Just an update - 12/30/2011

Well with 2011 pretty much said and done, 2012 is looking pretty awesome. Things are already starting off nicely, like with Wakfu finally entering open beta for US, TERA being released in Spring and even WoW's Mists of Pandaria expansion looks appealing (and that's coming from someone who's never wanted to touch WoW at all.)

I guess I would like to take a moment just to say thanks to all the random viewers that visit my small little blog. Even though I haven't been posting as often as I should, I really just enjoying having a nice outlet to myself where I can post my thoughts on MMOs and all the games I play, even if most of my posts aren't "deep" or "intriguing" like most people would expect from blogs. So yeah... thanks for the hits!

In other news: DizzyPW over at OnRPG got some inspiration from an article over at Massively.com about getting the writers to form a prediction of what will happen in the online gaming industry for 2012. I decided to throw my hat into that prediction, too.

Here's a little tidbit for you all:

"My prediction leans toward the future of the free-to-play gaming market. I predict that new MMO titles will come out and will follow down the F2P route in the RIGHT way. With only a couple of games that I could literally count on my fingers as true Free-to-play games, such League of Legends, TF2 and Tribes: Ascend, game publishers will look at these games and see the proper way to monetize the game in the F2P format without instead of trying to flat out rob their players, so most of publishers then follow their example."

Will my prediction come true? I sure as hell hope so. Expect to see more predictions from the writers of OnRPG real soon.

One last thing I'd like to mention for anyone that's be browsing my blog for info on the upcoming GunZ 2: TSD by MAIET: I came across an interesting .gif animation on the GunZFactor Forums the other day:

As you may have heard: MAIET isn't going to reintroduce K-style for GunZ 2, but they will be keeping the core values of K-style. Here you can see that instead of being able to perform slash-shots from GunZ 1, you can instead perform shot-slashes.

Credit goes to peaceofpi of the GunZFactor Forums for posting the .gif animation.

Play Log - Mabinogi - 12/16 to 12/24

With my huge lack of posts for the month of December, I decided start posting more play logs. Still bumping around Mabinogi, switching between my male human and male elf characters.

Also around when my winter break started, Nexon was re-selling some old pets during weekends. Even though  I was broke, I bought a Guardian Spider and a Griffon pet, which I placed on my BillMeLater tab. Probably not such a good idea since I have a pretty big balance set on it, already...

The spider's inventory space is excellent, but its not so great for battling, since it spends a lot of time randomly pooping out spider webs, which is useless to me since I don't plan to give any of my character a tailoring skill (yet.) Still, it's kind of cute. Kind of...

During the same week, I spend my time doing some farming again. Instead of growing pumpkins, I grew strawberries. I figured: "They're the hardest to grow, so the profit from them should be huge." Managed to harvest them at 100%, but then I saw the selling prices and felt like I got jipped. Should have stuck with growing pumpkins, I guess.

During one of my farming sessions, one of my in-game friends messaged me about participating in a machinima piece called "FF7 - Mabinogi Edition". At first, I thought I was going to be just an expendable extra, but my friend asked me to play as Cloud. I was a bit surprised at first, getting to play as the main character and all, but then I saw what my part was... All I had to do was running around, make my character look at a statue for a little bit, and that was pretty much it.

They recently finished and uploaded the scene to their YouTube page.

You can watch it and my brilliant performance (at 13:02 to 13:24) right here:

That's all for now.

Just an update - 12/12/2011

Well... this sucks...
I was hoping that my winter break would start off with me kicking back and enjoying DFO online with a few friends, but fate seems to be conspiring against me. First I found out a few days before today that my Nexon account got caught in the hacker outbreak of April 2011 and that all my avatar items were missing on my main Blade Master character.

Then a day after that, my PC starting having slow bootups and HDD problems (which I think I caused myself by shutting down the PC while it was still defragging), and so now my HDD is messed up and all my pictures and documents and porn is slowly becoming inaccessible. I've been trying to get as much data off my messed up HDD over the weekend, but it's such a painfully slow process. Just to give you an idea: I tried to transfer my 1GB documents folder from my messed up HDD to a new HDD, and the time it would take to finish changed from 3 hours to 6 hours, then to 14 hours, then to 1 day, and then it went into question marks...

