Canaan Online – another cute, browser-based MMO

Site: http://en.canaan.gpotato.eu/


Canaan Online is new browser MMORPG by gPotato. It is a free to play game with manga characters and fun, colorful world. It is a flash game so you don’t need an installation to play. The game is somewhat similar to Neverland Online.

Canaan Online offers four playable classes – Ranger, Priest, Warrior and Mage. Each class has its specific skills and style. Pets take main part in the game as they accompany your character in battles and fight.

First Steps
Your character will receive a quest right at the beginning – fight the flying piglet. You must defeat one of the cute flying piglets near the village. If you can’t find them, use the link on the monster name in the tutorial window. You will have a piglet as a pet to accompany you in your first battle. The game offers even an auto-combat mode for lazy players like me.

Overall Impression
Canaan is nice and relaxing game, perfect for people who don’t want to be too engaged in an online MMO.

Aika, finally some good news

Few days ago GPotato announced Aika’s closed beta is going to run from 3rd February to 9th February. More information about the closed beta can be found on the official website of the game http://aika.gpotato.com/.
The test will feature all 6 classes, 5 nations and 30 levels of character development.

Actually so many facts and rumors are spreading on the net that I can’t wait to try this game. I wonder why GPotato haven’t made it available yet. Aika is played in Korea for more than two years. I’ve heard that it has several gaming awards there.

In case you don’t know, Aika is beautiful, fantasy MMORPG that greatly emphasize on PVP or more likely RVR (Realm vs Realm) battles. The information about the game on the official site is too little and I don’t know Korean to learn more from their sites.

Edit: There is some fun information about the game on the official forum. And many, many fans. The community seems big and nice.

I found this mass video on youtube, I want to play this game!

Battle of the Immortals - new MMORPG by Perfect World Entertainment

Site: http://boi.perfectworld.com/

Battle of the Immortals is the new, action MMORPG by Perfect World Entertainment. PWE created quite a buzz with releasing only bits of information and teasing the gamers’ world.












Here is a list of promised game features:

• 2.5D action MMORPG game
• The story combines eastern and western mythologies - from North Mythology to Qin Dynasty
• 5 classes, each with unique skills and equipment
• Zodiac System – your character will be empowered according to its creation date
• Auto-Navigation Quest System
• Soul Gear – unique sets of armor, that change as players use them
• PVP with ranking system
• Dungeons with bosses
• Pets
• Mounts
• Territory Wars

Battle of the Immortals is promised to be unique title, not alike any other PWE game. The art of the game looks very cool, these armors catch my heart. I hope the game will be as good as they say.

Last Chaos – awesome MMORPG game

Site: http://lastchaos.aeriagames.com/

Last Chaos is a free-to-play, 3D MMORPG with cool graphics and nice gameplay. The game looks incredibly similar to the popular pay to play MMORPG Lineage 2. More or less most of the free to play MMORPGs have problems with its gameplay. They sure look good but after some time the player finds no depth. In contrast, Last Chaos doesn’t have awesome graphics but its gameplay is ways above. I really was amazed to find myself addicted to a game so fast. 

Graphics
The game has somewhat beautiful graphics with large castles, vast territories and strange monsters. There are also a lot of different pets and mounts with bright and cool graphics, they create part of the magic atmosphere in the game. The horses maybe are a bit to colorful but the overall impression isn’t bad.

Gameplay
One drawback of this cool game is the poor customization options of the game characters. I really prefer to have bigger choice.
When I play MMO games I prefer to play magic damage dealer so I created a mage character. At the beginning my mage was thrown in something called private dungeon – there you can fight different monsters (zombies and similar) and learn the interface. At the end of the dungeon I was teleported to the first town. What made me an impression was that the game has good number of players – many players were selling different goods and some number of newbies like me was fighting low level monsters outside the gates. There were also many players leveling their pets with low level mobs. The pets are something cool – with many different shapes and colors – not your usual stupid (or cute) looking pets but fantasy creatures with nice and eye-catching design.
The monsters also make an impression – they are not grouped by types and you can see many different kinds in one field. The foxes at the beginning look too much like the keltirs from L2.
The game offers large maps with many places for exploration and different mobs. You are actually free to do what you want, you are not bound to different quests like “run to point A, return to B, then run back to A”. Of course you can do quests as you want and they bring a lot of experience (I usually go and take all available quests before hunting but I don’t like to do quests only).

