After the collapse of Flagship Studios in late 2008, the company’s pseudo-MMOG Hellgate: London had its servers shutdown by Namco-Bandai in February 2009.  HanbitSoft, the game’s Korean publisher, continued to run the game in Korea under the free-to-play model, later purchasing the intellectual property outright.

Shortly after the acquisition, HanbitSoft rechristened the title with an apt name, Hellgate: Resurrection, and promised to re-launch the title internationally.  HanbitSoft itself was then purchased by T3 Entertainment, who assured players that the game would still be returning.  Going so far as to promise its own development power to create an expansion, Hellgate: Tokyo.

Now you’re caught up on the situation of Bill Roper’s gig before Champions Online.

/me wipes brow

HanbitSoft announced a few days ago that Hellgate: Resurrection is still coming to North America, Europe and Japan, but a release in China and Southeast Asia are the first targets.  Hellgate: Resurrection continues to be F2P in Korea, and it’s likely that the game will remain that way for its upcoming re-releases.

In case you are wondering, HanbitSoft also owns Mythos, Flagship Studios’ other project.

Today Cryptic Studios released a much anticipated beta patch for Star Trek Online. The patch has addressed over 150 issues and updates, with mission bugs being summarized simply as fixed for nearly every mission. The most notable change is the removal of level restrictions. Players can now reach the level of admiral and fully experience the game as intended. Players will also notice an improved user interface and map system. Cryptic still lists 24 known issues and states that they are working to address those soon. Star Trek Online open-beta will run through January 26th, with a launch date of February 2nd.

Recent court transcripts between Bethesda and Interplay were uncovered recently by Duck and Cover, and reveal that Bethesda is likely working on an Elder Scrolls MMORPG. Bethesda filed to have the public transcripts rescinded; however, it seems the cat is already out of the bag. What is not known is the actual intellectual property being used for the MMO in development. The court transcripts state that the MMO in question is not of the Fallout franchise. What is known is that Zenimax Media, parent company of Bethesda, has opened an MMO division. Given the large success of the Elder Scrolls franchise, it is within reason to speculate that Bethesda would invest in such an MMO.

 Global Agenda doesn’t actually launch until the beginning of February, but I received a nice treat in the mail the other week, the Limited Edition.  It’s not because I am some well known blogger, on a special list, or friendly with the developer.  The reason I received the game nearly two weeks before the servers go live is just because Hi-Rez Studios is smart.

Hi-Rez has spearheaded a multitude of issues by delivering the game to players early – I am not the only one to have the game in hand.  The most obvious is that the arrival of the game itself, and all of the extras included within, will create a bit of (hopefully positive) media buzz ahead of the official release.  That’s something all video games would enjoy.  The inclusion of beta access in the box only adds to this.  While waiting for the live servers I’ve taken the opportunity to get a handful of hours in with each character class.  Sure, I could have done that as part of the beta that’s been running, but I didn’t bother until the game was in hand for some reason.

Speaking of the beta process, I think it’s safe to assume that the developer is watching who’s in the beta, who’s a pre-orderer and who went from beta to having a purchased copy.  By doing so the company could estimate how many players are signing up for the game, as opposed to being beta participants.  Thus extrapolating what kind of server load can be expected on February 1, 2010.  Hopefully this negates any over or underpopulated server issues that can decimate a game’s launch.

Being ready for that fateful day may be the best perk of all.  By having the game already installed, patched and ready to go, everyone should be on the same playing field.  No shipping delays, missed UPS delivery persons or other shenanigans to force your friends to leave you behind, never to catch up.

/me cleans his gun, readies his jetback and polishes his mines in anticipation.

It’d be nice to see other MMOG getting in our hands a few days early, don’t you think?

Today a Frogster announced a new content patch for Runes of Magic which will unleash the “Uber Villain as the Ultimate Boss Opponent”. A new raid dungeon, called the “Demon Stronghold” will be available for high level groups of twelve and allow players to battle the Demon Lord Sirloth.  More details about the new Runes of Magic content patch and raid, Demon Stronghold, are posted below with screenshots.

The raid dungeon is available for groups of twelve high level players, and is located in the Naga Acropolis. The path to the Demon Lord leads through dungeons, cells and torture chambers. The first boss opponent is the giant Naoth in the Chamber of Punishment. Only those who can skilfully wield their powers of runecraft will be able to overcome him and penetrate deeper into the stronghold. The way to the throne room leads players past three additional bosses and loyal servants of the demonic ruler, as well as past the birthplaces of new henchmen.

