Let’s raise the Bar in DOTA 2: The Monkey King Bar. Okay but seriously, a teaser for the Monkey King is here! He’s coming this fall.
Yearly Archives: 2016
World of Warcraft: Is it hype or substance?
I finally came back to World of Warcraft. It’s been a few months since I really sat down to play it, because Warlords of Draenor had an interesting concept, but a boring and tedious fucking inception. I liked the idea of seeing all my favorite Warlords and Chieftains mixing it up in a higher definition battleground than Warcraft 2. But ultimately? It was way grindier than I anticipated, and most of the content bored me to absolute tears. Slowly, I watched all the green fire begin to envelop the world. Green is my favorite color, and the green warlock fire is pretty awesome. But when the only colors I see are black and green all the time, I’m going to begin to hate it. I hope that isn’t all I see in Legion. But Warlords is over; two underwhelming expansions in a row! That’s not a good look, Blizzard. I love you guys, I do. I love World of Warcraft, but if it’s not good, I’m not going to lie to anyone and say I think it is.
But what do I think of this pre-expansion event? The Invasions? I hate it on a PVP server, because the first few days were just people murdering each other instead of working together. This time last year, I was grumbling about the “Iron Incursion”, wanting to enjoy it but finding myself unable to. But even though I chose to be on a PVP server, I enjoy this event. There are little things I like. There’s cool cosmetic stuff, but the best thing: My grossly undergeared characters can catch up and be ready for the expansion. Demon Hunters can get ready, learn their class, my Mage which I’ve had since vanilla, Ragachak, is getting ready! Since Blizzard doesn’t care about Paladins, guess he gets to sit on the shelf for a bit and just do old-world raids. Even if they are slow as balls now thanks to the Pally changes. Now to figure out who to heal as, who to DPS as. I don’t really tank, but maybe this will be the time. Honestly? I’m excited for this story to be told. I also have been enjoying streaming WoW, something I haven’t done before! This occurs on the OnRPG.com Facebook and occasionally over at The Bottom Tier. I haven’t been this excited since Burning Crusade. Are you guys hyped? Is it just a flash in the pan? Would you rather go play Everquest 2? Let me know!
Path of Exile – Atlas of Worlds Press Preview
By Darren Henderson (DizzyPW)
Every six months or so, an exciting email comes my way that offers a burst of adrenaline amidst the sea of less interesting gaming news. Tis a bi-annual tradition in which the great designers of New Zealand’s Grinding Gear Games take the legendary flight across the near full expanse of the Pacific Ocean to visit LA, bringing with them knowledge of the next true game changer to Path of Exile. This week, the event has once again happened like clockwork.
However, unlike the usual tradition of Grinding Gear demonstrating the continued construction of their Tower of Content Babble, they choose a different route for Atlas of Worlds. The tower has grown too tall over the years, and its base needs fortification and restructuring to maintain the course. Atlas of Worlds is a revisit to the end-game map system, turning a one-off interesting (though very addicting!) mechanic into a fully fleshed world.
For those not in the know, the Map System was the original end-game design brought to Path of Exile following the conclusion of the first story arch of the exiles washing into the Hunger Games on steroids world that is Wraeclast. Players could travel to a variety of maps utilizing runes to experience challenges worthy of players who had been through the hellish gauntlet and sought something greater, with loot to match.
Maps get…. A Map
The biggest change to maps is that they no longer exist in an imaginary world known as end-game instance scenarios. No Grinding Gear has taken inspiration from their iconic passive skill tree to create a world map existing in the ether complete with four starting points, and an ultimate goal of battling to the center for greater and greater rewards.
As you wind through the maze of maps, you will notice a few things. First of all, just like the passive tree, there are routes that will connect you with the primary roads of the other starting points. Strange they would do that I thought to myself. If the goal is the center, who cares about routes that lead to other routes I could have started at? Also I certainly don’t remember this many scenarios available in Path of Exile’s Maps system before.
As it turns out, yes this is more than an aesthetically pleasing map. Atlas of Worlds has not only added 30 new maps to the set, they have examined which of the existing maps were shoddy and lower quality than the standard expectations of quality, and rebuilt those maps from the ground up. They’ll still carry a similar theme that you may recognize the original from if you’re a hardcore enough player, but the enemies, map generation, and bosses will be a totally new experience.
The Story behind the Maps
It was there, in the void between worlds
Where the seeds of creation swirled before my eyes.
It was there that I truly awoke.
