Blizzard has released back ground info on the Quel’Delar sword. This is an epic weapon that requires the players to find the pieces to reforge the blade. Here is the story of the famous Blade posted by Blizzard;

In ages past the great Dragon Aspects worked alongside the night elves to forge powerful prismatic blades that could be used to thwart any evil that came into the world. They would become known as the blades of Quel’Serrar. One of these blades, which had become lost in time, was recently unearthed again by brave heroes of Azeroth. Now rediscovered, Quel’Serrar is revered once more as a mighty tool of raw power.

Its sister blade, however, has not been seen for many years…

The sword known as Quel’Delar was held by the group of kaldorei who would eventully become the high elves, and it was handed down from generation to generation. Most recently Quel’Delar was wielded by the valiant high elven warrior Thalorien Dawnseeker. Thalorien fought tirelessly in the Troll Wars to defend his beloved home of Silvermoon, the Sunwell, and all of Quel’Thalas. When the Scourge swept through the lands during the Third War, Thalorien was among the last lines of defense for the Sunwell. Despite the sword’s power, he was ultimately slain by the overwhelming might of Arthas and his legendary runeblade, Frostmourne. Quel’Delar was thought to be lost forever.

Following the destruction of their homeland, the determined blood elves began to regroup and rebuild. It was during this time that the battle-hardened warrior Lana’thel stumbled upon Quel’Delar, and soon afterward the greatest opportunity to use the blade presented itself: Prince Kael’thas Sunstrider raised an army and combined forces with Illidan Stormrage, who led them north to Icecrown on a mission to destroy the Lich King. Lana’thel readily followed her prince with one thought in mind — revenge against the Scourge — but only tragedy awaited her.

In the icy hills of Northrend, Arthas ultimately defeated Illidan and Kael’thas, and the expedition’s few survivors were scattered across the frozen wastes. One by one the Lich King sought out those who had challenged him, and Lana’thel found herself cornered. Using Quel’Delar, she struck at him with all her might… but Frostmourne’s evil powers overwhelmed her. Through his blade, the Lich King chose Lana’thel to serve him in undeath as queen of the San’layn, a group responsible for overseeing the Scourge’s operations across Azeroth.

Queen Lana’thel eagerly carried out her new duties, but every time she looked at her blade, maddening anger would swell within her as she remembered her former life. She could not afford such distractions, and with a scream that echoed throughout Icecrown, she shattered Quel’Delar and flung the fractured pieces as far as she could.

Now…

The champions of the Alliance and the Horde who confront the Lich King’s armies have but a slim chance of finding the pieces of this fabled blade. If they succeed, the heroes can embark on an epic adventure to re-forge Quel’Delar. They will require the strongest materials and a source of great power to make this shattered blade into the fearsome weapon it once was. Several classes can use Quel’Delar, and the sword can fit several different play styles. For any class that is unable to wield it, however, the Sunreaver blood elves and the Silver Covenant high elves will gladly take this relic of their history in exchange for a usable weapon.

The search begins soon…

Hear ye Hear Ye, for all you WOW players out there. The time has come to convert your wow account into a Battle.net account. On November 11, 2009 if you do not have a Battle.net account you will not be able to log into WOW. At least we get a pet out of it. Here is the announcement from Blizzard;

A few months ago, we unveiled the Battle.net account, our new way for players to log in to World of Warcraft and future Blizzard games, sign up for upcoming beta tests, shop the online Blizzard Store, and more with just one username and password. This was just the first step in the rollout of the brand-new Battle.net; in the future, players will be able to use Battle.net to participate in cross-realm chat in World of Warcraft, create real-life friends lists, communicate across different games, and a whole more.

In preparation for the launch of these new features, on November 11, 2009, all current World of Warcraft players will be required to merge their World of Warcraft accounts with a Battle.net account in order to log in to the game. As our way to say “thanks” for taking a moment to go through the process, existing World of Warcraft accounts that upgrade to Battle.net (including those that have already switched over) will receive a brand-new penguin in-game pet — after you’ve merged, he’ll be waiting for you in your in-game mailbox the next time you log in.

 Starting on November 11, all World of Warcraft players will need to log in to the game using a Battle.net username and password, and anyone who wishes to create a new World of Warcraft account will need to start with a Battle.net account.

