I was planning on writing a full review for SWTOR, but Pherephassa did such a great write-up on her SWTOR reivew, that I figured I’d skip mine and get straight to my likes and gripes. I’ll give you a hint, it’s going to be mostly gripes.

Undoubtedly the best part of game is the journey to endgame, after all this is what BioWare does best. Having said that, as a MMORPG player I found myself beginning to skip dialog as early as the mid teen levels and before I hit level 30 I was skipping it all with the exception of the main storyline. Even that I began to partial skip or you can say fast forward by the time I hit the early 40′s.  It’s not that I didn’t find it interesting, I just wanted to get on with things.

As a player who has never seriously crafted before, I actually enjoyed the crafting system in SWTOR. I didn’t have to waste my time grinding it out looking for resources or spending hours killing the same mobs, however while I enjoyed the mechanic of crafting, the entire system is broken since only a few professions can actually make any money.

For one, crafting is way to easy and fast. One of the main reasons I never pursue crafting is because of how much time it takes to master. In SWTOR I hit the max in all three of my crew skills within 3 weeks without really trying. Now nothing is wrong with the system itself, they just need to make the crafting time much much longer. While it took me 3 weeks to master all my crew skills, if you take the actual crafting time, it was probably only 3-4 days.  It should take at least 1 month of “crew skill time” to master a skill.

Secondly, they need to make craftable items better, not the best, but close. There should only be a handful of items that are better then the best crafted items and those items should be harder to get. Right now you can spend a few days in PvP or grinding flashpoints and obtain some of the best gear out there making crafted gear worthless.

Moving on to PvP which we all know is broken across the board, from open PvP to the PvP planet Illum to Warzones, it’s a mess. While Warzones recently got a lot better with the separation of level 50 characters, they still need to introduce at least one more bracket to divide 1-49. Open PvP and Illum need a full overhaul to become worth while since  currently there’s zero reason to participate in open PvP and nearly none on Illum as you can obtain the same rewards from warzones at an unmatched rate.

That leaves Operations and Flashpoints. Flashpoints are instanced, so of course I hate them, but they’re fun the first one or two times you run them. Unfortunately if you want better gear and don’t like PvP you’ll be running them over and over and over.  I can’t comment on Operations since I still haven’t do one, but I’d image they’re the same thing with more people.

My favorite moment of the entire game was on Tatooine waiting on top of a sandcrawer with Empire and Republic players alike waiting for a balloon that would take us to a datacron on top of another sandcrawer. As the balloon approached tensions began to rise to see if anyone would attack. We all jumped on the balloon and as it began to pull away from the sandcrawler you could just sense something was about it happen and then it did. Someone attacked and all hell broke lose.  Lucky my faction (Empire) was able to push off all the Republic players and we floated away as they sat and cursed at us.

That’s was SWTOR and nearly all theme-park MMO are missing, there’s no surprises, no tension of not knowing what’s going to happen next . The only tension is knowing you have to run Black Talon 8 more times until you have enough point to get the item you want.

If you look at SWTOR as strictly a single-player RGP, then I’d say it’s a great game, but unfortunately for BioWare they made a MMORPG. With the exception of Flashpoints, I grouped exactly two times during my entire journey from level 1-50.  Now that I’m at 50, I’m stuck with either a broken PvP system, running Flashpoints and Ops all day or starting a new alt. No thanks.

It seems BioWare created a MMOPRG where their biggest replay value is in restarting with a new character and while many players will, not as many are willing to pay a monthly fee to play what is basically a co-op RPG.

In my mind SWTOR is a complete dud and failure in term of gameplay, but in a good way. This marks the end of the theme-park MMORPG shit-fest that has taken over the genre for the last decade.  If an IP like Star Wars cannot compete with WoW, no IP using a theme-park design can. The next great MMORPG might not be pure sandbox, but it sure as hell won’t be a theme-park either. I feel like this is the turning point in the industry and we’ll once again seen innovation in MMORPGs and I can’t wait.

My overall impressions of this game do remain positive, although in many ways it’s a muddle. BioWare is new at the MMO genre, and it very much shows. I generally think ‘balanced classes’ is an MMO myth, but there is very little of it in SWTOR; classes just play unevenly in both skillsets and companion acquisition, crafting is… well, I’ll just say it’s bolluxed. Patches and updates aren’t staying long enough on the test server, BioWare isn’t listening to the testers’ feedback, and has now displayed a pattern of knee-jerk over-nerfs that have seriously hit my enthusiasm for playing. I really have to wonder if anyone at BioWare has ever played an MMO at endgame, or participated in serious pvp.

And yet, my overall impression remains positive. I’m treating this game like it’s single player, or rather, like it’s a LAN. As a single player or LAN, it is a great game.

But on to the specifics.

CHARACTER GENERATION

There is nothing new here since the beta. At first glance, character generation is pretty spiffy. There are multiple ways to customize your character; hair, eye color, different heads, skin colors, tattoos and jewelry, honestly I’ve yet to see a clone of any of my characters (I currently have 6), and I don’t see copies of other players as I run around the game either. There’s really a broad variety of looks you can achieve (unless you’re a Chiss. They’re all blue. But Chiss are cool so does it really matter?), so that’s pretty cool.

Once you get beyond the first glimpse, however, chargen pales a bit. While I’ve never seen someone else with a clone of any of my characters, all of my characters look very similar to each other because there are so few options that I actually like. The tattoos and makeup share the same slider, so if I want that cool looking tattoo over the left eye, I’m stuck with no lipstick. The races with horns have the same problem – horns and hairstyles are on the same slider.

