Friday, September 26, 2014

ArcheAge + Reviews Update

I meant to make an update sooner, but I've been so invested into ArcheAge I don't have much time left for other things.

It's been an intense two weeks, to say the least. For the first week, it was a battle just to play the game. On top of that headache, I found out that the one zerg guild I wanted my guild to avoid was on my server. This came about due to some issues with our originally planned alliance, the Council of Erenor. But, in the end, it's worked itself out (at least for now), so it's not so stressful.

We were able to get our Tradeship a bit over a week after Launch. The day after, our guild also got our first Galleon (A Lutesong Junk, pictured below). As we're a small guild, we have trouble manning both of them so we don't really see a reason to try hard to get more. We definitely could, but now our resources are better focused at getting neat houses and whatnot. Speaking of which, we got a deed for a medium house to act as our "Crafting Hall" last night. I'll post a screenshot of it in the next update (so in a month or so :D ).






My ArcheAge launch review was published  on the same day the game went live as I had been working on it since beta. I used the Early Start to fine-tune everything to make it as accurate as possible for launch, and it was ready to be published as soon as the game went live. Of course, someone at OnRPG (not sure if it'll be me) will come back to the game after it's had time to mature to give it another look. Until then, though, you can find the review HERE.


In non-ArcheAge news, I recently did an article on the Early Access of a hack n' slash/ARPG game called Fight The Dragon. It was a surprising amount of fun, and I especially liked the unique take on end-game content. As the name suggest, you fight an epic dragon as the end-game boss. And you don't have to max out your character to do it, either. From the start you can challenge this dragon and you can continue to do it over and over, using items you get from regular adventures called Dragon Scrolls. The dragon has (at least for now) 1,000,000 HP and it will take some time to get it down. I haven't achieved it yet so I don't know what happens when you do (And I'm purposefully not looking into it as I would like it to be a surprise). Anyways, 3 Sprockets decided to use a quote from my article on their steam page.




Tuesday, September 9, 2014

ArcheAge Update

It's been about a month since I last posted a blog. In that month, Amitabha has been revived and has begun to flourish. With Head-Start for ArcheAge coming up in just three days, we're all excited for whats to come. Although, a lot of us must admit that the excitement we have is laced with a bit of trepidation, as a lot of us are fearful of what effect the recent changes to the Marketplace will have on the game. The term "Pay-to-win" has been thrown around a lot lately.


We've learned a few new things regarding the game. The most important being the launch date - September 16th. This means the Head Start begins on the 12th. We've also learned that we'll be restricted to two characters at launch, with the potential to purchase more slots. The maximum amount of characters we can have per server, per account, is four with a total of six characters account-wide. This is both a relief and a bit disheartening - a lot of us (including myself) have paid $150 and we feel that we should be able to get all that the game has to offer, in terms of character slots, at least, without having to pay even more.

Another thing we've learned is that Northern Continent will not be available at launch. A lot of people think it will be at least two months before it's made available. This threw the plans of a lot of guilds out the window, as a lot of strategy centered around the Northern continent. A lot of people plans to rush to the highest level and are afraid they'll have to nothing to do while they wait for Auroria to be made available.




Onto Amitabha, though. We have joined the Council of Erenor, an alliance of thirteen or so guilds who have a non-aggression pact, along with plans to generally improve the gameplay of all members of the guilds in the alliance. Part of the reason of the CoR's creation is the combat the number of so-called "Zerg Guilds" who plan to play the game. These are the guilds that have members in the hundreds that are generally toxic to the community.

Amitabha has also gained a lot more new members. We're still fairly small - we generally have somewhere between ten and fifteen people on TS3 during the beta - but we're a dedicated lot. I originally restarted Amitabha with the idea of creating a small and tight-knit casual group of players. Since then, though, I've found that we've evolved into a community that is a bit more hardcore than I anticipated. I've yet to find out if this is a good or bad thing, but we'll see.


Above is the emblem we have created that will be used in-game on our sails and flags. This is because our typical Amitabha logo doesn't look so good when seen from the backside of a sail or flag. We felt we needed something with no text that could represent us, so the above was created. As Amitabha was originally a Shaolin guild within Age of Wushu, we made use of a couple Buddhist symbols (The Eternal Knot and the Dharmachakra). We also stayed with the roots of our logo and made use of a circular blood smear. I think it looks quite nice.

