Arena Net was created by a team of ex-Blizzard guys, and that we see in everything they did, from graphics, content, and optimization, everything is managed very well, but we will talk more on that during this review.

The big difference between Guild Wars and others MMOs, is the instanced approach. This means that the game is divided by several instances, and most of them are dedicated to you as a player, or to your group, guild. How this works? Every city, outpost, fort, acts like a normal city in a MMO, filled with players, traders, merchants, and when you go outside the city for quests or other adventures, a instance of the world will be created for you and you alone, or for you and your party. This might scare some of you out there, but is very easy to get a party, if you really want do some adventures in groups or to go alone with hired henchman (npc), or solo totally. Also, the cities have languages districts which are basically instances of the cities, but made for other languages, parts of the world, so you wont see spam in different languages in your Europe District, because there is already a French, German district and so on, which is pretty nice.

Not all locations are totally instanced, during the PVE campaign you will have around 20 cooperative mission, where you will have to go in group to finish them. These represent the main story of the game, and they are very well made, and also some quests require a party by default.

The core of Guild Wars was built for competitive PVP. All over the world, we have PVP arenas, some are just for training, some are for tournament, Guild vs Guild wars, Alliance vs Alliance, Hero Battles, and the ultimate battle Hero’s Ascent. From these wars, fights, players and guilds, can obtain rank, recognition, and loot, and also Arena Net holds nice PVP contests, with real prizes, like the July $100,000 Tournament Series.

In Guild Wars we get to choose from several professions: Warrior, Elementalist, Monk, Dervish, Ranger, Mesmer, Necromancer, Paragon, Ritualist, or Assassin, each with its own strengths and characteristics, a weapon or magic specialty, and a unique set of skills with which to deal damage, manipulate the enemy or environment, or protect and heal allies. Each profession provides a set of attributes which determines the effectiveness of weapons and skills in battle.

You can customize your avatar by choosing from multiples faces, hair styles, (around 10-20 each profession) which is good, because you are really able to make a character to look like what you like, and not be like in some games just a clone. From here you choose to make a roleplay character which will start a lvl 1, and you will be able to go through the storyline, quests, which are great, or PVP character of lvl 20(max) ready to get in Arenas and fight.

Because of the instanced approach, the PVE system, content is one of the best we saw so far. The world sometimes changes because of your actions which is great, the quests are very well done, not all are just courier, and most of them have a nice story, and they are present in a nice way, when you go side by side in a adventure with a NPC, because that is the quest, and fight side by side with him, learn his story, and so on. They are tons of quests with decent rewards, on each continent, and besides this we have the cooperative missions, that are the main storyline, where you need to go with a party to complete them, and I got to say they are great.

Each character has around 200-300 skills to use in their fights, but only 8 of them can be used in a adventure, once you  are in a town, outpost, you can change, add, remove the skill you have available. Also each character can choose a second profession, and to use that profession skills, imagine a Warrior/Monk, that fights well, but also can heal, and cast enchant or holy spells over the enemies and allies. (this is my mainJ)

The control is by default, done with W, A, S, D and mouse, and is very well made, but you can also change it to point and click. The control over the interface is incredible, you can customize every panel, where to be and it size.

The weapons, armor for your character you can get them from the players, quests rewards, drops from monsters, or craft them, by gathering materials and craft them in town at the NPCs. You are able to salvage any item with a salvage kit, so this way you get materials. Also the item system is something like in Diablo, we have white items, blue items, rare and unique items, each with more attributes added to the item. You can also add special characteristics to your items with special runes, bought from merchants, or found in your adventures.

The game engine, is one of the best I ever get my hand on a MMO, very optimized, works well on high details even on old computers, of 2-3 years ago. The graphics of this game on high details are superb, the level designers, art work people did a great job, just go to a forest and see how nice is designed, the characters, armors, weapons are even better.

The music is also great, epic, medieval-fantasy theme, doesn’t get repetitive because of their quality and because they are multiples songs, and the sound fx is just as it should be.

Having no monthly subscriptions, great competitive PVP, great PVE content, Guild Wars at this moment is one of the best fantasy theme MMORPG out there, even if is instanced.Even if you get bored of the PVE Content from the Guild Wars Prophecies, which is the main game, you have 3 expansions at your disposal for more PVE and PVP content.

Kudos to the developers!