I’ll admit I’m picky. I can, have, and do spend hours on chargen, making my characters look just exactly so. The more options there are, the more time I’ll spend in chargen – I have actually timed out of the game during chargen many times. I’m vain. I spend VAST amounts of time in game looking for just the right outfits, and these days, I’m not likely to even play a game that doesn’t have a cosmetic system. But still, personal preferences aside, there are certain things that lose massive points with me, and different types of features sharing the same sliders is one of them. Is it really that difficult to make it so I can have lipstick and a tattoo, or three horns with pigtails instead of 5 horns? You can’t even use clipping as an argument, because there are hairstyles that clip with the heads! The Sith race in particular is guilty of this, many of the hairstyles clip with most of the Sith heads. I’ve tried many times, but just can’t find a Sith look that I like, due to hairstyle clipping, and shiny mouths because of misaligned jaws. It seems like if the hairstyle doesn’t clip with the head, there’s a glaring white line across the mouth where the jaws don’t properly sync.

But take that last with whatever salt you like. It drives me absolutely insane (to the point that I never ever take long hair on video game characters because it’s almost a certainty that long hair will clip with armor), but I’ve been assured by several people that it looks fine and I’m just super picky.

PROGRESSION

Character progression in Star Wars is pretty easy. Leveling is lightning fast. I’d thought WoW leveling was quick, but Star Wars has WoW beat by a landslide. There are multiple ways you can level, too, which makes it rather fun. You can wander around the world following the story quests, PvP, blow things up in your spaceship, and group in flashpoints and operations. There’s very little that you need that can’t be provided by solo questing … ok, I can’t think of anything I needed while leveling that I couldn’t get from questing.

The story quests are, for the most part, pretty fun. One thing that everyone can agree on is that BioWare does story, and in Star Wars, they did story. In most MMOs I move on once I hit the level to start in a new zone, but in Star Wars most of the time I don’t even notice the pace of leveling. In the places I did skip, I went back to finish up after I hit 50. Many of the quests have multiple endings as well, so there is some variety to be had when leveling alts. Some of it is minor – do you force the girl who has been adopted by bugs to return to her family, or let her stay – but it is also possible to make choices that determine the outcome of planetary conflicts. Honestly I’d assumed that most of the choices mattered very little and you’d wind up in the same place no matter which route you take, but last night while playing another pair of alts, my fiance and I managed to lose a war and cost the Empire the acquisition of one of the major planets. The Darth in charge of the war efforts wasn’t very pleased, but we threatened to kill him if he kept complaining and then just walked out. Now he sends us pissy letters in the mail. Which I’ll admit are pretty funny. I do like getting mails from the various NPCs you interact with in the world.

When it comes to PvP, Mike has already said much of what I’d say. Ilum sucks. The only thing I will add is that the 10-49 queued warzone brackets are pretty fun. It’s world and endgame PvP that sucks. I do have one complaint with the game in regards to pvp however – I absolutely despise pve nerfs because of pvp balance, and BioWare has done just that to one of the main classes I play. One of the burst dps classes is (surprise) bursting people to death, so it’s just – as of patch 1.1.1 – been nerfed into oblivion. Stealth burst dps classes always seem to have this problem, but even so, BioWare has nerfed them above and beyond even my jaded expectations.

Spaceship missions … you’ll either love these or hate them. They remind me of the good old days, when I blew up asterisks and other ascii-styled enemies on my atari 2600. It’s like Missile Command or Defender, or that old arcade sit-in Star Wars game, only the spaceships actually look like spaceships and the missiles aren’t just distorted lines!

I do all of my daily space ship missions most every day, and have an absolute blast. Many people complain that the ship flies on rails, but I’m just here to blow stuff up so that’s fine by me. My biggest complaint here is once I enter the mission I might as well have left the game. You can’t see the chat anymore, so it’s easy to miss messages that come in while you’re playing. But it’s fun, and a great way to make some quickie chump change. I also get gear for my companions; a run through my daily missions will net me enough commendations to buy a blue level 50 lockbox that will provide pretty decent stuff for the sidekicks.

UI

I hate the UI. I abhor the UI. I loathe and despise the UI. Seriously folks, I don’t think there’s any way to do justice to just how bad the Star Wars UI really is. It sucked in beta, and it still sucks. There’s no way to resize it, no way to move windows around, the windows you can have open are limited to 2 (in some cases, to 1!), you don’t get nearly enough hotbars, and it clips with itself!

The Galactic Trade Network (SWTOR’s auction house) is particularly onerous. It’s one of the windows that won’t allow other windows to open. And many of the things you’ll be looking for the most, like mods and enhancements for armor and weapons, and crafting schematics, don’t have an item compare. So if you’re crafting and looking for new recipes, you’ll either have to write down every one that you have and manually compare, have an eidetic memory, or suffer through a very lengthy process of opening the GTN window, closing it down so you can look at your crafting window, then opening the GTN again. The same goes with item modification; you can’t see what you’ve already got without closing down the GTN window and opening up your item window. There’s also no way to search the GTN for specific armor slots. Just want a belt? Sorry, you have to look at every chest, glove, helmet, wrist and leg piece as well.

Just bad, bad, bad design. I know, I know, they’ve promised modification in future patches, but until that magical unspecified day, the UI sucks so badly there’s just nothing more to really say about it.

