Wildstar: First Impressions

Carbine Studios lifted the NDA for Wildstar some days ago, so I can finally share my impressions about this game. This also includes screenshots with watermarks, so this is what you’ll see here. I have tried to include new ones which I took after they removed the watermarks, because the watermark is indeed very ugly. ;) But in quite a few of the screenshots (see the gallery at the end of this post), you can see the watermarks showing a number or my name. I’m sorry about that. Just ignore them! They’re also not of any special quality, etc. since the watermark made them looking good obsolete and I didn’t think I would get to actually show them to others. ;)

First things first, I would have loved to dedicate much more time to this game, but I couldn’t for various reasons. Also, a standard disclaimer: This is not a review and this is not going to be objective! It is about my “first impressions” of the game.

The TL;DR version is as follows: I really like the game. The music is awesome. The world is full of humour that made me smile and chuckle several times. The housing looks solid and like something I could be interested in for a long time. But, it comes with a monthly sub and since my RL job just gave me a great opportunity, I won’t have the time to be playing Guild Wars 2, Rift and Wildstar and thus, the one that costs the most is the one I won’t be playing.

Now for the longer version. When I first got into the closed beta, I actually wasn’t too enthusiastic about it. I had seen the videos that Carbine had published and had really liked the humour. I had read a bit about the game and while it looked “cute” (as in: comics graphics) and I loved the humour, it still did not seem like a game I would want to play on a regular basis. The longer I played in the beta, the more that changed. Now, when I say “the longer I played”, I do not mean that I got to any high levels. If you know how I play my MMOs, you know that I can spend hours online without gaining a single XP point. This is just how I am. So no, my characters did not get far and you need to keep this in mind, because while I think I can write down my impressions, they are, of course, limited to the bits I have seen.

The character creation was quite solid, but also mildly disappointing. While there are lots of options for your chin, nose, eyes, etc. there is no option to change your body height or size. If you are interested in Wildstar, you have probably read about that point before. It even led to Carbine reducing the breast size of the female characters, but they still all have an hourglass figure. And don’t worry, the breasts can still be seen without applying a magnifying glass! ;) I don’t mind the female body shapes per se, but I do mind not having a choice. This choice could be either being able to change the body shape a bit or having alternative races which feature a different body shape. In Wildstar’s case, this means Chua or male characters, as all the female characters have the hourglass figure.

Before I started playing, I had a look at the available races and while I prefered the story of the Exiles, I thought I’d actually want to play a Chua. The Chua are a “genderless race“, whatever that means. I had imagined it to mean that they are like asura (more in Guild Wars 1 than Guild Wars 2) where neither the “typical male” or “typical female” stereotypes apply (you know, breasts, beards, that sort of thing…). But apparently, Carbine meant “Lord of the Rings dwarves” where all Chua look more male than female (still no breasts, but lots of beards). I love the first, but not the latter. So, while I still liked the look of the Chua I created, I can’t think of him as being female.

My personal favourites are the Mordesh. They remind me a bit of the Undead from World of Warcraft or the Xadaganians from Allods Online. Unfortunately, while I like the Mordesh, I chose mine to be an engineer and I did not like that class. But more about this later.

One big thing was the housing. I only got to try it out during an earlier beta phase. I’m not going to get into any details here, because they made some changes and the points I would have criticized aren’t there anymore. Housing looks solid now and if you’re into this kind of thing, I’m pretty sure you will have fun! One great thing is that you do not just have a plot and place a house on there. You can get something out of it like buffs or rested XP. If you still prefer checking out housing before you buy the game for its housing, you can already find several videos (for example, here and here).

What I did not enjoy much was the questing and the combat. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s great that this game also requires you to move and dodge. But the telegraph system always made me try to position myself according to the pixel bars in front of my character and I did not really pay attention to any of the combat animations. I only paid attention to where the bars on the floor were facing. Part of that was also because I did not like the engineer class much. I would have imagined it to be a very agile and mobile class, but compared to others I had tried, it seemed sluggish. I tried out the medic and enjoyed that one a lot more. The medic can both be a healer or a DPS class. It depends on which skills you are using, which stats you’re wearing with your equipment and so on. I liked the skills system, by the way. It reminded me a bit of Guild Wars 1 where you unlocked skills and then chose which ones you take with you to combat. The higher in level you get, the more skills you’re allowed to take with you to combat up to a total of 8 skills.