And now I'm stuck at my brother's college for the next 5 hours because he forgot he had an Art class final to attend while driving around town, and I happened to be in the truck with him.

Could be worse, I suppose.

GunZ 2 - 1st Promo Video

The flow of news for GunZ 2 isn't quite over yet, folks. Recently, MAIET released their first promotion video, showcasing many of the game's features, including new revamped mechanics, such as being able to fire single-handed firearms while hanging from walls. This video also shows a glimpse at the game's PvE, with players fighting against enemy NPCs and scaling the giant mechanical "Gustavus" while searching for its weak points. Check out the new promotion video right here:

Bloody awesome. (And speaking of bloody: The blood effects are now shown in red instead of white from the previous G-Star 2011 build.) Still no confirmed beta date for South Korea, but I can't wait for this game to hit US shores.

Ghost Recon Online - Interview

Ever since the late 90s, The Tom Clancy series has always been synonymous with military and espionage action. Most specifically: Ghost Recon is a well-known squad based shooter series, and now the series plans to go online as a F2P title. Sounds like this change of pace with Ghost Recon Online is set out to put all other F2P shooters to shame. I got to chat with the guys at Ubisoft to find out more.

GunZ 2 - G-Star 2011 Interview

More news for GunZ 2 keeps on rolling in, and I just have to post it all because I can't wait for this game to come out. Recently on MAIET's official Facebook page for GunZ 2, they've posted an interview with GameShot.net. The interview was poorly translated and (once again) posted as a comment rather than a new post, so many people may not notice it once more comments roll over. I took the liberty of posting the interview here while fixing some of the bad grammar.

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Q: When did you start development of GunZ 2?
A: We started back in 2007.

Q: It's a sequel, but it looks very different from the previous one.
A: We've rewritten the whole story of the GunZ universe.

Q: Please introduce the three playable classes.
A: The Assassin class is focused on close combat & sniping. Fighter class is a "jack-of-all-trades" type and will be useful in multiple situations. The Heavy class is primarily designed as a tanker for PvE mode, but can use wide area attacks for massive kills.

GunZ 2 - Live gameplay videos

I grew a bit tired of waiting around for some more gameplay videos of GunZ 2 to show up, so I decide to look for some myself. I searched around THISISGAME.com and found some live cam footage. It took me awhile to figure out how to download the video since there wasn't any direct links, but I got it anyway! Check it out:

As a quick breakdown of the video:

• All three character classes (Assassin, Fighter, Heavy) were playable.
• As with the original GunZ, players are free to dash as many times as they want, although the dash distance seems a bit shorter.
• Tumbling with ranged weapons is no longer possible as dashing is used for all weapons.
• The crosshair changes depending on what weapon you're using, including a shield icon whenever you're in a guard stance using a melee weapon.
• Wall running and wall climbing is now much easier to perform while giving players more freedom to move around.
• All character classes are capable of dashing, wall running, etc.
• In team battles, players are distinguishable by a small red/blue light underneath them.
• The gauge meter next to the HP and armor bar can be filled up by killing enemies or by collecting gauge bottles around the map.
• Earning an assist kill does not fill the gauge meter.
• Filling the gauge meter to max allows you to perform a "Kill move". The meter will turn red and slowly depletes itself, giving players roughly 20 seconds to perform a kill move on an enemy player.
• Kill moves can only be performed with a melee weapon.
• Your gauge meter will be depleted completely whether the attack connects with the enemy or not.
• Kill move animations CANNOT be interrupted.
• Seen from previous footage, it's possible that the gauge meter will be use for attacks other than single-hit kill moves.
• Melee weapons can once again be used to deflect enemy bullets
• Stun moves are still possible, but it is uncertain whether players will able to recover from stun attacks.
• Heavy types with shields can fill up a small amount of their gauge meter by successfully blocking enemy bullets.
• Guard stance can be broken from certain melee attacks and from deflecting too many bullets.

Well that's what I managed to pick out from the video. Still no sign of any sort of animation cancelling (K-style, D-style, etc.) but the gameplay looks just as chaotic and fast paced as it the original. If there's anything you've spotted worth mentioning, you should probably leave a comment or something.