Creating a Battle.net account is simple and free. To merge your existing account with a Battle.net account, go here. For more info, check out the Battle.net site or read the FAQ.

Blizzard promised a revamped LFG system at this year’s BlizzCon, and the company is finally starting to deliver on the promise.  Players will be able to take the updates for a spin alongside Icecrown Citadel in Patch 3.3, instead of waiting for Cataclysm, World of Warcraft’s third expansion.

There’s a parade of changes to the system, some expected, others out of the blue.  Here’s the synopsis:

• Join as a Group or Solo
• Cross-Realm Instances/Grouping
• Instance Teleporting
• Smarter Group Matching
• Daily Random Dungeons
• Repeat Random Dungeons
• Choose Multiple Dungeons
• Vote Kick system
• Lovin’ the PUG Bonuses
• Looking For Raid
• Need Before Greed Updated
• Group Disenchanting

My personal favorites, PUG bonuses, Cross-Realm groups and Random Dungeons.

You can find the full breakdown at the official World of Warcraft website.

Today Dragon Oath enters its US open beta phase inviting players to sign up on the official site at www.dragonoath.com.

If your not familiar with Dragon Oath, it is a free 2 play MMORPG that has been runing in Asia for 3 years now and according to ChangYou.com Ltd, the games developer and operator, boasts 75 million registered players.  Although let me point out that registered players does not equal active players.  The Dragon Oath is the first game from ChangYou.com Ltd to enter the eastern market and the’re hoping for the same success they have had in the western market.  So if your interested in the Dragon Oath open beta, just go to the link above.

We also have some new screenshots of Dragon Oath for you.

State of the Game’s are a fantastic way for developers to tell players, and prospective players exactly what is going on in a given universe.  Cryptic’s Chronomancer, or Bill Roper, posted a wall of text over on the official forums.  The SotG covers everything from the list of free stuff for the Champions Online Halloween event to promises of new missions and the ability to share quests to party members.

Here’s a fun one:

Zombie Apocalypse

Although this was intended to be a high level event until after Blood Moon, we’re going to open it up to everyone during the event. This map will be available in the PvP queue starting at level 5! We also fixed a bug that prevented the score report from displaying when players click on the “report” button mid-game, so now you’ll be able to see where you stack up in that whole “who can survive the longest” competition (or how many non-zombie heroes you’ve taken down)!

Today Zemi Interactive, the developer behind 4Story, has released two new trailers, once gamplay and one prom, plus a slew of screenshots.  4Story is a free to play MMORPG that was released in 2007.

Screenshots after the jump.

Continued…

From the news section of the Alganon forums:

After taking time to process player feedback, work with our strategic partners, and present options to our investment team, we have decided to move the release date for Alganon from October 31st to December 1st.

This decision will allow us to refine the game, test on a larger scale, obtain additional visibility, and run some great contests (starting with the Immortal contest which should begin this upcoming week). We appreciate the patience and support of everyone who has been testing and pre-ordered Alganon.

Those who have pre-ordered Alganon before the 31st will receive a month of free play as compensation and also receive the in-game items awarded at launch sometime during the beta process.

The testers on the forums seem to be pretty pleased with this development and given the state of the game, and an MMO market that is unforgiving of a poor launch, this delay is probably a good idea. The NDA will not go back into effect, so expect more info on how the game develops as the weeks pass.

Introduction

Quest Online is releasing their new fantasy MMO, Alganon, at the end of this month. I have had the opportunity to get my hands on this game for a couple of weeks and below is my Alganon preview.

Character Creation

Character creation in Alganon is pretty straightforward. You are given the choice of either the Asharr or Kujix faction and that choice also determines your race. Humanity serves the Asharr and the Talrok (which look a heck of a lot like elves) serve the Kujix. Once your faction and race are settled, you have four pretty standard fantasy rpg classes to choose from: soldier, ranger, magus and healer. Next, you choose to which of the five families your character belongs. More on families later. Finally, there are a few customization sliders where you can tailor the look of your character.