CRAFTING

On the positive side, you can craft without having to actually craft. I wonder if the BioWare crafting motto was if you can’t make it fun, then make it painless? You send your crew members out to do your crafting, so once you get more than one of them, it’s easy to play the game and get your crafting done in the background. Heck, you can even craft while offline!

But that’s the only positive thing I have to say about SWTOR’s crafting. Which saddens me, because I generally love crafting.

There are three types of crew skills: crafting, missions, and gathering. Crafting makes things. All you need are the materials and the recipe. Then you send out your companion and wait. When using a mission skill, you pay a start up fee, then your minion goes out and collects rare materials. Gathering skills are exactly as they sound, they allow you to collect nodes throughout the world as you adventure, although you can also pay to send your companions out as though they’re mission skills. Two of them also allow you to harvest from the bodies of enemies that you kill.

It’s a great premise. You can craft and gather materials while doing other things, and even offline. Bioware wanted a system that rewarded crafters for the amount of time they sink into their crafts, and they by and large succeeded. In order to get the very best crafting recipes, crafters have to spend a fortune in both time and money creating items and deconstructing them, hoping for that magical success that will teach them an improved recipe.

It fails in execution, however, as very few of the crafts have any actual end game value. I will admit that this is very heavily debated by the playerbase, however. There are people who make millions selling crafted gear. I, however, see no benefit to it. During the leveling phase of the game, I level so quickly that it’s pointless for me to make anything for myself as I’ll be leveled beyond it by the time I make it. And on the same coin, I level so quickly I can’t be bothered to buy things crafted by other people. At the endgame – it’s easier to just use the commendations I get from dailies and drops from instances instead of craft. There is money to be made with crafting as not everyone is content with ‘good enough for now’, so long as you’re willing to sink vast quantities of time and money deconstructing hundreds of items to get the recipes you need.

Every time I make a new alt, I tell myself, ok this time I’m going to make what I need in advance, so I’ll have it. But thus far, each time, I just couldn’t be bothered to take the time collecting the rare materials needed for the gear that’s any good. At no point do I ever feel like I need gear upgrades beyond what I can pick up in instances and questing. Crafting is also a giant money sink, even beyond the normal.

If you want to have the very best gear at all times, or don’t mind putting in heavy hours evaluating the market and player trends in order to make money, then crafting might be for you. Normally, this is me. I love playing the market, and amassing a fortune in the games I play. In Star Wars, however, the ‘click and wait’ system makes me want to crawl into a hole and die.

CONCLUSION

Remember what I said in my beta preview? That opinion hasn’t changed much: ultimately, I am having fun playing Star Wars and will continue playing it for a while. It’s got a few more months of fun left, possibly more if they continue to add content and patch. Massive multiplayer content is where BioWare has largely dropped the ball, so if you’re looking for a standard BioWare single player game, with the added bonus of being able to play it with friends, then you’ll probably enjoy this game. Taken casually, this game is pretty solid.

If you’re a focused player, who likes to excel at what you do; whether it’s PvP, crafting, or raiding, you may want to give this game a pass, or at least wait another 6 months. BioWare is in its infancy in regards to MMOs, and I suspect it’s going to take a while before they learn enough to satisfy the hardcore crowds. I’m having fun playing it like a LAN game, but I’m already casting my eyes toward my next game. After 6 alts, there’s very little left for me to do.

The first time I played the original Realtime Worlds beta of All Points Bulletin I never really got past the first few tutorial missions due to a faulty graphics card. After spending some time with the free-to-play revival of this game, I’m starting to think I may have missed out on a fun experience.

Taking place in the fictional city of San Paro, APB pits criminals vs enforcers in a virtual game of cops & robbers. Featuring no classes, levels or stats, your skill with a gun will largely dictate your success, or failure in this game.

I say there are no classes but that’s not entirely true. Players can purchase equipment and character modifications that grant various buffs in the form of extra health, quicker health regen, ammo regeneration for team mates, and various other goodies I’ve not yet had the chance to play with. This enables players to specialise in various areas, perhaps equipping modifications beneficial to a sniper, or a close quarter shotgun wielder in effect creating your own custom class similar to the perks/specialisation features of modern FPS shooter titles.

Character customisation features some of the most varied options and choices you will likely ever see in an MMO, and will probably suck up a large amount of time when creating your first character. I was able to knock up a hockey masked enforcer tribute to Casey Jones fairly easily. Another childhood fantasy achieved if only in video game form.

After picking a faction and creating a character, players are transported to a tutorial area where your first ‘contact’ will provide a few basic solo missions. As an enforcer I was dispatched to remove some graffiti from a wall and some other basic tasks before given the choice of entering one of three ‘action’ districts, or the ‘social’ district.

Action districts are instanced areas containing up to 100 players where missions or open world activities (such as witnessing crimes or committing them) can be completed. Grouping is handled automatically upon entering an action district, or you can manually join a group or even run missions on your own, although I highly recommend grouping. Sure you can complete things on your own, but there is a lot of fun to be had jumping into a vehicle with some friends and hanging out the windows showering your enemies with automatic fire!

Before long you will find yourself dispatched against enemy players to assault or defend locations, pick up and deliver evidence, raid criminal hideouts, and other various missions. For each successful mission you gain prestige and improved standing with local contacts unlocking clothing, weaponry, and vehicles. Prestige affects the number and threat level of the enemy players you will be matched against which I found to be an interesting way of matching players together.