Update 11/14/2011 - More gameplay from G-Star 2011 showed up. Gameplay in this video was primarily focused on the Assassin class.

• While using melee weapons, players can perform swipe attacks while side stepping
• All character classes can fill up their gauge meter by blocking bullets with their melee weapon
• Players emit a green gas whenever they've maxed up their gauge meter
• Players gain a yellow outline during respawns and kill moves to signify their invulnerability to enemy attacks
• Along with dashing, players can perform dodge and side steps on the ground while using ranged weapons.

Gameplay still looks sweet, but I have to say the player in the video seemed to be trying REALLY hard to perform K-style moves or some kind of variant. Is K-style going to be ditched completely in GunZ 2? Well there's no solid way of telling, but it sure is starting to look that way.

SDGO - CB Impressions

Gundam fans! The wait is finally over! SD Gundam Capsule Fighter Online (SDGO for short) has finally reached North America. SDGO is a multiplayer online third person shooter featuring SD (Super Deformed) versions of mobile units from many different Gundam eras, including Gundam SEED, Mobile Fighter G Gundam and many others.

Since its initial release in South Korea, the game is about four years old and has had a lot of content built up over those years. Players that got to participate in the closed beta were granted with 1,000 astros (OGP currency) to test out the shop and play around with as many functions as they wanted. I nabbed a closed beta key and got to try out all these Gundam goodies for myself.

GunZ 2 - New gameplay footage (HD) + Artwork

For your viewing pleasure, MAIET Entertainment has revealed new gameplay footage of their upcoming TPS shooter: GunZ 2. Gameplay showcases three playable classes: Assassin, Fighter and Heavy.

From the trailer alone, you can see a ton of differences between this and it's predecessor, including DMC-style bullet juggling, kill moves, sniper rifles, and many other snazzy new features. What I DON'T see is any sort of re-implementation of "K-style" as MAIET claimed they would introduction into GunZ 2, but eh... I can live without it, regardless.

What do YOU think about the new footage?

Source: Inven Webzine (Korean)

(Click read more for more artwork!)

Tribes Ascend - CB Impressions

A legendary shooter series is coming back for a new generation, and it’s getting the F2P treatment. “Tribes Ascend”, developed by Hi-Rez Studios, is a multiplayer only FPS series that’s all about jetpacks, insane speed and blowing stuff up. While having a very sizeable fanbase, Tribes has always been considered to be a niche title, so many changes were made in order to appeal to broader audience. An early access closed beta was opened to a select few, and I managed to get in on the action.

Transformers Universe @ NY Comic Con 2011

In the midst of all the craziness that happened over at NY Comic Con 2011, Jagex Games Studios and Hasbro was there to showcase their upcoming title: Transformers Universe. Powered by an advanced and evolved engine that powers Jagex’s ever popular “RuneScape”, Transformers Universe will continue Jagex’s trend of creating high quality MMO experiences straight in your internet browser.

Besides from that, very little is known about the game, so I took the time to check out the booth, ask some questions and possibly grab some swag!

G-Star 2011 - Get Hyped!

So who's excited for G-Star this year? I know I am! There's a crap ton of titles I've had my eye on for the past couple of years are getting new details revealed.

Some of the games on my radar include Blade & Soul, GunZ: the Duel 2, Cabal II, FreeJack and many others. Here's a few that I (and think you) should be keeping your eyes on:

Blade & Soul:

• Summoner class shown/playable at their booth
• 7th class revealed
• CBT3/OBT dates announced

GunZ: the Duel 2:

• Playable preview build
• PvP including four maps: Mansion, Pier 5, Refinery, Market Town
• PvE confirmed, but map is undecided whether it will include a boss battle

Cabal II

• New footage showcasing the new engine (CryEngine 2 to CryEngine 3)

FreeJack

• New footage showcasing finalized content (will most likely include the recently announced Graffiti gameplay mode)

And that's just to name a few. There's also new Cyphers footage (probably the first MOBA game I've ever been interested in) and a HUGE booth for Guild Wars 2:

*Pic gathered from MMOCulture.com

I was hoping for details regarding Mabinogi 2 and ArcheAge, but at the moment they're either declared as a "no show" or strictly Business-2-Business behind closed doors, but hey there might be a leak or two. You know how the internet is these days...