Creating My Ranger

Classes, Abilities and Specializations

Alganon sports four character classes that fit closely to the main archetypes of fantasy gaming: soldier, ranger, magus and healer. Though this might seem to be painfully limiting, each class has four (core plus three more) ability specializations that serve to further differentiate characters. This allows two characters of the same class to play slightly differently and fill different roles in a group situation. Let’s take a look at two examples of classes and their specializations.

Soldiers are the tanks of Alganon and as such, their Core specialization is wearing heavy armor and taunting their opponents. However, soldiers can also specialize in Weaponry which will increase their offensive capabilities, particularly with two-handed weapons. A warrior who focuses on Tactics will gain crowd control and utility skills that will serve a group well. Finally, a Protection specced soldier will become master of the “sword-and-board”, sacrificing damage for the ability to tank and absorb hits like no other class.

Solder Tactics Tree

Rangers are a strange mix of bowmen, melee dps, healers and controllers that can serve many functions on a battlefield. A ranger’s Core abilities focus on managing threat, snares and party-buffs. Guardianship rangers gain additional defensive abilities which allow them to avoid damage and possibly be effective off-tanks. Rangers focused on Predation increase their damage-dealing skills while their counterparts who study Lifeblood gain considerable healing skills.

Every level, characters gain a point, which can be applied to one of the abilities under one of the four specializations for their class. Each point allocated improves one of the character’s actions, eking out a percentage more damage, giving a better chance to dodge, reducing the cooldown time, etc. If you’ve used WoW’s talents, or EQ2’s Acheivement  Points, this system will be familiar to you.

Studies

Alganon’s studies are an interesting addition to the fantasy rpg mix. Like abilities, studies provide an incremental increase in your character’s abilities. This could be a higher resistance to magic, or access to better crafting materials and recipes. However, unlike abilities, studies are not gained by leveling up. Studies are learned in real-time, points accumulating each second, even if you are offline. As long as any of your characters have studies queued up, you will continue to advance. Players of Eve Online will recognize that game’s skill system as the inspiration for Alganon’s studies.

Adding New Studies to My Queue

More on Families

One of the unique features of Alganon is that every character is part of a family. Though they have flowery, fantasy rpg names made up of randomly chosen syllables jammed together with the odd apostrophe, the families really represent your character’s motivation and look like the results of one of those “What Type of Player Are You” quizzes. Characters can be Achievers, Competitors, Crafters, Explorers or Socializers. Being part of a family is a way to get players with similar interests and motivations together from the start of the game.

Being a part of a family in Alganon is a great way to join with players that share similar interests. For example, power gamers can be in the same family and casual gamers can be in their own family… Every family has its own chat channel that all family members can freely participate in. This channel is automatically “made active” when you log into the game.

Your character’s family does not impact his abilities. However, each family will have merchants that sell “heirloom” items that affect his appearance. These include tabards, clothing and non-combat pets.

Pretty Pictures

Alganon has an art style that is reminiscent of World of Warcraft with its cartoony structures and characters. However as I played the game, one thing that struck me was just how pretty the landscape was. The colors and textures are great and the water effects really brought the world to life.

Another item of note are the excellent, hand-drawn world maps.

Quests

Quests in Alganon are nothing new: You travel to a quest hub, pick up all the relevant quests at the hub, then travel into the wilderness with instructions to kill 20 foozles, or collect 10 motley hides. Once done, you return to the hub, get your rewards, rinse and repeat until ultimately, one of the NPCs gives you a task that involves walking to the next hub. It’s not a bad system… it is just the same system. Unfortunately, in my brief time in Alganon, I didn’t see any quests besides kill and fetch quests — no escorts or scripted events. As it stands the quest system is serviceable, but nothing special.

However, the developers are close to finalizing a system for “dynamic quests” that

check for multiple different character attributes (or even account or world-wide attributes) and change a player’s available quests based on these criteria. This allows for us to design quests that, based on player choices and the state of the world, are different for each player. This system allows us to not only setup simple quest chains, but also to create a system where custom quests are available based on player choice.

I did not see evidence of dynamic quests when I was playing, but mmocrunch has been told that the system is in place, but the developers are trying to determine the best way to use the system without gating players from certain quests and rewards. (Personally, if you have an innovative technology such as this one, I say “Gate Away!!”)