Classes
Last Chaos has six playable races – Knight, Healer, Mage, Rogue, Titan and Sorcerer.
Knight - The knight is your usual tough guy with sword and shield or two swords.
Healer – She is a surprise, she actually can use bow and arrows and she can become an archer or a cleric at her first job change.
Mage – I like characters with high damage, especially high AoE damage.
Rogue – fast and deadly character she can use dual daggers or a crossbow.
Titan – rough guy with high HP and sword or axe of course. Do you like barbarians? My brother always plays this type of characters.
Sorcerer – something like summoner, maybe strong character. I need to try this one soon.

PVP
I haven’t tried it yet, my character is brand new, but I prefer to play on PVP servers. I was surprised to see a bunch of high level, bored people at the town gates in the middle of PVP battle.

The story
Actually I spent some time reading the story – war between gods of course. Good against evil, light against darkness and we, the humans were always the good ones, blessed with many abilities. Now you can choose a side and fight for it. So cool, I wonder who writes these stories and why game creators or publishers won’t hire a professional writer to do the job. Either way, the game is cool, maybe the best free to play game out there.

Visual Utopia – browser-based, strategy MMO

Site: http://visual-utopia.com

Visual Utopia (VU) is a free to play, strategy MMO game. It is a nice, browser-based adventure with many fun points.

The player takes the role of a ruler to develop and defend his land. At the beginning new players start in a tutorial mode, where you can learn the basics of the game. This MMO have some of the standard features of the genre – you can build structures, train soldiers, send them on missions, join forces with other rulers.

Dark Void - trailers

Dark Void is a sci-fi, action, adventure game - you can learn more from this post: http://godsector.blogspot.com/2010/01/dark-void.html.

Dark Void

Site: http://www.darkvoidgame.com/

Dark Void is a new sci-fi, action-adventure game published by Capcom. The game is developed by Airtight Games and uses Unreal 3 Engine.

The main character in the story, William Augustus Grey, is a pilot who crashes in the Bermuda Triangle. He is teleported to a strange world – the Void. The Void is a parallel world accessed through the vortices in the earth atmosphere. There William meets the Survivors, a group of people, trapped in the world of Void. Of course, the Survivors want to return home but they can’t because of the Watchers. The Watchers are the bad guys, an alien race who wants to enslave the mankind.
The game is available for Windows, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

Combat Arms - fast and addicting MMO FPS game

Site ( Europe ): http://combatarms.nexoneu.com/
Site ( America ): http://combatarms.nexon.net/

Combat Arms is an online, free-to-play FPS game developed by Doobic Studios and published by Nexon. It is an addicting, fast-paced, strategic shooter with many customization options.

Players start in a lobby where they can join matches or create rooms and host a game.
Successful match brings experience and GP (Gear Points – in-game money). The experience is needed to obtain a higher rank (similar to real life army ranks), and players with higher rank can buy better weapons.

Combat Arms offers many different modes – One Man Army, Elimination, Quarantine, Fireteam. You may wonder what exactly these mode names mean – here is the list of modes and explanations for newbies:

• One Man Army – Free for All Deathmatch
• Fireteam – a cooperative, story-based game, something like team quest
• Elimination – team match. A team must reach an amount of points (kills) first.
• Elimination Pro – similar to Elimination but each player has only one life per round.
• Search and Destroy – similar to Elimination, but one team is in offense (place bombs and destroy the other team fascility) and the other must defend itself.
• Capture the Flag – popular mode in many FPS games.
• Spy Hunt – strange mode where players can become spies through obtaining a special item – Intel Case. All other players hunt the spies but the spies have some advantages like speed and special armor. This mode has a phase 2 where the spy is only one (the person, who has gathered all suitcases), but he is equipped with some powerful weapons to fight all the other players.
• Quarantine (Zombie mode) – Some of the players are chosen to be infected. They must infect all the other players, while the non-infected players must kill them or at least survive the match.
• Snowball fight – Christmas event mode.

The gameplay is fast and addicting. If you are FPS and Combat Arms newbie you may feel a little confused at the beginning but the game is easy to play and fun. I’ll write separate gameplay review after this post.