Good source for new players: http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Main_Page

In EVE you create a character and choose one of the four races, which provide you with some skills, based on which profession and race you’ve chosen.All the modules, ships, require a skill trained to a certain level, for you to use them. Skills are trained in real time, once you’ve bought a skill, you start training it. No matter if you are ingame, or logged off, the skill will continue to train until it’s finished. This way, you can always learn and advance in the game, even if you’re not capable of playing multiple hours a day. The only downside of this is that people that started playing the game before you, have more skills trained than you, which makes virtually impossible to catch up to. This hardly an issue, because as long as you specialize, you can be just as effective as someone with many more skills trained then you.

What is EVE really about? Well, EVE Online has some predefined content, like missions from agents, which rewards you with items and money, as well as raising your standings with the corporation the agent belongs to. The more missions you do, the more loyalty points you receive with the agent in question. At a certain point, the agent will start giving you offers such as items, blueprints, and ships.
You can also mine asteroids, which give you ore that can then be refined to obtain minerals. You can sell these minerals for money, but can also use them to manufacture items or ships to sell on the vast player-controlled market.

That’s it? Definitely not, EVE is mostly focused on PVP  (Player Versus Player) combat.

Each solar system in EVE has a few planets, asteroid belts, gates and usually stations, stargates are used to travel from one system to another, and is the most common way to travel in EVE. Another way is to have a capital ship such as a carrier, dreadnought, mothership or titan, the biggest and meanest ships in EVE that can travel through jump portals, traveling several systems in one jump. This however, requires a certain amount of fuel, and someone to open a jump portal in the destination system.

How does PVP work? Well, in EVE when you lose your ships, a certain amount of the fitted modules and cargo gets destroyed. The rest remain in a shipwreck, which can be looted by anyone. In both low and high security systems, if you take an item from a person’s container, or shipwreck, it is considered theft, and you will be criminally flagged to the entire corporation that the wreck or container belongs to, for a period of 15 minutes. This allows them to seek out and destroy you, to obtain the stolen items.

PVP is basically, quite harsh, because it is not always consensual. This is also it’s charm, because it generally gives you an incredible rush of adrenaline when engaged in PVP combat.PVP can however, also be profitable. The person who loses an engagement, will sometimes drop valuable items, that can be looted and sold later on. To soften the impact of a loss, there are several ways to insure your ship. A certain amount gets paid to the insurance company, and when your ship gets destroyed you receive a certain amount of your ship’s worth reimbursed.

By default, the camera is focused on the rear of your ship but you have complete freedom over the camera movement, and zoom level is quite high. You move your ship by double clicking anywhere in space, giving you full control over the location you want to go, or by moving according to other objects, such as orbiting or keeping distance from stations, ships,  and alike.

Every weapon has an optimal range, and falloff. Depending on your weapons, you will have to keep your target at optimal range want to hit your target for full damage. Whenever a target is out of your optimal range, but still within optimal+falloff range, you will still fire on the target, but with reduced chance of hitting, as well as reduced damage. Your modules can also be overheated for several seconds, inflicting damage to the module, but increasing performance. Be careful not to overheat a module too long, or it will be damaged so severely that it cannot be used anymore, until repaired at a station.

Each ship has a handful of high slots which are generally used for guns or missile launchers, as well as medium slots which are used for electronic warfare and shield tanks, and low slots which are used for damage modifiers and armor tanks. This allows every player to fully customize the setup of each ship, so you will rarely find someone with an exact setup as yours. Skills, real in-game experience, and ship setups are the deciding factors that will make you win or lose a battle.

EVE is unique because of the players generated content as in wars, conspiracy and territory clashes. Over 50% of territory 0.0 in EVE Online is controlled by Player Alliances, and from here there is always politics, mercenaries, all pointing eventually to high scale WARS. These territories offer the Alliances minerals to extract to build ships, weapons, everything, so it a source of income, a home where you can build space stations and player own bases, for complete supremacy.

With over 30.000+ online players on a single server, and 5000 solar systems, the possibilities are endless. If you are looking for a unique, complex, innovative and fun MMORPG, look no further.

As you start the game, you will find yourself in the capital of your faction, where you can buy, repair, upgrade your units, talk and group with other commanders from the same faction. Here the game is like an isometric rpg, where you walk around and buy, repair, customize your units, and talk with your buddies in a city, preparing for the battles ahead.

On each planet there are 3 factions that fight for supremacy. Each faction aims to get the most victories as fast as possible. The first faction that does, at the end of a war(which means 30k total victories), reaches the 30k  bar and it will receive a high amount of uranium, resource that helps the players to get elite weapons and elite units, that can be bought only with uranium.