Path of Exile loves the dark spin on the Cult of Personality. It’s been a theme in nearly every expansion since the start. So it should come as no surprise that all these new things aren’t just being written off as a love letter from the developers to entertain you. No of course with all good things, the threat of global annihilation and bending the fabric of reality is the accompanying footnote.
See, those portals you traveled through to the maps was taking you to artificially created worlds designed by the Shaper. Who is the Shaper? How has he found himself in the ether and learned to bend it to his will? Why is he practicing building worlds? How is it a threat to Wraeclast and beyond? To answer these questions, you will have to seek the truth at the center of the Atlas, the Crucible of the Void, beyond the four guardians.
The Crucible of the Void
The four guardians are no joke either. Bring your a-game and your a-gear. Represented by the Phoenix, Hydra, Minotaur, and Chimera, each brings gameplay elements and challenges never before witnessed in-game, complete with build-up dungeons that would make Bowser cry tears of respect for their beauty. Although most of the guardians are still a work in progress, I got to see a quick demo of the Phoenix in action. Oh and spoiler alert, the four guardians are humanoid to an extent, but still pretty awesome representations of their spirit animal.
The phoenix resides within an industrial themed fire and brimstone map. Lots of grates. Lots of pipes. Lots of heat and burning foes. This theme ties directly into the mechanics of his battle, as pushing the phoenix causes him to heat up in reaction. The entire room’s aura will slowly begin to glow a faded red representing his heat as the pipes wrapping throughout the room struggle to contain the fire. One by one the pipe vents will burst open, unleashing flame (that after my suggestion, the developers decided it would be a good idea for the flame to damage players). From these flames, small phoenix will burst forth, raining more moving fire through the arena to keep you hopping. The pipe vents are separated enough from each other to make melee characters rage, and the heating up boss can’t be ignored either. He gets pretty intense and pumps out enough damage to almost bring the demo GM character down.
For the record Jonathan Rogers is one of the most hardcore members I’ve seen in action from the Grinding Gear Games team. He can play through most of Path of Exile blindfolded. So when you see him have to pause his spiel to focus on healing and dodging on a GM badass account, you know the challenge meter is at 11.
Real Steel – The Power Up Game Evolved
“But random internet press dude,” I hear you say, “how can we compete against such insane challenges without spending two dozen hours praying to RNGesus for equivalently good GM gear?”
Oh ye of little faith, you should know where there is new end-game content in an MMO, there is equivalent gear power-ups awaiting to reward your grind. Remember how I stated that the Atlas of Worlds is inspired by the passive skill tree? Well now you can think of the Atlas as your passive skill tree for customizing your character’s gear!
See each map now has unique item drop types. These are armor pieces with a guaranteed boon connected to them, meaning you can plan your build around being 100% sure your armor will have said boon on it. For instance, around the graveyard sector on the North – North-East side of the map, there is a scenario that drops the Bone Helmet. The Bone Helmet always features a boon to your minion’s damage, which I’m sure is making a few niche witch players drool just thinking about it. Many of these unique items were designed base on community feedback to ensure that a variety of favorite and niche builds are addressed and properly represented so everyone will benefit from the update.
But then another issue arose in development. Not all maps are equal. The outer rim features tier 10 maps, then tier 15 as you progress deeper, and so on. Well Grinding Gear thought of that too.
As you progress through the Atlas, you will slowly usurp the power of the Shaper in the form of Shaper’s Orbs. These orbs act like the Jewel embeds on the skill tree, except adding an aura of effect to maps within range on the Atlas. Utilizing these you can amp a tier 10 map up to 15 and so on, bolster difficulty, add weird changes to both yourself and monsters on the maps, and impact the drop items. Best of all, if you play with a guild you can coordinate with each other to spec your Atlas in a variety of ways, and then all benefit from them as the party leader can share his Atlas’ boons when choosing a map. And yes, the Atlas sockets are close enough that, just like the jewels, you can turn a few points on your Atlas into Venn Diagram uber maps. So if you find a unique item type that’s ideal for your build, you know what to do…
The OP Gear Challenge League Arrives – Essence
As with most expansions, you can expect a new wild League concept to be on the way. This time around, Grinding Gear wants to see what chaos will happen when players have access to the most powerful crafting customization items ever released in-game. Combined with the new Atlas system, the Essence League is sure to see some of the most powerful characters Path of Exile ever has.
In Essence League, roughly once per map you will come across a Frozen Essence Prison. Before unlocking the prison you will be able to see which essence is held within, allowing you to plan for the coming battle against a boss creature and minions packing the power of said essence. There’s 25 base essences and four rare essences total so don’t expect this to get boring!