Upgrading graphics? It's easy

Funny ATI video.

Altis Gates - upcoming MMORPG game

Site: http://ag.igg.com/

Altis Gates is a turn-based 2.5D MMORPG published by IGG. The game features a fantasy world, influenced by the European mythology.
The game promises many fun features like shape-shifting, pets, marriage system, guilds, formation system and so on.
Altis Gates alpha testing is scheduled for this month and will run from 19th January to 22nd January.

Mytheon Preview - when strategy and MMORPG collide

Site: http://www.mytheongame.com/

Mytheon is a MMORPG game under development by Petroglyph Games. The creators promise an exciting action-RPG in a mythology-based universe.

The events behind the Mytheon story are based loosely on Greece and Egypt mythology. After many centuries on the mercy of the gods, mankind finally has the chance to prove itself.

The gameplay will combine strategic elements with standard MMORPG play style. The action in Mytheon will revolve around the “Power Stones”. They are collectable items that can be used for summoning creatures or structures and casting magic. Additionally players will have the opportunity to craft rare power stones through the help of arcane recipes.

The game will offer three playable classes: Warcaster, Elementalist and Eidolon.
Warcasters have the largest selection of creatures in battle but also the least amount of healing potential.
The Elementalists are descendants of sorcerers, oracles and mystics. They posses the ability to command the forces of Air, Earth, Fire and Water. They use mainly spell stones. Their vulnerability is their lack of companion stones.
The Eidolons are an order of warrior-priests from Egypt. They have stones to create structures, dispel magic, enhance and heal.


Mytheon currently accepts applications for its closed beta.

Game trailer:

Tales Runner – fun, racing MMO with MMORPG elements

Site: http://talesrunner.gpotato.com

Tales Runner is unique, fast-paced MMO racing game where you can compete with your friends. The game is created by the Korean company Rhaon Entertainment and published by Gala-Net Inc.

Tales Runner is a racing multiplayer game, where you can compete by running, skiing, climbing and so on in a fantasy, 3D world.

Every time you participate in a race you receive experience points, TR (in-game currency) Alchemy Cards and other items. Alchemy Cards are used to upgrade the equipment. Each map has a set of cards and each card from the set has a percent probability to be obtained. Also during the race you can obtain power-ups and some of them can be used for attacking the other competitors.

The game has multiple game modes – single player race, basic race, survival races and more.

Trailers:

MapleStory expansion! Pirates!

NEXON Europe today announced new expansion of their MMORPG MapleStory.

MapleStory is a free-to-play, 2D, side-scrolling MMORPG game developed by the Korean company Wizet and published by Nexon. The game is set in a typical, fantasy world with warriors, magicians, monsters and adventure.

The update adds new pirate job class. Prates can choose from two development paths – Brawlers (specialize on hand-to-hand combat) or Gunslingers.
The update also adds new territory – the Leafre map. It is an egg-themed territory, located in the West of Ossyria. Some of the strongest monsters and hardest quest can be found there.

To learn more visit http://maplestory.nexoneu.com/Promotion/Pirate.

ShadowTale – cool browser MMORPG

Site: http://www.shadowtale.com/

Shadowtale is a flash-based, 2D MMORPG game that can be played entirely in a web browser. The game has great features more similar to usual MMORPG games. Playing ShadowTale is like adventuring in a tale world.

I didn’t expected much but it turns out to be really fascinating game. Its universe is persistent, players go around from one scene to another, meet other players, fight monsters and do quests.

The battles are actually real time and quite fast. You can’t take a breath between attacking enemies. The enemies tend to surround you, fighting large groups isn’t easy. You don’t know what enemies would emerge behind the next turn. At the beginning series of goblins, wolves and boars will attack you. You must go on a mission to save a girl and then you must infiltrate a castle. Castle guards will attack you and they are quite strong. My character had a hard time fighting them. You can use spells together with regular attack to fight.

The game interface is convenient and similar to traditional non-browser MMORPG games. You can equip your character, eat food, drink special potions, upgrade your weapons and armors and so on. You even can have a pet although I don’t have one yet.

Players can explore many different locations like the Catacombs, Gravelands, and even some castles. The game graphics looks like images from an old, tale book.