From the capital of your faction and other faction territories you can join any fight on the map in order to help your faction commanders, to fight the enemy, get experience for your avatar and your units. This way they increase their damage, armor, and they can be upgraded, and with the increase of some of your certain attributes, you can control more units, change their weapons, armor, and change your current modules with better ones.

After you reinforce a disputed region you enter RTS mode. Here you control a division of the units you had selected to enter first and engage the battle to control certain points on the map, for a period time, or to retake those points from the enemy named POCs. You control a several number of divisions,  and after a division/squad is destroyed, you can reinforce on the map with other divisions to the point that you loose them all, or win, or retreat.

The battles are exciting and spectacular, as long as you coordinate and help the other faction commanders in the battle. On a single map there can take place a battle of a maximum of 40 players, from a certain point and the region can’t be reinforced until somebody retreats.

The game has 2D graphics, runs in 800×600, and even if they are way outdated, they are decent and provide the right atmosphere. The sounds are ok, nothing fancy; the music is ok, but tends to be repetitive.

Shattered is a pretty good mmorpg game, but it seems that no major updates, features or contents were added to the game in the last year, only small patches. The game has two plans: one free, where you can play unlimited time, but you have 10% less offense in battles and you cannot gain honor or purchase rare units and one standard plan where you pay 9.95$ per month for full features. If you like RTS genre you should give Shattered Galaxy a try.

The game concept is pretty familiar, that there are tons of mmog browser based out there you may find similar in design. But here we have a persistent world.in which things take place even when you are offline, a world where you control every unit, in a 3d graphic environment.

In ToD you start with an island, with resources, a basic outpost and turrets, plus the war fleet, the miners and scouts. Your aim is to develop a powerful economy, conquer as many islands as you have to and conquer the other player’s empires, islands. You build  your ships from your bases, or buy additional and unique units from the Eighth House House.

Everything you build takes time, real time, from 3-10 mins or more. And while this happens, you can take a break or even log off for a while. Standard league games stand from a no. of days to a maximum of 28. After that the world resets. Due to this time limit you may find out when you log in that you lost ships, you have been attacked or you even destroyed a fleet that tried to take you down.

Time of Defiance is a small mmorpg game, with a dedicated community that loves this type of mmog. There are many people out there playing this type of games, but browser type. So a game like ToF should be a pleasant change for them.

After playing most of the mmog’s on the market I came across this game and it was a pleasant surprise. Even more now, the game is free while you are on the newbie island, until you want to proceed further to the main continent, so you can explore the game further and make up your mind if you want to subscribe.

In Ryzom you can choose between 4 races, each with their history and goals. The skill tree is very flexible, and your development is defined here. Even after you have gained experience and levels, you can be whatever you like: a fighter, crafter, forager or even a magician, or all four, but you can’t be the best at all. You need to specialize if you want in one or two, but you can do it if you have “the time”. The more you craft, forage or fight with a weapon, you get experience and advance in the specific skill tree, learning new actions, recipes etc, when advancing in these skill tree.

On Planet Atys, where everything happens, you will find different creatures with their various behaviors. Each has an enemy, some will travel in small packs and attack anything they can eat, some will travel in herds, and defend only if attacked, some creatures will migrate naturally and some will choose to remain in an area. What is nice about these creatures is that they don’t drop “weapons, armors or complete items” like you see in most of the mmorpgs out there (I always wondered where the hell that wolf had the uber sword from…and where he stored it – in his stomach? ). Here you get raw materials for crafting which you can sell for money, or use them to craft items. For example, a carnivorous creature may provide sharp teeth that are appropriate for spearheads, while a herbivore may have a soft skin that makes excellent light armour padding. The other way to get materials is by foraging them, extracting them from the lands, after you find them with your prospecting skill.

There are two powerful factions that claim to be the guardians on the planet. Eventually you will have to join one or the other and do deeds for them, and get into faction pvp also. There a different types of pvp in Ryzom, and you can choose to participate or to avoid them. You can duel any player if he accepts or get in Arena to get some taste of pvp. A more complex type of pvp are the Outposts Wars, where guild fights for outpost take-overs, and get some rare materials while controlling them.

On newbie island, where you can play for free as long as you want, the game teaches you the basics of Ryzom. On the main island where you will have to subscribe to get there, the game is more based on group then solo play in order to defeat monsters, and lesser based on quests. On mainland there are the groups that bring you the fun, guilds, and the pvp.