If you don’t feel like taking part in combat, the social district is a PvP free area containing all the tools required for the huge level of customisation available in APB. Players can alter clothing, give vehicles a new lick of paint, or even change the physical look of their character such as hairstyle, body features etc. Player auctions can also be accessed here and there is a large selection of gear and weaponry to choose from.

So far despite a few niggling issues I’m having a lot of fun with APB. It’s refreshing to play an MMO (of sorts) that relies more on player skill than gear level to progress.

Stay tuned for my full APB Reloaded review.

Now that SWTOR has officially launched, I figured it would be a good time to give my first impression review for Star Wars: The Old Republic. While I had the opportunity to get into the last two beta weekends, I wasn’t able to due to other obligations, so my first real taste of the game was when the early access began.

Going into it I was expecting to dislike it; boarder-line hate it, so I’m actually quite surprised that I’m enjoying myself and even more surprised that I’m still listening to a good portion of the voice-overs.  Being one of the biggest selling points for BioWare, the billions of hours (ok, maybe not billions) of voice-over acting was going to be what separated it from all other MMORPGs and quite frankly has to be because so much of the gameplay features have been done before.

Currently my Sith Bounty Hunter is at level 21 and while I still listen to the main story-line, for just about every other quest I’m hitting the next button after a few words. The NPCs tend to ramble on and in most cases I really don’t care what they have to say, but that sort of fits my characters persona, so I don’t feel too bad. So in terms of the voice-over acting, I’m happy to report that it’s a big plus and being able to select the answers for yourself in conversations is also fun, or maybe it’s fun because I’m playing a Sith.

One of the new features that I haven’t seen before are the “personal zones” in the game that don’t revert back after you complete your mission. In many MMORPGs when completing a quest it resets back to normal for the next person to complete, but not so for SWTOR. Once you enter one of these zones, marked by a green force-field, you enter a zone that is personalized to your progress and the choices your make. Meaning if you leave that area and go back later, it doesn’t reset, which is nice as it feels you’re decisions in the game actually mean something.

Moving on to Flashpoints which are small group missions, up to four players, and instanced. Flashpoints are basically missions given to you by the “leader” of your faction, in my case Darth Malgus, and are accessed from a single ship in the fleet. They’re really nothing new in terms of gameplay or features when comparing Flashpoints to any other instanced mission from any other MMORPG, so I’ll just skip ahead.

Traveling is a lot faster than in any other game I’ve played before. You start off with a slow run, then by level 8 (correction, lev 14) you get a passive sprint which is not based on stamina and never runs out. There’s also plenty of rides and ships that can take you from location to location for a small fee and at level 25 you get your own personal transport.  Plus players get two skills that can automatically transport them to the fleet or a city, but they have a 24 hr and 30 min cool-down respectively. Being a sci-fi futuristic game, it would be strange to not to have so many traveling options, so I’m more than fine with the quick transportation.

Getting into PvP Warzones and PvE combat, it’s nothing you haven’t seen before. Basic tab and hot-key combos for combat and your normal queue up for PvP, join a match and receive some PvP tokens to use at PvP vendors. I’ve only had the chance to play the Huttball Warzone and while it was fun, I already know the Warzones aren’t going to hold my interest in the long run.

Getting to crafting, I absolutely love the system BioWare has implemented, but only because I hate crafting. Players can send out their companions to gather materials and do all the crafting themselves, so as the player you never really have to do anything. Sure you can still gather resources in the field if you spot them, but you don’t have to bother grinding for them. While I’m not sure how crafting will change towards the end-game, right now it’s perfect for me.

Companions are the second big feature BioWare added, but my feeling so far are mixed. Players can have up to six companions and while only one can be active at a time, you can still send the other 5 on crafting missions which is great for crafting. My grip with them is there isn’t enough control on how they behave. When I got my first companion, I wanted to set it up so they would tank for me, unfortunately as far as I can tell it’s not possible. Even if they attack first, after my first attack I end up pulling all the aggro.  So I figured, ok, they can’t tank, so I’ll have my companion just heal me, but that doesn’t work either, because they’ll constantly attack and while they’ll still heal me, it’s no where near fast enough to keep me alive in tough fights. I would love it if there was more control on the role you wanted your companion to play, but so far there isn’t.

Finally there’s space combat which is just a rail shooter. Quite frankly if feels like I’m playing an oooold arcade shooter that sucks. Players are able to upgrade their ships with better equipment, but that still doesn’t change the fact your playing a rail shooter.  On the bright side, they offer a ton of XP and can be completed daily, so they’ll help you level quickly if you won’t mind them.

The shining light in Star Wars: The Old Republic is bar-none its voice-over acting, which I really didn’t think would make much of a difference to me, but has now become the reason to continue playing. We all know BioWare knows how to create enthralling store-lines with their games and they’ve done it yet again with SWTOR.

Welcome to MMOCrunch’s Gunshine review, where we review the newest MMO’ish game to hit Facebook. Like so many other MMO games these days, Gunshine isn’t a true MMOPRG since the vast majority of the game world is instanced. Although there are towns throughout the game that are not and people can meet up, trade or fight.

Gunshine begins with your character arriving on corporate built city island called Dawnbreak, which was sold the the public as the place where dreams would come true. Unfortunately almost immediately upon arrival you’re arrested and realize that it’s more of a nightmare than a dream. So with the help of some new friends, you end up busting out of jail and learning that the entire island is overrun by organized crime, violence and some monsters for good measure.