If you’re worried about playing with others in crowded starting areas when the game releases: It now features open tagging. So you can attack a mob that somebody else is already attacking. There is no need to be in a party with them, you will get your experience points, your loot and can even advance in your quest if the mob belonged to one. Speaking of quests, some are pretty standard “kill those mobs over there!”, but some are actually fun and entertaining. I think in general, it’s a nice mix. At least in the lower level regions.

As I mentioned above, I still did not like the quests too much. Instead of stating how many mobs you have to kill, you get a bar that fills up. It may sound like the same, but it’s actually different. A weaker mob does not let you progress as much as killing a stronger mob. So while similar, it still allows for a bit more freedom in choosing which mobs to hunt. What I did not like was the map design and with that, the lack of being able to navigate around easily. I was constantly trying to figure out where to go for each quest (yes, even after reading the quest text!). This was not as bad when I had just accepted two quests and did them. But after going out to explore the region, accepting a few quests here and there and then taking a break of a few days, I found it difficult to get back into the quests.

Another area where I think the game wins is the world design and possible exploration. I also loved all the weird animals. My personal favourite here is the “Jabbit”. As I just wrote, I did go on to explore the maps a bit and the things I found were quite often beautiful and in a few cases, surprising and made me laugh. I will not go into details, because I do not want to put spoilers in here with the exception of the video below. This is a challenge. A challenge is usually something time-limited. Up until that point, I had only had kill challenges. This one is different, though. It does not only show the quirky world, it also is a great example of how the music just fits perfectly to your environment.

The soundtrack in general is amazing. I do hope they will make it available for purchase somehow, because I would love to get my hands on it. As an example and to hear something less silly then the song in the challenge video above, you can listen to the character creation theme here.

In general, I’ve enjoyed my time in the beta, even though it was brief and I was lacking time (and sometimes, motivation). My main caveat is the character design as I would have loved to get more options and not knowing what awaits us at the endgame stage. We do know there will be raids, but I am not a raider. So the question is, how many other things will be available, how much fun it is, etc. At least, the game has lots of “fluff content” as I like to call things like housing and cosmetic items for your character to wear.

But with my lack of free time and two MMOs I’m already playing, this isn’t a question for me. As I said, it wouldn’t make any sense for me to play a game with a monthly fee. So, is this Wildstar’s fault? Only as far as the monthly sub requirement goes. The game itself, however, seems solid to me and I had a good time in the game.

Character screen

I like the lore books you can find in the world.

Mordesh engineer on the login screen

The “most female-looking” Chua I could create

Chua and options for facial hair

Jabbit!

My male Draken in a cut scene

Linya in a taxi. This is your “fast travel” system.

Linya in a taxi. This is your “fast travel” system.

The zone’s map with fog of war

Nope, no way you can miss your level up.

Settler path. My favourite of the 4 available paths.

Skill builder window

First Impressions: Folk Tale (Alpha Version)

Folk Tale is currently on Steam’s Early Access and it is an alpha version! Keep this in mind when reading my post about the game.

I had first heard about Folk Tale when I had tried out Steam’s Greenlight for the first time and I was very happy to see it Greenlit. It had instantly reminded me of Cultures. Cultures was one of the first or maybe even the first PC game I bought. So naturally, there is a lot of nostalgia involved, but it’s not just that. I really like this genre where you are building your village (it’s not a city, really) and all your little inhabitants have names and you can direct them somewhere individually. It’s a bit like The Sims married The Settlers. ;)

I think Gamesfoundry explain their game a lot better in their latest video. They also include what they want to add for the release version, which is why I’m embedding it here.

What impresses me about the developers, Gamesfoundry, is that they are a from various different countries collaborating together. And they’re either all watching their social networks or have somebody awake 24/7 as they did reply to questions quite fast and regularly both on Facebook and Steam. This is what I usually like about independent or smaller developers in general. You can get “in touch” with them much more easily and it feels like they listen to your feedback. They may not agree with you and that’s fine, but at least, they listen. ;)

I’d eagerly awaited the game’s “release” on Early Access ever since they announced it. For those who don’t know what it is: Steam lets you publish your game on Early Access which means that potential costumers buy the game and get it “as it currently is”. In this case, it means that Folk Tale is still in alpha state. When you buy it, you get it for a discounted price ($19.99/16.99€) compared to the retail price later on. But you will have to live with the non-finished version in the beginning. Gamesfoundry already said that we will get updates in between now and the finished version and of course, by buying the Early Access version, you will get the release version without having to pay again! So, as an Early Access-customer, you will get to see, step by step, how the product gets closer to release. What you cannot expect, however, is to pay money and get a finished and polished product immediately, as this is not what Early Access is about. I much prefer that over the pre-purchase options that games have been doing more and more often lately (like Guild Wars 2, for example). In both cases, you pay money upfront, but with Early Access, you get something to play with already!