Here's how it looks in-game.






 We have yet to decide on a server, but if you see this logo in-game, you'll know it's us.


Well, that's all for now. As always, thanks for reading. I'll try to update again after the Head Start.



Friday, August 8, 2014

ArcheAge and the Rebirth of Amitabha

So, as the beta events for ArcheAge have been happening, I've found myself focusing on the game a lot more. If anyone has read any of my other blog post concerning ArcheAge, or my Early Look at the Russian ArcheAge Open Beta, you'll know I like the game a great deal. And my love for the game has continued into the Trion version. Although, I'll be the first to admit that certain parts of the game should be tweaked - such as F2P LP restrictions.

My time in the ArcheAge closed beta has inspired me to re-create Amitabha within the game. We've received multiple members, a number of which are quite active and all of them are Founder's. We're going for a medium-sized guild with around 50 active members at most. We want to be somewhere between casual and hardcore. We definitely do plan to play hardcore during the first weeks of the game, however. Especially during the 4-day Early Start.

I have also decided to upgrade from the $50 Founder's Pack to the $150 Founder's Pack once I get the money to do so. The alpha access will be nice, as I have a lot to re-learn about the game. Especially considering all the changes between the Russian and Trion versions. Plus the bonuses from the pack will be nice. Part of my early-game plan is to get a cash-shop mount and a cash-shop glider. 


I've re-designed the Amitabha website a decent amount to get ready for our transition into ArcheAge. I've removed as many old relics from the site from our time in other games that we no longer play as possible. I also re-did our permissions and rank system to be more in-line with that of ArcheAge. One of our new members, who has been promoted to officer, has paid for our site and TS3 server for over a hundred days. We also have several very active members, a couple of which have also been promoted to Officer in preparation of ArcheAge. So it looks like Amitabha will have a full revival within ArcheAge with a strong core membership.


I've also experimented with importing our logo into the game. The system for doing it is quite nice, and you can even purchase clothing to have it printed on. As you can see, I'm wearing and "Amitabha" shirt. The only issue I ran into was that one side of the sail shows the logo in reverse, so you can imagine that would be a problem. I'm considering a slight re-design that will turn the Amitabha lettering so that it can be read from any direction. There's also the option of coming up with a crest or something that will represent Amitabha in ArcheAge that has no letters. I'm not sure yet.


Other than that, no real updates yet. I am working on an Early Look for an awesome game called Robocraft. I've played it in the past and coming back to the game to see how far it's come is great. I know it's an over-used description but it fits the game perfectly - It's a mix between Minecraft and World of Tanks. It's amazing right now, especially playing with friends. I'll have it done before the up-coming ArcheAge beta event on the 14th.

Wednesday, July 23, 2014

Ingress + Articles update

This month I submitted reviews/articles on Endless Legend, Divinity: Original Sin, Ingress, and Ascent: The Space game (which hasn't been published yet). Endless, Divinity, and Ingress were all superb games. I'm still playing Divinity and Ingress (especially Ingress), and the only reason I'm not playing Endless or Ascent right now is that they're not complete. I would recommend you check out all of the games, though.


Speaking of Ingress, this past week or two have been pretty fun. The "virus" released by Dr. Bogdanovich, that has greatly reduced the life-span of portals that don't receive regular XM recharges, has resulted in a lot of portal changes. This is perfect for the new influx of players thanks to the #NewAgentInitiative program and iOS release. Plus it makes playing in a town by myself a lot easier and interesting.

This week, my town has been visited by Resistance agents three times. I'm not sure if this is because they have plans that require portals in my town, or if they're just coming because they noticed my small town becoming an Enlightened-controlled haven. Either way, it's been fun having challengers. I'm able to take out their portals fairly easy, as they seem to only put up to level 6 reso's on the portals. Not sure if they're being considerate of me, or if they're just no higher than level 6. 



If things continue as they have been, I should reach level 5 either today or Thursday. 


That's all I have for today. My posts will probably center around Ingress and ArcheAge for the next few weeks. Thanks for reading.