In the final battle with the Demon Lord, players will have to throw all of their abilities into the mix in order to be victorious against the winged demon. Groups have to survive four phases of battle, overcome sworn helpers of the evil lord and fend off flying swords. Only then will the arch villain of the first two chapters of Runes of Magic be vanquished. As a reward, players will be able to carry off the original weaponsof the mighty Demon Lord.

After roaming the world of Agon for a bit and having a lot of fun doing it, I thought it would be a good idea to answer the question: How far can a noob get in a month? So, here is an overview of my Darkfall character after four weeks for play.

Play Time

In terms of video gaming, I never know what to call myself anymore. I think the disturbingly large array of jewel cases and dusty game boxes will attest to the fact that I am not a casual gamer. On the other hand, I don’t fit the hardcore PvP or raider mode either. I play between 2-4 nights a week, 3-4 hours a night.

Activities

I spend a lot of time teamed with one or two people hunting relatively easy spawns — trolls, hags and mercians. I rarely harvest during my prime-time, but on the weekends, or if I am home during the day (rarely), I try to get some semi-afk mining in. I don’t PvP much, as my chances 1v1 are slim. However, I do try to help my clan during city defenses and on the one siege in which they have been involved since I joined. As a rule, I don’t macro skills, or use a bloodwall. I certainly want my skills to increase, but I want to do so by experiencing the game.

Skills and Stats

I have tried to focus on raising my magic skills as quickly as possible. I have had mixed success. At the beginning of your career, your magic is pathetically weak and you can blast a full bar of mana at a goblin and not kill him. This is great for skilling up, but bad for winning the combat. As your skill increases, you get access to better magic, but that magic starts to require reagents. Reagents are pretty costly and are one of the first things taken from your corpse when you are killed, so you never seem to have enough.

Nonetheless, I am pretty happy with where my skills are at this stage in the game. I feel I am making steady progress and starting to turn the corner to where I can be useful in a fight. My main goal is to get Fire Magic up as quickly as possible. Once I got Greater Magic to 25, I took a quick detour into Witchcraft, but decided that Witches’ Brew could wait because I needed to melt someone. Once I got GM 45 or so… my progress seemed to slow to a crawl, mostly because I could not go anywhere with reagents in my backpack without getting killed. Anyways, here are my notable magic skills.

• Lesser Magic: 85 (Mana Missile: 54, Heal Self: 49)
• Greater Magic: 51
• Fire Magic: 25 (Firebolt: 25)
• Witchcraft: 28 (Needles: 34)

I also do a fair bit of melee focused (as it seems almost everyone is) on Greatswords.

• Greatswords 54 (Power Attack 35)
• Rigor 30
• Parry 6
• Gank 1 (As you can see, I’ve never had the chance)

I also gather, but it is not a main focus for me most nights. Most of my gathering is done on the weekends, or on a weekday when I am off work. I then do some semi-afk gathering while dealing with the kiddies, or some chores. I am mostly crafting swords with weaponsmith, and I just bought alchemy to make staffs.

• Mining 70
• Logging 49
• Skinning 45
• Weaponsmith 25
• Alchemy 3

As far as stats go, most of my stats are 25-27 except for Dexterity… which is a disappointing 21 after one month. I assume that archery is the best way to increase Dex because nothing else seems to do so. Unfortunately, my archery has suffered due to my focus on skilling up magic. My hit points also seem a bit slow to move. I have a whopping 212 hit points.

Gear

I still use crap gear most of the time. I wear a mix of studded and banded on most sorties and carry r10 swords and r0 staffs. Not very impressive, I know. I am slowly working up some crafting skills to make better swords and staffs, but my progression has slowed somewhat because I have limited time to gather materials. I am loathe to ask my guild for help because frankly, I am not that useful a guild member at the moment, and it is likely that any items I get will get stolen in a day or two. For the most part, I will continue with whatever I can salvage or create and things will slowly get better.

PvP

My PvP record is a blazing 1 win and 50 losses. Oddly enough, I think I am doing pretty well because I know others who started about the same time I did with double the number of deaths. I am still at the stage where most small-scale PvP encounters end in my demise (and the loss of all my reagents). Still, in my last 1v1, I got my assailant down to about 1/3 of his health before dying and the last duel I was in both of us stopped when we were at 25% hits. I feel that my skill is increasing and I am getting better at surviving in the frantic dance that is 1v1 PvP.

In group PvP I fare a little better. I have fought through one siege and several smaller town defenses. I fare ok in these combats, mostly because there is lots of room to hide and I tend to stay back and either play support, or follow my betters into combat. As I stated earlier, I am hoping that as my Fire Magic increases, my value in these situations will increase.