Having said that, it should be pretty clear that my impressions are not based on a product that will “ship” like this. Folk Tale currently offers you the tutorial and even within the tutorial, there are things that are probably not polished yet. They are working on adding the sandbox part of the game next. Missions and multiplayer will follow later on.

Gamesfoundry said that the tutorial, if you play through it perfectly, will take you about 1 to 2 hours to complete. I am never a person who runs through something like a horse with blinders. It took me five hours to get through the tutorial. There is currently no save option which means I decided to start over again at two points. That, however, is not a complaint. I’ve liked my first playthrough, but all my militia ended up dead, so I thought it was best to just start over again and do things a bit differently (like not sending one single guy into a pack of werewolves). But let’s start at the beginning.

First of all, the game has been very stable for me. The client did not crash, I did not get any black screens and so on. That is a big plus in my book! I know that a few people reported problems on the forums (mostly related with cut scenes, I would say) and the developers are on it. You can zoom in and out with your camera, move around the map with WASD, arrow keys or the mouse. Moving around worked fast and without any stuttering on my PC.

The game itself starts off with a cut scene. The poor squid! I loved the voice-acting and the game itself has a silly kind of humor which doesn’t take its setting too seriously. So it’s certainly not an accurate depiction of a medieval time – but who would expect that given that it features goblins, dwarven ghosts as well as magicians? ;)

You’ve got an advisor who gives you quests and tells you what to do. I liked that the advisor can be seen in the game itself and he’s actually walking to the “scenes of action”. When you’re asked to build a wheat field, he’s standing next to it watching its progress. You do not need to assign builders. Just click on “build a wheat farm” and peasants without a profession will arrive and build it. Once a building is finished, click on a peasant, then click on a building which will give that peasant the appropriate profession and he will start working there. I say “he”, as right now, only male peasants can take on jobs (with the exception of tavern keepers which is reserved for the female population only). I was a bit disappointed to see that: this is a fantasy setting, after all, and not a medieval one, so there is no reason at all not to let women take on all professions! However, it’s just because the art is not finished yet. Women and men will be able to take on each and every profession! So yay for that.

There I was, floating around and watching my advisor watch my peasants work and I decided to have a look at my little village. It already came with cottages, a store house and a tavern. Then there were placement slots for new buildings. As said in the video above, those will very likely disappear in the future and I’m all for that. Having certain placement slots makes games like this too limited, if you ask me.

Unfortunately, once your advisor has explained something, it won’t appear again. Or at least, I couldn’t find a way to get the tutorial text to show up again. I would definitely love that as I had looked away from the screen and missed the section about capturing resources. Additionally, I had put one of my villagers close to a resource and then watched in awe how a flag near the resource slowly disappeared in the ground and how another flag moved up the flag pole. Silly me didn’t realize this was my village’s flag and my villager doing the capturing. Cause and effect are tricky to understand sometimes. ;) Not long after that, I built a mine next to the iron resource. Not long after you have done that, some kobolds appear and your villagers have to kill them. Again, I had not paid attention – I really shouldn’t talk with my boyfriend, bookahnerk, while playing a tutorial that doesn’t have a save option yet – and had again missed the capturing of a resource and the appearance and killing of those NPCs. Oh well. I did eventually figure it out and that’s what counts, right? ;)

Then finally, we got to the combat action. Although when I say “finally”, I should probably say “unfortunately” as not only do I prefer peaceful settling, I also did get my behind handed to me on my first try. The tutorial said “one or more militia”, so I thought I would start with the careful option of just one militia, in case I needed peasants for something else. This poor guy did not stand a chance against the werewolves! The kobolds were no problem, though. I ran in, killed one, ran out, the kobolds followed and then reset after a while, running back to their spot. Then I waited until my militia had regained his health and sent him in again to fight the remaining kobolds. The werewolves, on the other hand, were much stronger. I think I had recruited a second or even a third militia at that point. The poor guys went in, fought against three werewolves and then I had them run out again, waiting for the werewolves to reset. But they’re definitely fiercer: They ran after them right into my village. I already saw my peasants hide in fear, but nope. They killed the militia and then peacefully walked out of the village again. Yeah, they’re beasts, but at least, they’re not completely inhuman by killing innocent bystanders. ;)