Crafting

I have to admit to just scratching the surface of crafting in Alganon. On the surface, it is pretty similar to World of Warcraft. You can choose a gathering skill such as mining, or skinning and take a crafting skill to go with it. I picked skinning and leather working on my ranger. As you find nodes, or kill creatures, you can gather raw materials from them which increases your skill level, which in turn allows you to gather from higher grade nodes. Each gathering skill comes with some basic refining recipes you can use on the raw materials to create items that are used by the crafting professions and also raises your skill level without the hassle of finding nodes. Once you have some materials, you open your crafting skill window and see the recipes there. If you have the materials, just press a button and you will create the desired item — no crafting station required.

The Crafting Is Familiar

Unfortunately, I don’t have more insight into how crafting fits into the overall economy, or how useful the gear is compared to quest rewards and drops. It seems to be similar, but more involved than WoW’s system, with a lot more interim combines, and more crossover between crafting professions (you need to buy widgets from a tailor to create something with leatherworking). Higher level crafters on the beta chat seemed to be happy with the system, indicating that the gear was at least moderately useful compared to what you could find adventuring.

Deities and Crusades

At some point during your character’s career, he will be asked to throw in with a deity. Deities form another type of faction in Alganon and each provides its followers with additional quests, items and abilities. In addition, deities will lead their followers into battle to conquer territory and further their agendas. All that sounds cool, but no more so than any other quest giver and PvP premise. What makes Alganon’s idea interesting is that the deities in question won’t be abstract constructs, but actual characters you can interact with in-game. Even more astounding is that Quest Online plans to have the deities controlled by live GMs.

In ALGANON, gods won’t just be legends, they will walk the lands. Many players will be able to see and interact with their Deity directly, as they are controlled by in-house staff hired specifically to role-play within the world. When the Crusades are added, players will be able to fight along side their deities in these massive battles between the two factions, and receive powers, teachings and knowledge from their chosen deity.

If they can pull that off and make this kind of epic interaction a regular occurrence, that would go a long way to setting Alganon apart from the crowded pack of fantasy MMOs on the market today.

Is It Ready for Release?

Alganon releases the end of October, less than a week away. I played through the early levels and can tell you that the game is playable and I did not have trouble with extreme lag, or any crashes. There are bugs, like in pretty much every MMO at release, but nothing that will get in the way of you playing the game.

On beta chat, I did hear that some of the classes were getting reworked and I know that my ranger’s ability tree had many places where the abilities offered either weren’t that inspiring, or made little sense. For instance, through level 12, I still had abilities that gave bonuses to powers I didn’t have yet. Other abilities gave 1% cost reductions to powers that cost about 30 focus. Expect the ability trees to be reworked either before release, or soon afterwards.

Just Another WoW Clone?

A lot has been made on various gaming forums and even in beta chat that Alganon is nothing more than an unabashed WoW clone. You have two factions, with exclusive races (including elves with Popeye forearms) doing battle. You have a skill system, a combat system and a crafting system that could have been lifted straight from WoW. Hey, the “bad guy” starting area is even arid and blindingly orange!

Not the Barrens Again!

Here’s the thing, I don’t think anyone who had played it will argue with the fact that at first glance, Alganon looks a heck of a lot like “just another WoW clone.”  In fact, I am not sure the developers would argue that fact either. Alganon’s design philosophy seems to be to shamelessly borrow aspects of other successful games, mix them together in proper proportion and then add a dash of “don’t fix what ain’t broke.”  Toss in a desire to listen to their players, focus on what is fun about MMOs and maybe add a couple of neat ideas into the formula and you end up with Quest Online’s upcoming release.

I had a chance to level a couple characters through the first 12 levels of Alganon. For the first four or five levels, I was bored. My ranger played a lot like an early paladin in WoW — auto-attack and hit my seal every so often. However, after that first dry period, I got my first good damaging skill, as well as a heal and I started to fight creature that could cut into my hit point bar. I made it to the first village, picked up my gathering and crafting skills and started to skin my kills. I found myself planning out some studies, loading up on the shorter combat studies and saving the 1-day “furs and skins” study (which improves the crafting materials I could work with) for when I was offline.

