Monthly Archives: May 2015

Earthcore: Shattered Elements debuts on the App Store

Earthcore: Shattered Elements debuts on the App Store

Independent mobile games developer Tequila Games released today its free digital card battler Earthcore: Shattered Elements on the App Store for iPad and iPhone. Earthcore’s mechanics allow players to minimize the randomness typical of card games by employing their intellect and tactical thinking, creating powerful skill combos to surprise and eventually to topple their opponents.
 
To create “the game they always wanted to play”, developers tore up the genre rule book. Earthcore offers an unprecedented array of strategic gameplay possibilities, including elemental powers, skills, and chants, granting players with abilities such as damage amplification, power mimicking, card swapping and turning enemies cards into dust.
Earthcore: Shattered Elements’ key features include:
 

  • Highly tactical gameplay that allows players to take control of any battle
  • An innovative Risk mechanic in which players gamble their health points while playing stronger cards
  • Card Crafting, generating hundreds of thousands of possible skill combinations on cards
  • A compelling single-player campaign featuring a rich fantasy storyline full of intrigue, suspense and treachery
  • Three different multiplayer modes, including casual matches, friends challenges and online epic PvP ranked leagues and tournaments
  • Hundreds of finely illustrated cards for players’ decks, outstanding visual effects and an original orchestral music

 
The production of Earthcore lasted over 18 months, allowing the development team to tune the gameplay based on extensive player feedback. Cooperation with Michal Oracz, top board game designer behind the success of Neuroshima Hex! and artists who illustrated games like Magic: The Gathering and A Game of Thrones, was pivotal to the game’s development. Gaming press has already welcomed Earthcore as “one to watch”, a “welcome change from most digital CCGs” and a potential “new CCG obsession”.

Brave Brigade Joins Ban Hammered Event

Brave Brigade Joins Ban Hammered Event
ZQGame Global, today announced another of its mobile RPG’s, Brave Brigade will be joining ZQGame’s previously announced Ban Hammered Welcome Event. The event welcomes the 100,000 players banned from Az’roth for using third-party software to auto-play their beloved MMO.
 
Brave Brigade: Hero Summoner includes auto-play options for “hardcore” players to aid in searching for ultra-rare items and use to make their characters stronger.
 
“There’s no sin in the use of auto-battle options for RPG’s,” said Dennis Jaurigue, Community Manager, ZQGame Global.” The practice is nothing new. Brave Brigade is inspired by the mother of all RPG franchises, Final Fantasy, which have used auto options in a few of its titles.”
 
Officially announced earlier in the week, ZQGame’s Ban Hammered Welcome Event invited banned players to its other respective RPG’s, Soul Guardians: Age of Midgard and Celestia – Broken Sky; both with auto-battle options.
 
Starting today, new players to Brave Brigade who enter the code banhammered will recieve an exclusive and generous starter pack to start their new journey. Coupon limited to the first 100,000 players.

Blade & Soul: Announcement Livestream Re-cap

By Michael Sagoe (mikedot)

After several years of waiting, NCSoft has finally re-announced that Blade & Soul will be coming to the west (for REALS this time), and they are 100% prepared to bring the hype as they ramp up for the game’s closed beta (Fall 2015) and launch this holiday season (Winter 2015/6). To get the hype started, they hosted a livestream session today on Twitch, featuring several producers and community managers working on the game. For those that have been unfortunate enough to miss the livestream that was hosted recently, I have prepared a quick recap of all the important details that were covered during the session.

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  • US/EU version will technically not be “based” on any foreign client. Rather, it will be tailor made for the western audience.
  • They discussed their plans for localization, which will not be a simple translation of Korean to English. Their plans for localization and “westernization” extends towards gameplay balancing, re-writing story elements in a way that English speakers can understand and more.
  • Various races that are currently available where shown off, including the Jin, Gon, Lyn and “Yun.”
  • They went on to explain that the Kun race was changed to Yun due to the word Kun being possibly offensive in certain European languages.
  • Their character creation system was then demonstrated on the stream, and it still holds up as one of the most extensive character creation systems ever seen in an MMORPG. The hosts mention that players have used the character creation tools to re-create various famous people in real life.
  • The four guardians’ announcement trailer was shown off once more (well more than once).
  • The hosts mention that fans have been expressing their interest for having multiple voice packs available for the US/EU versions. The hosts respond to this by saying that they will consider including extra voice packs into the game as an optional download.
  • They finally showed off some gameplay, showing off the Qing Gong system as the player performs several movement-based skills including gliding, diving, water walking and more.

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  • Other forms of Qing Gong movement and transportation were shown off during the stream, including dragon streams.
  • Live combat was shown off. The hosts then explained that the gameplay structure of Blade & Soul was vastly different than in most MMORPGs, as the game has no dedicated healer class. There will be support abilities across all the available classes, but everyone must do their part to keep themselves alive, as well as defeat the enemies as a group.

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  • The death and recovery system was shown off, demonstrating that players can revive themselves by mediating whenever they are defeated in battle. Average meditation time takes about 20 seconds and players that are within an enemy’s range can be attacked and killed while meditating.

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  • Dungeons locations were also shown off. They expressed heavily that the game will include a cross-server dungeon finder.
  • Even though Blade & Soul has been released in foreign territories for several years, the hosts mention the reason they’ve waited so long to release an English version was in order to fix bugs and latency issues. Unlike most other MMORPGs, since the game is already finished, they won’t have to worry about content or balance issues.