I looked all over the village and here’s my biggest problem with the game as it is right now: There are no statistics. You cannot find out where your peasants are, how many you have, etc. In fact, there is no statistic about any of your professions or buildings. I’m a fan of those. The more, the better! Give me my tables, overviews, diagrams, pleeease! I eventually looked in the tavern and sure enough, there was a lonely guy drinking mead. Lazy bum. But I would have needed much more than just one guy to get the werewolves down. As it had gotten rather late, though, I quit the game and decided I would start over the next day. On the forums, people reported that they would love to be able to find peasants much faster. Or militia that they have lost somewhere on the map. The reply from the developers is that they are working on this, so once again, I’m not worried. Did I already mention it’s in an alpha state? ;)

On my second try, I quit after a few minutes. I had placed a building at the wrong spot and you cannot delete them at the moment. (Edit: You can actually delete buildings by selecting them and pressing “del” on your keyboard.) Oh well, it had only been 3 minutes or something like that, so no big deal. The third try went much better and smoother. I knew my way around and hey, I even figured out that the loot you get from killed enemies included equipment like axes, helmets and so on that your militia can wear. Additionally, I also found a lonely knight standing near three ogres that apparently belonged to me. He died before I got to the end boss, though. By the way, your soldiers can level up. If they do, they gain full health again, which saved my militia on numerous occasions. The magician I got at some point during the story and the militia I had recruited after the first few had died (again) finally managed to kill the “end boss” of the tutorial. Once again, brilliant cut scenes. I hadn’t expected those from an independent developer. They set the atmosphere of the game and it’s just fun watching them.

I also like the sounds and background music. I think the goblins, werewolves and your villagers have different theme songs. I didn’t pay too much attention, but it seemed like the songs changed with the different races/areas on the screen.

All in all, the game is a fun mix of a city-builder and RPG/adventure game. It is clearly in an unfinished state. Playable, stable, fun, but currently missing key features, UI elements and so on. If they had done a kickstarter campaign, I would have backed them. But if they had done Kickstarter instead of Early Access on Steam, I would have missed out on five hours of fun! So in short, I do not regret spending that money at all! I’ve had fun and enjoyed the short time it took me to play through the tutorial. It’s nice to see that it wasn’t too easy, but involved a learning curve.

Do I recommend it to others? That depends. If you know this is a kind of game that you love, and you don’t mind – or even love – playing an alpha version, seeing the game grow and develop over time, then yes, definitely! Go get it! If you’re unsure about any of these, then watch it at Steam (or on their own website – they also have newsletters) and follow its development from the outside.

The 10/10 project: Wurm Online (Day 7)

Game number 7 for the 10/10 Project was Wurm Online. Even though the game officially released on December 12, 2012, this is not a new game at all. According to its wiki article, development began back in 2003 and people could start playing it in 2006. Notch, the maker of Minecraft, was also one of the developers of Wurm Online.

I had tried out the game at some point last year, but that hardly counts as I had to quit after maybe 5 minutes or so due to simulation sickness caused by the game being in first person view. In the meantime, I have learned that I can deal with it better if I make sure that there’s enough light in front of the PC, but the biggest help is to put mouse sensitivity as low as possible. In Wurm Online, it’s not just a slider in the options, though. You need to open the console (via the F1 key) and then enter “sensitivity 2″. Well, you can use any number between 0 (nothing happens when you try to move the camera with your mouse, though) and 10. 1 was too slow for me, but 2 worked perfectly. With that done, playing was no issue at all.

Installing the game, on the other hand, was a bit of an issue. It somehow got uninstalled after installing it the first time. I have no idea what I did (and I usually do know that, even if I may come across as clueless sometimes ^^), but the installation folder was empty. Gone. So I reinstalled, but the game couldn’t be launched. Then I deleted the folder and used a different one to install the game again. That finally worked.

Was the game worth all the hassle and the risk of feeling sick again? Yes, yes it was! Wurm Online did not feel like a game, but more like an adventure and I loved every minute of it.