Overview

After one month, I consider myself reasonably successful for the time I have put into the game. I could stand to practice my sword fighting a little more, both from a character and player skill perspective, because I am still not competitive in a small PvP situation. I am happy with my magic progression though. Even with the cost (and infinite steal-ability) of reagents, I am closing in on the bigger hitting fire AoEs.

As far as PvE, I still find hunting monster spawns fun and have finally reached a point where easy spawns are actually easy for me to solo. I would love to have more time to gather and craft because that would help my overall gear situation… but smacking monsters is way more fun.

In a recent interview with Star Trek Online developer Zeke Sparkes, the information regarding level and skill cap has come into question. During the interview Sparkes states,

“Each rank has ten grades for a total of 45 grades in the game. They [players] can still earn bridge officer points. Once they hit that cap they won’t be able to earn any more skill points for themselves”. Currently Cryptic Studio’s Star Trek Online website states “Were a player to invest the minimum-required skill points to reach Admiral, he’d be about half-developed in relation to a maxed character. It will take significantly longer to completely max out each available skill”.

Previous statements regarding the Star Trek Online level cap have announced 50 grades being available at launch, with unlimited skill points until all categories are filled. The conflict of information has become a topic of great debate on the Star Trek Online official forums. While the community is split on the subject, the question arises as to whether Sparkes was simply misquoted. As of press time, Cryptic has not made an official announcement.

Karos Online is a free-to-play MMORPG, set in a fantasy world of Asmara. The game was developed by the Korean studio Galaxy Gate and is ported by NHN, the people behind the popular game portal ijji. While Karos may not be very innovative, the game offers a very clean and addicting gameplay that most players can enjoy in peace. If you are asking whether you should try to game or not, this Karos Online review should answer your questions.

Asmara

The world of Karos Online is stunning, to say the least. And not just graphic wise – the design is also breath taking and makes up for a unique experience in Asmara. Karos offers three playable races in total – Humans, Seroines and Shadows. The race of the humans doesn’t need any introductions. The second race, the seroines, is just a renamed version of the classical light elfs – pointy ears, unique hair color, love for nature.. As for the shadows – they are the game’s equivalent to dark elfs. But while this whole thing sounds promising, the character creation is a bit of a let down. Your options for customization are very limited and so is your choice for race/class/gender. Bladers and Rogues are male only classes while Mystic, Bowmistress, Paladin and Sorceress are female exclusives. That’s it, you can’t have a female Blader or a male Mystic.

First steps

Karos Online has serious problems with its basic guide. Its way too minimalistic and seems to have a mind of its own – it pops up whenever it wants. So my advice would be not to waste nerves on it and just turn it off, using the one on the website instead. But even considering the clunky guide, Karos makes a very smooth appearance and getting the hang of its mechanics is simple and requires little effort. The controls are standard – you can use both your keyboard and the mouse. But there is a catch here as well – the keyboard control is way too awkward and not handy enough. The interface is very clean and intuitive – you won’t have much trouble finding anything. It’s the lack of direction that may cause troubles for newbie players.

Combat

If there is one negative thing about the combat system of the game, it’s how slow it is. Half of the blame goes to the lack of HP/MP regeneration while in battle, but even if that gets a fix the battle pace is still slow. If you can get over that, you’ll find the classical combat mechanics known to most gamers. The battles are pretty tight, so any mistake could be your last. But the best advice I could give anyone who seeks to approach this game is – take any quest you can. This will help you level much faster than if you just keep on grinding and a large portion of the quests can be completed more than once, meaning you will always have at least one task to take care of.

Game Mechanics

Karos Online adds a few extras to the classical formula. The first one is the Fletta system. Fletta are permanent buffs, one for each element. Every time your Fletta point progress bar reaches 100% you will receive a Fletta point to invest. The game has a pretty solid crafting system, a fishing system and a mining system. Each one is pretty simple, but manages to deliver a much needed break from the grinding. And speaking of grinding – Karos has lots of it. Some may even call it a grindfest, which is partly true. All and all, Karos Online’s gameplay mechanics are pretty standard and solid.

PvP

PvP is the other key component of the game and it deals pretty well on that paragraph. PvP is not the right word actually, PK is more like it. Once you reach level 10 you can enable player kill mode, which will allow you to kill other players. But don’t think you can just kill whoever you want – player killing is punished by the moral system of the game. By killing others your moral value drops to a point where you will no longer have access to towns and you will be attacked by guards. But you can raise the moral bar again by just killing monsters. Karos also offers two other ways of PvP, which are not so direct – guild wars and mine takeovers. The first one we’ve all seen – you fight other player guilds. But the second one was obviously inspired by RF Online – you fight another player guild for domination over a mine and all its resources.