In the demo we came across a trapped Porcupine Goliath empowered with the Weeping Essence of Hatred. This allowed them to passively spawn ice storms all over the damn place as the battle raged on. It got pretty intense as what was a rather open field was suddenly a death trap with few safe spots to stand.
Upon defeating your foe, you will claim the Essence – a modified version of Skill Gems that always carry the same base benefit. The trick though is that the benefit differs depending on which socket of gear you slide it into. The benefits are very powerful but can be rather character specific, such as a gem that might give a beefy health bonus if inserted in your chest plate, but a ranged damage buff if inserted in your arm. You’ll need to collect a ton of Essences to create your perfect custom build rare build in this league!
To make rares great again in a League dedicated to building the ultimate rares though, you will have to roll the dice of fate as well as bring a level of patience to the field. Collecting multiple versions of the same essence will allow you to combine said essence for a massively improved version. Every essence has three tiers total, with the third variety only obtainable through combining tier 2 essences. To push the envelope even further, you will need to inject Remnants of Corruption into the Frozen Essence Prison.
Remnants of Corruption are truly random. They can be nothing but beneficial, adding bonuses to your drops such as upgrading the tier of the imprisoned essence or reducing the challenge of the Frozen Prison fight. They can be a mix of positive and negative, such as adding a second obtainable Essence to the creature resulting in a much more challenging battle but getting you double the drop as a result. Sometimes though they just screw with you, instantly initiating the battle with an insanely increased difficulty setting with no additional bonus for having used it. Be sure you are ready before messing with corruption magic…
Remnants of Corruption are crucial though to obtain the ultimate power. In very rare instances the essence will be corrupted into one of four ultra rare essences. Those are boss fights you can’t afford to lose!
Such Corruption. Many Effects. Much Mobs. Performance Improvements. Wow.
After everything I’ve laid out here, along with the newly designed spectacular maps featuring crazy perspectives, new tiles, and background effects like none you’ve seen before, people playing on low-end PCs are likely cringing. Such an awesome expansion awaits, and my PC is going to slow to a 15 FPS chug and get me killed so I can’t experience it.
Never fear, multi-threading is here! Grinding Gear is at last pushing Path of Exile into the technology of the 2010s by implementing Multi-threading. I won’t get all tech savy on you as I’ve already been log winded, so I’ll keep it short. You won’t even notice this most of the time. But when the chips are down, the effects are flying everywhere, and forty minions are crowding your personal space, multi-threading will see your standard FPS doubled if not multiplied by 2.5 times!
Of course disclaimer… if you’re gaming on something older than Path of Exile itself, your CPU likely can’t utilize multi-threading. So this won’t be a quick fix for all players, but a good bulk of you will be enjoying Path of Exile like never before. You might even be able to make Youtube videos with a solid frame rate with this expansion! Oh and more good news on the horizon as Grinding Gear has set the goal to implement Direct X 11 by update 2.5!
The End of the World Begins Again
Your showdown with the Shaper fast approaches. Buckle up, start planning a shady deal and insider connections to battle your way into the beta, and prepare. The Atlas of Worlds arrives in Path of Exile on September 2nd!
Guardians of Ember Gamescom 2016 Trailer
The makers of Runes of Magic and Dragon’s Prophet announce a new isometric MMORPG with Guardians of Ember. Get first glimpses of gameplay in this trailer.
Raiders of the Broken Planet Gamescom 2016 Trailer
Raiders of the Broken Planet, just revealed at Gamescom, offers some very stylized asymmetrical PvP shooting action. More details surely to come.
Chaos Chronicle Android Review
By Jaime Skelton (MissyS), Senior Editor
Finding a balance between the casual game experience of mobile with the need for gamers to do more than watch pixels fly by on their screen seems to be a challenge that most mobile game developers can’t handle. Idle games certainly have their charm, and hardcore gamers have their niche games haunting the corners of the app stores. Gamers like myself, though, want an in-between: something casual enough we won’t cry if we miss a day playing, but don’t fall asleep watching auto attacks fly by. So when action RPGs came to market at last, I happily hopped in each one, hoping for something that could sustain my interest, something that actually engaged me as I played.