It grew on me…

Yes, Alganon is a WoW clone. It is also an Eve Online clone… and an Everquest clone… and I think there is a true desire among Alganon’s developers to be a responsive development team and add something new to the mix with their Dynamic Quests and Deity system. Can they pull any of that innovative stuff off? I don’t know. In today’s MMO market, and with the climate hostile to new games, I would say the odds are against them. But how can’t you root for the guy who promises to get you wading into a massive battle with your GM-controlled god at your side?

Should I Try Alganon?

I think you should give Alganon a shot if

• You like WoW, or EQ2, but have seen it all and would like a fresh start with all new content.
• You are thinking of returning to a fantasy MMO, but have played out all the classes and would like something new to see.
• You want to get in on the ground floor of a game.
• You want to be part of a small community with more direct contact with the dev team.
• You like WoW, but think the community stinks.
• You like WoW, or EQ2, but think the game has gone downhill in the past couple of years.

Alganon is not for you if

• You are looking for some massive innovation that will give you that “first game ever” feeling again.
• You are hooked on fast, flashy combat such as is found in CoX and Champs Online.
• You are happy with WoW, or EQ2… if so, there is nothing to see here (unless they implement some of their killer features).

There is a fishing goodie on the test realms for all you WOW fishermen. Fishing can be boring but the tournaments can be fun. The rewards listed below are definelty worth it. Remember as with all ptr items this can be changed before release. Here is the announcement;

Coming in patch 3.3.0, the esteemed tuskarr of the Kalu’ak are proud to introduce to Northrend the Kalu’ak Fishing Derby, a test of fishing skill with a healthy dash of luck! Every Wednesday beginning at 8 PM players can try to catch the elusive Blacktip Shark. Elder Clearwater sits in Dalaran for one hour awaiting the return of the quickest, most experienced fisher to bring him the first catch of the night. This champion fisher will be rewarded in-kind for his or her fishing expertise. Those who aren’t able to return with the first catch will still receive just reward for getting the Blacktip Shark to Elder Clearwater before he takes his leave.

It is said that these sharks’ favorite meal are the bite-sized Pygmy Suckerfish. Perhaps a hook in their waters will do the trick. Because of the increased concentration of fish, you have an increased chance to catch a shark from fishing pools. Don’t forget, in patch 3.3.0 you never catch trash from fishing pools, regardless of skill.

The derby winner will receive a substantial chunk of experience (or money at maximum level) and gain 5000 reputation with the Kalu’ak. In addition, the champion will be given a choice between two unique rewards:

Dread Pirate Ring
Binds on Account
Unique-Equipped
Finger
+34 Stamina
Requires level 1 to 80 (80)
Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 53.
Equip: Improves hit rating by 29.
Equip: Experience gained from killing monsters and completing quests increased by 5%.

Boots of the Bay
Binds When Picked Up
Feet
Requires Fishing (200)
Equip: Increased Fishing +15.
Use: Whisks you away to the finest drinking establishment in Booty Bay. (1 Day Cooldown)

To keep it interesting, the Achievement “Master Angler of Stranglethorn” has been changed to “Master Angler of Azeroth.” This can be earned by winning either the Kalu’ak Fishing Derby or the Stranglethorn Fishing Extravaganza.

We recently had a chance to interview David Allen (President and Co-founder of Quest Online) and Hue Henry (Alganon Lead Designer) about the upcoming MMORPG Alganon which set to release on Oct 31st.  Check out the Alganon interview below.

1. Your website mentions “custom dynamic quests”. Could you elaborate on these custom quests and will they be in the game at launch?

Our quest system allows us to check for multiple different character attributes (or even account or world-wide attributes) and change a player’s available quests based on these criteria. This allows for us to design quests that, based on player choices and the state of the world, are different for each player. This system allows us to not only setup simple quest chains, but also to create a system where custom quests are available based on player choice.

While the system for these quests will be in at launch, they will not be used to their full capacity right away. We know that if we create content where a player’s actions choose a personal nemesis, we are actually denying them access to the content where that character is not their nemesis. We know that if there is a choice where all rewards are identical, the choice doesn’t have much meaning. If the rewards are different, players may feel regret about their choice because they missed out on the reward they wanted.

