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.

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!

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.

Wurm Online & Dragon's Prophet

I knew this would eventually happen, and I've mentioned it in past posts. I've gotten a bit bored of Dragon's Prophet. Not because the game is bad, not at all. The game is fantastic and I still log on daily to work on my dragons. It's just that I've been reduced to repeating Public Events each day to level up because there's no quests. It's quite annoying and almost ruins the game for me. I still log on whenever there's events, and I try to log on enough to set up my dragon processes and let the guild know I still exist.

Other than that, I've been playing Wurm Online lately. I started with Xycrone and Nargato and we've been having a bit of fun. It's been going a bit slow, but that's to be expected as it's Wurm. I'm not sure if they'll stick with the game, they seem to like it though. We're part of a village called Minowick at the moment, but we went off on our own so I could introduce them to the game more easily. I'm not sure if we'll continue to live off on our own or just stick with Minowick. The cool thing about Wurm is that there's so many options.

Soon, Wurm should have bridges. Not sure if that will affect me, but it seems quite cool. I'm kind of torn between wanting to start my own village, or just sitting back and being apart of one. The issue is I have my own ideas of what I think would be cool or interesting, so it makes it hard to sit back and follow the plans of someone else. On the other hand, I don't feel like dealing with the stress of running a deed on Epic, I've done it once already and it was annoying to say the least. And it's not because of raiders or anything, it's dealing with neighbors and villagers that gets annoying, as there always seems to be an never ending source of drama.


Other than Wurm and Dragon's Prophet, I've been playing a lot of Gotham City Imposters, World of Warplanes (review link) and World of Tanks. That's about all I have for this update.

Still Playing Dragon's Prophet

So I've been playing Dragon's Prophet for about two weeks now. I've been putting in 4-6 hours a day. Sometimes more, sometimes less. So far, things have been going great and I haven't gotten bored of the game at all. I'm truly surprised at this. I figured by now I'd be long gone and looking for a new game. Mostly because I really hate quest grinding.

As I've said in the past, I'm guessing it's the housing, the dragons, and now the guild features that are keeping me hooked. It's taken quite a while, but I'm finally able to say that the $40 Dragon Pack I bought for the game months and months ago was worth the money! So far, I've spent about $100 on the game (including the $40 for the Dragon Pack so long ago), and I haven't regretted a dime of it. About $30 of that $100 is going towards helping out guildies and buying a $15 SC card for a contest I'm holding for my guild.

So far I've reached level 48. I would be higher,but as with the past couple of days, I got a bit distracted with other things in the game and didn't get a chance to level. Tonight I went dragon hunting, trying to find dragons with great abilities that I can transfer over to my Chaotic Terror ancient dragon that I got from the Halloween event. So far I've given him Tough Hide, which will give him a nice boost to his defense stats once it's leveled up all the way, but now I'm trying to find nice healing abilities for him. I found one, but I'm going to keep searching just in case I can find something better.

Amitabha should reach level 4 tomorrow, which is nice. We're picking up the pace in leveling as we get more active members. I'm hoping to keep the guild a bit small, as I don't want to be a random zerg. However, we're also doing our best to accept newbies  to give them a hand. Introducing people to this game is a blast, just as much fun as it was in Age of Wushu. Both games are a lot more deep and complex than they initially seem, so there's a lot to learn and I feel like I've only just scratched the surface myself.

Since we reached guild level 3 and unlocked the flute gathering process for our dragons, we've been having a blast trying to get something good. Setting up 6 5-hour flute gathering processes and then getting on the next day to see if you got anything good is great, but nothing beats the excitement of seeing what you summon when actually using a good flute. We've been gathering in our Sanctuary whenever one of us has flutes to open, so it's become a pretty big deal within our guild which makes it all the more exciting. So far we've got one ancient out of all of us, but then again we've only had the ability to gather the flutes for two days.

That's it for now. I'll continue to update the blog with what I'm up too in Dragon's Prophet up until I get bored of and quit the game. And even after that I'll continue to update the blog still. I should be making an OnRPG update on what I'm reviewing/have reviewed in the next couple of days. So far this month it's been nothing but browser games, none of which haven't kept be interested enough to stick with them for long. Anyways, thanks for reading.

Dragon's Prophet

Lately I've been playing a game called Dragon's Prophet. I've covered it a few times in the past, doing a couple of press previews and writing a "First Look" article. I've got to say I've always been fascinated with the concept with the game, ever since I first heard of it. I even purchased a $40 Dragon Pack in anticipation of the great dragon-backed adventures I would have.

My first introductions to the game was through the Taiwanese version. Plenty of times in the past I've played the foreign versions of games before their North American release to get idea of what they were like. I've done it with ArcheAge, Swordsman Online, Age of Wushu, and many others. So, I did the same with Dragon's Prophet and I have to admit I had a lot of fun playing this early version of the game. There were some bugs, of course, and some things I wasn't a big fan of. But I did enjoy it.

