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!

Game Features

The game gives you full reign of everything that affects your team. You start off naming your manager, your team and practically giving yourself the overall power to imprint yourself in your F1 team.

You are also given the choice of what type of F1 cars your drivers have. The helmet design is also by your own accord and even the names of your team’s two drivers are your pick. You then dictate the training your drivers will have to undertake and the amount of R&R time they will be having after each training session. You have to carefully discover the proper harmony between training and relaxation for your drivers so that you can maximize the growth potential of what you have.

Aside from the drivers you also have three other teams to look after which are the Pit Crew, the Engineering team and the Mechanic team. As your team’s manager you get to dictate what each team should be working on, what kind how intensive is their training, how long will they take it and of course the kind of R&R they would be taking and also of the duration.

Another job of a team manager is to handle the team’s overall budget and finance, and this is not overlooked in F1 Manager. Through the desk page, you get to look at every data you have on the team. You can see the contracts of your teams, the warehouse where you can get your car’s spare parts tire partners, the world ranking list and you can even track your bank records through it.

Racing Properly

When the opportunity arises you are then invited to take part in races that will be your team’s staging ground to the Grand Prix. With the game concentrating on the managerial side of a Formula one team all you do is watch in the sidelines as your drivers duke it out with their competitors in the race track.

In each race, you get to track how each driver is doing, the shape of their car is in and other data that you can use as your basis in future plans for your team. You won’t get to see your drivers actually race; you will only see race-data that is shown in your screen.

As with real F1 races, your drivers would not immediately take part in the race properly but would have to go through qualifiers to determine where they would start, each race then costs you fuel and equipment that is why you have to carefully manage your resources on and off the race.

Conclusion

F1 Manager is for those avid fans of the heart-stopping, adrenaline-rushing sport that is Formula One racing. Though you may not be positioned in the driver’s seat where most of the action takes place, you are given the alternative to at least be the person who, besides the driver makes thing roll in a racing team.

F1 Manager does provide you everything that you need to know regarding your team. The statistics of your drivers, the car and helmet design. Even the name of your drivers would come from you. The game has given you the opportunity to experience the biggest dream of a F1 fan, become a boss of a team.

However, the problem with F1 Manager is that with the lack of a guide that is translated to English, you have to second-guess whatever it is that needs to be done and that you have to rely on your own know-how on how things work for an F1 team.

Thankfully, the English server of the game has everything in the interface in English. If you can’t read German then getting to understand the whole game needs more effort for you because you have to either research about the things you see or go through the game forums, which has people that can help you.

As long as you get past the language barrier issue of the game everything would run smoothly for you then. The game balance is not really a problem because everyone starts off with the same set of stats for their cars and drivers, the same amount of starting money and the same set of crew.  It all boils down on how well you manage your team which is basically what a manager does.

This browser-based game is not a game that a casual gamer would enjoy. True, that it may spark interest for those who are trying out the game, however in the long run, if F1 is not in your system you would then eventually forget about this game.

The opposite can be said for true F1 fans though. The level of detail this game has can feed the cravings of any die-hard F1 racing fan.

F1 Manager has successfully detailed the things a real F1 manager would have to go through in their everyday life and it is what F1 manager is all about. If you are into strategic planning and would want to know how it feels to handle an F1 team, F1 Manager is a game for you.

Pros:
- You get to experience how it feels to be a manager of an F1 Team
- You have full reign of your team, every detail is provided for you to decide on
- You get to decide on the team and the driver’s name.

Cons:
- Not everything is translated to English
- The game is for those who are into F1 and not for casual gamers
- You don’t get to see how your racer fares in the actual race.