You start the game with a few basic items like a pickaxe and then you’re thrown into a foreign world – okay, not that fast. You start with a tutorial that teaches you the basics. Seeing how this game is a bit more complicated than your average MMO, the tutorial was rather long with lots of text to read. Most of the items in the game are crafted. The buildings are all built by players. You get basics like clay, cotton, water, but the rest is up to you and the rest of the players. You cannot just go somewhere and buy a pottery flask to carry water with you. First, you need to find clay, then you make a clay flask, then you need to find a stove, oven or campfire (which were made by other players or made by you) and turn the clay flask into a pottery flask. On top of that, you need to be careful where you go as there are hostile mobs around. The Wurm Online Wiki will be your best friend, especially in the very beginning.

But let’s get right into my adventure. Here I was, just freshly finished with the tutorial. I decided to join a non-PvP server. Hey, I have trouble understanding the basics of the game, the last thing I need is having to deal with hostile players on top of that! Independence it was, then. It sounded like a nice enough name for a server. Apparently, you can travel to other servers and play on there, but I haven’t tried that out.

Guides for starting out in Wurm Online said that I should try to find an empty space where I could settle. Let me spoiler you already: I did not find anything. ;) Independence was built on by other players as far as I could see. So I tried to just find a corner where I could start crafting or do something. Food and water aren’t needed to survive per se as you won’t die without them, but it’ll still give you serious disadvantages if you’re starving or getting really thirsty. Food wasn’t the problem, since you can always forage or botanize grass. This resulted in several kinds of berries that I could eat. I decided to stay close to the water to drink whenever I got thirsty. Since a pottery flask allows you to store water, I tried to make one. The first step, as mentioned above, is to find clay, which I did, lucky me! ;) Then I needed wood for a campfire or find an oven I could use, but the trees all belonged to other players and I wasn’t allowed to use any of the ovens I saw. If something belongs to you, you can choose whether others can use it or not and it seemed like nobody allowed strangers to use their stuff.

For the most part, there were no mobs around. So I felt safe – until I ran right into some wolves. I kept on running, hoping to get away from them which I eventually did – only to run right into an old angry troll. The result was a few wounds, nothing big. I tried to figure out how to heal myself, though. While doing that, I also remembered that the tutorial said something about water and that most animals/enemies won’t follow you into the water. I guess I should have tried that instead of running from the wolves right into the troll. After asking for advice on Google+, I was told that I should try to treat the wounds as they would get worse over time if they’re bad enough. I had been told about that in the tutorial as well, but of course, I had forgotten about that. After checking, I could confirm that one of my wounds was a lot worse than it was in the beginning and had turned into a severe one. At that point, I only tried to find a cure as I knew it wouldn’t heal and it kept taking away life from me. Again, the Wiki is your best friend in a situation like this and it told me what I needed for some healing covers. I finally found some items I needed by foraging grass. Unfortunately, the first try failed. I managed to use healing covers on one wound when I tried again, but as I wrote, the second one had gotten severe already. The others were at medium, one light wound had healed. I decided that staying in the open hostile world was too dangerous and I had read somewhere that there are usually resources near the starting area where you spawn after the tutorial. I figured this would be the safest place for now. Besides, healing covers are nice, but the ones I had weren’t strong enough to heal the wound and it meant that without treatment, I would die soon.

Finding your way around in Wurm Online isn’t too easy either. There are no maps in this game! I had a compass which didn’t help me much as I hadn’t been paying attention to it earlier. I looked for online maps and found one. The maps you find online are all maintained by players, by the way. I knew the general direction I had to walk to then to get back to the starter area, so off I went. I did not run into the first pack of wolves anymore, but instead, I found another one. Hurrah. With less life thanks to the wounds, I did not want to risk running into them. I remembered that water was probably safe and decided to swim around them. You can swim, but only for a limited amount of time. The longer you swim, the lower your stamina (which equals your “life”) gets. If your stamina is at 0 and you’re still in the water, you will drown. Unfortunately, the more wounds you have, the lower your stamina. I misjudged the amount of stamina it would take to swim by and the result was that I chose death by drowning over death by wolves – and over death by my severe wound. It was a slow, rather embarrassing end. Luckily, I was revived at the starting area. Unfortunately, I had lost quite a few of my starting items (including the compass) that are or were still in my body. I tried to find the location of my body on the online map, but the place that I had memorized was not mentioned there. I only know vaguely where I died. Oh well, c’est la vie. ;) That’s when I decided to ignore it and start fresh.