Thursday, July 10, 2014

Ingress and Summoners War + Article updates

So, I've continued to play Ingress and have continued to have a blast with it. Honestly, the game has been so enjoyable that I've decided to upgrade my phone to a device that can better play it (an LG G2). A few days ago I created my first link between two portals in my small town. A couple of days after that, I created my first field. It wasn't any fancy, just a simply field that covers less than a quarter of my small town that gave the Enlightened nine Mind Units. I have actually started coming up with a road-trip plan for a portal I want to span a huge area of open space between my town plus two medium sized towns. The entire trip should take about three hours and I honestly have no idea when I'll make it - I'm thinking once I hit level 4.

My first field.

I've made a few trips into nearby towns for key collection so that I can help with future links/fields and so I can recharge portals from afar. Also, you might see a fully resonated portal in the top left corner of the above screenshot. Apparently someone passed by and turned it into a level 4 portal. Not sure if that'll be a problem for me. It has two shields, and I'm honestly not sure if I want to make the effort to cap it. I think it might provide some nice items since it's the highest portal in town - so it may be a boon.

Other than Ingress, I've still been playing Summoners War. I recently discovered that I can set it to auto-play in combat, so I've been spending a lot of time leveling up my creatures while doing other things like reading or playing games on the computer. It's still quite fun, and I enjoy how the game isn't really pay-to-win. Well, I suppose you DO need the cash shop currency to get some of the best stuff, but I've gotten about 500 of the cash shop currency since I started playing, from my daily wishes, missions, my crystal farms, etc... So it hasn't been an issue - especially since the game is mostly PVE driven and the PVP arena is fairly balanced.

My current line-up. I love my Nine-Tailed fox.

Other than that, I've been working on a few games for OnRPG. I recently completely my launch review of Divinity: Original Sin. Just click the link to see it if you like. I'm still working on Ascent: The Space Game - it seems like more projects with higher priorities keep popping up. It shouldn't take long to finish, I just want to get a bit further in the game and then need to collect all my screenshots. I also got the OK from Dizzy to do a review on Ingress, which shouldn't take long at all. And I recently got a key for Endless Legend to do a review. So my plate is pretty full for this month. 

Other than that, the only other bit of news I have right now is that Dizzy has a project for me on September 19th, which he says should keep me plenty busy. So that's something to look forward to.

Wednesday, July 2, 2014

Ingress Update


Still playing. Walked about 7 miles so far playing the game. My town is small, unfortunately, so the leveling is slow - just now reaching halfway to level 3. Like I said, my town is in the middle of most of the major towns in the state, so it seems like a lot of people have keys to my area - well, at least in the nearby Resistance-nest that is Hutchinson. They've got that area down tight thanks to four or five high level agents, while we only have two or three mid-to-high level Enlightened in the town.

That's good for me, though. The Resistance in Hutch have been keeping the portals in my town recharged. So I know they wont go neutral by themselves due to neglect. I am working on capturing some of the portals on the main street so I can do some links and a small field. I'm kind of hesitant, however, as if I do that, that's three less Resistance portals for hacking and I don't know if/when any Res will come through town to switch them. Of course, there would still be six or so portals afterwards.

I got one resonator down, and have plans to kill two more that are right next to each other (From two different portals) either later tonight or tomorrow morning, depending on how many XMP bursters I get from my night circuit here in a bit.


I went into another town yesterday. It was a small town, though, so only three portals. I plan to go into Hutch tomorrow, which has a decent number, though.


Oh yeah, I finally figured out that holding the fire-button when doing XMP bursts can give you up to 20% extra damage. Also, holding the hack button down initiates the glyph mini-game that gives bonus items. The glyphs remind me a lot of what I've seen from Shadow Cities gameplay videos, so I'm wondering if Niantic will someday introduce a feature that uses them similar to how Shadow Cities did.


I also noticed (along with a shitton of other people, apparently) a couple of codes in this picture, from a recent announcement of... an upcoming announcement >.>








One of them seems fairly obvious (After doing a quick course in Ingress code breaking). The other is to advanced for me to figure out right now. Especially considering that I somehow got the supposedly easy code wrong... unless I need to reverse it or something.