When it came time for the press previews, things seemed to be going well. I noticed that some things had been improved since my time in the Taiwan closed beta version of the game. I was still excited. Unfortunately, by time the closed and open betas came around, which was when I wrote my First Look, things were looking grim. Promised features were months and months away from being implemented, the starting areas of the game felt way too cramped for a game that focused on riding on the back of dragons (often flying). And overall it just felt like another quest grinder that wouldn't amount to anything, but I still optimistic and decided I would just forget about the game for a bit and then come back at a later time.

Well, almost two weeks ago I decided it was time to come back to the game. Or should I say, I logged into Team Speak to find that several of my guildmates had downloaded the game and I decided to join in on the fun. The first two days were great, we had a blast and it seemed like a great game. Unfortunately, after that we found out (via a friend of mine that is a vet of the game) that Dragon's Prophet was a bit "pay to win." This put a damper on our moods, and in the end resulted in two of us quitting. However, two of us decided to remain and we've been having a blast.

We know we probably wont be so optimistic later on down the line, but for now we're having fun capturing dragons, completing epic boss battles, and seeing how far we can get before the "Pay to win" aspect ruins it for us. Neither of us are afraid to put a bit of money into the game, so we've unlocked dragon slots, extra inventory/bank space and some other convenience features.  We've both bought houses and have found that we quite enjoy the housing system available in the game.

So, lately this is what I've been playing. I'll write a few more in-depth posts over the next week or so, probably include a lot of screenshots as well. Till then, see ya later!

Dark Age of Camelot and Champions of Regnum

Lately I've been playing Dark Age of Camelot (DAOC) and Champions of Regnum with a friend. They've been playingd DAOC off and on over the years, so they've been introducing me to the game. Oddly enough, I was immediately hooked on the game because of two reasons. One reason, and probably the biggest factor, is the PVP-centric gameplay. I've always enjoyed PVP, and I tend to find games that center around it a lot more fun.

The second reason I've been enjoying DAOC is the large selection of classes. Most games nowadays are consider diverse if they offer six classes. DAOC offers a lot more than that, and most are pretty unique. So far I've made a Runemaster, a Bonedancer and a Vampiir. Playing DAOC has made me realize that it's not just the Nostalgia that makes me love old games and keep coming back to them, it's the diversity of their classes and gameplay.

 Trying to figure out how AOEs work...

For example, Istaria, another old game that I played for several months back in 2010-11, there are a lot of unique and interesting races and classes to play. You can be anything from a fairy to a half-giant. The classes available are pretty numerous compared to most games, too. Because of this, there are ton of options in play-style. There's also player housing, something that is slowly becoming the norm for MMOs again (Thankfully). The numerous race choices (that include dragons that can fly, which is why I liked the game so much :P)

Another old game I liked a lot because of its classes were pre-NGE Star Wars Galaxies. The game didn't make you choose a class when you played, instead you would just do things, get exp and then buy skills from trainers. It was great because people could basically create their own classes that fit their play-style, or just follow the various skill trees til they hit master in it. Age of Wushu was also a great game due to how free-form it's classes worked - you started with no class and then could learn any skill in the game, from any school. It was great and I wish more games were like this.

Just to be complete, I'll mention other games with similarly diverse skill or classes system. Darkfall (Original and, to a lesser extent, Darkfall Unholy Wars), Mortal Online, and Wurm Online. I made a thread and people brought up their own favorite games with a lot of classes. Ragnarok Online was the one that was brought up the most. Feel free to post your suggestions/favorite games with a lot of classes.


As the title says, another game I've been playing the past week or so is Champions of Regnum. I've been playing this casually, so I only have a level 26 Barbarian. I've participated in a bit of PVP, but all I've been able to accomplish at this level is a couple of stuns and a lot of dying. I made a new character, a mage, to level up with the same friend I was playing DAOC with, but so far we haven't played to much.

The appeal Regnum has for me is the RvRvR-centric gameplay, along with the pretty neat class system. Honestly, there aren't many choices, but I'm a fan of the divergent path system. That is, you start as a fairly generic character and then later on advance into something else. For example, my Barbarian started as a warrior and could have gone the path of a Knight but I chose Barbarian instead. I plan to take my mage down the path of a conjurer so it can support others in combat. I like having choices in a game, and choosing which path your character will take is a pretty nice one to have, I think.


Anyways, that's it for now. I've done five articles for OnRPG this month. One of which is a review on the recently released Path of Exile. Feel free to check it out and leave a comment to let me know what you think of the game, or the review itself. Thanks for reading.