The upcoming patch to Atlantica Online has been announced and details have been revealed.

To start off the Yellow River Ruins dungeon has been destroyed and is no more. However a new dungeon type has been introduced called “Hero Dungeons”, which are meant for high ranking players beginning at level 120. Players can travel back to past areas such as the Forest of Spirits and the Yellow River Ruins and face new enemies far more powerful then before.

The patch introduces two Hero Dungeons to start off, Chaotic Yosun Temple and Red Forest of Spirits. Players should beware, once you enter these dungeons you cannot see any of your opponents and they will attack you in timed intervals so make sure you heal often.

In each Hero Dungeon players will meet one of two new NPCs, Lian and Wonni, who will have quests that will reset every Monday and Friday.

The next major update for Atlantica Online is almost here and with it comes the long awaited Valkyrie class.  Names Morrighan, she is a female Valkyrie defended by the heavens and who wields a godly sword and shield that deals devastating damage to foes while sealing her enemies’ physical attacks. The Valkyrie also uses heavenly power granted to her by the gods to imbue her sword with holy energy, increasing allies’ attack speeds, which provides players with a keen competitive edge in battle.

Aside from the new Valkyrie class, the Atlantic Online June update is pretty massive.

Brand new interface changes will also be featured, including an item history system which will allow players to see everything about their gear, from when it was created to everyone who owned it.

Colosseum League has been completely revamped, giving exceptionally skilled lower level players a chance to attain glory against Atlantica veterans. Even players who want to take a quick break can now gain experience just by sitting down.

Full details to the Atlantica Online content update can be viewed on the official site.

Atlantica Online’s Three Kingdoms update is now live.  The massive Three Kingdoms update introduces a new high level mercenary ,General Guan Yu. Guan Yu’s military expertise is said to be so great that he is worshipped as a god. Drawing upon the power of the Green Dragon, his prowess with a spear and its summoned magic is a work of legend, capable of dealing blow after blow to any enemy that crosses him.

Due to the power struggles associated with the Three Kingdoms period in China, several quests are now available in the game that reflect the shifts in power during that timeframe. Players will soon be able to put their strategies to the test in a variety of dungeons and quests, where they will play alongside iconic Chinese historical warlords, leaders, and soldiers like Cao Cao, Liu Bei and more.

Players will be introduces to new quests and dungeons as well as the Expedition Team feature, which allows players to send a team of mercenaries on various tactical missions, while the player journeys through more important battles.

With more than 30 mercenaries in the game, players will be able to maximize the efficiency of their acquired characters by covering more ground and picking up extra items and experiences along the way. Players will also be able to view their dispatched mercenaries as they engage in battle, giving insight into new combat tactics and strategies.

More information about the Three Kingdoms update can be found on the Nexon Atlantica page.

Ndoors Interactive, the publisher of Atlantica Online and WonderKing, announced today that they will be giving away more than $30,000 in cash and prizes to players over the course of two mega-events this summer. And yes, one of the prizes is a brand new Chevrolet Camaro.

Between now and August 31, 2010, players of Atlantica Online can enter to win the afore-mentioned car, as well as a Razer keyboard and mouse, a Bose speaker system, or even a coveted Alienware laptop. Peter Kang, the CEO of Ndoors, said about the giveaways, “These Summer Events serve as a ‘thank you’ to our community… We are looking forward to watching gamers compete for prizes and we can’t wait to award one lucky player with a brand-new car.”

Ndoors Interactive’s other MMO, WonderKing, will also be part of the festivities. Starting on July 7, players can enter raffles and collect special tokens to receive in-game items, experience bonuses, gift cards, and much more.

Both Atlantica Online and WonderKing are free-to-play. Atlantica Online is a strategic, turn-based MMO, while WonderKing is a 2D side-scrolling MMO. For more information on the Atlantica Online “Play, Win, Drive!” event, visit their contest website.

Ndoors has revealed the next update for Atlantica Online. It’s mostly a series of minor tweaks and improvements like fixing old quests and adding new ones. Players can experiment with more formations now that up to two Hwarangs, Minstrels, and Punishers can be used in a single formation. Now word on when the patch is coming, though, but you can expect it to be soon. More information on Atlantica Online here.