That's it for now. 



Sunday, June 29, 2014

Ingress and Summoners War + Ascent the space game

So, these past few days I've been playing very little Dragon's Prophet. I haven't played much Chivalry, either. This is because I found a couple of mobile games that were interesting enough to pull me away from them and I've begun working on another project.




I downloaded Summoners War a few days ago and it's been quite fun. I love monster-capture type games, and this definitely fits that. I am a bit sad that the method of getting new monsters is based on RNG. I mean, I'm a faithful follower of RNGesus, but it's still kind of annoying getting crap after crap. Although, the crap makes for great fodder in leveling up my main summons.

The combat system in the game is also pretty fun. Generally, I don't like turn-based combat, but Summoners War has kept it simple, yet strategic. Really great for a mobile game, especially when a majority of the time you're just logging on to play for 5-10 minutes at a time. The progression, at least for the summons themselves, is also massively skewed thanks to RNGesus, but it does give you something to keep playing for. I'm just afraid I'll end up getting bored/frustrated with it and quit.







The other game I've been playing a lot of the past few days is Ingress. I got a new phone with a new provider and decided to give it a try. My last phone/service was a bit iffy when it came to GPS lock/Data in my area. But the one I'm with now is pretty stable, even in the middle of no where. The only issue is that my new phones resolution is a bit smaller than the suggested resolution for Ingress. I read into a lot of ways to fix this, and I may still decide to go with them, but I found a work-around that lets me get past the few issues I was having. After getting past those issues, I can easily play the game with my phone, although there is a bit of text overlapping on some tabs - nothing serious though.

I was worried about playing in a rural area, but was surprised to find that my small town of about 900 has a number of portals. I also have several towns that aren't to far away, including some cities and one being Wichita which has something like 400k people - and seems to be fairly active going by the intel map. Here's a screenshot of my town (and yes, that is exactly how big it is - for about 10-20 minutes in any direction it's nothing but farms, too.


I suppose now I should say I decided to join the Enlightened. I enjoy being the underdog, and it seems like almost everyone plays Resistance - the numbers support that.  From the above, you can see that there is one Enlightened(Green) portal, and a lot more Resistance. This is because someone from one of the nearby bigger towns came through a few months ago and submitted a ton of portals. They're all level 1 with one level 7 and one level 8 resonator each. So they're not very strong and great for a low level like me to learn the game with.

The single Enlightened portal is one I grabbed earlier today. I took out the first resonator earlier that day and came back later after re-filling my weapons reserves to finish it off. Once I took over the portal, I put a four level 1 and four level 2 resonators on it, plus a very rare and a rare shield mod to help protect it from anyone that happens by - though I doubt that'll happen... or that the shields will stop anyone. 

My next goal is to capture the four portals in the middle and make a very small field with them, just to get familiar with it. Then I guess I'll farm a lot to get higher level so I can upgrade the portals enough so that I can make a bigger field to surround the town. Still learning, though, so that strategy may change. Or someone from Resistance will make an outing and come re-take everything and screw up my progress. 

For those that familiar with Ingress, it's the Augmented-reality mobile game that Google's "Niantic Labs" created. It has some pretty rich lore, combines geocaching, Alternate Reality Game techniques, and (of course) Augmented Reality. If you didn't notice, I included links to several wiki-pages in the last couple of sentences. In short, the game is incredibly fun - even while playing by yourself, but it is meant to be played with several people (even if you're just coordinating over the comms and not actually meeting in person). I do have two invites for the game, though I'm honestly not sure if you need to be invited anymore since the game is out of the beta - however, if you want one, just let me know in the comments and we'll figure it out.


Other than that, I've been playing a game called "Ascent" or "Ascent the Space Game" with the URL of "thespacegame.com." It's an interesting game, but very hard to get into, though from what I understand the developers has been working on improving that tutorial and new player experience. I haven't played it enough to write much on it. But so far it seems like a mix of elements from Shores of Hazeron (one of my all-time favorite games) and EVE Online (another game I enjoy), so it should be fun once I get more into it.

Anyways, that's it for now. Thanks for reading.



