Monthly Archives: January 2014

Dragon’s Prophet (EU) receives huge mounted combat update

The online role-playing game “Dragon’s Prophet” just received a major update for mounted combat. A trio of healing, tanking, and damage skills are now available for dragons, which allows for a more dynamic combat experience and creates entertaining fights for players to enjoy. Whether a player wants to specialize in a single area or be more versatile, it’s entirely up to them! But that’s not all: The update also includes the new high-level dungeon “Shrine of Handras”, which offers fresh obstacles for Osirans to overcome. The new teaser shows the mounted combat skills in action.

Dragon Propher

“The new features give the game more depth, let the players develop an even stronger relationship with their dragons, and results in a more dynamic flow of combat!” says Marco Neubert, Director of Brand Management.

Another highlight of the patch is the legendary Dungeon “Shrine of Handras“. Explorers will find the entrance to the fully submerged instance in the southeastern region of Olandra. Inside the shrine, brave adventurers will find a number of belligerent water monsters, dangerous whirlpools, and five fearsome bosses. Only those who have paved the way through the algae forest, past sunken ships and giant clams, will face the final battle with the dragon Handras. The new trailer shows the bosses of the instance at a glance.

All information about the new features and the dungeon, as well the client download, can be found on the official website: http://www.dragonspropheteurope.com

Alfheim Tales Online Starfall Server Starter Pack Giveaway

OnRPG has partnered with GameDP to launch the third server of Alfheim Tales Online with a bang.

Alfheim Tales ONline Server 3 Giveaway

Alfheim Tales Online is a fantasy MMORPG with exquisite anime-styled 3D graphics, which allows you to enjoy the fascinating battle experience. Travel around Carlyle land under the guidance of the Spirits from a refreshing country town to an outstanding capital. Search for the track of spirits, discover the secrets that lie within the dark volcanoes, ice fields, battle fields and grasslands, and to become the savior of your continent in various battles. It is a world full of dreams, glory and exciting adventure.

The Starfall Valley Pack Includes:
Shining Silver Coin*2
Soul Stone (M)*2
Dawn Star*5
Note: One code per Alfheim Tales Online account available.

 

To Redeem your Key:

  • Make an account and join ATO at http://ato.gamedp.com/
  • Create a character on the new Starfall Valley Server
  • Find the Gifts icon next to your radar
  • Enter your key code when prompted
  • Click the envelope icon on the opposite side of the radar
  • Open your gift pack to claim items!

Clockwork Empires

Clockwork Empires is a multiplayer real-time strategy game. Take on the role of a Junior Bureaucrat (Colonial Grade), sent forth to seek fame, promotions, and natural resources to feed the ravenous maw of Imperial Industry & Commerce. Build a prosperous colony, fill it with magnificent factories worked by oppressed labourers, and harness the awesome power of steam through fearsome machines invented by determined men and women of Science!

Note: This is a buy-to-play retail game.

Features:

Build a colony: Manage the characters who live in it, each with unique histories: The colony set in a Victorian steampunk era, as well as the lower, middle and upper class characters, have their own memories and unfolding futures which are shaped by your choices.

Free-form goals: Every scenario is what the you make of it. As you colonize an unknown land, objectives are given by “The Empire”, but you may choose to align with another faction – or none at all – if so you desire.

Cosmic Horror, Factories, Booze, Science, Et Cetera: Complete with all the elements for an industrial revolution, a colonial society pushed too far will break down and unleash horrors such as cultists, marauding fish-people, axe murderers, and things darker still from Beyond the Stars.

Sharing and Successive Multiplayer: Supporting up to four players online, or via a turn-based ‘round robin’ successive multiplayer, the saved-game file option encourages other player Bureaucrats to further diverge histories and continue building & expanding those colonies.

2014 MOBA Predictions – Professionalism in eSports

By Mohammad Abubakr

Last year, I predicted the rise of eSports with tournaments having larger audiences, being located all across the world, and gaining the interest of more advertisers. Fortunately these predictions all turned out to be correct, but the prize pools saw a massive increase to match, surprising even a hardcore supporter like myself. The prize pools reflect the health of this growing industry, and greater events to come.

Now that eSports has grown and become a part of the lives of many people, both gamers and non-gamers, I think it is about time that we begin to see more professionalism in the sport. While 2013 has been great when it comes to the number of events, size of audiences, massive prize pools and the globalization of eSports, the sport doesn’t act in a way for it to be taken seriously. Often times you will see the majority of team members missing at major events leading to further delays due to finding stand in players. How can eSports be expected to be taken seriously if even the professional players are not present? I understand there can be visa or health issues but this problem is seen far too often.

In 2014 I predict that the eSports world have tighter stipulations on the professionalism of its athletes in order to be taken seriously and grow beyond its current audience. Tournaments will become more standardized with strict rules in place. I don’t expect, or want, stand in players to be completely banned but I think there will be certain limitations such as requiring stand in players to be preregistered.