Atlantica Online is one giant MMORPG! Just a few days ago we informed you of the new housing system. But it seems we were just getting warmed up. Last month NDoors picked up a grand prize winner for the “create your own mercenary” contest, along with five runner-ups. Now the developers want to show you the winner. As some of you may know the winner of the contest, Symban, will have his creation brought to love. His creation is called Camilla: A Vampire Countess derived by the effects of the Oriharukon device in Bran Castle, she floats through the air, draining life from other players to sustain her existence. Camilla looks every bit the part of a Vampire Countess, with jet black hair contrasted against her snow-white skin and blood-stained lips. Players will be able to learn more about this mercenary as we near its release. Congratulations, Symban.

The popular j-rpg styled MMO Atlantica Online will receive its very own housing system. This new feature will be introduced on the game’s Korean servers on April 22nd and will eventually be released on the international version as well. Once released, players will not only be able to customize their own houses, but visit other people’s houses, have dinner together, or just talk. Players can also hire mercenaries for their houses to serve as..cooks and if you invite another player over to share a meal, you will both receive buffs. How social!

Free Korean MMOs are notorious for being grindfests with little to show for your time at the end of the day. With that in mind, a lot of MMO gamers might catch a glimpse of Atlantica Online and simply ignore it. After all, it’s got the same anime-style graphics as all the other games; it’s free; and doesn’t look at all compelling at first glance.

But here’s the kicker: Atlantica Online has turn-based combat and is actually quite different to probably anything else you’ve ever played out of Korea. Don’t believe me? Keep reading this review…

If you think of Final Fantasy or other console-based Japanese RPGs, you’re on the right track with Atlantica Online. Take those style of games, stick them in an MMO context, along the lines of an environment like Guild Wars, and you’re halfway there.

You start the game by selecting your main character (choosing between archers, spearmen and even gun and guitar-toting characters), and then recruiting a few party members (or “mercenaries”) before embarking on one of many kill/fetch quests, such as “kill ‘x’ monsters” or “kill monsters to find ‘x’ item(s)”. Don’t worry; these quests are simply to teach you the basics of the game and get you up to speed with what is, essentially, a PvP experience once you blast through the first phase of the game.

Starting in “Division 18”, your goal is to work towards “Division 1” through fighting other players in an arena environment. When not fighting in the arena, you can travel the countryside – which is essentially an alternate version of Earth, with fantasy-style areas named after real world places, such as Beijing, Moscow and even Detroit.

Combat is very cool. You are given 30 seconds to make all the moves you can across up to nine party characters before the balance turns to your opponent and they get 30 seconds to hammer you – so while the game is turn-based, it’s still fast and you really need to be on the ball to maximise your strategy against your opponent.

In all, this is a solid strategy game with some strong PvP and guild elements. On the downside, the setting is a little bizarre and a touch cutesy, like most games coming out of Korea. If you can see past that, however, this is a very, very good free game and, I guarantee, quite different to what you’re used to seeing produced out of Asia.

We’ve all done it before, going back to a past MMO that we either quit or swore we never come back to.  In most cases it seems that there’s a particular MMO that we go back to, whether it’s your first MMORPG, a game where your best/highest level character is, or it could just be the last MMO you played.  For me, I usually end up going back to the last MMO I’ve played.

There’s a few reasons why I tend to do this.  For one, many of the people I’ve gamed with are still playing, I still remember how to use my character and how the world works, so there’s less to relearn.  Going back to a game I haven’t played in 2-3 yrs feels like I’m almost starting over.  New expansions, new items, classes, balance changes, plus your guild might not even be around anymore or if it is it might be with a bunch of people you no longer know.

However not everyone is like me, there is definitely something special about the first MMORPG you’ve played or I should say played for a prolonged period of time.  It’s the place you created your first serious character at and when you return it gives you a feeling of coming home.

Since having quit Warhammer Online about a month and half ago, I’ve dabble with Atlantica Online which just didn’t do it for me.  So once again I’m MMOless and decided it’s still way to early to already be thinking about going back to Warhammer.  I’ve been thinking about trying out a older MMO like Dark Age of Camelot or Planetside, but I’m not sure if I could get over the old school graphics, it might be too much of a distraction for me.  Any suggestions, I’m open to new and old games, PvP plz

Since having let my subscription to Warhammer Online lapse, I’ve moved on to Atlantica Online, a free turned based MMORPG in the style of Final Fantasy games.  Currently I have a level 28 character, but I’m not sure how much longer I plan to say with Atlantica.  The game has an extremely weak story line and so far I’ve only seen 3 types of quests, but we’ll get into that later.   The game does have a ton of features and options to keep you busy, but from my point of view it seems like it’s just one big grind.