Technical details

I already mentioned how beautiful and well designed the world of Karos is, but you just have to see it. The character models look great, animations are well done, particle effects are simple but pleasant. The engine of the game isn’t very advanced but does its job perfectly. Now is the time to mention that every bit of the graphics are showered in bloom effects, which for some may be a plus but others may not approve it. As for the music – the background tracks are a joy and are really adequately placed. The only negative about the whole soundtrack of the game are the terrible character voices.

The end

Even with all its flaws and bugs, Karos Online is a great hardcore MMORPG. Fans of PvP-oriented grindfests like Lineage 2 should consider downloading the game, though casual players may find it being way too masochistic. The balance could use a bit of tweaking, controls need fixing, duels should be implemented, but thankfully none of the problems of the game are big enough to turn away anyone determined to join Asmara.

Since the release of Fallen Earth back in late Sept 09, I’ve been able to spend some time in this post-apocalyptic world and today I give you my Fallen Earth review.

Fallen Earth takes place in the wastelands of the Grand Canyon in North America and as with any post-apocalyptic game, food, fuel and resources are scarce.  The game begins in an instanced tutorial that is meant to teach you the basic game play elements, which is accomplishes for the most part, although it is a bit light.

Right off the bat I could feel just how rough the game was and it wasn’t ten mins later when I started to run into some bugs.  First my character was stuck in mid air and I wan’t able to figure out how to get the game to reset him, so I had to logout to fix it. The next bug was encountered on my first death.  When you die you are automatically cloned and start in a clone tube, so after I died I was cloned back to life in one of these tubes, however was completely stuck and couldn’t get out.  After a few mins of jumping and moving around I was able to finally get out, so at least I saved myself another restart.

Aside from those two instances, I haven’t really encountered any major bugs, however you will constantly see NPCs floating in mid air or buried in the ground.  This really should be fixed by now, there’s no excuse to see that four months into a game’s release.

For those of you unaware, Fallen Earth is a FPS/RPG hybrid. It takes leveling and statistic elements of RPGs and combines it with an FPS style of combat.  My problem is that if I’m playing an FPS I want it to feel like one. Fallen Earth does not feel like a normal FPS.  Aiming is still based on your stats so it doesn’t really matter if you’re dead on with your shots, if your skills are low you’re still most likely going to miss your target. Fallen Earth feels like they took an RPG and incorporated a FPS style of combat, when it should of been the other way around.

Once you complete the instanced tutorial, you begin your adventure in a small intro town that will introduce you to other game elements such as crafting, mutation skills, attributes, etc.  I was happy to learn that you can get your mount at level two and didn’t have to walk around for the first 20 hrs like most of todays MMOs have you do. You start off with a horse, but there are other types of transportation available, motorcycles, jeeps, quads to name a few and each has their own storage capacities that can be used to store weapons, armor or other items.  Unlike most MMOs, your mount does not go with you when you die nor does it disappear when you get off. Where ever you leave it, that’s where it will be.

Like most MMOs, leveling your character is a major part of the game.  With Fallen Earth it’s no different, however you will find that leveling your character is much slower than most other MMORPGs, especially early on.  As you level you are given attribute points that you can use to build up certain skills and mutation. I believe you are given enough points to max our 3 different skills by the time you reach the max level.

The questing system is what you would find in any other MMO game.  You have your fetch quests, kill 10 whatever quests, talk to this person, gather this, etc.  The biggest issue with the questing system is you can only have one quest marker show up on your map at a time.  So if there are two quests in the same location, you’d never know about it and would have to make two separate trips out to that location.  You can of course scroll though your entire quest list to see where the markers are, however that is extremely annoying to do and if your in a bad spot can’t do it.

I’m not sure if that was done by design or not, but if you’re going to give the player tons of boring quests to do, at least allow us to see where they are all at once.

Once you have completed the quests in the intro town, about 20 or so, you should be around lev 5 and can now move on to the first real location.  Again this was not a good first experience for me.  When I entered the first major town, there were so many people that I completely lagged out.  I dropped my graphics to the lowest levels and was still only getting about 5 frames per second.  After about 15-20 mins of trying to gather some quests, I decided to quit for the day and try again at a different time.  I’m happy to say the next time I logged in I didn’t experience the same issue and was able to finish collecting quests.