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  • The English version of Blade & Soul will ship with the first three acts of the game, whereas the foreign versions of the game currently have six acts. This is in order to keep the game fresh with new content so that players will not blaze through the story within a week or so.
  • They also mention that the foreign versions of the game are still being worked on with new content and new story acts. Over five years of story content is currently being planned for the future.
  • PvP was discussed, expressing that various PvP modes will be available at launch, as well as Doboks (martial arts uniforms) will still work the same as they do in the Korean version. Players will be able to wear certain doboks in order to flag themselves for PvP.
  • They mention that Blade & Soul has a huge eSports scene in Asia. They hope to see western audiences supporting Blade & Soul’s PvP in order to kickstart an eSports scene for the English version.
  • Itemization was shown off, including refinement and the Soul Shield (Bopae) system. The soul shield will allow players to switch costumes and stats at will, allowing them to wear the outfits they want with the stats they want.
  • Omeed then expresses his pet peeves in MMORPGs such as weapons and items being expressed as legendary equipment, but only being worth some minor pawn shop quality price when sold to NPCs as a means of preventing inflation. They also mention that weapons also do not break when being refined, another of his major annoyances in monetization systems. These are things they will keep a close eye on balancing going into the western version.

After all the demonstrations were said and done, they then went on to answer various questions from the audience.

  • Beta keys are currently not available but are being planned for the future.
  • There is currently no plans for regional IP blocks.
  • There will be no fatigue/vigor system like in the Chinese version.
  • Servers will be located in Dallas, Texas for NA and Frankfurt, Germany for EU.
  • The Blade & Soul Dojo fansite was given a shoutout, as this fansite is one of the oldest English B&S fansites in existence.
  • There will be contests, events and holiday events.
  • Character transfers will not be possible from foreign versions of the game to the English version.
  • A fansite kit will be available soon.
  • There’s currently no details regarding founders’ packs.
  • The game will NOT be censored.
  • Lastly, a cutscene from the game was also shown off as a player-controlled character was preparing to ambush a gang of thugs. The voice acting was incredibly cheesy (which I personally loved since it gave the game a dubbed Kung-Fu movie feel)

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All in all, the stream contained a wealth of information for those that are new to the game and are longtime fans, as well. As more livestreams will be prepared for the future, staff members of NCSoft will be visiting the Blade & Soul Dojo fansite to answer any and all questions until their own official forums will be ready for the public.

Stronghold Kingdoms Hits 4 Million Players

Stronghold Kingdoms Hits 4 Million Players

Firefly Studios’ castle MMO Stronghold Kingdoms has reached a new milestone in development. Just over a month since its release on the Mac App Store, Firefly Studios can proudly reveal that the game has reached its four millionth player registration. Stronghold Kingdoms also remains the most popular free-to-play real-time strategy game on Steam, with more active players than Magicka: Wizard Wars and The Mighty Quest For Epic Loot.
 
Players from over 100 different countries have now signed up to build a castle and expand their online kingdom. Stronghold lords and ladies tend to hail from the US, UK and Western Europe, with the series’ fan base in Germany ensuring a steady stream of new players. The series’ expansion into MMO territory has also helped Firefly expand its audience with nine supported languages, dedicated game worlds for Turkish and Brazilian players and even the odd player commanding their online forces from the Vatican City!
 
Despite the game’s lengthy development history which stretches back to prototyping and closed alphas in 2009, Firefly Studios is still hard at work on new features and expansions. Stronghold Kingdoms: Rise of The Wolf recently introduced new PvE gameplay, improved AI and classic Stronghold characters for players to do battle with. Today Firefly opened a ‘Europe’ game world to accommodate for the hundreds of thousands of active players who log in every month. Accurately recreated in-game, this new map is a direct response to requests from the community for more game worlds on a grander scale than those based on single countries.
 
“In the coming months players can expect Kingdoms’ scale to continue to grow”, said Marketing Manager Nick Tannahill. “We’ll accomplish this primarily with new world types that expand the actual gameplay, achieving our ultimate goal of grand strategy in an MMO. We also have a few surprises planned! These will be significant pieces of work that appeal to new players just as much as they do existing Lords.”

Wargaming Joins Forces with Melesta Games

Wargaming Joins Forces with Melesta Games

Wargaming is excited to announce its partnership with Melesta Games, a prominent mobile developer from Belarus. With this partnership, Wargaming will continue to strengthen its position on the mobile market, one of its key strategic objectives. This also allows Wargaming to experiment with new business models for its mobile games.
 
“Partnering with Melesta Games was a natural choice for us,” said Andrey Yarantsau, VP of Wargaming. “They have an excellent portfolio of mobile titles, a wealth of experienced people, and their close proximity to our Minsk studio will help streamline our work. We all feel very positive about our future cooperation.”
 
Through this partnership, Wargaming will share its publishing expertise, supporting Melesta Games’ projects to help both companies flourish. Melesta will continue to create titles in their core areas: casual games for mobile platforms.
 
Melesta Games is a mobile games developer with a player base of over 11 000 000 people from more than 60 countries around the world. Established in 2007, the studio has built an impressive range of over 20 projects, including the popular Toy Defense and Farm Frenzy game franchises.
 
“The deal is a big move forward for us,” said Alexey Meleshkevich, founder of Melesta Games. “We’re very excited about working together with a company like Wargaming.”