The latest add-on for Ryzom is named Ryzom Ring. It provides tools to create your own content and scenarios, and share them with the community.

With a pretty decent and mature community, great game-play elements and atmosphere, Saga of Ryzom, is one of the most interesting mmorpgs on the market, but on other side is lacking some content for the last 2-3 years, besides the Ryzom Ring, which is not liked by all, but a nice addition afterall.

In Dungeons Runners you can play as a warrior, mage and of course a ranger. You can buy powerful skills from NPC at different levels to enhance your character. You also have complete control of its attributes: strength, agility, endurance and intellect by adding the 5 points you receive per level to these attributes.

Most of the features in this game are a copy from Diablo II, and it works really well. From portal to town, random generated maps, random items drops and their importance, developers didn’t stop here; they added some of their features too, like a nifty feature where you can teleport to the party members so you don’t loose time reaching them.

As Dungeon Runner, you complete different tasks, challenges received from the NPCs you found around in Townston, the local city, and other locations. The adventure maps, dungeons, are completely instanced for your party or yourself, and they are randomly generated each time you log in and reach them again. In these locations you adventure to kill monsters or to scout ahead for dangers, and of course to find “PHAT LOOWT”. Also a map can be completed on a 3 difficulty modes, from Normal to Formidable, Extreme and Insane, where  on Formidable  you get  +50% monster health, +20% monster damage, +50% loot drops and on Extreme  +100% monster health, +40% monster damage, +100% loot drops, and on Insane! – +150% monster health, +80% monster damage, +150% loot drops.

The story behind the quests, even though it simple, makes sense if you read it, and the audio speeches from the NPCs are hilarious, as well as the whole world impersonates a funny but dangerous and satisfying fantasy world.

You can control your character with the classic W,A,S,D keys and mouse, or you can choose to select a point to click for movement, combat. First level encounters are easy. Then, it gets challenging and you have to learn which skills you have to use and how to use them. For example you have a skill named butcher for fighters, and when you are surrounded you  can use this skill to neutralize one enemy for a few seconds by knocking him down, and taking care of his pals until he wakes up alone to get his whooping too. Also, death is painless in general, but in some high level dungeons you will receive a temporary penalty on death.

Besides the old school random loots generator, originally from Diablo I-II, the game has a system named Relics, where some NPCs will reward you with great items for your level by giving them King coins, acquired in your adventures.

There is also a pvp server where you compete in teams against each other in a pvp dungeon, but it still needs a lot of tweaking and more features.

The graphics engine is simple but very well conceived, the characters models and armor are good, and it seems we have a model for each item, which is great, so you rarely see twins, unless they have relics or some popular sets.

The music and sound effects are decent, though on some occasions the background music flips away from the fantasy theme to some techno, electronic music, which was a little strange for this game.

The game is available for free download, and with two subscription plans. One free, but limited, with ads in loading screens and on top of the screen, and the full membership plan, where you pay 4.99$ for full features and no ads.  The ads messages on loading screens that rarely appears are a little brain washing sometimes like “buy this game or..”, and sometimes are hilarious.

In the end, Dungeon Runners is a great and fun little online rpg game, mmorpg, with decent features, good graphics, and fun to play in small doses,  when your mouse itches for some hack and slash alone or with your friends to discover new challenges or some PHAWT LOOT!

Rating Preview Presentation 8.5 Graphics 8.0 Sound 8.0 Gameplay 8.5 Lasting Appeal 8.0

Lately I started to research and look for smaller mmorpg games, free mmorpgs. It’s not fair to keep the attention only on the big boys, and also from time to time you find very interesting games. One of these is Project Torque.

Project Torque is a Racing Free MMORPG, developed by Hungarian developers from Invictus Games, and managed by Aeria Games in US and Europe. I wouldn’t go that far to add “massive” to this game, because even if there are many servers and lobbies, a basic game can have around 8 to 20 players, depending on the racing mode, so I will call it a online racing game.

There are few online racing games out here, but I found this one to be one of the best, think of something like NFS MW vs online game lobbies, and more features than you expect.

In Project Torque you start as a racing driver with two cars, no cash, but from the beginning you can have fun, enjoy yourself by participating in any race you find, or wish.