For these reasons, we are greatly limiting this content in our release content. The content available at release is a foundation and introduction to the game that is meant to be available to all players. In the future, when we add additional content, we plan to use this system to adapt the player’s experience to their own personal choices.

2. You seem to have an aggressive patch/expansion schedule planned post-release. I know that the first expansion will include new races and classes. Can you give us any more insight into what is planned for the early expansions of Alganon?

Alganon at launch will be a complete game, with more features and content than many other MMOGs on the market, but that doesn’t mean we’re going to stop there. Alganon was built to grow with our players. We have more than two years of expansions and new features already planned, and our goal is to release an expansion every 6 months. Upcoming expansions will include new races, classes, instances, domains, and more.

We also have some unique plans between expansions, such as the upcoming ”Dawning” event that begins at launch. We feel that our players are as important to the lore of Alganon as any NPC or fictional character we create, and so we want them to be a part of the story of the world’s evolution. Content will be added prior to these expansions that allows players to take part in opening the expansion, and the effects our players have on the world will be added to the permanent history of the game, so that future players can forever remember the heroes that came before them.

3. Alganon has to compete in the very crowded fantasy MMO space. What is the ”killer-feature” that Alganon brings to the table to make it stand out?

If there is one core feature that sets Alganon aside from the other MMOGs it’s the study system, the ability to set character progress that takes place regardless of whether or not you’re online. This is very cool because it rewards players for being a part of the game, not just for playing. If players have real-world commitments, such as work, school, or family, they can take care of those commitments and when they return, they will find that their studies have opened new content, alternate forms of play, and increased the power of their characters. As long as they remain subscribed and keep their studies queued, they will continue to advance and be rewarded.

4. There has been a bit of noise on various forums and even in your beta test channels about Alganon being “another WoW clone.” You guys seem to have taken those comments well, but does it bother you at all to have your work dismissed in such a way?

It only bothers us because it may keep players who would love Alganon from playing the game. I hate to think that someone would miss out on a game they’d love to play because someone jumped to the wrong conclusion and posted it on every game forum they could find. That bothers me, but the fact that people think our game is similar to the most popular MMOG of all time, does not. I see it like forming a band and having everyone compare you to The Beatles, or building your own car and being told it’s very similar to a Ferrari, or being told that the novel you wrote is like Lord of the Rings, except with different characters, a different plot, and it doesn’t take place in Middle Earth.

There is a reason WoW is successful. It is full of fun gameplay encounters, has a deep and well-written lore, and has beautiful scenery and world-design. Alganon is full of fun gameplay encounters, has a deep and well-written lore, and has beautiful scenery and world-design – but our gameplay encounters, our lore, and our world-design are very different. Alganon is all original content, and as long as people play and enjoy the game, that’s what counts.

5. On your website, you indicate that you will proceed with a controlled release, allowing a limited number of subscribers into the game each month. How many keys will you be creating each month? Are you concerned that you will discourage would-be subscribers who cannot get in at release?

We’re currently re-working some of our BETA policies to bring more players to Alganon. This will become apparent over the next few weeks as we work with IGN to distribute more keys.

Although our numbers are “limited,” it does not mean they are “small.” Every MMO release has the same issues, and many of these releases are due to extreme numbers of players hitting the servers simultaneously. We just want to let players know that we may be handling those issues by limiting our release, rather than simply letting these numbers ruin the experience for everyone. We would rather have a smaller subscriber base that truly loves the game, than a larger subscriber base that does not.

6. Who drew the wonderful in-game world maps?

Doug Shuler, or lead concept artist. He is also responsible for the wonderful concept art seen on our website!

7. In your explanation of the Deity and Crusade system, you indicate that you will have gods controlled by paid, in-house staff directing their followers into wars of conquest. This feature sounds awesome on paper, but difficult and costly in reality. Will role-played deities and crusades be in at launch, or is this a long-term goal?  How will you deal with the possibility for favoritism?

Technically, it’s not very difficult, it’s simply entity control. We already have a tool called GOD that allows the CSGM to do a whole myriad of things. Allowing certain CSGMs to embody a deity and enter the world is more about policy – what they can and can’t do, and that’s something we’re still finalizing.