commercially in April at lostsaga.wemadeusa.com. Lost Saga is an action-packed online fighting game for PC. The MMO brawler brings together heroes from fantasy, history, and sci-fi in an epic brawl for glory. Players can choose from over 50 unique heroes and level up and customize their skills. Fighters can be subbed in, tag-team style, even in the middle of a battle to create favorable matchups or initiate multi-character combos. Teams of up to 16 players can participate in a variety of game modes while battling in treacherous terrain. WeMade USA and IO have spent the recent months polishing the game, preparing new content, and building out a plan to add an outstanding lineup of new and well known characters to the game’s pantheon of fighters through regularly scheduled content updates.

 

“Our mission at WeMade USA is to bring American gamers the most engaging PC and mobile games from the extensive WeMade Entertainment lineup,” said WeMade USA CEO Philip Yun. “Starting with Lost Saga, we have aggressive plans to launch new projects, especially on mobile, that fit our philosophy of publishing games we are excited to play ourselves.”

 

For future projects, the company will be fueled by the creative and technically advanced output of WeMade Entertainment’s eight global development studios and over 800 development staff. The company’s games span multiple genres and platforms including RPGs, action games, MMOs, and social network games on PC, mobile, and social platforms.

Talking Flight in Age of Wushu

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Talking Flight in Age of Wushu

 

Free is a word that Age of Wushu uses in various manners. It’s Free to Play. Players have the freedom to make decisions in a vast open game, and there is the ability to move freely across rooftop and other structures that are typically off-limits in MMORPGs. The Flying Skills of Age of Wushu let players explore more of the landscapes, reach random treasures that would otherwise be too high, and escape pursuing enemies or vengeful victims.

 

Since Flying Skills are in fact “skills,” players must learn them through unique skill books similar to the Internal and Combat Skills found in-game. Some of these skills can be found strewn about in the world by their pages, some rewarded in instances, and some through the Random Encounters that unlock as your life in Jianghu progresses. Once learned, these skills do not require any cultivation. You simply study the script and now have the excellent ability to sprint across the surface of water around Suzhou.

 

Flying skills rely on a player’s stamina to utilize. Having more base stamina lets you run and fly longer than a player with less. Stamina is adjusted and modified through various means as well. When you use the flying skill the blue bar that appears tells you how much stamina remains. This is important when using a feather fall skill from a higher ledge. You don’t want to lose stamina mid fall and complete the rest of the descent flailing to a thud. Likewise, you don’t want to be running from constables while wanted for murder and lose stamina trying to climb the side of a city wall.

 

 

To see these impressive skills in action check out the montage video below. Age of Wushu will launch on April 10th, so don’t let the time fly by without reading up on the various guides on their site!

 

 

TERA: Rising F2P Conversion Interview

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TERA: Rising F2P Conversion Interview

Questions by Darren Henderson (DizzyPW), OnRPG Editor-in-Chief

Answers by Patrick Sun, Associate Producer, En Masse Entertainment

 

 

Just three months ago on our combo 2012 Awards Show I gave TERA the Combat of the Year award. However I ended the award stating that it was my sincerest wish that the game would go free to play in the west so that an entire untapped market would have access to the same visceral experience I had tried to share with anyone who would listen since launch. And now today we see a TERA F2P system that is not only fair and balanced, but has returned unbelievable new life to the game. And so we’ve brought on Patrick Sun from En Masse Entertainment to talk briefly about the F2P conversion and how the company pulled off such a successful sudden jump from their subscription model!

 

 

OnRPG: Hello! Please introduce yourself and tell us a bit about what you do for En Masse.

 

Hello!  My name is Patrick Sun, and I’m the Associate Producer for TERA here at En Masse Entertainment.  I’m mostly in charge of working with the development team, Bluehole Studio, at getting content builds of TERA out to our market.  I also voice player concerns, help plan community events, and get owned by other players in our battlegrounds when I have the time.

 

 

OnRPG: When did orders come in that it was time for the free-to-play transition? How long had you been preparing for it prior to the announcement?

 

We started months before our announcement.  There really wasn’t a switch we could just flip to make TERA free.  A lot of our back end systems, as well as the game itself, had to go through a complete overhaul to make this transition as seamless for players as possible.

 

 

OnRPG: Your model is incredibly fair for new players while still providing plenty of goodies for long-time veterans like myself. Were there any past conversions from subscriptions your team looked at to get a nod of either good or bad ways to go about it?

 

We looked at a variety of titles ranging from super popular to niche, but I don’t think there’s any specific title (or titles) that led us in the direction we eventually took.  We’re all gamers here, and as a player and a consumer we know what feels right which helped us structure our current business model. Our philosophy from the beginning of the transition has been to avoid gating content to force players to spend money. We find that if players are truly enjoying the game, they are happy to spend money on things they want to buy.

 

 

OnRPG: Again and again end-game content seemed to be a constant complaint with the early launch state of TERA. With a whole new audience rising through the ranks, what do you have planned and what have you introduced since launch to change this consensus on TERA’s end-game?

 

Since launch, we’ve introduced a variety of end game content which continues to expand in the oncoming months. The Nexus introduced a multi-stage raid event while PvP players compete against each other in 3v3 and 15v15 battlegrounds to win epic gear. Battlegrounds will continue to grow in our future updates to a massive 20v20 siege in addition to an extensive revamp of the political system to include alliances. These are just some of the updates we have planned, but we’ll provide more information in the near future.

 

 

OnRPG: And with the incoming planned content, are you intending to adopt a B2P model for major expansions akin to titles like WoW and the original Guild Wars?