While participating in races, you gain RP points (Racing Points), and with these points you customize your look, the performance of your car, and at the same time you can buy misc items like driver license, bonus items that can be use in-race and other goodies, and of course, New Cars. At the same we have AP, which are Aeria Points that can be bought with real cash from Aeria Games, that do the same thing as RP, but the only difference is that you can buy amounts at any time. This will give you cash from the start to upgrade your car, but it won’t give you huge advantage over the others, because after all you really need to know how to race, drive, but it helps. On each race you participate, you get RP points no matter what you do, as long as you finish, which is great and the amount you receive is calculated by how well you do.

As a driver you will start with cars and license from the basic class, and while you level up(racing), you advance in classes, from F, E, D to advanced classes like C, B, and A.
While the game is first a street race type, the good thing is that there are many modes, and different types of cars, from street racing cars, to crazy V8 engines, and 4×4 cars, and each car can be bought when you have a specific level or you are part of specific racing class (F, E, D, C, B, etc..) and sometimes you get free cars while you level.

On the first race or license test, you will have a small shock – the game is not an arcade race that you are usually used too, is actually a mix of arcade and simulation, somewhat realistic. Taking a 90 degrees corner with 70 mph,110 km/h it gonna’ take you directly into the first wall, but with time and planning plus hand break you’re going to do well and it will be satisfying and fun.

There are around 6 cameras from which you can choose to view your car, while driving, I prefer one inside from the driver view, because it’s the most fun, but we have one for each preference.

You race your way within around 10 maps, each having track scenarios, and time of day, season, from high speed maps, to dirt or rally country side races, so there is enough diversity for now, and at the same time we have 8 game modes.

First we have Arcade system, where there is no collision between cars, so it’s the best mode for quick races, or beginners.

Next we have SIM system, where usually ghost option is off, so there is collision between the cars, and you get 20% more RP than in Arcade mode.

Next we have Capture the Flag system, where your the goal is to hold the flag as much time as you can, and while others can get your flag from you by hitting you with theirs cars. Destruction Derby anyone? : )

Next we have Thunder Valley (good name), where you race with your V8 cars, American muscle I could say, but not only, which is divided in three categories ranging from 600 HP to 900+ HP(Horse Power) .

At the same time we have Drift and Drag races, racing modes which don’t need explanation, and the last ones are Explorer where you collect power ups while driving trough the map exploring, and the Challenge where you enter with a racing ticket, and get 80% RP of challenge pool of that race, if you get on the first place.

Winning a race, can depend on many factors, factors like how many competitors you have on track, if collision is on, how damaged your car is and when you choose to repair it (it takes a few second, or with special back pack item you can do instantly), performance of the car, and most importantly how well can you drive.

Project Torque, besides the online mode, introduced recently a mission system, where you play alone on several maps, to win RP, and get to know the game better.

The game features include a chat system also (even in race), an in race quick emote system, private chat system, buddy system, email system, ranking system, and of course a detailed statistics window with your progress through the racing world.

The game has great graphics on full details, and doesn’t require a ’’NASA’’ computer to run it, and by having multiple options you scale the graphics details for optimal performance, but if you have a good computer it will look good.

The music and sound effects are very well made, but the best thing is that you can use your mp3 in game, by copying them into music/my music folder and activate it in sound option, and in game menu and racing maps; you can control volume by pressing “numpad + and –“, and use forward or back to change the songs (with “,” and “.”) which is a great feature.

Overall Project Feature is a great online racing game, played in small sessions or sometimes you will want more and more, I know, I played it some and still play it when I want some quick fun and rewarding experience, and with the features that are planned to be added in the future, features like race teams/ race clubs, fully customizable drivers (avatar) and racing girls, plus new cars, content, could make this game even better.

See ya on track! Vruuuum!

]]> http://www.popmmorpg.com/review/project-torque-review.html/feed 0 http://www.popmmorpg.com/review/age-of-conan-review.html http://www.popmmorpg.com/review/age-of-conan-review.html#comments Sun, 30 Aug 2009 01:59:52 +0000 admin http://www.popmmorpg.com/?p=800

Rating Preview Presentation 8.5 Graphics 8.5 Sound 7.5 Gameplay 6.5 Lasting Appeal 6.0

Conan, the newly crowned king of Aquilonia has called us all to arms. Countless heroes, both men and women, have obeyed his call and have arisen to defend Hyboria from obscure cults and their petty gods, from mythological foes and armies of darkness. New alliances are formed, new cities are built over night, blood flows in rivers and echoes of battles engulf the lands in terror. Over a month has passed since the release of this highly expected MMORPG by FunCom, developer that you might remember as the creator of Anarchy Online, and time has come for me to take an in-depth look at what AOC has to offer, both good and bad.