My second attempt had me going the other way trying to find some resources and I avoided all wolves and trolls this time. There was a starter village or whatever it is, which is player-made as well, I assume, but at least, there was a public mine and there was even an oven that you’re allowed to use. A lot more welcoming! Sadly, I did not have the clay with me anymore and I couldn’t find any. Ironic, isn’t it? And there was still the issue of not being able to find an empty space to call my own and settle. That’s when I decided to end my trip to Wurm Online.

All in all, I haven’t been able to build anything in the game apart from a clay flask and healing covers. I did manage to raise a few of my skills like botanizing and foraging, but nothing else. And yet, I’ve had a lot of fun! I don’t know what the game is like when you’re playing for a longer time, but the hours that I did spend in the game were great and I enjoyed it. I always felt terribly lost, the Wurm Online Wiki was open all the time and used heavily. Still, it was a welcome change to the usual MMOs and I actually like digging into something like that. Not being able to just buy everything at vendors but having to rely on the player economy and crafting is something that I really love and I always hope that the “more mainstream” MMOs adopt this feature as well.

The 10/10 project: Age of Wushu (Day 6)

The 6th game for the 10/10 project was Age of Wushu. This game released on April 10, 2013, with its US publisher Snail Games. It’s been released in China last year. European publish gPotato will probably follow later this year, in case you are waiting for a German or French version – or for a lower ping. The game is called Age of Wulin in the European version.

The gold spam was quite annoying…

Just like Dark of Age Camelot, Age of Wushu also gave me a bit of trouble when it came to my mouse. It simply refused to accept the mouse clicks for the camera view/rotation. I could move while  using the arrow keys to let me change the camera view to look left and right (and move left and right), but that was still too inconvenient, especially as my right hand is on WASD and can’t switch to the arrow keys easily. ;) After having problems with my mouse before, I came prepared this time and had a symmetric mouse ready. This setup worked perfectly.

The customization options for my character were disappointing. I am not talking about how all the settings always make your character look Asian, no matter what you do. This game is set in China, so what do you expect? I did see people complain about that, though, so I thought I should mention that this is not the case here. But there were just very few hair styles, no body options, etc. If you’re into heavy customization and if you really want to look different from the other characters, be prepared that Age of Wushu does not give you this possibility. At least not in the character creation menu. It may be possible by adding costumes.

Age of Wushu is an open pvp game. This means that you can attack and kill every other player in the game. Before you set foot into the game world, you are warned about that fact and need to click on OK to enter the game. So no complaining afterwards, you were warned! I personally do not like open world PvP at all, but I still wanted to have a look at the game. For the whole time I’ve been in the game (a few hours on three different days), I haven’t been attacked once. The system they set up seems to be a good one that discourages mindlessly ganking others… or maybe attacking others just wasn’t possible in the extreme newbie area.

What I absolutely loved about the game were the graphics. The scenery around you is very pretty. I started out in a town (I’m not sure if every character starts in the same place, as you choose a background story in the beginning and this may change where you start). For the first few hours in the game, I have only killed 4 animals to get food for a quest. Other than that, it was combat practice (this is a martial arts game and you start as a beginner) and getting the game explained.

You can gain experience while being offline.

When you go offline, lots of things can happen. As is usual for games nowadays, there is a wiki about the game and it explains what happens when you go offline. This includes your character working as an NPC and when you log on again, you receive the money the character has earned in the meantime. There are also disadvantages: For example, your character that appears as an NPC when you’re offline can be kidnapped by other players. Anything you would have earned normally while being offline gets lost for you. No money for jobs your character did, for example. This is both exciting and annoying for me. While it certainly makes the world feel more alive and immersive (possibly with the exception of characters with horrible names), I also don’t like having something taken away from me without me being able to do anything against it, apart from being online 24/7 which probably wouldn’t work too well either. ;)

What I liked was when I walked into an NPC, they turned around and told me off for being rude. That’s a nice little touch there.

Joining the Wudang

The combat system is something I have not been able to look at too closely in the time I spent in the game. Most of my time was spent reading, looking around, trying to figure out where I am and what I’m doing. You start with your character that doesn’t have a certain class. There are eight schools in the game and it doesn’t take long until the tutorial asks you to join one. I joined Wudang. I chose this school because in the description, it said something about defensive skills and the ability to survive. What I wondered was whether that means that all Wudang characters are basically more “tanky” characters than those of other schools and if that meant that I basically choose a “class” by choosing a school. At this point, the game and its tutorial don’t do a good job in explaining it.