There are three classes to choose from, melee, ranged and medic, with the medics also being ranged as they need a primary attack. Skills are of course based on the class you select, but weapons and gear is not, meaning you’ll be able to use any weapons and gear in the game.

To best help describe how Gunshine works I’ve posted a portion of the World map above. As you can see it’s split up into many smaller zones, with many of them being connected to other zones. While you can walk from zone to zone, there’s really no need to as you can instantly travel to any explored zone you want. Those that are unexplored must be reached through adjacent zones or through quests, which will allow you to teleport instantly to the zone.

To begin you gather some quests from NPCs in town then teleport to the zone to complete them. All the quests boil down to a few types, kill this, find that or talk to this person, and then there are group quests. Combat is a simple click of the mouse, then watch as the characters battle it out.

There is a PvP system, but it is confined to small areas called pits, so no open PvP. The problem is that you can leave mid fight or right before you die to avoid death and cheat the other play from a kill.

Group quests allow you to join random groups of players, which is done automatically for you, and while the search is going on you can continue with whatever you were doing. From my experience so far the grouping system is pretty fast, I’ve never had to wait more than a min or two to find a group, although many times someone will leave during the “ready” phase, so the system will go back to searching for a replacement player.

Gunshine is not some push-over Facebook game, it’s actually challenging, which is one of it’s strong points. Group quests are by far the hardest since they involve elite mobs and have end bosses, but even some normal quests are difficult, especially if a mini-boss is involved.

Of course it’s a Facebook game so the high level of difficulty is done for a reason, they want you to invite friends to play with. There’s a lot of notifications asking you to post things to your wall or to send things to your friends. I don’t know if I’m just too old, but bugging my friends via Facebook to play a game is kinda annoying and one of the reasons I’ve never played a Facebook game before this.

Gunshine uses two in-game currencies, the first being money, which is used to buy plans to craft items and to learn or upgrade a skill. The second is diamonds which are used to buy items from the items store or for other perks in-game. For example, mobs will drop special boxes once in a while that contain random rare items, but in order to pick it up you have to use diamonds. Unfortunately you can’t see what’s inside either, so it’s a gamble.

Crafting and learning skills work similarly, in the fact that they’re both based on time. You select the skill you want to learn then wait. Crafting works the same way, however you first have to collect the required items for it. Only one production slot is available for use, but you can temporarily add more by using diamonds, just keep in mind that once the item is done, you go back to one slot.

Overall the game is some what fun, but its too simple and gets repetitive fast with the only incentive to keep playing is if your Facebook friends are or if you happen to be an leveling junkie and have to get that next level.  As I said in the title “It’s good for a Facebook game”, but if Facebook isn’t your thing you probably won’t like this game either.

Lately I’ve been reviewing a lot of theme-park MMORPGs, so for my next review I wanted to select a sandbox game and decided on Perpetuum. Also because it’s coming up on its one year anniversary in almost exactly a month, so I figured it was a good time for a review.

Perpetuum, which recently seems to have become the MMORPG of choice for disgruntled Eve Online players, like Eve has a player driven economy, open PvP zones, corporations and a steep learning curve. Although overwhelming at first, Perpetuum has some very useful tutorials and the first dozen or so assignments, which can be likened to quests, continue the tutorials if you need them.

The game begins with the character creation screen, which has a ton of customizable options, then moves onto faction selection, class selection and skill specializations, all before beginning the game. It’s a lot to take in all upfront, especially when you’re really not sure what type of player you want to become.

While it may be confusing at first, in actuality it all boils down to three main categories. Tactics and mechatronics, which means what weapons you can use and how strong your mech can become. Industry and research, which correlates to mining materials and crafting items/parts.  Then we have politics and economics for those who want to start up their own corporations and specialize in things like relations, management and finance.

Since I’m not much for crafting or wanting to run my own corporation, I selected mostly combat attributes and a bit of industry cause I know I’ll have to do some crafting eventually. Even if you decide to make a pure combat or mining character, you’ll still have some points in the other two categories as well, so you can dabble in everything.

One of Perpetuum best features is the way it handles experience points. You don’t get XP by completing assignments or killing things, XP is passive and everyone gains 1 XP/min regardless of whether your logged in or not. Here’s the kicker, XP is shared by all alt characters, so for those of you who like gaming the system by creating multiple pure characters, one for combat, crafting and politics, you’re out of luck here. The game really forces you to create once character and stick with, but allows you to have two other alts, after that you’ll need to delete one to start another.

Getting to the actual game, Perpetuum starts off like no other MMO I’ve ever played. You begin in a facility staring at a terminal or desktop if you will. It’s not a graphical room or hangar, but instead it’s just a computer screen that acts as a desktop where you can pull up information, storage, chat room, your mech and everything else you’ll ever need in the game. Like a desktop all windows can be moved around, resized, min or maximized, the whole UI is very cool.

Once you’ve selected an assignment, you need to re-adjust your Mech’s equipment, because once out in the field you can’t equip different item/weapons. So if you’re planning on doing some mining, you’ll have to equip your drills first. Since each Mech has multiple arms, you’ll have to decide how many drills to use, the more you equip the faster and efficient the drilling will be, but if you equip only drills you’ll be left defenseless in an attack.

Combat works on a targeting system that is similar to tab targeting, however you actually have to lock onto your target to initiate an attack. First you’ll need to be in range of the Mech you want to attack, then you’ll have to select it using your mouse and once you do, you’re targeting system will begin to lock on.