After escaping from the wreckage of a slave ship, the unsuspecting adventurer is slowly but surely directed towards Tortage, a corrupted city filled with drunken sailors, whores, thieves and thugs – how convenient. Here, with the help of a few friends, the player will begin to unravel his forgotten past, story which will function for the rest of the game as the main plot. I thought that amnesia as an engine that drives the story forward can only be found in crappy TV shows where characters have car accidents all the time and forget everything right before the wedding, but I guess I was wrong: seems it works fine for games also. Tortage will cover the first 20 levels of any character and does that friendly manner, with more than enough quests to tackle, a decent storyline and voice acting for most of the NPCs in the city. The downside to it is the fact that every time you choose to restart the game the first 20 levels will always be the same, so for the undecided ones or simply for the ones that like to level more than one character at a time, going three or four times through Tortage in a matter days will most likely be at least boring if not completely annoying, clearly damaging the appeal of the game. Of course if the players would suffer from amnesia too then the repetitive game start would no longer be a problem.

An interesting game feature is that the player is given the possibility to choose if he wishes to play during the night which means he will enter a single player campaign in the attempt to cleanse the evil that has corrupted the city and in the same time advance with the game plot, or he can choose to play during the day solving more common problems together with his online friends in the multiplayer mode. Unfortunately this is only limited to the starting city, and although one can understand the reasons that stood behind this design decision, having the alternative game mode extended to the whole world might have been a good call.

The game classes that one can choose from at the beginning of the game circle around the normal definitions of melee, ranged and caster. They are grouped in larger categories that give several classes similar abilities, such as hide for the rogues. In case you didn’t know, barbarians are rogues and they can sneak around even if they weight about a tone.

Everything is just dandy in Tortage and maybe this is the reason why the closed beta limited the exploration only to this city and its immediate surroundings, because as soon as you depart for other areas the game seems to lose his polish: voice acting with a handful of exceptions is a thing of the past, quests seem to be scattered around without any game design perspective and the main story looses focus. The game pushes the player towards a quest orientated approach, which is highly commendable, but that can turn into a serious flaw if the total number of quests available to a player at a given time is not enough to drive one character up on the leveling ladder and I wouldn’t be making this comment if this wasn’t the case in AOC. Around level 30-35 the game seems to loose interest in the player and concentrates on some other highly important issues, like picking its nose for example. On top of that the quests that link one area to the other, the ones that should give the player a coherent line of events to follow, have two little problems: the first one being that they become available to the player much to early, at a level when one still has stuff to do in area A and isn’t really interested in leaving it for area B, and the second one being the fact that they lack any adventure value – quests with texts like “If you happen to find yourself in zone B, please tell my husband’s mistress that….” are most likely subject to players’ irony not to their undivided attention and interest, especially in a world shook by conflict from its very foundation as Hyboria is. On the other hand, quests in AOC do have one addition that I find to be of high importance: map marking. Upon accepting a quest the area of immediate interest to the player in solving the quest goal or turning in a completed quest is marked both on the map and on the corner-screen mini-map. Although this clearly reduces the importance of reading the quests’ texts, it highly speeds up the puzzle solving process because the chance of wondering around searching for a quest goal that is poorly described in the greatly reduced, thus leading to a system of fast rewards for the players, so thumbs up here.

The combat system in Age of Conan is again something innovating and I can only applaud the idea that stands behind it and the effort in making that idea something tangible. The basic combat system is built on the usage of keys which dictate what body area of your enemy your next blow targets. A mirror copy of this is the defensive system which uses shields placed around a character’s body in order to reduce the damage one takes in those specific areas. All players, regardless of the class they choose, will eventually have to use a series of key combos in order to trigger special attacks. Sounds great… in theory, but the whole system is pretty much useless and annoying actually. You can not change the position of the shields fast enough to make a difference in combat and if you do it before combat feels a lot like playing the lottery; the combos take too long to perform and while for a caster class that’s not actually a problem, for a melee class in PVP it means you will never get the chance to finish two button combos because no one is that retarded as to stand around long enough for the melee character to perform the death-in-horrible-pain-2-combo; high level combos include more than one normal attack button, meaning that the damage of the combo is spread around on at least two body areas, so again, I find the shields to be completely useless.