Your character does not have a level per se. Instead, you level up your skills by cultivating and here, team practice is apparently the best way to go. You do that with other players. I haven’t done it myself, so I don’t know what it’s like, but I watched a friend and it didn’t seem difficult to do. Just seemed a bit boring while he was waiting for everybody to be ready and start. Using internal cultivation is only good for as long as you are logged in as it gets paused when you log off, unless you are VIP by buying a monthly sub in which case internal cultivation continues after logging off. Internal cultivation starts out fast, but it goes up to several hours for each skill pretty fast. If it only works while you’re logged in, it’s just not too efficient.

I did get to fight a bit in the tutorial quests as there were teachers that showed me certain moves. The game features active blocking, for example. Another fun thing is that you get flying skills. The combat felt alright. But again, I was a bit confused about where and how to choose which skills I want to have/use.

Being “confused” is probably the feeling I’ve had for most of my playtime. Age of Wushu is not a horrible game at all. On the contrary! There are some really good features. If you like the kidnapping system or not, it’s at least something that you don’t see in every other game out there. But I could tell pretty fast that this game is not for me. I play games to relax and have fun. Being constantly vigilant because another player could be out there to attack me is not what I call fun. I knew about that before I gave it a try, so I’m not complaining here. By trying out the game, I simply confirmed that I still do not like open pvp like that. ;) On top of that, I have the feeling that I would have to invest too much time into the game. Time that I would rather spend on several other games instead.

I did, however, tell bookahnerk’s cousin about the game who has 9 accounts by now, so he can see everything, try out all the crafting professions, and so on. The game only allows you to have one character (per server, I think?). His cousin digged into the game, read all he could find about it and he’s been telling us about the game and how great it is. He loves open pvp and for him, this game is perfect. Oddly enough, what he loves isn’t even that it has open pvp (he still loves that fact, of course), but everything around the game. The features like farming in the game, that your character needs to eat and drink and that the food is made by players exclusively, the combat system and so on.

The 10/10 project: Champions of Regnum (Day 5)

My fifth day of the 10/10 project brought me to “Champions of Regnum“. This is a free to play MMORPG with a focus on RvR (open world PvP, so to say) with three factions. It was originally released in 2007 according to the Wikipedia entry. I noticed it some time after it was released on Steam on February 27, 2013. It features open world PvP in specific (open) areas of the map with three different factions. This, of course, reminded me of Warhammer Online. I know that Dark Age of Camelot was earlier with 3-faction PvP and Champions of Regnum is actually older than WAR, but WAR is the only one of those three that I ever really played. And I loved the idea and lots of their concepts (not the execution, though). So I was excited to try out Champions of Regnum.

Let me tell you that I have not tried the PvP in CoR yet. So if you’re looking for information about that, you need to go elsewhere. A few hours were not enough to dip my toes into PvP. One thing that I think isn’t as good as WAR which let you enter PvP as soon as you were done creating your character. But maybe it’s the same in CoR and I just didn’t get to do it because I had no idea it works. ;) The region that I was in at the beginning, however, was a safe zone. But let’s start at the beginning…

The installation was fast and smooth, just as most game installations are that go through Steam. I created an account and noticed the little “Gamigo” icon on the game’s launcher. I don’t know if I could have logged on with a regular Gamigo account, I didn’t try that. After registering a new account, I logged on and saw that there was exactly one server, Valhalla, with “(Germany)” at the end. Some Googling followed and I learned that apparently, the game is IP-locking you to a certain region. Since I’m in Germany, I only saw Gamigo’s German server. They also have a French one. Without changing anything in the game’s client settings, I could not change my server. There is some information about how to do that in this thread on Steam’s forum. Anyway, I played on the German server. It was nice to see people greet each other in the chat – or rather, greet the faction. It seemed cozy.

As I mentioned, there are three factions. One, Alsius, had a bonus of 25% extra XP and extra gold earned. Ignis gave a 10% bonus to XP gain. Syrtis has no bonus. I assume that’s because Syrtis has the highest population, but it wasn’t explained anywhere. I would have liked to get more information than that. I would also have loved to be able to change the resolution before continuing. The graphics settings can only be changed after entering the game. Also, if you do change the graphic settings and it’s something that requires a restart, my client tried to restart but crashed. Those were the only crashed I encountered, though.