Tuesday, June 24, 2014

Quit Age of Wushu, Playing Dragon's Prophet, and more

So, I recently quit Age of Wushu (again). This time, it was due to getting bored with the game and not wanting to invest much more into it, as the plan was to quit once ArcheAge was available from the start. It still has most of the issues - poor customer support, bad translations, bugs, lag, etc... However, Earthquake, one of the community managers, has begun taking player input to help improve the translations of the game. I even helped contribute by posting the correct translations for some of the Shen Family Golden Needle faction. So, that is a step in the right direction!

Since then, I've been playing a few games I got from the Steam Summer Sale, as well as Dragon's Prophet to pass the time. I've also been playing Euro Truck Simulator 2 here and there. However, a bulk of my time has been spent playing games for OnRPG.com. This week that was Skara - The Blade Remains and HEX: Shards of Fate. Of the two, I've got to say HEX was the more fun. I enjoyed Skara, but I've been getting my fighting fix from Chivalry: Medieval Combat/Deadliest Warrior.


Steam Summer Sale
Oddly enough, I've only bought a few games from this years Summer Sale (so far). Usually I end up buying a lot more than I would ever play, like most normal people. It's not so much because there was nothing more I wanted, just that I've forced myself to realize I probably wouldn't play most of what I got and the money is better saved for when ArcheAge rolls around. Anyways, the games I got were Chivalry: Deadliest Warrior, Contagion, and one other I can't remember the name of at the moment.

I've been spending a lot of time in Deadliest Warrior - about ten hours since I got it the other day. It's been quite refreshing and is a great way to recharge my batteries when I'm starting to get bored of other games. So far, my favorite classes to play are the ninja and Samurai (hey, I may not be a super Japanophile, but  still love it). I've been getting quite frustrated the past day or so, though. It seems like a majority of the servers are full (and stay full), forcing me to play on a server with only 5-6 other people which often time leads to stacked teams. I much prefer playing on a full or almost full server, where it's a lot harder for the teams to become stacked.

Contagion I got because my cousin (who has been staying with me) has become addicted to L4D2 and I figured he would enjoy it. Surprisingly I was right and now I'm lucky if I can go half an hour without him asking to get on my computer. I've played the game myself a few times, and it's quite decent. I enjoy how it looks and feels a bit more realistic than the L4D series. The only negative I've found is that, in some of the servers/game modes, both the survivors and zombies are trying to kill you. I much prefer the modes where you're working with others to accomplish a goal, rather than trying to backstab each other.


Dragon's Prophet
The day before yesterday I decided to check out Dragon's Prophet after a thread on OnRPG made me feel a bit of nostalgia for the game. I enjoyed the game a decent amount, and the only reason I quit last year (about 7-8 months ago) is because the game is definitely a bit pay-to-win. Trying to play the game without investing at least a few hundred dollars to unlock more inventory/bank/dragon slots and help you along with improving your gear and whatnot is akin to playing Entropia Universe with nothing but sweating for income. Simply click on the link to see how fun that can be.

I do love the dragons in the game, though. And the housing. Heck, I even enjoy the combat a decent bit. I grew up on point-and-click for MMOs and Dragon's Prophet has the perfect (in my opinion) blend of point-and-click and action for its combat. However, the grindy nature of the game ended up making me bored of the game and so I quit. But now I'm back and I'm having some fun trying to re-figure everything and doing my best to make sure I don't screw up anything progress I made before I quit.

My main character, Jizzybell - a level 65 (now 66) mage.

So far, I've been sticking to Wintertide, doing the public events and soloing dungeons. I also joined a new level 100 guild, and I've been working on getting guild points in there so I can get into the guild base and start using some of the flutes I have saved up. It's bearable, but it's not quite as fun as when I was playing with a couple of friends. I'm hoping I can pull one of them back into the game and play with me for a while, but most of them are busy with other games so I doubt they'll feel like it. Oh well.





I've also been taking part in a couple of the festival events. One of the things I enjoyed the most in my time with Dragon's Prophet are the various events. The content is usually fun, rewarding (if you have a house or like costumes), and it gives you a bit of experience. The Halloween event has been my favorite to date, partially because I started the game right as it was starting but also because I feel like it had the best content and rewards without being to grindy. My Chaotic Terror is still my favorite dragon and I got it from the Halloween Pack (along with my pumpkin house and a bunch of decorations). 