I did not predict major increases in prize pools for 2013, glad I was wrong!

Professionalism doesn’t need to be seen in just the players but also the tournaments themselves. Valve always impresses us with the quality of The International. Following this tournament, all tournaments show a great improvement by learning from Valve. Throughout this year we have seen major improvement in the production quality and professionalism of third party tournaments. I predict this trend will continue mainly due to the continued growth of eSports popularity. I also have some experience with hosting events and a lot of the time the amount of work you can do is limited by budget. By having a larger audience the tournaments should definitely see an improvement in professionalism and production quality.

An area that definitely needs improvement and I think will improve drastically as the budget for organizers increases is that of covering downtime. A lot of the time you simply watch an empty stream with just music playing for longer than an hour waiting for the next match to start. We have seen improvement in this field when it comes to some LAN events but there were plenty of events still lacking in pre-match entertainment in 2013. In 2014, organizers will be able to use their increased budged to hire entertainers during the downtime to keep the crowd interested and hyped.

Even a simple Macho Man game can help to rid downtime.

With this increased professionalism, I predict that eSports in 2014 will expand into the television market, being featured on more than just a few specialized channels know for featuring game tournaments. Maybe Valve will surprise us this year and instead of simply hiring a TV broadcaster to host interviews, they will have an entire TV crew to stream the tournament onto live TV. I predict that even a few western channels may take the risk of testing how much of an audience can be garnered from broadcasting the larger tournaments.

In conclusion, eSports will continue to grow in 2014. The size of audience, globalization of events, prize pool and interest of potential advertisers and sponsors is bound to grow throughout the year. However, more specifically I believe that this year eSports will become more professional. Only if eSports is professional will it have the chance to be treated as a real sport. It has already gained a large audience and following and now eSports simply needs to improve in quality and professionalism. I don’t want it to become completely serious as the laid back style of eSports is what makes it amazing, but a little more professionalism by both the organizers and players would be appreciated and rewarded.

Conquest of Champions

Conquest of Champions is a blend of tabletop action and collectible card games, featuring deck building, crafting, and card leveling with turn-based strategy. Following in the footsteps of PoxNora, players can collect cards, customize decks, and battle in tactical strategy arenas.

Features:

Three Game Modes: Climb the leaderboards by battling ranked opponents, facing off in real time matches or asynchronously. Or, if you prefer, complete the single player campaign.

Earnable Rewards: Pick your deck and hero on starting, and then earn more cards, components, and currency as you play. Over 130 cards and 6 heroes await!

Card Crafting: Fuse duplicate and unwanted cards together to make them into more powerful cards, or collect components to create ultra-rare and powerful cards.

SMITE Reveals Early Patch Preview Featuring Geb

SMITE Geb Reveal

HiRez Studios’ featured caster Bart unleashed a barrage of googies on the official SMITE twitch.tv stream yesterday including gold and legendary skins for Ah Muzen Cab and Hel, a texture rework for Ares, a variant on their popular 5v5 clash mode Arena, and a look at the kit of upcoming Egyptian deity, Geb.

Geb fills the roll of tank and support while also offering one of the most wicked surprise initiations in the game when unleashing his full kit at once.

SMITE Geb Rollout

Passive – Hard as Rock
Crits only do +25% damage to Geb, rather than the normal +100%.

Roll Out
Geb turns into a mass of rolling earth. He increases speed as he travels, his damage scaling from 50% initially to full damage over 3s. He stops at the first enemy god he hits dealing damage up to 125/200/275/350/425 +70% of his magical power, and slowing enemies he encounters 30% for 1/1.25/1.5/1.75/2s. Once at his top speed, Geb becomes CC immune, and will also knockback enemy gods. Cooldown: 10s. Cost: 50,55,60,65,70.

Shock Wave
Geb creates a shock wave, which ripples out from him in a cone, causing damage up to 90/160/230/300/370 +50% of his magical power, and knocking up enemies. Enemies closer to Geb take full damage, enemies at the furthest edge take 50% damage. Cooldown: 15s. Cost: 60,65,70,75,80

Stone Shield
Geb targets himself or an ally to put a shield around for 4/4.5/5/5.5/6s. The shield blocks damage equal to 0/100/200/300/400 + 20% of Geb’s Max Health, and makes the target immune to Knockback effects . It lasts until time expires or it takes enough damage to be destroyed. The Shield also cleanses any CC when applied. Cooldown: 18s. Cost: 60.

Cataclysm
Geb pulls apart the earth, dealing magical damage to all enemy gods around him, based on 30/35/40/45/50% of their current health, and stunning them for 1/1.2/1.4/1.6/1.8s. Cooldown: 90. Cost: 100.

The full stream can be viewed now on SMITE’s Twitch channel here beginning at roughly 3h10m!