Back to the factions: I googled once more and found this forum post. Alsius has dwarfs, so I really wanted to play those! The wiki entry also mentioned that Syrtis start in a forest area. I did not want to play Syrtis, though, because it looked like they already were the biggest faction and even for just trying out the game, I did not want to do that. Also, elves. No, thank you. Alsius start in a snowy area, but since it was still freezing here in real life last weekend, I really did not want to see any more snow, even if just in a game. So, Ignis with their desert region was my choice. All three factions’ race choices can be previewed, by the way. Only when you have created a character, you are locked to this faction unless you delete all your characters which then makes you able to choose a different faction (at least, I assume you can re-choose your faction then). All three factions have the “Lamai” race (which can be seen in the screenshots below). They reminded me a bit of asura from Guild Wars 2, so I chose one of them.

One weird thing I noticed in quest hubs was some “clicking” noise that appeared irregularly. It was definitely annoying especially when you can’t figure out where it’s coming from and how to stop it. I realized what it was after a while: It can be heard whenever the NPCs have a bunny-ears-helmet appear. Yes, a bunny-ears-helmet. It disappeared again after a few seconds with no noise. This is, of course, not relevant to the gameplay, but it was very strange and distracted me from the game quite a bit. ;)

The game does a good-enough job at introducing you to the movement controls, how to accept, do and finish a quest, what the NPCs are for, etc. What I did not see was an explanation about the discipline points, etc. that you get for earning a level. Maybe I missed it, though. It was at my warrior trainer (I chose a warrior which shouldn’t really surprise my regular readers as some kind of heavy melee fighter is usually my first choice) and I remember that I did have a quest that introduced me to the warrior trainer.

If you want to know more, there is a “how to play the game” section in the options which gives you information about several topics including PvP. I only got to level 6 or so and up till then, there was no mentioning of PvP in the basic tutorial quests. It’s nice that there is the option, though, and that you can read about aspects of the game whenever you need this information.

The controls were explained quite well, but there wasn’t that much to explain anyway. W and S for moving forwards and backwards. You can also click on the ground to move. A and D are for strafing left and right which was nice, because I always re-bind my keys to do exactly that. I’m a mouse- and not a key-turner. You can jump in this game unless you are on a mount. Also, when you are on a mount and get any kind of damage (like falling damage), you are dismounted immediately. I assume this was done with a focus on PvP balance. Mounts make you faster, but they limit the terrain you can move on by now allowing you to jump and if you’re hit, you’re without a mount immediately.

The user interface doesn’t give you a lot of choices. I want my character portrait at the lower part of the screen and close to the centre. Especially in PvP, I look at my character most of the time and I appreciate not having to move my eyes away from my character to spot how much life I have left. But as far as I know, I was not able to move any of the windows to any other positions.

The gameplay itself was standard questing. If you’ve played World of Warcraft or Lord of the Rings Online or any other MMO that features quests, you know the deal. As I said in the beginning, I have not tried any of the PvP. Since this game is mostly about PvP, I guess this “first impression piece” is missing an essential part. ;) But as the project says, devote a few hours to the game and report about it. Now it’s time to move on to the next MMO.

I can say, however, that taken everything together, the game did not impress me. The graphics aren’t good or up-to-date (the game is from 2007, after all), but I liked the reflections in the water and all in all, it set a good desert-y atmosphere. The movement and controls seemed a little off at times. The UI is a bit too restricted when it comes to letting you move windows. The quests aren’t anything special either. And yet… I can’t bring myself to say it’s a bad or even a boring game. There was something about the game that drew me in. I can’t even say what it was. Maybe it is because I haven’t had the chance yet to test any of the RvR or PvP. This is what made me interested in the game in the first place and this is what I still haven’t seen. The map and the conversations in the faction chat made me curious, though. I’m certain this wasn’t the last time I logged in.

I’ll end this blog post with a few screenshots I took which give a pretty good picture of the region I played in. And I tried to find some good videos about the game on YouTube, but I wasn’t able to find many.

Here’s a video that was uploaded by the developers. It shows a mage (I think? I didn’t play that class) in RvR. Ignore the bad music choice. I have no idea why they added this song, as in my opinion, it just doesn’t fit to RvR combat action. Also, the animations/movements of the character “freeze” during combat. I didn’t experience that when I played, but maybe it’s different when there are more characters on the screen.

Here’s another YouTube video, this time not by the developers. I only watched the beginning, so I have no idea what they’re saying later on. But I liked the beginning (cute laughs there).

Part of the “How to play” section that explains the RvR

UI: Buy/sell window, inventory and character panel

Achievements tab

Discipline and power points to specialize your character.

Ignis. One of the three factions in the game.

Cute and a bit like asura.

World map… I think?