Currently my Mech takes about 12 seconds to lock on, however I can increase my target locking ability to speed this up. Once locked, the unit shows up in a Targets window where I’ll need to designate it as a primary target if I want to attack. While this attack is going on, I’m able to select other hostile units and begin locking on to them as well. This way I’ll be able to start attacking the next target as soon as the Primary one is destroyed. Although similar tab targeting, it’s definitely more involved here, but fits in perfectly with the whole Mech theme.

Mining on the other hand is very different from what you would find in most MMO games today, infact I’ve never played a game with this type of mining system. Instead of finding a rock or tree and just clicking it, you actually have to find the resources yourself. While some are above ground and can be seen, others are below and you’ll need to find them yourself by scanning the ground.

Each Mech can be equipped with a GeoScanner which scans in two way. First, it’ll scan a large area and tell you the percentage of resources underground, for instance 5% would mean there’s not much while 25% would mean there’s a decent amount. If you get a good number you’ll basically have to guess where the resources are and scan again, but this time only scanning a small portion of the larger area you just scanned.

This second scan will give you a much more accurate reading and tell you exactly where the resources are by showing bars graphs underground, red for a lot and green for barely any. Once you start drilling it’s automatic and will continue for as long as you have resources to do so. However there is a weigh limit, so you can’t drill forever and eventually you’ll have to return to a facility to unload your materials.

The scans you take are saved and can be loaded onto the world map at any time so you can keep a record of where you drilled and which areas have the most resources.

Facilities, as far as I can tell, can hold an unlimited amount of items, however are not connected to each other. So if you leave some items in facility A and are at facility B, you’re going to have to travel back to A to get them. While this can be annoying, it adds more realism to the game, but don’t worry, there are teleports through out the game, so you can travel around pretty quickly.

Like many sandbox MMORPG, Perpetuum is PvP centric, however does have three safe zones, which are the three inner islands in the above image. Once you get a grip on the game you can travel outside to the PvP areas where it’s open PvP and the real fun begins. Perpetuum is also a single universe MMO, like Eve Online, where everyone plays in the same persistent world, which is always a huge plus in my book.

Since I began, I’ve only completed the four tutorials and the dozen or so tutorial assignments, so I’ve only really scratched the surface with what Perpetuum has to offer, but I have to say I’m very impressed so far. The graphics are outstanding, the gameplay, while a bit complicated just feels so refreshing after playing so many rail MMORPGs lately. I’m actually excited for the first time in a long time to get back into the game to see what else I can do.

Gaming genres are a funny thing, they normally give potential players a quick idea of the type of game it is, however it seems that these days the MMORPG genre just doesn’t want to follow the rules. This no more apparent than with Nexon’s latest MMORPG, Dragon Nest.

Of course Dragon Nest has all the aspects of being a RPG game, you have leveling, gear, skill trees and of course quests to complete, but the funny thing is they forgot to add the “massive” part into the game.  You won’t find any persistent world here as every part of the game is instanced with the towns acting as social hubs for players to gather and form groups. What Dragon Nest really is is a single player game with multiple-player features as there’s nothing that ties the game together.

So in order to give Dragon Nest a fair review, I will not be reviewing it as a MMORPG, because it’s simply not. Instead I will review it as a multiplayer online RPG.

Dragon Nest begins with you selecting from one of four pre-made classes, warrior, cleric, archer and sorceress, however there is very little customization available. Once you have your class selected you begin the game in one of the two starting towns, depending on your class.

The first thing you’ll notice is just how simple everything is. Combat is point and click, spells are automatically laid out for you in your 1-9 hot-bar as you acquire them and quests not only point in you in the direction you have to go, but tell you exactly how far they are. The interface is so simple, yet informative that there really is no need for a tutorial, although there is one. Dragon Nest’s simplicity continues throughout the entire game including its crafting system, enchantments, skill trees, and quest themselves. While this may be a plus in some areas, such as combat and the UI, others might find the game entirely too simple to hold their attention.

As I mentioned earlier ever part of the game is instanced, so anytime you want to leave town and venture out, you’ll be greeted by one of many portals (loading screens). This is by far the biggest issue I had with Dragon Nest. There are so many loading screens you’ll be spending a good amount of time staring at DN wallpapers. To make things worse, each main town has a few extensions that are kinda part of the town and have NPCs in them, but are connected by a  portal. Every once in a while you’ll get an NPC in one of these extensions asking you to talk to another NPC in the main town, so you’ll end up going through the loading screen a half dozen times before you complete the quest. Very frustrating and I don’t understand why they didn’t just make these extensions part of the main town to eliminate the loading screen.

On to quests, which are instanced as well with each one being broken down into 2 – 5 sections, regardless of how small the dungeon is. Guess what that means…more loading screens. Some of these dungeons are so small, yet still have 2-3 loading screens. It’s just baffling as to why they would break them up into such small sections.

Quests are also very linear and once you get into the high teens levels get extremely repetitive. You’ll end up doing the same dungeon 6 or 7 times, maybe more, just to complete all the quests for it and with no other way to gain XP, it’s not like you can skip it and go do something else.

However there are plenty of other things to do in Dragon Nest aside from questing. There’s the Daredevil Faire, Rozin Sanctuary and of course the PvP arena, each one having their own tokens to collect to unlock items, weapons and gear. The Faire and Sanctuary are sort of mini-games and challenges that you can do solo or in groups, which are pretty fun and a nice addition to the game to break up the questing. There’s also a faction system and achievement list for additional collecting purposes.