In the screenshot above, I'm fighting Pinatas with a special sword that has "Dragon's Prophet" written along the blade. I thought that was pretty neat. Basically, each time you hit the Pinata, it spews candy which you then collect. Each piece you collect gives a satisfying "Ding!" as well (if you played the Sonic games as a kid, you'll feel nostalgic as it's almost exactly the same as the sound from collecting rings). The event is quite grindy, however. You need 100 candy to get just one candy coin. And the furniture stuff costs in the hundreds of coins and the weapon skins costs 1,500 coins (I think). Which is 150,000 candy you have to collect. That takes a hell of a long time, unless there's a better way to collect candy that I haven't found. Apparently there's also a dragon you can capture, too, but I haven't figured it out yet. And there's a dance event that happens every couple of hours, too. 



There's a few new features that have been added since I last played. Like the Dragon's Compendium, which is almost like a dragon pokedex and achievement system rolled into one. You get various rewards by collecting eight of a dragon or winning a certain number of fights in the arena using it. The rewards are Dragon Runes and Dragon Elements, which are used in another new feature - Dragon Skill Evolution. I honestly have no idea how that works yet, but plan to do some research tomorrow. Looks pretty neat, though.



That's about all I have to talk about for now. I am thinking about investing in getting a new house, but don't know how well that will work for me. Last I remember, house spots costs a few million gold and I have just over 800,000 to my name. Plus, the items used to purchase house slots on the Marketplace/cash shop don't seem to be there anymore. I could just be looking in the wrong places, though. Anyways, thanks for reading.

Oh, and I'm planning to start up another blog where I talk about anime and manga. It can be found here if you're interested.


Thursday, May 29, 2014

Back to Age of Wushu

I failed to make a post about it, although I felt I should have, but about a month ago I came back to Age of Wushu. If any of you know me, or have seen my past posts about Age of Wushu, you'll know I have a love-hate relationship with it. I love the game (for the most part), but I hate the way Snail USA has been running it. The game has infinite possibilities, but Snail has no Customer Support, issues with hacking, bots, etc...

Now, as for the reason I came back to Age of wushu. I decided it was time to play again for two reasons. First, is that ArcheAge is not yet out of Alpha/Beta testing in NA. If ArcheAge had been available to me as a permenent game that wouldn't be wiped, I would not have given Age of Wushu a thought. However, due to that not being the case, I was on the out look for a game to play to occupy my time til ArcheAge was ready.

The second reason is that Age of Wushu got its Tempest of Strife expansion, which expanded upon the "Vagrant" path a lot, and added new factions to the game that you could join and participate in. There were also a handful of other neat features that caught my eye, such as events that occur only during certain weather conditions. This is one of Wushu's biggest content updates (if not the biggest). I figured it would be worth it to play the game again and try out all this new content.

The last reason, though not a major one, was that a new server was starting up. Silver Viper offered a unique opportunity to partake in the fun that always happen at the launch of  new in any game, to try out the new Vagrant content, and to join one or more of the new Factions added to the game. All that combined sounded like a good time to me. However, I was still quite weary of Snail after having played the game in 2012-2013.


At first I figured I wouldn't spend much time in the game, and decided I would not spend any money. However, I found myself changing my tune quite fast. I decided to purchase a months subscription within the first 24hrs of playing. I figured that nine dollars wasn't much, so why not? And now, here I am a month later, and I've got to admit I've enjoyed my time so far.

Of course, Snail is still an issue. There Customer Support is still nearly non-existent and the support you do get is questionable at best. Bots seem like they're still an issue, though not nearly as much. Gold-spammers are everywhere, just like before. And they've instituted a bunch of changes that has made it quite hard for Non-VIP/Premium players to make unbound-currency within the game. Oh, and they've made the game more pay-to-win in plenty of ways, such as making it possible for you to directly purchase in-game unbound currency with real-world money, with a conversion of $3 per 100 liang.