Also on my radar:

• Continent of the Ninth (C9)
• Battle Territory: Battery
• NED
• Bless
• Dizzel

I can't be ONLY one this excited for G-Star this year, right? Let me know I'm not alone! Post a comment or something! G-Star will Busan, South Korea from November 10th to 13th.

I'll be following such sites as KoreanGamers.com, AcroFan via YouTube and of course, Cinderboy's blog: MMOCulture.

Click to visit!

Click to visit!

Click to visit!

Dragon Saga - Review

Dragon Saga (also known as Dragonica) was one of the first original action MMOs to ever hit English speaking territories. Just recently, things got tuned up with an expansion called New Origins, featuring new story quests, a new race and many other goodies. While this title may have turned heads by in the day, many other action MMOs are now out and about in this ever increasing MMO market, so it’s time to take a closer look and see if there’s enough here to make gamers want to turn their heads back.

NY Comic Con - Day 4

And it is OVER!

The NY Comic Con ended at 5:00 PM today and I managed to get most of my work done covering a few booths. This whole thing was a huge learning experience for me, and really showed me that I need a lot of tools to do my job more effectively, like an audio recorder, better video recorder and whatnot. With that in mind, I'll be far more prepared for next year, or for any other public event I can go to. I checked out the Star Wars: TOR booth which had a one hour wait time for PvE and PvP play. I mostly wanted to get inside the booth so I could take pictures of the place, but the exhibitors wouldn't let me. I was only allowed to take pictures outside and behind some of the players. When I finally got in, I tried out the PvE and went with the Smuggler class.

After the short play-through I had, I can safely say that the game was... well... kinda boring. It's true what they say that the game is sort of like WoW with lightsabers. But then again, I only got 17 minutes of playtime, so that's not enough time to give proper judgment.

Next up was the fan booth for Mega Man Legends 3. I know I mentioned that they were planning to gather a bunch of supporters and "protest" around the Capcom booth around 3:00 PM, but I misspoke. They were actually planning a "peaceful march" down to the booth, and apparently Seth Killian, marketing director for Capcom US, knew all about the march and was totally cool about it. After the marchers reached the booth, they met up with Seth to present a huge scroll filled with fan appreciation and support from people at Comic Con in reviving MML3. Seth took the scroll to heart and have a friendly discussion with the marchers a bit later. I have some footage of the march and a little bit of footage from the meeting with Seth:

Seth agreed to send the huge scroll to the higher ups in Capcom Japan to support to cause. Mission accomplished!

I was done covering any more booth after that, so I spent the rest of my time playing the latest build of Skullgirls and tried out Dead Island for the first time. One thing I DO regret was not getting a beta key for the Counter Strike: Global Offensive beta which is happening right now, and the stupid part was that I was around the Intel booth where they were giving out  keys quite often. Damn. All in all, though, I had a really great time and got to see a lot of great/funny/stupid/creepy stuff. Definitely going again next year.

NY Comic Con - Day 3

Argh, my aching back.

I'm gonna get this post out real quick because I'm pretty tired at the moment, but today was interesting than yesterday. Most of my morning was spent around the Intel PC Gaming booth because due to the jealous I had over my brother winning that Core i7 Extreme CPU, I wanted to win one myself... by entering an Unreal Tournament 3 Tourney. I played that game for hours and felt I actually had a winning chance, but when preliminary rounds started, I always lost by a hair or from playing on a map I had no knowledge of. The third prelim round with the map set to ROCKETS ONLY really pissed me off and I gave up at that point. No new CPU for me. :( At 4PM, it was time for me to get back to work. I got a little tour of the TRANSFORMER UNIVERSE booth and interviewed Laura for more info on the game. The new Jagex engine used to power the game looked great, and they took the time to demonstrate some of the animation process using Maya.

Besides that: I made an ass of myself playing that Black Eyed Peas dance game and took more cosplay pictures...