The PvP arena is currently very limited with only two gameplay mods to choose from, deathmatch or rounds. There’s also some major balancing issue between classes. Its seems melee and range are evenly matched up against the same class type, but when matched up against each other, melee dominates. For example my sorceress may as well bend over when up against a warrior class. Once I’m knocked down, which isn’t hard, they’re able to combo me to death most of the time. Granted I didn’t build my character for PvP, but it’s not even close in a fight between the two.

Combat however is actually quite fun in both PvE and PvP. There’s no tab targeting so you’ll have to aim at your target if you want to hit it, which is refreshing and is one of Dragon Nest’s best features. The game uses a standard skill tree system, with the option to select from one of two advance classes once you hit level 14.

The graphics are fairly good, although I’m not a fan of the character design, as everyone looks like a bunch of kids to me, but if that doesn’t bother you, then you’ll find the graphics are up to par with many of today’s MMO games. The story-line as well is pretty good and there’s a lot of humor throughout the game to keep things light and enjoyable.

Overall the extremely intuitive user interface and fun combat were not enough to save Dragon Nest. The constant loading screens, linear gameplay and repetitive questing, not to mention a lack of PvP modes, makes Dragon Nest a pass in my book when it comes to online RPGs. This is definitely not a game for the hardcore or even slightly hardcore player, but if you’re new to the genre or just want something simple, then you should check it out. I hope this Dragon Nest review was useful.

Usually when I start playing a game, whether it be for a review or because I simply want to, I usually have a pretty good idea of what I’m in for. However with Dragon Nest, aside from some of the news and updates about it, I never really bothered learning anything about the actual game or gameplay mechanics.

The reason being is that I’m just not a fan of the art style of Dragon Nest. The characters look like a bunch of children which just makes me feel like I’m playing a kids game and a little dirty to be honest. That’s not to say the graphics are bad, they are actually quite good and make great use out of the blur effect to enhance depth-of-field, I just don’t like the way the characters look.

As I began my journey I was expecting something more along the lines of, oh I don’t know, a WoW clone. Sorry, but with so many others out there, I just assumed. Rest assure, Dragon Nest is no clone, but it is also definitely not what you would think of as a traditional MMORPG. Think if Fable was a MMO and add combat combos.

Everything in Dragon Nest is instanced and connected by portals. There’s no open world to explore and really the only open zones are the towns, everything else puts you on a linear track. While I don’t necessarily mind instances (I liked Rusty Hearts which was all instanced as well), I don’t like it in Dragon Nest because there are far too many of them. Every zone is tiny, even the big zones are small when comparing it to any other MMO game out there, so you’re constantly staring at loading screens. Even if I loved everything else about the game, the loading screens alone would be enough for me to stop playing.

Earlier I stated I felt the art style of Dragon Nest made me feel like I was playing a kids game and now that I’ve had the chance of playing it, I’m not so sure kids aren’t Nexon’s target audience. Dragon Nest is probably the easiest to learn MMO game I’ve ever played. Combat is point and click like you would in any 3rd person shooter, then to cast more advanced spells or skills, it’s simple matter of hitting 1-9 on your keyboard.

The skill trees are very simple, at least so far, and once you learn a new skill it’ll automatically appear in your skill bar for easy access. Quests automatically appear in the sidebar with a arrow pointing in the direction you need to go and even a distance measurement showing how far you have left to travel.

Once you have some quests and head out of town, you’ll run into PvE portals. Upon entering one you’re presented with a loading screen, which is filled with information along with multiple areas within that zone. Each area has 5 levels of difficulty ranging from easy to abyss and shows you how much XP you’ll get depending on what difficulty level you select. It also shows what rewards you’ll get, what level you need to be, which quests you have in which area and what achievements you can get.

Something like this isn’t possible with a non-instanced MMO, but fits perfectly in with Dragon Nest and is one of it’s best features. Having all that information right on one screen just makes everything so much easier.

Getting to the actual quests, so far they’re your run of the mill kill this, collect that type of quests. However if you want a challenge you can jack-up the difficulty in each zone which not only gives you more XP, but better item drops and once you get to Master or Abyss, it does get very hard. One thing I don’t like is that you end up running the same zones multiple times for different quests, so it does get a bit repetitive, but every area has a boss fight, so that’s a plus.

Overall my first impressions are mixed. I’m not a fan of the art style, the fact that there are so many instanced zones or the fact you have to re-run the same zones multiple times, but the combat is fun and the UI is great. The point and click combat is spot on and fun, which beats the click and wait mechanism most MMORPG use today. I’ll be continuing my journey through the world of Dragon Nest so check back in a few weeks for our full review.

A few weeks ago I gave my first impressions review of Rusty Hearts when it launched into open beta and for the most part it was a positive review. Now that I’ve had some more time to get to know Rusty Hearts, it’s time for a more indepth look.

To get started, for those of you not familiar with Rusty Hearts and who don’t want to ready my first impressions article, Rusty Hearts is a side-scrolling multi-player online RPG (MORPG). It is no more of a MMO game than Diablo or Call of Duty is, regardless of how Perfect World categories it, but that isn’t necessary a bad thing.