In addition to the hack and slash at ground level, AOC comes packed with a mounted combat system, which does not surprise by ingenuity, but by its simple presence because probably most of us have given up on the hope of seeing something like this and have accepted the mount simply as a travel form. Although of little use in PVE, the mounted combat system is a source of great fun and brings into PVP a sense of power and speed unsurpassed by any other MMORPG of this kind. Several types of mounts are available to players of level 40 and above and although they do cost a small fortune, I can assure you the money are well spent.

The crafting system will also open up for the player at level 40 and comes as an addition to the already obtained gathering skills which can be all learned and practiced by everyone. Except for the common professions that target the creation of armor, weaponry and enhancements of the first two, Age of Conan introduces a bran new one: architecture. The architect is the guy you want in your guild if you are ever planning of building a guild city, since he is the only one that can put all those resources you and your palls have gathered in the bank to good use and raise city walls, keeps any other normal mythological city features,

The only problem is that the guild city is in an instance. Actually the whole game is a long sequence of loading separated instances. Now, I may be wrong, but isn’t the goal of any MMORPG to have all the players on one single server that has only one single instance of the world? I mean we got used to having dungeons treated as instances, but now the open-world also? Instead of trying to come up with a solution to make one single world for everyone, AOC refuses progress and actually takes this issue on step back. It’s sad because having a naturally generated conflict by the limited spaces a guild city can be build upon would have been something that could have driven the game forward simply on the PVP system, without any story/PVE support.

On a graphic level FunCom huffed and puffed and released a high-poly MMORPG and now I can’t help thinking that this should be considered to be contradiction of terms: no game that targets such a large number of consumers should be created for high-end CPUs and video-boards. It is unacceptable to make a PC that runs most games in high-detail, spit out blood at 40-50fps when confronted with the latest generation MMORPG. Yes, the shadows are cool, yes, the water effects are nice, yes, I saw some sunsets that made me want to call ex-girlfriends to apologize for being a jerk, but was all this really necessary? We are not playing games for the scenery, but for the game mechanics, for the game story, for PVP and other features that by some arbitrary reason FunCom considered they should be neglected. Basically we are playing games for fun and call me a freak if you disagree with me, but a slideshow of extraordinary pictures can keep you hooked for hours maybe, while some great story telling and killing people can do the same for months. Now don’t expect some revolutionary graphics that will make you loose touch with reality and make you fill the walls of your house with the names of the developers in adoration – I only said high-poly. For some strange reason, whole areas have a minimalist, spartan approach to them when it comes to color palette. This simply a pompous way of saying that they spilled the barrels of grays and browns into the game, they took two steps back like trying to see a bigger picture hanged on a wall and since they are color-blind decided that it’s simply ferpect.

On top of this you add the recipe of hideous UI, some bugged character animations and inventory objects in 3D that look all the same and you got pretty good picture of how Age of Conan looks at the moment – all dressed up in its parents’ expensive clothes that just don’t fit (the pants are 6 numbers larger then they should be, the socks don’t match and the hat is pink). As a general example of what I am talking about: you can morph your character at the beginning of the game and if you are narcissist like I am you will spend at least half an hour trying to find the perfect combination of hair color, eye color, skin color, hair style, facial features and tattoos. Too bad that when entering the game your character’s face is not present in the interface and the physiological differences between one character and another are so small when wearing an armor that you could even make a bold male with a dark beard and name him Lola and no one will ever suspect she’s a guy. And speaking of character animations, I wonder why is it so hard for a developer to understand a player will care less if quest X in zone Y has been fixed and more that his character, the only thing that is always on his screen except for the crappy interface, runs around 98.967% of the time like a chimp on ecstasy – hilarious hide animations not included in the comment.

But rest assured, FunCom’s bug fixing campaign is fairly active and updates and patches pop-up every week. The fact that the subscriber pays for a beta game version is another story; I personally would feel insulted if I would be paying for this because I don’t remember FunCom hiring me for the position of game tester. The fact that the bug fixing process features “top-notch” solutions such as invisible walls against wall climbing exploits makes me doubt the developers will ever go down to the core of the problems in the attempt to fix them, but more likely will patch things up, stitch things together in the attempt to keep the game in one piece.