NY Comic Con - Day 2

Second day down. Things started out more rough than yesterday, though: There was a lot of rain before I got to the center and I had to dredge through two miles of it. With that and the tons of traffic, I missed the live demo portion of "The Secret World" event.

I managed to catch the Q&A session, though. There was one question that people around the OnRPG forums wanted me to ask, and it was regarding why The Secret World will be using a subscription based model instead of going with the trend of F2P. The response I got was: They're going with a P2P w/ Item Shop. Item shop will have mostly cosmetic items and they feel that TSW is a quality game for P2P with all the content it has. And they seem pretty damn confident about it, too. That's all I could get out of them, so I hope that's a good enough question.


Afterwards: I walked over to the event area for Street Fighter X Tekken. They revealed some new features including a gem system and revealed that Rufus from SFIV will be playable. TThey also set the release date for Street Fighter X Tekken will be on March 6, 2012. A PC version was also in development (which I was happy about) and 9 more characters were teased near the end.

NY Comic Con - Day 1

Whew.

Managed to check out the first day of Comic Con.

...Well, just a little bit of it, anyway. I actually showed up late with my brother, thinking there wouldn't be anything to see, but luckly we had 4-day passes so we were able to check out the IGN Kick Off event, which was a concert headlined by a DJ named Z-Trip and some rock band that I didn't really care for.

Big week!

I think it's fair to say that next week is going to a big one for me because I going to NY next weekend to attend Comic Con!

Now, I've never been to convention before, but I hear they're creepy as hell, with all those sweaty nerds dressing up and what not. But I'm mostly going there on business, checking out a couple of booths and doing some coverage on some real high profile titles including Star Wars: The Old Republic and The Secret World.

Could be fun, but at the same time I'm a bit worried. This is the first press event I'll be covering that WON'T be behind my computer screen, and to be honest: I don't know much about these titles outside of the information already noted on their websites, so I better start snooping for some decent questions to ask in case I find myself doing an impromptu interview.

Still, I'm just exicted to be heading back to NY again. Last time I went there was with my brother and a few of his friends for St. Patricks Day, and oh man what a day it was. I'll never forget walking around from pub to pub with those guys, and me getting drunk off ONE beer. Plus the trip back home was hilarous.

Other than that: Still playing around with Dragon Saga for review and will be replaying APB:Reloaded later on.

Battlefield 3 Beta (In a nutshell)

GOD DAMN IT!

Just an update - 9/28/2011

Boy, I really should post something else on my blog besides just these updates... But still, this week is looking pretty interesting. Still playing Mabinogi even though hackers, gold dupers and Nexon themselves are ruining it. Managed to finish  G1 and G13 on my human character and I'm getting started on G2 (all of which must be solo'd which is kinda nice.)

The dreaded non-saving character data glitch also happened both on Mari and Ruairi recently. It wasn't so bad, though. I mean sure, the glitch allows people to dupe their gold and effectly destory the game's economy even more, but hey without the glitch, I wouldn't have been able to take these amusing pictures with all my pets:

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I'm also been playing some Dragon Saga for review. So far, I think the game is decent. I like the Crystal Chronicles vibe it has going for it, but the gameplay feels a bit stiff. That's all I really have to say about it right now.

Lots of other fun stuff to play this week, like the Battlefield 3 "Open Beta" this thursday, and apparently, it's got 99 problems:

...and I got one problem: I have no idea how well it's gonna run on my rig. Sure, my PC meets all the recommended requirements except for the GPU. I got a GTX460 in this thing and all sites recommend GTX5xx series. which is bull because we all know the 5xx series is basically just the 4xx series with less power consumption and heat dissipation. Oh whatever, I'll find out soon enough...

Two closed betas on Friday! Brawl Busters goes into CBT2 with a new map (Pinball Avenue) some new weapons/outfits and a revamped netcode. 

The other closed beta is Family Guy Online. Not expecting much from this, but it should be "interesting" to say the least.

 Yes, this game still exists.

Last for me is a playthrough of APB:Reloaded. GamersFirst has really been tweaking the hell out of it and they're almost ready to pull the game out of beta. I snagged the chance to do a review on it starting this October.

So BF3 on Thursday, Brawl Busters or Friday and APB on Saturday. Yay.