What Rusty Hearts does right is realize what type of game it is, a fasted paced action beat-em-up. With that in mind you won’t find any real world to explore, other than the towns you travel to as you progress through the game. All the quests and missions are accessed through Dungeon portals which are scattered throughout the towns, from which you will choose what dungeon you want to go to. While this means everything in the game is instanced, it also means you can jump right into the action without having to follow some quest marker.

Above is the first dungeon you’ll come across which you can see is separated into four sections, with each section having a level range, meaning you cannot access it until your character is at the minimum level. You can also see that all the dungeon sections have 4 difficulty settings. In the image above you’ll only see three,  Normal, Hard and Very Hard, but there’s a forth called Blood, which is the hardest difficulty level and available in all dungeons past the intro one, however requires tokens to access as the drops are epic.

While Rusty Hearts allows players to group, up to four players, you’ll really never need to unless you want to. I’ve only really had minor issues with some Very Hard levels, but nothing a few health potions or resurrection scrolls couldn’t fix.

Combat is what you would expect, fast and furious. Your character gets a lot of spells and moves, so you can can pull off some crazy attack combos reminiscent of those Marvel vs Capcom games. While initially I was having a blast doing quests and completing dungeons, as you progress it does get a little grindy. The main issue comes from quests that have you going to the same dungeons over and over again to kill this, collect that, find this, so it does get boring from time to time.

While PvE can get stale, Rusty Hearts also features a PvP battle arena where up to 8 players can square off against each other in various PvP modes as teams or solo. There’s survivor and death-match, which can be played solo or in teams and VIP and tag team, which require teams. Winning teams or players receive points that can be used to purchase special weapons and items as well as their PvP rank raised if they win enough matches. Rusty Hearts also features a PvP ladder system for those of you that want organized competition.

Crafting is very simply in Rusty Hearts, you basically go to various vendors who all have their own crafting lists and you see what you can make. For someone that doesn’t enjoy crafting and just wants to get back into the action, this crafting system fits in perfection with Rusty Hearts’ fast paced style.

Aside from crafting, players can also upgrade their weapons and gear by visiting the blacksmith. All you need is some in-game money and things called Wiseman Stones. While you can upgrade your items multiple times, the risk of failure goes up with each upgrade and if it fails, you lose all previous upgrades.

While for the most part I enjoyed my time with Rusty Hearts, it wasn’t all good. My biggest issue, although minor, did cause me quite a bit of frustration. When I started out I was using my mouse and keyboard, but due to the awkwardness I quickly switched to my Xbox gamepad, which worked great, except I was constantly scrolling though my skill rows accidentally. I’d pull of some combos, move away real quick, then would trying casing again only to realize nothing was working.  It seems I was pulling off an unknown combo that would scroll my skill bar from row one to two and I couldn’t figure it out, so I would have to grab my mouse and click the scroll button to get back to row one. I eventually figured it out, but was still constantly doing it so I had to make row 2 a duplicate of row 1 so I wouldn’t lose any time switching back. I was dying for a lock feature.

While PvE is fun, at least early on, it does become grindy and boring. What I’d like to see is more player interaction for PvE content in term of competing for scores or times.  There are already quests that have you completing dungeons under a certain amount of time, with a certain score or other requirement, so why not setup some sort of system to allow players to compete with each other? Or even a dungeon achievement list.

Rusty Hearts also gives off the feeling you’re playing a single-player game because you really don’t need anyone’s help to complete dungeons, so there’s no need in joining groups. There need to be dungeons specifically designed for groups, maybe some that require players to split up or complete tasks simultaneously or are just plain harder where you need to group.

Overall Rusty Hearts has a lot of things going for it, it just needs to adjust some of them to turn it from a good game to a great game.

Episode 2: Species War is the latest content update to hit Black Prophecy and introduced PvP Warzones. Over the last week or so I strapped myself back into my fighters pilot seat to see just how much Black Prophecy has changed since the launch of Episode 2.

Getting right to it, the biggest issue I found with the Warzones is that they’re always empty. The largest group of players I’ve seen in the last week was four, including myself, which is pretty sad. I’m not sure if this is due to a lack of players, interest in warzones or incentive to participate, but it’s clear it’s a problem.

I don’t believe it’s a lack of interest, one of Black Prophecy’s early issues was a lack of content and the new Warzones greatly help to fix that issue, so I really think it’s a problem with player incentives. Currently players have two incentives to fly into a warzone, Honor Points and faction rewards.

Each of the six warzones has it’s own reward, something like an XP boost, cheaper items from vendors, things of that nature and everyone in the controlling faction receives it. This gives players an general incentive to take over a zone so everyone in their faction receives the reward, but lets be honest, people are greedy and want personal rewards.

This is where Honor Points come in. Each time you kill an enemy pilot or take over a sector in a warzone, you receive honor points. However the problem is that Honer Vendors have astronomical prices, some items costing 500,000 points.  Even the lowest level items cost a minimum of 50,000 points. Couple that with the fact that you’re restricted to only one warzone at a time because of level restrictiosn and you can see that the process becomes even slower.

The currently rewards system leads to honor points grinding. What Black Prophecy needs to do is offer better personal rewards so players have additional incentive other than to grind honor points. Something as simple as a kill board would fit the bill. I think once the incentives have been readjusted and players get a real reason to participate, the Warzones will become a hot spot.

Aside from the emptiness of it, the Warzones are actually really fun even with a few people in them. They just need to figure out how to get them filled.

Below is a brief video intro to Warzones as I try to take one over solo. Enjoy.