Bottom line, Age of Conan has a lot of potential, proposes some new interesting game features for an MMORPG of this genre and might just have what it takes to be the next big hit. But not just yet… For now the game is buggy, the story is inconsistent, the gameplay can be frustrating, the world is a series of instances that brake the game into tiny, tasteless pieces, the classes are unbalanced and overall the game has a feeling of closed beta it just can’t shake off. FunCom is promising fast updates and patches to compensate for the game problems, but for now all we can do is take their word for it. They might succeed in squeezing something great out of this old IP, but while they are doing that, if you haven’t bought the game already, my advice is to catch up on some single player games or stick to the MMORPGs you are currently playing. Come back in few months to check if Conan has learned some new tricks or if he is still acts retarded and bangs his head against the walls trying to figure out why water effects are not what players are looking for.

Off!

Seth Lex

]]> http://www.popmmorpg.com/review/age-of-conan-review.html/feed 0 http://www.popmmorpg.com/review/navy-field-review.html http://www.popmmorpg.com/review/navy-field-review.html#comments Sun, 30 Aug 2009 01:58:39 +0000 admin http://www.popmmorpg.com/?p=798 Navy Field is a Massively Multiplayer Online Tactics Game developed by SDEnterNet a Korean games studio, and available in NA and Europe. This game is based on naval battles that toke place in the World War II, with all neat details like big guns battles, plane carriers, torpedoes attacks, all in played in a lobby system.

While I don’t like most of the Korean games, they are a few out there that exit the usually fantasy grindish pattern with no real stories or features, Navy Field is one of these good games that come from time to time, from Korean Developers.

In Navy Field you play as Ship Commander of World War II War Ship of one of the four major countries: England, US, Germany and Japan. You start with basic frigate, crew and equipment and raise the rank by participating in huge battles with other players, usually 24v24, or more. As you play trough the game, with each battle, your crew gains experience and you – credits to buy new ships, equipment and points to specialize your crew in different areas, as gunner, bridge operator, scout plane pilots etc.

You control your ship with mouse and keyboard, where with the mouse you set course to run from the map you are on, and with the keyboard you control the speed, the direction and angle, range of your guns, and torpedoes, planes. The skill comes from firing quick at your enemy from long range, or small range, by guessing, setting up the correct range to score hits. There is also equipment for auto targeting but I don’t recommend it from level 6 onwards, because you need to have complete control of your guns to do real damage

Navy Field has available for players almost every War Ship that was built in the WWII, and while you start with the basic frigate, you advance and can specialize, in ships as Destroyers, Light Cruisers, Heavy Cruisers ( Yes, Bismark, Hood, Yamato, and others), Carriers, and of course Battleships.

All the battles you can participate in are usually lobby games open on world map, where players gather and fight trough a few game mode, most popular being Blitzkrieg where players participate with Frigates (FF), Destroyers (DD), Light Cruisers(CL), Heavy Cruisers(CA), and Great Battles where players participate with all the ship types available, but is the home ground of Carriers and Battleships. Besides these popular modes, the player has available PVE missions, which are just for training or grinding for some credits, testing etc, but the best way to enjoy the game is to play in the Team vs Team modes. Of course we also have fleets (clans), and battles for supremacy between these fleets.

While there is no real naval MMOG out there, this game is very popular because it is the only one that can offer this in a multiplayer instanced environment, where huge battles take places. Unfortunately, the environment is instanced, so no dynamic world here, but the battles are fun enough to get you very addicted to the game. You enter the game, get in quick in a room that takes like 5 minutes, to get around 30+ players, and then the battle starts. You get experience for your crew, points and credits, based on how much damage you inflicted and if your team wins, you receive more for all.

The graphics engine is a 2D one, but very well made, based on 1024×769 resolution, but it looks good in higher monitors too, so it won’t bug you much, while the sound is excellent, from the background music, to the sound effects of the torpedoes, naval guns. You can recognize these by their sound, like torpedoes impact, all these contributing very well at getting you in the atmosphere of a naval battle

In the end I find Navy Field a very interesting and satisfying massive multiplayer game, because I am sick of those fantasy mmorpg that don’t bring nothing new, and because I also love the idea to be part of those naval battles that took place in the World War II and after all, the game is free with game shop options (can buy special items), and even subscriptions if you want to get more experience, bonuses after each battle. So give it a try, if you want something new, and like naval battles.

Ahead Flank!

If you start to play this game or you are already playing it, I recommend you to read the following sites that have guides, and other helpful info regarding this game:

http://www.nf-guides.com
http://trainworld.us/NF2/English/index.html