Chaos Chronicle, developed by WING Studio and published by Nexon globally, is one of those games that manages to hit the sweet spot. It’s not the first of its kind, and at first glance, might simply look like a uniquely animated brawler that brings nothing new to the table. But after the first hour or so of gameplay, I was won over: not simply for the game’s style (which has a hint of Hyung Tae Kim when it comes to eye candy), or its amusing storytelling, but because it reaches a little farther than the best on the market. Let’s get straight to what makes this new mobile RPG worth your attention.
The Basics: Hold my Hand, Senpai~
(OMG NOT THAT HARD IT HURTS)
Chaos Chronicle is a 2D side-scrolling brawler, similar to games like Soul Hunters and Crusaders Quest. In fact, if you’ve been a player of the latter, you’ll see a striking number of similarities. Thankfully Chaos Chronicle finds its own way to stand apart from the mobile trend of auto-scrolling time wasters. So if you’re familiar, you can skim ahead to the next section, which you owe to yourself since the game will forcibly hold your hand through the tutorial until your palm begins to bleed.
Meet Mono-Senpai. She will notice you. A lot.
In Chaos Chronicle, and games of its kind, players take the role of a hero who must lead a small party, RPG style, into battle against evil through a series of stages and chapters. Like many mobile games, this takes the flavor of a “collect ‘em all” gachapon hero album. Characters can be earned or summoned, come in a variety of rarities and classes, and can be improved in multiple ways.
Across each stage, players pick their team and enter a side-scrolling stage similar to those found in beat-em-up’s, but with a twist: characters will auto attack and auto advance. Each character also has skills they bring into battle, which can be activated by tapping on them during combat. Characters gain experience by completing stages, along with having surplus characters ‘synthesized’ into their own, and can eventually be upgraded to rarer and more powerful versions of themselves. It’s a fun combination of a story-based game and active play, with bonus features attached.
What Chaos Chronicle Does Differently
With autoscrolling brawlers becoming more popular on the market, it’s easier to tell you what Chaos Chronicle does differently than walk you through most of the same old systems by hand and point out the similarities.
Active skills. Oh yes, similar games require active skill use too, but Chaos Chronicle takes it a step beyond. In addition to relatively simple “one tap and it’s done” type skills – frequent on healers and front-line fighters – there are targeted and charge skills. Targeted skills, represented by a small marksman’s crosshair, are a two-step process. The first tap activates the skill, sending a targeting circle forward along the ground. A second tap will stop the circle and begin the skill’s attack. It’s important for players to pay attention to the ground target in the midst of the combat to make sure their aim is true, but the benefit – being able to specifically target enemies, especially those in the back row – is powerful indeed. Charge skills, on the other hand, can be charged up by holding the skill before releasing the tap to gain more power.
Counter-attacks. Part of the skill system also involves the ability to counter-attack. Enemies will project their skills with a small alert sound and an exclamation mark, followed by text on screen describing the skill. By using a skill that will hit the enemy at the same time as the enemy’s skill, a player can cancel their skill cast. Add to this crucial interrupt feature (because enemies will use skills quite often, once Mono-senpai lets go of your hand) the Perfect Counter-Attack. This rare feat of skill requires players timing their skill use to activate just as the enemy’s skill hits them, but if done correctly, will unleash a powerful counter attack that will smash your enemy into dust.
RPG Style Heroes. Cracking open the hero info for the first time is a bit like looking at your first Dungeons & Dragons character sheet or trying to decipher your advanced stats in Diablo. Heroes have a full array of stats that you’d expect from any single player RPG including attack speed, evasion, accuracy, crit chance, and crit damage. Heroes also have six different equipment slots, one active skill and three traits, and an equipment ‘crest’ which lets you further enhance their power through the use of special stones. This means you have thirteen different stats, a dozen different pieces of equipment, one active skill, and three passive skills to manage. Add to that the complexity of racial bonuses, stat upgrades, and enhancement, and you’re faced with as much character management as you’d find in a standard MMO – for each character in your roster.
Choose Your Lord. After a starting battle that introduces you to the play style of four different heroes, you get to choose which one you want as your “House Lord.” The options are two male characters (both melee fighters) and two female characters (an assassin and a mage). While you’ll inevitably drift from these heroes in advanced late-game play, it’s rare you get to choose your starting hero in action RPGs like this.
Other people. It’s a small touch, but when you’re in town, you can see other players in the same area, represented by their chosen leader. You can also check out their teams and request them as friends.
Hero opinion. Another small touch, and a funny one to boot. In the hero screen, there’s an option to write and read opinions or “reviews” of each hero. While some of these can be useful, many of them range into the absurd: “his name is tom. just tom” being one of my personal favorites, while female heroes get what I’ve decided to call the *o*bs treatment:
Players like *o*bs, what can I say?