Questing – Having reached level 28 I would have thought I would be doing more than just 3 types of quests by now.  So far the only quests I’ve seen are tutorial, fetch and kill quests.  Tutorial quests are actually very good and I’m glad they have them, some are extremely easy and should never have been created, but for the most part there useful.  As I said earlier there are a ton of features and options in the game so it’s good to have these tutorial quests to help you learn the game and yes even at lev 28 I still get many tutorial quests.  Fetch quest are exactly that, deliver this or go talk to that person and you’re done.  Then there are kill quests which either tell you to go kill x number of these monsters or kill a boss.  That’s it.  I’m not sure if there are other type of quests later on, but having played to lev 28 at this point it’s pretty sad those are the only types of quests I’ve seen.

Traveling with Auto-Move/Teleports - One of the features that you’ll uses pretty much the entire time you’re playing is auto-move.  Basically when you get a quest you don’t have to do anything except click the auto-move button, then you can go make yourself something to eat or watch TV.  The auto-move feature will take you exactly to where you need to go, so when you come back all you have to do is talk to the person or kill the monster then click auto-move again and it will take you back to turn-in the quest.  Honestly Atlantica is unplayable unless you have a TV in the same room because a good portion of your time you’re not even playing, you’re just waiting for auto-move to take you to where you need to go.  Later on in the game you’ll get Teleportation Licenses, basically these allow you for 1 day (in game time) to teleport anywhere you have already been, which is great cause it saves you a ton of time, however they’re expensive so you won’t be using it all the time.

Above is a screenshot of one of my auto-move runs.  I had to go to Rome to use the warehouse so I could store some of my items, since I don’t have enough money to buy a teleportation license I had to run back to where I was questing.  As you can see it took about 27 mins, 27 mins!  While a bit on the high end it’s nothing unusually to have 10-15 min auto-move times.  While I like having auto-run cause I’d rather the computer run for me than having to waste my own time, it makes me wonder why they even have a 3D game world to begin with.  Why not just make it a top down map where you move from locaton to locaton similar to Mythos.  There’s no monster agro so unless your character runs directly into a monster your fine.

Combat PvE - Combat is the best part of the game, if you like eastern style RPGs like Final Fantasy you’ll feel right at home. Atlantica allows you to have up to 18 mercenaries in your group which I actually feel is way to much.  Right now I only have 6 and feel like that’s enough, so I couldn’t imagine worrying about 18 units.  The problem with Atlantica is that it makes PvE combat extremely boring, the monster you fight are way to easy unless you go way past your level then you die.  The only time I feel like I have a challenge is when I’m fighting a boss, but the great majority of you’re time you’ll be grinding monsters.

Combat PvP - PvP combat is a lot more fun than PvE.  The game gives you many options to participate in PvP, you can challenge someone that’s near you,  go to the challenge board to find an open challenge or participate in the battle arenas which start every 2 hrs or so.  Winning a battle you’ll be awarded items and XP, there’s no looting so you don’t need to worry about losing your items.  Free leagues are battles that take place in the Rome arena where players of similar rankings fight over a 1 hr 40 mins time span to determine a winner.  I’ve participate in a few of these although I haven’t done well yet.  One of my biggest grips is that even though they put users of similar rankings together that doesn’t mean there similar levels.  I was lev 28 with 6 merc and I had to fight a lev 33 char with 7 mercs.  Not only did the user have an extra merc to fight with, but they were all 5 levels higher than my guys, so obviously I got my ass kicked.   This seems to be a very common occurrence as most of my PvP battles have been one sided.  On another note once the League ends your stuck in Rome, so for me that means I have a 27 min auto-run back to where I was questing.

Crafting – While I haven’t done much crafting so far, it basically works the same way as most crafting systems with one exception.  Once you have gathered your ingredients, you need to build up work-load points to actually craft the items. The way to build work-load points is to either fight monsters or get work-load scrolls for winning PvP fights.  I honestly hate crafting in MMOs, just a huge grind fest, so I tend to not do it.

Basically I’m not seeing the potential in this game, it seems like all you do is quest grinding.  Since Darkfall seems to be having 1001 problems, I’ll probably continue playing Atlantica from time to time when I’m extremely bored.  I really hate quest grinding so unless the game starts offering other things to do I don’t see myself lasting.