Needless to say, the game is still "pay to win." If you've got money, you're going to have an easy time of things. If you don't, you'll have to scrounge up $9 for the monthly VIP fee in order to even have a chance of keeping up. But, other than those problems, the game is still a ton of fun. I think a major reason I love this game is because of my love for this type of fiction. 2008's Legend of the Condor Heroes is still one of my all-time favorite TV shows. I love The Breaker and The Breaker: New Waves - which are set in the modern Korean version of the fictional Chinese Jianghu/Wuxia. I eat this stuff up constantly, and that contribued a lot to my love for Age of Wushu.


Anyways, that's enough for now. Over the next few days I plan to post more on my time in Age of Wushu on this blog. My next post will be about my time in the Shen Family Golden Needle sect faction. After that I'll probably post about my plans for the future within Wushu. Thanks for reading!

Saturday, January 25, 2014

The Secret World, Robocraft, and Shores of Hazeron + Article update

During the month of January I've spent a majority of my time playing Shores of Hazeron. This was because of the Galaxy Wipe that happened on the 4th, which cleared the playing field and let everyone start off on an equal footing. Of course, the veterans got off to a better start than most, as they know the ins-and-outs of the game, and some large communities (such as the Goons from SomethingAweful) have set up shop, making things a bit difficult. But, my friends and I have managed to get off to a decent start and we've set up Amitabha Industries, currently 20th in the Empire Rankings.





I re-used my Amitabha EVE Corp logo as our Empire flag. 

The first few days were a bit rough, mostly because we came into contact with the two biggest "bullies" in the game. One of which is GET OUT, the Goon/SomethingAweful empire. After that rough start, we've managed to get ourselves settled in a nice corner of space and have been doing pretty well for ourselves. We're about two days away from getting warp tech, and have made some nice friends near our sectors of space. We've also conquered a couple of smaller empires. All-in-all, we've been having fun this time around and it's nice that we're getting to start off with equal footing than others, as last time we played the Galaxy had already been going for a year+ and the "Super powers" were already firmly established and it was play there way or don't play at all, which wasn't very fun.


I've recently gotten back into The Secret World, as well. When I originally started playing, I only played while my friend played so I was able to focus being a more support-type character. This was great as a duo, but now that I'm playing mostly solo, it's not very fun. So, I've decided to switch my focus to Chaos and Fist weapons for now, and will spread out later on. I am playing with some guys from the OnRPG Community, though. TSW is a fanastic game, and it's true potential doesn't come out until you have a friend or two to play it with over a voice-chat program like skype or TS.


Wish I had a better TSW screenshot to show you. I can't find where I saved them though :(


Playing The Secret World again has reminded me just how amazing the game is. It's honestly the best PVE-focused experience I've ever played. The quests are fun, the voice-acting is spot-on, and the atmosphere in the game will completely consume you while you're playing. I just can't think of another MMO that can compare. No other MMO combines story-telling, puzzle-solving, mystery, and fantasy/sci-fi so well. It's one of those games that I would recommend anyone buy and play.


Another neat game I've come into contact with recently, thanks to the OnRPG Community, is Robocraft. It's a spectacular game with a simple concept that allows for an infinite number of possibilities (kinda). Basically, using blocks, you design and build your own robo-death machine and go at it in team versus team matches with other players who have created their own machines. The game is still fairly early in development, yet is great fun (and free to play!), and I suggest you try it out. The download isn't large, and it's a ton of fun when you've got a quick 10-15 minutes.


Here I'm testing out a new flying design against a ground-based AI unit. My design was a complete failure as it would easily flip over.
 
 
 
Last up is some article updates.  I've been pretty busy this month. I started the year off with a Predictions article for 2014. After that, I did a re-review of Requiem. Then I got a chance to get an Early Look at War Thunder's Group Forces update. I also took an early look at Yulgang 2, a point-and-click and action MMORPG hybrid set in the universe of a popular Korean Manhwa. I've got got admit that playing Divinity: Original Sin was the highlight of my month, though. It's a spectacular game, even at this early stage of development , with a lot of potential. I've also done a Q&A with the Senior Produce of Dragon's Prophet at SOE, on their up-coming major update to the game, and that should be available on OnRPG closer to the end of the month.