 

 

We’re invested in our free model and currently do not have plans on changing it to anything else.

 

 

OnRPG: Thanks for your time and again my appreciation for publishing such an adrenaline filled MMORPG. I wish you the best of luck going forward.

WoW Wednesday – The Big PAX Appearance

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WoW Wednesday – The Big PAX Appearance

By Meredith Watson, OnRPG Azeroth Reporter

 

 

In just two short days Blizzard will be at PAX East. This in and of itself is a big deal as Blizzard doesn’t frequent the gaming conventions. Earlier this month Rob Pardo, Chief Creative Officer at Blizzard, announced via Twitter that they would indeed be at PAX East to announce a new game. What could it be?

 

 

The first thing that comes to mind is Titan, the not so super-secret next-gen MMO that Blizzard is supposedly working on. Rumours abound about what Titan is and when will it be announced. There are rumours it will have robots, hippies, be futuristic, have a huge social impact, be free to play, be for the Xbox and released in 2015. Who knows. It seems fairly certain Titan isn’t World of Warcraft II or another Diablo or Starcraft though rumour also has it that it isn’t necessarily a new IP. However, Rob Pardo was quick to point out that is wasn’t Titan.

 

 

So, again, what could it be? I think most agree that it is probably Blizzard All Stars, a multi-player online battle arena game.  Blizzard All Stars was actually a Starcraft II custom map that was announced way back in 2010 at BlizzCon but has since become a standalone game. Originally this game was called Blizzard Dota. Dota meaning Defense of the Ancients and was a fan made map and mode for Warcraft III. The developer that was overseeing Blizzard Dota went to work for Valve on Dota 2 where there was contention over the name. Valve won the rights to it in a settlement and what we have left is Blizzard All Stars.

 

 

MOBAs are popular right now but for me it holds little to no appeal. Not even the possibility of getting to be Sylvanas Windrunner would tempt me to play.  What do you think? Will you play Blizzard All Stars?

 

 

There is also speculation it could be a playable demo for Diablo 3 on PlayStation but it seems highly unlikely given Blizzard has stated in email, “As mentioned in the invite, this is a little something, different from what we’ve previously announced or talked about, and not a sequel, etc.” Maybe it isn’t Blizzard All Stars after all given it has been announced previously.

 

 

In other news, character models will be getting an upgrade in the World of Warcraft. In an  interview with MMORPG Greg Street aka Ghostcrawler states:

 

 

“ …and we are working on updating all of the player models. The Pandaren is kind of the example of where we want to go with that. Where they have facial animations, their eyes move, mouths move. Their fingers are individual and not just one big mitt like the old models are. It takes a lot of work, it’s a brand new model, with new animations that have to match. Unlike the Pandaren, we can’t take say the Tauren and make it a brand new race. At the end of the day, they have to still look like Tauren. It still needs to feel like it’s your character that you’ve had for eight years. They’ve got to have the soul of those existing races. It’s a long term project, it’s going well. We don’t yet have an ETA or how we’ll roll it out though.”

 

 

This is great news for those of us who play classic races or even Cataclysm races which are looking fairly dismal compared to the newer races. The night elves hands are big lumps and gnomes appear to have only four digits while the human female feet are little more than rectangles. It might be welcome changes to see some of our beloved characters get a makeover. However not everyone is a fan of this news. One forum poster commented “ No. I don’t want my favourite races to be ruined by what Blizzard considers an “upgrade”.  I need only look at how ridiculous Pandaren look (or any new characters for that matter) to sway me away from this “improvement” – this isn’t the future I asked for nor wanted.

 

 

It’ll only be acceptable if every character is given a free race change if they don’t like their new model. Let us not forget that the wretched pandas all have the same faces.” He brings up a valid point. Blizzard may well ruin the looks of our favourite races.  I remember how upset I was when they changed night elf eyes but a race change might be a bit extreme. And let’s not forget the ridiculousness that is Malfurion Stormrage after the last “makeover”.  As with all the Blizzard changes, we as a community just adjust (though there is a fair bit of righteous indignation on the forums). It would be nice to have an option between older and newer models though. What changes would you like to see to the older races?

 

Forge of Empires Reveals Rogue and Easter Event

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Forge of Empires Reveals Rogue and Easter Event

 

 

Today InnoGames launched the Easter event for its popular online game, Forge of Empires. During the event, Easter eggs will be introduced as a new collectible resource. Players can hide the eggs in their neighbor’s cities. Collecting those eggs allows for purchases in a special Easter store, where exclusive buildings and units will be available – including a powerful new military unit: The Rogue! A video of the Easter event and the Rogues’ abilities can be seen here.

 

When used in battle, the rogue will ignore the first damage dealt to it by enemies and turn into a random unit of the player’s army instead. After the battle it will then turn back into its original form. Another exclusive is the Wishing Well: once built, it produces a random item or resource every 24 hours, for example forge points, medals, but also diamonds. The new Watchfire applies a defense bonus to a player’s city when being attacked.

 

The Easter event will be visually displayed with an icon in the upper left corner of the screen. There the player can see the number of collected Easter eggs and how many are left to be hidden. Clicking on the icon opens the new Easter store. There, eggs can be traded for new profile pictures, forge points or blueprints. The event will run until April 3rd.

 

 

Forge of Empires is a browser-based strategy game, where players, tasked with leading their own city to prosperity can research new technologies, build impressive historical buildings and enlarge their sphere of influence through military campaigns and skillful dealing.