A Day in the Life of a House Lord
So what can you expect when playing Chaos Chronicle? Let’s start with the story. Your chosen character plays the role of a House Lord, one who goes off on missions to uncover the game’s story while recruiting other heroes to their aid. Naturally, this means that the core gameplay is in the single-player campaign experience, set out across multiple chapters and stages. The game throws what feels like an endless supply of quests and missions at you that will get completed as you play with no need to double check that you’ve killed ten rats or looted a rare crystal skull. The story is relatively well told and well translated from its original language, enough so that it has lost the awkwardness of many translated games on the market. The game also starts you out with enough power that you’ll generally be blowing through these quests for a long while before hitting any need to grind.
This blackmailing is why Mono follows you everywhere.
It’s no surprise that this part of the game is gated by an energy system, in which you gain a limited number of energy points over time and each stage costs energy points. However, the game is generous enough the energy burn will only be felt if you’re grinding. The game offers Subjugation Tickets, which let you skip a stage, and social points, a currency gained through the game’s friend system, can also be exchanged at a reasonable rate for energy.
If you do run out of energy, there’s still several options available to you. The ManaTech Tower is a solo challenge in which you take a party through ascending and more difficult levels for sizable rewards. The Arena offers ranked asynchronous PvP matches against other players’ teams, with weekly and daily rewards paid out. Finally Raids allow players to discover raid bosses and call their friends into a shared fight against powerful enemies to earn yet more points. Each of these features has its own energy system, meaning that in a single daily pass, you can get fifteen battles under your belt in these special features plus however many stages you can fit in your stamina bar (in chapter three, that’s about 12 in a single fill of stamina). That’s about an hour of play, if not more, without having to worry about purchasing energy refills. Extremely generous for a free-to-play title.
The Obligatory Question: Pay2Win?
Any game that touts itself as free-to-play has to answer to the question of if it’s pay-to-win. In Chaos Chronicle’s case, it’s a muddy answer. Like most mobile games, it offers energy, hero contracts, and equipment with its premium currency, the ruby. It’s also relatively generous in handing out rubies and even hands out six free hero contracts a day to players. Additional currencies offer even more ways to obtain these items, making them within the grasp of an active player without pulling out a credit card. Despite that, a game with those microtransactions and a PvP system will, in essence, always have an element of “P2W” and Chaos Chronicle is no exception. With dedicated players capable of putting down money to get the mats and experience they need faster to make their heroes more powerful, the Arena is bound to be dominated by a P2W attitude. If you’re in these kinds of games to dominate the leaderboards and don’t want to pay up, scratch Chaos Chronicle off the list. If you’re more casual, though, the microtransactions will never hurt you.
Final Verdict: Excellent
I’ve been a long time believer that Crusaders Quest is the best free-to-play brawler on the market, and Chaos Chronicle managed to knock CQ down just a ranking in my personal favorites list. I still believe that Crusaders Quest has better charm, perhaps due to its goddess system or those oh-so-adorable pixel sprites. But when I look at Chaos Chronicle, I see a game that has a more active and cerebral combat system, a more in-depth character progression system, and a more generous energy system. Quite simply, Chaos Chronicle, though it comes from a relatively unknown development team (to us Westerners, at least), has the best gameplay mechanics of the brawler RPG genre.
That’s not to say that Chaos Chronicle is perfect. Raids can be too easy to push over and end almost as quickly as they are announced. A guild system, which could easily enhance the social atmosphere, is lacking. The Arena is already too competitive for casuals to hope for a weekly ranking in. But despite these flaws, Chaos Chronicle remains engaging and entertaining. This is a definite must-try.
Omega Zodiac Trailer
The teaser for Omega Zodiac, a forthcoming browser action game is on the way! Check out all the action, excitement, and big numbers!
SMITE – New Sea Maiden Medusa Skin
A sickeningly sweet voice calls to the SMITE community! Sea Maiden Medusa is the latest addition to the Summer of Smite! And here I thought Chang’e had the sweetest sounding voice. . .#saltinjector
Chronoblade Trailer and Character Spotlights
ChronoBlade from Netmarble is on the way! We have a playlist showing the trailer as well as some character spotlights, just for you guys!
DFO: Demonic Lancer Reveal Playlist
Today we have a small playlist of coverage for the newest class for Dungeon Fighter Online: The Demonic Lancer! Tune in to see more of what they have to offer! More information here.

