Aside from the normal everyday quest, there are PvP zones setup around Fallen Earth that are open combat areas.  As you approach these areas you’ll get a warning message that says you are approaching a PvP zone and another once you enter the zone.  Once inside you can partake in PvP combat as you would with any other MMORPG.  There is no looting so you don’t need to worry about your stuff being stolen if you die.

Recently there was a graphical update and I did notice a better looking game afterwards, which was nice, but in the end Fallen Earth did not win me over. After this review I won’t be going back to the game.   Aside from being extremely rough around the edges, the FPS aspect of the game wasn’t quite what I was looking for. The questing system seemed like your generic run of the mill quest grinding and I felt there wasn’t enough of a storyline to keep me interested.

In my first post here at MMOCrunch I went over why I think City of Heroes/Villains (COX) is still a good and somewhat underappreciated MMORPG.  This time around I am going to discuss something I touched on the last time, what makes a good MMO.  There are a number of points, but there are some key factors in my opinion that can make or break a game.

One of the things that both COX and World of Warcraft do throughout the year is in-game events, especially around the holidays.  This consists of special missions or instances that the player can partake in usually around Halloween, Christmas or Valentine’s Day.  Just recently COX wrapped up its Winter Event that ran from December 15th to January 12th. The event featured the opening of the ski chalet in Pocket D which is an open zone that both villains and heroes can hang out in.  In addition to ski slope runs and extra badges, players were also granted the optional mission of rescuing baby new year (who to me just looked like a little person in a diaper) to gain even more badges and temporary powers.  Scattered all through Paragon City and the Rogue isles are also presents that will either spawn killer snowmen or candy cane salvage which can be traded in for badges and powers.  One of the highlights of the event is battling a building-sized snowman called the Winter Lord in a zone where heroes and villains can work together on teams while it is open.

World of Warcraft Winter event" src="http://www.mmocrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/WOW-snowmen-thumb2-150x150.jpg" alt="Snowmen from the World of Warcraft Winter event" width="150" height="150" />In World of Warcraft it was called “Feast of Winter Veil” and ran from December 25th to January 2nd.  Like COX it is themed around the holidays and features special achievements and instances for players.  Instead of a Winter Lord causing mayhem, Greatfather Winter is the figurehead and seems to be more Santa orientated in its focus.  These seasonal events help give long-term players a reason to keep playing, it’s like a holiday thank you from the game developers.

Another key ingredient to making a good MMO is keeping in touch with the community within the game.  As I stated in my last post, what keep me coming back to COX is the people I play with.  Having talked with many WOW players, it sounds like they feel the same.  What both games have done well is keeping an open line to the users and re-acting to what they like and don’t like.  Prime examples of games that have not done this are Sony Online Entertainment’s Star Wars Galaxies and the NcSoft’s ill-fated Auto Assault.

Star Wars Galaxies started off strong and early on was very popular among MMORPG fans.  I used to have many friends who played it religiously and really liked the game.  Then there was the update that changed many things, including making everyone a Jedi.  Previously players had a long road to be a Jedi and put in many hours collecting Holocron pieces to get that rank.  Then after the update it seemed all that hard work was for nothing and fans quickly left the game in disgust.  There is now talk of a new MMO coming out set in the world of the Old Republic and I will be curious to see if fans of the genre will give it another try.

NcSoft thought they really were striking into new ground with Auto Assault developed by NetDevil.  But after only a few months of being online, it was shutdown and many refunds were given.  What made that game unique was that your main character was a vehicle with you having a semi-customizable human to wander around in cities with to either get missions or upgrades.  I played the game quite a bit and did enjoy driving around in a post apocalyptic world blowing up things, but found being humanoid clunky and distracting at times.  The mission types were escort, patrol and kill which would earn you in game money to upgrade your weapons and look of your vehicle.  There was no death penalty per se in the game; once your health ran out your only cost was the time to get back to a mission, but no loss of experience.  What ultimately killed it in the end was lack of players.  Even though there was a really easy teaming system in place,there just wasn’t not enough people online to team with.  I would log on and there would be hardly anyone on the servers.  It is a shame though, I think if it had been given a chance by the fans it would have lasted longer.

So as we head into this New Year and decade it does not look like MMORPG’s are not really slowing down at all.  Looking ahead I am anxiously awaiting to see what the new Going Rogue expansion for COX, DCU Online, Star Trek Online and Star Wars: The Old Republic has to offer us all.  If the developers keep in touch with the fans, listen to the communities and give them what they want it will be very busy online year.  Heck, I might even have to play more than one at a time if they can bring the goods to the table, so to speak.